Section 115a of Australia’s Copyright Act allows copyright holders to apply for injunctions that force ISPs to prevent subscribers from accessing ‘overseas online locations’ that facilitate access to infringing content.

The legislation has been used on a number of occasions since its adoption in 2015 and as a result, dozens of notorious pirate sites are now inaccessible via regular means. However, pirate sites are often quick to adapt, with mirrors, proxies and other sites popping up to reactivate access.

Additionally, search engines – Google in particular – provide a handy reference guide for those looking for these kinds of resources. The entertainment industries are therefore keen to plug this loophole, to ensure that their web-blocking efforts are as effective as possible. That has resulted in the publication today of proposed amendments to copyright law.

The aims of the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2018 are fairly straightforward.

Where existing legislation compels ISPs to prevent access to sites listed in an injunction, the amendments attempt to deal with sites that “have started to provide access to the online location after the injunction is made”, meaning that subsequently appearing mirrors and proxies can be dealt with much more quickly.

Turning to the perceived problems with search engines, the amendments will allow rightsholders to apply for injunctions that will not only target infringing ‘online locations’ but also their appearance in search results.

Companies including Google will be required to “take such steps as the Court considers reasonable so as not to provide a search result that refers users to the online location.” Search providers will also be compelled to deal with the subsequent appearance of mirrors and proxies by ensuring that these don’t appear in search results either.

In a statement published this morning, the Department of Communications offered the following summary.

“The Copyright Amendment Bill will ensure a broader range of overseas websites and file-hosting services widely used for sharing music and movies are within the scope of the scheme, and provide a means for proxy and mirror pirate sites to be blocked quickly,” the statement reads.

“The amendments will also further empower copyright owners to seek Federal Court orders requiring search results for infringing sites.”

That search engines are being targeted in this manner is not a surprise. Entertainment industry groups everywhere believe that Google has become a key part of the piracy problem and rhetoric has at times been scathing, particularly in Australia where Village Roadshow chief and outspoken piracy critic Graham Burke has continually slammed the company.

In a TV interview with Sky News Australia yesterday, Burke said that site-blocking is working to an extent but is being undermined by the actions of Google.

“It’s been very effective because the traffic to the blocked sites is down 53% and that’s extremely gratifying. But it should be down 90% and the reason it’s not down 90% is because Google are saying ‘Hey, the front door’s been shut but hey folks, here’s the back door, we’ll lead you round to the backdoor’. In so doing, actually – in my view – they’re facilitating crime,” Burke said.

The Village Roadshow chief added that Google is helping people to circumvent the legislation of the Australian Government and is making it very easy for people to “break the will of the Australian Parliament and Australian courts.”

“If you Google in ‘Watch Mad Max Fury Road’ up will come a whole raft of pirate sites. [Google are] taking people to the proxies, to the mirror sites, of the pirates and they’re doing it unashamedly,” he said.

“Google have no interest in Australian jobs, Australian culture, and the Australian economy. They make protesting noises but it’s a sham.”

Google already and voluntarily demotes pirate sites in search results based on the number of DMCA notices it receives against them. However, should this legislation be adopted, it will be required to remove references to them completely following an injunction, at least in the Australia-facing parts of its service.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Source link

In an effort to reduce levels of copyright infringement, content companies and distributors have adopted site-blocking as one of their preferred anti-piracy tools.

The practice is now commonplace across Europe, with many of the main torrent and streaming portals blocked by local ISPs.

In Sweden, ‘pirate’ site blocking became a reality in February 2017 when ISP Bredbandsbolaget (Broadband Company) was ordered to block The Pirate Bay and streaming portal Swefilmer.

That process took a long time to come to fruition. The original lawsuit, filed in 2014 by Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film, and the Swedish Film Industry, initially went in the ISP’s favor.

A subsequent appeal, however, saw the rightsholders emerge victorious, with Bredbandsbolaget ordered to implement “technical measures” to prevent its customers from accessing the ‘pirate’ sites through a number of domain names and URLs.

For more than a year, other ISPs in Sweden have been able to provide subscribers with access to The Pirate Bay, since the earlier case was targeted at just one ISP. Now, however, local ISP Telia finds itself in a similar position following an order handed down Monday by the Patent and Market Court.

Following an application by a huge coalition of content companies and groups including the Swedish Film Industry, Nordisk Film, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox, Telia must now block subscriber access to several ‘pirate’ sites.

As is often the case, torrent favorite The Pirate Bay heads the list, with streaming platforms Fmovies, Dreamfilm and NyaFilmer following closely behind.

Cited by IDG, Per Strömbäck of the Film and TV Industry Cooperation Committee said that a favorable decision was anticipated.

“The decision was expected and complies with the current legal situation. Now it’s high time that Telia takes the same responsibility in Sweden as it already does in Denmark and Norway,” Strömbäck said.

While the move to site blocking in Sweden hasn’t always plain sailing, last year’s decision in the Bredbandsbolaget case laid down some valuable pointers.

