Content-ID allows rightsholders to upload the videos and music they own to a central ‘fingerprint’ database. YouTube will then scan their site for full or partial matches, and if there is a hit the copyright holder can automatically take it down, or decide to put their ads on it.

Although the above sounds like a fair and honest solution, not everything Content-ID does goes to plan. Of course some errors are expected when pioneering a new system, but the problems are more severe than that. Welcome to the world of YouTube swindlers, mass misattribution of copyrights and an unfair bias towards stubborn copyright holders.

One of the problems appears to be that people with bad intentions can claim copyright on videos they have nothing to do with, and even run ads on them. In the YouTube support forums there are hundreds of posts about this phenomenon, also summarized by the PRV blog recently.

Although some swindlers may indeed be around, most of the “misattribution” problems seem to be the result of screwups and technical limitations. A good example is the case of the Dutch game review site Gamer.nl, owned by the publishing platform Sanoma.

All Game Videos Are Belong to?

A quick Google search shows that the site has ‘claimed’ ownership of more than 10,000 YouTube videos, nearly all game related. However, most of the videos in question have nothing to do with the website. In fact, most are standard game trailers or fan made videos.

So what is going wrong here?

It appears that the Content-ID filter is automatically assigning these videos to Gamer.nl, because the clips produced by the review site also include snippets of trailers and in-game play. In other words, the Content-ID filter is set so broad that official game trailers are assigned to Gamer.nl because Gamer.nl uses footage from the trailers in its reviews.

As a result Gamer.nl is now collecting ad revenue on thousands of videos it has nothing to do with. And bear in mind that the above is just a single example, there are several similar examples which show that it’s a widespread issue.

TorrentFreak got in touch with Gamer.nl to hear their side of the story. They confirmed to us that in their case the videos are flagged by the system, not an actual person.

“Because our productions contain a lot of game footage, YouTube classifies videos with similar footage as infringing. Since this is an automated process we can’t do anything about it,” Gamer.nl’s Joost Wouterse said.

“Unfortunately the YouTube notice makes it look like we are actively flagging material as infringing, but this is not the case. We would never claim ownership on the game footage we use in our productions, but we do of course claim ownership on our full videos,” he added.

Wouterse understands that the confusion caused by the mass-takedowns is unfortunate, but at the same time he’s happy that the Content-ID system allows them to protect their own videos. The big question is of course, whether the thousands of videos that are assigned to them by mistake can simply be seen as collateral damage.

In response to this Wouterse said that YouTube users can file a counterclaim if they disagree with the removal of a video. But this isn’t as straightforward as it sounds.

Many users simply do not know whether they are allowed to post parts of a game trailer, or in-game material, and may think the claim from Gamer.nl is legit. Also, since YouTube threatens to ban the accounts of repeat infringers for life, they may not want to cause any trouble.

Bias Towards Copyright Holders?

Adding to the scare factor that might prevent people from complaining, YouTube’s Content-ID system also appears to hold an underreported bias towards copyright holder which sometimes makes bringing back content impossible.

Patrick McKay, candidate for Juris Doctor at Regent University School of Law and founder of FairUseTube.org, told TorrentFreak that there’s a systematic flaw in YouTube’s copyright enforcement system that needs to be addressed. A bias towards copyright holders which goes directly against U.S. law.

According to the DMCA, YouTube should make a video available again if a user disputes a claim from a copyright holder. The copyright holder then has to file a lawsuit to take the disputed video offline again. But this is not how YouTube works according to McKay.

“Under YouTube’s content ID system, the exact opposite is true. After a copyright holder rejects a Content ID dispute, that’s the end of it, and the user’s video is blocked without giving them further recourse under either copyright system—Content ID or DMCA,” he explained to TorrentFreak.

“Content ID thus gives the copyright holder sole authority to decide whether a video is fair use (and most copyright holders will never agree something is fair use), which is completely unfair to users, and ends up trampling fair use rights.”

