2 Illegal Movie-Sharing Websites Are Closed; New York Times, 11/3/15

Michael Cieply, New York Times; 2 Illegal Movie-Sharing Websites Are Closed:

"Two websites that film companies said had jointly become a clearinghouse for illegal movie viewing were closed last month by orders from courts in Canada and New Zealand, the Motion Picture Association of America said on Tuesday.

The Popcorntime.io site, commonly referred to as Popcorn Time, was closed under an Oct. 16 order from the Federal Court in Ottawa. YTS.to, a BitTorrent site whose films were often reached through Popcorn Time, was closed under an interim injunction in a separate suit filed on Oct. 12 in the High Court of New Zealand, the M.P.A.A. said."

MPAA Adds New Rating To Warn Audiences Of Films Not Based On Existing Works; The Onion, 10/20/15

The Onion; MPAA Adds New Rating To Warn Audiences Of Films Not Based On Existing Works:

"“We recognize how distressing it can be when viewers go into a film and suddenly find themselves confronted with jarring scenes containing a protagonist they’ve never encountered before, which is precisely why we created this rating,” said Joan Graves, head of the MPAA’s ratings board, who said the new category was added in part due to the thousands of complaints the organization has received from moviegoers who were upset they weren’t given advance notice that they’d have to make sense of the scenarios unfolding onscreen. “It’s important that today’s movie fans are aware upon entering the theater that none of what they will see has been adapted from a well-known comic book, television series, novel, video game, historical event, previous movie, or theme park ride.”

“Ultimately, it will be up to the consumer’s discretion as to whether a film is suitable for themselves and their family, but the O rating will explicitly caution people that they will have to pay attention during the movie and follow the storyline on their own,” Graves added.

Though sources said films requiring the new rating are comparatively rare, a spate of high-profile movies over the past several years that do not stem from any previously existing source material—including The Kids Are All Right, Her, WALL-E, Birdman, and Nebraska, among others—have left many viewers angered and perplexed. Citing test audiences they have observed, MPAA officials said that many moviegoers spent the entirety of such films in a state of distress, waiting for the moment when the Incredible Hulk, Katniss Everdeen, Wolverine, or another recognizable character from an established franchise would appear onscreen and clarify the meaning and direction of the film."

Super-scholars: MPAA offers $20,000 for academic research in copyright battle; Guardian, 5/7/15

Sam Thielman, Guardian; Super-scholars: MPAA offers $20,000 for academic research in copyright battle:

"If you’re an academic who loves conservative interpretations of copyright law, the MPAA might be willing to pay you enough to go see The Avengers about 1,500 times (not in 3D, though).

In an effort to “fill gaps in knowledge and contribute to a greater understanding of challenges facing the content industry”, the Motion Picture Association of America is available to fund academic research to the tune of $20,000 per successful proposal, according to guidelines released recently by the movie industry lobbying group.

An email from the Sony WikiLeaks hack, quoted by copyright news site TorrentFreak, had a fairly direct statement about the conference’s purpose from Sony global general counsel Steven B Fabrizio: “[T]he MPAA is launching a global research grant program both to solicit pro-copyright academic research papers and to identify pro-copyright scholars who we can cultivate for further public advocacy.”"

Copyright & The Changing Political Environment In Washington - Derek Khanna V. Ben Sheffner (MPAA VP); Forbes, 2/4/14

Derek Khanna, Forbes; Copyright & The Changing Political Environment In Washington - Derek Khanna V. Ben Sheffner (MPAA VP) :

"In January, 2014, I took part in a debate with Ben Sheffner (VP of MPAA) at the Copyright Society in New York City. We were discussing Copyright and the Changing Political environment in Washington, DC...

Madison ominously warned that all monopolies, including copyright, must be “guarded with strictness agst abuse.” Abuse is precisely what we have seen, copyright terms have been expanded by 580%."

