With the defeat of SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and its Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) as the backdrop, Register of Copyrights in the U.S. Copyright Office Maria Pallante urged publishers to do a better job communicating with the public the importance of copyright protection in the creative process. It was clear in the debate that led to the defeat of SOPA that the general public is confused about the importance of copyright, she said. “A well informed public is important to future copyright debates,” she said. While copyright must respect the interest of the general public, that doesn’t mean the public has a right to unfettered access to content without paying for it, Pallante said.

--Megaupload Drops Suit Against Universal
(March 29, 2012)
Megaupload has filed the paperwork to drop a lawsuit it filed against
Universal Music over a video the file sharing service produced; the
video contained clips of musical artists saying positive things about
Megaupload. The suit is likely to have been dropped so that Megaupload
can focus its attention on criminal charges its executives face in the
US over allegations of facilitating wanton copyright infringement.
Megaupload may also be facing changes of copyright infringement in a
lawsuit from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/0 ... n-charges/
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threa ... versal.pdf

Embattled Megaupload is dropping a lawsuit against Universal Music that accuses the label of unlawfully removing from YouTube a four-minute video Megaupload produced featuring Kanye West, Mary J. Blige, will.i.am and others praising the notorious file-sharing service.

French anti-P2P law cuts back pirating, but music sales still decline

France's three-strikes anti-piracy law is one of the strictest in the world. It employs private companies to scan file-sharing networks for copyright infringement and sends warnings to pirates if they're caught red-handed. The law, enforced by a French authority called Hadopi, was instated 17 months ago to the applause of music copyright holders and their representatives. Although an early study originally showed piracy had actually increased after the anti-P2P law passed, Hadopi released a report this March saying French ISP users had significantly decreased their illegal file sharing. Despite that announcement, the French music industry still saw a decline in revenue.

Hadopi used the reports of two different companies to ascertain the decrease in pirated traffic. One metric said illegal data sharing on peer-to-peer networks decreased by 43 percent, another survey used a different methodology and saw a 66 percent decrease in illegal P2P traffic. While Hadopi only monitors peer-to-peer networks, its recent study noted there's "no indication that there has been a massive transfer in forms of use to streaming technologies or direct downloads."

For all the fanfare in Hadopi's 14-page report celebrating the crackdown on music and video piracy, the music and video industries in France did not see increased profit in 2011 compared to the year before. The overall recorded music industry saw a 3.9 percent loss, and France's video market dropped 2.7 percent overall.

The depressed sales likely won't take copyright holders off the warpath. In fact, both music and video industries saw significant increases in purchases of digital media. In music, download revenues increased by 18.4 percent. Streaming and subscriptions revenue grew by 73 percent, largely due to the rising popularity of Spotify and Deezer. According to a domestic video publisher's group, video-on-demand sales increased 50 percent.

An article on the French website Numerama also noted that streaming music played a large part in increasing sales of digital music downloads, and surprisingly, concert tickets. Streaming music did not, however, influence a user's impetus to buy CDs.

These numbers show that despite the hemming and hawing about piracy eating up entertainment industry revenue, the transition from physical discs to digital files is a huge factor in negative growth. No matter what, music industry officials are unlikely to let up on piracy. More than likely, they will adopt the argument that media sales would be even lower without ISP monitoring.

MPAA head still hoping for some agreement on SOPA

Christopher Dodd, the current head of the Motion Picture Association of America, famously denounced the mass blackout plans of thousands of web sites last January a day before they happened to protest the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US Congress. The former US Senator said at the time that it was "yet another gimmick." He had to eat his words a few days later. The blackout caused a number of people in Congress to switch their positions on SOPA and PIPA and finally the voting on both bills were delayed indefinitely.

However, Dodd seems to believe that there can be some kind of understanding on a bill such as SOPA, which its supporters claim is out to stop online piracy. Its opponents believe the bill was too broadly worded and could be used to shut down any site for the slimmest of reasons.

In a new interview for The Hollywood Reporter, Dodd says that he wishes Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, were alive today, saying, "At least he understood the connection between content and technology." He added that he hopes that there are others like Jobs " ... who are smart and highly respected in both communities. Between now and sometime next year [after the presidential election], the two industries need to come to an understanding."

