Getting the public to stop downloading movies, TV shows, music, software, and other content from the Internet is a huge task.

For at least two decades, the public has been presented with Public Service Announcements (PSA) aimed at doing just that, but nothing seems to do the trick.

Most readers will be familiar with the “Piracy, It’s a Crime” campaign from 2004. It was so over the top it ended up becoming its own meme (before memes had a name) and was eventually lampooned by the IT Crowd.

With this experience in the bank, one would’ve thought that people producing these PSAs might get the message that scare tactics don’t work. However, year after year similar ads have appeared, most of which had the same non-effect on the public but perhaps with fewer laughs.

Reaching out to people to prevent them doing what many perceive as a victimless crime is difficult. But even when PSAs focus on this very aspect, that creators and the entertainment industry can suffer due to piracy, few get even close to the mark.

These days much effort seems to be centered around convincing pirates that they’ll have their devices reduced to virus-infested junk while “cybercriminals” pillage their networks and empty their bank accounts. These are classic scare tactics that work no better than most sex infection videos pumped out in the 80s.

The problem is that while in some cases people might indeed experience malware, few pirates know anyone who has experienced such a thing to the degrees stated. That means that once there’s no evidence to the claims, people simply ignore the entire message and discard it as pure propaganda.

Another issue centers around the over-dramatization of the effects of piracy. Constant claims that films or music won’t be made anymore is already provably false – one only has to look around at all the legal services today for evidence of that.

Furthermore, the average pirate really doesn’t make the connection between piracy and “real” crime, a point overlooked by this recent PSA from Film Ireland. It manages to pack in plenty of drama while also threatening the end of the movie industry.

While the above may have some effect on casual pirates, the fact that it currently has less than 400 views on YouTube shows, bluntly, that no one cares about this type of PSA. There are zero comments too, which seems to show that it’s not even controversial. Cruelly, perhaps, it’s quite boring.

The problem is that the vast majority of ads and campaigns fail to see the issue of piracy from the user’s perspective. Hardcore pirates are unlikely to be moved to “correct” their ways no matter what they see, but there’s a huge population of casual and potential pirates that, given a bit of thought, might reconsider.

Given these people make up the bulk of the entire media-consuming public, a new anti-piracy PSA produced by content-awareness group Agorateka in conjunction with the EU Intellectual Property Office caught our attention.

Instead of all the scare tactics, they appear to have sat down and actually considered what the average person (who isn’t highly proficient in piracy techniques) might encounter when looking for content to watch online. In fact, it doesn’t mention piracy directly at all and instead focuses on the end goal – getting people to use legal sites.

In summary, the PSA seems to suggest that regular Internet users and casual, non-technical pirates have a choice. They can spend a long time looking around trying to sort the wheat from the chaff, or they can go straight to a legal source and enjoy content immediately.

There’s no malware suggested, no decaying cinemas, no dying actors, and no police raids. Piracy itself doesn’t even get a mention.

Of course, there will be no shortage of people viewing the video noting that it only takes them a few minutes to find whatever they want on their favorite pirate sites, so this doesn’t apply. There’s no arguing with that, but skilled pirates do not make up the bulk of the public.

So what this video attempts to do, it appears, is ask the viewer a simple question – what do you value more? Is time your most precious commodity or are a few euros, dollars or pounds spent online each month an effective trade? For many, especially those with the cash to spare, time can invariably come out on top.

The message may even ring true with some proficient pirates too.

Many reports show that pirates have access to Netflix or similar services, so it seems unlikely that many will head over to the nearest streaming site or legally questionable platform when the legal variant is so much more simple. Kodi add-ons might be the weapon of choice for some ordinarily, but none guarantee a flawless trip.

In short, the PSA won’t be for everyone but it’s definitely not annoying, it’s non-judgmental, and it doesn’t come over as propaganda. It merely suggests that an easy and quick alternative to piracy are legal resources and they can be found via the Agorateka portal.

That’s a great starting point for those who want to prevent people from downloading a car but don’t want to alienate them.

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Last year, a group of prominent record labels filed a piracy lawsuit against the Russian operator of YouTube-ripping sites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.

The labels hoped to shut the sites down, but this effort backfired.

In January, US District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case due to a lack of jurisdiction. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operate and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.

Many copyright cases against foreign operators result in default judgments. However, this lawsuit transformed into a landmark case that will determine when such operators can be sued in the United States.  As such, the record labels swiftly appealed the District Court’s dismissal.

Tofig Kurbanov, the Russian operator of the stream-ripping sites, is not backing off though. With help from his US-based legal team, he maintained that US courts have no jurisdiction over the matter. If the record labels want a legal battle, they should come to Russia instead.

