Tag: Piracy

A lot of the questions about ACTA are raised by reading between the lines of what little is known about the proposed agreement. Is the term “border measures” a reference to searching individual consumers’ devices at airports? Is a reference to “safeguards” for ISPs to “encourage ISPs to cooperate with right holders” an attempt to shift the balance of rights and responsibilities under DMCA safe harbors?

These are some of the most pressing questions that are raised when it comes to ACTA, but they’re certainly not the only ones. While in a situation as opaque as this one, it’s critical to seek out what may be intentionally hidden in the unstated implications of the language, as well as the unintended consequences of broad language.

But that doesn’t mean that the face value of the language that’s there should be ignored, either.

Over the course of the last year, we've seen an intense, international lobbying effort on the part of the entertainment industry to craft policies that would boot alleged filesharers off of the Internet. The folks over at TechDirt have been keeping a close watch on this front and point to legislation and negotiations in the UK, France, Australia and Canada that would institute a "three strikes" rule. As proposed, this three strikes policy would require ISPs to filter their networks for copyrighted content and send out notices of infringement to users suspected of engaging in filesharing--effectively turning ISPs into "copyright cops". As implied by the three strikes moniker, users would receive two written warnings before having their contract with the ISP terminated outright, upon receipt of the third.

Luckily, the EU Parliament saw fit to put an end to this nonsense last week, passing an amendment that prohibits member states from instituting three strikes policies, or "…measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of Internet access," as the EU Parliament calls them. Thanks to this amendment, the threat of a three strikes policy in Europe seems to have passed. But here in the U.S. of A, three strikes isn't just alive and well--it's already being implemented, despite the notable absence of a policy mandate.

Today, the Senate approved an amended version of its version of IP enforcement bill (now named the PRO-IP bill to parallel the enforcement bill in the House). PK’s press release is here.

As amended, the bill retained its increased forfeiture penalties for copyright infringement and media bootlegging, meaning that any number of multipurpose devices—even those not owned by the infringer—could get caught up in the net of forfeiture penalties.

Late yesterday, the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce sent a letter to Senators Leahy and Specter opposing S. 3325, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008. Specifically, the letter says that the agencies are “deeply concerned” that

the proposed legislation will undermine existing intellectual property enforcement efforts by diminishing the effective use of limited criminal enforcement resources and creating unnecessary bureaucracy. It will also improperly micro-manage the internal organization of the Executive Branch.

The letter targets Titles I and IV of the bill as most offensive. Title I, as we have written about numerous times, would give the Justice Department authority to pursue civil lawsuits. Plain and simple, the Justice Department does not want to sped its valuable resources (or your tax dollars) to bring such suits.

Several weeks ago, PK and EFF asked the US Trade Representative to turn over documents on ACTA, the international agreement on counterfeiting that still hasn’t been made public yet. After some back-and-forth, and even after narrowing the scope of the request, we still have yet to receive any documents from USTR, as required under the Freedom of Information Act.

So yesterday, the two groups filed suit against the USTR to compel them to process the request and turn over the documents.

Congress is still trying to figure out how to handle the Internet. All too often, PK is in the position of defending online innovators from higher legal standards of secondary liability—holding a service provider or product manufacturer liable for the misdeeds of the users. Now, we’re starting to see more of this kind of secondary liability applied to online sales of physical goods. Recently, bills in both the House and Senate are trying to deputize online retail markets (like eBay) and turn them into police.

Last week, Wired's Threat Level blog ran a great feature, which takes a close look at the RIAA's ongoing legal campaign against filesharers on the fifth anniversary of the first RIAA suits. Since then, the RIAA's campaign has expanded to include a whopping 30,000 lawsuits, nearly all of which have been or will be settled out of court. While the Copyright Act allows for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement (i.e. per song), the RIAA has been generous enough to settle most cases out of court for a few thousand dollars--thereby ensuring that most defendants choose a quick cash settlement over costly legal fees and months of litigation, regardless of guilt. Obviously, the RIAA has managed to raise quite a bit of money for its own pursuits through this legal campaign (not a single cent of which has gone to the artists the RIAA claims that it's working to protect, mind you). But what else has the music industry lobbying group accomplished during the last five years?

For the second straight year, I addressed the EDUCAUSE/Cornell Institute for Computer Policy and Law, held at Cornell’s beautiful campus. The Institute gathers 50+ higher education information technology (IT) professionals – usually campus CTOs, librarians and legal counsels, and teaches them the substantive particulars of IT policy issues and advises them how to be strong advocates.

Consumer rights advocates and media companies have been fighting over digital rights management (DRM) software for many years now. In the age of the closing digital media store, the negative effects of DRM are more apparent than ever before.

Just a few days ago Yahoo! announced it would be closing its music store, taking the authentication server for its DRM offline in September. This will leave its users without access to the content they believed they bought once they: switch computers, alter their operating system, or try to copy their Yahoo! store music to an MP3 player. Luckily for Yahoo! customers the company has said it will compensate them for music they bought.

On Monday, Judge Richard Sullivan of the Southern District of New York ruled resoundingly for eBay in its defense against Tiffany’s various claims of trademark infringement. Coming as it does in the wake of eBay’s $63 million loss to Louis Vuitton in France, this decision stands as an unambiguous breath of sanity. It’s great to see that France’s nakedly protectionist, moral rights-influenced, lack-of-first-sale-doctrine decision has been quarantined to France for the time being. As Judge Sullivan affirmed, “The law clearly protects secondary markets in authentic goods.”

The Court detailed the myriad ways in which eBay extended itself in trying to accommodate Tiffany by removing listings featuring counterfeit Tiffany merchandise.