Just two weeks ago a coalition of several British “creative industries” called on the UK government to implement legislation that would make it possible to disconnect repeated copyright infringers. At the time they were convinced that the French model was the right way to go, but it appears they have already changed their minds.

The UK film industry – backed by some of the same organizations that previously called for the disconnection of pirates – now think this approach is too extreme. Instead, Internet service providers should slow down repeated offenders, in the hopes that this will stop their defiant behavior.

“We see the use of technological measures as similar to creating road humps – they will make potential copyright infringers pause and think twice,” Lavinia Carey, chair of Respect For Film said in a comment.

In addition, the movie industry group vaguely mentions the possibility for ISPs to block access to ‘pirates sites’ or at least warn their customers that they could end up in court if they continue to download copyright infringing content.

By itself, the speed bumps are an interesting approach to the ‘piracy’ problem, but we seriously doubt it will have much effect. A reduction in available bandwidth will surely annoy people previously used to downloading a lot of content, but will it also stop them from return to their old habits when the bumps are gone?

Or phrased in the speed bump analogy; will speed bumps on a road still have an effect on the behavior of drivers when they are removed? It might very well be that the restrictions are only effective when they are in play, which makes them useless as an anti-piracy tool.

Nevertheless, the UK government has committed itself to helping the entertainment industries tackle the piracy problem. In the words of David Lammy, Minister of State for Intellectual Property: “We know that the copyright industries in the UK are suffering huge losses due to illegal downloading.”

The use of the term ‘copyright industries’ by Lammy is telling. Meanwhile, Minister Lord Carter is tasked with making sense of all the industries’ piracy solutions. The legislation he comes up with will be announced on 16 June.

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By sheer volume the number of downloads these lesser known bands accumulate might only be a fraction of those generated by the Britney Spears and Duffys of this world, but 10,000 downloads is pretty significant for developing artists. Artists need to be heard in order to build a steady fanbase.

Revenue wise, most artists trying to earn a living making music only have a moderate income, and every fan counts. Generally, they don’t make much from album sales – contracts where the band/artist gets less than 10% of the revenue are quite common. Merchandising and playing gigs are the largest source of income, income that is generated by fans.

If the average artist can pick up a few hundred extra fans by giving away his music for free, this can make a huge difference. This group might not be that interesting for the record labels and the royalty collectors, who tend to feed off the top 1% of artists who are generally well marketed by million dollar budgets from the music industry.

Contrary to the conclusions of the PRS study, a special brand of ‘pirates’ are particularly interested in new and unsigned bands. On the music tracker What.cd, which hosts almost 100,000 users, the most downloaded album ever is a compilation of unsigned artists. Second is an album from The Flashbulb, with 10 times as many downloads as Britney Spears’ Greatest Hits collection.

Similarly, on the music sharing website Jamendo thousands of artists are giving away their music for free. Rob Costlow, one of the early adopters of the site told TorrentFreak that thanks to this free music model, he is able to make a living off his passion. His most popular album on Jamendo was downloaded over 80,000 times while nearly half a million listened to it on the website.

So, even though the vast majority of the the users of file-sharing services download music from the top of the charts, there is undoubtedly a huge potential for new artists to market themselves through file-sharing. Perhaps less interesting for the major labels who make most money off cleverly marketed top acts, but extremely valuable for the average artist trying to make a living off music.

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In the United States, MIT is leading the list for the second year in a row, followed by the newcomer University of Washington. Purdue University dropped 4 spots and is now ranked 8th, but this could be due to the fact that students at Purdue launched their own private P2P network.

BayTSP reports that the overall number of copyright infringements hasn’t changed much over the past three years, despite the expensive anti-piracy systems that were implemented.

BayTSP also recorded statistics for non-US universities and schools, topped by the University of Botswana. Greece is well represented with four universities in the top 10 and Polish universities are up and coming with three entries. Sweden – home of The Pirate Bay – completes the top 10 with Uppsala University in second place and students from Gothenburg in 10th.

