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Feb 05, `08 — Three global record companies, Universal Music Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong) Ltd and Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd, have launched legal proceedings against China’s top Internet search engine Baidu.com, accusing it of violating copyright by giving access to music files, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a press release on Monday, Feb 04.

* New legal proceedings brought against Baidu
* Copyright infringement actions against Sohu and its associate company Sogou
* Yahoo China in breach of copyright violation judgment

After months of fruitless negotiations, legal proceedings have been filed on Feb 04, against the China’s biggest internet company, Baidu. Separate actions have also been brought against Sohu and its associate company Sogou. Meanwhile, Yahoo China faces fresh proceedings following its refusal to comply with a landmark ruling in December confirming it violated Chinese law by committing mass copyright infringement.

All of the Chinese companies involved operate similar services based on delivering music to their users via “deep links” to hundreds of thousands of infringing tracks on third party sites, with the aim of driving their own advertising revenue. Such services have been confirmed as in breach of copyright by the December judgment of the Beijing Higher People’s Court. Each of them is a driver of copyright abuse in China, where the huge potential for the online music sector is being stymied by copyright theft.

China has potentially the largest online music-buying public in the world with as many broadband connections as the United States. Currently, however, more than 99 per cent of all music files distributed in the country are pirate and China’s total legitimate music market, at US$76 million, accounts for less than one per cent of global recorded music sales.

Monday (Feb 04)’s actions follow in the wake of a decisive judgment against Yahoo China in December 2007 by the Beijing Higher People’s Court. The court’s finding that Yahoo China’s music delivery service is illegal under Chinese law sets a precedent for cases against similar operations in China.

Three record companies have now filed proceedings against Baidu. The new claims have been filed with the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court by Universal Music Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong) Ltd and Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd. The three companies are asking the court to order Baidu to remove all links on its music delivery service to copyright infringing tracks that they own the rights to.

Action is also being taken today against Sohu and its associate company Sogou, which operates a similar service. Sogou makes profits through advertising that appears on the service and through sponsorship. Sogou also actively induces and encourages copyright infringement by means of recommendations and charts, while Sohu provides deep linking services through its associate company.

Sohu is the official sponsor of internet content service (ICS) for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The legal action is being brought by four record companies: Universal Music Limited, Gold Label Entertainment Limited, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong) Limited and Warner Music Hong Kong Limited. The cases were also filed at the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court. They follow four prior notices that were sent to both companies from July 2007 onward.

The claims against Baidu, Sohu and Sogou will be served on the respective companies by the court after the Chinese New Year.

Meanwhile, Yahoo China has still not complied with the December ruling made against it by the Chinese appeal court. As a consequence, the plaintiffs in that case have now filed execution proceedings against Yahoo China, asking the court to force Yahoo China to comply with the earlier judgment.

More at International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Feb 03, `08 — As Swedish prosecutors fixed their sights last week on The Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service that is a scourge of the movie and music industries, the operators of the site responded by hoisting a defiant, digital Jolly Roger, reports the IHT.

The Pirate Bay, on its blog, called for a celebration saying, “This week we’ve hit some magic numbers. We’re tracking over 1 million torrents. We have had over 10 million simultaneous peers on the trackers. We’re at 2.5 million registered users (and they are active as well).”

The 100th post on the Pirate Bay blog further adds, “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more.”

The Wires writes, “Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of the four Swedes charged in Sweden on Thursday, said in a telephone interview that the site has set up a clandestine, double-blind operation with its servers spread throughout the world — and out of reach of the Swedish authorities.

“The Pirate Bay is not in Sweden,” the 29-year-old Kolmisoppi said. Where are the servers?

“It’s a distributed system. We don’t know where the servers are. We gave them to people we trust and they don’t know it’s The Pirate Bay,” Kolmisoppi said. “They then rent locations and space for them somewhere else. It could be three countries. It could be six countries. We don’t want to know because then you’ll have a problem shutting them down.” More at IHT, theWired.

Feb 01, `08 — Four men who run one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world have been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden, the BBC reported on Thursday.

Pirate Bay does not store music and video files on its own servers, but instead helps users share them on the internet. The website acts as a directory of the files used by the BitTorrent file-transfer protocol.

“It’s not merely a search engine. It’s an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright protected material available,” public prosecutor Hakan Roswall told Reuters. “It’s a classic example of accessory — to act as intermediary between people who commit crimes, whether it’s in the physical or the virtual world.”

Pirate Bay told the news agency that the people running the site cannot be held responsible for how its directory services are used. The website is said to have between 10 and 15 million users around the world and is supported by online advertising.

Police seized computers in May 2006, temporarily shutting down the website.

