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.

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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.

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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

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However, recently the PRS has been getting more and more aggressive in its quest to funnel cash to its paymasters. It now sees every UK organization – commercial or otherwise – as a legitimate target to intimidate with threats of legal action, should they dare to play a radio, TV or DVD within earshot of the public without a license. Small businesses playing the radio for personal entertainment to pass the working day, charities, tea rooms, corner shops and even community centers are being targeted by this outfit. Bizarrely, they are currently going after the British police, who have been refusing to pay. It’s clear, they care about just one thing – money.

To get this money the PRS go after people like the 61 year-old mechanic Paul Wilson, who has worked alone at his garage for 23 years since he was 15. He can’t afford the PRS license, so now he has to work in silence. “When I was first contacted by the PRS I thought somebody was having a laugh with me,” he said. But really, this is no laughing matter. After the demands for money, Mr Wilson told the PRS to take his radio to prove he wasn’t listening to it, but the PRS warned that the police could come round to do spot checks. Meanwhile, the garage next door to Mr Wilson also received a PRS letter, so they are maintaining radio silence too. Just regular people trying to earn a living, being chased down for money to listen to a radio at work. It’s astonishing.

When the small guy gets hit by these type of issues it really annoys people in the copyright debating community. However, if you really want to widen the debate and spread some really bad PR, it’s going to take tactics which show how low you are prepared to go. For instance, you could go after a charity trying to raise funds via a tea-room, discover their staff radio can be overheard, and demand money from them.

But it is possible to further outrage people. And this is what these type of collection outfits are doing, by widening their campaigns to start going after the softest most impressionable target in the country – kids. Last week we reported how the MPLC, a Hollywood royalty collection outfit, (illegally) demanded money from kindergartens in Ireland, so that the kids could watch DVDs there.

But going after children isn’t exclusively an MPLC tactic, the PRS are doing it too. Part of the claim against the tea-rooms mentioned above was that the kids there needed to be licensed to sing carols in front of the public and now, to add insult to injury, the PRS ‘non-profit’ copyright cop is going after a kid’s non-profit community center in Glasgow, Scotland. The Yoker Resource Center is faced with a £3,000 bill, it if wants to carry on using its TV, radio or CD player, that is.

Elizabeth Busby, the after-school supervisor at the center said: “We can’t afford to pay this money. Although we have a TV license for the center, under these rules we cannot let all the kids watch it.”

Wondering (like the rest of us in the sane world) why people have to pay twice or more for using the same product, Ms Busby added: “If the children are watching a DVD then I have gone out and paid for it, so whether it is one person or twenty-five I still paid for it. It’s not as if I’m buying pirate copies or downloading them illegally. Soon it will be the Halloween party and what do we do for music?”

Asked to comment, the PRS declined. I’d like to think that the silence is down to shame, but I doubt it. I’ll leave you with some comments from Steve Pendlebury, writing in The Bolton News:

“Radio stations pay large amounts of money to licensing organizations PRS and PPL for the music they play, and music has been on the radio for many years. During the war, there were programmes like Workers Playtime and Music While You Work. Now, many radio stations have features about workplaces. If the PRS force people to switch their radios off then how are these stations going to survive?

Music has to be heard before people go out and buy it.”

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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.

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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.

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Perhaps the biggest incongruity that came from the announcements about it, is the feeling that session musicians, after being paid for the last 50 years for a single days work, need, all of a sudden to get another 45 years of payment.

You can bet the guy that put paper in the printer, that spat out the plans for McCreevy’s house hasn’t gotten paid for the last 50 years. I’ll bet the architect hasn’t either. However there is some reason that musicians, particularly jobbing musicians without the talent or ambition to head off on their own, should be paid for work of decades past. The press materials put out by the commission tries to spin a brave face on this, with the likes of frequently asked questions, and number 7 asks the question we all have:

7. Have performers not earned enough in the 50 years of protection?

Most performers or singers and session musicians start their career in their early 20’s or even before. That means that the current 50 year protection ends when they will be in their 70’s. Current life expectancy in the EU stands at 75.1 years for men and 81.2 years for women and it is usual for persons to live well into their 80’s and 90’s. Once protection has ended, performers no longer receive any income from their sound recordings. For session musicians and lesser known artists this means that income stops when performers are retired – the most vulnerable period of their lives.

