by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy
Pirate Bay Claims “Censorship” to deflect from its role as an anchor for illicit web economy built on piracy for profit.
Apparently Pirate Bay, the notorious torrent website, is adding web search to its repertoire of tools designed to aid those in search of illegal downloads. According an announcement on piratebrowser.com the new search engine is designed to “circumvent censorship.”
PirateBrowser is a bundle package of the Tor client (Vidalia), FireFox Portable browser (with foxyproxy addon) and some custom configs that allows you to circumvent censorship that certain countries such as Iran, North Korea, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland impose onto their citizens.
The fact that the folks behind Pirate Bay cling to the notion that their’s is a fight against web censorship is nothing new, disingenuous though it may be. After all claiming to be a soldier against tyranny is much more appealing than say–“we are fighting to make it easier to steal movies, music, e-books and more.” Pirate Bay’s heroic veneer has been spotlighted recently thanks to its 10th birthday celebrations and today in The Guardian, Loz Kaye wrote a piece examining the site’s 10 years as a “milestone for internet freedom.”
The site itself can’t be divorced from its cultural context, the hacktivist digital dissidence scene. Pirate Bay represents the punk music of the 21st century: while popular music is reduced to sugary talent-show fodder, online counterculture is noisy, rebellious and disruptive. The cool kids aren’t writing lyrics, they are writing code. This is the heart of Pirate Bay’s tenacity. It’s no longer just about the service it provides, it’s because Pirate Bay has come to symbolise web liberty for many.
What Pirate Bay “symbolizes” and what it actually is are not necessarily analogous. I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating once again–online piracy is not about sharing nor is it about “free speech” or “liberty”– it’s about theft for profit. Despite the spin, online piracy does not advance our dialogue over privacy, government surveillance, or political suppression–all increasingly worthy concerns. What it does do is enrich thieves and undermine the livelihoods of musicians, writers, filmmakers and others who create the content we enjoy.
Web censorship is undoubtedly an issue that needs to be vigorously debated, but thwarting the Pirate Bay’s ability to make money by facilitating theft is not. The fact is that Pirate Bay and other sites that share its torrents–pirate forums, cyber-lockers and streaming sites are in it to make money (off of advertising). Without the carrot of the torrent (movies, music, etc) they have nothing to drive traffic to their sites to entice users to click ads. Pirate Bay is in the BUSINESS of piracy.
It’s not surprising that the web is a vast, at times unruly place, but neither is it unreasonable to expect that criminal activity be discouraged. If users in Iran and North Korea can utilize the new web browser to bypass government firewalls that’s not a bad thing, but by lumping United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland into the same category, their claimed mission subverted. Sorry, but blocking access to stolen content just isn’t the same thing as political repression.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Law, Music, Piracy, Politics, TV
David Kaplan, head of Warner Brother’s anti-piracy unit made news this week in Los Angeles at the 4th Anti-Piracy and Content Protection Summit. According to a Q & A with Kaplan posted on the event’s website, he characterized the studio’s approach to IP enforcement this way:
Generally speaking, we view piracy as a proxy of consumer demand. Accordingly, enforcement related efforts are balanced with looking at ways to adjust or develop business models to take advantage of that demand by offering fans what they are looking for when they are looking for it.
Of course this makes sense. Piracy apologists often attempt to rationalize the dubious notion that consumers are entitled to have everything available–anytime, anywhere– by charging that obsolete distribution models are a sign that distributors are ignoring audience demand.
However, it’s not as simple as it may seem. The reality is that it takes time to build new business methods–and meanwhile, in the thriving universe of digital theft–as is true with most black markets–the pirate’s model has never been constrained by such “trivial” issues as contracts, licensing, budgets, or the law.
In an ideal world filmmakers would be able to release their films to worldwide audience simultaneously. With models like day and date release finding success, it’s likely such an approach will someday become the norm.
But…even when that day does arrive, the other elephant in the room remains-Will consumers be willing to pay instead of going to pirate sites that offer fast and free options with the click of a mouse? Finding efficient ways to meet audience immediate demand only solves one piece of the piracy puzzle. The other is how to thwart the black market entrepreneurs who compete directly with legit distributors? Remember–profit comes easy when a business has little, to no overhead costs associated with the content it offers.
