Facebook, a Link in the Piracy Food Chain

Facebook, a Link in the Piracy Food Chain

by | Copyright, Film, Piracy, Tech

thumbs-downThe fact that online piracy has flourished over these past few years is nothing new.  Neither is its co-dependence on an ever-efficient distribution network, largely developed and maintained by an assortment of tech enterprises based in Silicon Valley .  Up to this point, Facebook’s role in enabling this plague of piracy has, for the most part, generally been minimized, if not ignored entirely.  But given the ever-expanding influential reach of world’s #1 social network, perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at the site’s role as a purveyor of pirated content.

In the past I’ve written about the popularity of Google’s blogger platform  among pirate entrepreneurs because it offers both an easy (and free) way to distribute stolen movies and make money via online ads.  How does Facebook fit into this equation?  Well, just as legit businesses use Facebook to gain customers, pirate profiteers around the world also utilize its popularity to attract users to their illegal websites.  Check out any pirate site on blogspot.com, or anywhere else on the web for that matter,  and you’re likely to find a link to the site’s Facebook pages (as well as other social networking sites like Twitter).

facebook youtube pirate.004

The Facebook page (shown below) for the FilmesYouTube site (shown above) boasts more than 166k “likes.”  The Facebook page sends visitors to the pirate website, and also features numerous posts which link directly to easy-to-use, active streams and download links for a variety of popular movies.

cruise.006

Facebook links directly to full stream of pirated movie starring Tom Cruise.

Depending on one’s preference, one can either watch the movie online or download a copy.   Either way it’s free–the only inconvenience being a pop-up ad or two.

facebook pirates.005

Facebook links to full stream (and download links) to GI Joe.

In this example, it appears that this Facebook pirate has also been busy creating multiple websites that also link to mirrored Facebook pages.  If one notes the “likes” listed on this page, you’ll find links to several other “free” movie sites setup in a similar fashion.  This redundancy may be in part due to concerns that one or more of these pirate sites could go offline.  However, given the fact this particular page boasts 166K “likes” it appears this fan page has been active for some time.

more facebook.008

Screen Shot 2013-04-14 at 11.55.58 AMThe common thread between the Facebook pages and the pirate websites is that both generate income from advertisements.  The more visitors, the more money for Facebook and, in turn, the more traffic to the pirate sites which,in turn, generates more ad profits for the online pirate entrepreneur.  Who’s left out of this equation?-the content creator of course.

When I viewed the above page it featured “sponsored ads” promoting Capitol One and Discover credit cards, along with political PACS and Ancestry.com.   Do these entities realize that the sponsored advertising they’re paying Facebook for appear adjacent to pirate links to bootleg, illegal movie downloads?  I doubt it.

As for advertising on the actual pirate web site (which translates into motive and money for the pirate) I found ads for Amazon.com and others served up by the Ad Council, a U.S. based non-profit whose mission is to “deliver critical messages to the American public.”  

Perhaps the time has come for the Ad Council to add anti-piracy messages to their slate of “critical” messages for the American public?

 

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Screen Shot 2013-04-14 at 12.25.17 PMLike Google, Facebook offers rights holders the opportunity to send DMCA takedown requests to have these illegal links removed.  Unfortunately, Facebook mirrors Google in another way–when it comes to DMCA notices, usually only individual posts are removed, not the infringing page.

It’s been my experience that when I’ve reported infringing content to Facebook via a DMCA only the  post with the pirate link is removed.  The Facebook page, with dozens more pirated offerings, remains online. I can understand if only a single link is reported, but what about a site that’s repeatedly reported for copyright infringement?  From what I’ve seen such sites generally remain online.  If it’s obvious that the page is dedicated to promoting pirated content, why leave it online?

I’ve asked Google this same question, if a site is reported for promoting infringing (illegal) downloads why not remove it?  Surely Facebook has the staff to investigate and determine whether a site exists purely to traffic in stolen content.  If not, why not?  Why is it OK for a company with the reach and financial resources of Facebook to look the other way?  Their censors often seem all to eager to remove photos of breastfeeding mothers or LGBT movie advertising.  Why not go after pages that are trafficking in illegal content?

I’ve tried to contact Facebook to ask for clarity on the criteria, if any, they have for removing pages and will update this post if I should receive a response.  Given my past experiences with inquiries to Facebook, I’m not optimistic that I’ll hear back anytime soon. The “community standards” that define what type of “expression is acceptable” is conveniently vague when it comes to copyright and intellectual property:

Before sharing content on Facebook, please be sure you have the right to do so. We ask that you respect copyrights, trademarks, and other legal rights.

Facebook is careful to point out, however that the decision as to whether to remove content reported for violating their terms is entirely up to them.

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The link between piracy’s advertising profits and those of so-called legit entities like Google (including YouTube, AdSense, Blogger & search) and the corporations they service ads for has been well-documented so that fact that Facebook is a part of this web of illicit profit is no real surprise.  However, it’s worth asking once again, why isn’t something being done?

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The notorious Pirate site Movies2k even boasts it’s own Facebook page.

How is that mainstream tech companies like Google and Facebook–and those who pay to advertise with their networks–continue to look the other way and ignore their role in providing both a motive, and a means,  for this illegal activity to occur?  The obvious answer is that profit trumps morality when it’s a matter of making millions.  In this era, and until the law adapts, there’s little to no risk in skirting U.S. law in order to maintain their cash cows. Clearly the fact that this is tainted revenue doesn’t matter to these companies or their stockholders.  With the amount of lobbying muscle they’re displaying in Washington these days, things appear unlikely to change any time soon.

Updated (4-16-13) to add the response I received from Facebook.  Just as I suspected, nothing but boilerplate verbiage.  Here it is:

Screen shot 2013-04-16 at 11.32.37 AMFacebook may “stand ready” to respond, but in my experience, they don’t do much else.

 

Who Really Gets “Chilled” by Chilling Effects?

Who Really Gets “Chilled” by Chilling Effects?

by | Copyright, Law, Piracy

5/9/15-Update: 

A recent blog post explaining why I sent the Chilling Effects database a DMCA takedown notice has generated a lot of traffic to this post from 2013. While the original post is worth reading, if you’re interested in a more up-to-date perspective on Chilling Effects–and its role as an efficient search engine for pirated movies, music and books–you may want to read this more recent post: Does Chilling Effects make a mockery of the DMCA?

