by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Politics, Tech
Piracy apologists would have us believe that it’s actually the content creators who are to blame when their movies, music and books are pirated. The rhetoric is always the same old, same old–a stale mantra of “outdated business models” and blame the victim verbiage.
This predictable tripe reemerged today on a new website called PiracyData.org that published (splashy but false) new data that supposedly supports the idea that piracy is Hollywood’s fault. According to a story in today’s Washington Post, the site was created by members of a libertarian “think tank” called the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a software engineer:
Piracydata.org was created by two tech policy researchers at the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank, and by Matt Sherman, a software engineer based in New York. The team’s leader, Jerry Brito, says he got the idea for the site after a hearing in which major content holders criticized Google for failing to do enough to combat piracy. That criticism came despite the fact that Google has taken a number of steps to prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted works.
It should be noted that Brito’s Twitter account links to page on the Mercatus Center’s website featuring a book he co-authored, “Copyright Unbalanced, From Incentive to Excess.” Hmmm, not exactly a neutral party. On piracydata.org he and his co-authors posed this question:
Do people turn to piracy when the movies they want to watch are not available legally? We’re building a dataset to help answer that question.
The single web page includes a large graphic listing the week’s top ten torrented downloads and highlights the fact the finding the movies via legit sources online is difficult, if not impossible. Their takeaway? Piracy is the fault of the distributors, not online thieves. Too bad their original graphic (and data) contained errors–a fact belatedly pointed out by the Washington Post’s Timothy B. Lee in his story which featured the provocative headline, “Here’s why Hollywood should blame itself for its piracy problems.” Lee updated his piece (and changed his headline):
Correction: The original data supplied to us by PiracyData.org was inaccurate. It showed 1 movie available for rental and 4 available for purchase. In fact, 3 are available for rental and 6 are available for purchase. We regret the error…
It’s a shame Lee didn’t also disclose his former ties to the libertarian Cato Institute and Google.
In a statement, the MPPA added , “More than half of the films they cite are in fact available to stream or download, including films they claim are not,” Their spokesman also pointed out that the popular series “The Walking Dead” was pirated 500,000 times within 16 hours even though it was available for free steaming via AMC’s website.
One would think researchers working at an institution like George Mason University would be a tad more careful to verify their findings before posting them on the web…or maybe not. Perhaps accuracy was left on the cutting room floor in favor of a more pernicious agenda. To understand what I mean it’s worth taking a harder look at the Mercatus Center and its mission.
…Our mission is to generate knowledge and understanding of the institutions that affect the freedom to prosper and to find sustainable solutions that overcome the barriers preventing individuals from living free, prosperous, and peaceful lives.
Ironic that their mission includes the phrase “freedom to prosper.” I guess that applies to prosperous thieves like Kim Dotcom, and not those who make their livings creating content (films, music, books, and more). Piracydata.org’s founders seem to take umbrage at the the ongoing criticism directed toward Google for it’s lack of accountability and transparency regarding its role in profiting from and enabling online theft. Apparently the site’s founders aren’t offended by the fact that Google has made millions off stolen and counterfeit products over the years.
It’s too bad that piracydata.org isn’t more transparent about its sugar daddy. Like many of the astro-turf anti-copyright entities this one’s tentacles can be traced back to Google, the supposedly aggrieved party whose persecution by anti-piracy advocates that inspired the site’s creation in the first place. Brito makes no bones of his allegiance to Google’s position and was quoted in Politico story saying:
“When movies are unavailable, illegal sources may be the most relevant search results…Despite what the content industry might like to see, search engines are just telling it like it is.”
