While pressure is maintained against search engines and sites such as YouTube, not all Internet-based companies are as willing (or indeed easily able) to cooperate due to the way they are setup. One such complication arises from the continued availability of illicit content on the worldwide Usenet (newsgroup) system.

Considering the masses of copyright-infringing content uploaded to Usenet, legal action against companies that provide access to the system is relatively rare. Adult publisher Perfect 10 fought battles against Usenet giant Giganews and five years ago the RIAA crushed Usenet.com in the what was probably the most significant victory of its type.

This week in the latest action against a Usenet supplier, German anti-piracy group GEMA reported a new victory against Aviteo Ltd, the Munich-based operator of UseNeXT.

For years the music-focused rights group has been pressuring UseNeXT claiming that tracks from its repertoire are being made available for illegal download via the company’s services. UseNeXT isn’t responsible for putting the tracks online and they weren’t necessarily placed there by a UseNeXT user, but GEMA wants the company to take responsibility.

This week GEMA obtained an injunction against UseNeXT / Aviteo Ltd at the Hamburg Regional Court in respect of a sample 10 tracks from GEMA’s repertoire. The injunction is the latest development in GEMA’s long-running legal battle with UseNeXT.

The dispute dates back to 2006 and has already resulted in a pair court injunctions issued in 2007 and 2010, each ordering the provider to do more to protect GEMA’s rights.

“The adoption of this [latest] injunction is a positive signal for all rightsowners,” said GEMA CEO Dr. Harald Heker.

“It confirms that services whose business model is based on the illegal downloading of protected works and thereby make a profit, have a duty towards rightsholders.”

The precise details have not yet been made public, but according to GEMA the injunction “extends the responsibility of services providers towards rights holders” in the event that copyright works are continually made available.

“In such a case, the service provider has an obligation to eliminate the danger created by him for illegal use of protected content, through the use of an appropriate filtering system, or if necessary, even the closure of the service,” GEMA said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, UseNeXT have a different interpretation of the decision. The company says that it only provides access to the Usenet system and has no control of the content to be found there. It is common practice, UseNeXT says, for copyright holders to send takedown notices to the actual server operators so that files can be removed from newsgroups.

In a sure sign that this battle is far from over, UseNeXT / Aviteo says it will appeal.

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

It is a complex battle with a simple disagreement at its core. In 2007 the entities reached a licensing agreement for YouTube to use works from GEMA’s extensive repertoire. Two years later negotiations to extend that deal broke down when GEMA’s long-term demand of around €0.12 per stream was rejected by Google.

In May 2010 GEMA sued to have YouTube block certain titles so that they could not be viewed locally. In April 2012 and after much legal wrangling, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled that YouTube could be held liable for the “infringing” videos and must therefore take measures to render content unavailable in Germany.

And herein lies the problem. YouTube is a constant source of frustration for German users thanks to the blocking of thousands of videos as a result of the GEMA dispute. When local users try to access popular videos being enjoyed by their fellow Internet users (GEMA claims that YouTube overblocks unnecessarily) they are greeted with a message informing them that they should blame GEMA, not YouTube, for the inconvenience.

Time and again, users are informed that videos are blocked due to GEMA not granting the necessary music rights. As a result, GEMA has become very unpopular indeed.

Trying to remedy the situation, GEMA applied for an injunction to force YouTube to change the messages, claiming that they misrepresent the situation and damage GEMA’s reputation. YouTube alone is responsible for blocking the videos, claiming otherwise is simply false, GEMA argued.

Yesterday the District Court of Munich agreed with the music group and issued an injunction to force YouTube to comply, stating that the notices “denigrate” GEMA with a “totally distorted representation of the legal dispute between the parties.” Changing the message to state that videos are not available due to a lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA would be more appropriate, the Court said.

“For almost three years, YouTube has misled the public with these blocking messages and unlawfully influenced public opinion at the expense of GEMA,” GEMA CEO Dr. Harald Heker said in a statement.

“The decision sends an important and positive signal: It’s not GEMA preventing the enjoyment of music on the Internet. It seeks merely to license YouTube, like all other music portals. Our concern is that the artists participate in the economic exploitation of their works and can earn a livelihood in the future.”

