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UK IP Chief: Google Should Blacklist Pirate Sites
Research Links Piracy to Internet Addiction and Deviant Friends
Spotify: We Make Revenue From Pirates Who Never Pay

UK IP Chief: Google Should Blacklist Pirate Sites

Posted: 30 May 2014 02:51 AM PDT

Mike Weatherley, a Conservative MP and Intellectual Property Adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, has become increasingly involved in the online piracy debate in recent months.

Weatherley’s current focus is on the role search engines can play in reducing infringement. In contrast to the approach taken by the entertainment industries, the MP has taken a much more positive stance when speaking of Google’s efforts thus far. In a new report, however, Weatherley lays out often far-reaching recommendations that puts him almost completely in sync with industry demands.

The report, which Weatherley says is intended to stimulate debate, begins with praise for Google for “engaging positively” during its creation. Its recommendations are directed at all search engines, but as the market leader Google is called on to show leadership. Where Google goes, others will follow, Weatherley believes.

Search results – demoting illegal sites

The music and movie industries have long complained that illegal content is too easy to find and for a long time they’ve been putting Google under pressure to do something about that. Weatherley believes that by working with two existing sources of information – Google’s Transparency Report and the recently formed Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s infringing site “blacklist” – Google has a ready formula at hand.

The BPI’s input suggests that when a search engine has received 10,000 infringement notices for a site, that site should no longer appear on the first page of search results. Any that receive 100,000 notices should no longer appear in the first 10 pages. However, it’s envisioned that “certificates” could be handed out to some sites to help them avoid being relegated – more on that later.

Voluntarily complying with site-blocking court orders

In the UK around 30 ‘pirate’ sites are now blocked via the UK’s major ISPs after both the BPI and MPA went to court to obtain injunctions. While these injunctions only legally apply to their formal targets (the ISPs), in future Weatherley would like Google to acknowledge the existence of injunctions by immediately removing the affected sites from all search results. The MP acknowledges that this may require a change in the law.

Accepting takedown notices for AutoComplete terms

For some time Google has been accepting applications from rightsholders to remove “infringing” terms from its AutoComplete service. Weatherley now wants to see this process formalized.

“Given that Google has accepted that Autocomplete for pirate sites should not occur, it seems uncontroversial to recommend that steps are taken to continue to ensure this does not happen,” he writes.

AutoComplete takedown notices should be included in Google’s Transparency Report, the MP says.

Incorporating “Trust Marks” and “Warnings” to inform consumers

The idea here is that somehow Google will consider the reputation of a site when formulating its algorithms and when it presents its search results. “Trust Marks” would be used to denote a legal and licensed resource while “Warnings” would be used to highlight an illegal site.

The exact process through which a site could become trusted is unclear, but suggestions from the BPI indicate that a “certificate” could be obtained from its own Music Matters project to indicate that a resource is “clean”. Similar certificates could be obtained by sites that receive a lot of takedown notices but operate legally (YouTube for example) so that they are whitelisted by Google and not downgraded in search results.

In terms of warning against unlicensed sites, rightsholders suggest that Google takes note of PIPCU’s “pirate” site blacklist by either negatively marking affected sites in search results or removing them completely.

Referencing a TorrentFreak article published last month reporting how Google had signaled that Demonoid was a potentially dangerous site, Weatherley said Google can do more to protect consumers.

“Google has not only proven in relation to malware on certain torrent sites that it has the technical capability within its systems to deliver consumer messaging in search listings, but that such messages can be an effective deterrent to consumers,” the MP explains.

Licensed services should do more to help themselves in search results

While the music and movie industries complain endlessly about “pirate” results appearing above their own licensed content, not much time is given to explaining why that’s the case. Weatherley reveals that Google has made a request for movie and music streaming services behind a paywall to allow Google to crawl their sites in order for consumers to be able to see them in results. For some services, apparently that’s not currently allowed.

“Google maintains that it is perfectly possible to create crawlable pages for each movie or album title in a security-friendly way. I am told by rights holders that there are potential security issues around making licensed services crawlable and they have concerns with this proposal,” Weatherley notes.

Conclusion

While Weatherley is currently praising Google in order to keep the tone positive and the discussion flowing, the IP advisor clearly believes that the search engine is capable of assisting rightsholders much more but is failing to do so.

The MP’s report has no official standing in respect of government policy but it addresses most if not all of the movie and music industries’ main problems with Google. Expect this document to become a point of reference in the months to come.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Research Links Piracy to Internet Addiction and Deviant Friends

Posted: 29 May 2014 12:29 PM PDT

Over the past decade a lot of research has looked at the effects of online piracy, particularly on the revenues of various entertainment industries.

