Movie Pirates flourish on Youtube
YouTube has always been a conduit for online movie and music piracy. Some copyright infringement...
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Google Drive remains a haven for movie piracy
Google ignores DMCA safe harbor requirements Writing about online piracy and Google is a bit like...
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Twitter sidesteps DMCA law ignoring notices sent via email
As many of you know all too well, successfully removing your pirated work from online sites is a...
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U.S. companies help piracy websites evade the law
U.S. based companies assist pirate websites by providing cover for their illegal piracy business while pocketing their own dirty money in the process.
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Kim Dotcom may be going to jail, but MEGA piracy still going strong
U.S. based companies assist these efforts by literally providing cover for their illegal piracy business while pocketing their own dirty money in the process.
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Google tricks search users to redirect Amazon Smile charity donations
Amazon.com offers its users a small way to give back to a favorite charity by using the Amazon Smile portal instead of the regular site. When I make purchase via Amazon, I’m happy to know that .5% of my purchase goes to a charity of a my choice. The key to remember, to have a donation made, is to login through the Smile portal.
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EU Moves Copyright into 21st Century while USA prefers to remain in the 20th
Unlike their counterparts in the U.S. who seem content with a creaky DMCA law more than 2 decades old, members of the European Council passed a directive to move copyright law into the digital age:
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Lumen database news
UPDATE: It seems that Lumen database has finally acknowledged that there is an issue and seen the light. Its operators have announced an important change, limiting access to actual infringing links. Per Torrent Freak:
In a nutshell, takedown notices presented in Lumen’s database will no longer list the precise URLs targeted by copyright holders. Instead, as the image below illustrates, the notices only list how many URLs were targeted at specific domains.
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YouTube continues to profit off the pain of others.
YouTube is a money machine for Google. While actual numbers are hard to come by, it’s estimated that the online video hub brings in upwards of $15 billion annually.With that much money at stake, it’s not surprising that its business model continues to put profits over people.
In 2015, following the on-air murder of a television reporter and her cameraman, gruesome videos of the event were quickly posted on YouTube with with ads alongside. I wrote a post about it at the time:
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EU Goes Where Others Fear to Tread on Copyright Reform
Excellent news out of the European Union, as contentious copyright reform directive (Copyright in the Digital Single Market) was recently approved by the European Council. While the agreement still has a couple more hurdles before it can become law, momentum seems to be moving in the right direction.
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Women working behind the scenes remain the exception in Hollywood
Hollywood is known for making sequels, but unfortunately there’s one refrain that grows increasingly stale with each passing year– the narrative that women continue to remain woefully underrepresented behind-the-scenes according to two studies just released. Both San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film annual Celluloid Ceiling report and USC Annenberg’s Inclusion in the Director’s Chair provide evidence of this discouraging tale.
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Piracy’s scofflaws – All roads lead through Cloudflare?
The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was signed into law nearly 20 years ago….yet here we are today, same old tired law but with an online ecosystem vastly different from what existed 2 decades ago. Despite this, no one in Congress seems in any great hurry to update law and as they drag their feet, creative artists continue to pay the price.
For creators trying to safeguard their work from online theft this leaves them with only one option, the DMCA takedown notice. This antiquated process works ok in very limited instances, but for most filmmakers (and musicians) dealing with a large volume of infringements, it’s like using an umbrella to stay dry beneath Niagara Falls. Not only is it inadequate, but the truth is– it’s a joke. Why? Because the DMCA’s safe harbor provision provides loopholes allowing many of tech’s piracy enablers–U.S. based companies play a significant role in allowing pirates entrepreneurs to pimp their stolen content across the globe–to sidestep any legal liability and happily accept the tainted profits filling their cash drawers.
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