This also happens at SoundCloud, which in recent years became one of the most popular services for people to share music.

As a legitimate service, SoundCloud helps copyright holders by accepting takedown requests. However, in some cases SoundCloud goes a step further.

This is what DJ Mr Brainz discovered after his paid account was terminated due to repeated copyright infringements. Mr Brainz used SoundCloud to post copies of his radio show, which he believes drives more sales, but Universal Music disagreed and took down his files.

To find out more about the alleged infringements the DJ asked SoundCloud for additional details, as Do Androids Dance reports. Quite surprisingly, however, SoundCloud couldn’t provide more information as the removals were carried out by Universal music directly.

“Your uploads were removed directly by Universal. This means that SoundCloud had no control over it, and they don’t tell us which part of your upload was infringing. If you look at your tracklist it may help you find the Universal content they wanted blocked,” SoundCloud’s copyright team explained.

“The control of removing content is completely with Universal. This means I can’t tell you why they removed your uploads and not others, and you would really need to ask them that question,” the SoundCloud representative adds.

In other words, SoundCloud grants Universal Music the power to delete any and all content they deem to be infringing. This apparently happens without oversight or any record of what’s being taken down.

This blanket removal power is especially problematic since the affected users don’t know what they have done wrong. Without any details on the allegedly infringed track, it’s pretty much impossible to file a counter notice.

These type of broad takedown powers are not unique to SoundCloud. Previously YouTube has come under fire because the company allowed record labels to remove “disrespectful” videos or other non-infringing files the labels deemed inappropriate.

The recent issues at SoundCloud are not an isolated incident either. Over the past several months many users have complained about an avalanche of takedown notices. After America’s DJ Kaskade had 70 percent of his SoundCloud tracks removed due to alleged copyright infringements, he said he would start his own music sharing site instead.

“I will move forward with constructing my own portal where I can share what I like when I like,” Kaskade said.

Despite the critique SoundCloud sees no wrongdoing. The company points out that users are free to dispute any inaccurate takedowns. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done.

It is clear that SoundCloud is putting its users at a significant disadvantage here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The documents detail meetings held in 2009 with Lord Mandelson, then Secretary of State (SoS) for Business, on the UK’s then-upcoming Digital Economy Act.

One report is titled ‘Note of Secretary of State’s meeting with Lucian Grainge (CEO, Universal Music Group International). In common with many documents released under FOI requests, this one (marked ‘RESTRICTED’) has blacked-out sections, hiding information deemed too sensitive for the public eye.

However, due to the government’s failure to black-out the text in all versions of the document (and leaving the PDF version open to exploitation) we can now reveal the contents of a censored paragraph.

In it, Universal CEO Lucian Grainge begins by talking about a deal his company struck with Virgin Media.

“Universal have entered into an arrangement with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Virgin to target legitimate broadband users with a £10 ‘all you can eat’ offer,” Grainge explained.

Indeed, in mid-2009 that particular deal was hailed as “ground-breaking” but the other major labels didn’t sign on to provide the necessary momentum. Quietly, even Universal had reservations.

“There is a commercial risk with this strategy, which could be like putting a Coca Cola pipe in your house which would then supply the whole street,” Grainge told the meeting.

But the deal with Virgin was two-way. To combat piracy concerns like these the ISP agreed to do something for Universal.

“In return for a fixed fee revenue share Virgin have agreed to anti-piracy measures, including pop-up warnings on screens,” Grainge confirmed.

Eventually the Universal/Virgin deal fizzled out and now more than two years later the Spotify service is on the horizon instead.

However, it is Grainge’s final comments during the meeting on anti-piracy enforcement that will raise eyebrows, particularly since the government has tried and failed to censor this statement from the Freedom of Information request.

“As ISPs can monitor the amount of power used by specific users and the sites connected to, it is possible for ISPs to pass on any details to owners of particular rights, who could then take legal action,” Grainge concludes.

The mere suggestion from the head of a major label that ISPs could spy on their customers is outrageous enough, but mentioned in the same breath as a deal with Virgin Media will cause even greater concern.