In a reply brief filed at the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit this week, the record labels counter the defense’s arguments. The operator of the stream-ripping sites argued that his contacts with the U.S. were “random, fortuitous, or attenuated,” but the music companies state that the opposite is true.

The labels note that the site operator knows exactly where all users are located. Millions are in the U.S., and together these people ripped close to 100 million streams last year. Many of these ripped streams were of copyrighted content, the music companies argue.

“Appellee knows down to the person the geographic location of the 32 million U.S. users and more than half-a-million Virginian users who visited the Flvto.biz and 2conv.com websites in 2018. Those users engaged in almost one hundred million stream-ripping sessions,” the reply brief reads.

“During a substantial number of those sessions, the websites transmitted illegal copies of appellants’ sound recordings to users’ home computers in the U.S. and Virginia. Indeed, the United States is appellee’s third largest market globally, both by number of users and number of stream-ripping
sessions conducted.”

The United States is the third largest market for the stream ripping websites, the labels argue. Not just that, but it’s also a market that’s specifically targeted with geo-located advertisements.

In his defense, Kurbanov stressed that the advertisements are outsourced to third-party advertising brokers. However, the labels counter that the website owner willingly hired these and that he, therefore, bears responsibility.

“Moreover, appellee earns huge revenues from the advertisements his U.S. users view while conducting their stream-ripping sessions—advertisements specifically targeted to users’ geographic location in the U.S. because of the geotargeting technology that appellee uses. Appellee knows full well this geo-targeting is occurring,” the reply brief reads.

The record labels also point out that the site operator cited various contacts with the U.S. to then argue that, in isolation, these are not sufficient to warrant jurisdiction. However, the rightsholders say that a different picture emerges when all elements are taken together.

Looking at the big picture, a US Court should be allowed to take on this case, the record labels conclude.

The alternative would be to sue the site operator in Russia. This is what the defense has suggested, admitting that this would be somewhat burdensome for the U.S. companies. The record labels, however, believe that would be absurd.

“In short, nothing in the Constitution requires that U.S. copyright holders travel to Rostov-on-Don, Russia to sue for violations of U.S. law that occur in the United States and that generate huge profits for appellee from ads targeted at U.S. users.

“The decision of the district court should be reversed,” the labels add.

It is clear that both sides have a completely different take on the matter and with various rightsholder groups and EFF jumping in as well, the gravity of this case is obvious.

It is now up to the Court of Appeals to weigh the arguments from both sides and come to a conclusion.

—

A copy of the record labels’ reply brief is available here (pdf).

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This week, new legislation was tabled in the U.S. House and Senate that introduces the creation of a “small claims” process for copyright offenses.

The CASE Act, short for “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement,” proposes to establish a copyright claim board within the United States Copyright Office.

If adopted, the new board will provide an option to resolve copyright disputes outside the federal courts, which significantly reduces the associated costs. The proposal follows years of discussions with various stakeholders and has bipartisan support.

The House version of the bill (HR 2426) was introduced by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Doug Collins (R-GA) and an identical Senate version of the CASE Act (S. 1273) was tabled by  Senators John Kennedy (R-LA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI).

The idea behind the legislation is to lower the barrier for smaller copyright holders with limited resources, who usually refrain from going to court. Filing a federal case with proper representation is quite costly, while the outcome is rather uncertain.

The newly proposed copyright claims board is a cheaper option. It will have three judges who can hear cases from all over the country. They can award damages awards of up to $15,000 per infringement, or $30,000 per case.

The introduction of the bill this week has received broad support from various copyright holder groups.  The Copyright Alliance, for example, says that it will empower creators with smaller budgets to protect their rights.

“The CASE Act is a legislative priority for hundreds of thousands of photographers, illustrators, graphic artists, songwriters, and authors, as well as a new generation of creators including bloggers and YouTubers across the country,” Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid said yesterday.

“Today, they have rights but no remedies. The CASE Act will go a long way to restoring their faith in the copyright system.”

The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) is also pleased with the introduction of the CASE Act. Many photographers have to deal with people and companies who use their work without permission. However, filing a court case can be more expensive than the compensation demanded.

Tom Kennedy, executive director of ASMP, stated that the new bill will correct this “historic inequity” in copyright law.

“Under this legislation, these artists will have a viable alternative to the often prohibitively expensive federal court system, and their creative efforts will be appropriately protected so that they are incentivized to continue producing works that change how people see their world,” Kennedy said.

