Tag Archive for 'DMCA'

MPAA demands printers to stop downloading pirated movies

A study by a group of University of Washington staffers reveal how flimsy the process of identifying copyright offenders used by RIAA/MPAA really is.

During their investigation on who is using and how are BitTorrent trackers used the research team’s automated bots received 400 MPAA DMCA takedown notices without having actually downloaded or uploaded a single pirated movie. Moreover MPAA also sent DMCA takedown notices about files being shared by IP addresses belonging to printers the researchers “framed” to have shared pirated content.

The research team’s findings should ring alarm bells within the justice system. It is clear the methodology used by RIAA/MPAA to identify copyright infringers is completely inadequate and does in no way meet even the lowest standards of burden of proof.

-TPP

ICE raids mod chippers. The US is much safer today.

ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency in charge of, among other things, keeping illegal immigrants out of the country raided 32 mod chipping “operators” earlier this week in 16 states. The operation was a cooperative effort with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). ESA, unsurprisingly, applauded the raids wholeheartedly.

The rest of the country, however, aren’t seeing things quite in the same light ICE and ESA are. Especially gamers. The reaction to the raids has been overwhelming and 100% negative. Even the venerable John Dvorak felt compelled to speak out against the raids.

One of the best written counterpoints to ICE’s and ESA’s black-and-white view of the world is a forum post on Xbox Scene by twistedsymphony titled The Legality Of Modding, and how everyone is a criminal according to the DMCA. It raises several questions about ESA’s motivations, the PR spin put on the raids and modding video game consoles in general.

Technically speaking the people raided might all be guilty of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The raids are, however, yet another sign of how utterly ridiculous the DMCA is.

-TPP

Why do copyright holders and US legislators assume people are guilty until proven innocent?

Yet another bill making copyright violations incrementally more serious hit the news today.

Entertainment industry lackeys Senators Feinstein and Graham have introduced a new bill that would effectively ban devices that record streamed digital music, primarily through satellite radio.

Then there’s the new super-DMCA introduced by Conressman Lamar Smith, someone who is so completely in the pocket of the entertainment industry that he probably doesn’t even fart without asking them if he is allowed to do that. This bill is something else. Among other things it would make posting copyrighted material on the net exceeding a value of $1,000 punishable by a 10 – 20 year prison sentence. You gotta be fucking kidding me! I can kill someone and get a lower sentence. Be sure to check the working draft of this bill that reveals the kind of edits done to it before its introduction. It’s amazing.

When the fuck did the US legislators start assuming every US citizen is a criminal and therefore not to be trusted with such awful gadgets as satellite radio receivers with recording capability? And I’m not even going to go into the way copyrights have been extended so that the original work is basically covered until hell freezes over.

Why is the tech industry sitting with their thumbs up their ass and basically letting the entertainment industry dictate the direction of technological innovation? (Update: read below…)

With the introduction of such concepts as the Broadcast Flag it’s clear the entertainment industry doesn’t want the consumers to record anything digital. Not even if you legally own it. They don’t want you to back it up or transfer it to another device so that you can listen to it while jogging. And the reason for it is not so that you’d have to buy it sevral times (although that’s a consequence), but because if they allow it, then all of us criminals will be distributing digital content wholesale. And there’s where the assumption of guilt until proven innocent comes in. Why are the US legislators buying into this sort of thinking? It goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for.

Why are organizations such as the EFF the only ones that keep making any noise about these issues?

Just north of the border, there’s a revolution going on in the music industry. Six leading Canadian record labels left CRIA, The Canadian Recording Industry Association, over disagreements on how CRIA handles copyright issues. It has left some wondering just how Canadian the CRIA is, as it seems it’s more interested in protecting the “rights” of their southern comrades than advancing Canadian artists’ interests.

Fuck’em. Just fuck all of them. Simple as that.

Update: Right on cue, CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) has upped the ante:


Please also read the press release associated with CEA’s campaign against RIAA/MPAA. Awesome!

-TPP

EFF has published a paper on the unintended consequences of DMCA

The EFF paper is a great collection of DMCA horror stories.

I’m pretty sure the copyright owners see the list as a collection of their greatest moments though.

-TPP

MPAA sues Google – well, not quite, but they might as well

MPAA is sueing a number of search engines that link to copyrighted content. What’s interesting is that they’re sueing search engines that comply with DMCA takedown requests.

-TPP

Has the entertainment industry completely bought out the government?

The entertainment industry is big, and it’s powerful, but I never thought they ran the United States. Even when the DMCA was passed I didn’t think so. But today I read two news stories that make me wonder.

The first one is so absurd you really have to read it twice to believe it. It seems the FCC is claiming it has authority to regulate all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus “associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received” via all interstate radio and wire communication. That, btw, includes personal computers, PVRs, and any other device that could receive digital TV signals now or in the future. FCC’s basis for this argument is that they have to do it to make HDTV adoption happen. This is why the FCC now thinks they can dictate what you can or, rather, can not do with your audiovisual gadgetry.

The second item comes straight from the lobbying arm of the RIAA and MPAA via your friendly entertainment industry representatives in the US Senate. It seems like there’s a new copyright bill in the books every week. This time it’s something called the Intellectual Property Protection Act (HR2391). Now, it has all the usual “share music or movies online and go to prison for the rest of your life” stuff all the other bills have, but this bill goes even further. It actually has the audacity to prohibit skipping commercials or other promotional announcements when recording movies for home viewing. At least they let you skip the commercials when viewing the recording though, for now.

-TPP