McKay, who experienced the problem first hand, believes that YouTube needs to address this systematic bias towards copyright holders.

The issues outlined above illustrate that YouTube’s copyright enforcement system and Content-ID filter are not the solid machines they claim to be. Not for regular users at least. Although it’s understandable that mistakes are made when millions of videos are added every month, YouTube should work on getting the basics right.

Don’t let the war on pirates ruin the fun for everyone.

Source: YouTube’s Content-ID Piracy Filter Wreaks Havoc

But for all its brilliance, YouTube isn’t perfect. YouTube requires an Internet connection to function and even once material has buffered in a user’s browser, once that window is closed that data is lost forever. If the user wants to view a video again or listen to a piece of music, they simply must be connected to the site.

This shortcoming has been noted by various companies around the world who have created tools and services to get around the issue. So-called ‘YouTube Downloaders’ allow users to keep the music and videos on local devices, meaning that no net connection is required to view them again.

One such site, TubeFire, has been in operation since 2007 but now it appears the world’s largest recording labels – including Universal, EMI, Sony, Warner and more than 25 others – have had enough.

On August 19th, the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) filed a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court against MusicGate, the Japanese owners of TubeFire. The plaintiffs in the case claim that by copying and converting YouTube videos and then distributing the resulting files to its userbase, TubeFire is in breach of copyright law.

According to their own studies, the labels believe that 10,000 music videos were transferred from the TubeFire service to users between May and June this year. Using this data the recording industry group says it is seeking total damages of around $3 million – the amount they say the labels would’ve earned if TubeFire had obtained official licenses.

“So far, we have given our best attention so as not to infringe copyright,” says a notice on the TubeFire website. “However, a complaint submitted to the Tokyo District Court accuses TubeFire of violating copyright.”

TubeFire say they have not yet received the full details of the complaint but as a precaution they have terminated their service, at least temporarily.

“In order to completely prevent the spread of the problem, from 23 August 2011 we decided to stop TubeFire and related services. We apologize for the inconvenience, thank you for your understanding.”

There are dozens of similar YouTube downloading services and tools which achieve the same end result so shutting down one isn’t going to make a huge difference to the labels.

While some like MakeItMP3 are web-based and extremely fast , Firefox extensions such as Easy YouTube Downloader (also available for Chrome) and others have millions of users.

Services such as Tubidy, which enable cellphone users to download free MP3s from music culled from YouTube, are also growing in popularity.

In late 2010, the MP3Rocket software abandoned its P2P roots and became a service which acquires its media from YouTube and other similar sites. Its operators now insist that all “downloads must be for time-shifting, personal, private, non-commercial use only” in order to comply with relevant laws.

Source: YouTube Downloader Site Sued By World’s Biggest Music Labels

Although it’s quite common for the major music labels to send takedown requests to YouTube, as far as we’re aware this is the first time the RIAA has filed legal action against the video hosting site in order to obtain the personal details of an uploader.

In a declaration to the court the RIAA’s Vice President of Online Piracy, Mark McDevitt, requests a subpoena ordering YouTube to reveal the IP-address, email address, and any other information that may be used to identify the person who uploaded the concert.

TorrentFreak asked the RIAA for a response but their spokesman declined to comment on the case. The video in question has since been removed from YouTube but copies of the full concert can still be found elsewhere on the video site.

Although YouTube is listed as a defendant in the court documents, this doesn’t mean YouTube is being held liable for copyright infringement. The filing is for a so-called DMCA subpoena which the RIAA occasionally files as part of ongoing investigations into more ‘severe’ acts of copyright infringement.

The court docket shows that the RIAA filed the legal action against YouTube last month, and that the case was closed after a week. A copyright lawyer informed TorrentFreak that this most likely means that the subpoena was granted by the court and that YouTube agreed to hand over the personal details that were requested.