Kaplan sees this issue as a “top priority.”
I think our top priority would be to remove the financial incentives from
those who would profit by building businesses based on the unauthorized exploitation
of our intellectual property. A close second would be educating consumer about the
importance of IP protection and the availability of legitimate alternatives to piracy.
I’ve said it before –if the financial incentives to run pirate websites disappear, and popular content made readily available through legit channels, piracy’s impact will diminish. The problem remains–how do we get there? At a time where content creators are adapting to online distribution, ad providers, search engines, web hosts, and payment processors continue to drag their feet when it comes to making real inroads against infrastructure and incentives that underpin digital piracy.
n the White House’s just released “2013 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement” the word “voluntary” appears 36 times including this statement:
The U.S. Government is pursuing an innovative and multi-pronged strategy to combat infringing foreign based and foreign-controlled websites by encouraging cooperation by law enforcement, development
of voluntary best practices, and international leadership…
The White House document also offers this carefully worded prescription as one path forward combatting IP theft online:
22. Facilitate Voluntary Initiatives to Reduce Online Intellectual Property Infringement and Illegal Internet Pharmacies
As an Administration, we have adopted the approach of encouraging the private sector to develop and implement cooperative voluntary initiatives to reduce infringement that are practical and effective. It is critical that such efforts be undertaken in a manner that is consistent with all applicable laws and with the Administration’s broader Internet policy principles emphasizing privacy, free speech, competition, and due process. Together with law enforcement efforts, private sector voluntary actions can dramatically reduce online infringement and change the enforcement paradigm. We encourage all participants to continue to work with all interested stakeholders, including consumer advocacy groups, to ensure that voluntary initiatives are as effective and transparent as possible.
It’s great to think that we can all reach a consensus to combat the scourge of piracy through “cooperation.” However, the fact is there’s still a very long way to go. Until ad providers, advertisers and companies like Facebook and Google, whose tentacles reach far and wide throughout piracy’s infrastructure, get serious about cleaning up the act all this talk about “voluntary” initiatives is just talk.
The fact is, when it comes to profiting from online piracy, money speaks louder than words. It may just take a bit more “law enforcement” to make those responsible pay attention and take meaningful action to clean up their acts.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy, Politics
The White House has released its 2013 strategic plan for intellectual property enforcement. The document is 35 pages long and outlines progress that’s been made since 2010 and goals moving forward. Included in the report is a letter to the President and Congress from Victoria A. Espinel, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, who summaries the findings and outlines progress made since the last report in 2010 which includes:
• U.S. law enforcement has significantly increased its enforcement against infringement that threatens the vitality of the U.S. economy and the health and safety of the American people. Since FY 2009
- − U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)-Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) new cases are up 71 percent, arrests are up 159 percent, convictions are up 103 percent, and indictments are up 264 percent.
- − Pending Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) health and safety-focused investigations are up 308 percent, FBI health and safety arrests are up 286 percent, and new trade secret theft cases are up 39 percent.
- − Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE seizures of infringing imports have increased
- by 53 percent.
• Private sector companies have voluntarily agreed to adopt best practices aimed at curbing the
sale of counterfeit goods and reducing online piracy. For example:
- − American Express, Discover, eNom, Facebook, Go Daddy, Google, MasterCard, Microsoft, Neustar, PayPal, Visa, and Yahoo! established the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies—a new non-profit to combat fake online “pharmacies” selling dangerous illegal drugs over the Internet.
- − AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and major and independent music labels and movie studios entered into a voluntary agreement to reduce online piracy. Under the agreement, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will notify subscribers, through a series of alerts,when their Internet service accounts appear to be misused for infringement on peer-to-peer networks.− American Express, Discover, MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa agreed to a set of best practices to withdraw payment services for online sales of counterfeit and pirated goods.
- − The Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies issued a leadership pledge to not support online piracy and counterfeiting with advertising revenue.
