by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Piracy, Politics
Billboard reported on a SXSW panel “Copyright & Disruptive Technologies” held last week in Austin. The panel included moderator Margot Kaminski, executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School; Andrew Bridges, partner at Fenwick & West LLP; Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network; Derek Khanna, visiting fellow at Yale Law’s Information Society Project; and Wendy Seltzer, policy counsel to the World Wide Web Consortium.
Not exactly a “balanced” panel on the issue, so it wasn’t surprising to hear them echo well-worn talking points critical of current U.S. copyright law. As is typical of such panels, real facts presented seemed few and far between.
Attorney Andrew Bridges’ secured the chutzpah award for the day when he suggested that copyright owners should “lose” protection under copyright law if they sent more than 6 erroneous DMCA takedown notices. According to Billboard:
People on both sides of the SOPA/PIPA debate can probably agree that copyright law and enforcement ensnares some undeserving individuals and businesses. Attorney Andrew Bridges, a partner at Fenwick & West LLP, recovered the Dajaz1.com domain after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) determined the New York-based hip-hop site had violated copyright law. ICE dropped the case after a year of secret requests for more time to file paperwork….
Bridges had a suggestion to prevent record labels and movie studios from sending false-positive infringement notices: copyright owners lose protection under copyright law if they send six false infringement notices. The comments were met with loud applause.
The crowd’s pleasure not withstanding, it’s important to understand that a takedown as part of the government’s “Operation in Our Sites” anti-IP theft enforcement, is not equivalent to a filmmaker, or musician, sending a DMCA notice to demand takedown of an infringing file. Certainly these such takedown notices are occasionally sent in error, but does the harm done by that really outweigh the harm done by the massive online copyright infringement (piracy) that currently thrives online? If a rights holder is forced to send literally tens of thousands takedown notices to safeguard their content is it really unreasonable to believe that a few erroneous ones would be sent?
The idea that there’s any actual harm done by false takedowns is vastly overblown.
In the anti-copyright lobby’s opposite-world a takedown sent to an “innocent” party brings the spectre of prison and/or poverty. In the real world it’s generally an email. If sent in error, the aggrieved party can, often with the click of his mouse, respond with a counter notice and explain why the takedown was in error. Usually that’s the end of it. Case closed.
If the sender of the original DMCA notice wants to ultimately enforce what they believe to be a legitimate takedown they must then go to court (and spend money) to prove their case. If anything, this set-up favors pirates who knowingly upload infringing content. I’ve witnessed situations where counter-notices where filed (even though the uploader didn’t own rights to the material) thus nullifying the original (albeit legit) takedown. It ended with the infringing content remaining online because the rights owner couldn’t afford to go to court. What do pirates have to lose by filing a counterclaim, even if it is a lie?
Sometimes an uploader will file counterclaim based on the principle of “fair use.” If it’s legit, rights holders will generally allow it to remain online. However not every “fair use” claim is valid. I’ve had the experience on YouTube where my entire film was uploaded. When I filed a takedown notice the user specified “fair use” as the justification for the upload. In that case I sent a friendly email to the uploader and included a link explaining the perimeters of “fair use.” The file was ultimately removed, no courtroom required.
In other instances, the line between fair use and copyright infringement is not so clear. The oft-sited Dancing Baby video, featuring Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” was taken off YouTube after a complaint by the Universal Music Group. The uploader filed a counter-notice and the video was restored to YouTube. Not satisfied with having the video restored, the uploader sued UMG for “bad faith” in having sent the original takedown. In that case no apparent “harm” was done, yet the issue ends up in court and the uploader becomes a “free speech” hero (her case supported in part by the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation ) while the creator is vilified.
Yet, Dancing Baby aside, it’s important to note that despite hyperbole to the contrary, “record labels and movie studios” are not the only entities that send takedown notices. Independent artists, who don’t have a bevy of lawyers (or an entity like the EFF) at their disposal, are particularly vulnerable to the damages of piracy, but generally cannot afford to fight (false) counterclaims. Tell me again who is the victim in this scenario?
