THE COPYKAT

Extradition to US for alleged torrenter Artem Vaulin

Artem Vaulin – the alleged owner of the torrenting site KickAss Torrents (“KAT”) and Ukranian national – is facing extradition to the United States. In July 2016 he was arrested in Poland and charged by criminal complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. Vaulin has been held in custody since his arrest, having been denied bail.

The US is alleging that Vaulin, who is 30 years old, is responsible for the unlawful distribution of $1 billion of copyrighted materials.

Vaulin’s American defence council has asked the Illinois District Court to dismiss the case, arguing that torrent files are not copyright protected. Vaulin’s defence team argued that “Torrent files are not content files. The reproduction and distribution of torrent files are not a crime.” The defence council continued; “If a third party uses torrent files to infringe it is after they leave the KAT site behind and such conduct is too random, inconsistent, and attenuated to impose criminal liability on Mr. Vaulin. The government cannot use the civil judge-made law in Grokster as a theory in a criminal case.”

The Warsaw District Court has ruled in a preliminary ruling that Vaulin can be extradited. The extradition process does, however, have another hearing until the decision is final, as the process is decided in two stages. If the lower court fully grants the extradition request, Vaulin will have recourse to the Polish Supreme Court. If extradition is granted, he will be facing a criminal trial in the US.

And more extradition! it's off to the US for alleged torrenter Kim Dotcom

Kim Dotcom has been at the centre of an extradition saga since 2012. He is the founder of Megaupload, another BitTorrent site. Dotcom, a German national with permanent residency rights in New Zealand, was arrested at the behest of the US on criminal copyright violation and racketeering charges.

In a recently released decision, it has been ruled that Kim Dotcom cannot be extradited to the US on copyright infringement charges. Dotcom’s legal team had argued that there are no equivalent criminal sanctions for copyright infringement in New Zealand that would activate the extradition treaty with the US.

Instead, it was ruled that Dotcom can be extradited on grounds of conspiracy to commit fraud, which is an extraditable offence under section 24 of the Extradition Act 1999. Dotcom and his legal team immediately criticized the decision, stating that “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that copyright charges can't be fraud charges. Let's just ignore that minor detail over here in New Zealand.”  Image portal gda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

The saga is not at its end, and further updates should be available in the upcoming months.

Piracy filters for ISPs – web blocking

The contentious issue of the blocking of pirating sites by ISPs has been reported on this blog previously here, here and here.

The Recording Industry Association of American (“RIAA”), along with 14 other groups of rightsholders have now expressed its dissatisfaction with the current DMCA takedown regime and is advocating for ISPs to directly filter out pirated content in comments filed with the US Copyright Office. It argues, inter alia, that “the notice and takedown system as currently configured results in an endless game of whack-a-mole, with infringing content that is removed from a site one moment reposted to the same site and other sites moments later, to be repeated ad infinitem.”

Google responded to the RIAA’s comments, principally pointing out the 99% of links it was asked to remove in January of this year “were not in our search index in the first place.”

These comments to the US Copyright Office are being made within the context of a review of US Copyright laws which is taking place at the moment.

Search engines potentially to be forced to delist piracy sites in Russia

A new copyright law has been proposed in Russia which would force search engines to delist piracy websites.

Sites that would potentially be blocked under the new law would be those that have been subject to a web-block injunction in the Russian courts, as well as piracy sites that have failed to respond to takedown requests by rightsholders.

Students to pay to play whilst learning music?

Conflict is brewing in Japan between The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (“JASRAC”) and The Association to Protect Music Education.

The domestic Copyright Law grants an exclusive “right of performance” to composers and lyricists to perform their copyrighted music. JASRAC is planning to introduce a policy charging copyright fees for performances of copyrighted music at music schools in January 2018. This policy would be to charge music schools 2.5% of the income generated from tuition fees for a fixed rate licence to perform copyrighted music.

JASRAC argues that it is unfair that music schools are not covered under this right. In contrast, The Association to Protect Music Education argues that performing music for instruction is not for the purpose of having people listen to it, and that copyright fees are already paid through payment for scores and other materials.

The Association to Protect Music Education is ready to take legal action in order to verify that no such financial obligation flows from the domestic Copyright Act.

This CopyKat by Tibbie McIntyre

THE COPYKAT

CREATe Public Lecture 2017: the Case for a Related Right for Press Publishers

CREATe is the Research Council UK’s Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy at the School of Law – University of Glasgow. The Centre is headed up by Professor Martin Kretschmer.