Hotfile forks over $80 million to settle MPAA copyright suit; CNet, 12/3/13

Dara Kerr, CNet; Hotfile forks over $80 million to settle MPAA copyright suit: "Hotfile agreed on Tuesday to pay $80 million to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Motion Picture Association of America. It was also ordered to cease all operations unless it instituted "digital fingerprinting" copyright filtering technology... Not all cyberlockers have been deemed unlawful, however. In fact, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor protects online services as long as they obey some rules."

U.S. copyright industries add $1 trillion to GDP; Los Angeles Times, 11/19/13

Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times; U.S. copyright industries add $1 trillion to GDP: "The economic contributions of U.S. copyright industries reached new heights last year, for the first time contributing more than $1 trillion to the gross domestic product and accounting for 6.5% of the nation's economy, according to a new report. The study tracks the economic effect and contributions of U.S. industries engaged in the creation and distribution of computer software, video games, books, newspapers, periodicals and journals, as well as motion pictures, music, radio and television programming. Those industries contributed $1.01 trillion in value-added services to the nation's GDP in 2012. That's up from $965 billion in 2011 and $885 billion in 2009, according to research slated to be released Tuesday morning by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a private coalition representing the Motion Picture Assn. of America, the Recording Industry Assn. of America and other groups... The findings are being released in advance of a congressional subcommittee hearing on copyright issues, one of several to be held on the topic in Washington over the next several months. Maria Pallante, register of copyrights at the U.S. Copyright Office, has signaled her support for updating federal copyright law."

MPAA backs anti-piracy curriculum for elementary school students; Los Angeles Times, 11/11/13

Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times; MPAA backs anti-piracy curriculum for elementary school students: "A draft of the curriculum, first published by Wired magazine, was blasted for presenting what critics said was a one-sided view of intellectual property by omitting the concept of fair use, which allows for the reproduction of copyrighted works without permission in certain cases, such as commentary and parody. "It sends the message that you always have to get permission before you can copy anything and that sharing is always theft and that if you violate copyright law all kinds of bad things will happen to you," said Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's a scare tactic." Fabio Marino, intellectual property rights attorney with the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, added, "The idea of educating the public starting with children about copyrights is a good one, but if you're going to do it, you should do it in an unbiased way.""

Copyright Pirates Vow To Fight On After Filesharing Site Isohunt Walks The Plank; Forbes, 10/17/13

Jasper Hamill, Forbes; Copyright Pirates Vow To Fight On After Filesharing Site Isohunt Walks The Plank: "Internet pirates are preparing to set sail for new waters following the shutdown of the decade-old filesharing site Isohunt. Following a long court battle, the world-famous site agreed to switch off the lights for good today and pay out a mammoth $110 million settlement, although there’s little sense of where this cash will come from and how it will be handed over to movie studios. However, supporters claimed the court case represented little more than a “paper victory” in an age where content was freely available to anyone who knows where to look. They vowed to continue campaigning for copyright reform."

Motion Picture Association Study Finds Search Engines Complicit In Piracy; Intellectual Property Watch, 9/18/13

William New, Intellectual Property Watch; Motion Picture Association Study Finds Search Engines Complicit In Piracy: "A new study released today by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in the company of members of the United States Congress found that internet search engines play a key role in user access to copyright infringing content online."

Start Nears on Plan to Combat Online Infringement; New York Times, 10/18/12

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Start Nears on Plan to Combat Online Infringement: "Last year, five major Internet service providers and the big entertainment trade organizations announced a joint plan to fight illegal downloading through what might be called a strategy of annoyance. Instead of suing people suspected of copyright infringement, as the record labels have in the past, they would prod and poke people into good behavior through a “six strikes” system that escalate from friendly notices in their e-mail to, ultimately, throttled Internet access. Progress has been slow on the project, called the Copyright Alert System, since it was announced 15 months ago. But in a blog post Thursday, the group created to carry out the process said it would finally begin “over the course of the next two months.”"