At the same time, there are also concerns. Digital rights groups Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)  warn that the bill could do more harm than good. One of the main concerns is that it may make it easier for copyright trolls to go after alleged file-sharers.

The EFF and various attorneys and other experts shared several of their concerns in a letter sent to lawmakers last week.

One issue highlighted in the letter is that the CASE Act will allow the Copyright Office to issue subpoenas to obtain the identity of an account holder whose connection is believed to have been used to download copyright-infringing material. At the moment, such requests have to be signed off by a federal judge.

The letter further points out that the CASE Act may in fact make it easier for copyright trolls to go after alleged pirates without solid evidence, just when federal courts are starting to limit these types of abuse.

“The federal courts are reining in these abuses by demanding specific and reliable evidence of infringement—more than boilerplate allegations—before issuing subpoenas for the identity of an alleged infringer,” the letter reads.

“Some federal courts have also undertaken reviews of copyright troll plaintiffs’ communications with their targets with an eye to preventing coercion and intimidation. These reforms have reduced the financial incentive for the abusive business model of copyright trolling.

“The CASE Act threatens to derail this progress by creating an alternative forum where these carefully crafted protections will not apply,” the letter adds.

It is worth noting that participation in the small claims board is voluntary and potential defendants can opt-out. However, if they fail to do so, any order against them can still be binding and enforceable through a federal court.

While opting out is an option, less knowledgeable defendants may not be aware of the risks and safeguards of either choice. As such, potential copyright troll targets may see a small claims board as a safer option, while that’s not necessarily the case.

Both the House and the Senate bill have yet to go through the legislative process where the text can still be refined or rejected. Opponents will likely request changes to protect the public from frivolous claims, while rightsholders want to ensure that their interests are protected.

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On March 26, the EU Parliament voted to pass the new Copyright Directive, including the controversial Article 13 (Article 17 in the final text).

The final step took place mid-April, when the Council of Ministers approved the legislation, despite opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden.

YouTube was and remains one of the primary targets of the legislation. Copyright holders, those from the music industry in particular, want to prevent the platform from utilizing content without paying a fair market rate.

Whether that will be the actual real-world outcome remains unclear but in a new post on its Creator Blog, YouTube says that it still has deep reservations surrounding the legislation.

“[W]e are also still very concerned about Article 13 (now renamed Article 17) — a part of the Copyright Directive that recently passed in the E.U,” writes YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

“While we support the rights of copyright holders—YouTube has deals with almost all the music companies and TV broadcasters today—we are concerned about the vague, untested requirements of the new directive.”

While it hardly needs repeating, the tacit requirement for some Internet platforms to install upload filters to prevent infringement in the absence of content licensing deals remains a big concern for many companies. While YouTube already has such systems in place, strict upload filters are a potential threat, Wojcicki suggests.

“[Article 17] could create serious limitations for what YouTube creators can upload. This risks lowering the revenue to traditional media and music companies from YouTube and potentially devastating the many European creators who have built their businesses on YouTube,” the company’s CEO adds.

Although Article 17 has passed on the EU level, member states will still have to write its provisions into local law, a process that’s likely to prove both complex and controversial. Wojcicki would like to see YouTube supporters, many of whom are Article 17 opponents, continue the fight, to ensure the best possible outcome.

“While the Directive has passed, there is still time to affect the final implementation to avoid some of the worst unintended consequences. Each E.U. member state now has two years to introduce national laws that are in line with the new rules, which means that the powerful collective voice of creators can still make a major impact,” she writes.

“We must continue to stand up and speak out for open creativity. Your actions have already led to the most popular Change.org petition in history and encouraged people to reach across borders. This is not the end of our movement but only the beginning.”

Finally, Wojcicki says that the company has been listening to key YouTube content creators who have expressed frustration over what they feel is an abuse of the copyright claims process on the platform.

Some users are receiving copyright claims following the use of small excerpts of copyrighted content lasting ten seconds or shorter, sometimes in an inadvertent context. It appears that the platform may be prepared to tackle this issue in the future.

“We also heard firsthand that our Manual Claiming system was increasingly being used to claim very short (in some cases one second) content or incidental content like when a creator walks past a store playing a few seconds of music,” Wojcicki notes.

“We were already looking into this issue but hearing this directly from creators was vital. We are exploring improvements in striking the right balance between copyright owners and creators.”

These types of claims, that are often filed without considering fair use implications, are decried by creators as a major irritant when attempting to review and critique third-party content, or film in public places. How YouTube will tackle this problem remains unclear but addressing it effectively could be a real boost to those who use copyrighted content within the confines of the law.

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