How The Recording Industry Hid Its Latest Attempt To Expand Copyright (And Why You Should Call Your Senator To Stop It); Techdirt, May 21, 2018

Mike Masnick, Techdirt; How The Recording Industry Hid Its Latest Attempt To Expand Copyright (And Why You Should Call Your Senator To Stop It)

"Larry Lessig has a piece over at Wired where he explains how this is really just the latest attempt at copyright extension. Earlier this year, we had noted (happily!) that it appeared that the usual crew of copyright maximalists had appeared to give in, saying they had no intention to push for any sort of copyright term extension this year, meaning that for the first time in decades in the US, some works may actually enter the public domain on January 1st next year. And while the CLASSICS Act isn't a straight-up copyright term extension, it is a form of copyright expansion on old works, done for no other purpose than to give the copyright holders more ways to extract money, without any corresponding public benefit. As Lessig notes, this is explicitly a welfare system for musicians...

Now, I should note that I've seen some recording industry lobbyists mocking Lessig's piece, claiming that how could he be against supporting musicians. This, of course, is the whole setup of this bill. It's designed -- like so many copyright expansions in the past -- to make it hard for people to question, because, really, who doesn't want to support the content creators we like? But that ignores the other side of this equation. Copyright is designed to benefit the public. The whole setup is to give an exclusivity to content creators for a limited time in order to give them the incentive to create.

 For EVERY SINGLE WORK that would be impacted by this bill, that incentive worked. It worked decades and decades ago. Those recordings were all created prior to 1972. So why do they now need more incentive for the works that were already created? And why, if we're giving them more incentive, does the public not get anything back in return? That's the hidden part that the lobbyists and think tank shills for the recording industry are hoping you'll ignore. The "expansion" here is at the expense of the public. And it's a big expense. For no benefit at all. The copyright system was an incentive system for creation, in the recognition that it would then help the public get access to content. But the CLASSICS Act flips that over. It takes away from the public and provides no new incentives to anyone."

The Man Who Broke the Music Business: The dawn of online piracy; New Yorker, 4/27/15

Stephen Witt, New Yorker; The Man Who Broke the Music Business: The dawn of online piracy:

"Napster lasted barely two years, in its original incarnation, but at its peak the service claimed more than seventy million registered accounts, with users sharing more than two billion MP3 files a month. Music piracy became to the early two-thousands what drug experimentation had been to the late nineteen-sixties: a generation-wide flouting of both social norms and the existing body of law, with little thought for consequences. In late 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America, the music business’s trade and lobbying group, sued Napster, claiming that the company was facilitating copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale. Napster lost the lawsuit, appealed, and lost again. In July, 2001, facing a court order to stop enabling the trade of copyrighted files, Napster shut down its service.

That legal victory achieved little. Former users of Napster saw Internet file-sharing as an undeniable prerogative, and instead of returning to the record stores they embraced gray-market copycats of Napster, like Kazaa and Limewire. By 2003, global recording-industry revenues had fallen from their millennial peak by more than fifteen per cent. The losing streak continued for the next decade.

The R.I.A.A. tried to reassert the primacy of the industry’s copyrights. But civil suits against the peer-to-peer services took years to move through the appeals courts, and the R.I.A.A.’s policy of suing individual file-sharers was a public-relations disaster. To some at the music labels, Congress seemed disinclined to help. Harvey Geller, Universal’s chief litigator, spent years futilely petitioning legislators for better enforcement of copyright law. “Politicians pander to their constituents,” Geller said. “And there were more constituents stealing music than constituents selling it.”"

The Biggest Filer of Copyright Lawsuits? This Erotica Web Site; New Yorker, 5/15/14

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Maria Pallante, Head of US Copyright Office, To Meet With Music Creators: Exclusive; Billboard, 12/18/13

Billboard; Maria Pallante, Head of US Copyright Office, To Meet With Music Creators: Exclusive: "The Recording Academy is convening leadership roundtables between music creators and U.S. Copyright Office register of copyrights and director Maria Pallante. The initiative ties in with Pallante's stated goal of hearing from the various stakeholders -- leading performers, songwriters and studio professionals -- of the current discussions on copyright. The roundtables will begin in New York on Jan. 14 and will continue to other Academy chapters contingent upon on the availability of Pallante and her team. The roundtables are part of a larger review of copyright law begun this year by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee... In the following Q&A, Pallante discusses the many music copyright issues now under review, her office's role in creating copyright legislation and the challenges ahead... What kind of timeline are you expecting for the discussions that lead up to actual action by Congress? I don't know. [Goodlatte] had six hearings, if you include the one he gave me, since March. We haven't had that many copyright hearings in a very, very long time. And he's announced three more. In the next few months there will be one on the scope of exclusive rights, there will be one on the scope of fair use, and there will be one on notice and take down provisions of the DMCA... We've got other provisions we've been working on for a really long time. We've been working on the public performance in sound recordings issue for a decade, if not longer. We've got orphan works issues. We've got pre-'72 sound recordings that we think should be federalized. We've got analog library exception rules that don't translate into the digital age."

