TorrentFreak Email Update

UK File-Sharers Face Disconnections After Appeal Court Ruling
With Digital Economy Act Ruling Due, ISPs Stung With Piracy Claims
History Shows That Copyright Monopolies Prevent Creativity And Innovation
It’s Official: US Demands Extradition of Megaupload Suspects

UK File-Sharers Face Disconnections After Appeal Court Ruling

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 03:07 AM PST

For almost a year the UK’s Digital Economy Act has been in limbo after two of the country’s largest Internet service providers challenged the legislation. BT and TalkTalk had argued that the controversial law was incompatible with EU legislation and in March 2011 the High Court began a judicial review.

In April 2011 the High Court sided with the government and said that copyright holders have the right to tackle unlawful file-sharing, but in October the ISPs were granted leave to appeal on the grounds that the DEA might breach several EU directives.

Just minutes ago judges Lady Justice Arden, Lord Justice Richards and Lord Justice Patten declared that the ISPs have lost their appeal and the Digital Economy Act will stand.

TalkTalk described the ruling as “disappointing” and along with BT say they are now considering their options. Groups representing copyright holders have welcomed the Court of Appeal ruling.

“The ISPs’ failed legal challenge has meant yet another year of harm to British musicians and creators from illegal filesharing,” said Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI.

UK Internet service providers will now be required to send warning letters to customers who the music, movie and software industries claim are infringing their copyrights on file-sharing networks.

After a year of sending letters, communications regulator Ofcom must report on the results of the campaign. In the event it has been ineffective in reducing file-sharing, so-called “technical measures” can be put in place – a euphemism for Internet disconnections and/or Internet throttling.

Open Rights Group, who have been campaigning against the legislation, said the Court of Appeal ruling has shortcomings.

“There is one thing the court cannot tell us: that this is a good law. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport had no evidence when they wrote this Act, except for the numbers they were given by a couple of industry trade bodies. This is a policy made on hearsay and assumptions, not proper facts or analysis,” ORG’s Peter Bradwell said in a statement.

“So significant problems remain. Publicly available wifi will be put at risk. Weak evidence could be used to penalize people accused of copyright infringement. And people will have to pay £20 for the privilege of defending themselves against these accusations. The Government needs to correct these errors with a proper, evidence-based review of the law.”

In comments to the BBC, Adam Rendle, a copyright lawyer at international law firm Taylor Wessing, said he expected BT and Talk Talk to take their appeal to the UK’s Supreme Court.

Source: UK File-Sharers Face Disconnections After Appeal Court Ruling

With Digital Economy Act Ruling Due, ISPs Stung With Piracy Claims

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 01:55 AM PST

In March 2011, the High Court began a judicial review of the controversial Digital Economy Act (DEA). The review was ordered after the legislation, which was rushed through during the final hours of the previous Labour government, was met with complaints from two of the UK's biggest Internet service providers, BT and TalkTalk. The pair question whether the Act was enforceable under current EU legislation.

In April the High Court’s Justice Kenneth Parker sided with the government and “upheld the principle of taking measures to tackle the unlawful downloading of music, films, books and other copyright material.”

In October, BT and TalkTalk were given permission to appeal, with Lord Justice Lewison stating that the ISPs should be allowed to argue that the Act "was enacted without following proper procedures and that it may breach the EU's E-Commerce Directive, Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, Data Protection Directive, Authorization Directive."

As long as certain conditions are met, under EU law Internet service providers are not liable for the data carried over their networks, a situation known as the "mere conduit" defense. But today it’s being claimed that staff from both BT and TalkTalk gave advice to customers that they knew had intentions of breaching copyright.

According to a ThisIsMoney report, ‘mystery shoppers’ were asked to call ISPs asking questions about using file-sharing sites.

Perhaps conveniently considering developments due in court today, the allegations focus on advice given by BT and TalkTalk staff. However, based on the information given in the article, first impressions suggest that only one call is worthy of immediate attention and the rest seem potentially overblown.

