Like all respected anti-piracy organizations, LANVA holds accounts at all the popular private torrent trackers, including LinkoManija. For a long time their account remained inactive, but this week LANVA claimed a small victory as it reported the IP-addresses of 106 users of the site to the police.

According to the anti-piracy outfit, the reported users were caught sharing a copy of the newly released Windows 7 Ultimate operating system. As evidence the self-proclaimed investigators submitted a screenshot of peers listed by uTorrent.

The owner of LinkoManija was not impressed by LANVA’s actions. “Anyone can copy a peer list, but it doesn’t prove that anyone downloaded the full file or actually uploaded anything,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. “It can’t be used as serious evidence,” he added.

LANVA disagrees and hopes that the police will track down the identities of the accused infringers. If this happens the users will face fines of up to several hundred dollars, plus additional damages Microsoft’s lawyers may call for.

In a response the owner of LinkoManija has reported LANVA to the police. People who are affiliated with an anti-piracy group are not allowed to use LinkoManija according to the site’s disclaimer, and Kestas has asked the police find out whether LANVA broke the law.

“We contacted the police and asked them to investigate how LANVA obtained the information, because we did not give them permission,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. The police informed him that they would look into the case.

If any of the reported users faces legal action, Kestas says he will help them out with legal support. “We told our users that we will be fighting for them if they get in trouble, because it’s a fight for the freedom of us all,” he said. “Our users are our strength,” he added.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today the project releases the film ‘In Guantanamo’ which makes a worldwide premiere on BitTorrent. The film documents filmmaker David Miller’s three day tour of the controversial camps, invited by the U.S. government.

“Although the event was presented as a chance to ’see inside’ the working of Guantanamo, it was in fact a carefully staged PR exercise designed to yield predictable, stale, controlled media images,” we read on the Gitmo’s VODO release page.

The film has been officially released on VODO today and is currently featured on both isoHunt and The Pirate Bay. With help from these sites and several other partners well known to the file-sharing community, the project is able to attract a lot of eyeballs for upcoming and already established film talent.

VODO founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak that the project’s first film performed really well. “I think the first VODO release was a great success,” he said. “Around 250,000 downloads through our DISCO partners — as the filmmaker put it, that was more than his terrestrial TV release in the UK.”

As the project’s name already reveals, downloaders are encouraged to donate to the filmmakers if they appreciate their work. King told TorrentFreak that quite a few downloaders have donated generously. Not enough to fund a new movie obviously, but as the project gains more attention it is likely to bring in some serious income for the filmmakers.

In Guantanamo can be downloaded for free here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Seven weeks ago, the Canadian government launched the first national copyright consultation since 2001. The consultation, which has featured town hall meetings, by-invitation-only roundtables, an online discussion forum, and an open submission process, has attracted considerable interest with over 4,000 submissions to date.

While the overwhelming majority of those submissions have called for balanced reforms that would strengthen fair dealing, create a liability safe harbour for intermediaries, and link any new anti-circumvention rules to actual copyright infringement, there is reason for concern.

There are only six days left in the consultation and the thousands that have spoken out for fair copyright – the students, teachers, Internet users, software programmers, privacy advocates, librarians, and a growing number of creators – now find themselves under attack from two sides.

On one side stand well-known copyright lobby groups such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association, the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, and the Entertainment Software Alliance. These groups largely represent foreign interests and have consistently called on the Canadian government to adopt the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act as its legislative model.

They invariably claim that Canada should be embarrassed by the current state of copyright law and propose solutions that involve a combination of DMCA-style anti-circumvention rules, a three-strikes and you’re out system that could see users cut off from the Internet, and a rejection of any new flexibilities within fair dealing.

To support those positions, the groups turned out en masse for a public town hall meeting in Toronto late last month, resulting in multiple interventions from record label executives (four from Warner Music alone). Packing the room ensured that there was virtually nothing heard from education and consumer groups, many of whom could not even attend the town hall since all the tickets were scooped up in less than five days.

Standing on the other side are copyright creator groups such as Access Copyright and the American Federation of Musicians. Access Copyright opened the consultation by ominously warning its members that “users outnumber us” and claiming that the debate is dominated by people do not believe that authors should get fair compensation for digital and other reproductions of their work (so far five out of 4038 submissions have called for the elimination of copyright).

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Musicians circulated an email to creator groups calling a leaflet distributed by an opposition Member of Parliament “disgusting” since it supported stronger fair dealing. These groups are pushing for an expanded levy system and have been quick to criticize users that don’t agree or offer up alternatives.

Faced with these vocal lobbying efforts, Canadians have just a few days left to ensure that their voices are heard. The town halls and roundtables are now over. The best way to speak out is through the online submission process that takes only a few minutes to complete. Authors such as Cory Doctorow and David Collier-Brown, technology companies such as Tucows, and groups such as Project Gutenberg Canada, the Documentary Organization of Canada, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations have all already done so.

