Piracy Archives

G8 declaration: Internet and IP critical to innovation

The leaders of the G8 concluded their meetings last week with a renewed commitment to freedom and democracy. They released a declaration dealing with a variety of topics including the importance of the Internet and intellectual property as catalysts to innovation. The declaration also highlights the challenges of maintaining the privacy and security of networks and network communications.

The declaration on the Internet made the link between the Internet and innovation as follows:

For business, the Internet has become an essential and irreplaceable tool for the conduct of commerce and development of relations with consumers.

…

View Post

Canada back on the USTR 2011 Special 301 Watch List

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) just published its 2011 Special 301 Report. The 2011 Special 301 review process examined IPR protection and enforcement in 77 of the US’s trading partners. The Special 301 Report is a critical mechanism for the U.S. government to ensure that its trading partners provide adequate and effective protection of IP for America’s creators and innovators.

Following extensive research and analysis, the USTR again listed Canada on its Priority Watch List along with Algeria, Argentina, Canada, China, India, Israel, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, and Venezuela.…

View Post

YouTube adopts “copyright school” to stop copyright infringement

YouTube has changed its copyright policy. YouTube already has a policy that involves suspending accounts of YouTube users who have three copyright strikes. Now, if YouTube receives a notification that a user’s video is infringing the user will be required to go to “YouTube Copyright School”. A second change in the policy relaxes YouTube’s copyright strikes from a user’s accounts if the user completes the YouTube Copyright School and has demonstrated good behavior over time.

The Official YouTube Blog says the following:

If we receive a copyright notification for one of your videos, you’ll now be required to attend “YouTube Copyright School,” which involves watching a copyright tutorial and passing a quiz to show that you’ve paid attention and understood the content before uploading more content to YouTube.

…

View Post

New Zealand passes law to reduce online file sharing

New Zealand just enacted legislation that puts in place a three-notice regime to deter illegal file sharing.

The three-notice regime involves ISPs sending warning notices to their customers informing them they may have infringed copyright. The legislation extends the jurisdiction of the NZ Copyright Tribunal to provide an efficient, low-cost process to hear illegal file-sharing claims. The tribunal will be able to make awards of up to $15,000 based on damage sustained by the copyright owner.

The bill includes a power for a district court to suspend an internet account for up to six months, in appropriate circumstances.…

View Post

Who Profits from Piracy?

The video shown below is based on a presentation first given by Ellen Seidler (fastgirlfilms) at Canadian Music Week’s Global Forum in March of 2011.

In the introduction to the video she says: “Online piracy isn’t about altruism, it’s about income. Today’s technology allows web pirates to steal content and monetize that content with a click of a mouse. Meanwhile, “legit” companies encourage and facilitate this theft while also profiting from it (ad service providers, advertisers and payment processors). The time has come for reasonable measures to be taken to discourage this theft.…

View Post

Rethinking notice and notice after C-32 (now C-11)

Canada’s last three copyright bills, C-60, C-61 and C-32, attempted to curb illegal online file sharing by requiring ISPs to forward notices of claimed infringements to customers. Canada’s ISPs had advocated for this “notice and notice” process claiming it was effective. However, they never produced any empirical evidence or studies to back up their claims.

On March 22, 2010 – before the federal election was called- TELUS, Bell and Rogers appeared before the Special Legislative Committee studying Bill C-32. The ISPs continued to endorse notice and notice asking that this process be formalized in C-32.…

View Post

What art copyrights and sandwhiches have in common

Here is a video included in a blog How copyright infringement is like stealing my sandwhich. It is by an artist “to put copyright infringement into terms the average person can understand: lunch”. It is an interesting perspective given the recent testimony of Margaret Atwood at the Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-32.

…

View Post

Are Canada’s copyright laws friendly or unfriendly towards wealth destroyers according to Prof. Geist?

In the last few weeks Prof. Geist has been writing, blogging, tweeting, speaking and even testifying to a Parliamentary Committee about the IsoHunt case and whether there is a need for an amendment to the Copyright Act to create a new cause of action to make online pirate sites and services liable for enabling copyright infringement. His ostensible claim is that representatives of the recording industry secretly filed a copyright infringement claim against IsoHunt three weeks before Bill C-32 was tabled in the House of Commons; kept the suit secret to improve their chances of getting copyright reforms needed to shut the site down – all the while not needing the amendments because they already have the legal tools necessary to put IsoHunt out of business.…

View Post

iiNet court backs reasonableness of graduated response to stop illegal file sharing

Last week the Australian Full Court released its decision in the landmark case Roadshow Films Pty Limited v iiNet Limited, [2011] FCAFC 23. The Australian appeals court by majority dismissed the appeal from the decision of the primary judge who had held that iiNet, an ISP in Australia that had not acted on any information provided to it by copyright owners, was not liable for authorizing the copyright infringement of its subscribers who had used its facilities to engage in unlicensed peer to peer file sharing.…

View Post

Canada: online piracy a problem hurting artists, creators and the economy

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) today released a report that spotlighted Internet and physical markets that exemplify key challenges in the global struggle against piracy and counterfeiting. Not surprisingly, Canada-based IsoHunt was identified as a major piracy site which “recently ranked among the top 300 websites in global traffic and among the top 600 in U.S. traffic.”

The report follows on the heels of last week’s submission by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) to the USTR recommending that Canada be maintained on the Special 301 Priority Watch List in 2011.…

View Post

Subscribe