YouTube parent company Google said it was studying the decision.

“We need to examine the reasons for the judgment, before we can make a decision about what to do next,” a spokesperson said.

Once the judgment of the District Court of Munich is made final, YouTube faces fines of up to 250,000 euros per breach.

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

The track, known as Mega Song and produced by Printz Board and Kim Dotcom, featured huge recording artists including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige. These and many others were doing the unthinkable in their labels’ eyes – singing the praises of Megaupload.

But just a few hours following its release with the catchy and strangely addictive track still cycling endlessly in listeners’ ears whether they liked it or not, it was all over. Universal Music pressed the nuclear button and had the song removed from YouTube on copyright grounds.

With Dotcom threatening legal action the song was reinstated and eventually the controversy faded away with the video going on to pick up millions of views. In the end Megaupload withdrew their case against Universal, deciding that further legal action would prove a distraction against the backdrop of much bigger issues the company faced following the January 2012 raids.

But then, just a few hours ago and following the Mega launch party last weekend, Dotcom must’ve felt it was déjà vu all over again. Overnight yet more of his own content has been booted offline in what appears to be another example of overreaching conduct by copyright owners. So what’s the problem now?

On Sunday, to a worldwide audience of millions, Dotcom’s new site Mega held its launch party. As expected it was a loud affair featuring several musical performances from both local artists and Dotcom himself.

The whole thing was broadcast live on the web and later uploaded to YouTube for posterity but by this morning it was gone, a victim of a copyright takedown.

“Incredible: The GEMA in Germany took down our #Mega launch press conference video from Youtube for copyright claims,” Dotcom announced this morning.

In a message to the music rights group, Dotcom expressed disbelief.

“Dear GEMA, all songs in the #Mega press conference are my content. And the artist who performed LIVE gave us permission. WTF?” he said.

GEMA itself has a long-standing copyright dispute with YouTube which has forced many videos offline for German viewers. Running for more than three years already, two weeks ago GEMA announced that it had pulled out of its latest round of talks with YouTube on resolving their differences. However, during the takedown period last night, German YouTube users said they could still access Mega’s content.

In the meantime, Dotcom has come out fighting to get the launch video back online.

“I filed a counter-claim with Youtube and the video is back online. GEMA can expect mail from our legal team. Copyright madness,” Dotcom concludes.

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

Rather than come to the negotiated settlement preferred by YouTube, GEMA commenced legal proceedings on copyright grounds against the Google-owned video site. The action concerned 12 specific music videos uploaded by YouTube users to which GEMA owns the rights but for which YouTube paid no royalties. GEMA argued that YouTube hadn’t done enough to monitor content submitted to the site.

Today a court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube is indeed responsible for the material its users upload to the site, despite the site having state-of-the-art filters which aim to detect and remove infringing content.

Presiding Judge Heiner Steeneck said his ruling gave both sides a reason to declare victory. GEMA wanted YouTube to take responsibility for videos uploaded in the past as well as those uploaded in the future but that was denied.

“YouTube isn’t the perpetrator here, it’s those people who illegally upload songs,” Steeneck said. “That’s why YouTube doesn’t have to search all videos uploaded in the past. It only has to help detect videos from the moment it is alerted about possible violations.”

Although YouTube operates its ‘ContentID’ anti-piracy system which detects infringements by way of digital fingerprints, the court ruled that in isolation that is insufficient. In addition YouTube must now filter by keyword too.

Both sides say they are considering their options and are yet to announce whether they will appeal the ruling.

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

Slowly, however, the record labels are starting to realize that the Internet is the future and it will ultimately do more good than harm.

One of the people who embraces this positive view is Edgar Berger, Sony Music’s CEO of international business. In a recent interview he stressed the importance of the Internet, while noting that the increase in Internet sales almost makes up for the decline in physical sales.

“There is absolutely nothing to complain about. The Internet is a great stroke of luck for the music industry, or better: the Internet is a blessing for us,” Berger said.

“You can not blame the Internet for harmful excesses. On the contrary. It has brought us tremendous new opportunities,” he added.

