Coldplay Is Against Music Streaming

October 31, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

It has already been a long time since music moved from the shop’s shelves to the Internet and by doing so starting a battle between artists & music studios and free-to-download services. The first punch was thrown by Metallica when it managed to K.O. Napster back in 2001. In 2010 iTunes revolutionized the industry by letting people download Beatles’ songs from their store.

But there are other services that chose to offer a subscription-based streaming service as they believe that this method will reduce piracy. However, not every artists is happy about it, and this includes the Kingdom’s beloved Coldplay, one of the most successful band, having 50 million records sold since their birth in 1996.

“EMI, the band’s record label, acknowledged that Coldplay, known for such songs as “Yellow” and “Clocks,” will not distribute through streaming services for “Mylo Xyloto,” [the band's new album] but did not detail the reasons for the decision…” CNET reports.

Tom Waits – an American musician – is also against music-streaming services as he declined his support to distribute his new record (also one of the biggest selling albums) on Spotify.

However, Jaimee Steele – spokeswoman for Rhapsody – made an interesting argument while talking to CNET:

“Artists are getting paid every time one of their tracks is being played,” Steele said. “A download is sold and the revenue is distributed, but the artist doesn’t see any more money from future plays of that song. With streaming, if someone plays a song a million times, the artist will earn money from that. Music acts could potentially make more money.”

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BitTorrent and Netflix – America’s Favorites

October 31, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Legal P2P News & Issues, Tops 

The Canadian broadband management company Sandvine has released an internet traffic report, showing that Netflix is the most bandwidth-consuming source of traffic, having 23.3% of all North American traffic on an average day. BitTorrent comes second with 16.5%. The difference that separates the two is that Netflix’s traffic is spread during the day whilst BitTorrent occupies the night time.

Sandvine’s graphic shows some patterns:

(Peak hour traffic in North America)

Moreover, the report shows that BitTorrent is the last Mohican proudly representing the file-sharing community as its former brother LimeWire was shut down, thus leading to the vanishing of the Gnutella network as well. In 2010 it represented 11% of upstream traffic and 2% of downstream traffic at peak hours, while in October 2011 it no longer made the top 10.

Brazil’s top traffic consumers are Megaupload with 9,45% of all traffic followed by Megavideo with 1.97%. Both portals are present in the top 10 in Africa with 2.33% and 3.11%.

Eastern Europe prefers Google Video instead of YouTube while in Brazil the situation is quite the opposite with YouTube generating nearly a quarter of all internet traffic during peak hours.

(Aggregate peak hour traffic – source Sandvine)

Netflix’s success shows that the consumer’s choice is rapidly focusing on paid services. On the other hand, this news may not be as good for Hollywood studios whose revenues would only be “marginal”.

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BT: Two Weeks Until It’s Supposed to Block Newzbin2

October 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Being ordered to block all access to the notorious file-sharing website Newzbin2, UK’s BT now has 14 days to comply according to a judge’s saying.

Back in July the Kingdom’s biggest ISP received a court order, forcing it to cut all access to the infringing website. Not only that, but the internet provider has also been ordered to pay the costs of implementing the block.

But several attempts to do so failed as Newzbin2’s team took the necessary measures to dodge BT’s Cleanfeed censorship system (post 1, post 2).

BT’s nemesis is the MPA (Motion Picture Association) which, after obtaining the victory, stated:

“This is a win for the creative sector. Securing the intervention of the ISPs was the only way to put the commercial pirates out of reach for the majority of consumers,” said Chris Marcich, president and managing director of the association.
“This move means that we can invest more in our own digital offerings, delivering higher quality and more variety of products to the consumer.”

Lord Puttnam CBE, President of the Film Distributors’ Association said:

“This is a very significant day for the UK’s creative industries. The law is clear. Industrial online piracy is illegal and can be stopped.”

Newzbin2 has been described by the MPA as “a criminal organisation whose business model is based on wholesale copyright infringement.”

Critics said that blocking a website is not going to put a stop to piracy. The alternative would be to offer affordable products and a better understanding of global economy.

Last’s week study – conducted by the Open Rights Group – shows that only 43% of the top 50 British films can be bought or rented online, while 58% of the BAFTA Best Films awarded winners since 1960 have been made available.

Peter Bradwell – an ORG campaigner – agreed that such drastic measures could set a dangerous precedent.

“Website blocking simply will not work. It’s a dangerous technological intervention when the legal markets are still a mess,” he said.