In  effect, the database acts a shadow site for pirate links removed from Google search. Using Chilling Effects to search for pirated movies and music is actually easier that using Google.  Using Google, one has to search through various results in order to actually find valid links.    Meanwhile, search results on Chilling Effects provide results that offer infringing links in a convenient, clean lists.  Great for would-be thieves–not so great for content creators.

Here are two additional, more recent Chilling Effects related posts that explore the relationship between Google and the efficiency of using the Chilling Effects database as a de facto search engine to find infringing music, movies, books, and more.

Back to original post published on 4/10/13:

The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse has been in the news lately as the target of DMCA takedowns by copyright holders whose say by that by compiling a database of takedown notices for pirate links Chilling Effects is, in fact, making it easier for the public to find pirated content online.  According to Wired.co.uk:

As part of its transparency policy, Google publishes every takedown notice it receives from either copyright holders or government bodies. As TorrentFreak has pointed out, that means Google has built up a pretty huge database of pirated material, which effectively undoes the point of a takedown notice — to make copyrighted material harder to find. Now companies such as 20th Century Fox and Microsoft want Google to take down their own takedown notices.

What exactly is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse and more importantly, WHO actually funds them?  It’s important to understand that the clearinghouse is actually tied to the web of the Google machine.    If you look at the sites “about” page, you’ll find the following:

The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse is a unique collaboration among law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Conceived and developed at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society by Berkman Fellow Wendy Seltzer, the project is now supported by clinical programs at Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics, and the EFF.

Google provides funding to the The Berkman Center and it’s various enterprises (including Chilling Effects).  Fact is, this operation isn’t exactly the unbiased public interest clearing house is purports to be and its “cease and desist” database is routinely used by Google in a manner clearly designed to discourage rights holders from sending DMCA takedown notices.

At any rate, I first came across the Chilling Effects website in 2010 when I began sending (lots of) DMCA takedown notices to Google requesting the removal of pirated copies of our film from Blogger hosted websites and pirate sites with our film that featured Google AdSense ads.  Given the current news, I thought it worth re-posting a piece I wrote for my popuppirates.com site that discusses whose rights really gets “chilled” by the Google-Chilling Effects merry-go-round.

Re-blogged from popuppirates.com:

Chilling Effects Website

If you send a DMCA notice to Google to report pirated content you’re likely to receive an email response that includes a stern warning (see example below) that a copy of your DMCA notice will be forwarded to the Chilling Efffects Clearinghouse for publication on their website.  Why?  Well, according to the C.E.C. they maintain a “Cease and Desist” database in order to document what they refer  as “the chill.” According to their website, this is done because “Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users.”

Apparently those operating the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse see no need to differentiate  between the illegal activities of “online pirates” from those of legitimate “online users”

For Google, these emails are clearly an ill-conceived attempt to intimidate those whose rights have actually been infringed.  As I mentioned earlier in my blog, it’s ironic that the only thing being “chilled” in this scenario is the legitimate right of content creators to earn a living through their work.

Email re: Chilling Effects

Apparently our complaint was legitimate, despite being posted on the C.E.C. website.

Examples of our Fast Girl Films DMCA notices sent to Google ending up on the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse website.

For the record, the DMCA notices (above) led to the infringing content being removed.  Here’s what the reported pages looks like now….

Blogger site with content removed due to copyright infringement.

As it turns out, each and every one of our DMCA complaints to Google (posted on C.E. C.) have been legitimate and legal.   And so it goes….

Game of Groans, HBO Programming Prez’s Piracy Blunder

Game of Groans, HBO Programming Prez’s Piracy Blunder

by | Copyright, Piracy, TV

game-of-groans-HBOHBO’s programming president Michael Lombardo recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the massive piracy of their hit series “Game of Thrones”  and in doing so gave pro-piracy apologists a glorious soundbite:

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts…The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

Lombardo’s hubris was magnified as he went on to stick his foot further down his throat by adding:

“One of my worries is about the copies [downloaders are] seeing,” Lombardo said. “The production values of this show are so incredible. So I’m hoping that in the purloined different generation of cuts that the show is holding up.”

Come again…He’s more worried about production values than piracy?  I’m sorry, but a man with the stature and success of Mr. Lombardo should know better than to blabber on in such a thoughtless way about an issue, that for many filmmakers, cannot afford to be taken so lightly.  Sure, it would be great if everyone had the reach and resources of HBO, but the fact is we don’t, and for us–no matter how you spin it–piracy is not a positive.  The arrogance Lombardo showed in blithely dismissing piracy’s impact on HBO’s bottom line did a huge disservice to the many content creators for whom piracy negatively impacts both their bottom line and their livelihoods.

For HBO, the popularity of “Game of Thrones” translates into mega-bucks.  Embracing worldwide piracy of the show as a sign of success is a choice made by HBO and, more significantly,  it’s a clearly a choice they can afford to make.  If only we should all be so lucky.  Mr. Lombardo should have considered the impact of his words on an online audience that does not necessarily appreciate nuance.  He should have known that by inferring that piracy’s impact on “Game of Thrones” was positive, his choice of words would only serve to propagate the false narrative that piracy is somehow “good for business.”   It’s a generalization that will, thanks to Lombardo’s glib comments, likely be applied to other pirated movies, music and art.  If it’s good for HBO how can it not be good for everyone else?

Mr. Lombardo attempted, rather meekly, to put the genie back in the bottle when he (sort of) qualified his remarks to EW by saying, “We obviously are a subscription service so as a general proposition so we try to stop piracy when we see it happen, particularly on a systematic basis when people are selling pirated versions.”    Clearly, however, the damage had been done  as the meme that “HBO says piracy is a compliment and doesn’t hurt sales” spread like wildfire across the web.

I wrote this the other day in my post “Pick a Side, But Don’t Call it Piracy”  in response to the band Ghost Beach’s lame “artists for or against piracy” campaign, but it’s appropriate to repeat here:

When artists choose to give their work away, they’re not choosing to support piracy, they’re choosing to offer their creations to the public at no cost.  It’s a distribution decision any artist is free to make, but please don’t call it piracy…

I’m sure Mr. Lombardo has a nice car, hefty bank account, and few financial worries.  Too bad the same can’t be said to the many creative artists, independent and otherwise, who aren’t so lucky.