Earlier this year the RIAA filed a similar declaration at a federal court in California, where it requested a subpoena to obtain the personal details of several Box.net users. These individuals were allegedly storing pre-release music on their accounts. Box.net said at the time that they would hand over the requested details if the subpoena was granted.

“We take the confidentiality of our customers’ information very seriously, but just like all other businesses, we are legally required to comply with court orders,” the company told THR.

Thus far we are not aware of any lawsuits that have appeared as a result of the RIAA’s efforts to track down these alleged copyright infringers. In 2008 the RIAA announced that it would no longer start mass-lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers using P2P networks. However, they reserved the right to go after individuals who leak unreleased content.

Source: RIAA Targets YouTube Over Leaked Britney Spears Concert

We’ve previously documented how people moved from buying albums to buying singles. But there’s another big change that occurred, one that may have an even bigger impact on the music industry as a whole; YouTube and other ‘free’ music sources.

If we go back in time 5 or 6 years, people had only one option if they wanted to listen to their favorite artists online without paying for the pleasure. That one option was piracy. Today the public has a wide variety of legal options, and the medium of choice for most people appears to be YouTube.

Although true music aficionados are hard to please, the majority of the public appreciates the option of listening to their favorite tunes for free on YouTube. Google is not complaining either, as music videos are a substantial revenue source for them.

But what about the record labels, are they happy too? This is not an easy question to answer, but we’re going to give it a try.

Revenue wise YouTube and Vevo have be come a serious revenue source. The major labels haven’t been very open about their revenue sharing deal, but EMI Music chief financial officer Paul Kahn said (pdf) during the LimeWire trial that his label gets half a penny for each YouTube play.

Half a penny may not sound much, but with billions of views it adds up quickly.

If we look at David Guetta, one of EMI’s top artists, we see that his YouTube uploads were viewed 308,000,000 times over the past 12 months. That means $1,540,000 in revenue, for only one artist.

Just as a comparison, Guetta and EMI have to sell more than 2 million singles to earn that much from ‘paid’ music.

In their latest report music industry group IFPI write that at the end of last year the major record labels were getting 1.7 billion views a month, and this number is rising rapidly. In the last 12 months alone Universal Music tripled the number of YouTube views from 2.3 billion May last year to nearly 7 billion today.

Staggering numbers that bring in tens of millions of dollars at least, with free music.

In part YouTube’s success goes at the expense of music piracy. With free music on YouTube a large group of people have less incentive to pirate, and indeed, the number of people who share music on BitTorrent appears to be slowing because of these and other alternatives.

This doesn’t mean that music sharing BitTorrent communities are fading away, but the more casual downloaders have found an alternative in YouTube and other streaming services.

That’s great news for the labels right? Well not so fast.

All those billions of views on YouTube each month may have slowed piracy down, but if we have to follow the logic of the music industry then actual sales of recorded music would also be affected. After all, for years they’ve claimed that “free music” on pirate sites caused billions in losses. Free music on YouTube should have a similar effect.

The big question is of course whether the revenue from YouTube can match these alleged losses or not. Not an easy question to answer, but these are crucial factors that define how the major record labels will fare in the coming years, probably even more so than piracy.

TorrentFreak asked both the RIAA and BPI to share their thoughts on how YouTube could affect music sales, but both unfortunately withheld their comments.

This leaves us with the conclusion that, unlike many record label execs have argued in the past, you can compete with free. You can even compete with piracy. Whether the net result is going to be a positive one has yet to be seen, but YouTube is taking up a larger chunk of the record label revenues each year.

Source: Is YouTube Killing Music Piracy?

The advanced search capabilities and outstanding usability makes it without a doubt one of the best YouTube jukeboxes around. One of the true gems is the Billboard “timetravel” feature, allowing users to pull up the Billboard chart for any week since 1964 and listen to the tracks that were leading the charts then.

Tubeify is an idea from Tomas Isdal, a University of Washington PhD student who TorrentFreak readers may remember from BitTorrent related research projects such as OneSwarm and the DMCA printer study. However, Tubeify is not a research project, but one that aims to turn YouTube into a decent music player.

