Read Write Web: YouTube Copyright System Gone Mad, EFF Prepares to Sue:
"Using YouTube's new automated copright detection technology, Warner Brothers detected last month that 15 year old Juliet Weybret had posted a video of herself playing the piano and singing the 1934 song Winter Wonderland. This unrepentant little criminal might have thought that such a widely covered tune had entered the public domain, 75 years after it was recorded, but Juliet was clearly unfamiliar with legislation like the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act, which extended copyright protection to 95 years or more after publication date.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is not happy with the situation...
What does the EFF intend to do about it? The organization has put out a call to people who have had videos taken off of YouTube at the behest of Warner and whose videos were both noncommercial and substantially original. The EFF says it will help serve a counter notice and offer legal protection to as many people as it can. "We can't promise to take every case," they say, "but neither will we stand by and watch semi-automated takedowns trample fair use.""
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_copyright_system_eff_action.php
Showing posts with label EFF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EFF. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Saturday, December 20, 2008
RIAA's New Piracy Plan Poses a New Set of Problems, Via Washington Post, 12/20/08
Via Washington Post: RIAA's New Piracy Plan Poses a New Set of Problems, The RIAA is backing down from consumer copyright infringement lawsuits, but consumers should still be concerned:
"Effectively, RIAA has turned itself into the sheriff, and your ISP into its deputy. Based on the same data gathering and user identification methods that have come under fire from the start, RIAA will now be able to get your Internet access limited or discontinued on its own if it for some reason flags you as an illegal filesharer...
"This means more music fans are going to be harassed by the music industry," saysFred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"The problem is the lack of due process for those accused," von Lohmann continues. "In a world where hundreds of thousands, or millions, of copyright infringement allegations are automatically generated and delivered to ISPs, mistakes are going to be made. ... Anyone who has ever had to fight to correct an error on their credit reports will be able to imagine the trouble we're in for."
In essence, the music industry is trading one questionable practice for another. Striking a deal to deem itself the judge and your ISP the regulator is not the answer -- and it's not going to win the war, either.
What is the solution, then? The EFF suggests RIAA support a "voluntary collective licensing regime" -- basically, a legal peer-to-peer network that'd let music fans pay a small monthly fee for the right to freely trade music. A survey conducted this summer found an overwhelming 80 percent of current peer-to-peer users would be interested in paying for such a system."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/19/AR2008121902930.html?nav%3Dhcmodule&sub=AR
"Effectively, RIAA has turned itself into the sheriff, and your ISP into its deputy. Based on the same data gathering and user identification methods that have come under fire from the start, RIAA will now be able to get your Internet access limited or discontinued on its own if it for some reason flags you as an illegal filesharer...
"This means more music fans are going to be harassed by the music industry," saysFred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"The problem is the lack of due process for those accused," von Lohmann continues. "In a world where hundreds of thousands, or millions, of copyright infringement allegations are automatically generated and delivered to ISPs, mistakes are going to be made. ... Anyone who has ever had to fight to correct an error on their credit reports will be able to imagine the trouble we're in for."
In essence, the music industry is trading one questionable practice for another. Striking a deal to deem itself the judge and your ISP the regulator is not the answer -- and it's not going to win the war, either.
What is the solution, then? The EFF suggests RIAA support a "voluntary collective licensing regime" -- basically, a legal peer-to-peer network that'd let music fans pay a small monthly fee for the right to freely trade music. A survey conducted this summer found an overwhelming 80 percent of current peer-to-peer users would be interested in paying for such a system."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/19/AR2008121902930.html?nav%3Dhcmodule&sub=AR
RIAA Strikes a 'Three Strikes' Deal, Everybody Loses, Via Public Knowledge, 12/19/08
Via Public Knowledge: RIAA Strikes a 'Three Strikes' Deal, Everybody Loses:
"According to the Wall Street Journal, these deals between the RIAA and the ISPs were brokered by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who reportedly "wanted to end the litigation." While it's hard not to agree with that sentiment, you've got to wonder whether there might not have been another solution to the problem that didn't involve content companies and ISPs deciding who should and shouldn't have access to the Internet.
After all, if Cuomo had bothered to look across the pond, he would have noticed that the European Union saw fit to strike down "three strikes" policies with an amendment that referred to such agreements as "…measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of Internet access." Access to the Internet is increasingly becoming a necessity for ensuring full participation in our society, democracy and economy. Should we allow an industry trade group with a notoriously bad track record to serve as the gatekeeper to the Internet?
To be fair, not everything in the RIAA's outlined strategy is nefarious. Under the new regime, the RIAA will not ask ISPs to reveal the identities of their users. Rather, the association will identify users anonymously, using only their IP address...
There are other proposals currently on the table--EFF's voluntary collective licensing proposal being the most prominent one--that would address the issue of piracy without criminalizing users or stripping them of their right to access the Internet."