This week, Mr. Lombardo clearly made himself into an April Fool…

My Emails from Sven Olaf Kamphuis…

My Emails from Sven Olaf Kamphuis…

by | Copyright, Piracy, Tech

sven-email

An email I received in April of 2010 in response to a DMCA notice sent to request removal of a pirated copy of my film.

On the front page of today’s NY Times there’s a story by   and  on Sven Olaf Kamphuis, a self-appointed “internet freedom fighter” who’s suspected of having played a role in the recent  cyber-attack that’s slowed the internet worldwide.*  According to the Times:

Mr. Kamphuis, who is actually Dutch, is at the heart of an international investigation into one of the biggest cyberattacks identified by authorities. He has not been charged with any crime and he denies direct involvement. But because of his outspoken position in a loose federation of hackers, authorities in the Netherlands and several other countries are examining what role he or the Internet companies he runs played in snarling traffic on the Web this week.

I wasn’t particularly surprised to see him figuring prominently in the Times story.  Three years ago I exchanged emails with him in which he made his view of the internet clear.   First the backstory…In the spring of 2010 our self-produced, indie film “And Then Came Lola” was released in Germany and within 24 hours, copies were found online.  Thus began my quest to battle the scourge of online piracy of our film and it didn’t take long before I collided directly with the notorious Mr. Kamphuis and his view of a what constitutes a “free” internet.

Thousands of download links and streams of And Then Came Lola, popped up on cyber-lockers throughout the web.  Most of these sites were hosted offshore and some ignored the dozens of DMCA notices I diligently sent.  Frustrated, I decided to dig deeper and attempted to contact those hosting the servers for these sites.  It wasn’t a surprise that they were all hosted by one entity.  Using a WHOIS search I found an email address for the technical contact for the server.  In April of 2010 I sent a DMCA notice, via email,  to the technical contact for the company providing servers for the pirate site Novamov.com.   A few hours later I received this response from Sven Olaf Kamphuis himself.

Congratulations, You have made it past our spam filter, as this is your
first email to us 😉

Let us clarify things a bit:

Ok, first of all, we have nothing to do with this “novamov” other than
them being routed over our IP infrastructure (and then only their
user-submitted links/player page, not even the actual movie streams 😉

We have no idea wether OUR client actually is the operator of this website
-at all- or wether they are one of his clients.

The DMCA, as you may have figured out by now, is null and void, unless
ofcourse novamov would be in the USA, or we would be based in the USA and
opting for the DMCA’s safe harbour protection, neither of which happens to
be the case. (even if we WOULD be in the USA, we’d rather to to court the
normal way than committing censorship haha 😉

CB3ROB Ltd. & Co. KG provides network routing services to a global
audience, furthermore, we rent out (unmanaged) servers (as in: the
customer has the administrative control over them), colocation facilities
in the Republic CyberBunker, etc, it does not operate websites unless
those websites explicitly state so.

CB3ROB Ltd. & Co. KG does not currently operate (commercial)
infrastructure within Germany, but german law applies to our
infrastructure and the services provided TO our clients (albeit not the
services provided BY our clients per-se) all over the EU
anyway.

furthermore,

It would be appeciated if “dmca spammers” as we call them would stop
wasting our time, trying to get us to get our customers to remove “their”
crap, this is europe, the dmca doesn’t apply here, providers have immunity
against liability for ANY kind of content or actions taking place over
their networks (if in doubt, go ask the european commission 😉

Spamming and uttering frivolous legal threats however ARE crimes.

(and the laws of that retarded ex-colony cannot be enforced here, thank
god 😉

i’d suggest your clients just fix their own business model and find a way
to make money on their productions which doesn’t involve bugging everyone
else to get other people to remove stuff for them.

You, nor your clients, pay us for our time, and our time is worth more
than lousy entertainment anyway.

If the customer doesn’t want to remove it, fine, then you can go and try
to get the customer to remove it by other means (or maybe you should just
offer them a license at a “fair competitive” price instead of favouring
certain distributers over others and thus breaking even more EU laws
and regulations ?!)

Anyway, as far as we are concerned:

– We are protected by article 8 of the german telemediengesetz, as are our
services to our clients, as we don’t select addresses, interfere with what
they do, or modify the transported data in any way (all criteria are met)

as far as the customer is concerned:

– Should the customer be in germany (which i can tell you is not the case
with most of them, including this one) the customer, provided that our
customer is the one running the website, would be covered by article 10 of
the telemediengesetz, which still doesn’t make him liable for what HIS
users do (once again, provided our customer is the one eventually
operating this website), but would create provisions for him to remove
stuff.

Now as for “copyright”

– In pretty much all countries, including the USA (the retarded ex-colony
referred to above) copyright solely applies to the original work without
any modifications or additions, it literally says so in the US copyright
act for example

furthermore, most “movies” we receive -threats- and -spam- about (I can’t
consider them as a “notification” as the DMCA doesn’t apply would plainly
be nothing more than “derivative works” at most, as either some guy in a
cinema sat there and filmed the thing (expecially the recent ones),
actually granting HIM copyright over HIS production (like taking a photo
of your car), or are compressed media, do therefore not resemble the
original sound frequencies and colors, and any copyright is thereby void.
(breaking the terms of use of the cinema by using a camera in there
ofcourse is another case, but that’s between the cinema and the guy doing
it 😉

Threattening isps, and or trying to sue ISPs will only end you and your
cleints in the position where ISPs start to see your industry as “the
enemy”

As there, indeed, is no absolute right to internet connectivity, and the
(“correct/unmodified”) relaying of packets on the internet is based on
common interest and friendships between parties involved, rather than
actual contracts (most peering agreements are not even in legally valid
form), guess what will happen to YOUR prospect of promoting your materials
over the internet once most ISPs start to realize that YOU ARE THE ENEMY.

(and no, computer crime laws do not protect you from ISPs simply not
relaying your packets destined to “your” ips or sending them somewhere
else, as WE own the internet, all the wires and switches and routers.)
It technically is a privately owned infrastructure, so you all would
better stay friends with us and stop taking ISPs to court every time YOU
fail to control “your” content, or sell licenses to interested parties.