FBI shuts down Megaupload file-sharing site; ComicBookResources.com, 1/20/12

J.K. Parkin, ComicBookResources.com; FBI shuts down Megaupload file-sharing site:

"The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI on Thursday shut down the popular file-sharing site Megaupload, seized $50 million in assets and charged its founder and six others with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy that’s cost copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue...

News of the shutdown was met with retaliation by the hacker collective Anonymous, which attacked the websites of the Justice Department and the Motion Picture Association of America."

MPAA Sends Letter to Thousands of Colleges About Copyright Rules; Wired Campus, 12/6/10

Jeff Young, Wired Campus; MPAA Sends Letter to Thousands of Colleges About Copyright Rules:

"The Motion Picture Association of American began sending letters to thousands of colleges and university presidents today, alerting them that the industry group will start notifying colleges whenever it detects illegal trading of Hollywood films and hit TV shows on their campuses."

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/mpaa-sends-letter-to-thousands-of-colleges-about-copyright-rules/28552

U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown; New York Times, 11/27/10

Michael Sisario, New York Times; U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown:

"In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world. “American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,” Mr. Morton said. “Criminals are stealing American ideas and products and distributing them over the Internet.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html?_r=1&hpw

Pirate-slaying censorship bill gets unanimous support; ArsTechnica.com, 11/19/10

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Pirate-slaying censorship bill gets unanimous support:

"This morning, COICA unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"We are disappointed that the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning chose to disregard the concerns of public-interest groups, Internet engineers, Internet companies, human-rights groups and law professors in approving a bill that could do great harm to the public and to the Internet," said Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn, who pledged to craft a "more narrowly tailored bill" next year to deal with "rogue websites.""

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/pirate-slaying-censorship-bill-gets-unanimous-support.ars

Court to Consider Breaking Up Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits; Wired.com, 6/29/10

David Kravets, Wired.com; Court to Consider Breaking Up Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits:

"If you’ve used BitTorrent to snag unauthorized copies of independent films you should be interested in the arguments unfolding in Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
At issue is a mass-litigation campaign, in which the fledgling US Copyright Group is suing about 15,000 users whose IP addresses were detected harvesting films like Steam Experiment, Far Cry, Uncross the Stars, Gray Man and Call of the Wild 3D.

Several digital rights groups will argue Wednesday on behalf of the account holders behind the IP addresses that each defendant should be sued individually in courts near where the defendants reside. Currently, they’ve all been lumped together in handful of lawsuits filed in the nation’s capital in March.

If U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer agrees with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen, the US Copyright Group could find its legal campaign almost impossible to continue on such a grand scale.

The issue is important if you live in California and have to answer to a lawsuit across the country. Copyright Act violations carry fines of up to $150,000.

A similar brouhaha came up during the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuit campaign against file sharers using Kazaa, Limewire and other networks. The association preferred suing hundreds of alleged downloaders at once, but in many instances were forced to drop the large-scale actions and sue each defendant separately.

In all, the RIAA sued thousands of individuals spread out over the past six years — and was backed by the deep pockets of the nation’s recording labels. If the US Copyright Group loses Wednesday’s courtroom showdown, it would be required to spend at least $350 per IP address to re-file an individual case against a sole defendant. Its lawyers likely would have to appear in courtrooms across the country, perhaps simultaneously.

The RIAA’s lawsuits against 20,000 alleged music pirates were focused on old-school file sharing systems like Kazaa and Limewire. BitTorrent file sharing is more complicated, with downloaders and uploaders collecting in transient swarms of so-called seeders and leechers. The US Copyright Group claims that, because of the swarming element of the BitTorrent protocol, the infringing activity of all the defendants likely had some nexus with the District of Columbia, even if a defendant’s computer was outside the district.

The indie filmmakers are taking a different tactic from their commercial counterparts. The Motion Picture Association of America, for the most part, has limited its lawsuits to BitTorrent sites themselves — like The Pirate Bay, TorrentSpy and Isohunt.