“I came up with the idea roughly a year ago when YouTube signed an agreement with Time Warner, which meant that they now have license agreements with the “Big 4″ labels,” Tomas Isdal told TorrentFreak. “At the same time I noticed that I increasingly used YouTube for music listening, but that the YouTube interface really wasn’t what I wanted.”

Isdal told us that, among other things, he was annoyed by several issues on YouTube including the fact that videos stop when you search for another song, that many duplicate clips appear in the search results, and that the playlist has poor functionality. The upside, however, is that YouTube has a huge archive of music with many (un)licensed tracks.

So, Isdal took up the challenge to come up with a better YouTube player, with help from Billboard and Last.fm.

“In Tubeify I tried to make it feel more like a traditional desktop music player, think iTunes or Spotify, but still web-based so you can use it anywhere. Then I fixed the annoying parts of YouTube and added stuff that I always wanted in a music player,” he said. The result is a pretty useful mashup of Last.fm, Billboard and YouTube.

Tubeify’s searching is handled by the Last.fm api, and unlike on YouTube the current track will continue to play while searching. Search results are treated as “lazy playlists” which can be “pinned” to the sidebar for easy access later. Adding songs to playlists and the play queue is also pretty easy with full drag and drop support.

Another feature that beats most existing services is that it allows users to share playlists with friends. Playlist links can be shared anywhere – just paste the link on Twitter, Facebook or in an email and your friends will have instant access to it.

Another great feature of Tubeify are the top charts that are included, and the ability to pull up charts from previous years, all the way back to 1964. This functionality is powered by Billboard’s API and allows users check out, and play, what was topping the charts decades ago.

Although Tubeify is obviously not the best music listening experience there is, it is one of the only music video Jukeboxes that lets you search for and play millions of tracks instantly. If anything, it beats using the traditional YouTube interface.

Tubeify was kind enough to exclusively share an unlimited amount of invites for TorrentFreak users, that will be handed out for as long as the server holds up. You can get your invite here (should arrive in a few minutes), no strings attached. No user account or password is needed either, but Tubeify does require a Facebook or Google account, to allow users to login securely.

Source: Tubeify: A ‘Historic’ Mashup of Last.fm, Billboard and YouTube

Not everyone in the music business agrees with this assessment though. When the indie rock band Barcelona saw one of its latest tracks featured in a viral video with nearly a million views, they responded quite differently. They claim that the clip below actually boosted their album sales and concert visits.

So, instead of demanding that YouTube pull the video, the band posted a response to the ‘Kuroshio Sea’ video on the site, thanking their new found fans and the uploader who posted the original video.

“We’re so flattered to learn that it features one of our songs called Please Don’t Go,” Barcelona’s lead singer Brian Fennell says in the video response.

“We want to let you know that it’s been affirming in the last week to watch in the iTunes store a correlation with the sales of our record ‘Absolutes’, growing in the rock charts as a result of having the song placed in the video,” drummer Rhett Stonelake added.

Aside from the boost in record sales, the band says that they’ve also met some new fans who came to their concerts after seeing the video on YouTube. It is a great way of promoting music online, especially when it’s coupled to a great video.

Unfortunately for most artists, anti-piracy outfits such as the RIAA, BPI and IFPI are increasingly policing YouTube to get all copyrighted music taken off the site. One such artist to suffer recently is the unfortunate Calvin Harris, who clashed with the music industry lobby group BPI.

“IT’S MY FUCKING SONG YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARDS,” Harris wrote on Twitter when he found out that YouTube had removed a clip he uploaded himself, following a copyright complaint from the BPI.

“FUCK YOU ‘The BPI’ what have you ever done for anybody you useless shower of cunts,” he added. As if that wasn’t enough Harris labeled the BPI the “worst organization to ever walk the earth” and their online employees “massive retards.”