Even if you WANT to keep “control” over distribution in the first place
seing that selling a license to a tv station only ends up with the tv
station putting COMMERCIALS in it which then make the money that pays for
the license and the tv station, why not put the commercials in it straight
away and just distribute your movies over the internet for free (have the
actors drink some coca cola or something..)

That’s YOUR business model failing, not ours.
And we’re not the party to fix that for you.
Although we shall drop you some hints in this email 😉

(as for the selling licenses and that nog being possible for a global
market, who pushed the berne convention again back in 1933? wasn’t us..)

Now, as for the site you mentioned, they don’t even host content over our
network, so i can’t see where we come in 😉

furthermore, they have a perfectly well usable contact form on their
website, if email should not work..

Either way, we are not a party in this, we shall not relay your messages
to them (not if you would pay us for it) and we cannot legally, nor
contractually, remove or interfere with what they relay over our networks
(end of story) as that WOULD actually make us liable (modifying the data
would violate the conditions of Art. 8 Telemediengesetz, hacking their
servers would constitute computer crime).

Now, considering that WE are in a country (For that matter: all the EU)
where ISPs for obvious reasons, just like the mailman, are not allowed to
look into what they transport and filter out your “mail” (transported
data), and the fact that you can’t prove that our client is in a country
where what he does happens to be illegal, nor that his users are for that
matter, and after all, all this site does is link to video streams that
are 1) derivative works and 2) not even on our network and 3) completely
different companies..

So what’s left is:
– Simular organisations like yours spam us (european law!)
– Simular organisations like yours utter frivolous legal threats
(punishable by 5 years in german prison 😉
– Simular organisations like your clients engage in corruption, unfair
competition, kartell forming, etc
– libel against us and several of our clients

And most importantly:

– Simular organisations like yours try to infringe on OUR rights by
wasting our time (yes, immunity from liability also includes not having to
waste my man hours or the ones of my attorneys on this without financial
compensation, now where do we send the bill for answering this email ? 😉

Should there be any further questions, I’m quite sure I can get our shiney
attorney firm, to make things clear to you, like they are doing against
some other movie firms at this moment already (Don’t you worry about that
😉

Anyway, you can’t just go around expecting companies to clean up the mess
for you after you make something public and then no longer are able to
control it’s distribution, that’s just a failure on YOUR end, you can’t
involve everyone else in fixing your crap.

If we (for example) want to keep something under control, we make sure it
only works with OUR hardware (for example), Blizzard entertainment makes
sure it’s games, despite being distributed by means of the torrent
protocol, only work with their subscription service, etc.

now why oh why can’t your clients get that done for their products…
(not to mention that for me as a former shareholder in several of those
“movie companies’ it would make far more sense to just throw the
distribution out in the open, get rid of the middle man (tv/radio
stations/cinemas) and include the advertising in the product, end result:
more profit! it’s 2010 people, deal with it, copyright was invented to
protect the investment in a book-printing-press in order to enable people
to publish their views on things, not to make everyone chase after
“baddies” for you, and the distribution part can now be done for free, no
more printing-press needed.

You also cannot blame distribution sites, such as torrent and video
websites for doing what they do, as there are plenty of legal (and then i
mean unquestionably legal) uses for those, such as non-copyrighted movies,
political campaigns, open source software distribution, home videos, etc,
interfering with that by shutting these sites down would interfere with
the right to freedom of expression, interfere with political campaigns,
human rights, etc, and in the end, yes, strike back at the copyright
industry…

(You know, there is a reason why i sold my shares in these short-sighted
companies that constantly attack my companies and the ones of friends and
colleguas in this industry, and I strongly urge every other shareholder
to do the same, until they adjust their course to something a bit more
profitable and wise in the long run, and making less enemies, all of which
have absolute control over the largest global distribution network for any
kind of media, not the kind of people you’d wanna pick a fight with 😉

I don’t think it’s very smart of you to make ISPs into your enemies, also
because we can bribe politicians and insert “our own” too 😉 that’s not a
privilege solely reserved for the copyright industry, furthermore, we, as
an industry, simply make more money than your industry does and therefore
pays more taxes and has more “bribing power” 😛

You are infringing in the rights of european ISPs, and the european
people, not the other way around.

PS, If you happen to be an attorney, and you need a full time job (on the
other side of the perspective ;), we can give you one (You’d have to move to
Berlin or the Republic CyberBunker tho, as we intend to prosecute everyone
that infringes on OUR right to not being spammed or spread libel about,
for which we shall set up a new foundation within the coming months 😉

We would not have to interfere between customers and complainers if the
customer would be bin laden and the complainer would be the cia, so who do
the copyright-industry think they are they can try to harrass us into
doing otherwise for them, if you have a problem with someone, fight it out
with -them-, not with third parties.

Maybe it’s time for you and your organisation to “switch sides” 😛
Come and work for us…

Furthermore, we, as a company, see no problems in finding technical
solutions for your clients little ‘content control/licensing and billing’
problem, although the main objective nowadays is telecommuncations
infrastructure, not hardware/software development or consulting, but we
still have other firms for that in the christmass-tree 😉

BTW,
I’m not personally pissed at -you- people, we have seen worse 😉

We were around before Google, we’ve seen all of it 😉

greetings,

Sven Olaf Kamphuis,
Network Operations,
CB3ROB Ltd. & Co. KG, a CyberBunker Group Company
AS34109
CBSK1-RIPE
http://www.cb3rob.net/

This is the one and only all-authorative answer from his royal
highness the price, you’ll get regarding our corporate views on this
matter,

If our customer or their customer or their user or whomever along the
supply chain doesn’t want to/doesn’t have to remove something, then
that’s basically -their- problem, we do not interfere… In fact,
interfering in such matters WOULD make us liable or even be a criminal act
(considering that the hardware in all cases either isn’t ours or not under
our legal control

I must admit that I was rather surprised to receive such a lengthy, impassioned tome in response to a boilerplate DMCA notice.  However, I was also annoyed by his arrogance in assuming that my DMCA was, in fact, SPAM.  Actually, it was the result my own digging that led me to the contact email for the servers.  Servers that were linked to the pirate site that was allowing my film to be pirated, in full, online.  I wrote him back to explain:

