Torrentfreak: “Pirate MEP Proposes Major Reform of EU Copyright” plus 3 more |
- Pirate MEP Proposes Major Reform of EU Copyright
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 01/19/15
- “The Internet Would Never Have Existed Without The Copyright Monopoly”
- Pirate Bay’s Fredrik Neij Wants You to Write Him a Letter
| Pirate MEP Proposes Major Reform of EU Copyright Posted: 19 Jan 2015 03:13 AM PST
But with the unprecedented advancement of communications technology, especially in respect of the Internet, copyright frameworks often appear terribly outdated and unfit for purpose. In 2015 the EU has its collective eyes on copyright reform and to this end has appointed an individual whose political party has more focus than most on the world of copyright. Last November, Julia Reda, a politician for the German Pirate Party and member of the European Parliament, was tasked with producing a report on the implementation of the 2001 InfoSoc Directive. Having already presented her plans during a meeting of the Legal Affairs Committee in December, this morning Reda released a first draft of her report. It will come as no surprise that need for reform has been underlined. “Although the directive was meant to adapt copyright to the digital age, in reality it is blocking the exchange of knowledge and culture across borders today,” Reda’s core finding reads. The report draws on responses to a public consultation and lays out a reform agenda for the overhaul of EU copyright. It finds that the EU would benefit from a copyright mechanism that not only protects past works, but also encourages future creation and the unlocking of a pan-European cultural market.
"We need a common European copyright that safeguards fundamental rights and makes it easier to offer innovative online services in the entire European Union." The draft (pdf) acknowledges the need for artistic works to be protected under law and calls for improvements in the positions of authors and performers “in relation to other rightholders and intermediaries.” The document recommends that public sector information should be exempt from copyright protection and calls on the Commission to safeguard public domain works while recognizing rightsholders’ freedom to “voluntarily relinquish their rights and dedicate their works to the public domain.” Copyright lengths are also tackled by Reda, who calls on the Commission to harmonize the term to a duration that does not exceed the current international standards set out in the Berne Convention. On Internet hyperlinking the report requests that citizens are allowed to freely link from one resource to another and calls on the EU legislator “to clarify that reference to works by means of a hyperlink is not subject to exclusive rights, as it is does not consist in a communication to a new public.” The document also calls for new copyright exceptions to be granted for research and educational purposes to not only cover educational establishments, but “any kind of educational and research activities, Also of interest is Reda’s approach to transparency. Since being appointed, Reda says she’s received 86 meeting requests from lobbyists. As can be seen from the chart below, requests increased noticeably after the Pirate was named as rapporteur in November 2014.  “I did my best to balance out the attention paid to various interest groups. Most requests came from publishers, distributors, collective rights organizations, service providers and intermediaries (57% altogether), while it was more difficult to get directly to the group most often referred to in public debate: The authors,” Reda explains. “The results of the copyright consultation with many authors' responses demonstrate that the interests of collecting societies and individual authors can differ significantly.” Reda has published a full list of meetings that took place. It includes companies such as Disney and Google, and ‘user’ groups such as the Free Software Foundation Europe. “Tomorrow morning around 9 I’m going to publish my report on EU #copyright, discussion in legal affairs committee on Tuesday,” Reda reported a few minutes ago. The final report will be put to an April vote in the Legal Affairs Committee and then to a vote before the entire Parliament during May. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.    | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 01/19/15 Posted: 19 Jan 2015 12:10 AM PST
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 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, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| “The Internet Would Never Have Existed Without The Copyright Monopoly” Posted: 18 Jan 2015 02:02 PM PST
In what appeared to be a private conversation on Twitter between colleagues I was called out as evil, claiming that all the anti-copyright-monopoly sentiment on the Internet came from me personally. Of course, knowing how Twitter works, anybody mentioning my name gets an immediate highlight on my screen, and so I took the liberty of butting in to the conversation a few seconds later.  I explained patiently that the Pirate Party could not possibly exist if there wasn’t already a widespread sense of information liberty; that the sentiment of the Internet already was that the copyright monopoly was there to constrict and punish rather than anything else. To my surprise, the copyright industry lawyer responded that the entire Internet would not have existed at all without the copyright monopoly. This was a statement that would have been trivial to ridicule to smithereens (“please explain how Al Gore fits into it?”), but it made me genuinely curious. How do these people think, anyway?  