Now is the time for Canadians concerned with copyright to add their voices. Websites such as SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca, CCER.ca, Vancouver Fair Copyright, and Digitalagenda.ca provide tools to learn more about the issues and process submissions. If you already know what you want to say, simply send an email to info@copyrightconsultation.gc.ca. Once you have spoken out, tell your friends, send the submission to your local Member of Parliament, and raise awareness that the consultation deadline is Sunday, September 13th.

Many Canadians felt anger and frustration when the government introduced DMCA-style legislation in 2008. The next six days provide a great opportunity to do more than just complain. They offer the chance to help influence the next copyright bill. Don’t wait – speak out on copyright today.

—

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Pirate Bay’s prominence has been the Achilles’ heel of BitTorrent. If the tracker should fail today, hundreds of thousands of torrents would begin to slow down significantly or stop working entirely. With the upcoming sale of The Pirate Bay this weakness has become even more salient.

Good and stable alternatives are needed, and luckily some of the leading figures in the BitTorrent community realize this. Last week we already reported on OpenBitTorrent, a free service that is already tracking 1,828,973 torrents for more than 20 million peers.

Still, replacing one tracker with another wont add much redundancy. The founder of BTjunkie and another major torrent sites came to the same conclusion and decided to launch a tracker of their own – PublicBitTorrent. Similar to OBT, PublicBT uses the Beerware licensed Opentracker software.

“Me and others felt that too much of BitTorrent tracking relies on one group and we would like to share some of that responsibility,” BTjunkie’s founder told TorrentFreak. “If anything were to happen to TPB, hundreds of thousands of torrents that are only tracked by TPB could be lost,” he added.

PublicBT has just launched, and although the site was almost entirely copied (without authorization) from the OBT website, it is operated independently. To get the ball rolling all torrents on BTjunkie will soon be updated with the new OBT and PBT trackers, BTjunkie’s founder told TorrentFreak.

Operating a standalone BitTorrent tracker, especially one that tracks millions of peers, can be a costly project but is a prerequisite for the BitTorrent ecosystem. It’s good to see that more BitTorrent site admins stepping up to take responsibility.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The judge acknowledged that the man indeed downloaded the files “without consent of the copyright holders” in 2003 and 2004, but ruled that he only did so for for “private use or sharing with other Internet users.” There was no financial gain, so no crime has been committed and the defendant walked free.

This is not the first time a Spanish court has ruled in favor of a file-sharer. In 2006, a man was similarly acquitted, and more recently it was ruled that websites linking to p2p downloads (torrents for example) operate within the law. Spanish law dictates that there has to be “an intent to profit” for someone to be held liable for copyright infringement.

Not everyone agrees with Spain’s liberal view on copyright infringement. According to the US, the Spanish government has done little “to change the widespread misperception in Spain that peer-to-peer file-sharing is legal.” However, as the courts show time and time again, this is no misperception – it is how the law spells it out.

Since sharing files on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks is legal, it is no surprise that Spain tops the list of countries with the most recorded copyright infringements. Close to 25 million were counted by the piracy tracking company BayTSP in 2008, mostly on BitTorrent.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

To add to the excitement there are also plans to use BitTorrent to distribute the show and source material. The BBC is one of the partners in the EU funded P2P-Next research project that uses BitTorrent technology to shape the future of web based TV delivery. BitTorrent is very effective in reducing bandwidth costs and thanks to technology developed by the P2P-Next team it can also be used to stream TV-shows, and even live video.

The BBC is not offering BitTorrent downloads or streams for R&DTV just yet, but they do hope to use P2P-Next (and therefore BitTorrent) for future episodes. This could be done by embedding BitTorrent powered streams in their site or alternatively they could offer regular .torrent downloads.

R&DTV is published in a full 30 minute version and a brief 5 minute edition offering just the highlights. Both are available in various video formats but that’s not all. For every episode, all of the source material – including raw footage not used in the full show – is also included in the so-called asset bundle.

In true BitTorrent style the downloads come with a ASCII art Scene-inspired NFO file disguised as readme.txt. “We’re pretty excited and ask you to please tell us what you do end up doing with the asset bundle, so we can learn what works and what does not work and fix it next time we release another asset bundle,” the BBC writes on the download page where the show is posted.

We applaud the BBC for being one of the few content publishers not to shy away from BitTorrent and file-sharing in general. We’ve previously written about Norwegian state TV that launched its own BitTorrent tracker, but unfortunately they forbid people from redistributing or remixing their shows.

By using a Creative Commons license the BBC seems to understand that this is one of the key elements of 21st century broadcasting, and we hope to see more initiatives like this in the future.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It’s when independent experts say that extending terms hurts the economy and stifles innovation that people should sit up and take notice. All too often though, such experts are ignored because they are just people that know the subject, rather than fund politicians campaign contributions. Moreover, they focus on facts and case histories, rather than vague associations or made-up figures.

