Tag: DMCA

For those of us who believe that the Internet should remain an open, democratic and non-discriminatory platform, with few exceptions, the last two years have brought a steady stream of bad news from Down Under. First, there were rumblings that Australia was seeking to implement a "three strikes" policy toward those accused of online filesharing. Next, New Zealand came close to instituting its own three strikes mandate, though thanks to the efforts of activists, that deeply-flawed law was struck down at the last minute. Finally, after a number of previous, failed attempts, the Australian government announced that it plans to mandate the use of real-time filtering technologies on public ISPs sometime during the next year.

Just when it seemed like no one in the Australian and New Zealand governments appreciated the damaging effects of such policies, an Australian federal court judge has ruled that the ISP iiNet is not responsible for the actions of its subscribers. In the landmark ruling (full text here), which will likely have ramifications in the U.S. and elsewhere, the judge rebuffs Hollywood's attempt to require iiNet to act as a copyright cop, dealing a blow to three strikes in the process. Let's take a closer look.

Yesterday, the MPAA and RIAA made a giant political misstep by refusing to participate in a debate about three strikes. In doing so, they exposed the public and a number of US policy makers to policy that would strip Internet subscribers of their constitutional due process rights.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended this year’s State of the Net Conference beautifully orchestrated by Tim Lordan and his crew at the Internet Caucus Advisory Committee.

Although overshadowed by Joe Biden’s big party for his Copyright buddies, the good folks at the House Judiciary Committee staged their own holiday party for Hollywood. Since “p2p” is now passe, the Judiciary’s Secret Santa brought Hollywood a whole new villain to attack in the name of piracy, streaming media. (Hey everyone, remember when ‘streaming media’ was the good way to get content online because it could be protected unlike that evil peer-2-peer stuff so Hollywood pretended they loved streaming media so they could outlaw peer-2-peer? Boy, we were so young back then . .

In a significant shift from its past position, the U.S. government yesterday expressed its willingness to consider a treaty on limitations and exceptions to copyright for the benefit of the blind, visually impaired, and other reading disabled persons as one of the options to address problems faced by this community. The statement was made on the second day of deliberations at the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights (SCCR), of WIPO at its ongoing 19th session. The delegations of Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay had introduced a treaty proposal in May this year at the SCCR’s 18th session. As I reported then, the U.S. government had avoided taking any position on the treaty, contending that copyright was just one hurdle facing the blind and there were many other issues that needed to be solved.

A new PKTV series, “Oh Hollywood!” focusses on … well, it’s kind of self explanatory. In this first episode we highlight the recent goings on in Coshocton, a small rural town in Ohio, that provides free WiFi in public areas in the community. It’s a service that’s used by citizens, businesses, and even the local police. Last week, Sony Pictures Entertainment, a Hollywood movie studio, threateningly notified the city that allegedly someone may have illegally downloaded one its movies. And so, the city’s free public Internet access, used by hundreds, was shut down.

All together, now … Oh Hollywood!

Copyright owners have often used the DMCA’s notice and take down procedure to silence criticism instead of preventing copyright infringement. A recent DMCA take down involving the group Yes Men is yet another example of this phenomenon. On October 22, a website created by the Yes Men which parodied the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s stance on a climate change bill was taken down pursuant to a DMCA notice.

The Yes Men is a group that exposes corporate greed by posing as corporate representatives and pulling off the “world’s most outrageous pranks.” Their most recent prank that caused the ire of the Chamber involved the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill. The Chamber opposes the bill even though its decision to do so has been controversial.

In our last interview in this series, we meet Francesca Coppa (pronounced cope-a). Francesca is many things — English professor, author, feminist. She’s also a vidder of long-standing and provides a fascinating glimpse into how the underground culture of women in video grew from working with tapes to the current digital environment — with all of the dangers and opportunities that change entails.

Of course, fair use is central to what she does, and that narrative runs through our chat with her.

This is the last of four interviews, for now at least. We hope you have enjoyed them. We realize they are a little long for such things, but we think they are well worth your time in helping to realize that “creators” are not restricted to big companies, or to certain California locales.

Jonny McIntosh calls his site rebellious pixels. There is certainly a lot of rebellion there, but also a lot of painstaking work pulling images from different videos and putting them into a coherent narrative with seamless imagery.

One video that caught my eye mashed up the 2008 presidential debates with a popular dance contest show. Another, a commentary on stalking, combined two popular vampire worlds. Fair use is essential to each of them.

Video remixers are on the front lines of the battle between new media technologies and impeding copyright laws that threaten to obstruct the public space for popular culture critique. Public spaces such as YouTube are teeming with meticulously crafted and articulate video remixes that make powerful arguments, deconstructing social myths and challenging dominant media messages. These remixes reflect the participatory nature of both pop and remix cultures, but their future is in jeopardy due to corporate claims of copyright infringement, DMCA takedown notices and an inability to distinguish between an illegal use of proprietary content and a fair use of one.

Yesterday, as part of our reply comments in the FCC's National Broadband Plan proceeding, we released our latest whitepaper, "Forcing the Net Through a Sieve: Why Copyright Filtering is not a Viable Solution for U.S. ISPs" (PDF link). Recently, the content industry has been ramping up its efforts to promote ISP-level copyright filtering as a practical solution to the problem of unlawful online filesharing. Given the imperfect, controversial nature of filtering technology, we thought it was time to take a close look at copyright filtering and the effects that it might have on the Internet ecosystem. What did we discover? As our report states, not only will copyright filtering be ineffective--it will cause a great deal of harm to users, creators, innovators, businesses and the economy and will undermine the goals of the National Broadband Plan.