So when I asked which part of the Internet Mr. Shrum referred to – DARPA (ARPAnet), TCP/IP, or CERN [sic, referring to the birth of WWW but I didn’t write that out], he surprised me even more by saying “All of them”.  Somewhat to my surprise, this lawyer also picked up on the “monopoly” moniker as can be seen above, not trying to argue against that characteristic at all. So being aware that there was a monopoly, this copyright industry lawyer still argued that no part of the Internet would have been created without that monopoly. Of course, this goes completely counter to actual history: particularly with regards to the World Wide Web, which was specifically created in Switzerland to circumvent the monopoly previously held by University of Minnesota in the US, where a similar technology by the name of Gopher had been developed. When somebody claims exclusive rights to a standard on the Internet, that standard is generally dropped like a bad habit and replaced by something else immediately. That has happened several times, and the WWW standard was such a replacement. However, I gained a lot of understanding from this short exchange. It would appear the people we are debating in the copyright industry are reasoning something like this: 1 – the Progress Clause (the justification for the copyright monopoly in article 8 in the US Constitution, allowing Congress to create exclusive rights in order to “Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts”) means that any law created using that justification automatically has the effect of also promoting such progress in all its applications and spheres of influence. 2 – therefore, anything created in an environment where such a law exists, created under a monopoly regime covering expressions of ideas, could not have been conceived without the existence of the law in question. If this is the actual reasoning – and it would appear that it is – then it becomes comprehensible why net liberty activists who fight for the freedom to create without permission are seen as evil by the copyright industry. If they genuinely believe that everything that exists was created because the copyright monopoly exists, then somebody who wants to take away that monopoly regime would plunge the world into darkness where nothing more is created, ever. Stop laughing. This explains the worldview we’re going up against when discussing the topic, and as such, it was valuable to understand. It fits well in with my observation that copyright monopoly maximalists are acting like religious fundamentalists a few years back – especially given the apparent non-need to check on actual facts, when all the “facts” could be easily deduced from the certainty that everything created was created because there is a copyright monopoly. At some point later in the discussion, a colleague in the copyright industry butted in and subtly suggested that this lawyer might want to stop arguing the point that the Internet was created because of the copyright monopoly before reading up on the actual history.  That was the end of that discussion.  About The Author Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. Book Falkvinge as speaker? Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pirate Bay’s Fredrik Neij Wants You to Write Him a Letter Posted: 18 Jan 2015 10:58 AM PST
As with Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik’s involvement with the site eventually resulted in a prison sentence and a hefty fine. After being on the run for two years he was arrested by Thai immigration authorities last November when he tried to cross the border from Laos. A few days later he flew to Sweden where he was transferred to a prison in Skänninge. With several weeks now passed, TF has learned that Fredrik is doing well considering the circumstances. His wife and two kids are allowed to visit now, which must be a welcome distraction to monotonous prison life. With a sentence of 10 months Fredrik will not be released before summer. Worryingly, he also has to face hacking allegations as well as a criminal referral of his ISP DCP Networks. Considering the above, Fredrik won’t mind having some things to entertain himself. In a message sent to TF he signaled that it would be nice to receive letters, cards and other stuff from people all over the world. Anything goes, the more mail arrives the better. People who want to write Fredrik should use the address listed at the bottom of this article. Keep in mind though, all incoming mail will be checked by the authorities before he receives it. Besides Fredrik, Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm also remains in prison. Last October he was convicted of hacking into the systems of IT company CSC and sentenced to 3.5 years. TF spoke with Gottfrid’s mother Kristina who informed us that her son is being held in better conditions than before. He is allowed to receive books and his letters are no longer read by the police, but access to a computer or the Internet is still off-limits. Gottfrid has officially appealed his sentence and these proceedings are scheduled to start in April. In the meantime, he too would love to receive mail. The addresses of Gottfrid and Fredrik are listed below. — Gottfrid Svartholm Warg — Fredrik Neij 14-514 Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The idea of copyright is certainly not new and most countries worldwide have developed complex systems to ensure that it’s upheld, ostensibly to protect the rights of creators.
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