The allegedly offending IP address were sniffed out by Guardaley IT, a German peer-to-peer–surveillance firm."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/bittorrent-lawsuits/#ixzz0sNl95RKe:

Google attorney slams ACTA copyright treaty; CNet News, 5/7/10

Declan McCullagh, CNet News; Google attorney slams ACTA copyright treaty:

"An attorney for Google slammed a controversial intellectual property treaty on Friday, saying it has "metastasized" from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to an international legal framework sweeping in copyright and the Internet.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is "something that has grown in the shadows, Gollum-like," without public scrutiny, Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel in Mountain View, Calif., said at a conference at Stanford University.

Both the Obama administration and the Bush administration had rejected requests from civil libertarians and technologists for the text of ACTA, with the White House last year even indicating that disclosure would do "damage to the national security." After pressure from the European Parliament, however, negotiators released the draft text two weeks ago.

The international adoption of ACTA could increase the liability for Internet intermediaries--such, perhaps, as search engines--Keller said. "You don't want to play Russian roulette with very high statutory damages."

One section of ACTA says that Internet providers "disabling access" to pirated material and adopting a policy dealing with unauthorized "transmission of materials protected by copyright" would be immune from lawsuits. If they choose not to do so, they could face legal liability. Fair use rights are not guaranteed.

"It looks a lot like cultural imperialism," Keller said at the Legal Frontiers in Digital Media conference. "It's something that really snuck up on a lot of people."

Jamie Love of the Knowledge Ecology International advocacy group, which has criticized the ACTA process, reported last year that Keller had signed a nondisclosure agreement that provided her with access to the early draft text. Other organizations whose representatives signed the confidentiality agreement, according to Love's Freedom of Information Act request, include Verizon, eBay, Public Knowledge, Intel, News Corp., and the Consumer Electronics Association.

Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge, who signed the nondisclosure agreement, wrote at the time that it didn't provide much access: "We were allowed to view a draft of one proposed section as we sat in a (government office) with some of its negotiators and counsel. We were not allowed to take any copies of the text with us when we left the meeting about an hour later."

The U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement last month that recent ACTA negotiations in New Zealand were "constructive." The Motion Picture Association of America called ACTA an "important step forward" that deserves to be adopted.

The next ACTA meeting is in Switzerland in June."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20004450-38.html

Digital Economy Act: This means war; (London) Guardian, 4/16/10

Cory Doctorow, (London) Guardian; Digital Economy Act: This means war:

Baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell:

"With the rushed passage into law of the Digital Economy Act this month, the fight over copyright enters a new phase. Previous to this, most copyfighters operated under the rubric that a negotiated peace was possible between the thrashing entertainment giants and civil society.

But now that the BPI and its mates have won themselves the finest law that money can buy – a law that establishes an unprecedented realm of web censorship in Britain, a law that provides for the disconnection of entire families from the net on the say-so of an entertainment giant, a law that shuts down free Wi-Fi hotspots and makes it harder than ever to conduct your normal business on the grounds that you might be damaging theirs – the game has changed.

I came to the copyfight from a pretty parochial place. As a working artist, I wanted a set of just copyright rules that provided a sound framework for my negotiations with big publishers, film studios, and similar institutions. I worried that the expansion of copyright – in duration and scope – would harm my ability to freely create. After all, creators are the most active re-users of copyright, each one of us a remix factory and a one-person archive of inspirational and influential materials. I also worried that giving the incumbent giants control over the new online distribution system would artificially extend their stranglehold over creators. This stranglehold means that practically every media giant offers the same awful terms to all of us, and no kinder competitor can get our works into the hands of our audiences.

I still worry about that stuff, of course. I co-founded a successful business – Boing Boing, the widely-read website – that benefits enormously from not having to pay fealty to a distributor in order to reach its readers (by contrast, the old print edition of Boing Boing folded when its main distributor went bankrupt while owing it a modest fortune and holding onto thousands of dollars' worth of printed materials that we never got back). My novels find their way onto the bestseller list by being distributed for free from my website simultaneous with their mainstream bookstore sales through publishers like Macmillan and HarperCollins and Random House.