When asked if any talks are happening right now between the tech and entertainment industries over SOPA, Dodd replied, "I'm confident that's the case, but I'm not going to go into more detail because obviously if I do, it becomes counterproductive."

He was also asked about President Barack Obama's switch from supporting to opposing SOPA but Dodd declined to comment, saying, "I'm not going to revisit the events of last winter. I'll only say to you that I'm confident he's using his good relationships in both communities to do exactly what you and I have been talking about."

Dodd also talked about the shut down of the MegaUpload file sharing site which happened just as the SOPA bill was put on hold. Dodd agreed that the timing of the events " ... seemed a little too coincidental." He also said that a woman from the Justice Department told Dodd the reason why the move against MegaUpload was made on that day. Apparently it was picked because it was a big day for MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom. Dodd claims the woman told him, "Oh, we've known about the date for the last year because it was his birthday. It was a big party, and we knew all the assets would be there."

When asked if any talks are happening right now between the tech and entertainment industries over SOPA, Dodd replied, "I'm confident that's the case, but I'm not going to go into more detail because obviously if I do, it becomes counterproductive."

There's also this group that's started a PAC to get rid of Lamar Smith.

http://news.yahoo.com/reddit-users-team ... 54220.html

Also, gotta say, the name checking of Steve Jobs by Dodd is pretty distasteful and a pretty cynical move. Not that I expected any better of a guy that's clearly selling his influence.

--Megaupload Attorney Says Case Could Set Troubling Precedent
(March 3, 2012)
The lawyer representing Megaupload in the US said that if the storage
service company is found guilty of charges against it, other cloud
storage service companies could be held liable for the content of their
customers' files. If US prosecutors are successful in their extradition
attempt and Megaupload and its executives are tried, it will be the
first criminal copyright infringement case brought against a cloud
services provider in the US. In a criminal case, the prosecution would
need to prove primary copyright infringement, in other words, that the
defendants were aware of the copyright violations and willfully violated
the laws. The indictment against Megaupload does not cite particular
content nor does it name any individuals who shared the content. The
indictment holds Megaupload and those operating the company responsible
for users' conduct. US privacy laws prohibit cloud storage service
providers from looking at the content their customers store.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... onomyId=82

--Man Seeks Order to Preserve Megaupload Data
(March 30, 2012)
A man represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking
a US District Judge to order that the 25 petabytes of data that
authorities seized earlier this year in connection with Megaupload be
preserved. Kyle Goodwin operates OhioSportsNet, which films and streams
high school athletic events; he wants access to his content that is
stored on the Megaupload network. Earlier in March, the Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA) asked Megaupload server host Carpathia to
retain all the data because they could be used as evidence in copyright
infringement lawsuits. Federal authorities say that they have copied
what they require and that Carpathia does not need to retain the 25
million GB of Megaupload data that it is currently storing at a cost of
US $9,000 a day. Carpathia has asked a judge to relieve it of the need
to retain the data and the accompanying expense. Megaupload has asked
that some of its frozen assets be released to pay Carpathia for storing
the data.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/0 ... d-content/

Huh, the DOJ is interested in taking care of the multimillion dollar industry, but couldn't care less about the average citizen.

People keep talking about 1984 but it seems more like Animal Farm to me.

perhaps a combination of the 2............

There seems to be a contradiction in the gvt's case as presented below:

1. " In a criminal case, the prosecution would
need to prove primary copyright infringement, in other words, that the
defendants were aware of the copyright violations and willfully violated
the laws."

2. "US privacy laws prohibit cloud storage service
providers from looking at the content their customers store."

MPAA's former tech policy chief turns SOPA foe

A senior executive that Hollywood hired last year to be its chief technology policy officer has undergone a remarkable about-face: he now opposes the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Paul Brigner, who was until last month a senior vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, has emerged as SOPA's latest critic. "I firmly believe that we should not be legislating technological mandates to protect copyright -- including SOPA and Protect IP," he says.

In a statement posted on CNET.com, Brigner says that his time at the MPAA -- which, more than any other advocacy group, was responsible for SOPA and Protect IP -- led him to realize that new laws to block allegedly piratical Web sites simply won't work.

