Smoking pipes and other copyright tales

To the USA first, where the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have announced that they will appeal a federal judge's reduction of a file-sharing copyright damages award from $675,000 to $67,500 in the Joel Tenenbaum case. The original award ordered the Boston University student to pay $675,000 in copyright infringement damages for sharing 30 songs online. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that amount unconstitutionally excessive, and reduced it by 90%. Similarly the copyright infringement damages award of $1.92 million that a jury ordered defendant Jammie Thomas-Rassett to pay has been reduced $54,000, although that case appears headed for a new trial on the issue of damages.

An to Germany for another turnaround: In Dusseldorf the appellate court has overturned a lower court's order that free file-hosting service Rapidshare must install a keyword filter to block the sharing of copyrighted media. The lower court issued a preliminary injunction against Rapidshare last year, after film distributor Capelight Pictures sued the site when copies of its "Insomnia" and "Inside a Skinhead" movies were made available for download from the service. The lower court ordered Rapidshare to filter words such as "insomnia" and "skinhead". The Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf has now ruled that more advanced filter that used full film titles cannot be used - noting that the words could wrongfully remove users' private copies of the films, which are permitted under German law. The court also said Rapidshare is not obligated to pursue those who distribute links to unauthorized files hosted on it service.

Finally to Eire where Irish ISP UPC has said that it will continue to “vigorously” defend itself against liability proceedings taken against it in the Eire's courts by content owners. The company is the latest in a series of ISPs to take issue with copyright holders' insistence that they police customers' Internet traffic. Ireland's biggest ISP, Eircom, was successfully taken to court by the IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association) and is currently sending warning letters to customers who have allegedly infringed copyright through illegal downloading using the IP addresses of alleged infringing customers which are supplied by IRMA. UPC said that it does not condone piracy, but considers that "there is no basis under Irish or European law requiring an ISP to monitor or block subscriber traffic on its network" – although in France and the United Kingdom there are the new, and much criticised, "three strikes" laws – the French HADOPI law and the Digital Economy Act in the UK – the French law has already faced legal challenge and as previouslt reported, the UK law is about to face a judicial review.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/90025/riaa-appeals-reduction-of-tenenbaum-p2p-judgment/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/german-court-overturns-injunction-against-rapidshare.ars
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201767/isps_battle_against_threestrikes_rule_throughout_eu.html

BPI warns Google over search links

BPI, the UK recording industry’s trade association has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, asking the search engine to take down links to nine "one-click hosting" sites, each of which hosts thousands of illegal songs. The BPI cite 38 links "that are available via Google's search engine, and [requests these] links be removed as soon a possible as they directly link to sound recordings owned by [BPI] members". Simple Google search queries such as keying in artist and song names and then a word like 'MP3', 'download', 'upload' or the name of a file-transfer service lead users to illegal downloads on pages of sites that includes MegaUpload, SendSpace and UserShare. Last October, Google removed links to the Pirate Bay – the infamous illegal BitTorrent tracker – from their search index. The BPI takedown request promoted much chatter online yesterday after it was leaked by the Chilling Effects website with some journalists and bloggers claiming this is a new more aggressive initiative on behalf of the BPI.

CMU Daily says that some commentators also note that the document includes not only a list of specific links to infringing content, but also a list of home page links to the services that have aided the infringement, such as MegaUpload, leading to additional speculation that the BPI is stepping beyond the strict remit of America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act and calling on Google to block access to whole website rather than just infringing content. The BPI has denied there is anything out of the ordinary about this takedown notice to Google and BPI Spokesman Adam Liversage told C-Net that such documents were filed with Google on a regular basis by bodies like the BPI and that "in most cases, Google takes down the links in question, following its own internal procedures".

In more encouraging news for the recorded music sector, The Black Eyed Peas' track 'I Gotta Feeling' has become the first ever single to be downloaded more than one million times in the UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jun/22/google-bpi
http://chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=40373

Google asks the questions ....

Google has taken the somewhat unusual step of asking a California judge to declare that it is not liable for copyright infringement, simply by linking to copyright-infringing works on Rapidshare. The move arose afterthe action brought by Blue Destiny Records last year alleging that the search engine and others were liable. Google is keen to establish that it is not facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs.

In 2009, the small blues label sued Google, Microsoft and Rapidshare in Florida, claiming that Rapidshare was running "a distribution centre for unlawful copies of copyrighted works," and that Google and Microsoft's Bing search engine were helping to prop up the company. The label argued that users could easily find copyrighted songs on file-hosting websites by doing a simple Google or Bing search. Whilst the suit was then withdrawn, Blue Destiny refused to waive its rights, preserving its option to re-file its claims.

Now Google has decided that it wants a court to decide the issue and the Company has filed a 96-page complaint with the California district court, asking for a declaratory judgment that it's not infringing Blue Destiny's copyrights. It seems to be a clever move and Billboard Magazine points out that the label is now on the back foot, facing a major court case on an important issue – and that “Google gets a more favorable jurisdiction than a Florida court. The Ninth Circuit has been friendly to Google in similar litigation with Perfect 10, an adult entertainment publisher that tried to punish search engines for indexing copyrighted photos”.

http://links.assetize.com/links/1f4b53

Spanish sentence another linker sinker

With all the the media frenzy over the sentence passed down to the Pirate Bay Four (not to mention the growing frenzy over the alleged bias of trial judge Tomas Norstrum on the grounds that he is pro-copyright – he is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and Swedish Association For The Protection of Industrial Property) readers may have missed a similar story from further south in Europe where a Spanish court has passed a jail sentence on a defendant for running a website that provided links to unlicensed music content. 

In an earlier case a Spanish court had held that Spain’s copyright laws did not cover websites that enable others to infringe – unless they were profit-making. Now a court has ruled that whilst Adrian Gomez Llorente did not directly make money from pay-per-download fees or host content, he did make a profit from his website through advertising and SMS services and thus was guilty of infringing. Llorente received six months in jail and a 4,900 euro fine for operating his website. As Llorente has no prior criminal record it seems unlikely that he will actually be serving time in prison.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/17542.cfm