The talking points echoed by the panel at SXSW reflected the anti-copyright lobby’s disingenuous mantra that content creators seeking to protect their work from theft should be viewed as criminals, while those who brazenly steal (and monetize) the work of others are somehow the “innovators.” Are you serious? I hate to break it to these folks, but the tech industry does not have first dibs on the adjective “innovative.” Creative artists have always thrived on the cutting edge–and while the modern-day tech industry has developed new means of delivery and consumption–their innovations would be useless were it not for the content their products deliver. In many ways, creative content is the fuel has fed the tech revolution. Why can’t we have a discussion that acknowledges this symbiosis, rather than diminishes it?
As for the ICE seizures, it’s certainly a subject worthy of discussion, but not one that should be equated with DMCA takedown notices. Of course muddying the waters to obscure the truth plays to the advantage of those who see copyright law, and any effort to enforce it, as “disruptive” to their bottom line.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Law, Piracy, Tech
According to a study released yesterday by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, last year’s shutdown of the notorious pirate file-sharing hub Megaupload, had a positive impact on movie revenues. Citing the increase in sales following the popular cyberlocker’s demise, the researchers (Brett Danaher and Michael Smith) note:
…immediately following the shutdown, there was a positive and statistically significant relationship between a country’s sales growth and it’s pre-shutdown Megaupload penetration, such that for each additional 1% (lost) penetration of Megaupload the post-shutdown sales increase was between 2.5% and 3.8% higher (depending on which of our models you believe to be most accurate).
The fact that these trends didn’t exist before the shutdown but existed after the shutdown suggests a causal effect of the shutdown on digital sales, and we find a similar (but slightly weaker) relationship for digital rentals. In aggregate, our estimates suggest that, across the 12 countries in our study, revenues from digital sales and rentals for the two studios were 6-10% higher than they would have been if Megaupload hadn’t been shutdown.
Given the size of Megaupload’s illicit traffic (ranked #63 worldwide in 2011), these results are not particularly surprising. However, in terms of its overall impact on piracy, it’s important to note that the seizure of Megaupload had a ripple effect across the entire cyberlocker landscape. Shortly after Dotcom’s arrest, other major players in the piracy’s profit pyramid, also bit the dust. These included Filesonic, and Wupload. Others, such as Fileserve, shifted their business models away from a rewards system that paid cash for downloads. Clearly the site operators, who grew wealthy through a cyberlocker business model that had thrived for so long in a lawless environment, were suddenly running scared. Their black market had been discovered and many jumped ship rather than face potential jail time.
Now, more than a year later, a cornucopia of new cyberlocker sites has emerged to take their place. So far, these sites–many based in Eastern Europe far from the reaches of U.S. authorities–have failed to achieve the size and scope of the defunct giants.
Another significant factor working in favor of content creators is that Megaupload’s takedown created a brief vacuum that gave legitimate streaming portals a respite, providing them with a much-needed opportunity to elbow their way into the global marketplace and establish a loyal costumer base.
After all, it’s always much easier to set up a successful shop if you don’t have another store down the block giving away the same products for free.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
This past Monday the Wall Street Journal published a thought-provoking piece “As Pirates Run Rampant, TV Studios Dial Up Pursuit.” Written by Christopher Stewart, the article explored how the television industry, studios, and film distributors are protecting their businesses from the ravages of online piracy. Kathy Wolfe, founder of Wolfe Video, the largest distributor of independent LGBT films in the world, spoke about the challenge of staying in business amid a sea of piracy. She told the Wall Street Journal that she estimates online piracy cost her small company more than 3 million dollars in 2012. In order to prevent that figure from growing, Wolfe spends over $30,000 annually (half the company’s profits) to scan the web for infringing content and send takedown notices. When I spoke with her today, she told me that her company could easily be forced out of business were anti-piracy efforts not in place.
