Google’s Hypocrisy-Seeing the World Through Green Colored Glasses

Google’s Hypocrisy-Seeing the World Through Green Colored Glasses

by | Copyright, Tech

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As Google has grown to dominate internet search and online advertising, the company has repeatedly lobbied against legislative efforts to protect copyright owners from piracy in the name of keeping the internet “open” and “free” from censorship.  During the debate over SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) the company led the astroturf charge against the proposed bill saying:

Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet. So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page.

The company even went so far as to obscure it’s search logo with a dramatic swath of black and provided a link so that visitors could “tell Congress not to censor the web.”  google-sopa-logo

Despite the hyperbole, many of those who create content for a living understood that Google’s campaign was not born out of a desire to protect the greater good, but rather to protect it’s massive online advertising profits that risked being diminished should illicit websites be subject to takedown.  During the SOPA hysteria Google played puppeteer in orchestrating the movements of not-so-grassroots campaign to defeat the legislation.  Sadly, few who opposed SOPA took the time to understand Google’s role in encouraging and sustaining online piracy  (along with other nefarious online sites offering counterfeit products and pharmaceuticals) and, while the bill had its flaws, thanks to Google and other tech-driven memes,  there was little interest in building consensus about how to effectively and reasonably attack the growing problem of online theft.

As was pointed out by Scott Cleland in a Forbes piece, for Google, organizing opposition to SOPA was a business decision, pure and simple:

Google led,  orchestrated, politically-framed and set the political tone for much of the Web’s opposition to pending anti-piracy legislation, SOPA/PIPA, because rule of law and effective enforcement of property rights online represent a clear and present danger to Google’s anti-property-rights mission, open philosophy, business model, innovation approach, competitive strategy, and culture.

So, today, when I read this account in Wired.com about Google’s insistence that those who purchase a Google Glass (“Explorer” edition) be prevented from selling, loaning, or transferring them to another person, I had to laugh.  Let me get this straight, when it comes to creative content online (including pirated material)–it’s fine to sell, loan or “transfer” it to another (and make money by doing so thanks to Google’s AdSense) but if I want to sell or loan my  Google Glass to my pal, I can’t????  Hmmmm….crazy, but apparently true according to the Terms of Services  published by Google.

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According to the LA Times:

Google says that these terms are specifically for the early version of Glass, so they may change by the time the device goes on sale to the general public. But for now, Google says it simply wants the first users to use the device, not anyone else.

So, it’s OK for Google to decide what happens to their products, but it’s not OK for creative artists to decide what happens to theirs?  Guess what’s good for the Creative Goose ain’t OK for the Google Gander.  In both instances what seems only to matter is Google’s bottom line.  No surprise really, but their hypocrisy is truly a sight to behold.

Google’s philosophy is one of openness, or so they claim on their blog:

At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important.

I guess their belief in “open systems” doesn’t apply to tangible goods.  When it comes to property rights, Google’s approach is indeed “subjective.”

Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management who wrote the post goes on to add:

So if you are trying to grow an entire industry as broadly as possible, open systems trump closed. And that is exactly what we are trying to do with the Internet. Our commitment to open systems is not altruistic. Rather it’s good business, since an open Internet creates a steady stream of innovations that attracts users and usage and grows the entire industry.

And here’s the kicker:

Finally, we must always give control to the user. If we have information about a user, as with IBA, it should be easy for the user to delete that information and opt-out. If they use our products and store content with us, it’s their content, not ours.[emphasis added] They should be able to export it or delete it at any time, at no cost, and as easily as possible. Gmail is a great example of this since we offer free forwarding to any address. The ability to switch is critical, so instead of building walls around your product, build bridges. Give users real options.

Yeah right, give users “real options” except when it comes to selling or sharing their super-cool, nifty (and expensive) Google Glass.  I’d be fine with Google  dictating licensing terms for their products, if only they were fine with me doing the same.  Hypocrisy, thy name is Google.

 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

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.

 

Takedown of Megaupload had Positive Result on Movie Sales

Takedown of Megaupload had Positive Result on Movie Sales

by | Copyright, Film, Law, Piracy, Tech

Screen-shot-2012-01-21-at-12.23.15-PM-1According 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.

Netflix Ads + Google Blogspot + Stolen Movies = Piracy Profits

Netflix Ads + Google Blogspot + Stolen Movies = Piracy Profits

by | Copyright, Film, Piracy, Tech

As the Annenberg Innovation Lab releases its February “Ad Transparency Report” on major brands link to advertising on pirates sites it’s also worth taking a look (again) at yet another recent example as to how Google–along with Netflix in this case–continues to incentivize, and monetize, online piracy.

dark knight download.001

Google-hosted site features ads for Netflix and active (free) download links for a popular movie.