Alas, they have overlooked one important fact. When someone retires, they cease getting paid for their work, since they are NO LONGER WORKING. That is what retirement means. If these session musicians haven’t worked since 1967, they have been retired for the last 40 years. Can we look forward to the Commissioner putting forth more legislation allowing nurses, gardeners, factory workers, mechanics, lorry drivers etc. to retire at 30 as well, safe in the knowledge that they will have their money woes cared for?

However, there was not all doom and gloom as a result of today’s meeting. Two other proposals were also passed that were in some way, better for the artist AND the consumer. First, part of the provision of extending the copyright is a requirement dubbed ‘use it or lose it’. It allows musicians to recover their copyrights from labels, if the label no longer wishes to market the recording. If, after a year of no commercial availability, then the copyright will be rescinded. This could be seen as an attempt to force recordings back into the market, but it will remain to be seen how effective this will be, or how it will be enforced. If selling copies only at a small back street shop in a small town would qualify, for instance.

Of course, of greatest interest to us, is the actions to deal with the royalty collection groups. Until now, they’ve had country monopolies. You play a song in public, and as long as it’s under copyright, you’ve had to pay a fee, regardless of the artist wishing the collection group to do so. As the final shake up of copyright reform, the national franchises such groups have enjoyed (like cable TV companies) will be broken up, and artists will be able to sign with any agency they desire, bringing about, the commission hopes, competition.

However, none of this is binding yet, as it has to be approved by the Parliament. It is worth noting however, that the proposal document lists the history behind the proposal. That in 2004, they issues a call for comments, and later had meetings with certain stakeholders. Stakeholders in the EU context means businesses involved with the subject, not citizens. Tellingly, the proposal itself lists where it seems to have gone wrong

Summary of responses and how they have been taken into account
Responses in favour of term extension came from performers’ associations, the recording
industry, collecting societies, music publishers, performing artists and music managers. Those
against term extension were telecoms, libraries, consumers and public domain companies.
The arguments of those against term extension were addressed in the analysis of impacts of
the various options.
• Collection and use of expertise
There was no need for external expertise.

From first looks at the impact study, it would appear that it only concerned itself with those who have created and published music in the 1950s and 1960s, and the cost difference between public domain, and copyrighted music. A study that had it’s conclusion written into the brief, and hardly representative of the real facts.

Euro-sceptics have disliked the EU for years, and with the increasing evidence that, in this case at least, commissioners are being lead by their wallets, rather than by common sense and the interests of Europe, it’s a sad state of affairs for a body described as “the only body paid to think European”. Clearly, ‘European’ is a euphemism for ‘greedy’, or possibly ’short-sighted’.

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The proposal is supposed to secure the pensions of long forgotten artists. In a statement, McCreevy said “I am not talking about featured artists like Cliff Richard or Charles Aznavour. I am talking about the thousands of anonymous session musicians who contributed to sound recordings in the late fifties and sixties. They will no longer get airplay royalties from their recordings. But these royalties are often their sole pension.”

According to the Financial Times, the proposal could come up to vote as early as this Wednesday, July 16th. Also up for discussion would be a plan to split up rights societies by the antitrust arm of the commission, potentially making rights societies compete against each other for the rights to collect royalties from artists.

While this would certainly be a better way to curb their less than philanthropic actions, if it comes at the cost of greater copyright, is it that beneficial to the 500 million citizens of Europe? There is a glimmer of hope though. Two commissioners are opposed to the extension plan; telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding and commissioner Antonio Tajan.

The copyright extension plans met initial scorn back when they were first announced in February, with groups like the Open Rights Group and the EFF launching a petition to have it blocked, as well as a website to deal with the issue. Nevertheless, McCreevy kept on going, and the proposal is now ready to be voted on.

McCreevy himself has his pension already planned from a former partnership in a chartered accountancy firm (and he has been in politics since 1977, so he clearly planned early). It is left to wonder then why he feels the need to legislate some sort of speciality pension for artists. If they decide to stop work at 25, why should they be paid for it past 75? If that has been their only source of income, why could they not have done as the hundreds of millions of other EU citizens, myself included, and planned for their retirement?

Commissioner McCreevy had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publication.

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His urge to share received quite a lot of attention after Coelho started a weblog with the name Pirate Coelho a few months ago. His motivation? He wanted people to have the opportunity to ‘try’ his books for free, but he knew some of his publishers wouldn’t agree right away. So, he took matters into his own hands and put his own books onto BitTorrent, FTP sites and Rapidshare.