TorrentFreak discourages prospective students from using these lists to select an appropriate school.

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BayTSP told TorrentFreak that it will mainly target rebroadcasts of live TV-signals on popular streaming sites. Those who use their mobile phone to stream their favorite football game when they’re at the stadium are safe, at least for now. BayTSP is already offering a similar service to the movie and music industries for ‘non-live’ clips uploaded to sites like YouTube and Dailymotion.

Illegal broadcasts of live sporting events are nothing new though. The P2P based TVU Networks has been around for years, and allows users to watch and broadcast live TV signals all over the world. With the increase in popularity of services such as Ustream and Stickam the number of illegal streams is growing.

“Since 2006 we’ve seen a steady increase in piracy of sports broadcasts and pay-per-view events, primarily as a result of video streaming technology becoming easier to use,” says BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa. “Since broadcasters make the majority of their money from the initial broadcast, they understand the impact that signal theft can have on the bottom line.”

The name BayTSP might sound familiar to BitTorrent users, as they are also sending takedown requests on behalf of the movie and music industries. The company does so by joining BitTorrent swarms to record the alleged infringer’s IP-address and other relevant information. This information is then forwarded to the user’s ISP.

With web based streams, however, it is often impossible to identify the source directly, as their IPs are not broadcasted on the web. “In most cases, take down notices are sent to the site hosting the stream. On some occasions, notices are also sent to the ISP of the hosting site,” BayTSP told TorrentFreak.

Whether the money that the sports broadcasters pay BayTSP will make up for the lost revenue though piracy is a question that remains unanswered.

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A recent post by isoHunt founder Gary Fung inspired us to run a poll. We know that TorrentFreak readers might not be representative of the average file sharer, but we would love to find out why you use BitTorrent. The following poll has four answer options, based on the four types file-sharer, as described by Lawrence Lessig in his book Free Culture.

The options are as follows.

1. Because it’s free

Some use BitTorrent to download music, movies and software so they don’t have to pay for them. Instead of purchasing a CD or buying a DVD, they prefer to download it for free on BitTorrent.

2. To ‘try before I buy

The second type uses BitTorrent mainly to sample content and try before they buy. They download music to discover new artists and might end up buying the album if they like it. Similarly, they try software or download movies but buy them when they live up to their expectations.

3. Because I can’t get it elsewhere

The third group mainly downloads content they can’t get elsewhere. The TV-show that it not on TV in your country yet, or that song you can’t buy easily online without having to deal with all kinds of digital restrictions.

4. To download ‘legal’ torrents

The last type of file-sharer mainly downloads content that the creator wants to share for free, often indicated by the misleading term ‘legal torrents’. Music from Jamendo for example, or films that are ok to share.

So where do you fit in? Let us know.

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Quite common by now are the watermarking techniques used by the studios to track down the origin of cams. Through these watermarks the theaters where the movies are recorded can be identified, and every now and then an arrest is made. Recent technological advances even make it possible to get a fairly accurate estimation of the location of the camcorder equipment using audio watermarks. These audio watermarks have not been implemented yet since they require a lot of extra paperwork in order to work well.

In a recent blog post John August, the director of hit movie The Nines, discusses some of the anti-piracy tools the movie studios are using to decrease or deter camcording in theaters. August himself has a fairly balanced view on illegal downloading. In a previous interview with TorrentFreak he said that he wouldn’t think bad of people who downloaded his movie using BitTorrent. In talks with other studio insiders, however, he discovered something that made our jaws drop.

We’ve mentioned many times before that when a movie hits the theater, or a DVD or TV show debuts in one country before it does in another, this is a major incentive for people to turn to BitTorrent. People don’t like waiting for something that other people already have, especially if the solution to that is just a few clicks away. However, instead of putting time and effort into making their content premiere globally, the studios are purposely delaying movie releases in some countries because a lot of cam releases originate there.