Two such experts are Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, economists at the Washington University in St Louis. Boldrin, chairman of the university economics department, points out that what goes by the name ‘Intellectual Property’ is in fact “an intellectual monopoly that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps.”

“From a public policy view, we’d ideally like to eliminate patent and copyright laws altogether,” says Levine, the John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics. “There’s plenty of protection for inventors and plenty of protection and opportunities to make money for creators. It’s not that we see this as some sort of charitable act that people are going to invent and create things without earning money. Evidence shows very strongly there are lots of ways to make money without patents and copyright.”

In a short video clip, Levine states that copyright shouldn’t been seen as a charitable act, which is a lesson Commissioner McCreevy needs to learn. Also, he states that Intellectual Monopoly is the more appropriate term, and that the property label is a recently-given propaganda title, a subject Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation has covered in the past.

The views of the economists are presented in their new book, “Against Intellectual Monopoly”, where they suggest that the copyright and patent systems in the US should at least be brought back into line with their constitutional establishment – that of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. In the book, they put the case quite simply – “In the decades to come, sustaining economic progress will depend, more and more, on our ability to progressively reduce and eventually eliminate intellectual monopoly.”

It might be that the Pirate Party has some intellectual support for their positions, and perhaps a Missouri party will soon be in the making.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

To resolve the issue Mark contacted Nuance’s support. To his surprise however, they didn’t want to help him straight away, instead asking him to take pictures of the CD in order to prove that the company owned a legitimate copy.

“I couldn’t believe my ears,” Mark told TorrentFreak. “After arguing with support for a while on how ridiculous it was, I still had to have the license within the day. To make a long story short I finally got them to unlock 2 licenses after 2 days of repeated calls and sending the picture of the CD multiple times.”

Upset at how he was treated by customer support, Mark decided to send an email to Nuance’s CEO Paul Ricci to inform him that alienating customers like this is not going to help him sell more products. The picture of the CDs that Mark had to supply was also sent to Ricci.

Dear Mr Ricci,

Our company has been using your product for nearly a decade. We have estimated that it is safe to say we have spent $3000 over the years on your product. We are by far not the biggest customer but in today’s economy we think every customer counts. We recently bought several PaperPort 11 licenses which we have used. We have upgraded our computers and the procedure is to uninstall paper port (While online) in order to free a license for the new computer. Sadly this did not work. My efforts at consulting with your technical support department were very time consuming, confusing, and ultimately pointless. To my surprise, they wanted me to take a PICTURE of the CDs we have. As an IT professional, I found this archaic exercise in futility to be absolutely appalling. Not only do your anti-piracy methods completely fail (There is no known anti-piracy method that works to this day, anything can be downloaded) but they cost me; the legitimate customer time and frustration. Attached is the picture I had to send in. This is to let you know that we are completely disgusted with your company’s procedures, and are no longer going to do any business with Nuance.

Just to let you know, being a computer engineer, I can guarantee you these statistics:

Pirates Stopped = 0
Legitimate Customers totally alienated = Thousands.

You may want to take a look at your stock trends of late, Mr. Ricci. Perhaps this poor customer service MIGHT explain some of that.

Ricci received the email in good order, and passed it on to the chief marketeer at Nuance, who wrote back to Mark. “I appreciate your note and will use it as a flashpoint for us to reevaluate this processes that you have correctly pointed out as archaic,” was his reply, and he offered some free copies of PaperPort, PDF and OmniPage “as a gesture of goodwill.”

Nuance has clearly recognized that they made a mistake and although it’s probably too late for some customers, we hope they’ve learned from it. Mark said that in hindsight his email to Ricci might have been a little bit over the top. But, it did make them realize that they were making a mistake, asking people to take pictures of their CDs.

“I was very upset and under a lot of pressure. My job is to solve problems in the quickest amount of time.. and taking pictures of CD’s or sticking them in a copier isn’t something anyone should ever have to do with their software,” Mark said.

“It just doesn’t make sense.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

For every blank CD sold in Canada, 21¢ used to go to the music industry, to compensate Canadian artists. This has now gone up to 29¢. However, the levy was introduced before the first iPod was sold, and this immediately brings up one of the key problems. The question is: How many of the blank CDs that are sold are used to copy Canadian music onto it? Furthermore, is it fair to ‘tax’ all the other people who buy those CDs for other means?

It seems that the levy is outdated by technology since most private copies are made on MP3 players, not on CDs. With the rise of MP3 players, and the ways to get them connected to audio equipment, blank CDs are becoming less relevant in the audio world. Further, as most computers now come with DVD burners, CDs may be following the floppy as an outdated storage medium. This raised levy might be the beginning of the end for CDs, at least in Canada.

