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.

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.

The paper shows that the tracking methods used by anti-piracy enforcement companies are not watertight, to say the least. Indeed, last year we already reported that it is possible to trap people into being reported to the MPAA or RIAA, by simply letting them click on the announce url of a BitTorrent tracker. The research from the University of Washington confirm these vulnerabilities, as they managed to receive hundreds of infringement notices addressed to a networked printer.

In August of 2007, data was being collected for a study of BitTorrent activity. During the experiment, the research team received over 200 DMCA complaints, despite never having violated any copyright. This alone should, and does, strike at the basic credibility of the organizations issuing such notices, and will be a big question if the content industries attempt to push for another ‘3 strikes’ approach.

Then, in May 2008, the team decided to repeat the tests, first to see if things had changed, and to discover if they could later implicate other IP’s, ’spoofing’ their presence. This time, there were almost 40% more DMCA notices, despite still not actually infringing copyright as claimed in the notices.

However, not only did the number of notices rise between the two monitored periods, the actual number of swarms monitored by the research team decreased. In August 2007 they had one notice for every 270 swarms. In April, that was up to less than one per hundred. However, without better knowledge of the torrents they were on each time, it’s hard to say if the difference was down to the choice of targets, or if anti-piracy efforts had been stepped up. For example, it could be that the increase was down to picking ‘hotter’ torrents, rather than an increase in enforcement.

Michael Piatek, one of the researchers involved in the project told TorrentFreak that they have contacted BayTSP and other enforcement agencies about the vulnerabilities in their tracking methods, but nothing has changed so far. A spokesman of BayTSP said he could not give a comment yet, but he assured us that their technical team will look into the research.

In addition, the researchers also checked to see if they could detect anti-p2p efforts, such as loggers. Whilst the paper gives one potential way to identify things, and later a method for using that to automatically create blocklists, the end result is that even with these major assumptions in favor of the blocklists (by eliminating residential IP addresses from consideration, for instance) at best, out of the 17 suspicious IPs found, only 10 were in such blocklists, 8 of them at colo facilities, tagged as ‘Mediasentry ‘or ‘Mediadefender’ (note that MediaDefender does not do enforcement)

In summary, the paper says that “potentially any Internet user is at risk for receiving DMCA takedown notices today. Whether a false positive sent to a user that has never even used BitTorrent or a truly infringing user that relies on incomplete IP blacklists, there is currently no way for anyone to wholly avoid the risk of complaints.” More dishearteningly for groups like Bluetack, however, is that it’s yet another kick at their claims of protection.

The last paragraph sums things up better than I can, however: “We have further demonstrated that IP blacklists, a standard method for avoiding systematic monitoring, are wholly ineffective given current identification techniques and provide only limited coverage of likely monitoring agents.”

We will give a more detailed breakdown of the study and its implications, soon.

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

TorrentFreak – What brought this law to your attention

Florian B̦sch РBoingBoing, through slashdot

TorrentFreak – The law wasn’t publicized at all?

Florian Bösch – It was, but it’s… a convoluted topic, and I don’t care about politics. There’s a trail of press releases and actions that accompany the passing of this law. It just didn’t gain any mainstream attention. Don’t know if it did now, I certainly hope so. You see I didn’t really know I cared that much about all of this, but somehow the news hit me and I knew it did.

TorrentFreak – Have you contacted your representatives in either council?

Florian Bösch – I didn’t contact the representatives in the councils no. Two reasons mainly, I don’t think it’ll help anything (with exception of two all voted for this law, no abstains), and I was pretty busy of late. (I have a day job too, one with deadlines) It’s a bit controversial, I work as a programmer for a company that sells DRM technology and services.

TorrentFreak – I would think that would put you in support of this law

Florian Bösch – I’m not. I think it’s a bad law, for the industry as well. See I think the DRM industry does just fine, it doesn’t require laws to protect it. They’ll make a shoddy product that will not be able to compete with actually free content once that becomes commonplace. And the cynicism of the industry is somewhat ungraspable for me.

TorrentFreak – This 50,000 signature rejection, is it common knowledge, or is it something brought up on rare occasions?

Florian Bösch – It is a very commonly known that it’s possible.

TorrentFreak – is it utilised often?

Florian Bösch – Yeah it’s usage is commonplace. Usually parties hold it up as a Damocles sword for discussions, at any time there’s 1-3 referendums running. It’s a bit rare that it’s started by people with no backing and clue how to do it.

TorrentFreak – How has this drive been met by the general citizenry?

Florian Bösch – I don’t know actually. I started last Friday (November 31st), spent the weekend doing the website, buried myself in mailing around and talking to people to do something, organized stuff.

TorrentFreak – What’s the response been like so far?

Florian Bösch – By the people who come to the mailing list and to the IRC channel, I’d say thankful and concerned. By people who worked on that law openly hostile (such as here). They basically think this law is the best we can manage, and the next one will be worse, so if we now abolish it, we will have to fight again, and it’s not sure it’s going to be better. (or the worst happens and the people vote for this law)

TorrentFreak – According to that thread, you believe DRM will soon be impossible to circumvent?

Florian Bösch – So hard it won’t matter, yes, I think that. See the DRM as you know it is already the past. That’s kiddie stuff, the future is polymorphic DRM that changes algorithm and inner working with every content item, because on it will be some bytecode that executes on a secure VM. Whilst it certainly won’t be uncircumventable, it will just be hard to keep open.

TorrentFreak – Yet, there’s the possibility that it will become undesirable

Florian Bösch – Yes, actually I think it’s inevitable this becomes undesirable, but I rather see it happen sooner then later.