“There was a strong reaction when I mentioned the site at Digital Life Design, back in January 2008,” Coelho explains. “The blog was out there for a while, but it seems that nobody from the publishing world was paying attention to it. When I spoke about it, all eyes were aimed at the site. From that moment on, based on actual numbers, the publishers not only accepted it, but helped me.”

“Harper Collins, for example, decided to offer a new book of mine every month, for free reading.” This, together with the pirated copies worked out really well, and the book sales went up. “If you go to the New York Times Bestseller list, you’ll see that the Alchemist jumped to the #6, and the Witch of Portobello is in the extended list.”

BitTorrent is one of the filesharing networks Coelho uses to share his books. “I am using it now, while doing this interview,” he says, and he encourages other authors to follow his lead. “The ultimate goal of a writer is to be read. Money comes later.” This is of course easy to say for an author who has already sold millions of copies, but Coelho goes even further, and argues that ’sharing’ books will actually help upcoming authors to sell more books. It is a win-win situation.

“I do think that when a reader has the possibility to read some chapters, he or she can always decide to buy the book later,” Coelho says, indicating that it is not a lost sale. On the other hand, the Internet makes it easier for new authors to publish content, and get people to read their work. “Nowadays, people are being encouraged to write, and start blogs, the book industry already found a few new talents on Internet,” Coelho says.

When we asked Paulo about the difference between book piracy and the unauthorized copying of music and movies, he told us that it is difficult to compare, since it is easier to consume movies and music digitally. Most people still prefer to read a real book however, pirated ebooks are more often used to preview. This can always change in the future, but for now Coelho is not impressed by the ebook reading devices that are out there, and many of his readers seem to agree.

“A (real) book is easy to carry, easy to read anywhere. Reading a book on a monitor on the other hand is very tiresome, and it would be even more expensive to print (considering cartridge prices) than to buy a paperback,” he says. What the movie and music industry can learn from Coelho, however, is that availability is of the essence, and restrictions will only lead to reactance.

Coelho fully adopted all the possibilities the Internet offers, as he uses his weblog, Myspace, FaceBook, Flickr and even Twitter to interact with his readers. “I want to share everything I write, from my books to my blogs.”

He recently started a new experiment, as he encouraged his readers to make a movie based on one of his books. When “The Witch of Portobello” was released, Hollywood came rushing in with movie deals, but Coelho told his agent: “it is time to start a new adventure!”

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At a preview of his new Change Congress project at the ETech conference, the Creative Commons founder responded to a question about the US Pirate Party, saying “I’m skeptical of the utility of something like the Pirate Party in the United States.” He went on to comment about the naming, referring to the ‘honest business fighting illegitimate thieves‘ battle that Hollywood portrays with “Call your party the Pirate Party, and you’ll reinforce that. The branding is not one that I would embrace here in the United States.”

Naturally, the Pirate Party of the US disagrees. “As a professor, he should know better than to advocate judging a book by it’s cover” says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party. “It’s also unusual that the man that fought Hollywood’s increase of copyright, should find fault with a party that only seeks to represent the general public, and what better title than the name that Hollywood is using for all citizens.” referring to a recent study,(pdf) which suggested that everyone violates copyright, and are thus pirates, every day.

“It may, however, be that he feels since we are called ‘The Pirate Party’, that at some point we may advocate Piracy, or at least copyright infringement. We do not, and will not, promote the breaking of any law, criminal or civil,” added Norton. “We, like Prof. Lessig, stand squarely behind the political process, and hope that people will use their ability to vote, to vote for the candidates they want, rather than the so-called ‘tactical voting’ which has turned current US politics into the sham it is. In this, we are willing and eager to work with the Change Congress campaign in any way we can.”

These sentiments regarding the political process in the US have suddenly come to a head, with Independent Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader condemning the current political setup. On an appearance on the hugely popular Daily Show Tuesday, he commented “The two parties have shut out the people in Washington. It’s corporate occupied territory.”

He later went on to comment about how the two parties have rigged things so it’s hard for any other party to even get on the ballot, which the Pirate Party knows only too well. “Many states bury their party registration requirements in vast amounts of legalese,” says Norton. “Other states don’t publish it clearly, and don’t respond to requests for information on it. Government is supposed to exist for the benefit of the people, but right now, it’s benefiting the lawyers, and those that can pay for them.”