Of course, the advances in technology were totally ignored by the Copyright Board. The only technology mention dealt with compression. Two reasons were given for the raise by the Secretary General of the Copyright Board of Canada, Claude Majeau.

“Two main factors led the Board to raise the CD levy rate to 29¢. First, the mechanical royalties that record labels pay to record a song onto a prerecorded CD have increased. Second, because consumers now use compression technology when they record music, the average number of music tracks copied onto a CD went from 15 to more than 18.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Majeau, the second point is greatly undermined by the fact that, according to the audio CD standard (commonly known as Red Book), CDs shouldn’t be compressed at all. If he was referring to mp3’s, then reducing the average size from 43Mb to 36 (assuming a 650Mb CD) is also unusual.

How fair the levies are is debatable. First, while it claims to be for compensating artists, the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) FAQ makes it clear that only Canadian performers and record companies qualify for payment. This is a significant blow against non-Canadian artists that don’t have a Canadian representative – the small artist. Worse, the payout of the collected levies is based on radio airplay and retail sales (physical and download). So, a starting Canadian artist that decides to burn 1000 CDs of his demo, he or she is actually paying $290 to established musicians and record labels.

There is also the question of payment. By their own figures, the CPCC had collected almost $242M between 1999 and 2007, of which just under $207M was available for payouts, but only $148.8M had been distributed, leaving $58M or so sitting around, roughly equivalent to the levies collected in 2006 and 2007.

Perhaps most unusually of all though, is that some consumers may be entirely unaware of the levies, let alone their rise. Despite the rise from 21¢ to 29¢ per disc, newegg.ca is selling spindles of 100 for under $20. Considering the levy cost on them is now $29, that’s quite a financial hit. The price of blank CDs may rise soon to compensate, putting them at similar prices to blank DVDs which have no levies. Fortunately for consumers, most DVD players can handle MP3s now. Another great example how technology has advanced since 1999, and also ignored by the Copyright Board.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

That’s where many lawyers, such as Davenport Lyons can make a tidy profit. As has happened in some of the cases they are involved with, many will admit wrongdoing, and even pay ‘damages’ where no actions (wrong or otherwise) have occurred. It has led to a general feeling that a claim of copyright infringement by a large powerful company will get the actions they desire, irrespective of facts, through fear of litigation. This was the situation last week, when Toyota ordered wallpaper site Desktop Nexus to remove all images featuring Toyota vehicles, even those with copyright belonging to others.

However, sometimes a company can be pressured into accepting mistakes, and this is the case here. With a large amount of negative publicity (a selection of which can be found on DesktopNexus’ blog) Toyota today contacted TorrentFreak and DesktopNexus, expressing their apologies for the incident.

From: Scott DeYager
Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:52 AM
Subject: Desktopnexus Toyota Wallpapers
To: tips@torrentfreak.com

Dear Torrentfreak.com,

The recent request Toyota made to have certain photos of Toyota vehicles removed from the public wallpaper site, DesktopNexus, was the result of an internal miscommunication.

To protect the legal rights and agreements we have with the photographers we hire, we ask that the photographs not be used for direct consumer advertising, sales brochures and the like.

If people wish to post their own photos of one of their own vehicles, that’s their right. In fact, we’re pleased that people would want to show their Toyota vehicles to the world. So have at it. Consider the wallpapers on DesktopNexus to be fair game for personal use.

Please let your readers know that we offer a sincere apology to the DesktopNexus site and its users for any inconvenience or disruption this miscommunication may have caused.

Thanks for your understanding,

Scott DeYager
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
Corporate Communications

DesktopNexus told TorrentFreak that they will be releasing a statement on this shortly.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

This ‘Way’ is probably not communicated to its lawyers in great detail, which is why Desktopnexus, a site that provides desktop backgrounds, has been contacted by them. In perhaps one of the most wildly arrogant demands in DMCA history, Toyota’s lawyers are demanding the withdrawal of all wallpapers that feature a Toyota, Scion, or Lexus. The site’s owner, Harry Maugans contacted Toyota to clarify. He was told that all images featuring Toyota vehicles should be removed, even images with copyright belonging to others.

Speaking to TorrentFreak, Maugans said: “Their lawyer, Garrett Biggs, told us that if we wanted them to specifically identify their images, we would have to pay for them to do so”. Maugans also said he was afraid it would come to a lawsuit, fearing the attrition effect that is so common now in copyright disputes. Toyota, with cash assets of over $23Billion can surely afford to spin out the legal costs in an attempt to bankrupt the site – the same strategy that is often used to ‘encourage‘ a settlement in RIAA cases.

Yet, Toyota has also been cagey. These demands have not been sent in the form of a DMCA notice. While sending such a notice would require the takedown, it also requires that the person sending the notice legally certify that they are legal representatives for the copyright holders at issue. Making a false statement is ‘punishable under penalty of perjury‘, which is not taken lightly in US courts.