My whole life revolves around the digital economy: running entrepreneurial businesses that thrive on copying and that exploit the net's powerful efficiencies to realise a better return on investment.

Parliament has just given two fingers to me (and every other small/medium digital enterprise) by agreeing to cripple Britain's internet in order to give higher profits to the analogue economy represented by the labels and studios.

But today, my bank-balance is the least of my worries. The entertainment industry's willingness to use parliament todi impose censorship and arbitrary punishment in the course of chasing a few extra quid is so depraved and terrible that it has me in fear for the very underpinnings of democracy and civil society.

In the US, the MPAA and RIAA (American equivalents of the MPA and the BPI) just submitted comments to the American Intellectual Property Czar, Victoria Espinel, laying out their proposal for IP enforcement. They want us all to install spyware on our computers that deletes material that it identifies as infringing. They want our networks censored by national firewalls (U2's Bono also called for this in a New York Times editorial, averring that if the Chinese could control dissident information with censorware, our own governments could deploy similar technology to keep infringement at bay). They want border-searches of laptops, personal media players and thumb-drives.

They want poor countries bullied into diverting GDP from humanitarian causes to enforcing copyright. And they want their domestic copyright enforcement handled, free of charge, by the Department of Homeland Security.

Elements of this agenda are also on display (or rather, in hiding) in the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty being drafted between a member's club of rich nations. They've turned their back on the United Nations to negotiate in private, without having to contend with journalists or public interest groups. By their own admission, they intend to impose this treaty on poor countries as a condition of ongoing trade, and in the US, the Obama administration has announced its intention to pass ACTA without Congressional debate.

I'm not such a techno-triumphalist that I believe that the free and open internet will solve all our socio-economic problems. But I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.

Chekhov wrote that a gun on the mantelpiece in act one is sure to go off by act three. The entertainment industry's blinkered pursuit of its own narrow goals has the potential to redesign our technology to be the perfect tools and excuses for oppression."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/16/digital-economy-act-cory-doctorow

Online movie free-for-all; Chicago Sun-Times, 11/22/09

Kara Spak, Chicago Sun-Times; Online movie free-for-all:

"This weekend, you could pay $10 to see the cinematic vampire love story "New Moon," stand in line for overpriced snacks with your new tween buddies and then jostle for a seat in a crowded theater.

Or you could pop some microwave popcorn, open your laptop and log on to a Web site with the supremely blatant name watchnew moononline.org, which was active 12 hours after the movie premiered in Chicago theaters.

Watchnewmoononline.org is but one place "New Moon" is popping up for free online. And it's not just movies and current season premium cable shows that anyone who knows how to search the Web can find.

On Nov. 14, 1.25 million pay-per-view buys of the Miguel Cotto vs. Manny Pacquiao fight were purchased for $54.95 each, the highest-performing boxing pay-per-view event this year, according to HBO.

The fight generated $70 million in revenue, as well as a prime opportunity for cheapskates to watch the streaming video live for free.

On fight day, some combination of Google searches for the words Pacquiao, Cotto, online, live stream and free made seven of the 40 spots on Google's Hot Trends list, which tracks the fastest-rising searches on a given day.

The entertainment industry is waging a mighty battle against online piracy, or the illegal distribution of copyrighted content online.

But copyright law hasn't evolved as quickly as the Internet. And a new generation that has grown up online doesn't see the harm in watching the latest theatrical releases on their home computers, a practice the Motion Picture Association of America estimated cost the industry $18.2 billion in 2005, the latest figure available.

"I don't think it's wrong," said 21-year-old online movie-watcher Ahmad Al-Ashqar of south suburban Palos Heights. "I'm sure the movie industry is doing a lot of harm to us, taking our money."

Al-Ashqar, a senior at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he doesn't have spare cash for a night out at the movies.