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1918
"According to the Wall Street Journal, these deals between the RIAA and the ISPs were brokered by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who reportedly "wanted to end the litigation." While it's hard not to agree with that sentiment, you've got to wonder whether there might not have been another solution to the problem that didn't involve content companies and ISPs deciding who should and shouldn't have access to the Internet.
After all, if Cuomo had bothered to look across the pond, he would have noticed that the European Union saw fit to strike down "three strikes" policies with an amendment that referred to such agreements as "…measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of Internet access." Access to the Internet is increasingly becoming a necessity for ensuring full participation in our society, democracy and economy. Should we allow an industry trade group with a notoriously bad track record to serve as the gatekeeper to the Internet?
To be fair, not everything in the RIAA's outlined strategy is nefarious. Under the new regime, the RIAA will not ask ISPs to reveal the identities of their users. Rather, the association will identify users anonymously, using only their IP address...
There are other proposals currently on the table--EFF's voluntary collective licensing proposal being the most prominent one--that would address the issue of piracy without criminalizing users or stripping them of their right to access the Internet."
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1918
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Questions Raised About Google Library Project’s Impact On Knowledge Access, Intellectual Property Watch, 11/26/08
Via Intellectual Property Watch: Questions Raised About Google Library Project’s Impact On Knowledge Access:
"Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently raised concerns about Google’s new settlement with publishers allowing the search engine to continue borrowing millions of books from libraries and scanning them to make a digital library.
His remarks were made to an international library copyright event in Chisinau, Moldova on 13 November where he spoke on the subject of “copyright’s ever-expanding empire” addressing digital rights management (technologies for controlling copyrighted content), licences and the privatisation of public information.
The key concern is that the Google project, likely to go into effect in 2010, will be in the private sector, which has different implications than public libraries, which von Lohmann described...
The Google project was settled out of court, which may prevent the outcome from being a precedent, noted von Lohmann, who added, “I think it [the Google project] raises many questions that are going to be with libraries for many years.”"
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1332
"Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently raised concerns about Google’s new settlement with publishers allowing the search engine to continue borrowing millions of books from libraries and scanning them to make a digital library.
His remarks were made to an international library copyright event in Chisinau, Moldova on 13 November where he spoke on the subject of “copyright’s ever-expanding empire” addressing digital rights management (technologies for controlling copyrighted content), licences and the privatisation of public information.
The key concern is that the Google project, likely to go into effect in 2010, will be in the private sector, which has different implications than public libraries, which von Lohmann described...
The Google project was settled out of court, which may prevent the outcome from being a precedent, noted von Lohmann, who added, “I think it [the Google project] raises many questions that are going to be with libraries for many years.”"
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1332
Saturday, November 22, 2008
All-Star Witness List In Lawsuit Over Constitutionality Of RIAA Lawsuits, TechDirt, 11/20/08
Via TechDirt: All-Star Witness List In Lawsuit Over Constitutionality Of RIAA Lawsuits:
"The list includes:
John Perry Barlow (former songwriter for The Grateful Dead, founder of the EFF, and well known digital thinker)
Prof. Johan Pouwelse (technical and scientific director of European research project P2P-Next)
Prof. Lawrence Lessig (needs no introduction, I imagine, for folks around here)
Matthew Oppenheim (who has a somewhat murky relationship with the RIAA, at times representing the RIAA, and at other times insisting he does not represent the RIAA)
Prof. Terry Fisher (a director of Harvard's Berkman Center and author of Promises to Keep, an early book looking at how the internet was changing the entertainment industry, and how it's business models need to change)
Prof. Wendy Seltzer (well known copyfighter, law professor, former staff attorney at the EFF and founder of the Chilling Effects site)
Prof. John Palfrey (Harvard law professor, co-director of the Berkman Center, author of Born Digital)
Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard and Oxford law professor, co-director of the Berkman Center, author of The Future of the Internet)
Andrew Grant (former antipiracy specialist at DRM company Macrovision)"
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081120/1244282904.shtml
"The list includes:
John Perry Barlow (former songwriter for The Grateful Dead, founder of the EFF, and well known digital thinker)
Prof. Johan Pouwelse (technical and scientific director of European research project P2P-Next)
Prof. Lawrence Lessig (needs no introduction, I imagine, for folks around here)
Matthew Oppenheim (who has a somewhat murky relationship with the RIAA, at times representing the RIAA, and at other times insisting he does not represent the RIAA)
Prof. Terry Fisher (a director of Harvard's Berkman Center and author of Promises to Keep, an early book looking at how the internet was changing the entertainment industry, and how it's business models need to change)
Prof. Wendy Seltzer (well known copyfighter, law professor, former staff attorney at the EFF and founder of the Chilling Effects site)
Prof. John Palfrey (Harvard law professor, co-director of the Berkman Center, author of Born Digital)
Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard and Oxford law professor, co-director of the Berkman Center, author of The Future of the Internet)
Andrew Grant (former antipiracy specialist at DRM company Macrovision)"
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081120/1244282904.shtml
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