A judge ordered that Craigslist cannot sue PadMapper and 3Taps for using its data under copyright protections, but the two companies — an apartment listings site and its data collector — still face claims that they violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

PadMapper gained popularity in 2012 for its apartment search app, which overlaid Craigslist vacancy listings over a Google Map to show their exact locations. It worked well — I used it during my own apartment hunt — allowing you to sort by the regular renting details: price, number of bedrooms and bathroom, location, and more. But then Craigslist blocked its data access, and while PadMapper founder Eric DeMenthon said it felt “dickish” to go against Craigslist’s wishes, he found a “legally kosher” way to do so and felt making renters’ lives easier was more important than pleasing Craigslist.

Craigslist then sued both PadMapper and 3Taps (which provided the legally kosher data access) in July 2012 and quickly changed its terms of service to say that Craigslist has exclusive rights to its users’ listings and that they couldn’t be posted anywhere else. It backtracked on this, however, when the community raged.

“Craigslist has threatened scores of startups and established firms with copyright claims over user content posted to its site,” 3Taps wrote in a blog post, “Justice Charles R. Breyer … put an end to further sham litigation by dismissing Craigslist assertions that it held exclusive licenses and copyright over user generated postings submitted to its site.”

But the argument that 3Taps violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act by continuing to access Craigslist data after the company took measures to block that access still seems to hold water in U.S. district court, according to Judge Breyer.

The Judge explains in the order that Craigslist both restricted data access through its terms of use and went so far as to block 3Taps-associated IP addresses. When 3Taps used new IP addresses to access Craigslist, it may have violated the CFAA. These lines are still murky, however, so the judge denied 3Taps’ move to dismiss the claim.

3Taps countersued Craiglist in August 2012, a suit that still stands. The battle of the apartment listings rages on.

Judge’s order in Craigslist v. 3Taps and PadMapper case

hat tip The Verge; PadMapper image via PadMapper screenshot

Copyright law in the U.S. was created in 1790, edited in 1831, updated in 1909 for “motion pictures,” and extended to unpublished works in 1976. Which means, according to the current Register of Copyright Maria Pallante, who leads the U.S. Copyright Office, that it is high time for an update.

“We always love it when law is brought up to speed with technology,” Josh Mendelsohn of Silicon Valley’s political advocacy organization Engine.is. “Hopefully we’ll get some some good legislation out of it.”

The review is welcomed by those looking for more freedom and less corporate control over the very stuff of our culture: digital content.

“This is great news for groups like my own, the EFF, and Public Knowledge,” Sina Khanifar, who led the White House cellphone unlocking petition drive and sees this as an opportunity to address the DMCA at the same time. “We’ll be pushing strongly for comprehensive Section 1201 reform via a grassroots campaign at FixtheDMCA.org. The DMCA’s unintended consequences on our rights to modify and repair the electronics we buy, and to remix and make fair use of copyright content could easily be fixed as part of a larger Copyright reform act.”

Whether that actually happens is subject to long months of debate and discussion. But Rep. Goodlatte said in a press release that “there is little doubt” the current copyright system is challenged by new technology, and that a wide review of copyright laws — and related enforcement mechanisms — is needed.

That’s precisely what Pallante, who had testified before the House Judiciary Committee last month, said in a recent lecture on the state of copyright law. She also addressed the need for reviewing the DMCA and its application. Corporations have used the DMCA to take down links, because the DMCA says that content-sharing and social services are responsible for the content their users post.

“The next great copyright act must … serve the public interest,” she wrote. “It must confirm and rationalize … the ability of authors and their licensees to control and exploit their creative works, whether content is distributed on the street or streamed from the cloud.”

The public interest part sounds hopeful to those who want greater freedom for users when it comes to digital content and digital devices — not so much the control and exploitation bits. But those two sides, of course, will form the basis of the battleground.

“We know the movie and music industries have been spending lots of resources on this,” Engine’s Mendelsohn told me, referencing two combatants likely to be on the control side at the coming hearings. “But we in the tech community have spent a lot of time on this as well, and now we are part of the process.”

“There is much work to be done,” Rep. Goodlatte said.

Indeed.

photo credit: opensourceway via photopin cc

IsAnybodyDown published galleries of nude photos, including identifying features, names, and cities.

Florida is one of the first states to take definitive action against revenge porn. The House subcommittee unanimously voted in favor of a bill that would make posting revenge porn a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Despite the fact that revenge porn is a pervasive and alarming problem, the practice still exists in a legal grey area. Revenge porn refers to the act of ex-lovers uploading illicit photos to the Internet. The images are often accompanied by personal identification information, and done without the subject’s consent. This is not technically illegal because the photos may be considered the photographer’s intellectual property, and the line between invasion of privacy and free speech is a thin one. Furthermore, operators of these sites claim they are not responsible for user-submitted content due to the Communications Decency Act, and content is often submitted anonymously.

House Bill 787 “prohibits knowing use of [content] that depicts nudity and contains any of depicted individual’s personal identification information or counterfeit or fictitious information purporting to be such personal identification information, without first obtaining depicted person’s written consent.”

Victims can currently make claims against their harassers through civil channels, but this bill would make revenge porn a criminal act. It recognizes “contextual consent,” which means that while a person may allow photographing or filming in one context, they would not allow it in another. For example, a girlfriend who lets her boyfriend take a nude photo in the privacy of her home is not consenting to having that photo published on the Internet a year later with links to her social media profiles. Other provisions of the proposal include enhanced penalties for violations involving victims under 16 years of age and targets perpetrators who live outside of Florida but post content involving in-state residents.

However, some say the Bill is not specific enough. In an interview with Salon, Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami, said that while the recognition of “contextual consent” is good, the law is both too broad and too narrow. On the one hand, it applies to any image that depicts nudity, which could include someone standing next to a nude statute. On the other hand, the law is too narrow because it does “not apply to depictions of graphic sexual activity unless certain parts of the body are visible.” Franks cited a case where a man posted a picture of himself ejaculating on his sleeping girlfriend’s face, which does not violate the law.

Revenge porn and its criminalization have recieved national attention over the past week as a group of lawyers, bloggers, and activists work to bring down “IsAnybodyDown,” one of the most well-known revenge porn sites, which features photos of hundreds of people. In March, CBS Denver reported that the federal government may launch a formal investigation into the site after several underage victims filed copyright registration certificates in Colorado with intent to sue. These class action suits, while they can have an impact, are slow to move and do not have the immediacy of a criminal case. The man behind IsAnybodyDown, Craig Brittain, has twice closed down his site after coming under scrutiny and transferred the content to a new site to frustrate the authorities.

Revenge porn sites have existed for a decade, and yet little progress has been made to address the problem. San Francisco attorney Erica Johnstone told VentureBeat’s Christina Farr that when she first started handling cases like these, they were individual cases of an ex seeking revenge. Now, there are more examples of hacking and extortion, such as a scheme that charges victims hundreds of dollars to remove them from the site. Additionally, the rise of camera phones and sexting mean that people can be photographed without their knowledge.

The Florida bill provides an effective date of October 1, 2013. Representative Tom Goodson authored the bill, with support from the Brevard Country Chief’s Association, State Attorney Phil Archer, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Florida Sherrif’s Association. The bill followed a report of a young woman in Brevard County who had nude photos, her name, email address, and hometown posted without her consent, and when she went to the Sheriff’s department for help, was told it was not a crime.

Photo credit: Screenshot

Today, Apple is being sued by state-owned movie maker Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which is accusing Apple of selling 110 movies that it owns via the App Store without its approval, the South China Morning Post reports.

This follows days of attacks on Apple from various sources that are all connected to the government.

First, China Central Television aired an Apple “exposé,” claiming that the company’s warranty policies were discriminating against Chinese consumers. That was accompanied by a clumsily-coordinated astroturf social media campaign via Sina Weibo, the Chinese Twitter/Facebook hybrid. Then the People’s Daily, the government’s main propaganda outlet, attacked Apple for those same warranty policies. And just two days ago, Apple appeared in court to answer a lawsuit claiming that Siri infringes a Chinese company’s patents.