In the meantime, according to Wolfe, they are working hard to develop a robust online streaming business. She says that 38% of their income now comes from online streaming and she expects that percentage to grow “radically” every year. “Now with our Wolfe on Demand [website], we have a formula that is accessible and affordable,” says Wolfe. She adds that by establishing their own online portal, and not depending on exclusively on other sites (iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, etc), Wolfe can direct a bigger percentage of profits back to the filmmakers.
Despite Wolfe’s success in growing online sales, mitigating piracy has become a fundamental part of protecting their business. “If it weren’t for our anti-piracy efforts, we certainly wouldn’t be functioning at the level we’re functioning at now,” she says.
After all, it’s still difficult to compete with free and the indie filmmakers who partner with Wolfe (including myself) are fortunate that the company bears the brunt of worldwide anti-piracy efforts. But whether it falls to a small independent film distributor such as Wolfe, or an individual filmmaker, the job of removing pirated content from the web is an onerous (and expensive) one.
Where does one begin? Well, in the example I’m about to outline, these are the 12 Steps a filmmaker would follow in order to remove ONE illegal movie from the web:
Step One: Find the film using Google search.
Step Two: Navigate to the YouTube (Google) channel featuring dozens of pirated movies.
Step Three: From there, click the movie you want and go to the description linking to a Blogger (Google) pirate site.
Step Four: Before you leave YouTube (Google), send a DMCA notice either via Content ID system or email.
Step Five: Navigate to the Blogger (Google) website, click the link.
Step Six: Click past pop-up ads to find the embedded film.
Step Seven: Fill out and send a DMCA notice to Blogger (Google) via online web form.
Step Eight: Click the VK icon on the embedded film to navigate to the host site for the infringing file.
Step Nine: Create an account with VK to find that actual URL of the infringing file
(amid more than 100 other uploads by the same pirate).
Step Ten: Fill out and send a DMCA Notice to VK via the online web form (no email address provided).
Step Eleven: Send a DMCA takedown to Google search to have the original link removed from search (YouTube link) in case Vk.com doesn’t respond.
Step Twelve: Get depressed when you have to begin all over a couple of days later when the Blogger pirate makes a new YouTube channel.
Let’s begin our journey with Google search–unquestionably the world’s most popular path to find links to pirated films. In the example below, I searched for the indie French film “Tomboy.” Thanks to Google, I ended up on a YouTube movie channel with links to more than 100 popular indie films. The films aren’t actually uploaded to YouTube. Instead, a it’s dummy file with the movie poster that includes a link to an external website in its description.
I’ve written before about the fact that YouTube is routinely used by pirates as an efficient means attracting traffic to their pirate websites and the example outlined here is no exception. In this case, the YouTube channel links to an external site also hosted by Google’s on its very own Blogger platform: http://cinegay9.blogspot.com.
If you are an indie filmmaker whose film pirated on this site, how can you remove the link? Well your first step would be to send a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube asking that the link to the pirate site be removed using their online form…
You have to fill in each line but, even when you click and send, your takedown request won’t touch the linked-to pirate’s page even though it’s also a Google entity, in this case a Blogspot.com offering an actual embedded stream of your (pirated) film.
If you click the link below the movie description on YouTube you’ll eventually end up at the pirated blog but, before you can glimpse the page, you’ll have to endure, and click past, a pop-up advertisement featuring ads from a panoply of well-known companies including: Dodge, Network Solutions, Reebok, XBox 360, Norton Software, Comcast and Hootsuite.
After you close the pop-up window, you’ll come to the pirate’s website.
