TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Megaupload Asks Court to Freeze MPAA and RIAA Cases
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 05/12/14
- Music Distributor Claims Right to Monetize JFK Speech
| Megaupload Asks Court to Freeze MPAA and RIAA Cases Posted: 12 May 2014 02:10 AM PDT
The respective cases are strikingly similar and all built on the same evidence. The RIAA and MPAA repeat many of the claims that were laid out in the criminal case, and each demand millions of dollars in damages. However, the fact that the suits all deal with the same issue is a problem according to Megaupload’s legal team. If the civil cases brought by the movie and music industries move ahead, this may directly influence the position of Dotcom and his colleagues in the criminal case. In a motion for a stay, the lawyers ask the court to freeze both civil cases pending the criminal proceedings. They argue that the accused may otherwise be forced to implicate themselves, which would violate their rights. “A stay is warranted here to avoid burdening the Fifth Amendment rights of the individual defendants,” Megaupload’s lawyers write. “During pleading, discovery, and trial, these individual defendants cannot be forced to risk implicating themselves in the crimes alleged in the Criminal Action in order to provide a defense to Megaupload in the civil case,” they add. The lawyers ask to freeze the cases until August 1, when the two-week extradition hearing in New Zealand has reached its conclusion. Megaupload previously requested the same in their civil case against Microhits, with success. If the criminal case continues after the extradition hearing, the lawyers will most likely ask to extend the stay. According to Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken the criminal case may be over sooner than later. TorrentFreak previously spoke to Rothken who believes that these RIAA and MPAA cases might show that the entertainment industries and the U.S. Government have little faith in the criminal proceedings. In any case, Megaupload’s legal troubles, civil or criminal, are expected to drag on for years. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.    | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 05/12/14 Posted: 11 May 2014 11:59 PM PDT
RoboCop is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Music Distributor Claims Right to Monetize JFK Speech Posted: 11 May 2014 10:28 AM PDT Earlier this week, TorrentFreak reader ‘Homer’ wrote in to complain about problems he’d been experiencing on YouTube. On April 8, 2014, Homer uploaded a five minute clip of JFK’s famous “The President and the Press” speech, given at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 27, 1961. When TF was alerted to the issue this week the video had received under 10 views, yet someone already had their eye on it. “A company called Believe Digital has made what I believe to be a fraudulent copyright claim against me for [the speech] I posted on YouTube,” Homer explained. “They’ve threatened no legal action, but have merely asserted ownership for the purpose of monetizing the video via advertising.” Believe Digital, a digital distributor for independent labels and artists, looks like a professional outfit. However, taking over the monetization rights of what should be a public domain speech and then on top refusing to respond to Homer’s dispute encouraged us to dig deeper. It would prove an interesting exercise, even though we already suspected there had been a monumental screw-up. After Believe Digital ignored TF’s attempts to discuss the issue, we spoke with Adam Holland, a Project Coordinator at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he works on projects including the DMCA ‘clearing house’ Chilling Effects. “Works produced by the Federal government are public domain. So the text of the speech itself is in the public domain,” Holland told TF. “If the federal government made a recording of the speech, then that recording is public domain. The JFK Presidential library confirms that that at least one version of the recording is still public domain.” Drilling down into Believe Digital’s repertoire we see that they represent a pair of artists called Harley & Muscle. Their track, Open Society, features something of interest throughout most of the track. Were Believe Digital really trying to suggest that the original JFK speech infringes their rights, or could there be another explanation? As pointed out by Adam Holland, a government audio recording of the speech would be in the public domain, meaning that Harley & Muscle could have simply sampled that. However, their use of a separate and private recording would be a different matter. “It's possible that someone else, a private individual, made a recording of the speech in question, and the copyright status of that sound recording or A/V work would be more complex, but it's likely the individual would have a valid copyright in that exact recording,” Holland explains. “This is only germane to the issue at hand if Harley & Muscle own that original recording, of course, and if it is that recording that was used to create their YouTube video. Otherwise, there's a 3rd party involved who has rights that may or may not be infringed here by both parties.” Adding yet more complexity to the mix, Holland goes on to explore another potential, albeit hugely unlikely scenario, but one in which Believe Digital could have a legitimate claim. “It seems extraordinarily unlikely, if not impossible, that the speech excerpt on YouTube [uploaded by Homer] was made by copying the samples within the [Harley & Muscle] song and pasting them together. It may well be impossible, I haven't listened to the full extent of both. What seems likely is that both of the parties involved had access to another, more complete recording of the speech,” Holland adds. Which would be, of course, the original public domain work. With that established and a fun detour into the public domain and back again, all roads branched back to what we initially believed to be the source of the problem – YouTube’s ContentID. Somehow the system has ‘awarded’ Believe Digital and Harley & Muscle “the rights” to go around monetizing this particular JFK speech based on their remix of the work more than 50 years later. That may have happened because speeches themselves don’t qualify for ContentID, potentially designating Harley & Muscle as the original publisher. However, those very same rules could also exclude their track from ContentID, but clearly didn’t. “Generally, [these kinds of mismatches are] unquestionably the downside of ContentID, and the extent to which it streamlines procedures for content holders. It’s certainly a shame that Believe Digital won’t engage, but this is really a place where YouTube needs to step in,” Holland concludes. While Believe Digital did not engage with either Homer or TorrentFreak on the matter whatsoever, during the week came a development. “Thanks to your intervention this claim has indeed been silently dropped, just as I suspected, without an apology or even so much as an explanation, and I presume also without any consequence to the opportunistic claimant,” Homer told TF. With Homer’s ‘strike’ gone he can relax again once more, but something clearly needs to be done about the one-sided nature of the YouTube complaints process. Companies like Believe Digital should be made to stand and engage once they have made a claim, not ignore the issue until they come under pressure. In this instance it was ‘just’ a claim against the original speech, but a claim against another artist remixing the same content could mean loss of earnings – or the loss of his YouTube account entirely with a third strike. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Following in the footsteps of the U.S. Government, this month the 
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