Increasingly researchers are also examining the sociological links, causes and effects of copyright infringement. A new study conducted by Tennessee Tech University’s Jordana Navarro is a good example.

With a large survey Navarro and her colleagues investigated the link between piracy, internet addiction and deviant tendencies. The results were published in an article titled “Addicted to pillaging in cyberspace: Investigating the role of internet addiction in digital piracy,” which appears in the latest issue of the Computers and Human Behavior journal.

The researchers conducted a large-scale survey among 1,617 students from 9th through 12th grade. The participants were asked a wide range of questions, covering their piracy habits, as well as scales to measure Internet addiction and association with deviant friends.

The findings on the piracy side are comparable to many previous studies and show that movie piracy is most prevalent. Nearly 30% of the students admitted to pirating movies, and this percentage went down to 15% and 13% for music and software piracy respectively.

One of the more interesting findings is the link between piracy and Internet addiction. Here, the researchers found that students who have more internet addiction related issues are more likely to pirate software.

“Based on the results of the study, we can determine that high school students who have Internet-related problems due to addiction are more likely to commit a specific form of piracy involving the illegal downloading of software,” the researchers write.

The same group of software pirates were also more likely to hang out with deviant friends. This measure includes friends who pirate, those who threaten others with violence online, those who send nude pictures, and those who have used another person’s credit card or ID without permission.

“Not surprisingly, youth who committed this form of piracy were also more likely to have deviant peers. In other words, their behaviors were influenced by friends who committed similar or other deviant acts,” the researchers conclude.

Interestingly, the link between Internet addiction and copyright infringement was only found for software piracy. High school students who pirated movies and music were not more likely to have these type of problems. They were, however, more likely to associate with deviant or criminal friends.

“The remaining two forms of piracy for juveniles are not predicted by Internet addiction based on our findings. However, the results did support past findings that deviant peer association and piracy behaviors are significant related,” the researchers write.

According to the researchers the results are a good first step in identifying how various problems and deviant behaviors are linked, which could be helpful to shape future educational efforts.

Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t offer any explanations for the differences in the link between Internet addiction and various types of piracy. One likely explanation is that those who show more signs of Internet addiction simply spend more time on the computer, and are therefore more interested in software piracy and software in general.

For now, it appears that some more follow-up research is needed before it’s warranted to send the first batch of kids to piracy rehab.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Spotify: We Make Revenue From Pirates Who Never Pay

Posted: 29 May 2014 07:00 AM PDT

In the continuing piracy debate one thing has been established beyond reasonable doubt. If an entertainment producer wants to make any dent in piracy, at the very least they’re going to have to make their products readily available at a fair price.

This argument has gathered serious momentum in Australia during the past few years, with local consumers regularly criticizing international TV and movie companies for shipping products Down Under months after release and then charging unrealistic prices.

But in a recent opinion piece, the principal analyst at local music royalty collection outfit APRA AMCOS disputed whether the arrival of services like Spotify that give consumers what they want, have actually done anything to reduce piracy rates.

“Music's had everything everybody now wants for television shows, such as Game of Thrones, for a couple of years: availability, access and a reasonable price. But the piracy issue still has not been solved,” Andrew Harris wrote.

“In fact, results last month from our ongoing national research show that music piracy levels – just as they were almost two years ago – still sit at around the same level as that of movies and television shows.”

Noting that Spotify offers content in Australia at the moment it’s released around the world and does so at one of the best prices, Harris arrives at a familiar conclusion.

“We've heard it all before. No matter how loud the minority might shout it in anger as the answer, it's impossible to compete with free.”

Unsurprisingly that notion doesn’t sit well with Spotify, a company that was designed from the ground up to compete with piracy.

Responding to Harris’s assertions in Australian Financial Review, Spotify Australia and New Zealand chief Kate Vale said that the company’s experiences told a different story.

"We do believe that access, availability and price does contribute and is the answer and we have proven this in other markets across Europe and particularly in Sweden where we have seen a 30 per cent reduction in piracy since we launched about six years ago,” Vale said.

Cracking Sweden was undoubtedly a major feat given the country’s long association with Internet piracy and Vale believes that Spotify now has the right formula to attract the most aggressive file-sharers – and make money from them.

"If you look at the main audience that is on Spotify, a lot of them are former pirates. There are teenagers who have potentially never paid for their music before, and probably never will,” she said.

"If we can get them on to a service that is free but legal, and they are contributing through our advertising on that free tier, then it is giving money back into the industry that they are just never going to get before."

The ad-supported tier of Spotify is undoubtedly a great incentive to get people to try the service. Globally the company says that it converts around a quarter of free users to premium subscribers but Australia actually tops that with 31%, suggesting that Aussies are happier than most to part with their hard-earned cash in exchange for a good product.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.