A sample of the movies that were allegedly pirated:

On the face of it, the new copyright lawsuit is a little challenging to process.

Apple does not generally seek out content for iTunes or the App Store and load that content onto the store itself. Instead, authorized representatives of companies, or individuals, upload their own content or apps for sale via iTunes. However, there have been cases in China where pirates have uploaded stolen content to iTunes and the intellectual property owners have successfully sued Apple for damages.

Apple provides steps on its website for reporting precisely that problem; however, short of conducting an exhaustive provenance search for each and every piece of content it sells, it’s hard to see how Apple can know whether content is being pirated or not … and how, given the legal documentation and forms surrounding the upload process, it can be held responsible for pirates’ actions.

However, a similar case involving China Encyclopedia Publishing in September resulted in Apple being required to pay 520,000 yuan in compensation. That’s only about $85,000, but it does set a precedent in China that Apple will be held responsible even if pirates upload stolen content to sell via iTunes or the App Store.

I’ve asked Apple for comment and will update this post if Apple responds.

Interestingly, the South China Morning Post story references a quote from a Shanghai Animation Film Studio representative, who references the “controversies” that “surround” Apple in China right now:

“We want to keep tight-lipped on this case because, as we see it, it’s just a litigation in which we want to get compensation [for our product],” said an official from the Shanghai studio. “It’s a sensitive period now since Apple is a big multinational company and it is surrounded by controversies on its practices in China.”

It’s as if there’s blood in the water and the sharks are smelling it.

One other quote in the story has me scratching my head and wondering what’s really behind this either highly-coincidental or else coordinated set of attacks.

“The cases are not good signs,” the South China Morning Post quotes an “iPhone owner” named Dong Jun as saying. And apparently he added these words: “They convinced me of quitting Apple products later now that my phone has quality problems.”

All I can say is that I personally would tend to identify a source a little more specifically than “iPhone owner,” particularly in a nation of more than a billion people. And that this is a mighty convenient quote, given the extensive and seemingly government-initiated set of attacks on Apple.

This ed-tech startup is fighting back against the three major textbook publishers that are suing it. Today, Boundless filed answers and counterclaims with the court, denying all allegations of wrongdoing.

“They are using litigation to try and stifle innovation,” said founder and CEO Ariel Diaz in an interview with VentureBeat. “They are trying to protect their stagnant product and wielding them as a legal offense.”

Boundless provides free digital textbooks and study resources to make educational content more accessible to students. Drawing from Open Educational Resources and a team of experts, Boundless offers an alternative to bulky and expensive textbooks that weigh most college students down on a daily basis. Thousands of students are responding well to the product, and Boundless raised $8 million last year to accelerate product development (aka the process of making physical textbooks obsolete).

The fact that students preferred more lightweight, cheaper, interactive content caused a few of the old-school textbook publishers to sweat. Last March, Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, and Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group sued Boundless with five claims. Since then, Boundless has made significant updates to the product, including SmartNotes summaries, flash cards, quizzes, tools to create collaborative study guides, social features as well as expanding into 18 academic subjects. Diaz said that the claims have no grounds, and furthermore, are based on Boundless’ 1.0 version, which has since evolved significantly, making them even more illegitimate.

“Three of the major publishers ganged up and sued us for a beta product that is no longer even available,” Diaz said. “We will continue to defend the original product while also highlighting that the product as it is today is fundamentally different. The content they are trying to protect is not copyrightable. The content in introductory textbooks are facts and ideas, and the order in which they are presented is pretty common for each subject area. These things are not copyrightable.”

Of the five claims, three are for copyright violation, one is for false advertising, and one for unfair competition. The complaint is that while Boundless takes its content from open resources, the “sequencing of the concepts” was wrongly taken. Lead counselor for the publishers Matt Oppenheim sent the following reply in an email:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Do you know much money Hollywood loses every time you download a screenshot from The Hobbit?

Probably nothing, but that isn’t preventing Warner Bros. Studios from going after Android apps like “Hobbit 3D Wallpaper HD,” which it says infringes on its copyrights.

And Warner Bros. isn’t alone. Companies like Marvel, Sony, and Viacom are all bombarding Google and Apple with claims that their app stores house dozens of apps with illegal content, as Reuters reports.

This is the new, scary face of piracy, right?

Going after tiny wallpaper apps is obviously pretty silly, but for Hollywood, the apps mean more than just lost income: They represent the new, mostly uncertain frontier for copyright infringement. And Hollywood is just starting to understand it.

Apparently, plenty of apps like “MovieTube” and “Full Classic Movies” are out there, and these offer links to dozens of full-length pirated films. Now, chances are these apps are just one-way tickets to Virusville and offer no movies at all, but Hollywood doesn’t care: They must be destroyed.

“With the rise of the second screen comes a new band of villains who pose a serious threat to the entertainment industry’s move to mobile,” Reggie Pierce, the CEO of mobile copyright protector IP Lasso, told Reuters.

But mobile piracy is in its infancy now — if it exists at all — because of one main factor: Data plans. Unless you’re one of the increasingly few people with unlimited data plans, chances are that you’re going to wait until you get home to download that illegal copy of Flight. (Though you probably shouldn’t at all because Flight was terrible.)

Photo:  Flickr/Uncle Catherine

With the thousands of automatic takedown notices for illegally uploaded videos flooding Google’s inbox, it’s nice to know that the legitimately bad requests by media companies aren’t blindly approved.

Yesterday NASCAR send a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedown notice request to YouTube concerning a video of a horrific crash at the Daytona Speedway that injured 28 people in attendance after debris from the 10-car wreck was sent flying into the crowd. (Video embedded below.) And while it was initially removed, YouTube restored the video on the grounds that it had not violated any copyright owned by the motor sporting organization, who clearly wanted to minimize coverage of the wreck.

“Our partners and users do not have the right to take down videos from YouTube unless they contain content which is copyright infringing, which is why we have reinstated the videos,” YouTube wrote in a statement sent to the Washington Post.

The video, NASCAR  says, was initially blocked out of respect to the families of those that had someone injured in the wreck. The truly sad part about all this is that most media companies and organizations treat YouTube as if its a personal extension of their product, as is the case here.

Via The Washington Post

On the same day the New York Times runs a story about how a faceless squad of hackers on the other side of the world has gone unchecked in a race to penetrate frightening chunks of the digital grid, I am sitting across from author, blogger, and activist Cory Doctorow.

He’s seated cross-legged, perched on a wooden table. The setting is an independent bookstore, where Doctorow proceeds to tell stories he’s told dozens of times already on this book tour — yet still manages to make them seem as fresh as they probably did the first time.

He sways, gestures invitingly, and adjusts his large-rimmed glasses, always in motion. He’s self-effacing, the way he calls himself a Patchouli-scented info hippie. And he talks with intensity of purpose, like a man always running out of time.

At his book signings, the co-editor of the website BoingBoing is not an author so much as a Jeremiah of the web. Never mind promoting “Homeland,” the follow to his 2008 bestseller “Little Brother.” He’ll get around to that.

Getting our policy badly wrong

First, he walks through a litany of episodes from the department of “truth is stranger than fiction.” He recaps examples of technology devices that have been co-opted and turned against their owners.

It’s partly our fault. One of the things wrong with the world, Doctorow insists, is that enough people aren’t demanding that devices be made differently, “so that people can see inside them.”

The default posture of computers is ‘Yes, master’ or ‘I can’t let you do that, Dave.’ It’s up to us decide, because the world we live in is made of computers. Your house is a computer. We are increasingly putting little computers inside our body. Your car is a computer that hurtles down the highway.

People are free when they know the reality of the world. Yet we continue to treat the Internet as though it were nothing but a glorified system for cable and phone calls.

Before he gets around to exposing the still-raw nerve that is his reaction to the suicide of his close friend Aaron Swartz, Doctorow continues with a segué that doesn’t let the public off the hook. He laments the frequency with which users tap “Agree” when confronted with Byzantine Terms of Service agreements and software updates, an action that’s a kind of mindless surrender to the complexities of the Internet age.

From there (and he still hasn’t yet bothered to beat his chest and tout the book that’s brought him here) he blasts prosecutors run amok and talks about how lawmakers “keep getting our policy badly wrong” when it comes to computers.