That copyright holders should be properly identified is also not lost on Mr. Maugans. “What if Toyota comes back and says “yes, we own the copyright to all of those [Toyota images on site]“. How can we know if they’re lying to get us to take them all down? How can we prove they do in fact own the copyrights on those wallpapers? Some are very hard to believe, such as this which looks more like Fan Art than a professionally designed marketing photo. Or this one which they’re claiming they own, but it has a “Created by:” line at the bottom by someone who doesn’t seem to have any connection to the actual Toyota company.”

The ‘huh what?’ value of Toyota’s position has been noticed by others as well. On the FreeCulture News site, one comment questions the action saying “What are they trying to accomplish by attacking free advertising?” Indeed, this is what it comes down to. Instead of embracing free advertising and word of mouth, Toyota seems desperate to control and micromanage every aspect of it’s publicity.

At the end of the day, the best question is that asked by Mr Maugans, “Has DMCA abuse really gotten this bad?”

At the time of press, Toyota Inc. did not respond to requests for comment.

Thanks to Conley at FCnews for the tip

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, over in New Zealand a law requiring ISPs to disconnect repeat copyright infringers has been proposed, passed and signed into law. The law, Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 adds a new section to deal with Internet Service Providers and copyright infringement. Yet, opposition from ISPs, and Internet user groups may see it being struck down or modified before it goes into force.

The section in question, 92A reads

Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers
(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.
(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

Opposition to this section of law has been steady, with six industry bodies that have opposed the law meeting with government ministers. Indications from Communications Minister David Cunliffe and Associate Commerce Minister Judith Tizard, are that if the opposing groups and rights holders can come to an agreement by developing a workable code of practice, the law can be reworded. Tizard also reiterated strongly that the law was going ahead, and it would do so because of ‘Internet piracy’, according to one of the meeting’s participants

The issue at the heart of the debate is that of proof. InternetNZ head Keith Davidson told New Zealand’s Stuff, that he wanted to see an element of proof being required before people are cut off. A position understandable with the recent bad press given to copyright infringement allegations in the US, both in studies, and the courtroom. Countering him was the CEO of the NZ Recording Industry Association, telling Stuff that proving the guilt of infringers in a court of law, before any penalty is dealt out would be “impractical and ridiculous”, a sentiment also shared by his American counterparts.

A provision to penalize false or inaccurate accusations was in the bill at one point, after dealings by the group of six with a select committee. However, Tizard stated that it was inappropriate, as the Cabinet had already decided the law was to go ahead as was, and that people shouldn’t be surprised.

New Zealand is also in the middle of an election (voting day is November 8th) so there may be a change of ministers soon. These may be more amenable to changing the wording of the law, to be based on proof, not simple accusations. As always though, nothing is certain for the 3.3 million kiwi’s (around 80% of the population) on the net, except they are considered less important than the greed of lobby groups.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

EA has downplayed this, naturally. In comments to video game developer site Gamasutra, EA’s Mariam Sughayer said “Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale. We’ve talked to people that made several unsuccessful attempts to download the game and ended up with incomplete, slow, buggy or unusable code. In one case, a file identified as Spore contained a virus. To say that every download represents a successful copy of the game –- or that there’s been more than 500K copies downloaded — that’s just not true.”

Of course, it should be pointed out that when TorrentFreak computed the download figures previously, the basis was only a few torrents, all known to be working and virus free, and similarly with figure earlier. TorrentFreak is not new at this, and we know how to tell the difference between an incomplete, a virused, buggy, or even encrypted with a password, and one that would work if downloaded. To attempt to spin it otherwise is rude and condescending, and shows how hard EA is attempting to salvage the reputation of itself, and Spore.

When we suggested a few weeks ago that the DRM was the cause of the high rate of downloads, we said it only hurt legitimate purchasers (and those that steal it) and we are not alone. A class action lawsuit was filed in northern California on September 22nd, targeting EA for the use of SecuROM. The lawsuit asks for damages based on the secret installation of a program, which can adversely affect your system, without telling you. It’s basically the Sony Rootkit debate again.

The lawyer that filed this case, Alan Himmelfarb, told TorrentFreak “People have an absolute right to control what does and what does not get put onto their computers. When companies resort to secret, undisclosed installations – for whatever purpose – they cross a line. Our lawsuit is the result in this case. First there was Sony with its Rootkit. Then there was Ubisoft with Starforce. Now we have EA with SecuROM. In each case, corporate executives failed to see anything wrong with installing a secret, uninstallable, administrative level program directly into the heart of the command center of the computer, so that they could control how you use your computer. So that they could decide what programs you could run, and what hardware you could have installed. All without asking. All without any attempt to obtain your consent. It is simply wrong, and we will continue to bring similar actions against any company that acts as if they obtain ownership rights to a consumer’s computer simply because someone plays their game or listens to their music.”