But with these new opportunities come new rivals from an unexpected corner. According to the Sony boss, music rights collecting agencies are now preventing innovation in certain countries.

In Germany, for example, most YouTube videos by Sony artists are blocked due to the music rights group GEMA, and not because Sony wants it that way. When asked why Sony’s music is not available on YouTube in Germany, Berger responded bitterly.

“It’s not because of us. You must direct this question to the German collecting agency GEMA, they licensed the copyright very restrictively.”

It turns out that the price GEMA want for views is too high for YouTube, and as a result the videos of some of the world’s most famous artists are blocked.

According to Berger, GEMA’s restrictive regime is not helping the artists or the music labels. In fact, he says the music industry is losing “millions in revenue”. Additionally, it’s one of the prime reasons why the digital music business is so far behind in Germany.

This is not the first time Berger has lashed out against GEMA’s practices. According to the Sony boss it’s time for the music rights group to embrace the digital age.

“We want to see streaming services like Vevo and Spotify in the German market. [These platforms] must not be blocked by GEMA any longer,” he said earlier. “Artists and music companies are losing sales in the millions.”

So here we have the boss of one of the largest music labels blaming another group for their repressive copyright enforcement. It’s the world upside down, but a promising change from Sony’s side.

This is not the first time GEMA has negatively entered the news this year. Last month the popular music streaming service Grooveshark decided to shut down voluntarily due to the “unreasonably high” licensing costs imposed by the music rights group.

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

The group recently sent an invoice to the organizers of a dance event where only Creative Commons licenced music was played.

The organizers of the event had informed GEMA beforehand that they would only play royalty-free CC music, but the music rights group isn’t buying this ‘excuse’.

After inspecting the list of tracks that were played, GEMA sent a 200 euro invoice to the organizers. The group claims that some of the artists on the list are very familiar to “pseudonyms” that are also registered with GEMA.

Since German case law dictates that the burden of proof lies with the people who hosted the event, the organizers now have to prove that these artists are not associated with GEMA. This is a problem, since these netlabel artists are often hard to trace, and some are not even known publicly by their full names.

An absurd, unworkable and totally outdated situation.

The process may have made sense 15 years ago when nearly all artists were members of royalty agencies, but not anymore. Today there are hundreds of thousands of creators who publish their work under Creative Commons licenses, and many of them are musicians. Why should they have to prove that they are not related to a royalty collecting agency?

Unfortunately GEMA’s ‘mistake’ of claiming money from Creative Commons content is not an isolated incident. Just a few weeks ago the group demanded money from the nonprofit organization Musikpiraten for publishing a CD with Creative Commons licensed tracks.

At the time GEMA used the same arguments, but the claims turned out to be a mistake.

Michael Koch, singer and guitarist of “the.princess.and.the.pearl,” was one of the people who had to prove that he was not a member of GEMA. Kock cancelled his membership earlier because it did more harm than good.

“We don’t think highly of GEMA. I used to be a member, and our band actually lost a couple of gigs, because the organisers of small festivals were unable to afford the GEMA fees, of which hardly anything flows back to the band in terms of royalties,” he said.

“The fact that we, as non-members, must prove that our music has not been composed by a GEMA member, demonstrates that the society has too much power – and that it abuses it ruthlessly,” Koch added.

German Pirate Party chairman Christian Hufgard recently filed a complaint through which he hopes to reverse this backwards situation, and put the burden of proof on GEMA instead of the artists and organizers of music events.

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

They target schools and kids’ community centers, charge charities for the singing of Christmas carols without a license, and even crash weddings if they have to.

While these copyright collectors are very strict in forcing their rules onto others, they often fail to live up to their own standards. This attitude was brilliantly exposed by the Belgian TV-show Basta when it exposed local music royalty collecting agency SABAM for charging people to pay non-existent artists.

This week, German royalty collecting agency GEMA made the headlines with a similar mistake. The group is claiming money from the nonprofit organization Musikpiraten, for releasing a compilation CD featuring the winners of its Creative Commons competition “Free! Music! Contest.”

