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In the communist era, the Eagle lost its crown |
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TorrentFreak has managed to unearth some financial details for The Center for Copyright Information (CCI), the 'not for profit' organisation set up to administer the US's 'six strikes' regime. When the scheme started, the founding content owner members (primarily the MPAA and the RIAA) agreed to share the costs with the participating major ISPs. The company's first eight month tax filing shows that ISPs and copyright holders paid a total of $1,377,633 in membership dues, putting the yearly budget around $2 million per year. So where is all the money going? Well here's a breakdown, via TorrentFreak: (i) The CCI pays Executive Director Jill Lesser - the only key employee working there - a modest $43,750 during the first eight months of 2012 BUT (ii) Lesser indirectly earns a bit more from CCI from her consulting firm JAL, which the CCI paid $193,750 to during the same eight-month period. (iii) Around $144,093 was paid to PR firm Glover Park Group and (iv) Resource Global was paid $125,691 for its consulting services, as well as $102,928 in legal fees. The costs do not cover the cost of copyright actions by copyright holders and the costs ISPs incur when tracking down infringers and processing the notices with TorrentFreak saying that "copyright holders and ISPs are likely to spend double or triple the previously mentioned $2 million on the entire six-strikes system."
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The monster Grendel - rivalled by Google? |
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And more on video games: It seems independent video game developer Wild Games Studio might have "abused" YouTube's copyright system to censor a negative video review of their game My Day One: Garry's Incident which was posted by user TotalBiscuit. In a series of tweets, Total Biscuit addressed the issue saying "Well, cat is out of the bag since someone on Reddit found it. My Day One: Garrys Incident video was copyright flagged by the devs [developers]. I should point out that this is a game I was sent review code for, it was also the top-ranked video on Youtube for that game. It is fairly obvious what they are doing here, abusing Youtube's copyright system to censor criticism of their product." More on Gameranx here - all fuel for the debate about what is and here perhaps isn't the proper role of copyright.
The shutdown of MegaUpload took nearly 11 million legitimate files offline - that's according to a new study by the Northeastern University in Boston. The same report confirms that the majority of the files did contain infringing content. Overall, researchers say that at least 26% and possibly up to 79% of files on the sites surveyed infringed copyright. stored and shared via the now defunct cloud-locker and file-transfer service were likely infringing copyright.
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And finally - a fascinating article by Shrii Shrii Anandamurtijii on how copyright law does (and doesn't) interface with indigenous peoples' folklore - and concepts such as communal ownership - here set against a background of Australian Aboriginal customary law. For more, it's on the Speaking Tree - go to "The equitable interface between customary law and copyright law". Image from www.tobwabba.co.au.
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