Piracy Archives

Challenges for Digital Britain: broadband access, copyright and business models

Last week, the UK Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, gave a speech outlining the main challenges ahead for the government in moving forward with its Digital Britain initiative. He focused on three challenges, broadband; copyright; and new business models.

With respect to broadband, he outlined that the government had two major broadband projects: a commitment that every home in the country should be able to obtain a 2 Mbit/s broadband service – and so be able to use the applications which most people are using broadband for today; and a next-generation fund to support national scale investment in much higher speed services.…

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The Italian Pirate Bay Case: What did the court order and why?

On December 23, 2009, the Italian Supreme Court released its ruling in a case involving criminal charges against the operators of the Swedish website, Pirate Bay. The case raised a number of interesting issues including whether, under Italian criminal law, the operation of a BiTtorrent site is illegal when the operators get a financial return such as by showing advertising on the site; the seizure of a p2p file sharing website is possible; a court can grant injunctive relief requiring ISPs to block access to a site that facilitates infringement; and the criminal law extends to online digital piracy that in part takes place abroad.…

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The Epidemic of Online Book Piracy

When people think of unauthorized file sharing, they often focus on music, movies and TV programs, and software. Often forgotten is the magnitude of the illegal file sharing in the book publishing industry. A recent study published by Attributor documents what the Association of American Publishers calls an “Epidemic of Online Book Piracy”.

The study monitored piracy for 913 popular books across the most popular 25 file hosting sites starting in October 2009 for a period of 90 days.…

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Canadian and international copyright-the year in review (2009) presentation for the LSUC

Here is a copy of my slides presented at the 14th Annual Law Society of Upper Canada Intellectual Property Law – The Year in Review conference. It covers the leading Canadian and international copyright cases for the 2009 year. It excludes decisions of the Copyright Board. These cases were dealt with by Mario Bouchard of the Copyright Board of Canada.

The cases summarized include the following: Robinson v. Les Films Cinar Inc, 2009 QCCS 3793; Drolet v. Gralsbotschaft, 2009 FC 17; Atomic Energy of Canada Limited v.…

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Eight things worth proroguing on TV: Pirating TV shows from BitTorrent

Did anyone catch John Doyle’s article in The Globe and Mail last week titled “Just copy Our Glorious Leader: Eight things worth proroguing on TV”?

In musing about Parliament being prorogued he suggested a list of 8 TV related items that should be prorogued. In one of them he makes the point that pirating TV shows over BitTorrent and other file sharing networks is not a victimless act. It can affect the lives of ordinary Canadians who directly or indirectly earn a living in the industry.…

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Critiquing copyright canards

I just came across a paper published by the US based Copyright Alliance entitled Critiquing Copyright Canards. Written by Patrick Ross, the paper sets out to debunk some of the arguments or “canards” that are used by opponents of copyright.

The Copyright Alliance “is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization dedicated to the value of copyright as an agent for creativity, jobs and growth. “ The report identifies its members as a broad coalition of the following groups: the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists; American Intellectual Property Law Association; American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; American Society of Media Photographers; Association of American Publishers; Association of Independent Music Publishers; AT&T; Attributor; Broadcast Music, Inc.;…

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ITIF Report: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy

Earlier this month, The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a paper called Steal These Policies: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy. The aim of the paper is to advance a policy in which illegal sources of digital content is reduced while legal content becomes more accessible. The executive summary provides the following overview of the problem as follows:

“The rise of broadband Internet access and cheap storage, along with the growth of digital content, has enabled digital piracy to flourish around the world.…

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Toying with funny math to downplay Canada’s role as a piracy haven

Several weeks ago TorrentFreak published its Top 25 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2009. In a blog commenting on the rankings, I pointed out that out of the top 25, 7 of them are located or have connections to Canada and that of the top 10, 4 are located or have connections to Canada. I also pointed out that this meant that Canada, alone, is home to more than 25% of the world’s public English language unauthorized bitTorrent sites and 40% of the leading ones are in Canada.…

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Fung and Isohunt found liable for inducing worldwide copyright infringement

Earlier this week, a US district court granted summary judgement to MPAA members holding that Gary Fung and four websites operated by him, including Isohunt one of Canada’s largest bittorrent sites, contribute to massive worldwide copyright infringement.

Operators of bittorrent sites like isoHunt often claim they are nothing but content neutral search engines like Google. The Isohunt court disagreed holding, based on uncontested expert evidence, that approximately 95 percent of all files made accessible through Isohunt were infringing or highly likely to be infringing.…

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Dr. Ficsor: An invitation to Canada to join the international community by ratifying the WIPO Internet Treaties

Geneva, December 21, 2009: An invitation – presented to Canada to join the international community by ratifying and duly implementing the WIPO “Internet Treaties” – that should not be turn down

On December 14, the international copyright community had a big celebration in Geneva at the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organizations (WIPO). The ambassadors of 16 Member States of the European Union and the European Union itself deposited their instruments of ratification of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT).…

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