Canada To Improve Copyright Legislation

September 30, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Reuters reports Canada’s intention to introduce an improved version of the copyright legislation on Thursday. The new laws aim to balance consumers’ demands and understand better the Internet organism.

Not only this, but the legislation was designed in such a way that it can now handle movie piracy – which the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association put at more than C$1.8 billion ($1.7 billion) in 2009-2010, or the equivalent of 12,600 full-time jobs.

“In the absence of clear and modern copyright rules, digital piracy caused enormous damage to the creative industries, Canadian jobs and the entire economy,” the association said in parliamentary testimony earlier this year.

According to the new legislation Canadians can legally acquire music and movies to their devices, but block most attempts to bypass digital locks which are meant to limit the access to movies, books, video games, music and electronic devices.
However, in a concession to consumers, the bill would allow them to “ignore” these digital locks on their smartphones to let them switch wireless service providers, if their contract allows it.

The change of the old legislation comes as a result of the first one being unable to satisfy both the consumers and educators.
Back in 2009 Washington placed Canada – with the agreement of Ottawa – on its “priority watch list” of countries that has the worst records of fighting piracy.

A Wikileaks cable shows that the office of Tony Clement – then the Minister of Industry – told a U.S. diplomat that Washington’s decision to put Canada on their priority list would actually help the government to push forward the legislation.
Introducing the bill before the federal election would aid the Government’s plans to avoid Parliament calling up groups that have already testified about the legislation.

“That suggests things could move very quickly with a few sessions and a march to passing the bill before the end of 2011,” said Michael Geist, copyright expert at the University of Ottawa.

The bill would cut the penalties that companies could seek for most private copyright infringements. Statutory damages would also be minimized to a one-time payment of between C$100 and C$5,000, compared with the maximum current punishment of C$20,000 for a single offense.

Moreover, rights holders would also have the legal means to go after online websites that host infringed data.

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BitTorrent Helps With Network Decongestion

September 29, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

BitTorrent’s CEO Erik Klinker attended the Broadband World Forum (France) and came with a solution for an old problem – network congestion due to peer-to-peer. Micro Transport Protocol or μTP is a new open-source technology that has already been implemented into the company’s client with the intention to increase the network’s performance by decongesting it.

Most of the data flying around the internet is transmitted through TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) which breaks down data to later reassemble at the other end of the network link. From Klinker’s saying this method might just be obsolete.
“TCP detects congestion based on lost packets,” Klinker said.

“This is a lot like driving your car through a school zone and only slowing down after you’ve struck your first pedestrian.”
Unlike TCP protocol, the μTP technology detects the network congestion in its early stage and tries to fix the problem.
“It was designed in its philosophy to yield to traffic,” Klinker said.

“μTP will no longer be the cause of any congestion on the Internet because of these mechanisms.”

“If we could somehow tackle the network congestion problem, we end up tackling the network cost issue,” he added.
Mr. Klinker also came with a prediction: “The Internet is going to evolve, to continue its development as a multimedia network. That means a lot more big files.”

According to his sayings, BitTorrent will now facilitate transferring large amounts of data from digital devices and gadgets.
“You’ll see us roll out applications that help liberate media from those devices and share it with family and friends.”

“The content has no value until it’s shared and seen. That’s hard for today’s networks. The devices at the edge of the network seem to miraculously increase in capability, but the networks don’t seem to change.”

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Lawyer Advises On The File-Sharing Act

September 29, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Michael Wigley’s presentation on the new Copyright Amendment Act in Wellington exceeded everyone’s expectations as he debated not only upon the how’s and what’s of the act but also made some interesting points in how to protect yourself from it. There are two things you can do to protect yourself, he said:

“Get all your IP addresses from APNIC [the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre] or stop all peer-to-peer traffic.”

“That’s my talk, thank you very much.”

And since APNIC is a foreign organisation, it holds no responsibility to New Zealand’s copyright laws.

The three strikes law must prove that the IP belongs to the alleged pirate and only then impose a five-figure fine. The penalty dispositions also include a clause which allows an organization’s network to be shut down, if those dispositions are activated at some stage by an Order in Council.

“And it’s all about the customer of the ISP, which in our case is the corporation, not the end user,” Wigley said.

“So you get stuck with [the consequences of infringing actions by] the ratbags in your office.”

APNIC, however, resolves this problem – “for various technical reasons connected with the legislation, you’re not at risk of getting caught out.”

“If you’re a city council or a university, with transient users or students using your network, this is the only way you can deal with it,” he added.

A debate on whether a rights holder, small or big, would even bother to risk fining or disconnecting a local government body or university took place. Some of the attendees said that the rights holder would not know that he’s dealing with a high-profile organization until it’s too late. But Wigley came with a third solution – IPv6.

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Yahoo!’s Contribution To File-Sharing

September 29, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

Yahoo!’s appetite for innovation has led them to organize many events in which they invited programmers to hack Yahoo APIs. Previous winners of Yahoo’s Open Hack and University Hack Day events were once more invited to let their imagination go wild.

The first Hack All-Stars event was held in N.Y.C and gathered 37 hackers who previously won various Yahoo Events. The teams were given 24 hours to access Yahoo’s goodies and 16 hacks were delivered by the teams and Ruum (a file-sharing tool) was declared the winner.

This file-sharing tool was born out of the hands of Team D1W from Carnegie Mellon University. What it does is to enable users to interact, share content, chat and leave comments. The team won the $10.000 prize and a chance to spend a whole year within that Yahoo developing team and even more, to bring Ruum to the market.

The jury consisted in Yahoo!’s senior executives and Forbes. An entire list of created-at-this-event hacks can be found here.

Yahoo’s planning to organize future events and if you’re interested to participate you should definitely visit the Hack University site.

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The Industry Has A New Strategy to Cash in – $10 Settlements

September 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Entertainment Industry, Legal P2P News & Issues 

A recent report by  Paidcontent shows that the latest tactic in the entertaining industry is to send out warning e-mails to alleged copyright infringers in the US. These e-mails are sent by an L.A. law firm – Digital Rights Corps – and inform the recipients that they may be liable to pay up to $150.000 due to their illegal activities but can settle for only $10 in order to “receive a legal release from the copyright owner”.

“If you click on the link below and login to the Rightscorp, Inc. automated settlement system, for $10 per infringement, you will receive a legal release from the copyright owner,” says the e-mail.

In an interview given to paidContent, the firm’s executives explain that they are monitoring file-sharing websites, thus obtaining IP addresses of the alleged pirates. ISPs are then informed and advised to send settlement offers from which Rightscorps takes their cut; they do not specify how many of these settlements were made.

However, this is not the first time when law firms make use of such methods.

Thus far the $10 settlement model seems to be successful but its legitimacy is at least questionable.

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