On February 14^th, Thomas Hoeppner (Professor of Civil Law, Business Law and  Intellectual Property Law, Wildau Technical University of Applied Sciences, and, Partner in a Berlin based law firm), will present on “EU copyright reform: the case for a related right for press publishers.”

The CREATe website states that:

“On September 14th 2016, the European Commission presented a package of proposed copyright reforms under the banner of promoting a Digital Single Market (DSM). Amongst others, the proposal includes an exclusive right of press publishers for the digital publication of their press publications.

The proposal has been criticised by academics arguing that the right lacked a justification and would interfere with the access to information (see above). Picking up on this lecture against a publishers’ right, Prof. Hoeppner investigates the merits of such a right. To this end, the lecture outlines the economic and technical background including the developments in the consumption of press publications since the current legislation came into force. The lecture will then present the arguments in favour of the proposed right and examine the counter-arguments raised against it.”

This lecture is in contrast to a previous lecture presented by Professor Raquel Xalabarder (Chair of Intellectual Property, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain), in which she discussed the press publisher rights in the proposed Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market, arguing that the right would not actually achieve the desired policy objectives set out in the recitals.

The lecture is free and open to everyone.

It will be held in the Humanities Lecture Theatre in the University of Glasgow on Tuesday 14 February 2017, 17:30 – 19:00.

Visit the CREATe webpage to register for the event.

P.S. This 1709 Intern is currently preparing analysis on the proposed exclusive right of press publishers for the digital publication of their press publications – watch this space!

Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunity at Harvard – deadline March 1, 2017

The Project on the Foundations of Private Law at Harvard Law School is seeking applicants for the Qualcomm Fellowship in Private Law and Intellectual Property.

The Qualcomm Fellowship is a two-year, residential postdoctoral program specifically designed to identify, cultivate, and promote promising scholars early in their careers with a primary interest in intellectual property and its connection to one or more of property, contracts, torts, commercial law, unjust enrichment, restitution, equity, and remedies. Fellows have been selected from among recent graduates, young academics, and mid-career practitioners who are committed to pursuing publishable research likely to make a significant contribution to private law scholarship.

Fellows devote their full time to scholarly activities in furtherance of their individual research agendas. In addition, fellows contribute to the intellectual life of the Project and the Harvard Law School community through mentoring students, presenting their research in and attending faculty workshops and seminars, helping to organize and participating in Centre events, and blogging.

Purpose

The Project on the Foundations of Private Law is an interdisciplinary research programme at Harvard Law School dedicated to scholarly research in private law. Applicants should be aspiring academics with a primary interest in intellectual property (especially, patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret) and its connection to one or more of property, contracts, torts, commercial law, unjust enrichment, restitution, equity and remedies. The Project welcomes applicants with a serious interest in legal structures and institutions, and welcomes a variety of perspectives, including economics, history, philosophy and comparative law. The Qualcomm Postdoctoral Fellowship in Private Law and Intellectual Property is specifically designed to identify, cultivate and promote promising IP scholars early in their career.

More information can be found at http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/about/privatelaw/index.html

Programme

The Qualcomm Postdoctoral Fellowship in Private Law and Intellectual Property is a full-time, two year residential appointment, starting in the Fall of 2017. Like other postdoctoral fellows, IP Fellows devote their full time to scholarly activities in furtherance of their individual research agendas in intellectual property and private law.

Eligibility

By the start of the fellowship term, applicants must hold a J.D. or other graduate law degree. Applications will be evaluated by the quality and probably significance of their research proposals, and by their record of academic professional achievement

For more information, please contact Bradford Conner, conner@law.harvard.edu.

Applications must be received by March 1, 2017.

DailyMotion Permanently Blocked in Russia As A Consequence of Copyright Complaints

DailyMotion, the video-hosting platform, has been permanently blocked in Russia.

The Moscow City court has ordered local ISPs to block subscribers from accessing DailyMotion. In other jurisdictions, this measure is usually reserved for ‘pirate’ sites, such as The Pirate Bay and Book-Fi.