Like many other artists, Harris just wants his music to be heard, and he believes that putting a clip on YouTube might in fact introduce new people to his music. If people like what they hear, they might even buy his album or visit his gigs, much like what happened with Barcelona.

YouTube is free promotion for bands and artists, it has the potential to drive revenue instead of killing it. It is time for the major labels and anti-piracy outfits to listen to the artists for once, and perhaps ask them if they actually want to have their content removed or not.

Source: ‘Pirated’ Youtube Clip Boosts Band’s Album Sales

“Never work with children or animals” said WC Fields. TorrentFreak takes a chance:

TF. Hi Hannah! How old are you?

- I’m 10 in 12 days

TF. What sort of music are you listening to right now?

Sean Kingstone, Shayne Ward and High School Musical 2

TF. Where did you first get into music?

- On the music channels, on MTV.

TF. When did you get a PC?

- People had computers but I couldn’t go on them but my Dad bought me one last year. I have internet.

TF. What do you do on the internet?

- MSN, talking to friends and cousins, games and dressing-up games [dolls]

TF. When did you first start using the internet to get music?

- My cousin showed me YouTube and then LimeWire and I was like “whoa cool!”

TF. What was cool about it?

- Because you can put anything in and it will come up and you don’t actually pay for it. Well you have to pay for the internet and LimeWire comes with the internet but you have to pay for that so LimeWire isn’t really free.

TF. Ok…I see….Do you get music from anywhere else?

- My cousin gets it from BEBO. She copies it from other people’s pages and puts it on her own.

TF. Do you think it’s ok to copy the music?

- Yes it’s ok because she only does it to make her page better.

TF. So you’re sure that it’s ok to copy it? What do you think about copying?

- I suppose it’s not ok to copy but people copied it off her site so she just copies theirs. It’s like, you’re copying my t-shirt so i’m copying you on shoes.

TF. Ok, so a bit like copying school work?….Hmm….ok, let’s talk about copying on the computer again. When you started using LimeWire, did anyone ever mention that if you did certain things you might be breaking some laws?

- Why would they put it [music] on the internet and invent mp3 players if it was against the law?

TF. Confusing isn’t it?….You mentioned you like Sean Kingstone – what if I told you that Sean Kingstone’s boss might send you a letter asking for money because you shared his album on LimeWire? What would you say to him?

- W.E! [whatever!]

TF. Come on, play along with me. What would you say if he did?

- I’d say “tooooo strict!” and anyway he can’t make me do anything. He’s not the boss of me, he’s the boss of Sean Kingstone.

TF. What do you think might happen if you didn’t pay him?

- Nothing. I’m too young to be charged by the government so he can’t charge me.

TF. Would you carry on using LimeWire after he sent the letter?

- Yeah!

TF. Why?

- Because you can get good albums off there. Duh!! My CD’s don’t work in my mp3 player so LimeWire is the only way to do it. I bought High School Musical 2 on CD but it won’t go on my mp3 [player]

TF. How would you make LimeWire better?

- To speak to the person sending the music to make sure they send the right one, sometimes they send stuff that doesn’t even play.

TF. Do you know what a pirate is?

- They have parrots [effects 'arrrrr']

TF. Do you think its legal or illegal to copy a CD or DVD?

- Some men right, they sell you a DVD at the market but when you get home it doesn’t play, that’s illegal.

TF. Why is it illegal?

- Duh!! Because they tell you it works and when you get it home it’s rubbish and jumps in the middle and its a waste of money!

TF. Do you think you should be paying for stuff off LimeWire? You have to buy CD’s from the shop…

- You have to pay for CD’s because they’re actually on a disc not on the computer. My cousin, right, she uses LimeWire when she doesn’t have any money for CDs.

TF. Did you ever download anything by anybody and then go to see them?

- I got stuff by Lee Ryan and Simon Webbe and then I went to see Blue. Why don’t you ask me what my favorite hobby is?

TF. Ok, what’s your favorite hobby?

