Posts under Tag: news
Torrent Freak had an article over the weekend that helps to highlight the insanity that is the current state of IP law enforcement. They bring up the excellent point that law should not arbitrarily cease simply because it becomes easier and cheaper to infringe upon your rights.
“When I write a letter to somebody, I and I alone choose whether I identify myself in the letter inside the envelope, on the outside of the envelope, both, or neither. It is my prerogative completely whether I choose to communicate anonymously or not. This is a right we have in analog communications and in law; it is perfectly reasonable to demand that the law applies online as well.”
The author is correct of course. Why should our rights end simply because where real world infringement of our rights could be costly and time consuming computer based right infringement can often be done cheaply and quickly. In fact it is worse with online infringement as it can easily be harder to detect. If one wanted they could easily push the argument further to bandwidth throttling on a port by port basis. If I wanted to send mail I can send letters and packages of all sorts of sizes. Increasingly we’re seeing ISPs throttling certain ports and claiming that this is their right to do so. If you have an account that grants you a certain bit rate should you not be the one to choose how to use that bandwidth?
While the USPS may be having financial difficulties directly due to online communications it is still the gold standard in terms of privacy rights for communications. We would all be well advised to not let the rights we have online be stripped away. The right to privacy is one that many people have fought and died to protect and to simply let it fade away would be a disservice to everyone that has ever struggled to make it a reality.
Added Mar 16, 2011, Under:
Usenet
Will throttling internet user’s data help stop piracy? According to Daniel Castro’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, it could be part of the solution to stopping online piracy. As part of his testimony he referred to a 2009 study by The Institute for Policy Innovation that states “U.S. recording industry and related industries lost over $3.5 billion to online piracy”. This study like many others makes the flawed assumption that each pirated song is a lost sale. Obviously this is not and never will be the case. Fundamentally when people spend their hard earned money on music they want to show their support to the artist to allow them to continue to create music, and despite what recording industry groups want you to believe artists are making more then ever before. The Movie industry in 2010 had it’s highest revenue dollar amount ever. How can this possibly be? Does it not fly in the face of logic?
The problem that paid content has both in the US and around the globe is not one of piracy but of a failing business model. The current pricing structures in place for both movies and music are based on a single universal price and limited physical media. If one was to buy a $15 movie in the US and a $15 movie in Russia it’s the same $15 amount correct? Not quite according to a report by the Social Science Research Council. That $15 in Russia is a much larger piece of their income and would be the equivalent of a $75 movie in the US. Many corporations are not interested in bringing content to an affordable price for potential international customers. Instead, they’re simply trying to protect their premium clients, those in countries with the per capita income of being able to pay these inflated rates.
The solution to the “problem” of piracy is to cease seeing that as the problem and instead focus on the real issues, that of the failing business model and a re-evaluation of intellectual property law. Part of Article 1 Section 8 of the US constitution states “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;”. Limited times. The Copyright Act of 1790 was for 14 years, with option to renew for another 14 years and applied to maps, charts and books. However back then Corporations were not seen as persons under the law; now that they are these “persons” have no natural lifespan to end. So now those of us that live in the United States are left with legal entities that keep ideas under lock and key ad infinitum. This was not the intent nor letter of the law. We have let corporations become people, and people that live forever at that. We need to let these ideas have a limited time frame for the creator to have a monopoly on, we need to cease seeing corporations as persons under the law, and we need the RIAA and MPAA to take a better look at the finance sheets and figure out that they’re still making money hand over foot.
BREIN head Tim Kuik claims that FTD supporters are behind the DDOS attack on the BREIN website. He claims that the timing between the FTD takedown and the attack make the culprits obvious. Does it really? Certainly the timing is close but suspicions and conjecture do not equate to facts and BREIN hasn’t been all that good at making friends lately. Not only have they gone after FTD, but also the Swan website and a number of other Usenet sites recently.
DDOS attacks are not the answer however. Arnoud Engelfriet the legal council of FTD in the recent BREIN case states that “Executing DDoS attacks only strengthens the image that filesharing or downloading is a criminal activity, which does not help the cause.” He is right of course. Mixing a legitimate debate of intellectual property laws and an illegitimate attack on a website can easily and quite quickly taint the worthy topic at hand.