Click the thumbnail for the movie, and after you click through another pop-up advertisement featuring ads from Progressive Insurance, Stanford Hospital, Home Depot, U.S. Forest Service, and Toyota….
you’ll eventually arrive at an actual embedded stream of the full movie:
Ok, so if you’re the indie filmmaker who made this film, what do you do next? Well, before yo leave the Blogger site you can notify Google (again) by sending a DMCA takedown notice to Blogger.
However, even if the Blogger page disappears, the online stream doesn’t. So what’s the next step? Well, at first glance the video is clearly hosted on a Russian site, vk.com (a site like Facebook). However, if you click the VK logo, you don’t end up at actual film, but rather a page full of uploaded (pirated) movies on this pirate’s Vk.com account (seen below).
Click on the film and nothing happens so uncovering the actual stream file and URL seems hopeless. But, if you’re really persistent, there is a way. To do so you must create an account at VK.com (and give up your cell phone number). It’s a major pain involving a text message with a confirmation code, etc.
Once you have an account and log in, you’ll finally be able to navigate to the infringing file and find the actual URL you’ll need to report in your takedown notice.
There’s no guarantee that any of these pages or links will be removed so in order to be totally thorough, you may want to file a DMCA notice to have Google remove the original search result that led you to your pirated film in the first place.
Of course, after all this work, you think you’re finished right? After all, you check back with YouTube and the pirate who started this whole process account has been terminated for “multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement.”
Victory right? Well, not so fast…revisit Google search and you’ll discover that Cinegay9blogspot’s channel has been reincarnated with the user name reotereds. Guess it’s time to start the DMCA takedown process all over again…
YouTube pirate wastes no time in generating a new channel to attract traffic to his blogger-hosted pirate website
Tell me again why artists, photographers, filmmakers and musicians should have to go to these lengths to protect their work from thieves? Wouldn’t our time be better spent creating our art, rather than having to police it so that we can earn a living and afford to spend time to create something new?
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
I wonder what France Ford Coppola would think if he saw that his film “The Godfather Part II” was being claimed and monetized by a YouTube user “__0N5REyyX-r__,” or, at least an upload labeled “Godfather 2 movie.” Yep, apparently this account holder, using a YouTube account created just today, is uploading dummy files (displaying DVD covers) for various feature films and claiming them as his own. This same user also “claims” other recent Hollywood hits such as “Flight” starring Denzel Washington and “Magic Mike” featuring Channing Tatum.
Until qkame ndoni’s channel is removed for being the bogus scam that is, YouTube seems happy to place ads on these fake uploads and monetize them. I wonder what the advertisers, in this case Knockaround Sunglasses, think about paying for these faux page views? Other advertisers linked to the dummy files uploaded on this channel include GoDaddy, Guinness, and Maybelline among others. Last January I wrote about movie trailers being uploaded, and monetized, without consent from rights holders. In this case, the pirates don’t even bother with anything resembling real content. Dummy files emblazoned with the titles of popular movies will do just fine.
I’m sure the page views are pretty worthless to the advertisers so why doesn’t YouTube do something to stop these content leeches? Simple answer, monetized uploads make them money. Who cares what the uploaded file actually is. Google/YouTube pays these parasitic pirates and pockets more profit for themselves.
Who says you can’t spin straw into gold?
Fake movie file is uploaded and monetized by a YouTube user. Google/YouTube makes money as does the uploader. What does the advertiser think of this scam?
YouTube uploads are nothing but dummy files with DVD covers, but these straw files earn money for the uploader and YouTube.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
The RIAA is not pleased with results of Google’s efforts to downgrade pirate websites in search results. According to a story by Stuart Dredge published today on Musically.com, the RIAA says Google’s not doing all it can to demote infringing sites:
The RIAA says it’s been monitoring the results, and it’s not happy. “Six months later, we have found no evidence that Google’s policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy. These sites consistently appear at the top of Google’s search results for popular songs or artists,” it says in a statement.
Specifically, the RIAA claims that the “serial infringers” sites that it analysed “still managed to appear on page 1 of the search results over 98% of the time in the searches conducted – in fact, these sites consistently showed up in 3 to 5 of the top 10 search results.”