Dear Sven,I’m not a spammer actually.  I have done every step of this all by myself, day after day….trying, in good faith, to contact the correct person to ask that the infringing content be removed.I am an independent filmmaker who has put her life savings into a project and now see it uploaded illegally on the web before the DVD is even released.  I am not a studio, but my partner and I work out of Berkeley, California and are teachers and independent filmmakers who have produced a small, niche feature film “And Then Came Lola.”  It’s scheduled to be released on DVD in late May.  We have NO theatrical release of the film.I wish I had money to pay someone to do this, but no sir.  I’m going step by step, investigating and doing my best to stop these pirates one by one.  I’m sorry if you are offended by my email. What recourse do I have but to try my best to get these illegal files removed from the various sites they’ve populated.I am happy to say that my notifications have been pretty successful.  A number of sites, like Megashare, Rapidshare, and Blogger have quickly removed the files from their various sites per my request.  How is it wrong to ask that other not monetize our product?Please feel free to follow up with me further if you’d like.  I am a firm believer in free speech, but as someone who has spent the past 3 years working on this little indie film and poured every penny I have into it, it seems I have no recourse.  Can you appreciate that?I’m sorry if one email to your email box proved to be such an irritant.  Seeing our film streamed throughout the web via illegal uploads is equally irritating.  It amounts to theft basically.Thanks for your time and your thoughtful feedback.  Should you want to check out information about the film, please go here:  www.andthencamelola.com
Thank you,
Ellen Seidler
I was even more surprised the next day when I found a response to my response.  Apparently my explanation had put a slight chink in his bombastic armor as he realized I was not actually working for an evil, corporate entity, but rather a filmmaker attempting to protect my work.  He softened his tone, this time taking a more personal approach as he tried to explain what was wrong with our business model (not realizing perhaps that our film was already available via legit online sites like iTunes).

Hi,

The real spammers we refer to are actually companies like mediasentry and websherriff that besides knowing better keep harassing us and tons of other isps by automatically sending email (lots of it too 😉

trying megavideo and the other streaming sites, indeed makes hell a lot more sense, as that’s where the streams come from in the end,

most of our clients in this field simply link there, and most of the video-stream hosters actually DO comply with the dmca and dmca-like regulations.

The annoying thing is companies like disney inc (most recently 😉 trying to force us to cut off the piratebay (by trying to punch holes and undermining provider immunity), dispite the fact that the piratebay itself does not “distribute” anything, it merely connects people that want to exchange files, regardless of which kind of file, in the end it’s the end users that publish content.

I can see you went for the conventional model of DVD distribution, however, considering the profit margin on that, why not just sell your movie online on your own website in the 50 cent-2 euro price range, surely the profit margin on that is a LOT higher than having the entire distribution chain of distributors, truck drivers, shops, etc taking the profits away, and the market is global.

If you simply make it possible to download your movie from your website, maybe the itunes store, or amazon (i think they do that too), nobody in his right mind would go for a crappy flash based stuttering low-resolution watch-movies-online kinda thing if they can have a fast download of the full HD version, without having to spend hours in going to a shop, parkign the car, buying a dvd (if its in stock), going home, putting the thing in the player, etc (its a lot more work ;).

In our years of conducting business online (we used to do mass domain registration and mass shared webhosting, nowadays that would be called cloud computing), we found that people will gladly become your customer if you simply make it EASY enough for them to register and pay online with instant delivery of the services, I guess the same goes for music and movies as otherwise the itunes store would not be there 😉

We actually wrote something very simular to the itunes store. way before they (apple inc) did (1998-1999) which now is at www.huge.nl, it’s dysfunctional because its ugly and the payment processors aren’t linked anymore, but something like that could well become a central spill in the distribution of movies and music (or maybe we can keep the itunes store around once they learn to make it possible for ANYONE to sell their products there, not just their RIAA friends 😉

Now, primary problem I see with movie sites is that they don’t have a license (the ones that actually distribute the content that is).

This is due to the berne convention, which was pushed by the recording and printing industry of it’s days (1933).

GEMA, BUMA, STEMRA, etc are all in existance today because back in 1933 it was a pretty good idea to have the “rights’ managed by an organisation -per country- (after all, back in 1933 you still had several fairly small markets, its not like you had 5 billion books printed in korea and then shipped to your customers, there was no internet, satellite tv wasn’t invented yet, etc)

The result of this is that disney could not give a license to a movie site to put disney movies in full hd/3d for a global audience (worldwide distribution) if they wanted to (which, they btw, do not, otherwise they would not be trying to sue US for routing the piratebay all the time 😉

But then again, they have been part of the ‘usual suspects’ that kept lobbying for such regulations that now (also) get in their own way, deratifying treaties isn’t quite so easy as creating them 😉

This is also a reason why southpark, for example, doesn’t make their episodes available on one central worldwide site anymore, but rather has sites per country now, eventhough it’s their -own- created content.
(southpark studios also just includes the advertisements themselves and makes their streams high quality, as opposed to third party streaming sites which usually are captured from tv airings)

I’m quite sure you’ll still earn your investment back on the DVDs as a lot of people (still) buy those, and TV stations are (still) around and still get paid to put ‘something” between advertisements (which in the end makes the cash, also online, in most cases, except for direct sales).

Now as far as I understand, these movie sites, get paid by their advertisers, depending on how popular their site is in the “alexa ratings”. Why don’t you just set up your own movie site, together with some colleguas, that does exactly the same, watch the movie in low-res streaming with advertisements for free, or download it in full-hd and pay for it, I bet a lot of those movie link sites like the one you were complaining about would simply link to your site and therefore also generate advertisement income for you.