There is another possibility for the source of the DDOS of course, BREIN itself. With the history of their heavy handed tactics in the past would it be out of the realm of possibility that they have done this to themselves to continue to muddy the waters between reasonable debate and illegal activity? I would argue that it is not only within the realm of possibility but within the style of their playbook. To look back and find their most recent illegal activity on shutting down a service one only needs to go back to an incident in January. Where they took down sites who’s legitimacy and legality were beyond reproach even by BREIN’s standards. Either way it’s high time BREIN begins acting like the legitimate organization it claims to be.
TorrentFreak is reporting that our favorite Netherlands anti-piracy group, BREIN, is forcing the shutdown of numerous Usenet and NZB sites. This list includes: nzbkingdom.net, Twilightnzb.com, Furiousnzb.net, Shreknzb.com, Team-Casanova.com, Crosspost.nl, Cobra-team.nl and FTAClub.net. They of course managed to get some leverage with the court win over FTD (all this despite the fact that only 13 of the more then 1/2 million FTD users reported and uploaded infringing content, and even then who’s to say these anonymous persons didn’t actually work for BREIN). According to lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet
“BREIN is using the FTD verdict to threaten other sites into closing. Even though the verdict clearly said downloading is legal and ‘facilitating’ downloading is legal as well, BREIN is now saying that sites that provide NZB files are facilitating illegal downloading.”
It seems to me that BREIN is overstepping its bounds, something it is quite fond of doing. In an separate article TorrentFreak is reporting that BREIN has gone ahead and taken down the site known as Swan. Interestingly, neither the recent FTD ruling nor any other recent event has given them the legal authority to do so and the fine people that run Swan not only managed to seize back their servers but are also looking at suing BREIN. It’s about time someone hit them back. While there is certainly a debatable to be had over intellectual property a few things are painfully clear:
- Current intellectual property laws do not work in an environment where a single work can appear in multiple formats all of which can easily be shared across the globe in any number of ways.
- Being a rights holder or representative of the rights holders does not give you a free pass to do whatever you want wherever you want.
- Rights holders need to re-evaluate their monitization of the work product and investigate alternate means of making money.
- You can make money on free and can compete against free.
Perhaps it’s time the companies that supposedly represent the result these creative industries themselves get creative.
Canada’s Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) very nearly killed the interweb for Canadian consumers. They originally had ruled that independent ISPs that rent bandwidth from the big boys in the field (Rodgers, Bell Canada, etc.) would now have to follow the pricing structures of the company they rent that bandwidth from. This would have brought monthly caps from approximately 200 GB to 25 GB. Now those with accounts at the big networks are already on these metered accounts but the little ISPs at least gave the Canadian consumers some amount of choice. The original ruling would have caused significant harm to high bandwidth services like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon. There are plenty of services out there that spend the proper $ to upkeep their pipes (Easynews.com and Usenetserver.com just upped their retention to 860+ days for example) and I don’t know why the Canadian Bells can’t keep their networks substantial enough to feed video to their users.
While the CRTC ruling is currently delayed and not overturned the Industry Minister Tony Clement has said that if they don’t change it he will. This of course is a good thing as the ruling was decidedly anti-consumer. As the way we consume media changes consumers are able to access more and more options on how they want their media delivered to them. This seems to be leading into a familiar clash of content creator and content provider. Services like Netflix and Hulu are offering consumers a way out of the standard cable TV distribution method and this fact terrifies the cable companies, and for a good reason. They’re seeing their subscriptions fall for the first time in… well first time ever. So they’re doing everything they can to maintain the near monopolies that they enjoy. The recent Comcast NBCUniversal buyout is an example of that. A distribution company buying a content company. This gives them a distinct advantage over not only other media companies but over consumers. If forced metered internet had been or becomes successful in Canada it won’t be long till companies in the US begin doing the exact same thing to bring viewership away from alternative options back to their standard cable networks. Once that happens cable subscribers in the US will be trapped in a world of escalating fees. As for me all of this just seems exhausting so I’m going to watch something on Netflix instant… while I still can.
There are tons of Verizon subscribers out there just itching for an iPhone. Those of you that fall in this group have suffered from numerous rumors about the iPhone being made as a CDMA phone only to have the dates pushed or for the rumors to be false. I as much as anyone else do eventually expect to see a CDMA phone, but beware of the CDMA spec as it is likely to cripple the iPhone for all of you. As it is right now CDMA cannot do dual voice and data. That is to say that many of the things that make the phone useful (looking up directions while on the phone with someone for example) cannot be multitasked.