"Did my position on this issue evolve over the last 12 months? I am not ashamed to admit that it certainly did," Brigner writes. "The more I became educated on the realities of these issues, the more I came to the realization that a mandated technical solution just isn't mutually compatible with the health of the Internet." (See CNET's SOPA FAQ.)

A spokesman for the MPAA said his organization would not comment on Brigner's volte-face.

Hollywood, meanwhile, has hardly given up on SOPA. MPAA chief Christopher Dodd said recently that he was "confident" that President Obama was using his "good relationships in both communities" -- that is, Silicon Valley and Hollywood -- to advance the measure. And last week, the White House said that "we believe that new legislative and non-legislative tools are needed to address offshore infringement."

Some MPAA allies also remain optimistic. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the more ardent defenders of the bill, said it "will continue to work with Congress." Cary Sherman, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, wrote in a February 7 op-ed in The New York Times that his industry wants a "workable" legal framework -- after dubbing January's protests "misinformation," a "dirty trick," and "hyperbolic mistruths" that "amounted to an abuse of trust and a misuse of power."

Brigner's statement on CNET.com came in response to an article last week about his new job as head of the Internet Society's North America efforts.

SOPA and its Senate cousin, the Protect IP Act, were yanked from congressional calendars after January's historic online protest--which included Wikipedia going dark for a day, warnings about Internet censorship appearing on the home page of Google.com and Craigslist.org, and Senate Web sites being knocked offline due to a flood of traffic. The bills are opposed by a long list of Silicon Valley's most successful entrepreneurs and executives.

Both proposed laws are designed to target so-called rogue Web sites by allowing the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines and Internet service providers that would force them to make the suspected piratical site effectively vanish. But such broad censorship orders can jeopardize innocent Web sites, a point that constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe made, as well as negatively impacting U.S. cybersecurity.

Editorial: SOPA and the free internet's battle to the death

Holy crap, they're still trying to shove SOPA down our throats? After all that, they still don't get the problem with it? In case you haven't heard, the MPAA is still hard at work making deals with senators and congressmen in shadowy back rooms, even after all the previous pains such efforts brought on them.

I'm still sticking to my hypothesis that the problem of piracy is the fault of the studios themselves, and that it's their problem to fix. At best, legislation like SOPA (surely they won't be stupid enough to keep the same name?) will probably have no effect on piracy whatsoever, only hurting legitimate business and file transfers. At worst, it creates a dangerous precedent that will hurt everything but piracy.

The fact is, they're going to keep trying to pass laws like SOPA until it actually slips through. Maybe it'll be some shadowy back room deal that no one has a chance to oppose, or maybe it'll be hidden deep within some seemingly harmless bill. Maybe they'll even pass it openly, in one final, flamboyant middle finger to free speech.

At this point, I'm afraid that the only way that scenario doesn't happen is if there's a (not really) radical overhaul of existing free speech laws. It's going to take more than a pledge from the President not to pass any legislation that impacts access to or free speech on the Internet. It's going to take a Constitutional amendment to keep them from doing just that. I think the same argument can apply to pretty much any country, just replace 'Constitutional amendment' with the nearest legal equivalent.

Technically, the Constitution and basic human rights laws the world over should protect against such legislation. Any kind of law that says free speech and unrestricted access to information is a basic right should be totally redundant and unneeded. Sadly, that's being completely ignored.

This is as much a technological issue as it is a political one, but it seems to me that the Internet fills the same role as the literal free press did in its time in the spotlight. Sure, lots of it is drivel, but so was (and is) much of the literal press. There lots of good nuggets out there to be found by the discerning eye. In the modern world, more and more people are going to rely exclusively on the Internet and connected devices to get their information. Sure, I believe that libraries and books will live on, but I think that newspapers will be largely replaced in the future.

Any law that regulates what you can say on the Internet or cuts off access to it isn't any different than regulating what a paper can print or banning reading. A vital part of democracy and culture is threatened, and that's pretty scary.

Have no doubt: there's a storm coming, a showdown that will only end in the total defeat of one side. It's a battle between money, corruption, dying industries and the free and open Internet. Where will you stand?

I'm still sticking to my hypothesis that the problem of piracy is the fault of the studios themselves,