I cannot interfere in what my customers do, If some guy just buys your DVD and copies it and ships it with deutsche post, you can’t expect the mailman to open the package, see whats inside, refuse to deliver from or to specific addresses, etc, the same applies to data and telecommunications (and that’s a good thing or we’d have EVERYONE who could possibly have a problem with something at our door every second 😉

I cannot force him to remove it (which this specific customer probably won’t do anyway, but the streaming video providers he links to may do it if you ask -them-)

We just deliver traffic, indistriminately of what it carries, even if we know what it carries, we are protected from liability, even if what it carries is SEVERELY criminal (there are a lot things worse than copyright violations 😉 and that’s a good thing, not just for us, but for everyone
Your movie (i’ve watched the trailer) i’m suer would raise some eyebrows in most islamic countries for example, you don’t want your isp to remove it because they could possibly have objections to it 😛

Why don’t you get some of your colleguas together and set up a central distribution company for independant movie productions, which doesn’t ‘enforce copyright’ but rather just makes it easy to obtain high-quality copies at a reasonable price and low-quality streaming with advertisement income, so a lot of it is on one central, easy to find, well promoted, website, online ordering of an actual DVD/blue ray disk should be possible too ofcourse.

There are several more issues with copyright as a concept, one of them being the fact that i already managed to have my 386 “compose” all musical patterns (sheet music) in digital form back in 1996 up to 30 seconds in lenght (the requirement for copyright), and i mean -all- of the possible combinations of musical notes in any order 😉

Technically, that means i could sue each and everyone of those artists and their labels out there not to release any bit of music anymore as i own the rights to -everything- already, as it will always contain a sequence out of my billions of composed patterns, no matter what they compose 😉

now that was in 1996… computers are at least 1000 times faster and bigger now, and we own quite a few of them, i’m quite sure we could do the same for let’s say all english words in any possible combination (copyrighting all possible book texts before anyone else gets the chance) etc.

they could claim it’s not a “work of art”, which is a requirement for copyright, but then again, they compose using computers themselves, it’s all just a matter of interpretation of how many manual interventions one makes in the process 😉

I don’t consider copying “theft” either, as nothing really gets stolen, and it’s all rather vague.. it’s all common knowledge…
now breaking into someone’s house or his computer, stealing his data and making it public, ofcourse is theft
breaking into a factory, stealing the plans for their next model car, is theft, breaking into a bunker, stealing the nuclear launch codes, is theft (not to mention espionage 😉

making something which is already public knowledge more poblic, isn’t theft at all.

Me, using copyright to stop all artists from composing any music because my computer (or me) “did it first” WOULD however be ‘theft’, but it would be 100% legal for me to enforce that by the exact same law they promote.

(germany itself for example uses copyright to -prevent- distribution of mein kampf, despite not having the intention of distributing it itself).

So no, I don’t see any future whatsoever in copyright, you can probably still get away with the old business model of selling dvds for the next few years, you’ll definately make your investment back, one way or the other, but don’t expect that all to still work in let’s say 10 years from now.

When i started working in the internet industry at xs4all, they actually never gave people contracts that lasted longer than 3 months because they weren’t sure the internet, as an industry would survive that long, now, xs4all ofcourse is one of the biggest dutch ISPs out there, I’d say “easy money”, including copyright, should always be treated that way… don’t expect it to work/bring profits 3 months from now even if it does now, always cover your ass, just as with any other investment…

Now for companies like disney, there actually is no excuse 😉
they should simply give people a disney tv with a disney-disc player that only plays disney movies and doesn’t connect to anything else and can’t be filmed with conventional cameras (refreshing the screen the other way around, bottom to top, already solves that 😉 and call it a day 😛

see, your camera would not work in a cinema, if the screen refresh of the cinema would work significantly different than the way your camera ccd/vidicon scans it’s image. it would have black bars all over the image all the time, or even just random dots instead of an image, and as long as your hardware doesn’t have any standardised output, good luck on simply connecting it to a vcr or digitizer 😉

Disney however, despite having the cash and resources, would rather wait for other people to distribute their movies for them, and then sue them or third parties afterwards 😛 instead of actually taking steps to protect their content, in which they claim to take so much interest 😛
(which is why we put a bunch of attorneys on disney, as they were becoming a bit too much of a pain in the ass, and them trying to undermine european commission desicisions that protect providers from having to commit censorship is completely inacceptable 😉

Now as with making your investment back, i’m can’t help you with that, should you decide to do the video streaming/download thingy yourself or with some friends, we do offer guaranteed port-speed (100/1000base) dedicated servers, and i’m quite sure that we can find one of our companies to provide management services and software-development services with that (although cb3rob ltd. & co. kg just offers the actual internet capacity and the hardware ;)… however, we own quite a bit more companies in the consulting, hardware and software development field and research field that can supply “what goes on the server” and manage the things for you, google is expected to make the vp8 video codec open source in the coming weeks, which should work hell a lot better than that flash crap too, and will be supported by all html5 browsers (also all browsers, without plugins 😉

the fact that we don’t run the sites for customers doesn’t mean we can’t ;), we have some quite capable people around that can put this together in no time… (the cyberbunker group actually exists of 20 or so active companies registered around the world, most of them in the isp/telco and research and development fields, it’s pretty much more of a  cult than they are normal companies 😉

(once again, we were around before google and we’ve seen it all 😉

(And despite disneys efforts, we will be around long after disney has evaporated into oblivion 😉

I -wrote- audio and video streaming protocols long before most of those moviesite kiddies knew what a computer was haha 😛

(now besides accidentially having the odd patent here  and there and copyright on a lot of program code, most of which is internal-use only and therefore not open source 😉  as well as -all- possible musical patterns, we never make claims to any ‘intellectual property’ simply because we don’t
believe its a wise thing to do, it’s better if people take your ideas after
you show them that it works and can be done and improve on it)

there even are some people running away with our “trademarks”

I found a “cyberbunker ltd.” as a registrant to ip space that has nothing to do with us for example, there is a cyberbunker.com.au somewhere in australia running an internet cafe and a golf course, etc, oh well, just let them, if that makes them happy, who cares, people will know where to find the “real” one anyway 😛

people always claim intellectual property laws would “promote” innovation…

question: where would the world be if motorized vehicles using 4 wheels were patented and nobody else would be allowed to build simular products 😉

anyway, it’s quite easy to keep control over what you’ve made if you really want to and monetise on it by keeping control and limiting its distribution.