- Dancing to music, it’s fun!!

Thankyou, Hannah. That’s it! Have a nice birthday!

Source: Inside the Mind of a 9 Year Old File-Sharer

The videos are placed in different categories such as Accidents, Animals, Cartoons and Commercials to make it more easy to discover videos you like. The downside to keeping the site clean is that all videos need to be approved by the Snotr staff before they appear on the site.

Niek stresses that it is not their goal to create the next YouTube killer, “if you’re looking for a place to dump your videos, stick to those sites. But in case you have some spare time to spend, try Snotr ” he adds.

Snotr had some really great features that other video services lack such as a slidebar for real-time video resizing, a clean interface and the possibility to upload high quality content. On the other hand, Snotr does not (yet) have an embed feature to share the videos on your website or blog (update, they have now).

Check out Snotr.

Source: Mininova Launches SFW Video Site

After a long weekend of testing we gave a thumbs-up and wish the development team many more releases. Not all BitTorrent users see the need for all these extra functionalities (I still prefer uTorrent), but those who do should definitely try Tribler.

Some of the features of Tribler which set it apart from other BitTorrent clients are:

Yes, we are probably a little biased! This is made-in-Holland, which means a part of the tax money I paid went to Tribler because the project is state funded.

Here is a screenshot of the file view with Youtube-like thumbnail grid. You can download download Tribler V4.0 here.

Source: Tribler: A Next Generation BitTorrent Client?

Up until now, we weren’t completely sure if this was going to be the YouTube killer that TPB fans everywhere have been talking about. But a statement published today on The Pirate Bay Blog outright confirms it:

“YES – we’re going to do a video streaming site. It’s true. It’s in the works being done right now and as usual we put a bit of Pirate Bay mentality behind every project we do.”

And it’s exactly that “Pirate Bay mentality” that, in our opinion, is going to make this site a winner. Think YouTube without Google constantly pulling down copyrighted videos.

Some clever TorrentFreak readers and TPB fans managed to locate the URL of the upcoming YouTube competitor. It is: thevideobay.org. All you can see on the site is a plain page with two lines of text:

only open for beta- and dev-testers.
some is live, most is not. we will open for public when done.

Stay tuned!

Source: The Pirate Bay to Launch YouTube Competitor

In Geneva, the TV bosses want to hear about Tribler because it works a bit different then the other P2P systems out there. It has a recommendation system for downloads, based on what you downloaded before. It now has very basic support for adding friends. Tribler may look bad, but it proposed standards which removes large .torrent files, fixes trackers/DHTs and it no longer requires websites for hunting down .torrent files, which is an interesting development (but opens up possibilities for spammers).

The Tribler team is planning to release more features in their 4.0 release later this month. In Amsterdam they are holding a workshop around P2P with speakers such as BBC, Pioneer, Ilse Media, German TV people, and others. A picture of their planned new interface is shown here. Tribler conects to peers on the network with similar taste in torrents. The interface shows your top 20 most similar downloaders in the interface.

On their website they describe how this new interface will work:

“Tribler automatically scans the Internet for fresh BitTorrent content. It does not require typing keywords such as ’1984 Hilary clip’ when looking for content. With Tribler we are experimenting with software that can bring Bittorrent to your TV screen. Tribler is the product of university research. Our long term aim is to bring the wealth of content and vibrant community of Youtube to the TV, operated with a simple remote. By simply asking around Tribler build up a catalog of Bittorrent content. Our software asks other peers on the network what content they know about and the location of other peers. When it finds something you might like, Tribler will display the name of the torrent, number of leechers, seeders, size, included files, and the tracker URL.”