In late 2009 it was revealed that Virgin Media had partnered with technology company Detica to install a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) system. Called CView, the product was to be installed to monitor the instances of illicit file-sharing on Virgin’s network.

“Understanding how consumer behaviour is changing will be an important requirement of Virgin Media’s upcoming music offering [with Universal Music] and, should they become law, the Government’s legislative proposals will also require measurement of the level of copyright infringement on ISPs’ networks,” Virgin Media’s executive director Jon James explained at the time.

The assurances were, however, that all of the data collected by CView on Virgin’s network (and on other ISPs – Detica were in talks with them too) would be anonymized, but groups such as Privacy International still had concerns.

The notion of ISPs becoming “copyright cops” is an increasingly worrying topic. With the voluntary warning system just agreed in the US, ISPs are slowly revealing that they are prepared to work with the music and movie industries. Where they will draw that final cooperative line remains to be seen but if we take Lucian Grainge’s comments at face value, we can see where the labels might be aiming.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Yesterday, however, its readers were shook up by an absence of news. Instead of seeing the regular homepage, visitors were welcomed by the following unpleasant message:

“RLSLOG.net was suspended by its German hosting company after removal request from law firm representing Universal Music, although we never hosted any files or copyrighted data on our server. Our site is strictly informative,” the message reads.

TorrentFreak briefly caught up with RLSLOG founder Martin who told us that he’s currently trying to find a new home for his site, hopefully with a hosting company that will not shut down the site so easily. The suspension came without prior notice, hence the downtime.

This is not the first time that RLSLOG is been put out of action by takedown notices. Last year, Web Sheriff sent complaints to RLSLOG’s former host and the host’s bandwidth provider, who then took the site offline. Also, Google has filtered several of RLSLOG’s pages from its search results after complaints from copyright holders.

These issues raise the question whether sites such as RLSLOG are acting within the law or not. Technically the site is not hosting any copyrighted material, but it generally does point readers to various locations where copyrighted material can be found. Legally, this is a gray area in most countries.

As we’ve learned from the cases against torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova, not hosting copyrighted material on ones site is no prerequisite for the courts to find operators not guilty of assisting in copyright infringement. RLSLOG might actually have an even worse case since the ‘links’ are selected and published by the site’s editors.

Refraining from posting links to searches or files hosted externally might be the only option to avoid legal issues at a future host. However, for RLSLOG founder Martin, his primary concern is finding a new hosting provider so he can get the site back online again.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This time, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich shocked everyone by saying: “If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. It’s 2008 and it’s part of how it is these days.”

Despite this effort, it hasn’t taken long for people to start a dispute over piracy. According to a report, Metallica’s label, Universal Music, canceled an interview the band had planned with the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan last week, after a writer there, Jonn Jeppsson, sparked off an anti-piracy row featuring him and The Pirate Bay.

Instead of reviewing the official version of the album, Jeppsson used an unauthorized cut called “Death Magnetic: Better, Shorter, Cut”, which contains the same songs as the original, but shortened. If reviewing an unofficial copy wasn’t enough, Mr Jeppson clearly enraged Universal when he admitted in his review that he downloaded his copy off The Pirate Bay.

Metallica’s label Universal was not pleased, to say the least. Talking with Dagens Media, Universal Sweden’s Per Sundin said: “The reviewer is referring to a torrent where someone has altered the original songs. The reviewer explains exactly where one should go in order to download the file that is totally infringing copyright. It’s not only an illegal file, but an altered file. The reviewer also writes that this is how the album should have sounded.”

Showing that Universal isn’t happy about piracy, even if Lars seems to have undergone a road-to-Damascus-style recovery, Sundin went on stating: “File-sharing of music is illegal. Period. There’s nothing to discuss. That fact that Sydsvenskan has a writer that has downloaded this music illegally and then makes mention of an illegal site in his review is totally unacceptable to us.”

Hinting that Universal may stop sending promo material for Sydsvenskan to review he ends: “We live in symbiosis with each other and we send them our artists’ record for free for review. But if they download the albums illegally instead, then there’s no point in doing that.”

Meanwhile, ‘Death Magnetic’ entered the UK chart at #1.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.