There’s no way to legislate what computer users can’t do or shouldn’t do, because no sooner than the ink has dried on that bill would such a law be rendered obsolete by the pace of technological change. Yet along the way, in Doctorow’s telling of the story, legal protection of the free flow of information gave way to a kind of mutual protection racket.

Information that’s supposed to be free and public got shut away, where it’s kept under lock and key.

Remembering Aaron Swartz

“I knew Aaron for more than half his life,” Doctorow said, bringing the discussion around to the loss of a pioneer of Internet freedom. “Aaron was one of those bright kids who blew the grading curve. His parents let him leave school.”

Years ago, Doctorow was dating someone who had volunteered to be Swartz’s chaperone around San Francisco when the young teenager was visiting and involved in Internet work far beyond his years.

“We picked him up,” Doctorow remembers. “I remember he was the world’s worst eater. We fed him awful food. I remember thinking, this kid’s going to go somewhere – if he doesn’t die of scurvy.”

Swartz, of course, went on to work at Reddit. He got wealthy but stayed restless and reckless. He couldn’t shut off his ambitiousness, Doctorow remembers, not when he was “liberating” 20 percent of the most widely cited case law from the PACER electronic court records system and not when he was taking advantage of MIT’s public wifi and downloading academic journal articles.

The researchers behind those articles, Doctorow said, are “uncovering tiny chunks of the truth of the world, and we don’t get to see it. If you’re a random person, you can’t get it. And that matters, because we don’t know where the next innovation will come from. I think the world is better when we know the truth of it.”

MIT kept locking Swartz down, Doctorow said, trying to tweak the network and kick him out. At one point, Swartz walked into a closet and plugged directly into the system and downloaded millions of documents.

A prosecutor brought charges against him, threatened decades’ worth of jail time. Swartz said he’d fight it. Doctorow recalled lawyers who “started to play dirty,” denying Swartz documents he was entitled to.

“He kept working,” Doctorow said. “You may remember that dumb law, SOPA. Aaron was one of the people who helped fight and kill that.”

Just over a month ago, Swartz hanged himself in his New York apartment. Doctorow says he’s still trying to make sense of that.

Drawing from life

It’s hard not to be reminded of Swartz in Doctorow’s new story, about a young hacktivist who’s detained and roughed up by the feds. As a matter of fact, Swartz helped Doctorow write the book.

“When I was working on this book, I asked Aaron for help,” Doctorow said.

Swartz sent Doctorow a missing piece he needed for the story. Doctorow didn’t know how he’d describe it, but he wanted to include a mention of a next-gen device that could be used to mobilize voters without needing to rely on the moneyed interests or power brokers who run the current political structure.

Swartz sent him a few paragraphs that Doctorow liked so much he used them verbatim.

Doctorow wraps up his brief remarks by turning to something he’s written down. He’s promised Swartz’s family he would talk about this on the book tour.

“These are things I would have said to Aaron if he’d called me.”

Doctorow’s voice wavers a bit. He presumes there are people in the crowd who’ve dealt with depression.

“I know I have.”

Trying to maintain a steadiness in his voice, Doctorow tells the crowd that “dead people can’t solve problems.” That whatever problems Schwartz was facing, killing himself didn’t solve them. “They will go unsolved forever.”

That “if he was lonely, he will never again be embraced by his friends. If he was despairing of the fight, he will never again rally his comrades with his brilliant leadership.”

And that’s it. There are questions from the audience, and Doctorow promises to “render your books un-returnable” by signing them.

One of the several things striking about him is the way he can pull off a difficult feat. He’s served to rally the faithful — this small crowd of the faithful, admittedly — in defense of the cause of Internet freedom. And he gives them marching orders, without even having to tell them what those orders are.

Photo credit: JonathanWorth.com

Walk into any public library and, of course, you see books, reference materials, newspapers, magazines, and all types of the printed word. We might also see comic books, manga, and less traditional “literature.” These days, we encounter film, television, music, internet-connected computers, and other digital media. But video games?

Libraries lend video games, and they have been for some time. Some folks might think video games have no place in public institutions. Some articles on the web assume that readers will cringe when they hear that this is happening.  Libraries and librarians, however, seem to overwhelmingly support the practice.

The American Library Association endorses video gaming, placing these in a similar class to board games. The association is clear about whether kids should  play video games in libraries: ”Video gaming at the library encourages young patrons to interact with diverse peers, share their expertise with others, including adults, and develop new strategies for gaming and learning.”

Video games are yet another way for kids — and adults — to learn and to interact socially. “Learning a new set of rules, learning new symbols, and reading the text that comes with some video games and RPGs is just as much of an educational effort as reading a book. It’s different, mind you, but still valid. One certainly doesn’t replace another,” said Emily Reeve, a librarian based in Denver.

“Gaming in libraries, whether it’s sitting at a computer playing a video game online or playing a board game with friends, is a sociable experience, especially for kids,” she said in an e-mail conversation with GamesBeat.

Libraries are public spaces

Modern libraries, she said, are becoming more about public space than just about books. The concept of what a library is continues to evolve, with in-library coffee shops, teen spaces, early literacy programs, and new media collections all a part of this conceptual idea of public space at the library. Video games are a logical extension of this, with parents interacting with their children to choose the right games for their children and then connecting with library staff to get help. “It’s definitely in the interest of libraries to meet the needs of the community and engage and create relationships with community members,” Reeve said.

“Libraries hit a turning point when they made the decision to start including popular media in their collections,” writes Brian Mayer at Library Gamer. “By doing so, they shifted their collection development practices to be more inclusive of what their patrons want, embracing the desires of the community.”

As with many new media, beginning efforts are often met with concern — or outright fear, leading some libraries to hold off on offering video games.

“Games deserve their place among the other significant cultural media of our time, on par with television and graphic novels,” said Dr. Guy Berthiaume, the CEO of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). In a post on CultMontreal, he says that providing video games can help teens understand that the library is a place for them as well.

Reeve agrees and takes this a step further, saying that public libraries exist to serve the needs of their communities. “Just like providing Internet access allows patrons free access to more information, providing access to media allows patrons access to additional material to improve overall literacy skills,” she said. “It’s just another format, another way of engaging people whether it’s viewed as pure entertainment or not.”

Budgets, not copyright, the real issue

But what about copyright issues? Lending games to one patron at a time doesn’t seem to violate any end-user license agreements (EULA), says Reeve. “As I understand it, libraries can circulate video games like other media items under the assumption that the games are legally purchased and are used by one person at a time. Libraries, and librarians, are not responsible if items are illegally reproduced no more than an individual lending an item would be.”

Public exhibitions of multiplayer games, like the Guitar Hero (Activision) or Madden (Electronic Arts) series of games, however, may need special licensing or added agreements with publishers, according to an older article in the School Library Journal.

“A library looking to host an event like you’re describing for a licensed game would need to contact EA for a separate agreement,” said  John Reseberg, the senior director for EA Corporate Communications.  ”However, it is something of a nonissue – we look at each request individually, but an event of this type, as long as money is not changing hands, would typically be approved.”

Guitar Hero publisher Activision didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.

Ultimately, providing video game lending is no different from collecting movies, board games, or other recreational items other than books. It could even bring in new patrons who might not otherwise visit a public library or apply for a library card. “Publishers have picked up on the trend of gaming and provide gaming guides and some have even developed fiction based on particular gaming universes,” said Reeve. “If libraries are willing to collect these items, people will check them out. Of course, simply getting people within the walls of the library can remind them of books or movies and other items or services they might be interested in.”

Whether your library has video games to check out may come down to its budget. It seems, then, that while most librarians and academics don’t have a problem with libraries lending video games as a general rule, the budgets for public libraries are still shrinking. Adding a comprehensive gaming collection to an already overstressed library budget could be a hard sell. “With public library budgets being unstable in recent years,” said Reeve, “it’s irresponsible to start developing a collection without secured and continued funding.” Collections must include current games, and they need to work on systems that patrons have in their homes; collections must have working copies, with the inevitable replacement costs well in hand.