A year ago the Tribler people said they where making a “social BitTorrent client“. They now have some source code for a Version 4.0.0 of Tribler which actually does that. Here’s a preview of the interface planned for Tribler 4.0. Too bad those thumbnails only work for content from Vuze.com or other places that put previous thumbnails inside .torrent file. This is going towards a Facebook with P2P avatars. Finally a solution for world peace that works…

We hereby would like to thank all taxpayers in Holland (including myself) who, with a smile, payed the taxes that made the screenshots possible

Source: TV Broadcasters Experimenting with BitTorrent

Martijn van Dam, a member of one of the bigger political parties in The Netherlands said, “Taxing Internet traffic is great way to compensate the Music Industry for the loss in sales by illegal filesharing”. He added that a prerequisite would be that DRM and copy protection should be abandoned. The battle against piracy is lost according to Van Dam, he says that the Music Industry has to accept that their products will be traded over the internet.

Surprisingly, Van Dam is not alone in this. Nicolien van Vroonhoven, a politician from the leading party (CDA) in the Netherlands, also thinks that this pirate tax would be a good idea. She adds that this could only work if people can’t be charged for downloading music anymore.

The statements (Dutch source) from these leading politicians basically say that piracy should be condoned, as long as Internet traffic is taxed. Although the (hypothetical) model might sound appealing to some, it is not very practical. First of all, illegal music downloads are just a small percentage of all files that are swapped illegally. What about movies and software, will those companies be compensated too? And an ever bigger problem, these politicians seem to assume that all internet traffic is generated by illegal downloads. What about sites like YouTube, or software, music and videos that are released for free? These all generate a lot of traffic, but have nothing to do with piracy.

A bad idea if you ask me. It is good to see that politicians are exploring alternative methods to overcome piracy, but this one is quite ridiculous. This clearly shows how alienated politicians sometimes are from the real (or virtual) world.

Source: Holland Considers Banning DRM, Legalizing Filesharing

Sealand is currently prized at 750 million euros, which equals nearly one billion US dollars, a sum of money that would be impossible for The Pirate Bay to raise anyway. Prince Michael said that maybe some wealthy Russian, who doesn’t want to have a radioactive isotope dropped in his cornflakes when he’s not looking, might be a potential buyer instead.

Sealand’s Spanish estate agent, the one who came up with the price, also said that The Pirate Bay may not be allowed to buy the micronation, because Sealand has pledged not to allow a sale that would damage the interests of, or act against the UK.

But not to worry, The Pirate Bay still has its eye on some other islands and micronations. The good thing is that these are a lot cheaper than Sealand, which is nothing more than a pile of rust and concrete anyway.

CBC interview (YouTube)

Source: Sealand Won’t be Sold to Pirates

Libraries

Yes, libraries! Libraries are evil, evil places. One single copy of a book, movie or music album is borrowed and abused by tens, if not hundreds of self-centred, ignorant pirates. Hell, they even have copiers in most libraries allowing pirates to copy every book on the shelves.

The nerdy book worm with no money, he shouldn’t be able to read (and copy) every book in existence for free right? But he can! “Mommy, I want to go to to the library,” he asks his mother innocently. “Of course son,” she replies, secretly happy that her son can get smart(er) for just the cost of transport.

But seriously.. what if...

Imagine if publishers and authors suddenly decide to shut down libraries because they don’t want people to have free access to the works they publish. Wouldn’t that be a shame?

Waitaminute, haven’t they already started that??

The biggest library of them all

Google. One word that can literally shape the meaning of online copyright. And it has. Google has been sued more times than a prominent pop singer from the 80s has grabbed his crotch. With the recent acquisition of YouTube, Google has taken on not just the most popular site on the Internet, but also the one with the most copyright violations.

Google Print, now rebranded as Google Book Search is an attempt to create the largest library on the face of the earth, err… Google Earth. If Google isn’t the worst of all evils, then who is? I mean, now even book worms from the so-called third world (the regions we’re trying to keep under control through the holy means of copyright) will now be able to pop open their $100 laptops and read to their hearts’ content.

How in the world are we supposed to stop this armageddon of evilness? There is only 1 way. We Sue.

Source: What if book publishers started to sue libraries?