This is a Google-hosted website (via their Blogger platform) that features (as of yesterday) active download links to the Hollywood hit “The Dark Knight Rises.”  Note the (Google-served) advertising to the right.  At the top of the list is an ad for Netflix.  Now, I’ve asked this before and I’ll ask it again….Why go to Netflix and pay to watch the movie when you can click a download link and watch it for free?

Remember, Google is earning money, Netflix is gaining customers (earning money) and the Blogger pirate is earning money. The film’s distributor, Warner Brothers, earns nothing.   Sure, the studio is part of “big” Hollywood, but please remember–big Hollywood employs hundreds of thousands of “little” people who toil behind the scenes.  These grips, gaffers, caterers, drivers, makeup artists, script supervisors, carpenters, etc. depend on these Hollywood-generated jobs to put food on the table.  This is not a victimless crime.

There is no reason on earth that Google (and Netflix) can’t do a better job vetting websites where their advertising appears.  Profits for both are soaring.  Rather than hire additional staff to deal with these issues, it appears both companies are happy with apparently profitable, yet shameful,  status quo. google netflix profits.002

Profits for Google and Netflix are robust.

Despite lip-service to the contrary, neither company seems willing to take voluntary action for fear that it could impact their bottom line.  So what’s left?  As  of Fox Business wrote in his piece today:

The report deploys a new weapon in the assault on online piracy: public shame. The USC Annenberg lab’s director, Jonathan Taplin, hopes that publicly identifying the offending ad-nets will persuade them to block pirate sites entirely.

Ad supported piracy is nothing new, but finally the public is starting to pay attention.  Shame on Google and shame on Netflix and all the other established companies that continue to look the other way.

How Are Google’s Anti-Piracy Search Policies Working?

How Are Google’s Anti-Piracy Search Policies Working?

by | Copyright, Film, Google, Piracy, Tech

It’s been a few months since Google announced a new initiative designed to lower search results for web-sites reported for piracy.  According to Google, legitimate sites would move up and pirate sites would move down:

We aim to provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results. Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.

Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.

At the time, Google’s announcement  seemed encouraging, despite their careful use of the more flexible phrase “may appear lower” as opposed to “will appear lower.”  Now that some time has passed, I thought I’d do a random search to see how well Google’s new algorithm is working to thwart piracy.  I decided to do a fairly generic search using the terms “watch free movies online.”  I did not specify a time frame or put the search terms in quotes.  This was the result.

Result for search “watch free movies online”

The first two results were “sponsored results” (shaded in pink) which direct users to legitimate sites Yideo and Netflix.  However, the top two non-sponsored sites are sites offering pirate links.   I clicked “LetMeWatchThis” the second non-sponsored result.  That took me to this landing page which entices users with an array of movie poster thumbnails from current releases (many haven’t even been released on DVD).  I chose to click on a thumbnail for film that is scheduled to be released next week on December 4th, 2012–The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

Below a short summary of the film, there’s a list of 30 links to watch/download it.  I did not examine each and every link, but aside from several “sponsored” links, most point to sites known to host  pirated films.

Ignoring the first one (it’s a sponsored link that leads to an illegal pay-to-watch site) I clicked on the link to “Sockshare” a popular cyber-locker site (one of many to flourish in the vacuum left by Megaupload’s shutdown).  After clicking the link, and navigating past an ad (remember these pirate sites are in the business of making money off stolen content) I arrived at an embedded, full stream of the film.

Remember, according to Google’s explanation of its new policy, “we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.”  With this in mind, I decided to check Google’s “transparency report” to see how often this particular domain had been reported for copyright violations.  According to these results, there had been more than 10,000 requests for the URL to be removed.

 

I also checked the value of this website using and found this:

If these Alexa statistics are accurate, it’s safe to say that operating this particular pirate site is a lucrative endeavor indeed.  It’s long been notorious for its illegal links.  The fact this site comes up second in a Google search for  to “watch free movies online” is certainly a factor in their robust  income. Despite Google’s pledge to begin “using this (copyright infringement reporting) data as a signal” to adjust search rankings, their new algorithms don’t seem to be penalizing this site in the least.  To the contrary, it seems this site is being rewarded with a plum ranking resulting in plump profits.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that, despite lip-service to the contrary, not much has changed when it comes to Google aiding and abetting websites that profit from piracy.