So, instead of working towards solving the problem, the studios are actually encouraging piracy by restricting access to millions of potential customers. Like many others, August himself acknowledges that delayed premiere dates in some locations might actually encourage people to pirate movies and TV-shows.

Instead of adding restrictions and thereby alienating their customers, the movie and TV studios should focus on dropping the release windows for their content. It may have been possible to keep people and countries apart pre-Internet, but not any more. People worldwide are closer together today than ever before – and only getting closer.

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We thought it would be interesting to compare the users of different operating systems on their sharing behavior. Therefore we decided to take a closer look at the share ratios of Windows, Mac and Linux software on The Pirate Bay. The results are quite interesting and indicate that Windows users share twice as much as their Mac counterparts.

In order to calculate the share ratio we simply looked at all the seeders (completed downloads) and leechers (still downloading) on the torrents in the software category on The Pirate Bay. The share ratio is the number of seeders divided by the number of leechers. So, the higher the ratio, the more users share.

In the table below you can see that there are much more torrents for Windows software, 49345 compared to 2952 for Mac software and 1271 for Linux. Nevertheless, those downloading Windows software tend to share the files for longer, even compared to the Linux users.

Not listed in the table, but worthy of note, are the average number of downloaders per torrent. Mac software is in the lead here with 22 downloaders, followed by Windows with 9 and Linux with a measly average of 4 peers per torrent. Although we can conclude that those who download Windows software share more compared to others, the ratios for Mac and Linux software aren’t bad either. It can get a lot worse – Xbox 360 downloaders don’t even make a 0.3 share ratio.

Of course, the term ‘pirate’ obviously doesn’t apply to all downloaders either, especially not for the Linux group. It is interesting to see the huge differences in share ratios between the different categories though; perhaps Microsoft should consider building their next campaign around these stats. Sharing is caring, right?

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The report, which was commissioned by the government, estimates the positive effect on the Dutch economy to be around 100 million euros a year. While it is recognized that the entertainment industry suffers some losses, these don’t outweigh the positive effects of file-sharing.

File-sharing gives people access to a wide range of cultural goods and is often used to sample content that is bought later, the report concluded. Most file-sharers would have never bought the content they downloaded, but having access to such a large media library increases the welfare of Dutch citizens, the researchers note.

The researchers further found that people who download music and movies are not buying less than people who don’t. In fact, downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors of concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn’t. In the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most from file-sharing, the researchers report.

The report goes on to discuss the legal situation in the Netherlands. Downloading music and movies for personal use is currently legal under Dutch law while uploading is illegal, although most file-sharers are uncertain as to what is allowed and what is not. Although anti-piracy outfits are lobbying for harsher copyright laws, this will have little effect.

The researchers think that stricter copyright laws will not have much of an effect on the income of the entertainment industry. Most reported losses can be attributed to things other than piracy, they say. One of the main reasons for the loss in sales for the music industry, is competition with other forms of entertainment.

BREIN, the anti-piracy voice of the Netherlands hasn’t commented on the conclusions of the report yet, but we’re looking forward to hearing from them.

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One of the key statistics that is hyped every year, is the piracy ratio of downloaded music. Just as last year, IFPI estimates that 95% of all downloads are illegal, without giving a proper source for this figure. Interestingly, those who take a closer look at the full report (pdf), will see that only 10% of the claimed illegal downloads are seen as a loss in sales.

Contrary to the RIAA’s arguments in court, the BPI and IFPI don’t believe in the “every pirated download is a lost sale” myth. Matt Phillips, BPI’s Director of Communications wrote in an email to TorrentFreak: “No, we don’t think every illegal download is a lost sale (and never, ever, have, if my memory serves me correctly). The estimates for lost sales revenue is [sic] not calculated on this basis.”

To come up with a ‘best guess’ of the real losses for the UK market, the music industry have commissioned Jupiter Research. For two years in a row, Jupiter estimated the losses are to be about equal to the revenue that comes from digital sales. If we combine this with the ‘only one in 20 downloads is paid for’ guesstimate, only one in 10 illegal downloads is seen as a loss in sales.