I’m particularly interested in reviewing what said about the efficacy of the private sector’s “voluntary…best practices” approach to see what progress has been made, and whether it jibes with what’s really happening online with regard to piracy, counterfeiting, etc. I’ll more on my thoughts once I’ve had the opportunity to review the entire report.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Politics
Terry Hart takes the EFF to task for their misleading take on copyright history
Copyhype blogger Terry Hart wrote a thoughtful response yesterday to an post on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s blog by Mitch Stoltz that purported to be analysis (and rebuttal) of what he called the MPPA’s “copyright agenda”. The piece published Monday was in response to MPAA CEO Chris Dodd’s recent remarks at a L.A. Copyright Society event earlier this month. Dodd said:
What would Jefferson think about the current state of copyright law?
First, the men who met in Philadelphia during that summer of 1787 and drafted the Constitution, considered copyright so important to unlocking the creative potential of the citizens of this new country, that they explicitly empowered Congress to incentivize creativity through patent and copyright legislation.
According to Stoltz’s EFF’s piece, the MPAA chief got it wrong.
Dodd claims that copyright as we know it is what “the founders of this republic intended.” Hardly. The first copyright act in the U.S, passed in 1790 by some of the same people who helped write the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, was very limited. It covered only books, maps, and charts – not music, theater, pamphlets, newspapers, sculpture, or any other 18th-century creative medium. The Founders’ copyrights lasted 14 years, with an option to renew for another 14. Today, of course, copyright covers nearly all written, visual, sculptural, architectural, and performing art, not to mention computer software and games, and it lasts for the author’s life plus 70 years. We suspect that if anyone had described today’s copyright system to, say, Thomas Jefferson, he would have been shocked. By all means, let’s look at how the Founders thought copyright should work, as one guidepost for fixing today’s law.
But according to Terry Hart, in this case, it’s really the EFF that got it wrong by conveniently ignoring the complete copyright picture as it’s evolved over time:
What’s curious is that the EFF would focus so much on the provisions rather than the principles of early U.S. copyright law (never mind how incorrectly they stated the former) yet leave out so many provisions in current copyright law that the early acts lacked. For example, the 1790 Copyright Act included no statutory recognition of fair use, the first sale doctrine, or the idea/expression dichotomy; no prohibition on protecting government works by copyright;13 no exceptions for libraries, educational institutions, or non-profit groups; no centralized registration system or deposit requirement.
The grave inaccuracies contained in just a few short sentences should leave little surprise that the EFF is on shaky ground concluding that their views on copyright would be compatible with the Founders…
You can read Hart’s full piece here. It’s well worth it if you’re looking for a more balanced perspective on what the true intent of our founding fathers may have been when it comes to copyright.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy, Politics, Tech
It’s no coincidence that Google’s attempting to grab the tech news headlines with blog posts this week trumpeting the company’s ongoing efforts to fight the scourge of online child porn and illegal pharmacies. Google’s links to illegal and unsavory activities is long established, but with increased public scrutiny thanks to the NSA snooping stories and declarations like that of Mississippi Attorney General Tom Hood asserting Google’s search aids online criminals, it seems that Googleiath’s powers that be felt the time had come for some much-needed reputation burnishing.
And so, this week we have not one, but two new Google blog posts that are designed to grab the news cycle and put the Silicon Valley giant in a more favorable light. Never mind that most of it’s really just old news repackaged to fit their latest PR campaign. The first PR blast came Saturday via this post, trumpeting Google’s role in the battle against child pornography online.
Google has been working on fighting child exploitation since as early as 2006 when we joined the Technology Coalition, teaming up with other tech industry companies to develop technical solutions. Since then, we’ve been providing software and hardware to helping organizations all around the world to fight child abuse images on the web and help locate missing children.
There is much more that can be done, and Google is taking our commitment another step further through a $5 million effort to eradicate child abuse imagery online. Part of this commitment will go to global child protection partners like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation. We’re providing additional support to similar heroic organizations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Latin America.