The Mercatus Center was founded in 1978 by the Richard Fink, who currently serves as an executive vice president and a member of the board of directors for Koch Industries, Inc. He also happens to lead the firm’s lobbying operations in Washington. The center receives 54% of its funding from foundations and according to sourcewatch.org donors include the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council, aka ALEC. What Silicon Valley tech giant is active in promoting ALEC’s agenda? Google is, at least according to this story published on the Daily Beast this past August:
The American Legislative Exchange Council once faced a backlash for its support of Stand Your Ground and voter ID laws, losing Coca-Cola and Kraft as members. Now the advocacy group is working with companies such as Google, Facebook, and Yelp, and taking more civil libertarian stances on technology issues than it has in the past…
…ALEC’s communications and technology task force, which includes representatives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo. (The first two companies have not previously been reported to be involved with ALEC and have not responded to requests for comment.)
Google does mention its cozy relationship with the libertarian mission on its public policy page:
Our U.S. Public Policy and Government Affairs team provides support to a number of independent third-party organizations whose federally-focused work intersects in some way with technology and Internet policy. While this list is continually evolving, some examples of these organizations are: … Mercatus Center…
Given Google’s link to the Mercatus Center’s funding (and its libertarian philosophy) is it any wonder their new astro-turf site blames big, bad Hollywood for piracy instead of the thieves who steal and monetize its movies. Piracy is flourishing not because of Hollywood’s failure, but because criminals can make money monetizing stolen content.
Piracydata.org’s data dump is clearly yet another attempt by Google, and its stealth lobbyists (dressed as academics) to muddy the debate and undermine the rights of content creators. Dueling “studies” created using lobbyist’s cash is nothing new—but please, at least be honest about who’s funding the research OK? That would really be “telling it like it is.”
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Piracy, Publishing
Late last month ad industry executives from around the country attended the annual Advertising Week convention in New York. Included among the events was a panel “Digital Media Value Under Attack: It’s Worse than You Thought.” Nebulous title aside, it was basically a discussion focusing on the role that advertising plays in supporting online piracy. Rick Cotton, NBCUniversal’s Senior Counselor for IP Protection, pretty much summed it up when pointed out that, “No one has asked the blunt question of whether you want your ad associated with a pirate site…Advertisers should not want their ads to be in that environment. It’s getting more risky to be in business with criminal websites.”
Bob Liodice, CEO of ANA (Association of National Advertisers) agreed and suggested the industry needs to be accountable for its role in monetizing piracy.
“It makes us all shake our heads, wondering how we can wrap our arms around this. We have theft going on here.” Liodice believes that one problem is that no one has taken “ownership” of the piracy problem. “We have to create a level of collaboration in order for the [advertising] industry to own the issue.” Liodice stressed that collaboration has to be “systematized” and that the industry has to make it “personal.”
I know it’s only been a couple of weeks, but the advertising industry has been aware of the problem for a long time and yet nothing changes. Despite lip-service to the contrary and July’s White House’s announcementt of a much-hyped–but essentially toothless–anti-piracy “best practices” pact by online ad servers Google, Microsoft, Yahoo AOL and others, the sad fact is that advertisements from major American companies continue to adorn (and make money for) pirate web pages.
Below is just a sampling of ads that popped up when I looked for (and found) pirated streams of a recent indie film “White Frog.”
Why is it still acceptable for online advertisers to get away with this? Why is their money still filling pirate coffers at the expense of content creators? Online ad service providers and their clients seem to have no difficulty fine-tuning technology to sniff out web user’s product preferences. Why can’t they sniff out pirate pages and block their ads from appearing there? Do the head honchos at Snickers or USA Today know that their logos are plastered across stolen goods? Do they care? Why isn’t Disney, an entertainment giant, making sure that their dollars don’t end up in pirate pockets?