Thanks to DRM, Spore may well be the most downloaded game of all time, if not now, then in the next month. However, EA sees the facts a bit differently. On their support page dealing with DRM and Spore, they describe why they went with SecuROM

Q: Why are Maxis and EA implementing this new authentication process?
A: This solution serves to protect our software from piracy.

Yeah, it’s worked REALLY well.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The problem with DRM is that it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. The only people who are negatively affected are honest customers, since pirates will get their DRM-free version off BitTorrent anyway. In fact, DRM seems to produce an increase in downloads over legitimate sales, with the ‘Spore’ fiasco as a recent example.

Public reaction to DRM is not favorable, and has been growing worse (such as when a DRM-based service closes). Even though some retailers have started to sell their goods without DRM, others have not, or have released products selling stuff ONLY in DRM encumbered formats. A prime example of without DRM is Amazon, with its music, and an example of with DRM is Amazon and their Kindle ebook reader. Kindle ebooks are sold complete with DRM, locking the books to a single system. This applies to all Kindle ebooks sold via Amazon.

One of the Kindle e-books looks a little out of place with DRM though. A member of the US-based Students for Free Culture organization informed TorrentFreak that the book Free Culture, by Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, is available through the service. The book deals with the rise of the copyright situation in the US, and how laws in other areas were changed to keep pace with advances in technology, sometimes making obsolete decades, or centuries of precedent.

The fact that this book is available in a DRM format might not seem all that important, except that the book itself spells out what is wrong with DRM. The book is available as a 100% free download on the book’s official site. However, short of violating the DMCA by circumventing the DRM, it is hard to put the pdf version of the book on the Kindle, exemplifying the problem. Most ironically, though, is that the subtitle of the book is “How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”, so the book has become its own example.

Prof. Lessig will be giving a keynote speech at SFC’s “Free Culture 08” on October 11th.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The current era of intellectual property is waning. It has been based on two faulty assumptions made nearly three decades ago: that since some intellectual property (IP) is good, more must be better; and that IP is about controlling knowledge rather than sharing it. These assumptions are as inaccurate in biotechnology , the field of science covered by this report , as they are in other fields from music to software.

The discussion throughout focuses on how this “Old IP” system harms innovation and consumers. It mentions how the music industry is lobbying for higher penalties for copyright infringement, while they refuse to try out new business models. Similarly, how the movie industry tries to ban and restrict new technology, until they realize they can make money off it.

Perhaps even more concerning, when it comes to biotechnology , medication, treatments, equipment , withholding information or purposefully restricting it will lead to deaths. One example the paper makes on this topic is the lawsuits 39 pharmaceutical companies brought against the South Africa government, for trying to act effectively to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis there. Such restrictions have undoubtedly hastened the deaths of thousands if not millions.

This study is not alone in stating the problems with patents in research and development. In August, Kenyan medicine-men revealed that they have kept their traditional practices to themselves, because of the fear of patents. With the high costs, and excessive paperwork, filing patents on the techniques is not feasible to them, according to a report in Business Daily Africa. They are worried that companies that find the patent process trivial will patent their techniques, and prevent them from being used.

With them on this is the Pirate Party International, a collection comprised of all the national Pirate Partys) has mentioned that biopatents are a source of concern and an area they hope to change. Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak: “This shows yet again how Big Pharmacy practices are robbing people of their medicine; only now, they have managed to silence the critical word-of-mouth distribution of indigenous knowledge, through fear of monopolization of traditional medicine. It is high time for the patent system in general, and pharmacy patents in particular, to be exposed and abolished.”

Yet these arguments and studies appear to be falling on deaf ears. Today, a bill aimed at increasing the enforcement of these IP ‘rights’ still further , including the ability for the government to file civil IP complaints without the complaint of the IP holder , got it’s first reading in the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee. With only a few months left of this session of Congress, the lobby groups are almost certainly going all out to get them passed, despite strong opposition. Lost (or ignored) in this push is the intent of copyright and patents, which the US Constitution says is to promote progress, which as the study shows, it no longer does.

It also goes without saying that despite this talk of ‘old IP’ and ‘new IP’, there are those that refuse to use the term at all.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In some ways, Ghana could be the US of the future. Like America, they have a presidential election at the end of the year to replace a president that can not run again, having had two 4-year terms in office. They were once a colony of the UK, and politicians reportedly take bribes, just like the US. At the same time, they are quick to crack down on anything that seems to affect their backers, as a push to deal with counterfeit goods and ‘piracy’ has been proposed by the government.

“This insidious crime of product counterfeiting has become a global phenomenon; it’s no longer the canker of the under-developed or developing world,” president John Agyekum Kufuor said in a recent statement“The developed world is also battling with counterfeiting products albeit at a scale lower than in our part of the world”.