The blocking of DailyMotion is a consequence of repeated allegations of copyright infringement by Gazprom Media, as well as DailyMotion’s alleged inadequacy in dealing with those allegations. his story began back in 2016, when Gazprom Media discovered that video clips from one of its TV channels were being hosted on DailyMotion without permission. Gazprom Media told Russia’s Gazeta that its representatives had sent several complaints to DailyMotion’s offices over the course of 2016 but no response was received. Gazprom Media had DailyMotion URLs blocked at least twice during 2016 by the Moscow City Court. In December of 2016, DailyMotion was given a last chance to remove the problem clips from its platform. The subsequent failure of DailyMotion to comply with the Moscow City’s courts order has led it to engage the laws applying to repeat copyright infringers, therefore giving an order to local ISPs to block DailyMotion permanently.

In comments made to The Hollywood Reporter, a spokesman for DailyMotion stated that the company had no knowledge of any ongoing court procedure against it and was going to “take all necessary steps to make contact with relevant authorities in Russia to resolve the issue.”

Shattered Mirror; News, Democracy and trust in the digital age

Just a few days ago, the Public Policy Forum released its anticipated report on the future of Canadian media, entitled, “Shattered Mirror; News, Democracy and trust in the digital age.” The decline of the news industry is a hot topic across the globe at the moment, with the proposed neighbouring right for news publishers found in the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on copyright in the Digital Single Market sparking much debate across Europe.

The report makes 12 recommendations (summarised here), including a review of the Copyright Act’s fair-dealing rules in order to strengthen the rights of news originators to control their intellectual property.

The Copyright Act’s fair-dealing rules

The most recent iteration of Canada’s Copyright Act was enacted in 2012, and is due to be reviewed this year. It includes a series of listed exceptions to copyright infringement, including a fair dealing exception for news reporting at Article 29.2. The fair dealing exception in relation to news reporting state that;

“Fair dealing for the purpose of news reporting does not infringe copyright if the following are mentioned:

(a)  The source; and

(b)  If given the source, the name of the

a.       Author, in the case of a work,

b.      Performer, in the case of a work,

c.       Maker, in the case of a sound recording, or

d.      Broadcaster, in the case of a communication signal”

Reviewing the Copyright Act’s fair-dealing rules to strengthen rights of news originators to control their intellectual property (recommendation number 4)

The Public Policy Forum recommends on page 90 of the report a review which “tightens usage of copyrighted news material in favour of creators, without unduly stifling the social power of sharing on the Internet. News producers have a right to benefit from their work for a reasonable period while pursuing the business strategy of their choice.”

The report goes on;

“In many cases, the issue arises when aggregators, bloggers or others use material without permission. This is good for the aggregator, and perhaps convenient for the consumer, but even if the material links back to its source, the original producer should be able to decide whether it wants to share – and whether it wants to negotiate compensation in some form.”

An anecdote is subsequently given;

“In different circumstances, the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal told us of an exclusive photo posted on its site during the 2014 attack in Moncton that left three members of the RCMP dead. The site maintains what is known as a “hard paywall,” making content available only to paid subscribers. As a result, it experienced a spike in registrations when word spread of its photo. Then the CBC copied the photo

without permission, and the spike quickly subsided. What the CBC did is, in one way or another, common these days, and can be argued to be permissible under fair-dealing provisions.”

This recommendation is likely to spark much debate over its potential consequences for free speech, and whether narrowing the fair-dealing exception in relation to news would result in the desired economic improvement for the news publishing sector. This recommendation has already attracted criticism, and it will be interesting to follow the parallel unfolding debates on this issue across the European and Canadian jurisdictions.

European Copyright Society – Opinion on EU Reform Package

On a brief and final note, the European Copyright Society published its Opinion on the EU Reform Package on 25 January 2017.

The European Copyright Society provides a platform for “critical and independent scholarly thinking on European Copyright Law and policy. Its members are scholars and academics from various countries of Europe, seeking to articulate and promote their views of the overall public interest on all topics in the field of authors rights, neighbouring rights and related matters.”

This CopyKat from Tibbie McIntyre

Russia signs up for Beijing Treaty

According to the recently-published Beijing Notification No. 10 Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances: Accession by the Russian Federation (you can click through to the original here), the Russian Federation has committed itself to the WIPO-administered Treaty.

Russia's move brings to 10 the number of countries that have either ratified or acceded to the Beijing Treaty (you can check the current list here). This means that one-third of the number of participants necessary to bring the Treaty into force has now been notched up.