I can’t really think of any excuse for these major brands to be in the business of paying pirates to promote their products. Clearly the powers that be don’t care enough to demand change. For them, it’s all about the money, morals be damned…
For content creators whose work is routinely stolen and monetized by others perhaps its time to really pay attention. I know I won’t be putting snickers in any trick or treater’s plastic pumpkin this Halloween.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
[repostus]
The Continuing Rise of Piracy and You (via
Plagiarism Today)
Last week, NetNames released a study about the size of the piracy universe and it painted a bleak picture about both the amount of copyright infringement taking place and the growth of it. The study looked at three regions, North America, Europe and…
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by Ellen Seidler | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Copyright, Piracy, Publishing
Ad industry executives were out in force this week at the annual “Advertising Week” convention in New York City. Not surprisingly, the issue of digital piracy’s link to advertising dollars was raised during a panel discussion “Digital Media Under Attack-It’s Worse Than You Thought.” Privacy-net’s Gordon Platt reported on the event:
Much of the conversation focused on the relationship between advertising and piracy, not unexpected for an Advertising Week event. “No one has asked the blunt question of whether you want your ad associated with a pirate site,” said [Rick] Cotton. He added, “Advertisers should not want their ads to be in that environment. It’s getting more risky to be in business with criminal websites.”
Bob Liodice, CEO of ANA (Association of National Advertisers) agreed and suggested the industry needs to be accountable for its role in monetizing piracy.
“It makes us all shake our heads, wondering how we can wrap our arms around this. We have theft going on here.” Liodice believes that one problem is that no one has taken “ownership” of the piracy problem. “We have to create a level of collaboration in order for the [advertising] industry to own the issue.” Liodice stressed that collaboration has to be “systematized” and that the industry has to make it “personal.”
Part of making it “personal” is for advertisers take responsibility for where their ads appear. Unfortunately, this is an issue that extends beyond advertising on rogue sites offshore. Ad sponsored piracy is also ubiquitous on so-called legitimate, U.S. based websites like YouTube and Facebook.
Let’s take a look at YouTube first. Thanks to ad revenue, the popular UGC (user-generated content) site is a cash cow for Google and (some) content creators. Advertisers of all stripes are eager to see their products plastered over the latest in viral videos. There are four basic types of ad placements available:
- Display ads (banners) run across all areas of the site except the Homepage. They are available as a 300×250 ad that appears to the right of the feature video and above the video suggestions list. Learn more.
- Overlay in-video ads are transparent overlay ads that appear on the lower portion of your video.Learn more
- TrueView in-stream ads are skippable video ads that are inserted before, during or after the main video. Learn more.
- Non-skippable in-stream ads are video ads that can be inserted before, during, or after the main video and must be watched before the video selected can be viewed. Learn more.
The question real question is do advertisers know where their money is going and do they care? What determines which ad goes where and how much it will cost? YouTube explains it this way:
Monetized YouTube videos may display ads served via the AdSense auction as well as ads sold on a reservation basis via DoubleClick (DCLK) and other YouTube-sold sources.
AdSense Ads
The Adsense ads displayed on your video are determined automatically by our system based on a number of contextual factors relating to your video. These factors include but are not limited to your video metadata and how you categorize your video.
We aren’t able to control all of the ads that appear with your videos manually. Similarly, we can’t guarantee that specific ads will be displayed with your videos. We regularly monitor and update our content-targeting algorithms in order to deliver the most relevant ads to your video pages.
Like most things YouTube, it’s not particularly clear, but for advertisers who don’t want to miss out on eyeballs this lack of transparency seems not to be of much concern. Here’s a cross-section of “overlay” ads that represent a variety of companies that I found plastered on videos linking to pirated content.
YouTube isn’t alone. As I’ve reported in past blog posts, Facebook advertisers also routinely have their ads placed side by side with pirate offerings.
Facebook’s explanation of its ad placement and targeting options is fairly simplistic too:
Choose the location, gender, age, likes and interests, relationship status, workplace and education of your target audience. If you are the admin of a Facebook Page, event or app, you can also target your ad to people who are already connected to you.
Clearly the ad placement is dependent on who is looking at the page rather than the page content itself. That needs to change.