Of course we will be very reluctant to draw conclusions from research that is commissioned by the music industry itself, however, it would interesting to know what the effect is of those downloads that are not seen as a loss. Could they perhaps used by consumers to discover new music, and generate revenue in the long run?

What is clear from the report is that ‘pirates’ have shown the music industry what consumers really want. The music industry is slowly starting to recognize that they have to compete with piracy, by offering high quality products. In the 2009 report, for example, IFPI proudly reports that many services now sell DRM-free music, while they themselves are the reason why these restrictions were implemented in the first place.

In the report IFPI writes: “An important development in 2008 was the licensing of more online stores to sell downloads without digital rights management (DRM), meaning consumers can play the music they acquire on any portable device. In January 2009, Apple announced it had signed deals with leading record companies to offer eight million DRMfree tracks at flexible price points. The move is expected to significantly boost download sales.”

Besides the usual anti-piracy ramblings on how ISPs should help to disconnect pirates from the Internet, the report documents another interesting trend. The music industry clearly recognizes that they’ve done something wrong in the past, and is now promoting unlimited download services, either ad supported or for a low monthly fee. If done right, this ‘piracy inspired’ model might just be the future of music consumption, or at least a worthy competitor to piracy. But then again, they will find something else to complain about sooner or later.

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The legal action, under the Copyright and Related Rights Acts 2000, claims the ISP knowingly facilitated the infringements of its customers and is therefore liable for their actions. Willie Kavanagh, Managing Director of EMI records in Ireland said of Eircom: “With the greatest of respect” it was “well aware” that its customers used its networks to infringe copyrights “on a grand scale”. In response, Eircom (correctly) believes that as a carrier, it is under no obligation to monitor the content of traffic on its network.

Being heard by Justice Peter Charleton, the trial started yesterday in Court 7 at the Commercial Court and is listed to run for the next four weeks. Michael McDowell SC, a former politician now representing the ‘Big Four’ in the case, said Eircom should be forced to stop its customers from illegally downloading music. According to reports, he quickly began his attempts to portray Eircom in a bad light.

McDowell read out an internal email from 2001, written by Eircom’s head of Internet, Denis Curran, which noted that the issue of “MP3 piracy” should be the subject of discussion at a forthcoming management meeting. All fine so far, but Curran wrote “Piracy is a loaded term. Could we say ‘sharing‘- ‘piracy’ implies there’s something wrong with it.”

Clearly not realizing his off-the-cuff comments would be aired worldwide eight years down the line, Curran added “Think of it as helping the health and good living of rich cocaine sniffing rock stars by leaving them with less free money to spend on sex and drugs.”

McDowell didn’t stop there. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to imply that Eircom supports piracy, McDowell noted that only this week, the ISP was seen to be advertising its services on The Pirate Bay. Of course, Eircom would have no idea that this was the case, as they will have out-sourced their advertising to an agency.

In attempting to quantify the ‘losses’ incurred by the ‘Big Four’ at the hands of Eircom, McDowell noted that illegal downloading costs the Irish music industry 13.8 million Euros every year, and since Eircom has 40 per cent of the ISP market, it must be responsible for causing the industry losses of between 4 and 5 million Euros.

It will be no surprise if the rest of the statistics provided by the ‘Big Four’ and IFPI are equally vacuous.

The case continues.

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At this stage, little is known about ACTA, but what we do know is that the RIAA has put forward some radical proposals. One of their suggestions was to force ISPs to become ‘copyright cops’, ordering them to filter out pirated files on their networks, and making the ISPs liable if they fail to respond to the demands of copyright holders. That, in addition to the request for an official crime unit to track down and bust alleged pirates.

Most governments that have commented on the ACTA negotiations have refused to reveal any information about its contents, but were quick to refute rumors. According to the New Zealand government (ppt), ACTA is aimed at commercial piracy only, and no one has to be worried about getting their iPod through customs. Nevertheless, they also stress that “draft versions of the text will not be made available.”