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."

Joel Tenenbaum's $675,000 Music Downloading Fine Upheld; Associated Press via HuffingtonPost.com, 6/25/13

Associated Press via HuffingtonPost.com; Joel Tenenbaum's $675,000 Music Downloading Fine Upheld: "A $675,000 verdict against a former Boston University student who illegally downloaded and shared songs on the Internet has been upheld. A jury ordered Providence, R.I., resident Joel Tenenbaum to pay $22,500 for each of 30 songs after the Recording Industry Association of America sued him on behalf of four record labels."

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.”"

ReDigi, Reseller of Digital Music, Responds to Industry Criticism; New York Times, 11/15/11

New York Times; ReDigi, Reseller of Digital Music, Responds to Industry Criticism:

"What follows are excerpts from ReDigi’s response to the letter from the recording industry’s trade group..."

Site to Resell Music Files Has Critics; New York Times, 11/14/11

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Site to Resell Music Files Has Critics:

"A legitimate secondhand marketplace for digital music has never been tried successfully, in part because few people think of reselling anything that is not physical. But last month a new company, ReDigi, opened a system that it calls a legal and secure way for people to get rid of unwanted music files and buy others at a discount.

The service has already drawn concern from music executives and legal scholars, who say it is operating in a gray area of the law. Last Thursday the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major record companies, sent ReDigi a cease-and-desist letter, accusing it of copyright infringement.

John Ossenmacher, ReDigi’s chief executive, contends that the service complies with copyright law, and that its technology offers safeguards to allay the industry’s concerns that people might profit from pirated music."

No harm, no foul? P2P user says $1.5M award should be zeroed out; ArsTechnica.com, 12/8/10

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; No harm, no foul? P2P user says $1.5M award should be zeroed out:

"Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the first US citizen to take her file-sharing lawsuit all the way to a verdict, has been hit with three separate damage awards: $222,000, $1.92 million, and recently $1.5 million. The judge has made clear that these figures are absurd; after the second trial, he declared $54,000 the most that he could possibly allow.

But what does Thomas-Rasset think she owes? Nothing."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/no-harm-no-foul-p2p-user-says-15m-award-should-be-zeroed-out.ars

Supreme Court Won’t Hear RIAA File Sharing Case; Wired.com, 11/29/10

David Kravets, Wired.com; Supreme Court Won’t Hear RIAA File Sharing Case:

"The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the first Recording Industry Association of America file sharing case to cross its desk, in a case that tested the so-called “innocent infringer” defense to copyright infringement."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/innocent/

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

Joel Tenenbaum: a year on from being sued for $4.5m; (London) Guardian, 11/9/10

Joel Tenenbaum, (London) Guardian; Joel Tenenbaum: a year on from being sued for $4.5m: Last month, the RIAA shut down the peer-to-peer site Limewire. I was sued by the same organisation for sharing 30 songs online – 12 months on, my battle with them continues:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/nov/09/joel-tenenbaum-a-year-on

Third P2P verdict for Jammie Thomas: $1.5 million; ArsTechnica.com, 11/4/10

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Third P2P verdict for Jammie Thomas: $1.5 million:

"The first P2P case to come to trial in the US has lasted five years and now has three verdicts, this one coming after just two hours of deliberation. Jammie Thomas-Rasset must pay $62,500 for each of the 24 songs at issue in the case, for total of $1.5 million."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/the-first-p2p-case-to.ars

"It is Groundhog Day": Third Jammie Thomas P2P trial begins; ArsTechnica.com, 11/2/10

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; "It is Groundhog Day": Third Jammie Thomas P2P trial begins:

"The reference, to the Bill Murray film in which the main character continually repeats one particular day, makes particular sense in this case. Thomas-Rasset was the first of the RIAA's litigation targets to take her case all the way to a trial and a verdict, but Judge Davis has twice tossed the results. In the first trial, a bad jury instruction was to blame; in the second, the jury returned a shocking $1.92 million verdict that Davis slashed to $54,000, calling it "monstrous." Neither side was pleased, however, and the recording industry asked for yet another trial, this one on damages alone."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/third-jammie-thomas-p2p-trial-begins-it-is-groundhog-day.ars

Judge: Third trial against P2P user Jammie Thomas will go ahead; ArsTechnica.com, 10/22/10

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Judge: Third trial against P2P user Jammie Thomas will go ahead:

"The first file-swapper to take her copyright infringement case all the way to a verdict will have a remarkable third trial next month. Jammie Thomas-Rasset has fought the RIAA through four years, two trials, a name change, and a $1.92 million judgment; on November 2, she gets to do it again."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/judge-third-trial-against-p2p-user-jammie-thomas-will-go-ahead.ars

Judge Says Damages In Tenenbaum Case Were 'Unconstitutionally Excessive'; TechDirt.com, 7/9/10

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Judge Says Damages In Tenenbaum Case Were 'Unconstitutionally Excessive':

"It seems like the Joel Tenenbaum case is simply an echo on the Jammie Thomas case. Both lawsuits involved very flawed defendants who probably shouldn't have gone through with their fights against the RIAA. In both cases, juries awarded huge statutory damages awards to the record labels. In Thomas' case it was $1.92 million or $80,000 per song. In the Tenenbaum case, it was $675,000 or $22,500 per song. Even though both cases were what I considered to be "bad" cases (too much evidence that both Thomas and Tenenbaum were actually heavily involved in file sharing), both have used the rulings to challenge the statutory damages awards as being unconstitutional.. and now the judges in both cases have agreed.