Of course they are working on a solution to this but until they figure it out Apple may not want to release a CDMA version of the phone. Apple is a stickler when it comes to meeting user experiences and if the dual voice/wireless access solution isn’t found soon I expect the phone will be delayed. As always there’s a good discussion in misc.phone.mobile.iphone, check it out!
If you’re a fan of URL shorteners that use the .ly domain keep your eyes open. The vb.ly site has been taken down and the domain registration revoked by NIC.ly the registrar of all .ly domains. It seems that because the .ly domains are controlled by the Libyan government and that government follows Islamic/Sharia Law that any site they deem to have content that falls outside of the allowed morality of these laws is subject to be smacked down. This of course is a problem given that many of these URL shorteners link to adult content certainly beyond what Sharia Law would find palatable. Even popular sites like bit.ly are at risk despite their terms of use that don’t allow for infringing or pornographic content.
This of course can be an issue when you let a government determine for you what is and what isn’t appropriate. For now it looks like people may need to think about using a shortener that doesn’t have a .ly domain.
Have you heard about S. 3804: Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA)? No? Well, if you’re a fan of the great firewall of China and censorship in general you’ll love this one. It comes in the guise of preventing infringing activities but what it will really do is make it possible for sites to be blocked from US access. What kind of sites could be blocked if it passes? How about YouTube? Yes, the Google owned site that has given many of us lols would be fair game if this passes. Under current law because they follow the DMCA takedown procedure YouTube is not liable for any infringing content that its visitors may provide. If COICA passes all that has to happen is that interested parties convince a court that the site is being used for infringing activity (despite the fact that it would likely be taken down by YouTube under DMCA) and block the entire site in the US.
But that’s through a court system where sites at least have a fighting chance to protect themselves you may say, but wait. All it takes is an order from the attorney general to get a site added to the blacklist. ISPs will be required to block all sites on the list made by court order and be given immunity for blocking all sites on the list made by the attorney general. Given the immunity I would expect the number of ISPs blocking those on the second list to be hovering somewhere around 99.99%-100%.
But won’t there be ways that users could still get to these sites? Of course there will always be ways around things like this, but at what cost to the US? Currently the US is the hub for most of the internet. A lot of traffic flows through our tubes and many domain names are registered in the US. If this passes it won’t be long till the traffic slows down and people and companies begin hosting their sites outside of the US costing thousands of jobs in the process.
If you’re interested in learning more check out the EFF, Demand Progress, Tech Dirt, and sign the Demand Progress petition as well.
Apparently the UN doesn’t share Stephen Hawking’s view about contact with extra terrestrial life and has appointed Mazlan Othman as the new Space Ambassador. Now I’m not sure what the fine folks in alt.aliens.they-are-here think about this development, but I for one think we need to have our bases covered. Sure its highly unlikely that any species capable of interstellar flight would want to talk to us for any reason beyond strip mining our planet. Sure its less likely now that we’ll be found as radio transmissions are of less power and won’t penetrate as far into space as they had in the past. There is always the chance that if they exist and want to be nice they could be. Besides you could always vote for Kodos if they take over the planet.
It appears as if the French anti-piracy body Hadopi has begun sending notices to French ISPs to the tune of 10,000 IPs a day. It will then ramp up to 150,000 per day. This number is mind boggling when you compare it to the 28 IPs that Time Warner has to give up per month. Don’t worry though given that France has a population of just over 65 million it will take a whole 437 days to get everyone their first notice and in about 3 1/2 yrs everyone in France should have their third notice. After that nobody in France will be able to use the internet.
Per the law the providers need to identify the alleged infringers’ names, addresses, emails and phone numbers. If they’re unable or unwilling to do so within 8 days they risk a fine of 1,500 euros per day for each and every unidentified IP-address. The 3 Strikes law that is in place in France is quite extreme in that unlike most 3 strike laws you don’t need to be convinced of file sharing you only need to be accused so while the idea of an entire country being offline is obviously absurd its the end result if the current law stays as is without any pushback from the ISPs or public on their elected officials. It is unlikely that Hadopi will actually decrease piracy… that is until the entire nation is offline.