It would also seem that the president had been reading the recent BSA report, and following its (severely flawed) economics, when he noted “that counterfeit products denied genuine products of the rightful market share, costing governments significant amounts in lost tax revenues as well as threatening jobs”. Perhaps he missed how money spent locally stays in the local economy, but money spent on outside goods leaves the country. This money can’t be used elsewhere to generate MORE tax, and keeping jobs going.

What, though, is their ’solution’? As the Ghana News Agency (GNA) put it in a July 23rd report, the Criminal Investigation Department of the police, will “handle counterfeiting and piracy crimes as drug trafficking.”

As anyone that lives in the real world knows, decades of treating drug trafficking as drug trafficking hasn’t exactly limited it. Moreover, while ownership of something like cocaine is illegal pretty much anywhere in the world, and has a distinctive smell, counterfeit goods by their nature look like legitimate items. Piracy is even worse, in that what some consider criminal, others consider a civil offence, and yet others see no problem at all. In some instances what may be an infringement of copyright, may be a legitimate fair use, depending on circumstance.

Can it succeed? As already noted, the approach hasn’t worked for a rigidly defined area such as narcotics, why should it in the legal miasma that is copyright and patent law. What it appears to be is another attempt to treat the symptoms, and although that works in some cases (Cholera for instance), it doesn’t in this case.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Many have condemned these actions, others have supported them. The depth of public feeling in this is great, as are the potential risks and rewards from these actions , both directly, and indirectly through function-creep and precedent.

The ISP/BPI deal has been characterized as being ‘forced” onto the ISPs by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR). Now, in what could be a classic example of ‘closing the stable door after the horse has bolted’, the government has opened a public consultation on file-sharing.

The government wants to know from the public how it should deal with illicit file-sharing. Is it really that big of a threat to the entertainment industry? Should ISPs be obligated to police the Internet? Is it a good option to block P2P traffic, or install piracy filters? Answers to these and more questions will help to shape future anti-piracy legislation.

Perhaps most critically, the documentation does state that any proposals for government intervention should be “evidence based”. Queries to the BERR asking if claims cited as evidence need to be substantiated had not been returned at press time. Unlike many consultations, this is open to the public, so if you posted one of the 200+ comments we’ve had on this topic, perhaps submitting your thoughts to the BERR would be something to think about.

It is consultation season though, so if you’re more interested in television than file-sharing, there’s always the Public Consultation on Implementing the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which could impact how many British programs appear on our weekly Top10 lists.

The deadline for responses is October 30, 2008. For those that have yet to see the memorandum signed by the 6 ISPs, it’s included in annex D of the PDF.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Luckily, there are still some politicians who know what’s right and what’s not. Charles Angus, a Canadian MP, is not a fan of the ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ proposals, which have also been discussed in Canada. Indeed, it seems that nobody, except the lobby groups pushing it, are for it. Cory Doctrow, in a piece for the Guardian the other day, proposed a similar 3-strikes measure for the anti-piracy officials. Send 3 false accusations and you’re off the net. Angus is similarly opposed in a recent interview:

Well, i think the outset the three strike law as admissible is idiotic. It’s idiotic because as we see with the DMCA those that get accused of infringements lack the legal power that the corporations that are threatening them have. So it’s always going to be a completely one-sided argument and if ISP’s are legally bound to cut you off after three claims of infringement, I think there are certainly problems.

Charles Angus, MP, is not your typical politician. Unlike most, he’s not a lawyer, and having worked first hand with those who have been forgotten by those in government , the homeless , has a good appreciation for cause and effect. Also, through clashes with his church over gay marriage in the past, he has also proven himself a man of morals, not easily swayed by peer pressure or lobbying.

It is welcome then, to hear that he is also in strong opposition to Canada’s bill C61, dubbed “the Canadian DMCA”. Back in early May, in a statement from his office he warned of lobby actions:

The DMCA lobby will be working closely with the government to create a false impression that there’s an international crisis of confidence in Canada’s copyright regime. They will attempt to portray copyright as a black and white battle against pirates, thieves and criminals. In doing so, they will tar the efforts of educators, consumer groups and artist’s organization who recognize that the DMCA is the wrong model for Canada.

DMCA advocates have attempted to portray Canada as a pirate haven for failing to ratify the WIPO agreement. Angus points out that many of Canada’s competitors are in exactly the same position, and that Canada could easily ratify WIPO without agreeing to the onerous restrictions included in the DMCA legislation. He says politicians need to wake up to the problems with the DMCA.

The DMCA is a failed model. It doesn’t work in the United States and it won’t address the needs of a 21st century innovation agenda in Canada. However, U.S. trade lobbyists are intent on bringing Canada to heel. They will try to choreograph a sense of fear that Canada is somehow failing internationally if we don’t go the DMCA route.

