Warner Music issued a DMCA takedown notice against one of Lawrence Lessigs presentations that was posted online.  Here is that presentation, reposted.  I recommend watching every minute of it, maybe you’ll learn a thing or two:

I want to know who at Warner Music thought it was a good idea to assault the founder of Creative Commons, and one of the most renowned free culture activists in the world about copyright policy.  Surely a Stanford University Law professor, board member of the Software Freedom Law Center and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation would know a thing or two about fair use.  And this is fair use.

Consider the irony in this.

I can’t help but scream out of sheer frustration with the dictators of read-only culture.  Situation like this, this and this, don’t help those feelings.

Day one of the trial against the Pirate Bay saw the lead prosecutor Håkan Roswal, who claimed to be an expert in computer crime, fail to start his powerpoint presentation.  though a trivial situation, it’s a fun example of just how out-of-touch the prosecution is.

The defendents, Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, and Fredrik Neij, who have been extremely confident that they’ll win the trial, all pleaded not-guilty.

The charges amount to assisting in copyright infringement on a commercial-scale, and the plaintiffs (Warner Bros., MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal), are claiming thirteen million dollars in damages.

Right off the bat, day two of the trial went very well for the accused.  According to Fredrik Neij, the prosecution misunderstood how BitTorrent works, and he pointed out that Roswal couldn’t prove the torrents presented as evidence the day before were in fact using The Pirate Bay as a tracker.  The prosecution had to alter it’s charge of ‘assisting copyright infringement’ to read ‘assisting in making available infringing material’.

The trial, set to begin on February 16th is the culmination of a two-year investigation into The Pirate Bay by Swedish police. The Pirate Bay stands accused of assisting in copyright infringement, and the plaintiffs are claiming over $100 million in damages.

The Pirate Bay is expressly confident that they will win the trial:

“In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here for many more.”

you can follow the trial here.

New documents revealing ACTA details have been leaked, and there is some good news.  But let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

Apparently, The United States and Japan want the possibility for criminal sanctions to be brought against any commercial-scale copyright and/or trademark infringement, even if it has “no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain.”

This is certainly targeting sites that use a P2P protocol for sharing files, like The Pirate Bay, or Gnutella.

Next up, a proposal that would impose criminal penalties against unauthorized ‘camcording’ of ‘audiovisual’ works:

Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied against any person who, without authorization of the holder of copyright or related rights in a motion picture or other audiovisual work, knowingly uses an audiovisual recording device to transmit or make a copy of or transmits to the public the motion picture or other audiovisual work, or any part thereof, from a performance of the motion picture or other audiovisual work in a motion picture exhibition facility open to the public.

So, basically, you would be fined if you recorded a movie with a camcorder.  Notice it does not mention specifically a theater setting.  I can imagine a situation similar to the Stephanie Lenz debacle here.  This next one goes all the way back to the first leak of the ACTA proposal, and is perhaps one of the most Orwellian policies in ACTA:  border measures.

With a view to establishing whether an intellectual property right has been infringed under national law and in accordance with national provisions on the protection of personal data, commercial and industrial secrecy and professional and administrative confidentiality, the competent authorities have detained infringing goods, shall inform the right holder of the names and addresses of the consignor, importer, exporter, or consignee, and provide to the right holder a description of the goods, the quantity of the goods, and, if known, the country of origin and name and addresses of producers of the goods.

‘Competent authorities’ would have the right to seize any material in transit(at the airport/checkpoint/dock) that is, or that contains, Intellectual Property infringement.  And according to Law Professor Michael Geist, who is somewhat privy to the information in these leaks, they can keep that material for up to one year before releasing it, and they only need an accusation by the Rights Holder (the ones powerful enough to enforce this policy, corporations) to warrant the seizure of your property.

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Manuel Medina Ortega, a member of the European Parliament for the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party, has released his report on piracy(PDF). His wish list is very similiar to that of the RIAA/IFPI ACTA wishlist.

Number 31, under “Implementation of rights”, Medina calls for:

“the setting up in the individual Member States of administrative authorities responsible, on instruction from rightholders and using a graduated approach, for the enforcement of copyright on the internet;”

That’s a fancy way of saying he wants a 3-strikes law enforcible across all countries in the EU. Keep in mind that no proof is needed for an ISP to disconnect a customer, just the word of the rightsholder (which will almost always be a corporation with an army of lawyers begging for the chance to take every penny you’ve ever earned, just because you downloaded a single mp3 from the Pirate Bay).

Number 35, under “Implementation of rights”:

“Encourages the use of work identification and recognition technologies with a view to distinguishing more easily between legal and pirated products;”

Here, Medina is endorsing digital rights management systems. It would seem also that Medina want to criminalize all P2P usage, infringing or not:

(Under “Sanctions and the protection of copyright and related rights holders”) “So the activity of internet users who send files to their peers must be regarded as an illegal act of communication to the public without the possibility of exceptions being applied.”

Under the “Explanatory Statement”, in big bold text:

The nature of copyright must not be allowed to change as a result of technological progress

The above heading goes against logic in every way.

The European Parliament has voted against 3 strikes proposals twice before, but this report is being touted as a much more reasonable approach to copyright law. I don’t see that.

What’s the point of youtube if not for remix?

Some examples of the censorship:

here

here

here