Since 2008, we’ve used “hashing” technology to tag known child sexual abuse images, allowing us to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere. Each offending image in effect gets a unique ID that our computers can recognize without humans having to view them again. Recently, we’ve started working to incorporate encrypted “fingerprints” of child sexual abuse images into a cross-industry database. This will enable companies, law enforcement and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing these images, and to take action against the criminals. Today we’ve also announced a $2 million Child Protection Technology Fund to encourage the development of ever more effective tools.
While it goes without saying that any effort to battle child pornography is laudable, and it’s great that the company is “making news” by donating 2 million more to the cause, but in my (cynical) view this donation appears to not to be driven by altruism, but is more likely born from a not-so-subtle desire to rub elbows with “heroic” organizations and in order to generate positive media buzz for a company facing increasing criticism over its handling of privacy and piracy/counterfeiting issues. Google’s assertion that it employs “hashtag” technology to identify and block offending imagery also raises the question as to why they can’t do more to prevent pirated content from appearing in their search results? Oh, but I digress….
Then today, the Google PR machine was back in action with this post outlining supposedly ongoing efforts to battle illegal (rogue) online pharmacies also appears to be part of their efforts to burnish their increasingly tattered reputation:
For the last several years, Google has worked closely with a number of organizations, government agencies, and businesses to combat rogue online pharmacies from all angles.
Collectively, we are making it increasingly difficult for these operators to effectively promote their rogue pharmacies online. A variety of websites and web services are refusing ads from suspected rogue pharmacies. Domain name registrars are removing suspect rogue pharmacies from their networks. Payment processors are blocking payments to these operators, and social networking sites are removing them from their systems too.
Again, there’s nothing “new” here, really just the same old, same old. It’s also particularly ironic to see Google patting itself on the back for behavior that has not been voluntary. Wasn’t Google the company that in 2011 paid the feds a
half a billion dollar settlement to close a Justice Department investigation into its role in serving and profiting from illegal pharmacy ads. How does that jibe with them combatting
“rogue online pharmacies” for the
“past several years?”Oh, and just a week ago the company was
called out by Mississippi’s attorney general Jim Hood who asserted:
Google’s search engine gave us easy access to illegal goods including websites which offer dangerous drugs without a prescription, counterfeit goods of every description, and infringing copies of movies, music, software and games.
If Google is doing such a great job, why hasn’t anything really changed? When will enough be enough? How long can the company keep tap dancing around land mines before it’s forced to reckon with the fact it enables and profits from a plethora of illegal, online enterprises? If technology can be used to battle child pornography, why not employ it to battle other illegal online activities?
There are plenty of examples of Google enabling and profiting from online crime. I outlined some in a blog post earlier this year, “Chronic, Ill-Gotten Gains–Google’s Web of Piracy Profit” and have also written others:
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy, Tech
Websites that offer pirated movies and music are taking it on the chin as of late. First movie2k.to disappeared (only to be reborn as a dubious duplicate) and now Kickass Torrents, one of the most popular torrent sites on the web, has had its domain name (kat.ph) seized by Philippine officials. According to Torrent Freak:
The action was taken following a complaint from local record labels who argued that the second largest torrent site on the Internet was causing “irreparable damages” to the music industry.
The domain seizure didn’t stop the site of course, it merely moved to a new domain name. A message posted at the new domain explained,
We had to drop Kat.ph as a part of our global maintenance….This was a hard decision, but it was necessary for the further development of KickassTorrents. Stay tuned for more news.
“Global maintenance” seems to be their euphemism for staying one step ahead of the law. At any rate, despite the fact the site has moved to a new domain, the good news in all this is that there seems to be increasing momentum to shutdown, or at least disrupt, websites that facilitate illegal content theft. Of course, if you want to find a site to watch or download movies and support the filmmakers who make them you could go here instead.
Update: Torrent Freak has updated this story and adds the MPAA is targeting the new domain for Kickass Torrents in order to get the site’s homepage links delisted by Google.
… the MPAA appears to be hand-picking torrent sites and streaming portals in an effort to have their homepages de-listed from Google. The new KickassTorrents domain Kickass.to is one of the first casualties of this strategy.
This is good news for all the musicians, filmmakers and authors whose work is routinely ripped off via this site.