The Court found that under EU law it is possible for copyright holders to obtain an injunction against ISPs whose services are used to commit copyright infringement, noting that the Swedish Copyright Act should be interpreted “in the light of EU law.”

Before deciding on an injunction, the Court also sought to ensure that any blocking would be proportional. Since sites like The Pirate Bay and similar platforms primarily offer illegally-distributed copyright-protected content, a blocking order is now considered an appropriate response.

The decision handed down Monday is an interim measure valid from October 30. From that date, Telia must prevent its subscribers from accessing the sites listed in the complaint and keep those measures in place until the case is finalized. In the meantime, Telia says it is considering its position.

“We are surprised by the news and we are going to analyze the decision to decide if we will appeal,” says Telia spokesperson Iréne Krohn.

“We believe that legislators and courts should make the assessment. Service providers cannot and do not want to decide what’s available on the internet.”

In a reaction to the news, Jon Karlung, CEO of freedom-loving ISP Bahnhof, criticized the court and its decision.

“It is a specialized court without credibility that represents a special interest,” he said.

“[Blocking] does not work technically and, in principle, you can not build a filter for everything you dislike on the internet. You are destroying the core of the internet, to communicate freely.”

The injunction handed down against Bredbandsbolaget last year was the first of its kind in Sweden. It had a time limit of three years and a penalty of around US$56,000 for any breaches. The details on the Telia case will be revealed in due course.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Source link

Over the past year there has been a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against alleged cheaters or cheat makers.

More than a handful have been filed in the US, but there’s also been some action in Australia recently.

In one case, filed last month, GTA V developer Rockstar Games and its parent company Take-Two Interactive are going after several people believed to be linked to the popular “Infamous” cheat.

This lawsuit is notable because the Federal Court of Australia has signed off on several broad enforcement actions. Not only are the defendants restrained from any cheating related activity, they are also the subject of a search and assets freezing order.

The orders are issued against the person or persons known as Christopher Anderson, Cycus Lesser, Sfinktah, Koroush Anderson, and Koroush Jeddian. Per the court’s order, all are prohibited from cheating and can be imprisoned if they refuse to comply.

Restrained

The associated search order identifies two Melbourne premises. It allows a search party to enter the buildings and search, copy, or remove relevant evidence including any computer, electronic storage device, or documents related to “Infamous.” Any cars that are located at these locations can also be searched.

In addition to the search order, the Federal Court also issued a freezing order preventing the defendants from taking out more money than needed for regular expenses.

“You must not remove from Australia or in any way dispose of, deal with or diminish the value of any of your assets in Australia (Australian assets) up to the unencumbered value of AU$286,609.80 (the Relevant Amount),” the order states.

This freezing order also applies to any cryptocurrency and other digital currency, including the money stored in the PayPal account that’s assigned to “Christopher Anderson.”

It is likely that Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive will try to obtain copyright infringement related damages, and with the freezing order they can make sure that the money isn’t spent beforehand.

The orders in question were initially not disclosed, but that restriction has now been lifted. From the information we have available the searches were carried out late last month. In a follow-up order, the federal court ruled that the freezing and other orders should remain in place for now.

The defendant(s) have yet to file a defense, which is expected later this month. Whatever the outcome, these orders and actions reveal that GTA V’s developer and its parent company are taking cheating rather seriously.

—

An overview of the various orders is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Source link

Over the past decades, the entertainment industries have tried out numerous anti-piracy campaigns.

From “don’t copy that floppy,” “copyright alerts,” to “get it right,” and everything in between, it has been tried.

The problem with these campaigns is that it’s hard to measure the direct effect. This prompted psychology researchers Joanne Ullman and Clayton Silver from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to conduct a controlled experiment.

The results, published in an article titled “Perceived Effectiveness of Potential Music Piracy Warnings” show that some warnings are more effective than others.

The researchers conducted a study where students would see a series of piracy warning labels. These came with one of four icons, depicted below, as well as one of the signal words; NOTICE, IMPORTANT, and STOP. For each of these, five different warning categories were created.

1. Icon + Signal word – No warning
2. Icon + Signal word – “This is illegal”
3. Icon + Signal word – “This is illegal. You may be fined.
4. Icon + Signal word – “This is illegal. You may be monitored.”
5. Icon + Signal word – “This is illegal. You may be monitored and you may be fined.”

4 icons were tested with varying signal words and warnings

The students then had to rate each of these 60 warning messages for perceived effectiveness. These ratings were then analyzed to see if some are believed to work better than others, which was indeed the case.

The computer icon with a download arrow and a slash through it received the highest rating. The one of the right, with the cross and without the computer, was seen as least effective.

“The highest perceived warning effectiveness icon was the computer with the download paired with a slash; whereas, the no computer with the download followed by the cross, had the lowest perceived warning effectiveness,” the researchers write.

As for the signal words, both IMPORTANT and STOP were seen as more effective than NOTICE. This is something senders of infringement ‘notices’ might want to keep in mind.