Russian court orders VK to implement effective technology to block illegal uploads

Russian social network vKontakte (VK) has been ordered by a Russian court to use effective technology to prevent copyright infringement of the recordings of two record companies.

The IFPI say that the ruling, handed down in the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court on Monday, is a significant judgment which, when implemented, should improve the environment for developing a thriving licensed music business in Russia. The IFPI is the organisation that represents the global recording industry.  It was supported by the Russian National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI).

Universal Music and Warner Music had brought copyright infringement cases against VK in April 2014.  The judge issued an oral decision on 28th September, and the full judgments will be handed down in due course.

The court granted the record companies’ request to require VK to use effective technology to prevent the upload of their sound recordings to its service, meaning that VK must remove the record companies’ recordings and prevent them from being uploaded again in the future. The claimaints said 98% of their sound trecordings featuring in the Top 40 UK chart from the past seven years are available on VK's unauthorised music service, and  whilst VK did have a take down procedure, VK's filtering  technology, which was meant to prevent unauthorised uploads, was inadequate and ineffective. The claimants presented expert evidence that VK must be fully aware of the scale of the infringement, not least as VK advertised the availability of infringing tracks through its charts of the 'most downloaded' tracks and its recommendation service to individual users.

VKontakte and Sony Music Russia agreed a confidential global settlement in July 2015.

IFPI Chief Executive Officer Frances Moore welcomed the judgment saying: “This is a very important and positive decision for the Russian music market and for music creators in Russia.   VK’s infringing music service has been a huge obstacle to the development of a licensed business in Russia, making available hundreds of thousands of copyright infringing tracks to more than 70 million daily users. Now, the Russian court has ordered VK to use technology to stop infringements.  This is good news for rights holders in Russia.  We now look to VK to implement the court’s decision and stop these ongoing infringements.”

vKontakte spokesperson Georgy Lobushkin told Billboard: “We are glad that the court supported our position and has declined to impose fines on VK. The court has also ordered that we make our ‘music copyright DMCA technology’ more effective, and we are constantly working on that”. he also criticised the IFPI for commenting “on the judgement in the most advantageous way for themselves” before the final ruling had even been published.


Record companies file legal proceedings against vKontakte for deliberately facilitating piracy on a large scale

VK's press release on the final court decision can be found here: VKontakte Cleared in Dispute with Warner and Universal

The CopyKat dips a paw into the fast flowing stream

In China. the the National Copyright Administration has updated its policies on music streaming, updating saying online streaming services must stop providing unlicensed music to users. Service providers were required to remove unlicensed music by the end of July . The NCA said in a stament that the move was in line with China's copyright law and regulations. Those who do not follow the order will be 'seriously punished'. Duan Yuping, an official from the NCA, said the violation of copyright is common in China. “(Music streaming providers) infringed the rights of royalty holders, disturbed the order of the online music market, and also impacted the development of our music industry” - the latter being a common thread amongst comments with artistes, record labels and music industry executives supporting the fight against piracy. 

And Jack Ma’s e-commerce giant Alibaba is launching a music division to join its existing film and video units in China. Ali Music Group will be run by singer-songwriter and TV host Gao Xiaosong, who serves as chairman, and Song Ke, a former Warner Music executive, as CEO. Alibaba already has a number of licensing deals in place with the likes of BMG, Rock Records and HIM Records for their content to play on its platforms. 

In the UK, The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has released data that shows that the number of UK consumers accessing digital content through legal download or streaming platforms has risen 10% since 2013 - but one in five consumers continues to access music, movie, TV or gaming goodies from unlicensed sources online. The IPO survey says that 15.6 million UK internet users now access music online, with twelve million streaming and 10.5 million downloading - confirming the rise of the streams in recent years whic has been a common thread amionst recent figures from the recorded music sector showing streaming income rising at a very fast rate. whilst Spotify and Amazon are amongst the most use streaming music platforms in the UK, 54% of online music was consumed via YouTube - which whilst a licensed service certainly for songs via its licence with PRS for Music - its not seen as a primary revenue source by record labels and music publishers.  10 million UK internet users have accessed films online. Netflix, Amazon and YouTube were the top platforms for film downloads and streaming with Netflix responsible for 44 per cent of all activity. With TV, 15 million UK internet users have accessed a TV programme online. BBC iPlayer, You Tube and ITV Player were the top platforms for accessing TV programmes online with BBC iPlayer responsible for 62 per cent of activity. 21 per cent of users accessed some content illegally. The IPO survey highlighted 62% of internet users in the UK have downloaded or streamed music, TV shows, films, computer software, videogames or e-books. This is up from 56% in 2013. The survey showed that there was a 10% increase in UK consumers accessing content through legal services. One in five consumers still access some content illegally. The survey was published in parallel with research in Australia and shows that while British and Australian users consumed online media at similar rates, illegal downloading for UK consumers was half the rate of their Australian counterparts. 