According to the FFII, all this secrecy goes against EU regulations, and in response they have filed a complaint with the Ombudsman against the EU Council for concealing ACTA documents. “Making agreements to keep texts secret goes much further than allowed. The Council deliberately obstructs access to ACTA documents,” FFII analyst Ante Wessels commented. FFII requests that the documents should be made public. Alternatively, the EU could withdraw from the negotiations, they say.

Bottom line is this: we don’t know what the plans for ACTA are, and it is impossible to remedy this since requests for information are denied at all levels. There is no good reason to keep them secret either, other than to prevent the public and other institutions voicing their opinion on the proposal before it is signed. Convenient perhaps, but not very democratic.

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The RIAA recently announced that it would stop its massive legal campaigns and limit the court visits to a minimum. No surprise there. Lawsuits are expensive and the RIAA lost more of those than they had hoped, so they turned their attention to lawmakers, local governments and ISPs instead.

The new plan is to get legislation implemented that will allow the entertainment industry to spy on the filesharing behaviors of individual Internet subscribers, and order their disconnection when they are suspected of repeated copyright infringements. Ideally they would like to make “downloading” a criminal offense of course, and this is exactly what the Pirates Prison Project is anticipating.

According to Dimitri Johnson, CEO of Pirate Prisons Project (PPP), billions of Internet users around the world will have to be thrown in jail if the anti-piracy lobbyists have their way. “Everyone is guilty by default: since nobody will want to do without Internet access, no matter what, everyone will end up going to jail. All of our kids, parents, friends and peers. Off to jail we go,” he writes.

“This trend has led PPP to foresee a gigantic business opportunity,” Dimitri adds, while introducing his plans to build thousands of prisons where these Internet pirates can be locked up. Investors can buy shares in these yet to be built prisons, and pirates have the opportunity to book a comfortable cell in advance. PPP currently offers three options:

1. Buy Shares

You can invest in the new prisons due to be built, which is a solid investment according to the PPP. 150 shares currently trade at $10,000, but people with a smaller budget can get 2 shares for just $200.

2. Denounce Someone

If you happen to know someone who pirates music, software or movies on the Internet, you can first report them, and then send them over to the PPP website to book their cell early on. There are several options to choose from, and early birds get the best picks.

3. Book a Cell Yourself

Last but not least, you can book a cell yourself, and make sure that you’ll have a comfortable time in prison once you’re locked up. If your budget allows it, you can book the “jail premium” package: the largest cell available, complete with broadband Internet.

TorrentFreak contacted one of the project leaders, who told us that he hopes to get the RIAA and MPAA on board as one of the main investors in the project. He’s right, it’s their future…

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Perhaps even more importantly, the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. Availability seems to be the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent.

This also becomes clear when we look at the geographical location of the downloaders. The vast majority of the downloads come from overseas, over 90% on average. Outside the US, fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Legal online streaming services are only available in the US, and change very little in the overall download figures. Until the availability problem is addressed, we’re not likely to see a decrease in TV-show downloads from BitTorrent. Indeed, compared to last year, the download figures have grown a little, especially for the top three TV-shows in the list.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the US, based on data from Nielsen. Note that the download count for each show is per episode, the most downloaded in this case. The Olympics Opening Ceremony was one of the most wanted broadcasts of the year with 4,620,000 downloads, but we decided only to include TV-series.

The data for the top 10 is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. The download number is the sum of all torrent downloads for the most popular episode. Based on previous experience a correction is made for smaller .torrent releases that we might have missed.

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Sony’s PSP Product Manager John Koller told Multiplayer recently “[There] certainly has been some piracy on the PSP. We’ve seen that as a significant issue — it’s trending down right now, we’ve seen the piracy not be as such prevalent in the last month to two months”

According to Koller, more and more PSP users are joining the “good side” and standing up for the intellectual property rights of the company. “We’ve noticed there’s kind of a ‘good vs. evil’ battle that we track on many of the forums and many of the pirated web sites,” he said. “There are certainly people that are standing up and fighting for what we consider the good side, the rights of developers and publishers to make money on their IP.”