Prosecutor Hakan Roswall said the website was commercially exploiting copyright-protected work because it was financed through advertising revenues. According to the Pirate Bay website, its users are currently downloading close to a million files.

On the site, a statement says: “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site.

“The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more.”

In an interview with the BBC’s technology programme Click last year Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde said: “I think it’s okay to copy. They get their money from so many places that the sales is just one small part.”

The other three men facing charges are Carl Lundstrom, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. If convicted, the four men could face a maximum of two years in prison.

The website had up until 2006 based its servers in Stockholm, but moved some to the Netherlands after a raid in May of that year by Swedish police, who seized equipment and held three people for questioning “on suspicion of breaking copyright law or abetting the breaking of copyright law,” authorities said. The site was taken down for a day, but was soon up and running again.

Moves against the site have been backed by entertainment industry groups, including the Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. More at BBC News.

Beijing, China — Dec 20, `07 –The international recording industry today hailed a landmark Beijing court ruling confirming that Yahoo China’s music delivery service violates Chinese law by facilitating mass copyright infringement.

Yahoo China, part-owned by one of the world’s biggest internet companies, Yahoo, runs an operation enabling users to search for, play and download pirate music without ever leaving its website. Yahoo China’s appeal against a guilty verdict in April was today dismissed by the Beijing Court.

The decision is made under new Chinese copyright laws which entered into force in 2006. The Court separately ruled on a similar case against internet company, Baidu which had been brought under the previous Chinese copyright laws. The ruling confirmed that Baidu participated with and assisted third party sites in transmitting infringing music, but under the old laws Baidu was not liable for copyright infringement.

Music search services such as Yahoo China’s and Baidu’s, which “deep link” users to hundreds of thousands of pirate tracks, are a huge drain on efforts to develop a legitimate music market in China. Despite enormous market potential, music sales in China totalled US$76 million in 2006, less than one per cent of the global recorded music market.

Over 99 per cent of all music downloading in China infringes copyright, and services such as Yahoo China and Baidu account for the bulk of the problem. More at IFPI.

Los Angeles — Dec 19, `07 — In a significant victory for the major Hollywood studios, a federal judge in Los Angeles has terminated an ongoing lawsuit against the operators of TorrentSpy.com in favor of all six of the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) member companies.

The court imposed the harshest sanction against the TorrentSpy defendants because of their brazen, continuous, and systematic destruction of evidence and subversion of the judicial process. The ruling means that TorrentSpy operators are liable for copyright infringement.

The District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the Central District of California found that the defendants, Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker and Wes Parker, had lied to the court and had systematically destroyed evidence. She also found that TorrentSpy is responsible for copyright infringements. A further court session next year will determine what penalties will be imposed - the extent of damages and any other sanctions, such as closure of the TorrentSpy website.

In its decision, the court ruled that “although termination of a case is a harsh sanction appropriate only in extraordinary circumstance, the circumstances of this case are sufficiently extraordinary to merit such a sanction.” The court found that the evidence was “not deleted or modified negligently, but intentionally in direct response to the institution of this lawsuit.” Observing that defendants “already had been subjected to lesser sanctions in this case”, including a fine for $30,000 for violation of a court order, the court concluded that the “harsh sanction” of terminating the defendants’ case was the only appropriate remedy.

The evidence defendants destroyed included forum postings with references to copyright infringement and other incriminating statements; site directories referencing copyrighted works and subcategories clearly referring to pirated content; and user IP addresses.

MPAA members filed lawsuits against various P2P sites including TorrentSpy, early last year, because such websites enable users to download complete films from the internet. TorrentSpy defended itself and brought a motion to dismiss the action, on the basis that it does not host copyrighted works itself. In June of this year, TorrentSpy was forced to log visitor details. In response, the torrent search engine blocked access for US internet users. More at MPAA (in pdf).

REDMOND, Wash — Dec 04, 2007 — As part of a comprehensive effort to address piracy of its products, Microsoft today announced that the company will increase efforts against piracy and outlined new steps being taken to protect Windows Vista from ongoing and known counterfeiting threats.

The upcoming Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) will include updates that target and disable two types of known exploits to the Windows Vista activation process. Also, as part of SP1, the company is making changes in how it differentiates user experiences for genuine and counterfeit systems based on feedback from customers and partners.

Microsoft is to withdraw an anti-piracy tool from Windows Vista, which disables the operating system when invoked, following customer complaints.

The so-called “kill switch” is designed to prevent users with illegal copies of Vista from using certain features.

But the tool has suffered from glitches since it was introduced with many Windows users claiming that legal copies of Vista had been disabled.

Microsoft says its efforts have seen a drop in piracy of its software.