Last week representatives from the UK’s creative industries, supported by the UK government confirmed the agencies that will help to deliver a major multi-media education campaign aimed at encouraging consumers to do the right thing and access content from a wide range of legal services as part of the Creative Content UK initiative.  The education programme will target 16-24 year-olds, their parents, those responsible for household internet connections, as well as others who influence young people’s attitudes to accessing content. A second part of the initiative will be a subscriber alerts programme that will be co-managed and co-funded by ISPs and content creators and due to begin at a later date.  Participating ISPs will alert and advise subscribers when their accounts are believed to have been used to infringe copyright. The four largest ISPs in the UK- BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media are partnering with Creative Content UK: other partners include the BBC, the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), the Musicians’ Union and UK Music. 

And YouTube's dominance has prompted the major labels (Universal, Sony and Warner) to start to explore ways to loosen YouTube’s grip on free ad-supported music videos - not least by supporting rival sites like Vessel and Snapchat. The New York Post says that separately, the labels are weighing going nuclear — "potentially yanking rights to the Web’s most valuable and highly trafficked content" with one industry source telling the Post "They are not serious about monetizing music on behalf of creators and, as a result, music companies are realizing they have to reset the current relationship,” The labels are far keener on subscription streaming services such as Spotify's top tier. Industry body RIAA says ad-supported streaming services (both visual and audio) contributed just $295 million in 2014 to the US record industry — with YouTube’s contribution estimated to be about half of that sum. Google has said that YouTube has paid out billions of dollars to the music industry over the last few years and that partner revenue has increased 50 percent year on year the last three years in a row. More on Music Busines Worldwide here.

And Recent statistics explain why the record labels are so focussed: The income of Germany's recorded music market grew 4.4% year-on-year in the first half of 2015. That was mainly driven by a whopping 87% rise in streaming subscription revenues, which easily offset a decline in CD album sales. Download sales also increased. Germany’s record industry, the world’s third-biggest music territory behind the US and Japan, accrued €686m in the first half of 2015. The income of Sweden's recorded music market rose 4.2% in the first six months of 2015 - with streaming growing once again to claim 83.9% of revenues. According to new data from IFPI Sweden analysed by MBW, the market's recorded music turnover in Jan-June this year stood at 507.5m SEK (€54.6m), up from 486.9m SEK in H1 2014 (€52.4m).
And the income of the Italian recorded music market jumped up 22% in the first half of 2015, according to new figures published by Deloitte. The total revenues of the region stood at €65.55m, compared to €53.61m in H1 2014. A strong release schedule by local pop artists helped lift the total physical market by 22% to €37.3 million. Digital revenues increased 37% to €21.18m, with download sales up by 6% to €10.82m. Streaming, increased its year-on-year H1 income by 37%, up to €17.36m.

The Russian government's top Internet regulator has officially warned YouTube that it could be added to the Kremlin's Internet blacklist unless it removes unauthorised copies of Russian TV shows. It's the second time the agency has warned YouTube about the shows in question, and now the video streaming site must comply in a matter of days. A Moscow city court ruled on April 7th that YouTube was violating Russian copyright law by hosting copies of “Chernobyl” and “Fizruk.” YouTube removed the offending cntent but the shows have been uploaded again since, along with another 137 illegal videos. YouTube has until July 27 to remove the URLs in question or be included on the Russian RuNet blacklist, according to Global Voices Online, which tracks Russian media freedom.

The pit at Glastonbury (Denis O'Regan)

ImageRights International has announced the first "fully automated copyright registration service" designed specifically for the needs of professional photographers, "revolutionizing the process for registering photographs with the United States Copyright Office (USCO)". To be clear - ImageRights is a business - not a government or a free service - but makes the point that they have statistics that show that the time, cost, and complexity of registration has deterred 97% of US professional photographers from registering their work with the USCO, potentially losing out on "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in licence fees and indeed statutory damages from copyright infringement claims. There is a cost of course, but any interested (and unregistered) photographers can find out more here.