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News agencies seem to understand the concept of copyright fairly well, especially when it’s their copyrights that are being violated. That’s especially true for French papers — which have threatened legal action against Google for posting a title, blurb, and link to their stories.

You’d think that taking photos off another website and not just using them but actually posting them to Getty Images and reselling them would be a pretty obvious no-no.

You’d be wrong.

Photographer Daniel Morel took riveting photos of the devastation caused by the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. So riveting that the Agence France-Presse took them off Twitter and actually uploaded them to Getty Images, according to Reuters. Then the Washington Post — a Getty client — used the photos on its website.

Both the AFP and WaPo are named in the lawsuit, but it’s hard to argue that the Post did anything wrong. Most news agencies — VentureBeat included — use image-publishing sites and assume that the digital rights are taken care of. (I mostly use Flickr creative commons photography.)

District Judge Alison Nathan ruled in a summary judgement that both news agencies have infringed Morel’s rights, but the case has not yet gone to trial. He also clarified that while Twitter does allow the retweeting of images — which is in a sense re-broadcasting — the network’s terms of service do not allow for the downloading and reselling of images.

And yes, that’s the well-duh part.

photo credit: jakedobkin via photopin cc

When it comes to Reddit users, its much better to work with them than against them. And at least one U.S. representative has decided to get proactive.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has released a new post on her congressional website asking Reddit for help in crafting a new bill about the government’s ability to seize domain names suspected of mass copyright infringement.

“During SOPA I saw firsthand the Reddit community’s strong dedication to free expression. Because of that dedication, I thought I would attempt an experiment: crowdsourcing a legislative proposal on Reddit,” Lofgren wrote. “The goal of the legislation would be to build due process requirements into domain name seizures for copyright infringement. I’d like your thoughts on the proposal.”

The U.S. Department of Justice, in conjunction with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has conducted two separate sting operations that seized hundreds of domain names that were accused of copyright infringement or piracy. The first operation came about a year ago during the week of Black Friday, and went after digital media pirates (including Megaupload) as well as foreign websites that were selling counterfeit goods. The second happened just before the 2012 NFL SuperBowl, and focused on seizing sites that illegally live streamed sporting events. In both sting operations, the federal government took ownership of the domain name these organizations were using, which essentially shut them down (at least temporarily).

The practice of seizing domain names is highly criticized by online communities like Reddit because there is no due process involved. Suspected sites have their domain seized without going through trial, and (in the event of a) wrongly seized domain, people aren’t easily able to clear their names and get their websites back up.

Lofgren said she may introduce a new bill that reforms the process of domain seizure due to copyright infringe in the future, which would seemingly address the lack of notice given to sites in danger of being taken by the government.

Lofgren’s letter was submitted to Reddit earlier today, and the congresswoman has responded to some of the comments over the last hour. The submission currently has 84 “upvotes” and 25 comments — far less than some of the other politician’s who’ve taken to Reddit to further their causes. However, Reddit General Manager Erik Martin told me he and the team would be happy to provide the congresswoman with tips to get a better response in the future, should she reach out.

This isn’t the first time a politician has asked Reddit for help on a bill. Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) has done a handful of AMAs (ask me anything) to help people understand unpopular legislation like SOPA, PIPA, and international treaty ACTA.

Photo via Rep. Lofgren’s website

We now offer more #transparency in processing copyright reports by withholding Tweets, not removing. Learn more: support.twitter.com/articles/15795.

—
Jeremy K. (@jer) November 03, 2012

In essence, Twitter will now tell users when content has been removed from the site, and give them at least a suggestion of a reason why. This is in addition to Twitter’s already-existing policies of posting takedowns at Chilling Effects and per-country censorship of locally offensive content.

In the site’s documentation, Twitter describes the new process this way:

In an effort to be as transparent as possible regarding the removal or restriction of access to user-posted content, we clearly mark withheld Tweets and media to indicate to viewers when content has been withheld …

Here’s an actual, live example of a withheld tweet:

This Tweet from @torrentfreak has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder. Learn more: support.twitter.com/articles/15795#

—
TorrentFreak (@torrentfreak) November 05, 2012

This is a good move by Twitter. Not only does it add clarity and transparency to what the social network is doing, it avoids the black-hole problem: content that has just disappeared, causing havoc for links, retweets, replies, and more.

Typical offending tweets are ones that link to copyrighted or trademarked material — for example this tweet that linked to a download site for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. In the past, Twitter just deleted the tweets (as this one was), resulting in essentially a 404 web server error: page does not exist.

Source: Twitter

But … it used to exist …

A withheld tweet notification is far more web-friendly, and far more informative.

One thing that could be improved: the link to learn more goes to Twitter’s Copyright and DMCA policy, which is generic information that is not specifically applicable to the tweet. What would be even better would be a direct link to the notice on Chilling Effects from the copyright holder, which would then provide a fairly full and complete explanation of why the tweet was removed.

Perhaps Twitter, which has been doing a reasonably commendable jump walking the tightrope between users’ freedom and copyright holder’s rights, will add that feature next.

photo credit: !borghetti via photopin cc

Google’s European chief Matt Brittin has described a new proposed copyright law in Germany as “like putting up a big sign saying ‘we don’t understand the Internet’.”

The “ancillary copyright” law, in its draft form, would make search engines, including Google, pay for reproducing newspapers’ headlines and first paragraphs in search results.

“I’m concerned about it, not just as somebody who’s passionate about the Internet but also as a former newspaper publisher myself,” Brittin – Google’s VP for central and northern Europe and an ex-director at Trinity Mirror – said, speaking at Google’s office in Berlin.

He pointed out the clear value for businesses in adding online marketing (“four to eight times faster” growth) and estimated the size of the Internet economy – infrastructure, devices, access payments, and Internet-based transactions – at three to four percent of GDP in Europe. “It’s estimated it’ll be about 12 percent of European GDP by 2016.”

Newspaper publishers would seem to be the big losers as businesses’ marketing spend migrates to search engine optimization (SEO) and management (SEM) – with advertising through initiatives such as AdWords making up 96 percent of Google’s $37.9 billion revenue in 2011. Would Brittin agree this shift cuts resources available for journalism – justifying the bid to claw some back in Germany?

“We’re going through a big structural shift [in] how information is shared and produced,” he told VentureBeat syndication partner VentureVillage. “I don’t remember the stats for Germany offhand. … In Austria, 50 percent of advertising spending is on newspapers, I think – it’s about 10 percent of people’s time spent on newspapers, so this is an unsustainable thing.”

His advice for newspaper publishers and other vertically-integrated media companies is to pick what they do best and make the most of new ways to connect with readers online:

I was talking to the editor of the Guardian in the UK – he said that in the early 1960s, I think it was, they had 652 overseas readers. They now have 30 million. … They probably won’t make as much money per reader as they used to when they basically controlled the entire public sector jobs ad market, but that seems like a big opportunity and that’s how we’d like it to work.”

Google News and Search sends about four billion clicks per month to publishers’ websites, he said – with the implication that limiting that isn’t the best fix for the wider problem.

As for Google, arguably approaching monopoly status itself, Brittin was confident initiatives such as the Data Liberation Front, to help users switch to non-Google products, will keep the company honest. “You can Google for other search engines.”

Anyway, it’s not the likes of Yahoo the company is worried about. “It’s people like them”, Brittin said. “It’s two guys in a garage or, hopefully, two women in a Berlin startup unit – it’s the people who come up with something none of us have ever thought of.”

Brittin spoke in Berlin on Friday as part of the M100 Sansoucci Colloquium, part of Medianwoche @ IFA 2012.

This story originally appeared on VentureVillage, VentureBeat’s Berlin-based syndication partner.

After being arrested this past weekend in Cambodia, The Pirate Bay cofounder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg will be deported by Cambodian officials.

“We will deport him based on our immigration law,” police spokesman Kirth Chantharith told Reuters.

Because Sweden and Cambodia have no extradition treaty, it is unclear if Warg will be deported directly back to Sweden or will end up in another country. “We just know we will deport him,” Chantharith said. “As to which country, that would be up to the Swedish side.”

It’s reasonable to assume he will quickly be sent back to Sweden to serve his time and face more than $3.5 million in damages.

As VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell noted this weekend, Warg (also known by online alias Anakata) has been in big legal trouble since 2006, when Swedish police first raided The Pirate Bay, a popular torrent site, for copyright violations. Warg was eventually sentenced to a 12-month prison sentence that was supposed to start in January, but he evaded the police.

While The Pirate Bay remains the target of legal action, it is still up and running.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg photo via Nicolas Vigier/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple is cracking down on app store copycats and being more proactive about rejecting apps that may violate other companies’ trademarks, according to one developer who saw a colleague’s rejection notice.

9to5Mac first noticed that Benjamin Mayo, a university student who built the Bingo Machine app for iOS, received a note from another developer whose app was rejected. The rejection notice, pictured below, states that this particular submitted app’s icon was too similar to the “chart-topping lists/to-do app Clear” and suggests that “it would be appropriate” for the developer to modify the icon.

Source: Benjamin Mayo

Apple app store rejection letter

Apple’s app store review guidelines specifically say that “use of protected third party material — trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, otherwise proprietary content — requires a documented rights check which must be provided upon request.”

Developers might legitimately ask, of course, how with 650,000 apps in the app store any design might not look similar to at least one other app’s icon, but Apple is probably mostly concerned with the “chart-topping” apps, which developers have more incentive to copy.

Any developers who find any evidence of trademark infringement on their own can report the problem at Apple’s website:

But if Apple is indeed getting more proactive about cutting out copycat apps, developers may not have to. At least, if your app is on the top 10 list.

Image credit: Star Wars

The language we use affects the way we think. Political strategists know this: Once you succeed in setting the terms of the debate, you’ve won.

It works in business, too. One of the trickiest turns of phrase in modern business is “intellectual property.”

In many ways, it’s a useful phrase, and it’s deeply embedded in modern economic life. Besides, the abbreviation “IP” is so much easier to say than “patents, trademarks, and copyrights.” But as free-software advocate Richard Stallman points out, the phrase glosses over some important distinctions between different kinds of ownership, and it grants a misleading sense of permanence to the rights it covers.

That’s why I say it’s time to examine this concept a little more clearly, especially when patent law dominates business headlines and the outcome of the Apple-Samsung trial holds enormous implications for the tech industry.

I realize that this question puts me in a tiny minority of business writers — maybe even on the lunatic fringe. Almost everyone agrees with the notion that patents, copyrights, and trademarks are a kind of property. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines IP by writing, “It is imagination made real. … It is an asset just like your home, your car, or your bank account.”

But when even Google is talking about patent reform, it might be time to get a little more serious about this discussion — and to get some clarity about the terminology.

Let me explain: I’m not calling for the abolition of intellectual-property rights. I believe patents and copyrights are critical tools for ensuring that creators get fair compensation for their works of invention. VentureBeat pays my salary, and that of a dozen other writers, thanks to copyright. Silicon Valley’s 50-year technology boom would not have been possible without patents. One of the first things VCs ask (the smart ones, anyway) when examining a new investment opportunity is whether the company owns IP, and how defensible it is.

The problem lies with the way patents and copyrights, in particular, are implemented. Google executives are starting to have doubts about software patents, and they have said that the 20-year term of exclusivity granted with a patent is too long. (On the other hand, Google is also waging holy war against Apple on the hardware patent front, seeking to have all iPhones and iPads barred from entering the U.S. So it goes both ways.)

Patent examiners are incredibly overworked, and they often grant patents to ridiculous “inventions” that have no business being patented. When patent disputes arise, they’re often judged by a jury of 12 additional nonexperts, as the current Apple-Samsung case is.

Meanwhile, corporate copyrights now last for 95 years in the U.S., a term that gets extended every time that Mickey Mouse is just about to enter the public domain. (Thanks, Disney.) Unlike patents, which are intended to give a temporary monopoly to an inventor and then provide public access to it after a limited period, copyrights last essentially forever: Any copyrights granted today will outlive almost all of us reading this today.

When we lump these twin distortions together under a single term and dignify it with the same kind of language we use for real estate or personal property, we give it a false concreteness. Ninety-five-year copyrights start to seem like the natural order of things. Arguing for a shorter patent term sounds almost communist.

The result is a huge diminution of the public domain and a stifling of the kind of creative borrowing that all invention, artistic or technological, depends on.

We need patents and copyrights. We also need a better system for evaluating and granting patents. And we need a shorter term for both.

Let’s start by dropping the term “intellectual property” and talk about what we really mean: patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

Top photo: Model of a machine for making paper bags, patent #220925. Photo via Gaylord.com.

Google’s waters are about to become a bit more unfriendly to pirates.

The search giant announced today that it’s tweaking its algorithm to reflect a new variable: copyright takedown notices. Now, if Google notices that a website has been a big copyright offender, the site could get bumped down in Google search results.

Google gets a lot of requests from Hollywood and the record industry to remove copyright-infringing content from its search listings. According to Google vice president Amit Singhal, the company received 4.3 million notices in the last month alone — so copyright holders are clearly stepping up their game.

Google, however, would rather do things its own way, which is why the company is making this shift in its most important product.

While the move is sure to have an effect on piracy, Google’s focus isn’t on pirates at all. The company says the more important result is that users get the information they want quicker and with less fuss. Clamping down on piracy, it says, is just a side effect of that.

The move will also make it harder for copyright holders to argue that Google isn’t doing enough to target the bad guys, which certainly helps things as well. In a statement to AllThingsD, Recording Industry Association of America CEO Cary Sherman praised the decision, calling it “an important step in the right direction.”

When police raided Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s home in January, there were questions as to why one man charged for copyright infringement warranted so much force. Now we have video of the absurd raid featuring a helicopter, dogs, and semiautomatic rifles.

Dotcom has become a bit of an Internet folk hero because of his tribulations and is vigorously fighting government charges related to copyright. His file-sharing service Megaupload was shut down in January by U.S. and New Zealand authorities as part of a massive sting operation against sites that allegedly enabled copyright infringement.

Besides showing the unnecessary force used on Dotcom and his property, the video features Dotcom testifying about the raid. He says the FBI had already locked down servers related to the Megaupload charges before the raid, so there was no risk of Dotcom deleting evidence that it would later use in court.

The raid was later ruled partially illegal, but New Zealand authorities are trying to overturn that ruling.

Embedding a video that infringes copyright doesn’t violate the law, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

With more scrutiny on copyright violators than ever before, it’s important to know where you stand when it comes to things like embedding a questionable video into a website or sharing a video with friends on social media.

In the ruling, the 7th Circuit sided with video bookmarking site myVidster, which was sued by video production company Flava Works in 2010. Flava Works successfully argued that the site was guilty of infringement and got an injunction against the site in 2011. But now that decision has been thrown out. Judge Richard Posner wrote:

myVidster is giving web surfers addresses where they can find entertainment. By listing plays and giving the name and address of the theaters where they are being performed, the New Yorker is not performing them. It is not “transmitting or communicating” them… myVidster doesn’t touch the data stream, which flows directly from one computer to another, neither being owned or operated by myVidster.

While the site is in-the-clear on charges surrounding the embedding of infringing videos, the judge still said myVidster was potentially infringing because it let paying members store copies of videos on its own servers.

Finally, the decision had some good news for Internet video-watchers as well. The judge said that watching a stream of an infringing video itself is not copyright infringement.

Via GigaOM

Photo credit: zimmytws/Shutterstock

But the new poster boy for internet freedom has a big-kids message:

“The war for the Internet has begun. Hollywood is in control of politics. The Government is killing innovation. Don’t let them get away with that.”

Whether you agree or disagree, Dotcom is eager to make his case on the new Kim.com, where he calls on American president Barack Obama to “end the war on internet freedom” … and shares 10 facts about the MegaUpload scandal and court cases in an attempt to both exonerate his company and demonstrate the illegal nature of the US government’s actions.

And he explicitly links his message to Dr. Martin Luther King, saying “I have a dream, like Dr. King.” He also links himself implicitly to Che Guevara, the famous Argentinian Marxist who contributed to the Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba, by wearing the beret cap in the video.