Musikpiraten received a 350 euro invoice for five tracks listed on the CD, a false claim for which the pirates are considering filing a copyfraud complaint.

“GEMA’s claim that they hold these rights is demonstrably false. All artists have explicitly declared that they are neither members of GEMA nor of any foreign royalties collection society. The demands are therefore clearly a copyfraud,” Christian Hufgard, chairman of Musikpiraten explains.

The false claim appears to have been sent because some of the authors have names similar to registered GEMA members. But even then, the mere notion that the CD features work from a Creative Commons competition should have made GEMA reconsider their claim. That didn’t happen though.

According to the Musikpiraten chairman, GEMA and other royalty collectors simply assume that all artists fall under their wings. This is an outdated assumption, especially in the digital era where many artists allow people to share and redistribute their work.

“Internet portals like Jamendo.com with more than 52,000 albums published under Creative Commons license are a proof that the principle of ‘all rights reserved’ is outdated. If an artist verifies to us or to another publisher that he or she is not a member of GEMA, this certainly must have more weight than the blanket assumption that every author is a member of GEMA or a similar society,” Hufgard says.

This is not the first time that a royalty collection agency has filed a false copyright claim, and some artists have even cancelled their membership because they do more harm than good. Michael Koch, singer and guitarist of “the.princess.and.the.pearl,” one of the bands who GEMA falsely claimed royalties for, is one of them.

“We don’t think highly of GEMA. I used to be a member, and our band actually lost a couple of gigs, because the organisers of small festivals were unable to afford the GEMA fees, of which hardly anything flows back to the band in terms of royalties,” he says.

“The fact that we, as non-members, must prove that our music has not been composed by a GEMA member, demonstrates that the society has too much power – and that it abuses it ruthlessly,” Koch adds.

A testament to the ruthless stance of GEMA is the fact that they didn’t immediately send a credit note when the mistake was pointed out to them. Instead, the royalty collecting agency suggested that the artists probably forgot to register the tracks with GEMA, and they asked Musikpiraten to convince them that the identical names are a pure coincidence.

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

On 19 December 2006, performing rights group GEMA, which handles the copyrights of more than 1 million rightsholders worldwide, filed for an injunction against UseNeXT. GEMA had earlier leveled accusations at UseNeXT’s advertising in which it said, among other things, the company claimed to offer 1 million MP3s through its service.

“[UseNeXT] advertised its fee-based access with unambiguous references to illegal exchange platforms. In particular it publicized the anonymity, speed and security of access to contents available on Usenet,” GEMA said in a statement, adding: “On top of that, the service also offers special, perfected search software that makes it easier to locate and manage musical works and other contents protected by copyright.”

On 18 January 2007, the Hamburg District Court issued a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT’s operators, which included instructions for it to change the way in which it advertised its product and barring it from providing musical works from GEMA’s repertoire. UseNeXT objected to the decision and disputed that it had ever encouraged subscribers to download copyright works, arguing that its use of the terms ‘unfiltered’ and ‘anonymous’ related to features inherent in the Usenet system.

On 17 February 2010, the Hamburg District Court handed down a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT which bars the service from offering a sample 100 musical works to which GEMA administers the copyright. The injunction also states that UseNeXT must go further than simply modifying its advertising in order to protect GEMA’s copyrights.

Although not necessarily liable for infringements, the Court said that Usenet providers would have to take responsibility for the services and environments they provide.

In a statement, GEMA said that the Court of Hamburg’s decision represents expanded liabilities for Usenet providers which go further than regulating their approach to advertising, but also apply when modified advertising proves insufficient to protect rights holders.

“The adoption of the preliminary injunction is a success in our commitment to the protection of copyright,” said Dr. Harald Heker, Chief Executive Officer of GEMA. “Second, the ruling also represents a further important step towards a comprehensive responsibility of the Usenet service operator for its offer.”

At this stage it’s unclear how UseNeXT will choose to comply with the injunction. Unlike services such as Rapidshare that operate their own servers and actually store content, UseNeXT are a reseller of the Highwinds Usenet service. UseNeXT does not store any content, Highwinds do.