To verify this assesment, we decided to take a look at the piracy rate of PSP games. This data, based on direct monitoring of BitTorrent trackers seems to contradict Sony’s statements. From our statistics, there seems to be an increase instead of a decrease in the past months, which is true for all content. There is a steady increase in downloads for PSP games throughout 2008, and an even steeper one over the last three months.

To give an example of the piracy rate of PSP games, Dissidia: Final Fantasy was downloaded 200,000 times via BitTorrent over the past 5 days, which is pretty significant for a PSP game. The two most pirated games for the PSP in 2008 were Final Fantasy VII and GTA Vice City Stories, with an estimated 650,000 and 550,000 downloads. As a comparison, the average PSP game sells 133,000 copies. We’re curious where Sony got their statistics, perhaps it was just a PR stunt, to give pirates a guilty conscience.

Despite the increase in pirated downloads, for other types of games, more units were sold November this year compared to the same month in 2007, adding up to an impressive $4 billion in sales.

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This means that millions of people will receive warning emails from their Internet service provider, based on ‘evidence‘ gathered by a third party with a vested interest in the outcome. This will also mean, however, that thousands of individuals will receive emails in error, as the evidence gathering techniques are not as solid as the anti-piracy outfits say. There have been a lot of false accusations already, and this was recently confirmed in mainstream media by the BBC show Watchdog.

The move from individual lawsuits to controlling piracy at the ISP level seems to be the new trend this year. Many countries have looked into the possibility of disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet, often gently pushed by anti-piracy lobbyists. France was the first to present their “three-strikes” law earlier this year, which would allow anti-piracy outfits to police the Internet. The IFPI now plans to implement this worldwide, with or without legislation.

It wont stop there though, if the RIAA gets its way ISPs will also have to pro-actively check for copyrighted content on their network. In their list of suggestions for the controversial ACTA proposal, the RIAA wants ISPs to spy on the files that are transferred by their customers, and check them against a reference database of “copyrighted files”.

ISPs worldwide are not looking forward to policing their networks, but they might find themselves with no other option. Adding further pressure, the RIAA wants ISPs to be held liable for the copyright infringement that takes place on their network, as their proposal suggests “…in the absence of proof to the contrary, an Internet service provider shall be considered as knowing that the content it stores is infringing or illegal, and thus subject to liability for copyright infringement…”

So, while dropping the mass-lawsuits might be considered to be a step forward by some, the change in tactics might very well result in a virtual police state where consumers (and ISPs) are guilty until proven innocent. The RIAA has lost some major battles in court, but if they gain control over ISPs, the future might be even darker than the past.

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In fact, earlier this year the MPAA had to release a statement saying ‘they made a mistake’ in the figures. Nevertheless, the $6 billion figure in question has been quoted a lot, with MPAA chairman Dan Glickman still using it in almost every public talk, to convince his listeners of the seriousness of the ‘piracy’ issue. According to the MPAA there is more bad weather ahead, as it is now worried that piracy might flourish in the current financial climate.

“If you look at the situation, the current economic crisis makes this problem much more serious than before,” Glickman said recently at a forum, adding, “If we don’t protect IPR (intellectual property rights), our economic losses will be far worse.” The MPAA will of course leave no excuse unused to justify its anti-piracy measures, nothing new there. Although there are no studies that show how illegal downloads actually affect sales at the box office, there has been a significant bump in the number of BitTorrent users recently.

One should always be cautious to interpret these two events as having a causal relationship. However, after several months of relatively slow growth, BitTorrent sites have seen a dramatic increase in visitor numbers this fall. Since September, the number of peers tracked by The Pirate Bay has nearly doubled from 14 million in early September, to 25 million now. Other BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, Torrentz and BTjunkie report an increase in downloads, searches and web traffic, ranging from 25 to 50 percent over the same time frame.