Watch, listen, enjoy:

Somewhat interestingly … on the bottom of the Kim.com website is a small image: a copyright notice.

And there’s a terms of service, which states that the website is copyrighted and may not be used by organizations, companies, or businesses for any purposes. And one more thing:

Unauthorized framing of or linking to the Website is prohibited.

I don’t think Che had a terms of service page, Kim.

Note:  last week Dotcom published the following letter to the movie industry via The Hollywood Reporter.

Dear Hollywood,

The Internet frightens you. But history has taught us that the greatest innovations were built on rejections. The VCR frightened you, but it ended up making billions of dollars in video sales.

You get so comfortable with your ways of doing business that any change is perceived as a threat. The problem is, we as a society don’t have a choice: The law of human nature is to communicate more efficiently. And the economic benefits of high-speed Internet and unlimited cloud storage are so great that we need to plan for the day when the transfer of terabytes of data will be measured in seconds.

Businesses and individuals will keep looking for faster connectivity, more robust online storage and more privacy. Transferring large pieces of content over the Internet will become common — not because global citizens are evil but because economic forces leading to “speed of light” data transfer and storage are so beneficial to societal growth.

Come on, guys, I am a computer nerd. I love Hollywood and movies. My whole life is like a movie.

I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for the mind-altering glimpse at the future in Star Wars. I am at the forefront of creating the cool stuff that will allow creative works to thrive in an Internet age. I have the solutions to your problems. I am not your enemy.

Providing “freemium” cloud storage to society is not a crime. What will Hollywood do when smartphones and tablets can wirelessly transfer a movie file within milliseconds?

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of changing their views to fit the facts, they try to change the facts to fit their views. The fact remains that the benefits of Megaupload to society outweigh the burdens. But instead of adapting, you imported one of your action-conspiracy movie scripts into the real world. In my view, MPAA CEO and former Sen. Chris Dodd lobbied his friends in the White House to turn me into a villain who has to be destroyed. Due process? Rule of law? Eliminate me and my innovation and worry about the consequences later. Never mind that millions of Megaupload users lost access to cloud data like their wedding photos. Well done, Hollywood, everyone with similar innovations got the message. But wait … You did not read the end of the script.

The people of the Internet will unite. They will help me. And they are stronger than you. We will prevail in the war for Internet freedom and innovation that you have launched. We have logic, human nature and the invisible hand on our side.

As you should have known, our Mega services operated within the boundaries of the law. We had users that spanned from the military to Hollywood to lawyers and doctors. If you are unhappy with that, it is up to you to convince Congress to amend legislation. You tried with SOPA and you failed. As an alternative, you chose to lobby the Justice Department to ignore the law and stage a global show of force and destruction. The only parties a New Zealand court has found to have violated the law in this case are the local police and the FBI.

Regardless of the issues you have with new technologies, you can’t just engage armed forces halfway around the world, rip a peaceful man from his family, throw him in jail, terminate his business without a trial, take everything he owns without a hearing, deprive him of a fair chance to defend himself and do all that while your propaganda machine is destroying him in the media. Is that who you want to be?

There can still be a happy ending. I am working on solutions. Just call me or my lawyers. You know where to find me. Unfortunately I can only do lunch in New Zealand.

This open letter is free of copyright. Use it freely.

Image credit: Kim.com

What happens when people who protest about copyright law are silenced by copyright infringement claims? YouTube rapper and commentator Dan Bull believes this has happened to him, so he’s taken to YouTube to document his experience.

The case begins with rapper Lord Finesse suing Mac Miller for $10 million for using the beat from “Hip 2 Da Game” without permission on a mixtape track. Bull, a rapper in his own right, created a YouTube video to call Finesse a hypocrite because Finesse’s song samples jazz musician Oscar Peterson. Bull’s video also uses the beat from Finesse’s “Hip 2 Da Game,” but he claimed he could use it under “fair use” because it is acting as commentary or parody. “Fair use” is what allows you to watch those endless “Call Me Maybe” parodies or lets sites like VentureBeat post small amounts of copyrighted works without asking permission.

But YouTube has taken down the video Bull uploaded because Lord Finesse claimed copyright infringement on it. (Watch the re-uploaded video here.) Bull’s video views and all the comments he received are gone now, and he doesn’t want to take the case to court because it could be costly. “Copyright law is being used to silence criticism of copyright law,” Bull says in the video.

So to help explain just what happened and why he’s upset with what Finesse is doing, Bull created an eight-minute video that helps show the alleged hypocrisy and act as a warning to others about how fair use may not protect your original videos from being taken down by copyright claims.

“I have fought ACTA, SOPA, DEA and various other forms of censorship in the name of copyright,” Bull writes in the video description. “I will not be silenced by this kind of abuse of the copyright system. The DMCA is not supposed to be used in this way.”

Check out Bull’s informative, eye-opening video below:

Fight like hell, if you’re Build.com chief executive Chris Friedland, who’s more than a little peeved by the massive influx of patent claims he’s had to deal with.

“Frankly, the absurdness of some of this stuff is just ridiculous,” Friedland says. “Are you going to patent wiping your ass?”

Friedland started Build.com in the early 2000s. Selling it in 2007, he did the unusual thing and stayed on as CEO. Today it’s the second largest online retailer of home improvement products in the U.S., doing $350 million in annual business.

“Only Lowe’s is bigger than us,” Friedland told VentureBeat.

That made Build.com a tempting target for so-called “patent trolls,” companies that acquire patents for the purpose of licensing intellectual property (as opposed to creating and selling products in the marketplace).

“About two years ago we were approached by our first patent troll with big threats over our web server,” says Friedland. Build.com was using the popular open source software Apache to run its websites.

“That scared the parent company, and scared us.”

New to patents and patent legislation, the company felt it could be facing an existential threat. “It’s kind of scary,” Friedland told VentureBeat. “If someone has a patent that is so broad, they could shut down your business … your business could go to zero.”

Eager to put legal troubles behind them, and wanting to avoid distractions from their core business focus, the company paid an undisclosed amount in the high five figures.

Big mistake.

It was like spilling blood into shark-filled waters. Almost immediately, the company was swarmed with patent claims.

“All of a sudden out of the blue we’re battling five different suits … I think because of the success of this troll, our category got targeted,” Friedland says. “The trolls came in massive force, and the patents went from semi-reasonable to just crazy.”

One of the companies was Patent Group LLC, a Texas-based firm that has targeted multiple firms, including 9 separate claims against 140 different companies in a single week in 2011 … the week between the passage of the America Invents Act — a bill intended to limit patent trolls’ power — and the signing of the bill.

Suffice it to say, Friedland is not a fan, calling Patent Group “sons of bitches” and “fucking trolls.” (VentureBeat reached out to Patent Group for a comment but has not yet received a response.)

The “invention” that Patent Group attempted to assert against Build.com was patent number 6603490, the same one the company is attempting to sue TicketMaster for right now. In Friedland’s words: “basically anything that has rotating images on the internet.”

This time, Build.com decided to fight. They’re not the first company to fight back in recent months.

Just this month, HipMunk announced it is suing i2Z Technology LLC. i2Z attempted to collect for United States Patent No. 5,345,551, which deals with syncing and presenting data from multiple sources in application windows, and HipMunk chief executive Adam Goldstein said “we do believe in fighting against spurious intellectual property suits.”

NewEgg has also led multiple battles against spurious intellectual property lawsuits.

But it was new territory for Build.com.

When the company decided that the patent was so egregious it could not settle, it pressed the issue in court … and won. In fact, Build.com recently received not just a dismissal but a dismissal with prejudice, meaning that Patent Group LLC cannot appeal or re-try the case.

That victory, however, was just the beginning.

Four other patent holding companies were seeking payments from Build.com, including Select Retrieval LLC. Select Retrieval is an infamous troll that sued more than 100 companies in 2011 for patent number 6,128,617, a way of retrieving and displaying information from a database.

Some would say that getting data from a database and displaying it online is obvious. Friedland agrees, but he’s a little more graphic:

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Build.com is not against legitimate patents, Friedland says, but not only did he feel this patent was obvious and ridiculous, the company’s tactics were “bullying, and we’re not going to accept bullying.”