Many didn’t heed that warning, however, and bill C-61 was the result, introduced last month. Like a lot of consumers (including some 85,000 – up from 40,000 last month – on Michael Geist’s facebook group) Angus isn’t happy about the bill, as he states:

Bill 61 is a piece of legislation that is taking us down the wrong road. We really need to update our copyright legislation for the 21st century. It’s Something that has been dragging on much too long. But bill c-61 is premised on a number of very faulty assumptions. It’s also predicated on, well it’s been based on a complete lack of consultation with the key people who need to be at the table to make good copyright legislation.

When it comes to copyright, he is the one that had the advantage over politicians. A former musician, he also earns money from book sales as well as music. His views seem to be quite different from another artist, Indiana Gregg, the difference is, he has studied the facts, she hasn’t.

It is the punishments that come up for greatest scorn however, and he is firmly on the side of ‘proving your case’ something the industry hates to do, for studies, and now lawsuits.

If you look at how the lawsuits happen in the U.S, you will get a bill for 15-20,000 and be told to pay it. If you try to challenge it, they will bring a massive legal team against you, and we saw the woman in the U.S who basically lost her house and savings for the fact she uploaded 12-24 songs. Thats completely irrational. If there are damages, if someone has massivly infringed copyright, there has to be a limit. There has to be clear limits, and it has to be proven what those damages are.

For the full low-down on his thoughts, check out the full interview. For more information about the European “three strikes” legislation, visit the Open Rights Group.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

One of these new developments has been the addition of increasing numbers of Creative Commons (CC) licensed material. Creative Commons media is licensed by the creator, to be shared – usually with some restrictions – and is the same license used by TorrentFreak. It’s not a niche license, instead it is becoming increasingly popular, with Nine Inch Nails having released their Ghosts album under a CC license earlier this year.

With this is mind, isoHunt has announced a partnership with Jamendo, a site that deals in Creative Commons licensed music. Reaching the 10,000 album milestone only days ago, content available on Jamendo is growing quickly and when you grow, it helps to be able to get the content out there. This is why isoHunt decided to partner with several BitTorrent sites. isoHunt’s owner, Gary Fung, has been a long time supporter of Creative Commons and public domain works, and has stated that there is a strong future in Creative Commons material at isoHunt.

Laurent Kratz, CEO of Jamendo told TorrentFreak “Jamendo uses the Creative Commons licensing scheme to keep the rules very straight forward : copy as much as you can eat, the artist, the right-holders are ok. The new thing about partnering with a torrent portal like isoHunt, is that Jamendo has started an editorial work on top.”

“We receive up to 500 new albums per week, from more than 60 countries in the world,” Kratz said. “In order to maximize the interest of millions using torrent search engines every day, it was critical to only highlight a subset of all the albums we receive every day. It’s not about discriminating one band from another, it’s about getting anonymous BitTorrent fans to Jamendo, and discovering unsigned bands from everywhere in the world.”

Jamendo is also partnering with SumoTorrent, and torrent.to, and has been experimenting with mininova. In addition, their torrents are also available through Vuze. What better way to “stick it to the **AA” as so many of our commenters put it, than to ignore their memberships product, and use sites like this instead.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The bill is controversial in many ways. Whilst supporters of the bill will point to the allowances for time shifting, format shifting, and the ability to ‘private copy’ (moving a song from CD to an mp3 player for instance). It will, however, prevent that activity, though criminalization, if there is any sort of technological restriction on it. Anti-copy flags on TV shows, DRM on music, or rootkits on CDs would mean that any attempt to make a fair use, would be subject to prosecution and heavy fines.

Perhaps even more important, uploaders, and to an extent, downloaders too (certainly those on torrents), will now be liable. While in the past, the RMCP has stated it won’t pursue uploaders, with new laws come changes in policy for those that enforce the laws. Bill C-61 contains a statutory damage amount of $500.

Limitation
(1.If a copyright owner has made an election under subsection (1), a defendant who is an individual is liable for statutory damages of $500 in respect of all the defendant’s infringements that were done for the defendant’s private purposes and that are involved in the proceedings.

This is a change from the previous wording, which gave the court latitude to drop that $500 to as low as $200.

Scene members, and torrent sites will also find themselves under increasing pressure. Despite claims that most torrent sites are not commercial, it’s not stopped industry associations from claiming they are, in order to get law enforcement action against them. From the act,

Circumvention of technological measure
(3.1) Every person, except a person who is acting on behalf of a library, archive or museum or an educational institution, is guilty of an offence who knowingly and for commercial purposes contravenes section 41.1 and is liable

(a) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding $1,000,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or to both; or

(b) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding $25,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to both.

Although DRM has seen a decline in recent times, laws like this can only give content distributors incentive to bring them back, at least in Canada.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.