This increase, even if it is directly related to the economic downturn, is not necessarily linked with a drop in box office grosses or DVD sales. ‘The Dark Knight’, which is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent in 2008 sold millions of DVDs, and grossed a record breaking billion dollars in cinemas worldwide. That does not really sound like a ‘bad year’ to us.

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The film, produced by Hiroyuki Kobayashi, is set for a Sony Pictures DVD release in the USA on December 30. A few days ago it leaked onto the Internet and since then it has already been downloaded a million times via BitTorrent.

This is not the first time that a movie quickly became popular online due to the release of a pirated copy. “The Man from Earth” is another example of a film that became immensely popular due to its distribution on BitTorrent. Contrary to the opinion of the big studios, many independent filmmakers see piracy as free promotion instead of a threat.

We doubt that Sony Pictures will respond similarly to the leak of ‘Resident Evil: Degeneration’, which tops our weekly download chart. Below is the full list of this week’s most downloaded movies on BitTorrent. The Dark Knight, which led the chart three weeks in a row, has dropped to third place. Later this week and following on from our top 10 most downloaded games chart, we will publish the top 10 most downloaded movies in 2008.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

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Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy endorsed the launch of the ambitious ‘Fake Free London’ project, noting that the police will be required to enforce already-existing laws: “Legislation alone will not combat counterfeiting and piracy. Good law is great but enforced law is better.” He said the aim of the campaign was send a message that people are serious about tackling the problem, and that consumers and legitimate businesses would be better off as a result.

Apparently there have already been dozens of arrests, but it is unclear if these were connected to running an operation manufacturing the counterfeit DVDs, or selling them. In the UK right now, the difference in terms of how the courts deal with the people at the top compared to the bottom is marked.

Street sellers, often from other countries, are at the bottom of the food chain and are usually cautioned by the police, DVDs confiscated and sent on their way. Some receive small fines but more usually, those that continually flout the warnings could find themselves the subject of an Anti-Social Behavior Order. If they breach the terms of those, it’s possible they’ll go to prison, but few do. It’s hard to see that this process is much of a deterrent, it relies on an offender getting caught lots of times. Besides, the UK has very little prison space right now.

Towards the top end of the food chain, things are different. Last month, another UK man Steven Adams, a fairly large-scale counterfeiter who also fitted huge numbers of XBox and Playstation modchips, received a fairly hefty sentence from the courts. He pleaded guilty to 44 charges, including the manufacture and selling around £1 million of counterfeit products. Adams had toured computer and flea markets all over the UK and at the time of his arrest, police found 31,000 counterfeit discs in his possession. He had numerous expensive properties, vehicles and possessions but didn’t try to hide his wealth, something which he will now regret as the court takes action to seize them. For his sins, Adams also received 3 years in jail.

The punishment for commercial piracy in the UK starts with a simple caution and goes up 10 years in jail and an unlimited fine, so it seems the tools to deal with the problem are already there, but is there the will to start locking more people up? Time will tell, but it seems unlikely. So can the MPA win its very own Olympic event? A bronze medal, absolute maximum.

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The amendment, drafted by Guy Bono and other members of the European Parliament, was supposed to put a halt to the march of the anti-piracy lobby. However, despite the fact that is was adopted by an overwhelming majority, with 573 parliament members voting in favor with just 74 rejections, the European Council went against this democratic vote.

In September, Bono stated in a response to the vote: “You do not play with individual freedoms like that,” going on to say that the French government should review its three-strikes law. Sarkozy had other plans though, and in his position of President of the European Council, he convinced his friends this Thursday to reject the proposal.

The rejection also goes against conclusions from the EU culture ministers last week, who sided with the more balanced view of the European Commission, by encouraging copyright holders to work on offering “high quality, accessible, easy to use and consumer friendly” content online – instead of chasing pirates.

Guy Bono was appalled by the recent decision of the Council, which he referred to as “an arrangement between friends.” Not all is lost though, the amendment might pass in January or February 2009, when it will be proposed again. However, as Bono noted, this initial rejection is likely to result in a negative image of European democracy.