Technologies like this could save popular streaming websites like YouTube or Google Video a lot of money. It is estimated that YouTube uses 45 terabytes of storage, requiring several million dollars worth of bandwidth a month to stream the content. Peer to peer streaming would significantly decrease the costs for YouTube, because most of the bandwidth would come from peers instead of YouTube’s own servers.

Solid State announced:

Solid State Networks is a developer of high-performance, content-delivery solutions, and the first commercial-class software suite based on the massively scalable BitTorrent protocol. Our flagship product, the Solid State Distributed Delivery Network, is a hybrid content-delivery solution that combines the economic and performance advantages of peer-assisted technology with the reliability of a traditional CDN. It now includes support for on-demand streaming of content.

Although Solid State can implement some of the features of BitTorrent, they have to make some concessions. A key feature of the BitTorrent protocol is that the pieces of the file are not delivered in a “chronological” order, to make it possible to give a high priority to rare pieces. This doesn’t seem to suit streaming.

In August we reported that the “social” BitTorrent client Tribler has plans to integrate YouTube videos in their client. Johan Pouwelse of the Tribler project told TorrentFreak that they are planning to index every one of the +6 million videos posted on YouTube.

A prototype of the YouTube indexing function from Tribler will be ready by the end of this year, and includes an Amazon like recommendation system, and video tagging features.

Source: Solid State to Launch Hybrid BitTorrent Video Streaming Service

Tribler is far from anonymous, and therefore probably not suited for sharing content you’re not supposed to share. However, the social aspect of Tribler has the potential to be helpful to sites like youtube, by saving them some bandwidth.

According to a Wall Street Journal article posted today, “youtube uses 45 terabytes of storage and requiring several million dollars worth of bandwidth a month to transmit”. Another interesting statistic from the WSJ article is that apparently people spent 9,305 years!!! watching Youtube since it started last year.

Assistant Professor Johan Pouwelse who’s coordinating the Tribler
project the Tribler project told TorrentFreak that they are planning to index all the videos posted on youtube (+6 million). This means Tribler users will be able to watch and share youtube videos with their BitTorrent client.

A prototype of the Youtube indexing function of Tribler will be ready in a month or two, and includes an Amazon like recommendation system, and video tagging features.

Tribler.org

Stay tuned.

Source: Tribler will integrate Youtube into their BitTorrent client

For now Grouper will keep its current management, but they will be working closely with a team at Sony Pictures. Lynton stated:

“Consumers are spending more and more time on sites like Grouper, and as one of the world’s largest creators of entertainment, we want to be where the audiences are. This acquisition demonstrates the breadth of involvement of Sony Corporation in the field of digital online entertainment. Many people in the Grouper community use Sony cameras to create videos and Sony VAIO computers and mobile devices to store and view them. It makes sense to complete the circle by having Grouper be a part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which itself creates so much content for people around the world.”

There are no concrete plans to offer Sony Pictures on Grouper at this point (rather the opposite), but this might change in the future. At least Sony now has a foot-in-the-door at this 21st century media outlet.

press release

Source: Sony Buys Video Sharing site

Lars Ilshammar, an information-technology historian who recently suggested Sweden to impose a fee similar to the one proposed in France said to the IHT:

“The process for change has now begun in Sweden, but it’s clear that this problem cannot be solved by one country alone,” said “More countries have to come out of the closet.”

One thing is for sure. Things will, and must change. Don’t expect that the copyright restrictions will disappear, but we will definitely need more “rights” to copy. It almost seems like the easier it gets to share things, the harder the restrictions get. I mean, come on, how insane are those people if they request to take down clips of children dancing on their favorite song on youtube or google video? Uma Suthersanen, a professor of international copyright law at Queen Mary, a college at the University of London sums it up quite nice:

“The way it works now, it is a little as if you give the consumer a lollipop, and then smack them over their heads, saying that they can’t use what they’ve bought,”

Go Pirates.

Source: Sympathy for the Pirate