In a statement released by the company, Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert, said:

“Users whose systems are identified as counterfeit will be presented with clear and recurring notices about the status of their system and how to get genuine. They won’t lose access to functionality or features, but it will be very clear to them that their copy of Window Vista is not genuine and they need to take action.”

Microsoft has described the new approach as a “change of tactics”. It said efforts to tackle piracy had seen numbers of fake copies of Vista at half the level of XP, the previous Windows operating system. The change will take effect with the release of Service Pack 1, a major update to Windows Vista. More at Microsoft.

Los Angeles, Calif — Dec 03, ‘07 — A federal judge on Monday threw out an antitrust lawsuit brought by the operator of the LimeWire online file-sharing service against a coalition of major record labels, concluding the firm failed to make its case that it has been harmed by the recording companies’ business practices, Alex Veiga of the Associated Press reported.

U.S. District Judge Gerard E. Lynch in New York ruled that Lime Group LLC failed to make its case that it has been harmed by the recording companies’ business practices, and he granted the companies’ motion to dismiss the claims.

Lynch also dismissed several claims brought under state laws “without prejudice,” which gives New York-based Lime Group the option to pursue the claims in state court.

Lime Group’s lawsuit was a counterclaim to a copyright infringement lawsuit brought last year against by record labels owned by the four major recording companies: Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group Corp., Britain’s EMI Group PLC, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG.

That case, which is still pending, was the first piracy lawsuit brought against a distributor of file-sharing software after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that technology companies could be sued for copyright infringement on the grounds they encouraged customers to steal music and movies over the Internet. More at Google/AP.

WASHINGTON — Nov 25, ‘07 — BRIAN BERGSTEIN of The Associated Press reports an excellent article on Business Software Alliance bullying over small business firms in North America.

“Michael Gaertner worried he could lose his company. A group called the Business Software Alliance was claiming that his 10-person architectural firm was using unlicensed software.

The alliance demanded $67,000 — most of one year’s profit — or else it would seek more in court. “It just scared the hell out of me,” Gaertner said.

An analysis by The Associated Press reveals that targeting small businesses is lucrative for the Business Software Alliance, the main copyright-enforcement watchdog for such companies as Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp.

Of the $13 million that the BSA reaped in software violation settlements with North American companies last year, almost 90 percent came from small businesses, the AP found.

The BSA is well within its rights to wring expensive punishments aimed at stopping the willful software copying that undoubtedly happens in many businesses. And its leaders say they concentrate on small businesses because that’s where illegitimate use of software is rampant.

But software experts say the picture has more shades of gray. Companies of all sizes inadvertently break licensing rules because of problems the software industry itself has created. Unable or unwilling to create technological blocks against copying, the industry has saddled its customers with complex licensing agreements that are hard to master.

In that view, the BSA amasses most of its bounties from small businesses because they have fewer technological, organizational and legal resources to avoid a run-in.

In Gaertner’s case, employees had been unable to open files with the firm’s drafting software, so they worked around it by installing programs they found on their own, breaking company rules, he said. And receipts for legitimate software had been lost in the hubbub of running his company.

“It was basically just a lack of knowledge and sloppy record-keeping on my part,” said Gaertner, who got a settlement that cost him $40,000.

These cases get costly because the BSA considers software pirated if a company can’t produce a receipt for it, no matter how old it is. Then the BSA generally demands at least twice the retail price of software deemed out of compliance. Plus it charges the “unbundled” prices of software that generally comes together at a discount, like Microsoft Office.

However, software-management gurus say the BSA could do far more to assist companies — which are, after all, its members’ customers.”Instead of just being the software police, be the police in the sense of helping old ladies across the street,” said Barbara Scott, a software consultant for Redemtech Inc. “The BSA could become more of a partner with organizations that they’re hammering as well.”

Gaertner, who worried his BSA encounter would crush his business, wants to rid himself of the Autodesk, Microsoft and Adobe software involved in the case.”It’s not like they have really good software. It’s just that it’s widespread and it’s commonly used,” he said. “It’s going to be a while, but eventually, we plan to get completely disengaged from those software vendors that participate in the BSA.“” More at AP.

Nov 25, ‘07 — Bobbie Johnson of TheGuardian writes a fine article on Video sharing website YouTube refusing to filter out threatening material, despite calls for more restrictions in the wake of the school shooting in Finland.

The article further writes, “Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, used YouTube to publicise his plans to attack his high school in Tuusula, hours before he killed eight people then shot himself. But Peter Fleischer, privacy counsel at Google, which bought YouTube last year, said the website was not considering passing more information to the police to avert such events. “Logistically we couldn’t do pre-screening,” he said. “We don’t want to become censors of the web.”

