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Dotcom Extradition Judge Steps Down After “U.S. Enemy” Comment

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 12:24 AM PDT

For the greater part, Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants will have been pretty happy with Judge David Harvey, the man overlooking their increasingly controversial extradition case.

Things had been going well, with the Judge ruling favorably towards the Megaupload founder and his friends on a number of occasions, but last week he apparently overstepped the mark.

It happened during the NetHui conference after the launch of “Fair Deal”, a campaign opposing amendments to New Zealand copyright law that could become part of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. In common with ACTA that went before it, TPP negotiations are being held in secret and being used by the U.S. entertainment industries to push for tougher copyright law.

One of issues surrounds the circumvention of DVD region codes which currently allows New Zealanders to watch DVDs from other regions without committing an offense. TPP seeks to remove that freedom, and Judge Harvey made it clear he wasn’t happy with that.

“Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited… if you do you will be a criminal – that’s what will happen,” Judge Harvey said, adding:

“..we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.”

Quickly, NZHearld quoted Auckland University law professor Bill Hodge describing the comment as potentially “unhelpful” but clearly the pressure has been building since.

This morning, Chief District Court Judge Jan-Marie Doogue announced that Judge Harvey had decided to step down from the case over the comments.

“He recognizes that remarks made in the context of a paper he delivered on copyright law at a recent internet conference could reflect on his impartiality and that the appropriate response is for him to step down from the case,” she said.

Over the past few months, Judge Harvey has ruled several times in favor of Dotcom and his co-defendants.

Back in April, he praised Dotcom and his associates on their “commendable” behavior, going on to reinstate Dotcom’s Internet access, his swimming sessions, and visits to a recording studio to finish his album.

He went on to grant Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato permission to travel to Dotcom's home once a week for a maximum of six hours so that they could work on their defense.

And in May and against U.S. wishes, Judge Harvey ordered the disclosure of all documents related to crimes the “Megaupload conspirators” had allegedly participated in.

The extradition case, scheduled for 2013, will now be heard by Judge Nevin Dawson.

Source: Dotcom Extradition Judge Steps Down After “U.S. Enemy” Comment

Google Builds Largest Database of Links to Pirated Media

Posted: 17 Jul 2012 11:10 AM PDT

google bay Under the DMCA copyright holders have the right to demand that websites disable access to infringing content. Without doubt, one of the top recipients of these notices is Google.

To give the public insight into the scope and nature of this process, Google started to publish all takedown requests online as part of their transparency report. Since then, the number of URLs Google is being asked to remove has grown rapidly.

Last week Google received takedown requests for a record-breaking 719,415 URLs, which is double the amount that were sent in two months ago, and four times as many as in January of this year. Google’s data further reveals that Microsoft and the RIAA are the most active senders.

# URLs in takedown requests per week

google takedowns

For the copyright holders the purpose of these takedown requests is to make pirated content unavailable through Google’s search engine. This happens through automatic takedown tools, with the unfortunate consequence that legitimate movie trailers and IMDB or Last.fm pages are censored too.

But, there is another issue that casts doubt over the effectiveness of the process.

Because Google indexes all takedown requests with the “infringing” URLs on the ChillingEffects website, the search engine is effectively building the world’s largest database of links to pirated content.

Around the same time next year, Google will have built a database of dozens of millions of pirated links, and a few years later it will be a billion links. Not just links to BitTorrent sites, but also files hosted on cyberlockers, blogs and a wide range of other websites all collected in one place.

Of course, Google’s search engine already indexes pretty much the entire Internet, but a database dedicated to infringing content opens up the possibility for outsiders to mine this data for pirate search engines. And that’s just one of the problems with Google’s transparency.

Disabling access to these “pirate” lists is harder than it seems.

Since all the takedown requests are published online, the URLs in question can still be found through Google. This irony leads to the absurd situation where copyright holders (intentionally or automatically) ask Google to take down their own takedown requests.

A Takedown-Takedown

google takedowns

Microsoft and others have already sent such takedown-takedown requests. In other words, Google is being asked to remove links to takedown requests, because these link to sites that link to copyrighted material. And even that is not enough.

Because the new takedown notice creates a link to the old notice, copyright holders have to send another request to take the new one down, followed by another… and another. A comical display of meta-censorship which could go on endlessly.

Of course, spamming Google with takedowns is much easier than contacting individual sites but as these companies should know by now, it doesn’t get rid of the infringing content. In the meantime, these same copyright holders are assisting in the creation of the world’s largest database of links to pirated content, courtesy of Google.

Source: Google Builds Largest Database of Links to Pirated Media

The Pirate's Press

Wednesday, 18 July 2012