Can Lessig really ‘Change Congress’? It all depends if he will see past names, to the actual issues they hide.

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In addition the IFPI was also looking for an extension of copyright, supposedly to help artists whose works will fall into the public domain in their lifetime, which is great for the artist but bad for culture. The extension was said to try and bring Europe closer to the protections available in the United States.

According to Danny OBrien at the EFF, the extensions wouldn’t make any sense: “..five Nobel-prize winning economists concluded that “copyright term extension is unjustified both as a protection to current artists (who rarely earn much from far future extensions), or as an economic positive for society as a whole. Yet the music industry, fearful of losing tight control of its own back catalog, still continues to advocate for more copyright, no matter the cost.”

Now, in what will be a huge blow to the IFPI, Danny O’Brien says that the proposals have been defeated.

He says: “Just got word from the European Parliament all three of the filtering/copyright extension amendments were defeated or withdrawn in the committee vote. We’re still waiting on the official record, but if that’s true, it’s an amazing victory — one was originally proposed by the original author of the report, Guy Bono himself, one was voted in by the powerful industry committee, and one was drafted by an EPP-ED member, the largest bloc in the parliament.”

In December we reported that the IFPI had already convinced several European politicians to support the proposals. However, The Committee on Culture and Education from the European parliament made a wise decision not to turn the proposed amendments into European policy.

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The message from the Moderate Party MPs to their AntipiratbyrÃ¥n supporting colleagues was “be careful, they will never be satisfied”, drawing parallels to the earlier attempts to ban MP3 players, and VCRs, both areas in which, having failed to ban, industry groups are now making a profit from selling content.

Karl Sigfrid told TorrentFreak that the APB proposals make no practical sense. “I think it could be solved in theory. However, in reality, you would need such a surveillance system to achieve this that it would be all out of proportion. So I don’t think there’s a feasilbe way of stopping individuals copying. The cause for file sharing is basically that it’s possible. People have always done it to the extent that they’ve been able to. With cassette tapes 20 years ago and electronically today. Copyright laws preventing individuals from sharing information have never been legitimate in the eyes of most people.”

When asked about if it was down to content industries being slow to change their business practices, he replied: “It’s hard to say what would have happened if the content industries had been quicker releasing their material online, before the P2P networks grew mainstream. Probably the illegal filesharing would be less extensive, but it’s possible that it would still have been increasingly difficult for iTunes and such services to compete with free downloading. The change needed might be so radical that it’s no longer about selling copies of immaterial products at all.”

Rickard Falkvinge, of the Swedish Pirate Party was understandably upbeat about it. “Karl Sigfrid’s taking a stand marks a major turning point. For the first time, an established politician shows deep-down understanding of the real conflict, instead of cluelessly humming along with a technophobical luddite industry. Some other Swedish mainstream politicians have previously talked in terms of how it’s unreasonable to declare war on an entire generation. Sigfrid is the first to understand why.” His enthusiasm is understandable as, one Swedish torrent user put it “a bunch of members of The Conservative Party have started listening to the policies of The Pirate Party, and they want to jump on their bandwagon, as it’s gaining popularity”.

Gaining popularity it is, as yesterday, thirteen members of Parliament joined in another attack (Swedish only, no English translation at present) on the likes of the APB, and recording industries, saying “The record labels are obviously opposed to a development that makes them obsolete.” However, not everyone has been celebrating. Pirate Bay administrator Brokep was skeptical, saying “I’m intrigued that the debate is sparking up again. There’s been a lot of lies from the politicians. Promises and nothing has happened, so at least this will put the debate back on the map.”

The initial seven MPs were Karl Sigfrid. Margareta Cederfelt. Ulf Berg. Lena Asplund. Staffan Appelros. Lisbeth Grönfeldt Bergman and Göran Montan. Tuesdays additions were Marie Weibull Kornias,Finn Bengtsson, Ann-Charlotte Hammar Johnsson, Sven Yngve Persson, and Anders Hansson.

**UPDATE** Sorry, forgot to add this translation of the second piece, available here

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The Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) in conjunction with the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) have been pressurizing Australian Internet Service Providers to take action against those it accuses of infringing its copyrights.