As you probably recall, the judge in the Thomas case reduced the $1.92 million award to $54,000 (or $2,250 per song) and today comes the news that Judge Gertner in the Tenenbaum case has declared the original damages award to be "unconstitutionally excessive" and slashed the total by 90% down to $67,500. In both cases, the judges actually set the per song damages award down to $2,250. There were lots of questions when Judge Davis did this in the Jammie Thomas case if a judge could actually do that, and that's still being fought to some extent. It seems likely that, as with the Thomas case, the RIAA will appeal this particular ruling because it most certainly does not want a precedent on the books that can lower the statutory damages rate for copyright.

This could start to get very interesting. Both judges are clearly taking a stand that the actual statutory rates set by Congress are ridiculously high and totally out of proportion with the actions done by the defendants. There is definitely some precedent for ridiculously high damages awards being thrown out as unconstitutionally excessive... but not when it comes to statutory rates, where the courts have generally said Congress has great leeway to determine what is and what is not excessive. However, with two judges pointing out that a number within the range provided by Congress is excessive, it's setting up a potentially very important legal battle about the statutory damages associated with copyright.

The industry has always pushed for higher and higher damages, somehow believing that will act as a disincentive for infringing. Yet, there doesn't appear to be any evidence at all that it's working. Instead, such high damages have actually done the opposite. They've convinced many, many people of just how ridiculously unfair and out of touch copyright laws are. The general public can recognize that sharing a single file shouldn't lead to a fine of tens of thousands of dollars. It's so out of proportion with reality that they begin to question the overall setup of copyright law itself. The industry's focus on higher and higher copyright damages has been a major strategic mistake that has backfired. These rulings -- which the industry will fight tooth and nail -- might actually be a blessing in disguise for the industry. If the actual damages weren't so ridiculous, people probably wouldn't be so up in arms over copyright issues."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100709/11305410154.shtml

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:

Court Reduces ‘Shocking’ File Sharing Award; Wired.com, 1/22/10

David Kravets, Wired.com; Court Reduces ‘Shocking’ File Sharing Award:

"A federal judge on Friday reduced a $1.92 million file sharing verdict to $54,000 after concluding the award for infringing 24 songs was “shocking.”

A federal jury in June found Jammie Thomas-Rasset liable in what at the time was the nation’s only Recording Industry Association of America file sharing case against an individual to go to trial. The Minnesota federal jury dinged her $1.92 million for infringing 24 songs. She asked the judge to set aside or reduce that $80,000 per song in damages.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis agreed on Friday, and said the RIAA may have a retrial if it does not accept his ruling.

“The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music,” Davis wrote. “Moreover, although plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must bear some relation to actual damages.”

The decision came days after the Obama administration supported $675,000 in damages a jury levied against a Boston file sharer in the nation’s second and only other file sharing case against an individual to go to trial. Among other things, the administration said the large July award would “deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe they will go unnoticed.”

Davis added that $1.92 million in damages “for stealing 24 songs for personal use is simply shocking.”

The new damages amount to three times the minimum of $750 damages the Copyright Act allows. The maximum is $150,000 per infringement, at a judge or jury’s discretion.

Thomas-Rasset, now 32, said she doesn’t have the money to pay even that reduced judgment, and that her house in Brainerd, Minnesota is homesteaded and protected from a judgment. The mother of four said she is a “very low- to middle-income” earner who works for a local Native American tribe.

“It’s not like I have a money tree in the backyard,” she said during a brief telephone interview.

The RIAA said it was reviewing the decision and was not prepared to comment.

Here’s Thomas-Rasset’s original $1.92 million playlist.

The decision, if it survives, may not have much weight in the file sharing world.

More than a year ago, the record labels announced they were winding down their nearly 6-year-old litigation campaign against individuals and instead were lobbying internet service providers to adopt a program to disconnect music file sharers.

One case in Boston still on the books concerns Joel Tenenbaum, the nation’s only other individual to go to trial against the RIAA. Most of the 30,000 cases the RIAA brought against individuals were settled out of court for a few thousand dollars.

Among other things, he is urging the federal judge in his case to reduce the $675,000 July jury verdict to $22,500, the minimum of $750 for 30 tracks.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, who is presiding over Tenenbaum’s case, is not obligated to follow Judge Davis’ decision."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/judge-reduces-shocking-file-sharing-award/#ixzz0rXeYuqXF"