Oracle has asked a U.S. judge for permission to update its copyright lawsuit against Google Inc to include the Android operating system's current market dominance - Google's Android operating system is now the world's best-selling smartphone platform.  Oracle said it wants to update the copyright lawsuit, filed in October 2010, to add that Google continues its copyright infringement through updated versions of Android in both existing and new markets and this is resulting in harm to Oracle and (of course!)  benefit to Google. More here.  In June the US Supreme Court denied Google's writ of certiorari to re-examine the 2014 decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in favor of Oracle which held that application programming interfaces (APIs) in Java were subject to copyright protection. The next stop for these two companies is back to the trial court to determine whether Google has a defense to copyright infringement under the doctrine of  “fair use.” 

And finally a couple of technology updates - and sorry I have drifted into patents - not the CopyKat's field at all - but fascinating for all lovers of copyright too:

First up, Techcrunch tells us that "Researchers at the University of Cambridge have linked musical taste to thinking style, with possible implications for how future algorithms might better tailor music recommendations. Not to mention the flip side: how music streaming services could psychologically classify their users based on what they like to listen to".

And Mashable says that Apple has filed a fingerprnt sensitive patent application posted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's website on Thursday -  "Apple detailed technology for a specialized TV remote control which could be used to access a person's TV preferences, bypass passcodes for services such as Netflix, enable child proofing and even control smart products in the home, such as garage doors and thermostats." 

The CopyKat - Konverting to Kopimism?

With Russia’s new anti-piracy law just a few days old, new opposition will be voiced in a particularly unconventional manner it seems: Internet activists in several parts of the country have applied to form their own church. Official complaints will then be filed against the new law on the basis that it insults the beliefs that underpin the Kopimist religion. The church’s founders plan to file a lawsuit against the anti-piracy legislation on the basis that the law, which restricts copying and sharing, is an insult to Kopimists, and possibly onwards by way of an appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation

The new Russian Kopimist church will closely follow the values pioneered by Sweden’s Church of Kopimism, a religion that was formally recognized by the authorities there in 2012. This means that it’s likely that CTRL+C and CTRL+V will likely be held as sacred symbols, and the acts of sharing and copying will be viewed as “the most beautiful things in the world”. The church also believes that the search for knowledge is sacred, the circulation of knowledge is sacred, the value of information increases the more it’s spread and, that while confidentiality is sacred, listening in to other people’s conversations is the greatest sin. Eleonora first reported on Kopimism on the 1709 Blog back in May 2012.

Amusing yes. But this CopyKat is not convinced that playing with the church in Russia is a particularly good idea. It cannot have escaped anyone's notice that two members of the feminist protest group Pussy Riot remain in prison in Russia after being convicted on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after a protest against Vladimir Putin at Moscow's Russian Orthodox Cathedral. Both were sentenced to two years in prison and one, Maria Alyokhina, was recently refused parole. Alyokhina, who has a five-year-old son, is now scheduled to remain in prison until March 2014. The same is true for her Pussy Riot band-mate, 23-year-old Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. A third member, Ekaterina Samutsevich, was freed last year.

And back to the new religion. I wonder just how welcome these statements will be to the Russian authorities: 

Copy. download, upload!

All knowlegdge to all!

Information technology is not to be feathered by laws.

The CopyCat - tantalising titbits and techno tales

Stevie Wonder at Glastonbury 2010 by Nick Cordes

Stevie Wonder has offered to perform live for international negotiators who are in Morocco trying to forge a deal to give the visually impaired greater access to reading material. In a very amusing video message, the blind singer-songwriter urged WIPO delegates to agree saying “So do it, we get it signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours.” Wonder said he’d fly to Marrakesh to celebrate with delegates if they struck a deal.

We had previously noted that Russia's social networks had started removing illegally uploaded music content en masse in the face of new laws - much to the annoyance of users. Was it all a waste of time? A Russian politician has now suggested that the country’s new anti-piracy laws should only protect copyrights in television programmes and movies – as these are expensive to produce. Aleksey Mitrofanov said he has submitted an amendment to the bill aimed at countering internet piracy saying “The bill must only cover movies and TV series - the copyright objects that are expensive to produce,” Mitrofanov to a session of the expert group on electronic democracy. Microsoft has already expressed surprise that software was excluded.