Instead of going Lone Ranger this time, Build.com assembled a joint defense group with 14 other online retailers and is now working to invalidate the patent.

“If it was a real patent, we’d license it — we license patents now,” says Friedland.

But the cost is significant and is stifling innovation, so Build.com is no longer settling. And Friedland’s recommendation for anyone else caught in similar circumstances?

“Create a joint defense group and fight it together.”

If a recent Apple-Motorola lawsuit is an indication, companies may not have to spend good money on bad lawsuits for long. Federal appeals court judge Richard Posner recently threw out the suit, saying “It’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries.”

Until that opinion proliferates in the legal and political establishment, however, patent lawsuits — legitimate or otherwise — will continue to be a cost of doing business.

And company builders like Friedland will need to keep fighting.

In a series of so-called “copyright infringement reports,” ISPs would first inform customers they are being monitored, then follow up with notices on how to legally obtain copyrighted material and eventually notices saying that their action could result in a legal response. Each report would be added to a “copyright infringement list.” After the third report, owners of the copyrighted material infringed upon could ask a court to reveal an ISP customer’s identity to launch legal action. ISP customers could appeal the process — for 20 GBP ($31).

The bulk of the cost of the record-keeping and reporting falls on the individual ISPs. The companies may also be required to enact measures against customers who are repeat offenders, including capping their broadband speed and even suspending their account. However, those more extreme steps would require new legislation.

While the draft rules hint at what ISPs may face in combatting copyright scofflaws, the actual three-strikes portion will not go into effect until 2014, reports indicate.

Google is rolling out a new section of its Transparency Report today that provides detailed information about copyright infringement removal requests.

“We believe that openness is crucial for the future of the Internet. When something gets in the way of the free flow of information, we believe there should be transparency around what that block might be,” Google stated in a recent blog post announcing the new section of the report.

The company first launched the Transparency Report about two years ago, which primarily focused on the number of URL or content removal requests  — as well as requests for personal data of an individual — made by governments across the world.

The new section of the report details the companies and organizations that are asking Google to remove content or de-index a URL from search results on the basis of copyright infringement. In the past month, the report indicates that 1,246,854 URLs have been targeted for removal from over 24,000 domains. The top sites being listed are shady sounding domains, such as Filestube.com, 4shared.com, zippyshare.com, etc.

So, who exactly is requesting these removals? The report indicates that over 1,200 copyright owners have asked for removals (either directly, or from an organization representing them). Here’s he shocking part though.

While companies/organizations like NBCUniversal, Lionsgate, the RIAA, and BPI (the British version of RIAA) are all at the top of the list for copyright infringement URL takedown requests, none of them come close to the top company — Microsoft, with a total of 552,252 requests.

Google also says the number of requests has been increasing rapidly, and that its not unusual for the company to receive more than 250,000 requests each week. That’s more than what copyright owners asked it to remove in all of 2009.

“Fighting online piracy is very important, and we don’t want our search results to direct people to materials that violate copyright laws. So we’ve always responded to copyright removal requests that meet the standards set out in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),” Google states. “At the same time, we want to be transparent about the process so that users and researchers alike understand what kinds of materials have been removed from our search results and why.”

The company said it will eventually provide information about content removal requests, such as those made through its video site YouTube.

In terms of how Google goes about these copyright infringement requests is pretty reasonable at least on YouTube. Once contacted by a copyright holder, it removes the content in question and contacts the user responsible. That user can then appeal the infringement claim, and if Google hasn’t heard back from the copyright holder after a two weeks, its restored.

With its search results, it’s not as easy, but Google said it’s working hard to better identify the legitimate requests and discard all the others.

Copyright stamp photo via filmfoto /Shutterstock

Google scored a legal victory today, as a federal jury has decided that the search giant wasn’t guilty of patent infringement claims made by Oracle.

The two companies have been wrapped up in a legal battle since August 2010, when Oracle accused Google’s mobile operating system Android of violating patents and copyrights related to Java that Oracle owns. The trial is seen as very important because it’d one of the most prominent battles over intellectual property in the software industry. In addition, it could set a precedent for whether or not a programming language can be copyrighted, as VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell previously pointed out.

Today’s verdict wraps up the second, patent-oriented phase of the overall trial. The first portion, focused on copyrights held by Oracle, concluded earlier this month, with the jury reaching a mixed verdict — basically finding that Google did infringe on some of the structure, sequence, and organization (SSO) of the 37 Java APIs used in Java.

Google still has yet to be charged with damages related to first phase’s outcome.

In a statement related to the trial, a Google spokesperson said: “Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem.”

Via WSJ

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple has been in a months-long battle with Shenzhen technology-manufacturer Proview over the “iPad” trademark in China. After much back and forth, Apple offered Proview a settlement today, which the company says is too little.

“We feel that the attitude of Apple Inc. has changed. Although they expressed that they were willing to negotiate, they have never taken any action before,” said Proview lawyer Xie Xianghui to China’s Xinhuanet. “It’s good for both sides to reach a settlement as soon as possible.”

However, according to a conversation with Bloomberg, Xie says there is still a “big gap between the two sides on the settlement.”

Apple says it purchased the rights to the trademark from Proview for $55,000 back in 2009. Apple claims the company wants it to repurchase the trademark again, only now for millions of dollars more. Proview, which has owned the iPad trademark since 2001, explained the 2009 transaction as taking place between a Proview subsidiary and Apple, and as such the purchase would not count in mainland China.

The case started when Proview demanded $10 million from Apple, claiming the company was using the iPad name illegally in China. Proview attempted to ban stores in China from selling the iPad until Apple coughed up the hefty sum.

A Hong Kong judge sided with Apple in February, saying that Proview was simply a company in financial turmoil, looking to take advantage of the very profitable Apple. Proview’s filed for bankruptcy in August 2010 and has since stopped trading on its stock.

Proview put a win under its belt, however, when Beijing National Copyright Administration deputy director Yan Ziaohong acknowledged Proview as owner of the trademark in China.

We have reached out to Xie Xianghui and will update the post when we hear back.

hat tip All Things D

The rising strength of the Pirate party in Europe’s strongest economy is a sign of new concerns among young, highly educated voters who are unhappy with the country’s two major parties – the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) — who have dominated the political scene there much as the Republican and Democrats do in the United States.

The Green Party has long pushed a pacifist, anti-nuclear platform. “For many young people, the Greens have become an old party. The anti-nuclear theme just doesn’t lure voters like it used to,” said Manfred Guellner, director of Forsa, which conducted this latest poll.

The Pirate Party has been focused on hot button issues like ACTA, the SOPA of Europe. Copyright reform and internet freedom, especially as it relates to government censorship, have become major talking points for the Pirates. This has helped them capture the vote of many in the “informatics sector”, the German equivalent of our tech industry.

Image from Flickr user Sdknex

The recent debate over SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN has left a bitter taste among those who think the tech industry is in desperate need of intellectual property reform. Add to it the recent shutdown of Megaupload and big-time patent disputes, and it’s easy to see how IP enforcement has become a weapon that threatens technological innovation in a way like never before. Despite the mess, a recent trend has left many startups crying out for greater copyright/IP protection: the rise of copycat kings like Rocket Internet in Germany, Fast Lane Ventures in Russia, and others in China, who are quick to “clone” successful U.S. businesses like Pinterest, Fab.com, Airbnb, Groupon, and Zappos in overseas markets. And I’m not just talking about taking an idea and tweaking it; this is about copying a site’s entire design, layout, and logo almost pixel for pixel and coming up with some uninspired derivative name (e.g., “Pinspire” instead of Pinterest, “Zolando” instead of Zappos) that reeks of being a cheap knock-off.

Supporters of clones argue that they promote competition, spur faster innovation, and provide access to new products/services in markets that U.S. businesses have not yet entered. They also draw on the “ideas are cheap” theme, playing up the importance of execution. But all of that sidesteps the negative effects of models based on outright copying:

Cloning doesn’t promote innovation; it decreases it.