“Consumers have moved online a lot quicker than the creative industries. The focus should be on making sure they catch up with consumer demand instead of these deranged plans to censor what people are allowed to look at.”

It remains to be seen if BT will manage to cut off all access to Newzbin2.

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Anti-Piracy Law Moves Forward

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

Heads of the House Judiciary Committee finally introduced their Stop Online Piracy Act on Wednesday. Supporting the law are Hollywood studios and labor.

NetCoalition – a group which also includes Internet giants like Google and Yahoo! – has been vehemently opposing the act as they consider it to be a “morass of legal and regulatory uncertainty which will compromise this vital sector of economic growth”. And they’re quite right since the House’s version of the bill shows the least amount of support for companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and so forth. The bill’s aim is to cut off any help rogue websites may get from payment processors, internet providers, ad networks and search engines. Furthermore, the legislation would also allow law enforcement representatives to seek injunctive relief against foreign websites that make money out of counterfeit goods.

However, the Senate’s version of the bill passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously in May, but it was delayed when Senator Ron Wyden decided to put a hold on the legislation. The bill would also turn copyright holders into cybercops as they gain the right to pursue any infringing website by cutting its support from ad networks and payment processors.

On the other hand, House’s version proposes that copyright holders have to first contact the payment processors and ads firms and offer them a deadline; otherwise, they can see injunctive relief in the court of law.

Among co-sponsors of the bill we can find House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, John Conyers and Rep. Bob Goodlatte and Howard Berman.

Smith said that the bill “helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology’s David Sohn supports the House version of the bill as he thinks it “radically expands the scope” of the Senate legislation. His only concern is that the bill is not thorough enough and that it includes a system of “domain name filtering”, a rather upsetting feature for the future of the Internet.

It is possible that in Mid-November a hearing will be held by the House Judiciary Committee and O’Leary hopes that the legislation will pass by the end of the year.

“This is a bipartisan, bicameral effort to save American jobs”, he said.

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Will The Revised PROTECT IP Act Affect Legal Sites?

October 26, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

The revised version of the PROTECT IP Act – designed to combat copyright infringement on the Internet – includes provisions that may affect online services like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Computerworld warns us; it’s about some copyrighted materials that may be posted, shared or uploaded to the respective portals.

Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives are to introduce the new version of the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property ACT (PIPA) during this week. The bill may share similarities with an older version of the PROTECT IP Act approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in May, said Demand Progress, a liberal civil liberties group who opposes the new legislation. They added that these new legal measures may come into conflict with legal websites.

From the Senate version of the bill (pdf) we understand that the U.S. Department of Justice will be allowed to obtain court orders requiring search engines and ISPs to blacklist all websites affiliated with copyright infringement.

If Demand Progress’ opinion proves to be true, the bill could overturn parts of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), a 13 years old law that, until now, had successfully kept ISPs out of the danger zone due to their users’ file-sharing activities.

“Our allies on [Capitol] Hill say the bill’s so bad that it could effectively destroy Youtube, Twitter, and other sites that rely on user-generated content by making the sites’ owners legally responsible for everything their users post,” the group said in an alert to members.

The group will boycott the new version of the bill, reassured Demand Progress’ executive director David Segal.

“We ask even those lawmakers who are leaning towards supporting it to hold back for now, decline co-sponsorship, and listen to opponents’ concerns,” he said in an email.

“The Senate version of PROTECT IP will stifle free speech and innovation — and all indications are that the House version will be even worse.”

Although comments from legal representatives were expected, no details or opinions were expressed. However, supporters of the act say that the law will finally put an end to those foreign websites that contain infringed materials and will magically increase the overall economy of the United States.

“Rogue sites … flood the U.S. marketplace with dangerously defective products, attract more than 53 billion visits per year, and have total disregard for U.S. laws which are designed to protect consumer safety and intellectual property,” Tepp wrote. “Consumers should be able to rely on trust and good faith in buying legitimate products online. Rogue sites and online criminals abuse this trust for their illicit gain,” reads Steve Tepp’s (chief intellectual property counsel for the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) blog.

Along with the Demand Progress group, other groups addressed concerns with the new act (Consumer Electronics Association, Computer and Communications Industry Association and NetCoalition) by sending a letter to Mr. Smith Goodlatte and other House Judiciary Committee members on Monday. In this letter the groups asked the law representatives to reconsider launching the legislation and wait for feedback from the affected groups.

“The technology industry is leading America out of the recession, and inadvertent damage to the tech sector could not happen at a worse time,” reads the letter.

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