I’ve found the same scenario with searches I’ve done. Earlier this month (2-11-13) did a search for an indie film “A Perfect Ending” that was released on DVD in early February. I searched the “past 24 hours” and used the search term: “a perfect ending” download. The results were not surprising. At the top of the list, after a paid Netflix placement, was a link to a Pirate Bay torrent.
Today I did a search for the Academy Award nominated “Silver Linings Playbook.” This time a I used a more general search term: silver linings playbook download and didn’t limit it by date. In this instance the first non-commercial result was the site www.movie2k.to. When I checked the link, I found more than 30 links to illegal downloads/streams. The first link was an active/embedded stream of the movie.* I checked the second link on the list and found it to be an active download.
When I checked Google’s Transparency Report for reported takedown request Google received over the past month for links to www.movie2k.to I found 37,764 URLS had been reported.
Now the top domain reported was Filestube.com with more than 400,000 takedown requests, but 37,764 is not an insignificant amount. BTW, this site itself is impervious to takedown requests. If you are a rights holder who wants the infringing links removed, you have to click each link and click often through a myriad of pop-up ads to report the file. Even then, some of the sites don’t respond. Lip-service to the contrary, Google remains a top dog in facilitating piracy. From Musically.com:
“There is a staggering amount of copyright infringement taking place every day online and much of it is facilitated by Google, as their own data shows,” wrote the MPAA’s SVP Content Protection, Internet, Marc Miller.
Earlier this week I wrote about Google’s disingenuous move to pressure payment providers to cease doing business with pirate websites. Once again I have to ask, why doesn’t Google clean its own house before shifting the focus to others? Seems like they still have plenty of their own work to do.
*In my experience the streams offered via this site (stream2k) are impervious to DMCA takedown requests.
by Ellen Seidler | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Copyright, Google, Piracy
It’s no surprise that anytime there’s discussion about finding effective ways to combat online piracy Google’s name seems to be in the mix. When the subject does come up, the constant refrain from Google officials is that they’re doing everything they can–but how much is just PR posturing versus real action?
Check out Google’s latest apparent stratagem. In a story by Katherine Rushton published on 2/16/13 in The Telegraph “Google looks to cut funds to illegal sites,” she reported that the company is pushing payment processors to cut off the flow of money sites linked to online piracy.
Google is in discussions with payment companies including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal to put illegal download websites out of existence by cutting off their funding. The web search giant, which is embroiled in a long-running row over the way it deals with pirated material, is considering the radical measure so that it can get rid of the root cause instead of having to change its own search results.
Executives want to stop websites more or less dedicated to offering links to pirated films, music and books from making money out of the illegal material. The plans, still in discussion, would also block funding to websites that do not respond to legal challenges, for example because they are offshore.
Ironically, the same day Ms. Rushton published her piece in The Telegraph, she also posted
this story “Google’s copyright war rages on-UK creative industries want the internet giant brought to heel.”
But the creative industries are not yet satisfied. They want those websites that are the subject of tens of thousands of “take down” requests to be blocked altogether – sites like fenopy.eu and filestube.com whose primary purpose appears to be offering downloads of pirated content. They also claim that the changes Google has made to its algorithm are not particularly effective.
I couldn’t agree more. Whether it’s Google’s search, YouTube, Blogger or AdSense, Google seems to have a finger in every slice of the piracy pie. Apparently the only buck that stops in Mountain View is the kind that goes into the bank.
Billboard reported on a SXSW panel “Copyright & Disruptive Technologies” held last week in Austin. The panel included moderator Margot Kaminski, executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School; Andrew Bridges, partner at Fenwick & West LLP; Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network; Derek Khanna, visiting fellow at Yale Law’s Information Society Project; and Wendy Seltzer, policy counsel to the World Wide Web Consortium.