TorrentFreak – More and more are going away from DRM and copy protection, and some of the best arguments came from a company called StarDock when they released the game GalCiv2 – that the only person it hurts and inconveniences are the legitimate consumers.

Florian Bösch – I don’t think that’s true. It hurts the whole content industry.

TorrentFreak – How so?

Florian Bösch – See we set-up music services for say mobile network operators. to do that you need players on mobile phones. To get content from the labels you need to prove that you do effective DRM. Then you have to explain to your client what he can and cannot do with DRM. It’s always funny when you get to the point where they absolutely want ripping to CD of your music, but insist that everything must be quite protected. Plain content on iPods (you got to support iPods) so the company I work for has this really good DRM, and your non-techie customers rip it apart with their real world business cases. Not that I mind, it’s just ironic. Then there’s the nature of obscurity. It permeates the whole system, you have to keep track of device IDs and userIDs and public keys and do the right dance against some piece of patented software to be privileged just to hand out a download url. I mean, something essentially simple, handing out a file, has become a huge and complex task.

TorrentFreak – So its log jamming itself, and that’s part of what is the problem with these laws, it not only hurts the consumers, but also the industries its intended to protect?

Florian B̦sch РExactly. it encourages the industry to more of that when it should do less. DRM in your business case is not quite yet the kiss of death, but it feels quite familiar.

TorrentFreak – How many signatures have you collected so far?

Florian Bösch – Embarrassingly few. we keep track here. It’s a lot more probably, but who knows.

TorrentFreak – and the signatures all have to be verified by the canton government?

Florian Bösch – By the municipality of the signatory; there’s about 1000 municipalities in Switzerland. The trouble is we should collect on the order of 2000 signatures a day. Those all have to go to the municipalities first and then be collected centrally; it’s a huge task. I think the important thing that happens isn’t so much the signatures as that people are talking more about this now then before. I’m happy I could help with that at least, and It’s a very interesting experience to go trough the signature collecting thing, I’ll write a tutorial/howto about it so more people can do it.

TorrentFreak – How do you plan on ‘expanding’ the campaign over the next few weeks?

Florian Bösch – I have no idea honestly. I try to make a breeding ground for like-minded and get them to talk to each other, and I hope we can form a network of action to have more local effect. I do just one thing, I express that I’m not happy with this law, and I thought I was not alone, and others might join in.

TorrentFreak – A laudable aim. Thank you for your time.

More information on the campaign can be found at http://no-dmca.ch

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

The findings are quite shocking, but at the same time good news for filesharers who receive DMCA notices from their ISP. Ben found what some of us already expected. BayTSP only records who connects to the tracker, and has no proof that the alleged pirates actually tried to download infringing content. BayTSP merely collects IP addresses and forwards them to anti-piracy organizations. The anti-piracy then send a letter to your ISP, accusing you of sharing copyrighted material.

The really scary thing about this is that it is extremely easy for other people to make you receive a DMCA notice from your ISP, and possibly get disconnected if that happens more than once. As Ben points out, one way to make someone connect to a fake tracker (don’t try this at home) is by letting them click on a link like this:

http://tracker.com:12345/announce?info_hash=579CC43E4D6.

Their IP will then be recorded by the fake tracker, and they will probably receive an infringement notice soon after that. Even if they’ve never heard of BitTorrent at all! Another way to set someone up is by using “peer exchange“. All you have to do is enter someone else’s address, and the fake tracker will record it.

All this is actually good news for people who receive these DMCA notices. As Ben points out in his post: “If your ISP forwards a DMCA notice from these guys, point them here. This research suggests that they have no evidence of wrong-doing. If ISPs learn that the folks sending them DMCA notices are not being completely honest, they may be willing to reconsider their position about how they respond to the notices.”

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

With that in mind, tomorrow Giest launches 30 Days of DRM page and an associated wiki which will, “seek to provide a starting point for the kinds of protections politicians and policy makers should be contemplating,” at the same time forming a compilation of DRM policy issues.

While there was much to criticize about Bill C-60, the last attempt at copyright reform in Canada, “given continuing pressure from the copyright lobby and American government, the Conservatives’ bill may be, “far more extreme in its approach,” says Geist, stressing that anti-circumvention provisions which grant legal protection to technological protection measures (TPMs) are likely to be the most contentious issues.

“In plainer English, traditional copyright law grants creators a basket of exclusive rights in their work.”

“TPMs or digital locks (such as anti-copying technologies on CDs) effectively provide a second layer of protection by making it difficult for most people to copy works in digital format. Anti-circumvention legislation creates a third layer of protection by making it an infringement to simply pick or break the digital lock (in fact, it even goes further by making it an infringement to make available tools or devices that can be used to pick the digital lock).”

Under the DMCA, it’s an infringement to circumvent a TPM, “even if the intended use of the underlying work would not constitute traditional copyright infringement,” Geist emphasises.

The House of Commons reconvenes in a month and to highlight exceptions and limitations that should be included if a Canadian DMCA is introduced, starting tomorrow, each day for the next 30 days Geist will post a new provision focusing broadly on marketplace concerns, public protection, and fair circumvention,” .

“We should be working on a positive copyright agenda that includes an expanded fair dealing provision, reform to the statutory damages provision, the elimination of crown copyright, and protection from DRM,” he states.

“Instead, given the strength of the copyright lobby, we may need protection from the next copyright bill.”

The 30 Days of DRM page and the associated wiki will, “seek to provide a starting point for the kinds of protections politicians and policy makers should be contemplating,” Geist states.

Stay tuned.

p2pnet

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