During that call, made to BT, the ‘customer’ says they want to use Pirate Bay or isoHunt to download movies such as Harry Potter or Cars 2. The BT staff member allegedly noted that the films could be downloaded from those sites “in less time than it would take to watch the film”.

In another call to TalkTalk, the investigators claim that the customer services operator admits to using BitTorrent himself and says that The Pirate Bay would perform best with an ‘unlimited’ broadband package. But there are millions of items on The Pirate Bay, plenty of them legal, and the advice is good, piracy hasn’t been condoned and certainly no laws have been broken.

The report goes on to state that “a string of similar calls elicited no warnings about the potential illegality of such activity” and in every call “the use of such sites is mentioned clearly by the caller as a reason for signing up to a faster broadband package.”

While the initial item which references specific copyright works might be problematic, it is not up to an ISP to attempt to police customer activity or predict which content someone might access on The Pirate Bay. It is certainly not up to telesales operators to try and understand the intricacies of copyright law and then give impromptu advice in response to casual comments by ‘customers’.

Both BT and TalkTalk say that they only want customers to use the Internet for legal activities but Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI who have been critical of the ISPs’ opposition to the Digital Economy Act, says what has happened is unacceptable.

“It is shocking if broadband providers have been boosting their revenues selling broadband to customers who make it clear they intend to break the law,” he said. “This is not the behavior we should expect from responsible companies.”

As highlighted earlier, the information provided in the report is not exactly detailed, so it will be interesting to read the full transcripts of the calls – we’ve asked for copies from the editor and we’ll report back should we received them.

Later today, appeal judges Lady Justice Arden, Lord Justice Richards and Lord Justice Patten will give their decision on the future of the Digital Economy Act and announce whether BT and TalkTalk have been successful.

Source: With Digital Economy Act Ruling Due, ISPs Stung With Piracy Claims

History Shows That Copyright Monopolies Prevent Creativity And Innovation

Posted: 05 Mar 2012 01:10 PM PST

Let’s start around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In that day and age, copyright monopoly laws were in force in the United Kingdom, and pretty much the United Kingdom alone (where they were enacted in 1557). You know the “Made in Country X” that is printed or engraved on pretty much all our goods? That originated as a requirement from the British Customs against German-made goods, as a warning label that they were shoddy goods made in Germany at the time. It spread to pretty much global use.

But Germany didn’t have copyright monopoly laws at this point in time, and historians argue that was the direct cause of Germany’s engineering excellence overtaking that of the United Kingdom. In the UK, knowledge of handicrafts was expensive to come by. Books and the knowledge they carried were locked down in the copyright monopoly construct, after all. In Germany, however, the same knowledge was available at print cost – and thus, engineering skills proliferated. With every new person learning engineering, one more person started to improve the skill set for himself and for the country at large. The result is that Germany still, 200 years later, has an outstanding reputation for engineering skills – the rise of which are directly attributable to a lack of the copyright monopoly.

There are more examples. Pharmaceutical companies argue how they absolutely, positively need the knowledge monopolies we call patents in order to survive. The company Novartis is one of the worse offenders here. The claim that patent monopolies are needed is not only false in an objective light – as in the patent monopolies not being needed at all today for the pharma industry – but more interestingly, Novartis itself was founded in a time and place when no such knowledge monopolies existed – more specifically, in Switzerland in 1758 and 1859. If the patent monopolies are so vital for success, how come the pharmaceutical giants of today were successfully founded in their complete absence?

Rather, the pattern here is that the people who have made it to the top push for monopolies that will lock in their positions as kings of the hill and prevent people who do something better from replacing them. It’s a power grab.