UseNeXT used to offer a search engine and software interface to access Usenet, so conceivably something could’ve been implemented there to bar access to the GEMA titles mentioned in the injunction. However, recent changes to their service means they are no longer offering those solutions but suggesting the use of 3rd party software, with one particular solution from Tangysoft up front.

Nevertheless, the Court said that UseNeXT is responsible for the service it’s re-selling so the company will have to find an answer somehow. Many Usenet providers are already working with rights holders to automate the removal of content, so solutions are available. How quickly and comprehensively UseNeXT acts will remain to be seen.

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

Rapidshare was also ordered to delete any and all of those same tracks from its servers and ensure that they are not uploaded again by users. Previously Rapidshare had been using file hashes to recognize tracks that were already removed after requests from GEMA, to ensure that they weren’t uploaded again. The court decided that the technique used was ineffective.

The court found Rapidshare guilty of breaches of copyright law and estimated the value of the tracks at €24 million ($34 million).

“The decision of the Hamburg Regional Court is a milestone in GEMA’s fight against the illegal use of musical works on the Internet,” said Dr. Harald Heker, Chief Executive Officer of GEMA. “We are confident that in this way we will be able to reduce the illegal use of the GEMA repertoire on the Internet to a negligible level,” he added.

Understandably, Rapidshare sought to downplay the ruling. Bobby Chang, COO of RapidShare, Switzerland, said: “We do not consider the court’s decision to be a breakthrough. As other proceedings in similar disputes with GEMA have shown, there is considerable disparity amongst the individual courts in some cases.”

Noting that the courts of appeal “tend to restrict the scope of the decisions made by the lower courts,” Chang said it would make more sense to offer music fans the right products and services at the right price to “open up a new source of income for music-markets on the Internet.”

Update: We initially reported that Rapidshare was fined $34 million on the back of this report. This information is wrong, the court only stated that the value of the tracks was estimated at $34 million. The article is updated accordingly and we’re sorry for the confusion.

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

Almost exactly 1 year ago, P2PBlog reported that the German rights organization GEMA had gained a preliminary injunction against Rapidshare which ordered the company to stop hosting and distributing titles which GEMA represent.

Rapidshare made an appeal – but lost. The court decided that Rapidshare should be forced to monitor all uploads which infringed on GEMA’s copyright – a feat which the company said was impossible.

At the time, GEMA boss Dr. Harald Heker said that the Court’s decision shows that it’s not down to the rights holders to police commercial outfits such as Rapidshare for their copyright works. He went on to say that he felt that the decision would send a major signal to all file-hosting sites where copyright works are used to generate revenue for themselves.

Then in April 2007 it was reported that Rapidshare was fighting back, suing GEMA in response – with the aim of clarifying the legal position for file-hosting sites.

Now, rumors circulating on the web indicate that Rapidshare was shut down. Quite a few sites reported the news but this situation does not appear to be true. Rapidshare’s Wiki page is now closed due to vandalism which is believed to have carried erroneous information which contributed to the confusion.

According to a report, a Rapidshare technician said: “There are rumors concerning attacks made on the Rapidshare.com servers. There are also rumors that Rapidshare has been shut down by a court order. These rumors are false. We would like to apologize to our users and inform them that no data has been lost. There have been some hardware issues as a result of high bandwidth and server overload. We are doing our very best to resolve the hardware issues, and users should expect uptime by midnight tonight (GMT)”

There is no doubt that Rapidshare stores millions of files – including lots of music. The operators of Rapidshare claim they have no idea what material they store on their servers and are in no postion (much like a regular ISP) to monitor or police the content. The users upload the content, they say, and as such, it’s out of their control.

However, the injunctions issued by the District Court in Cologne indicate that Rapidshare’s liability for such infringements still exist as they were carried out during the course of Rapidshare’s business. GEMA head, Harald Heker said at the time: “The mere circumstance of shifting acts of use to users and the purported inability of the operator to control content do not relieve the operator of a service from the copyright liability he/she/it possesses for the content made available for download from the operator’s website(s).”

In the meantime, Rapidshare.com and Rapidshare.de continue to operate.

This article has been updated

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