When it comes to warnings, the combination of “this is illegal” with “you may be monitored and fined” received the highest perceived effectiveness rating. The control group where no warning was shown was the least effective.

These findings suggest that the more explicit warnings work better. Indeed, that’s also the case when the researchers pinpointed the most effective combinations of all, with an example pictured on the right.

The most effective warning includes a computer for context, a download symbol, a slash symbol, the signal words STOP or IMPORTANT, and a message with all consequences (fined and monitored).

It is worth noting that these results are about ‘perceived’ effectiveness. While that’s a decent indicator, it doesn’t say anything about how these warnings would change the behavior of an actual audience of pirates.

This experiment is limited to a small set of warnings, but the researchers believe that developing an effective warning label can help to deter piracy and inform consumers.

The research suggests that explicit warnings are better than vague ones. In addition, we would caution that some campaigns can also go too far. Over the past decade, the “Piracy. It’s a crime” PSA has been mocked and ridiculed for being overly dramatic, without much substance.

Joanne Ullman, lead author of the article, tells us that the “Piracy. It’s a Crime” campaign isn’t particularly informative and therefore not very explicit. Providing explicit information about the risks appears to be most effective.

“This may be of value to some consumers given that we all have varying levels of risk aversion due to personality and/or situational factors,” Ullman says.

“For others, perhaps being reminded of these restrictions would embolden them to take legal and proactive measures to change current policies. The overall aim of this research is to maximize the capacity of people to make sound decisions for themselves.”

Piracy. It’s a Crime

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Source link

Following persistent complaints from copyright holders that Russian Internet giant Yandex has failed to keep ‘pirate’ links to TV shows out of its search results, several major broadcasters filed a lawsuit with the Moscow City Court.

Gazprom-Media outlets including TNT, TV-3, 2×2, and Super asked the Court to have ISPs block Yandex’s video indexing platform. The Court complied and gave Yandex until August 30 to remove all of the offending content.

Yandex responded with a refusal to comply, insisting that the law had been misinterpreted and that search engines are not covered by existing legislation. Content should be removed by the sites hosting it, Yandex claimed.

Soon after, however, Yandex changed direction. Fearing that its entire site would be blocked for non-compliance, Yandex removed links to the content and filed an appeal with the Moscow City Court. The search giant wanted the interim order rejected in respect of the TV shows owned by TV3 but the appeal failed.

A second appeal by Yandex concerning links to the TNT TV show ‘House Arrest’ also failed this week. According to a TASS report, the Court dismissed the company’s request to have the preliminary measures protecting the show lifted.

Late August, Yandex found itself responding to further legal action initiated by the TV channels. The lawsuits required the company to “stop creating technical conditions that ensure the placement of works on the Yandex.ru website” or face fines of 10,000 rubles ($150) for each instance of infringement of House Arrest and several other TV shows.

The Moscow City Court says it will begin hearing these cases next week.

“According to the results of the preliminary hearings, consideration of the claim of TNT-TV Network versus Yandex LLC is scheduled for October 15 at 11:00 Moscow time,” the Court said in a statement.

On the same date, the Court will also hear arguments in the lawsuit filed against Yandex by the TV channels Super, TV3 and 2×2. Each seeks to prevent Yandex from linking to infringing copies of their shows in search results or face fines.

The cases against Yandex have caused an element of confusion in Russia over the limits of current copyright law. In September, Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov said that the country’s anti-piracy legislation needs to be “improved” following the Yandex/Gazprom dispute.

Meanwhile, rightsholders and tech companies have been attempting to thrash out the terms of a memorandum to deal with piracy moving forward. TASS reported Friday that Yandex is prepared to sign first but only if companies including Google, YouTube, and Mail.ru group members vKontakte and others follow.

“We are in favor of an early resolution of the issue and are ready to be the first to sign the memorandum on the condition that the document will enter into force only after it has been signed by other participants,” Yandex said.

The comments follow a meeting this week attended by telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor, Yandex, Mail.ru Group, plus rightsholder representatives Gazprom-Media and the Association of Film and Television Producers. With the parties still a distance apart on the issue of piracy, Mail.ru suggested the adoption of DMCA-like system to counter infringing content.

“The best mechanism for interaction between Internet sites and copyright holders, in our opinion, is the international DMCA format, which regulates copyright with the development of new technologies,” the company said, adding that removing content within 24 hours of a copyright complaint is an accepted standard.

Mail.ru told TASS that while it already adheres to a strict policy when removing pirate content and believes further measures aren’t needed, it remains open to further discussion with rightsholders. Yandex reiterated that all parties need to be on board for an agreement to be reached.

“We oppose piracy and consider it necessary to develop a solution that will be transparent and equally applicable to all key Internet services on the market,” Yandex added in a statement.

“Such an approach should be fixed at the legislative level. Before the relevant law enters into force, the decision can be formalized as an industry memorandum.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Source link