In Sweden, the telecoms infrastructure giant Ericsson was founded making a telephone handset that directly infringed on a German patent from Siemens – or at least, would have done so with today’s monopoly laws. A Norwegian company later copied Ericsson in turn. Nobody cared. Today, with the patent monopolies we have today, Ericsson would not have survived the first phone call. And yet, Ericsson is one of the giants pushing for more restrictive monopoly laws. Of course they are; they have been successfully founded already. What innovative giants of tomorrow are we smothering stillborn through these monopoly constructs?

Indeed, the United States itself celebrated breakers of the monopolies on ideas and knowledge as national heroes when the country was in its infancy and building its industries. When the US was still a British colony, the United Kingdom had this idea that all refinement of raw material into desirable products should happen on the soil of the United Kingdom, and only there. Industrial secrets were closely guarded, and the United States sought to break the stranglehold for its own benefit. When somebody brought the British industrial secret of the textile mills to the United States, for example, he was celebrated by getting an entire city named after him and named a father of industry as such. Today, the same person would have been indicted for industrial espionage.

Or why not take a look at Hollywood and the film industry? In the infancy of filmmaking, there was a patent monopoly blanket on the entire concept of moving pictures owned by Thomas Edison, who was adamant in claiming his legal monopoly rights. In order for innovation in the area to flourish, the entire industry moved from the then-hotseat of moviemaking, New York. They moved as far away as they could, west across the entire country, and settled in a suburb outside of Los Angeles. That was outside of the reach of Edison’s patent monopoly lawyers at the time, and so, moviemaking took off big time. Today, the fledgling industry wouldn’t have been outside of the reach of those monopoly lawyers.

I could end with mentioning Internet and how monopolies try to tame it from every angle, but I am sure everybody can fill in the blanks here. Just for fun, we could mention Bill Gates’ famous quote that if people had taken out patent monopolies when the web was still in its infancy, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. It is consistent with the overall pattern.

The pattern here is clear: copyright monopolies and patent monopolies encourage neither creativity nor innovation. Quite the opposite. Throughout history, we observe that today’s giants were founded in their absence, and today, these giants push for the harshening and enforcement of these monopolies in order to remain kings of the hill, to prevent something new and better from replacing them. Pushing for copyright monopolies and patent monopolies was never a matter of helping others; it was a matter of kicking away the ladder once you had reached the top yourself.

But for the rest of us, it makes no sense whatsoever to carve today’s giants in stone. We want them to be replaced by something better, and the copyright and patent monopolies prevent that.

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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Source: History Shows That Copyright Monopolies Prevent Creativity And Innovation

It’s Official: US Demands Extradition of Megaupload Suspects

Posted: 05 Mar 2012 06:06 AM PST

kim Last Friday, US prosecutors filed an extradition request against four New Zealand-based suspects who were allegedly part of the so-called “Mega Conspiracy.”

Kim Dotcom is wanted in the United States alongside other key Megaupload employees on racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges.

In the battle to extradite the defendants, US authorities intend to rely on a United Nations treaty aimed at combating international organized crime.

Previously a lawyer working on behalf of the United States government admitted that no copyright offenses are specifically listed in the extradition treaty. However, he also noted that certain offenses which involve transnational crime are covered by New Zealand’s Extradition Act.

In New Zealand crimes must carry a four year prison sentence to be deemed extraditable. Under the country's Copyright Act, distributing an infringing work carries a five year maximum sentence.

Experts and observers are predicting that due to its groundbreaking status, the extradition battle for the Megaupload defendants will be both complex and prolonged, and could even go all the way to the Supreme Court.

For now, the first extradition hearing has been scheduled for August 20.

Megaupload programmer Bram van der Kolk recently called on the New Zealand authorities to remain dignified in their extradition dealings with the United States.

"I really hope New Zealand will keep its dignity and can show that it is a sovereign state that has its own justice system," he said, referring to the extradition process.

Talking to TorrentFreak last week, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom said that he and his co-defendants are positive that the law is on their side.

"We're going for this and we're confident we're going to win," Kim said.

Source: It’s Official: US Demands Extradition of Megaupload Suspects

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Tuesday, 6 March 2012