Vetting every video on the site would prove a technical challenge, with more than seven hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Mr Fleischer said privacy was of paramount importance but admitted there was no blanket ban on passing on information. “If it were child pornography then we would inform the authorities immediately. In the case of somebody doing a video that looks something like hate speech, however, we would remove the account. In most of these cases we don’t report it.”

YouTube users can flag up anything of concern, particularly pornography, bullying and violence. Moderators then decide whether the material breaks YouTube’s rules and often remove offending video in minutes.” More at TheGuardian.

Paris — Nov 23, ‘07 — French web users caught pirating movies or music could soon be thrown offline.

Those illegally sharing files will face the loss of their net access thanks to a newly-created anti-piracy body granted the wide-ranging powers. The anti-piracy body comes out of a deal agreed by France’s music and movie makers and its net firms.

The group who brokered the deal said the measures were intended to curb casual piracy rather than tackle large scale pirate groups.

In a landmark speech Nicolas Sarkozy said: “The rights of authors, the preservation of creativity, the recognition of the rights of each artist, of each performer… was an important commitment of my presidential campaign. “The deal was a decisive moment for the future of a civilised internet” he further added.

Net firms will monitor what their customers are doing and pass on information about persistent pirates to the new independent body. Those identified will get a warning and then be threatened with either being cut off or suspended if they do not stop illegal file-sharing.

The agreement between net firms, record companies, film-makers and government was drawn up by a special committee created to look at the problem of the net and cultural protection.

Denis Olivennes, head of the French chain store FNAC, who chaired the committee said current penalties for piracy - large fines and years in jail - were “totally disproportionate” for those young people who do file-share illegally.

In return for agreeing to monitor net use, film-makers agreed to speed up the transfer of movies to DVD and music firms pledged to support DRM-free tracks on music stores.

The deal was hailed by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the global interests of the music business.”This is the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far,” it said in a statement.

French consumer group UFC Que Choisir was more cautious.It said the agreement was “very tough, potentially destructive of freedom, anti-economic and against digital history”

Nov 17, ‘07 — News.com is reporting on the US House of representatives passing an amendment to the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (in pdf), that should make folks in Hollywood, the RIAA, and the MPAA well pleased.

The House of Representatives education committee passed a bill on Nov 15, ‘07 that would set higher-education policy for the next five years — and despite the efforts of campus officials and lobbyists, the measure directs colleges to take steps to combat illegal file sharing.

In the House Education and Labor Committee’s mammoth College Opportunity and Affordability Act lies a tiny section, which dictates universities that participate in federal financial aid programs “shall” devise plans for “alternative” offerings to unlawful downloading, such as subscription-based services, or “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.” The committee unanimously approved the bill Thursday.

Supporters and opponents of the proposal disagree, however, on what the penalty would be for failure to comply with the new rules. The proposed requirements would be added to a section of existing federal law dealing with federal financial aid.

Some university representatives and fair-use advocates worry that schools run the risk of losing aid for their students if they fail to come up with the required plans.

“The language in the bill appears to be clear that failure to carry out the mandates would make an institution ineligible for participation in at least some part of Title IV (which deals with federal financial aid programs),” Steven Worona, director of policy and networking programs for the group Educause, said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Worona acknowledged that “there does appear to be a great deal of confusion with respect to what penalties would be involved in not carrying out the mandates in this bill.” Still, Educause, which represents college and university network operators, continues to “strongly oppose these mandates,” he said. More at News.com.

American video stores have new-release sections. Chinese video stores have not-yet-released sections.

Beijing, China — Nov 12, ‘07 — Dawn C. Chmielewski of LA Times reporting on rampant video piracy in China. In his words, “On a recent weeknight here, four people entered a neighborhood shop, where a clerk escorted them through a back door to a closet-sized room.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves brimmed with some of the latest Hollywood movies, including “Ratatouille,” which had just reached Chinese theaters a week earlier and wasn’t due out on DVD until January. Also filling the shelves were entire seasons of such popular American TV shows as “Entourage” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” Each disc was bootlegged, selling for as little as $1.33.

Closed off from the rest of the store, the room looked hidden. But it’s secret to almost no one here — least of all this group that included two entertainment lawyers from Washington and Hong Kong as well as two representatives of the Motion Picture Assn., the film industry’s biggest trade group.

They were there to show a reporter the notorious black-market DVD store, Beijing Yongsheng Century International Cultural Co. It has been raided so often — 14 times since 2005 — that it’s acquired the nickname “Dan’s Shop,” after Dan Glickman, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

About 93% of the movies sold in China are counterfeit – black-market discs are sold in stores and by legions of roaming vendors who peddle them at subway stations and from their bicycles. Some make home deliveries.” More at LATimes.