They have informed ISPs that they require them to send warning notices to their customers informing them of their infringing behavior and warning of the likely consequences. They have also issued demands that ISPs disconnect their customers from the internet, should they be accused of sharing copyright works.

According to The Age, Sabiene Heindl – General Manager of MIPI – is signaling a new strategy after Australian ISPs dug their heels in and refused to co-operate with MIPI’s demands. The Internet Industry Association (IIA) wrote to MIPI and explained that they felt they weren’t responsible for the actions of its customers and should not be required to monitor them, effectively refusing to become the industry’s copyright police.

In a letter, the IIA suggested that copyright holders should look for their rights to be enforced by using the existing tools provided by the Australian courts and copyright law.

The IIA quite rightly believes that the labeling of someone as an infringer should only be done by the courts, not by an organization such as MIPI or AFACT, a point outlined in its letter: “The distinction between an infringer and an alleged infringer has been raised as an important legal standard which ought not be undermined by us.”

In response, Heindl explained: “We would hope that the ISPs and the record companies could come up with an alternative solution. That said, if that solution cannot be reached, and at this stage it’s because of the ISPs refusing to play ball, then we may have no alternative other than to take legal action.”

Originally created to curtail physical piracy, 2004 saw MIPI involved in high drama when it raided the offices and home addresses of people involved with Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment. Two universities and 4 ISPs were also raided during the search for evidence to support their case against KaZaA.

In 2005, MIPI was restructured to concentrate on educating the public about file-sharing, although this didn’t stop them raiding an ISP in their quest to get a BitTorrent hub shut down.

It’s likely that 2007/8 will see MIPI ‘educating’ file-sharers with the threat of lawsuits which are hugely expensive, have been tried extensively in the United States and generally, do not work.

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With the focus on the mine collapse in Utah high in the news right now, cynics might say that this is nothing more than a cheap attempt to gain publicity, at the expense of others. To that, Ray Jenson, the interim administrator for the Utah party responded “We’ve actually been working for quite a long time on this–over a month–and the timing really couldn’t be helped. It was ready when it was ready. If it had been two days, or two weeks from now, I’m sure we still would have had the same result.” He also added, “It’s a tragedy. Our best wishes are with those miners and their families, wherever they might be.”

Utah is, of course, no stranger to debate on copyright and its infringement. Some of the most controversial statements and proposals on dealing with it have come from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. Mr Jenson commented “In general, he seems as though he sincerely believes what he’s doing is the right thing. I hope that some education on the issue can alert him to the fact that what he’s been proposing is not always in the best interests of the public.” Indeed, it’s hard to say how destroying people’s computers could be in the public interest, especially when there is no way of definitively proving, even after months of court discovery, that someone was infringing, and as we all know, it turned out that his campaign site was itself infringing copyright.

Mr Jenson has no plans, however, for running for any offices at this time, saying “one step at a time, we’re concentrating on getting the party and it’s issues recognized at the present”.

More details can be found here

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“Extending copyright term is good for musicians and consumers too. It’s good for musicians because it would reduce the disparity between the length given to composers and that granted to producers and performers.” Cameron stated, “and extending copyright term will also be good for consumers. If we increase the copyright term, so the incentive is there for you working in the industry to digitise both older and niche repertoire which more people can enjoy at no extra cost.”

Clearly, Mr Cameron has not thought this through, since he appears to be oblivious to the fact that when it falls into the public domain, anyone can digitise the old media, at no cost, not just no-extra cost, if the record company decides to.

Mr Cameron also makes the case for the poor performers, saying some 7,000 of them will lose royalties to their songs over the next ten years. How or why these 7,000 are more important than the 7,000 or so that have lost their royalties in the last ten years was not something that was commented on. Nor was it stated why these people, who have known about the impending end of their royalty payments for some time now, suddenly need an extra hand, an extra twenty years of income. If any other group of workers squandered away their wages, would they be getting government promises to make things better?

Finally, in his push to secure the support of the British Phonographic Institute (BPI), the honourable member of Parliament for Witney showed his lack of knowledge. “Let me also speak about one final responsibility too: that of Internet Service Providers. They are the gatekeepers of the internet. Some ISPs claim there is nothing they can do to stop illegal downloading of music. But last month alone, there were eight sites that hosted more than 25,000 illegal downloads. That is clear and visible internet traffic. ISPs can block access and indeed close down offending file-sharing sites. They have already established the Internet Watch Foundation to monitor child abuse and incitement to racial hatred on the internet. They should be doing the same when it comes to digital piracy.”