During the Advertising Week event NBCUniversal’s Senior Counselor for IP Protection, Rick Cotton suggested, ““The simple message is that we need a systematic approach to this problem. Otherwise it’s bad news for the industry.” Very true.
Why not start with cleaning up our own back yard in Silicon Valley? If advertisers were to stop advertising on sites like YouTube and Facebook until they can be sure their ads aren’t associated with pirated content I imagine things would change rather quickly. After all, money talks…
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Piracy, Tech
When people talk about DMCA abuse it’s usually folks representing companies like Google or the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Time and time again this red herring is used as a cudgel to attack those who believe in copyright law. However, as I’ve pointed out numerous times, if one really wants to examine the law and its potential for abuse it’s worthwhile to explain why Google and the EFF have it backwards.
Bottom line, if an erroneous DMCA is sent all the recipient really needs to do to stop enforcement is to file a “counter-claim.” Unless sender of the DMCA wants to spend money to go to court to enforce their rights, that’s it, end of the story. This is why the characterization of who is “damaged” should be reversed.
Let me show you an example that I recently uncovered that demonstrates my point. French indie filmmaker Celine Sciamma’s 2011 film “Tomboy” was uploaded to YouTube on July 13th of this year (all 122 minutes) At the time the film’s U.S. distributor, a small independent company, matched the infringing content via Content ID on YouTube and issued a DMCA “takedown” in order to remove the infringing copy from the site. The uploader, who goes by the YouTube user name “Dirceu Alves” filed a “counter-claim” with YouTube saying he had the right to upload the film.
At this point, regardless of the fact the YouTube user filed an false counter-notice, per U.S. law, the only option remaining for the distributor to enforce the takedown is spend money and seek a court order against the uploader:
If the subscriber serves a counter notification complying with statutory requirements, including a statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed or disabled through mistake or misidentification, then unless the copyright owner files an action seeking a court order against the subscriber [emphasis added],the service provider must put the material back up within 10-14 business days after receiving the counter notification.
Perhaps, because he appears to live in Brazil, Dirceu Alves isn’t too worried about being charged with perjury. Note YouTube’s instructions for filing a counter-claim to a DMCA notice:
A counter notification is a legal request for YouTube to reinstate a video that has been removed for alleged copyright infringement. The process may only be pursued in instances where the upload was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled, such as fair use. It should not be pursued under any other circumstances. [emphasis added]
Despite the fact this YouTube user does not own rights to this film in the United States (or anywhere), because its indie distributor doesn’t have deep pockets to fight the matter in court, the pirated movie remains online. Now, if the distributor tries to remove the pirated film, this is the notification from YouTube that appears:
According to a graphic overlaid at the beginning of the pirated film, the pirated copy originates from a Brazilian-based pirate website (offering illegal downloads). There’s also a companion Twitter account and Facebook Page as well. It’s not clear whether the YouTube account holder is one in the same, but the upload’s links to online piracy are obvious.
So, for all the hoopla surrounding DMCA abuse, maybe it’s time to look at who’s really damaged when the law is used under false circumstances–content creators who have limited resources to protect their work and their rights. As I wrote in an earlier post on this blog:
…if one takes the time to read the DMCA, it’s easy to see that the law actually favors the reported party, not the other way around. If online content has been removed in error, the owner can file a counter-claim. That immediately puts the onus on the party that filed the original DMCA request to go to court and prove the legitimacy of their claim. If that next step isn’t taken, the takedown becomes moot. Filing a court case is a costly endeavor so it’s unlikely that those whose file false DMCA claims, whether in error or purposely, would bother to spend money to enforce a bogus DMCA. Conversely, those content creators who don’t have deep pockets have little recourse when it comes to enforcing a valid DMCA takedown if the other party, representing an infringing (pirate) website, chooses to file a counter-claim.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Piracy, Tech
It’s time to “un-like” Facebook’s habit of turning a blind eye to the flagrant piracy for profit on its pages
There’s been a lot of breaking news lately about online piracy. This past week, two new studies were released that document the scope of online piracy and search engines’ role in leading consumers to infringing content. Yet there’s another area, in addition to search, that should be drawing more scrutiny–the role that social media sites like Facebook play in leading consumers to illegal downloads.