BuzzFeed, the viral news site, is facing a $3.6 million copyright lawsuit from an Idaho-based photographer who says BuzzFeed lifted an image from his Flickr page and used it in one of its signature photo montage listicles back in 2010. In a complaint filed on June 7 in the Southern District of New York, Kai Eiselein claims that BuzzFeed, Inc. “knowingly and wilfully” infringed on his copyright when it reposted his photo titled “Contact” which features a female soccer player getting hit in the head by a soccer ball. According to the complaint, the image appeared in a post called “The 30 Funniest Header Faces” , a photo montage of people getting hit in the face by soccer balls  posted by BuzzFeed staffer Matt Stopera. The montage was posted on June 14, 2010, and Eiselein claims he sent BuzzFeed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice on May 26, 2011. According to the lawsuit, the photo remained on the site for more than two years after Eiselein sent the notice. In addition to remaining on buzzfeed.com, the lawsuit claims the photo was shared to 63 other sites, most of which appear to be personal blogs.  The montage, has since been conspiciously renamed “The 29 Funniest Header Faces”, and Eiselein’s photo is no longer among the images. Eiselein, who is representing himself in the case, said he first uploaded the image to Flickr in 2009 and registered it with the US Copyright Office in 2011. More on the IPKat from Jeff John Roberts here.

UK Culture Secretary Maria Miller needs to show she is "not in the pocket of Google", former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw has said. The Labour MP said copyright theft costs musicians, writers and artists billions of pounds each year and asked when the UK Government is going to enforce copyright law, amid fears not enough is being done to ensure global internet service providers tackle online piracy.

We don’t often get the chance to mention Armenia on this Blog, so I am delighted to report that the Armenian parliament on has approved amendments to the country's copyright law and neighbouring rights, which will mean those using excerpts from newspapers, magazines and the web must reference to the source. The changes stipulate that mention must be made of the original source of information in newspapers and magazines and there must be an active  hyperlink in internet articles. The law will also define a limit on what can be taken and used.

Victoria Espinel, The US Intellectual Property Enforcement Co-ordinator has published her 2013 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement and you can read a shorter review here: "As the Obama administration tries to build on the present intellectual property structure, it’s also looking towards the future. In the first few pages of the report, the enforcement office lays out where it thinks the intellectual property debate will shift in the coming years. Some items, like an ongoing fight against patent trolls and theft of trade secrets from China and other countries, are already high on the administration’s priority list."

Google News in Germany will soon change says TechCrunch. Starting August 1, it will only index sources that have decided to explicitly opt-in to being shown on the search giant’s news-aggregation service. Google News remains an opt-out service in the other 60 countries and languages it currently operates in, but since Germany passed a new copyright law earlier this year that takes effect on August 1, the company is in danger of having to pay newspapers, blogs and other publishers for the right to show even short snippets of news. More from Eleonora on the IPKat here

Normally it’s Getty who issues the lawsuits, but now a US courtroom sketch artist has sued Getty Images for allegedly infringing copyright by displaying her illustrations online and selling copies of them without her consent. Christine Cornell of Weehawken says in her lawsuit that she has served as a courtroom illustrator for nearly every major trial in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey since the 1970s. She alleges that Getty Images wrongly sold drawings from those trials - including sketches of people like Martha Stewart and would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi, which she had licensed on French news agency AFP on a limited licence.  Cornell argues that Getty Images has a pattern of acquiring rights to image archives without first making sure that the sellers are allowed to transfer the images. In 2010 Daniel Morel complained that his photos of the earthquake in Haiti which he uploaded to Twitter were distributed to Getty via AFP which then licensed them to other news organizations. That case is pending in the federal court in New York.

And finally, more on China - and the Hollywood Reporter says there is an acute shortage of IP and entertainment lawyers. With the cinema sector alone enjoying 37% growth last year to $2.7 billion, and already up another 40% this May on the same period last year, there are great opportunities it seems. Although Chinese legal traditions and copyright development stem from a quite different base than the American economic traditions, “Part of the problem is a simple shortage of qualified intellectual property and entertainment lawyers in the country". So to all young entertainment lawyers struggling to gain a foothold - the future is clear - Go East!

But I'm going West, and off to Glastonbury! And sunny skies. Maybe.