Torrentfreak: “Concern Over Russian “Piracy Buster” Internet Tax” plus 1 more

Concern Over Russian “Piracy Buster” Internet Tax

Posted: 07 Dec 2014 01:49 AM PST

Over the years there have been many strategies put forward aimed at reducing online piracy.

Rightsholders have often pushed for tough legislation in the hope that hefty fines and lengthy jail sentences will encourage the masses to buy rather than download for free. Recent proposals in Russia, however, look at the problem from another direction.

During October the Russian Union of Right Holders (RUR) suggested that a fixed royalty fee should be paid to rightsholders in exchange for people receiving certain freedoms to deal with online content.

“[People would] get the right to freely and lawfully use for private purposes – including to receive, distribute and share – absolutely any content that is not excluded from the system of global licensing,” RUR told Izvestia.

The proposals envision Internet service providers obtaining “universal licenses” from rightsholders or their collecting societies in order to legitimize the ‘infringements’ of their subscribers.

While nothing has been set in stone, figures appearing in the press suggest an annual fee of anything up to $5 per subscriber. While the ‘tax’ could inflate ISP subscriptions by as much as 5% per year, reports suggest it could also bring in $860m for rightsholders.

Unsurprisingly, the proposals have a number of potential pitfalls.

Every Internet subscriber would be required to pay the tax, whether they are downloading copyrighted material for free or purchasing it legitimately. Also, public sharing of content would not be licensed, a serious limitation for most file-sharers.

Furthermore, royalty charges would be “per device”, including home connections and cellphones, meaning some people could end up paying multiple times, whether they ‘pirate’ or not.

For their part, ISPs have also expressed concerns that by accepting the proposals the Internet piracy ‘problem’ would be placed on their shoulders as they would have to collect fees from customers.

Even copyright holders seem to have issues with the proposals. Some say that no suitable system for distribution of royalties exists. Others are expressing concerns that the tax would amount to the legalization of piracy and the undermining of fledgling digital services.

Still, reports now coming out of Russia suggest that the whole thing won’t easily or quickly get off the ground.

Late Friday Mail.ru reported First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov as saying that the government “won’t be rushed” into a decision on the licensing model.

All stakeholders need to negotiate, Shuvalov said.

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

LionsGate Targets Reddit Over Christmas Movie Piracy

Posted: 06 Dec 2014 08:31 AM PST

Some jobs are never done. Whether it’s cleaning up after kids or shifting leaves in the fall, as soon as one mess is dealt with along comes another. And another. And another.

Copyright holders know the feeling only too well. While it may traditionally come around on February 2, for them every day is Groundhog Day. Check torrent and other file-sharing sites for infringing content, send takedown notices. Hope content disappears. Rinse and repeat.

No one knows how many DMCA notices are sent in total each week, but during the past seven days Google alone received 8.68 million. It’s believed that the majority of these notices are accurate, but the truth is no one really knows. Google rejects thousands every day, often due to notices targeting the same URLs time and again.

Other errors are more easily spotted, such as when copyright holders target content they don’t own the rights to. Another ‘trick’ is not targeting infringing content precisely – why send a DMCA notice for a single URL when one can move up a level and take out a whole bunch of content in a single swoop?

This week that’s exactly what LionsGate tried to do. In a single DMCA notice to Google the movie studio targeted 9,000 URLs spread over 379 domains. As usual dozens of URLs were duplicates and as such were rejected by Google, but a trio of links targeting Reddit were dismissed for different reasons.

Each targeted a Reddit sub called BestOfStreamingVideo after someone posted a link to the LionsGate movie ‘Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas‘.

However, instead of targeting the precise link as required under the DMCA, LionsGate tried to have the whole sub-reddit delisted from Google. It didn’t pay off.

Faced with wiping the very existence of /r/BestOfStreamingVideo from its search results, Google refused to go full nuclear and rejected all three attempts by LionsGate.

It’s not clear why the search engine refused to comply but it’s possible that by being over-broad the studio shot itself in the foot. That being said, one of the URLs does link to the content in question so other factors could be at play.

The “over-broad” strategy has certainly paid off in the past, though. The MPAA previously managed to have the homepages of several popular sites removed from Google's search results, including that of KickassTorrents.

On the other hand, more recent efforts have produced less impressive results, with Google rejecting an MPAA attempt at removing dozens of ‘pirate’ site homepages just last month.

So at least for now /r/BestOfStreamingVideo remains findable using Google, but it’s quite possible that it will be targeted again before the Christmas period is over……

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