It seems that the lobbying efforts of the MPAA, RIAA and others have paid off, and for France and other European member states the road to a ‘three-strikes law’ for alleged pirates is now wide open again.

In France, Sarkozy will now go forward with implementing his controversial three-strikes law. We can only hope that other European countries wont follow this example. What a great demokarzy Europe has.

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

Recently their efforts to make money from alleged pirates was picked up by the mainstream press, because an elderly couple was incorrectly accused by them of pirating an Atari game, Test Drive Unlimited. It is of course a stereotype to think that people over fifty don’t play games, but with the help of consumer magazine, Which? Computing, the lawyers were forced to drop the case.

If anything, this suggests that the evidence they gather for use against alleged sharers is not as strong as it should be. In fact, this is not the first time that a case has dropped before it went to court. Apparently, the lawyers that represent the various copyright holders will only make their case when they have a sure win – that is, when the defendants fail to show up. Others who dig in their heels and refuse to pay learn that the consequences aren’t nearly as bad as the law firm would have everyone believe.

Meanwhile, thousands of UK citizens are receiving letters in which they are accused of downloading music, games or more recently, adult entertainment. In these letters, they are asked to pay a few hundred pounds, or else they are threatened with the prospect of being dragged through court, where the fine – if the law firm is to be believed – will be multiplied several times over.

There aren’t any precise figure on how many alleged pirates have paid up, but based on earlier comments from the law firm itself, it’s believed to be between 40 and 60%. It’s not unthinkable that some copyright owners are making more from this type of pirate-chasing than they do from sales of their actual products. Quite an innovative business model actually, especially since in many cases it guarantees a revenue stream for sub-standard products that otherwise simply wouldn’t sell.

But now, according to The Register, computer game manufacturer Atari has had enough, as they have canceled their collaboration with Davenport Lyons and Logistep. Exactly why is open to speculation, but it is difficult to find a single positive article about the activities of these companies, particularly when recent and rather more potentially embarrassing actions are taken into consideration. It’s not surprising that they choose to distance themselves from the operation.

In a comment to El Reg, Atari said that it will “always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy.” An interesting comment, since cashing in on alleged piracy happens after the offense, and has nothing to do with protection. However, this statement seems more of an attempt to show that this withdrawal doesn’t indicate that Atari is going soft on piracy.

Of course, copyright holders have every right to protect their material, or even make up for the losses they claim to suffer. Whether it is the right thing to do is questionable though, especially when the tactics are as aggressive as they are in these cases.

The complete lack of transparency in respect of the evidence gathering techniques just makes matters worse, and every negative aspect is compounded when people like Simon Davies of Privacy International speak about facets of the operation in very unfavorable terms. “This is appalling, it breaches a number of fundamental human rights,” he said. “They risk bringing the law into disrepute – just because lawyers can do something it doesn’t mean that they should.”

A great example of where copyright has gone wrong has emerged recently. In a leaked contract between DigiProtect (copyright protection outfit) and Evil Angel (content producer), the copyright was actually transferred in order for DigiProtect to make it available on filesharing networks.

“LICENSOR grants DIGIPROTECT the exclusive right to make the movies listed in Appendix 1 worldwide available to the public via remote computer networks, so-called peer-2-peer and internet file sharing networks such as e-Donkey, Kazaa, Bitorrent, etc. for the duration of this agreement.”

So, DigiProtect makes the files available to cash in on the people who attempt to download the files, but not to protect their intellectual property in a way copyright law was put in place for. In fact, this has nothing to do with copyright protection, they are simply exploiting the system. Probably a good thing that Atari got out before it all falls apart.

The question now is how are the other publishers feeling now that Atari has had enough? Since they are based in the UK, the focus now falls on CodeMasters, who are still pursuing people over Colin McRae Dirt, but does the return on the project cancel out the mountains of bad PR it generates? Time will tell.

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