"I'd rather just watch it at home," he said. "It's easier and cheaper."

'Complicated question'

Elizabeth Kaltman, spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America, said in no uncertain terms that watching a current theatrical release online is theft.

"Nobody who isn't a criminal would walk into Blockbuster or Wal-Mart or Best Buy, wherever they're selling or renting DVDs, take it off the shelf, put it under their arm and not pay for it," she said. "For a generation that has grown up with the Internet . . . there is a perception that because it is there, it's available and it's free, I can take it."

The law, with regard to watching online movies, is a little more vague.

"It is certainly illegal to put online copyrighted content like a telecast of a fight or a motion picture without authorization," said Steve Englund, a copyright attorney at Jenner & Block who has worked with new media. "It is a little more complicated question whether it is illegal to watch it when someone else has put it online."

Mickie Piatt, law professor and interim director of the Intellectual Property Law program at Chicago-Kent College of Law, said that while watching new-release movies or pay-per-view fights for free online may not be illegal, it is enabling the illegal distribution of the content.

"There's a lot of tensions going on in the copyright world," she said. "Because of the Internet, people feel they should have access to a lot of things."

Federal law sets up steep fines for copyright infringement. There's also the possibility of damages from civil lawsuits. And those who distribute illegal content online could be prosecuted.

"There are some criminal penalties, but those have not been used as much," Piatt said.

It's costly and difficult to track individual viewers, so the movie industry is trying to strike at the source of these downloads: the camera-wielding pirate who is recording in a movie theater.

Brittany Parlour, 20, a UIC junior who lives in Little Italy, said she watched movies including "Stepbrothers" and "This Christmas" online when they were new releases in theater. She thought it might be illegal, but that's not the only reason she stopped watching movies online.

"I was really annoyed," she said of the often poor quality of the pirated films.

Kaltman said more than 90 percent of current theatrical releases that wind up online come from a person in a theater with a camera. Every movie released by a studio contains a watermark, she said.

"Through forensic analysis, we can determine where the theft took place -- what state, what theater, what auditorium," she said.

The MPAA has field offices around the country to track and stop illegal recording, she said. "We also have, along with the enforcement activities, litigation activities which involve trying to get stuff off the Internet once it's up," she said.

The entertainment industry is working on getting high-quality content to viewers online legally, through sites such as hulu.com, which features current television episodes, Piatt said.

She predicted further changes to help consumers get what they want, when they want it, but also to protect copyrights.

"The music industry hasn't quite figured out how to do this, and neither has the movie industry or event industry," she said. "We have this real tension that exists in the business model that really comes from an era of being able to control the distribution of things instead of the distribution of information.""

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1898326,CST-NWS-online22s1.article

Australian Radio Program On 'Piracy' What 60 Minutes Should Have Done; TechDirt, 11/4/09

Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Australian Radio Program On 'Piracy' What 60 Minutes Should Have Done:

"On Monday, we wrote about that that ridiculous attempt by 60 Minutes to do a story about movie piracy that was basically one long press release for the MPAA's position. Facts weren't checked, and the reporter, Leslie Stahl, didn't bother to push back on a single claim made by any of the (all industry insider) guests. However, Boing Boing points us to a "radio documentary" on piracy that was done on Australian radio the very same day as the 60 Minutes episode aired. You may notice a major difference in that the Australian radio folks actually looked at the facts, invited on people who could refute industry claims, and actually pushed back on claims by the industry".

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091103/0303386776.shtml

Podcast: The Movie Pirates; 60 Minutes, 11/1/09

Podcast: [12 min. 31 sec.]; 60 Minutes; The Movie Pirates:

"They are the bane of Hollywood: criminals who copy films and distribute them illegally on the Internet, costing Hollywood billions in lost revenue. Lesley Stahl reports."

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/60_minutes/video/?pid=NceD3u9gWRu6gDUxN5DyCpDJBOj_RjhA