This is what software companies in the 80s did when it got ‘really expensive’ (novell netware, autocad), you simply only make the software work with a specific piece of hardware of which the inner workings are non disclosed plugged into the printer port 😉

It doesn’t matter if peope copy the software from their neighbor and can buy their computers at every street corner, the software still won’t work without your custom hardware, which only you know how to build 😛

it’s even easier to just distribute it and monetise on it by means of built-in advertisements, paid -easy, high quality, fast- downloads or other unique marketing aspects other parties cannot offer (or not that easy anyway).

there are tons of companies in the world offering internet hosting, it’s not about wether you ask 3 euros or 100 euros, its about how easy you make it to buy it from -you- rather than your neighbor, that’s what brings in the customers.

(we have btw left the mass hosting market, so the whole online registration and payment stuff has been removed from our website, but the concept still applies equally well to any market).

and having to go outside, and buy a disk, and then take it out of the box, and put it into some player (usually the computer anyway 😉 just isn’t the easiest way for the user to obtain his entertainment, which, still, is compensated by the higher quality, but that can’t possibly take much longer anymore (users nowadays have 50-100mbit at home, that is quite common in the netherlands and germany anyway (vdsl, cable, fiber to the home (ftth)), so the quality aspect of dvds vs downloads/online watching will soon disappear, the movie industry would better adjust to that, as sueing isps will only lead to the isps sueing them back, and thats a fight the isps will win in the end, the same goes for lobbying, funding political parties and politicians, etc 😛

and no, we will not keep them artificially alive by stuff like “a tax for “culture” on internet connections” as -they- choose to invest in movies, people have made music and danced etc since the stoneage, we really don’t need disney to provide the world with “culture” 😛

nobody asked them to invest millions into movies

If i invest millions into restoring an oldtimer car, and i drive it in the street, and people take pictures of it, i can’t charge them for my millions either, the same goes for movies, nobody asked them to make them, nor to make them public, so they can’t really complain if once they are public knowledge, people watch them without paying back their investment.

nothing to do with your investment, i’m qutie sure you’ll still make that back and a profit on it too, with or without low-res video streams on the internet

oh btw, in case of european providers, don’t even mention ‘dmca’ 😛
the dmca is a strictly american thing that can, if the provider chooses to avoid a court case, provide him with limited immunity (unlike european regulations) under the safe harbor protection, which basically means: remove the content, and let the customer protest against it 😉

which even if we were an american company, we would never do, but most american companies don’t have the balls to simply take that corrupt piece of shit through the court process and win (maybe there is something severely wrong with the american court process in the first place 😉

anyway,

enough of that for now 😛

I can’t say whether Mr. Kamphuis has had any role in this recent cyberattack, but I do think this email exchange provides some  insights into his view of today’s internet and the rights of content creators, indie and otherwise, to protect their work from theft.  Apparently, when it comes to the internet,  we have no rights–but rest assured, emoticons are here to stay. 🙂
*Update 4/26/13:  According to the NY Times, Mr. Kamphuis was arrested yesterday in Spain at the request of Dutch authorities:

Spanish police arrested the man on Thursday at his home in Barcelona, at the request of the Dutch police, and seized his computers and mobile phones. He is expected to be sent to the Netherlands. Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for Dutch national prosecutor’s office, said “S.K.” was suspected of playing a role in a wave of attacks last month.

His arrest came after an investigation by authorities in the Netherlands and other European countries into Mr. Kamphuis’s involvement in one of the largest attacks on the Internet. Mr. Kamphuis has been suspected of starting a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack against Spamhaus, the antispam group. Such attacks are a criminal offense under Dutch law.

 

Pick a Side BUT Don’t Call it Piracy…

Pick a Side BUT Don’t Call it Piracy…

by | Copyright, Piracy, Politics

This week there’s been an uproar about a billboard that ostensibly asks artists to “pick a side” as to whether they support piracy or not.  According to the NY Times:

For the last week a mysterious ad has flashed on the LED billboard above the American Eagle Outfitters store at Broadway and 46th Street, just over the bronze shoulder of George M. Cohan. Variably positing piracy as “criminal,” “progress” and “the future,” it asks the observer to “pick a side” on Twitter, as #artistsforpiracy or #artistsagainstpiracy.

It turns out that the entity behind the flashing billboard is a rather innocuous Brooklyn based band (of two) named “Ghost Beach.”  The apparel company “American Eagle” had arranged for band’s use of the billboard as part of a deal to license one of their songs.

In posting the provocative messages, band member Josh Ocean explained their intent to the New York Times: “Since we started we’ve given away all our music for free, so just telling people to purchase our music somewhere didn’t seem natural for us. So we said, ‘What if we take advantage of this and open up a discussion about the new music industry?’ ”

Screen Shot 2013-03-27 at 10.32.24 AM

Definition of piracy found at dictionary.reference.com

The ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day created the campaign on a pro bono basis for the band and certainly it’s been successful in raising their profile.  Unfortunately, as is often the case with advertisements, the challenge posed by the flashing LED in Times Square is based on a false equivalency.  Though purported to be designed to generate discussion about a worthy topic, in reality the campaign is merely a slick and sophistic illusion that does little to advance, or inform, artists (or anyone else) about scenarios for music distribution in our digital age.

While it’s worthwhile for artists to debate such issues, it’s disingenuous to equate the choice to give one’s music away as being equivalent to piracy.  Piracy is not about giving, it’s about stealing.

Despite the advertisement’s apparent theme, Ocean told the New York Times the band doesn’t support piracy:

“We are against piracy in the sense that we are for new technologies and using the Internet in a way that wins over it by us giving away our music directly to fans,” Mr. Ocean said. “That way we know where the music is going and can establish that connection directly with fans.”

“We never want to promote blatantly going out and stealing music,” he added. “What we do want to do is offer choices that we think are right.”

If  you don’t want to promote “stealing music” then perhaps you should think twice before allowing an ad agency to glibly frame a discussion about digital distribution around the mendacious premise that artists must be either “for” piracy or “against” it because last time I checked, the definition of piracy includes:

“the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.”

Note the key word being “unauthorized.”  When artists choose to give their work away, they’re not choosing to support piracy, they’re choosing to offer their creations to the public at no cost.  It’s a distribution decision any artist is free to make, but please don’t call it piracy…

 

 

 

 

 

A Good Week for Copyright

A Good Week for Copyright

by | Copyright

good-newsFrom Congress to the courts, this has been a good week for those of us who care about copyright and believe it’s fundamental to preserving creator’s rights.