The problem is one of degree , whilst racial hatred is always illegal, as is child abuse, is all music you can download infringing copyright? How can an ISP determine if that song you’re getting is licensed to you, or to its distributor or not. How can they tell if it even requires a license or not. The short answer is, they can’t, unless Mr Cameron is promoting an agenda by which all music file transfers are blocked by ISPs , a move the music industry would love. Preventing people using the internet for distributing their own works, and forcing them to use the music industry would resuscitate the flagging business models of the record industry.

Statements by politicians supporting the BPI and its ilk are not uncommon, unfortunately. In 2005, Arlene McCarthy (MEP for North West England) claimed sales of pirate DVDs in European cities financed the World Trade Center bombings in 1993. She subsequently blamed it on ‘the data she was given’. Of course, the only politicians not likely to pander to these special interest groups, will be those elected from the various Pirate Parties around the world.

Mr Cameron MP was contacted but had not responded at the time of press

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As usual, the Adobe products will only be filtered out if the user has chosen to block copyrighted material during installation by checking the ‘Enable Content Filtering’ option.

According to the company, such deals are being signed in hope that fewer consumers will be sued for using the program. They say this is “a significant step toward a positive relationship with software producers and means a safer peer-to-peer process for LimeWire users.”

The company has clearly been trying to go legit, but at the same time not charge users for anything but the Pro version. This became apparent when they added a pop-up message that notified users that a license for the song/file they were downloading could not be found and asked them if they were sure they wanted to download it anyway.

LimeWire was sued by the RIAA earlier this year after the company announced that it was planning to integrate BitTorrent support in the program. The RIAA demanded $150,000 per song “wilfully uploaded.” This did not stop them from going ahead and implementing it anyway.

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The Business Software Association, an international software body, claimed that in the year 2005 piracy in Australia cost them $361 million. The draft says these figures are “unverified and epistemologically unreliable.” It even goes so far as to call some of the stats used by copyright holders “absurd,” and adds that “of greatest concern is the potentially unqualified use of these statistics in courts of law.”

According to the draft, the RIAA’s Australian arm, the MIPI did not know how they calculated piracy stats, because the IPFI never told them. Strange? Maybe that’s just how things work with international organisations.

The reasoning behind the statements in the draft is that anti-piracy organisations calculate losses by counting each pirated good that is sold. They are making the assumption that each person who buys a pirated CD, for example, would have bought an original one instead. This cannot be backed up, as many of those people might not have been able to buy, or might not have bought the original CD.

The draft concluded with a statement asking for statistics that cannot be verified to be withdrawn. “Either these statistics must be withdrawn or the purveyors of these statistics must supply valid and transparent substantiation.”

The truth on the other hand: Why Most Artists Profit from Piracy!

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Copying CDs and DVDs for personal use would have little impact on copyright holders according to the “institute for public policy research” (IPPR). It is useless to criminalize the majority of your customers, if they simply want to transfer a song from a CD they bought to their MP3 player.

IPPR Deputy Director Ian Kearns said:

“Millions of Britons copy CDs onto their home computers breaking copyright laws everyday. British copyright law is out of date with consumer practices and technological progress.”

A recent survey among 2135 British adult consumers shows that most people don’t even know that they are breaking the law. Of all the people that participated in the survey, 55% said that they have ever copied CDs onto other equipment. However, only 19% actually knows that this behavior is illegal.

The IPPR hopes that their report will aid in the construction of more realistic intellectual property laws.

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

The site owner wrote the RIAJ a detailed description of how BitTorrent actually works, that they have no control over the content that’s added, and that the files are not hosted on their servers.

The admin told the RIAJ that he was wiling to cooperate, and take down the torrents in question. Most other BitTorrent sites have a similar policy, and take down torrents if they’re asked to by the copyright holders.

Surprisingly enough the RIAJ was very pleased with the response from fenopy’s admin. The RIAJ thanked the admin for his swift and polite response, and said it was all good.

The RIAJ even told the admin that they were “friends” now, and that they would contact the him directly in the future, instead of sending threat mails to their ISP.

They all lived happily ever after.

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

And of course the International Pirate Party Umbrella organization PP-International.

Piraten Partei

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