I’ve blogged about Facebook’s link to piracy in the past, but today came across a Facebook page promoting pirated content that has 1.3 Million “Likes.” The page also features advertising from entities like the Oklahoma Department of Commerce , Coach Handbags, and Petco. Apparently Facebook has no problem collecting tainted income from advertisers who likely have no clue that their ads are adjacent to a pages linking to pirated movies.
I found this particular Facebook page when I happened upon a pirate website, “Filmes Online Gratis” (Films Online Free) while researching illegal streams to a colleague’s film. It’s a Brazilian site (Portuguese language) that offers more than 393 pages of streams for pirated movies and TV shows. The site also features a link promoting its companion Facebook page that, as of today, apparently has 1,305,449 “likes.”
This pirate website promotes its offerings via a companion Facebook page
I checked several of the movies featured on the site and found that the infringing streams were indeed active. Of course this particular pirate entrepreneur’s business model, like the majority of them, is based on earning revenue from advertising so its pages–and the embedded streams — are plastered with ads. The infringing streams are hosted via a variety of sites known for offering pirated content including the Russian Facebook wannabe Vk.com and a favorite pirate cyberlocker site, Putlocker.
What’s troubling is that the Filmes Online Gratis Facebook Page also features direct links to these same pages (and infringing streams). Spin it any way you like, but the fact is, Facebook is profiting from, and helping promote, pirated content.
Its Silicon Valley neighbor, Google, has been under (justifiable) scrutiny for its connection to the pirate economy; now it’s time to hold Facebook accountable. One should also take note that in terms of this pirate’s FB page, Facebook doesn’t share any of its ad revenue with the pirate–the company gets to keep all its dirty money for itself (and its shareholders). For Facebook, ad income on this page = pure piracy profit.
Last April, when I attempted to get a response from Facebook about this issue for an earlier blog post, this is the email response (see below) I ultimately received. I’ll try to contact them again, but I would guess that not much will have have changed since my last effort to communicate, save for the price of its stock.
Seems a tad disingenuous to “prohibit” activity, yet do nothing about it. This Filmes Online Gratis Facebook page didn’t get to 1.3 million followers overnight. One can only guess how much advertising income Facebook has earned from its visitors.
Why do we let Facebook off the hook for making money off piracy on its pages?
Like other companies whose business models profit from piracy (search engines, ad servers, payment processors, etc.) Facebook’s lack of response adheres to the popular “Three Wise Monkeys” principle of corporate PR-hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. By the way, there is a fourth monkey from the proverb–the often forgotten Shizaru—who symbolizes “do no evil.”
Ironically that particular phrase is a well-known part of Google’s corporate code of conduct that reads, in part, “…it’s [do no evil] also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably…”
While I wouldn’t characterize Google’s corporate behavior as being particularly “honorable,” at least the company acknowledges on some level that online piracy is a problem. The time for Facebook to pull its head out of the sand and do the same is long overdue. Playing ostrich will only work for so long.
(original images credit: iStock)
Piracy apologists would have us believe that it’s actually the content creators who are to blame when their movies, music and books are pirated. The rhetoric is always the same old, same old–a stale mantra of “outdated business models” and blame the victim verbiage.
Ironic that their mission includes the phrase “freedom to prosper.” I guess that applies to prosperous thieves like Kim Dotcom, and not those who make their livings creating content (films, music, books, and more). Piracydata.org’s founders seem to take umbrage at the the ongoing criticism directed toward Google for it’s lack of accountability and transparency regarding its role in profiting from and enabling online theft. Apparently the site’s founders aren’t offended by the fact that Google has made millions off stolen and counterfeit products over the years.