Let me first say that not all copying is bad. Copying something and using it in a way that makes it recognizably different or better is often valuable—think of music remixes, parodies, or fan fiction. Isaac Newton himself said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” We don’t want to overly restrict this type of copying. But copying without any sort of improvement or modification hurts innovation because it doesn’t add anything to the original and takes away incentives to create the original in the first place. Xeroxing someone else’s book and profiting from it as if it were your own is harmful because it takes away that person’s incentive to come up with original ideas and is therefore not allowed. This is exactly the type of copying that clones use, and sooner or later it could have detrimental effects on our startup ecosystem by causing entrepreneurs to be less innovative.

It’s possible that clones might force startups like Airbnb to roll out new features more quickly than they would otherwise, but do you really think the Airbnb team is not already doing everything it can to go as fast as possible? Everyone knows that life at a startup is about going full-throttle while facing resource constraints and making tradeoffs—Airbnb is going to roll out features as fast as it can regardless of whether clones exist. So to say that clones will promote faster innovation doesn’t make much sense. If anything, it removes the incentives to put in the work necessary to be first. Why should a startup go to the trouble of running A/B tests, usability tests, market research, and focus groups to develop an optimal design or feature if someone else is simply going to take the end result and copy it over a weekend?

Healthy competition doesn’t mean more of the same thing.

Competition has several benefits including lower prices and greater consumer choice. But successful U.S. startups already face significant competition from others attempting to capitalize on the latest trend. How does adding a clone have a meaningful impact on competition? Consumer choice should be about actually having to decide between two different options, not two of the same exact thing. Pinterest vs. Fancy is the type of competition we need. Pinterest vs. Pinspire is the type that doesn’t offer much in terms of additional choice. Claims that clones add value through competition also seem much more disingenuous, given that their founders appear to build them only to sell them back to the original companies they were based on, often at a large premium (as an example, CityDeal, a Groupon clone, was acquired at a price rumored to be north of $100 million).

U.S. startups don’t have a fair chance to enter overseas markets first.

Proponents of clones say that consumers in international markets like Germany and China shouldn’t have to wait for U.S. companies to expand their services if someone else can provide them today. This argument would have a lot more weight if the lag time were measured in years or even months, but instead we’re talking about weeks. Given that imitators claim they can roll out a clone in less than six weeks, U.S. startups don’t stand a chance of beating their knock-offs to these new markets.Clones have the luxury of only having to focus on scaling quickly; innovators have to worry about both product development and scaling their business, making it more difficult for them to enter new markets as quickly as clones. The lead-time advantage that tech companies used to rely on has also been severely diminished due to cloud services like AWS, which have dramatically lowered the time and cost to get up and running.

And for those who think that clones are likely to be limited to super-successful American startups who have raised huge amounts of funding, think again. Just look at Wrapp, a Swedish gift-giving service that was just a few months old when Rocket launched a clone called DropGifts, despite the fact that Wrapp’s business model is untested and the team only raised a modest amount of funding. Clones are simply making it harder and more expensive for startups to launch in overseas markets. We might even see more U.S. startups staying in stealth longer until they can launch in several markets at once, meaning everyone would have to wait longer to benefit from new products/services.

Two potential solutions that give greater IP protection to U.S. startups would help improve the current clone problem:

International harmonization for enforcement against “close copies”

The recent escalation in international IP disputes has highlighted the problems with different enforcement standards. When you’re talking about trying to stop overseas clones, U.S. startups are basically out of luck since IP rules in other countries are either much more lenient or simply not enforced. The U.S. has recently been pushing for international IP harmonization, but unfortunately those efforts have been focused on treaties like ACTA which are designed to protect large content providers when they should instead try to address the issue of protecting U.S. entrepreneurship. There needs to be a mechanism/process in place for allowing U.S. startups to shut down overseas clones that are essentially “close copies” of the original.

Lead time protection for entering new markets

There should be some built-in time that is reserved for the original business to enter overseas markets before it can be copied. This could last just a few months and would at least protect against clones who seek to enter markets within weeks of a launch. After that period expires, clones could start copying but should be required to improve on the original in some way that differentiates it from the original.

Such a move would not be as radical as it sounds. In the 1980s, innovators in the semiconductor industry complained that it took significant time and money to develop new chip designs that were vulnerable to rapid, cheap cloning by competitors, especially foreign ones. This chip “piracy” threatened the ability of U.S. companies to recoup their investments. In response, Congress passed the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act (SCPA) which allowed competitors to use new, innovative designs if they improved on them enough to make something original. As a result, this promoted follow-on innovation, increased competition, and led to U.S. firms dominating the global chip industry.

Tech has remained resilient despite the broader economy’s up and downs these last few years in part because it’s such a hotbed of entrepreneurship. We should be concerned about the negative effects of startup “piracy” and the risks of deterring startup innovation. So much attention has been given to Hollywood lately about the threat of lost jobs and profits due to content piracy that we’re missing the possibility that the piracy that’s really going to have that type of impact is startup cloning. Unless we do something about it.

This is a guest post written by Wei Lien Dang, who is currently a JD/MBA student at Harvard University. He studies entrepreneurship, venture capital, and emerging issues in Internet law.

Cloned woman photo via Hasloo Group Production Studio/Shutterstock

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The setup for Aereo was fast and painless. No apps to download or hardware to buy. That makes it different from services like Sling Box, which requires an expensive set-top box and a monthly subscription to a cable or satellite television service. It’s also why Aereo charges $12 a month.

I logged into the site, authorized my devices (you can have up to 5), and picked a channel. The load time was under five seconds and from there it ran without buffering, even when I adjusted the video quality to high.

There was, however, the painful shock that comes from tuning into daytime TV for the first time in years. These shows are terrible and the commercials are even worse. (For example: if I order a scooter now, I get a free deck of large print playing cards! A class action lawsuit for users of vaginal mesh wipes!)

I connected Aereo to my Facebook account and it found four friends, but I couldn’t figure out what social features to use from there. I wouldn’t mind seeing what show people are watching and recording. I love the inbox feature in Spotify, and it would be nice to drag and drop great episodes of my favorite shows for friends to watch.

The DVR was also drop dead simple. I searched for 30 Rock and The Office, and then set both to record all new episodes, skipping reruns. Aereo gives users 40 hours of DVR with their $12.99 monthly subscription fee. When I see how well the DVR works, I’ll update this post.

I counted 27 channels available now in several different languages, including a bunch I didn’t even know existed like This TV, Qubo, and Livewell. The navigation on both the iPad and laptop was simple and intuitive. Search was interesting: “comedy on Fox” brought up all the right shows, but “NBA basketball” returned results for the NCAA.

We know Aereo investor Barry Diller is excited to duke it out with his old buddies from Fox. But sadly this service doesn’t carry the Court TV channel, meaning I won’t be able to follow the legal battle via Aereo.

Aereo allows anyone to rent a tiny antenna, about the size of a dime, that captures TV signals out of the air and streams them over the web. It also lets users record those shows and play them back anytime they like on any device. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS and others have sued Aereo, saying that the service is rebroadcasting their programming without paying the appropriate licensing fees.

In a statement emailed to VentureBeat yesterday, Aereo highlights the legal history of the VCR and DVR in arguing its case:

This case involves nothing more than the application of settled law to updated technology — settled law that establishes conclusively that Aereo’s business is entirely lawful. Plantiff’s Complaints fails because Aereo merely provides technology that consumer may use to what they are legall entitled to do: (1) access free and legally accessible over the air television broadcasts using an antenna; (2) create individiual, unique recording of those broadcasts for personal use, see Sony Cor. of America vs Universal Studios, Inc, 464 U.S. 417 (1984); and (3) record and play back those unique recording utilizing a remotely-located digital video recorder (“DVR”) to personal devices, see Cartoon Network L.P. vs CSC Holdings Inc., 536 F.3d 121 (2nd Circ. 2008). 

The big studios have been fighting recording technology for decades, and technology companies, from Sony to Aereo, have been trying to find ways to improve the consumer experience. Barry Diller, who helped create Fox, USA and QVC, is no stranger to the world of television and not shy about getting into it with the traditional media companies. “It’s going to be a great fight,” Diller told the audience during a panel at SXSW.