First up, on Wednesday, was U.S. Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante’s highly anticipated testimony before the United States House of Representative’s Judiciary Committee, where she spoke about the “next great copyright act.”  Her appearance there came on the heels of a lecture she gave earlier this month at Columbia Law School where she echoed many of the same themes.  Those who believe copyright law is the enemy expressed cautious optimism after the Columbia speech thanks to her mention of rolling back the copyright term from 70 to 50 years, but I imagine that by the time she was finished her testimony on Wednesday, their optimism had turned to disappointment, and for that I am grateful.

Why am I grateful?  I’m grateful because Ms. Pallante expressed a thoughtful (and modern) view of copyright law.  Her presentation was pragmatic and positive.  Like many others, she believes an update to copyright law is long overdue, but unlike voices of the anti-copyright lobby, she seeks a balanced approach, understanding how profoundly important copyright is to those who create books, films, music and more.  As Sandra Aistars, executive director, Copyright Alliance wrote in a recent editorial  in The Hill:

Should Congress take on the challenge of updating the Copyright Act, it must do so guided by sound principles, and its deliberations must be based in reality rather than rhetoric.

Chief among these principles is that protecting authors is in the public interest. Ensuring that all creators retain the freedom of choice in determining how their creative work is used, disseminated and monetized is vital to protecting freedom of expression.  Consent is at the heart of freedom, thus we must judge any proposed update by whether it prioritizes artists’ rights to have meaningful control over their creative work and livelihood.

In her prepared testimony, which she read before answering questions, Pallante affirmed the need to keep the rights of creators at the core of any revision to copyright law:

The issues of authors are intertwined with the interests of the public. As the first beneficiaries of the copyright law, they are not a counterweight to the public interest but instead are at the very center of the equation. In the words of the Supreme Court, “[t]he immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an ‘author’s’ creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good.”Congress has a duty to keep authors in its mind’s eye, including songwriters, book authors, filmmakers, photographers, and visual artists. A law that does not provide for authors would be illogical hardly a copyright law at all.

Overall, her testimony was, in my view, refreshing and forward-thinking.  Much has changed since 1998, the last time U.S. copyright law was updated via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and revising the law to reflect the digital landscape of the 21st century is long overdue.  Our culture is one where content of all kinds is disseminated with the click of a mouse.  The recognition that digital content is as worthy of protection as its non-digital counterpart, provides a foundation from which a comprehensive revision can emerge.  Surely we can find a means to protect the rights of creators while acknowledging the transformations that technology has brought to consumption and collaboration.

When Congress revisits copyright law I hope they revisit  Section 512 (Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online) otherwise known as the “safe harbor” provision.

(c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users.—

(1) In general.— A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider—

(A)
(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;
(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or
(iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;
(B) does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and
(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.

In the 14 years since President Clinton signed this law, technology has become exponentially more sophisticated.  Unfortunately, thus far, these advances seem to have primarily benefited those engaged in IP theft.  Why not turn that around? Why not mandate that websites implement appropriate technology to help safeguard copyright?   Youtube’s Content ID system is a good example of what can happen when an online entity institutes reasonable measures to protect the rights of content creators.  Why not revise the DMCA and add language to the safe harbor provision that requires websites to utilize reasonable technological measures to detect infringing content?   The DMCA is routinely used as a convenient shield from legal liability by online entities that actively and knowingly engage in piracy for profit.   Clarifying the law will benefit not only those who are victims of content theft, but those who wish to create legit businesses in digital distribution.

As Maria Pallante testified:

In revising the law, Congress should look to the equities of the statute as a whole, and strive for balance in the overall framework. It is both possible and necessary to have a copyright law that combines safeguards for free expression, guarantees of due process, mechanisms for access, and respect for intellectual property.

I believe that it is possible to find consensus and revise copyright law so that it will better protect the rights of creators in this digital age, while not hindering future artistic or technical “innovation.”  Spin aside, these are not opposing goals, but naturally synergistic ones.   In her speech at Columbia, Pallante touched on this notion as well:

In short, the next great copyright act presents an opportunity. All members of the online ecosystem should have a role, including payment processors, advertising networks, search engines, Internet service providers, and copyright owners. These strategies can be a mix of legislative solutions and complementary voluntary initiatives, but where gaps in the law exist Congress should not be absent.

One critical issue is the ability of law enforcement to prosecute the rising tide of illegal streaming in the criminal context. Streaming implicates the copyright owner’s exclusive right of public performance: it is a major means by which copyright owners license their rights in sporting events, television programs, movies, and music to customers, who in turn access the content on their televisions, smart phones, tablets, or video consoles. Under current law there is a disparity that may have once been of little consequence but is today a major problem: prosecutors may pursue felony charges in the case of illegal reproductions or distributions, but are limited to misdemeanor charges when the work is streamed, even where such conduct is large scale, willful and undertaken for a profit motive. As a practical matter, prosecutors have little incentive to file charges at all, or to pursue only those cases where the rights of reproduction and distribution are also at issue. This lack of parity neither reflects nor serves the digital marketplace.

This digital “marketplace” should continue to thrive.  Revising the copyright law to protect the integrity of products disseminated via that marketplace will ensure that it does.

The other bit of good copyright news came today as federal appeals court affirmed a lower court decision against the BitTorrent piracy website Isohunt.  Most notably the court held that website operators were not “entitled to protection from liability under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”   In their decision the court recognized that the site’s owner, Gary Fung, was in the business of piracy, not engaging in “free speech.” As I mentioned above, the DMCA’s safe harbor provision is often abused by piracy sites like Isohunt and although I’m an independent filmmaker, not a product of Hollywood, Henry Hoberman of the MPAA summed it up my reaction pretty well:

This ruling affirms a core principle of copyright law: Those who build businesses around encouraging, enabling, and helping others to commit copyright infringement are themselves infringers, and will be held accountable for their illegal actions It also strikes an important blow in the fight to preserve the jobs of millions of workers in the creative industries, whose hard work and investments are exploited by rogue websites for their own profit.

For a more comprehensive look at the decision, please visit Alexandra Goldstein’s analysis here.  All in all, a very good week for copyright (and those who believe in it).