Common Paradox Tech Blog

Good luck sorting this one out, short-sighted lawmakers. An upcoming piece of major legislation in the UK, called the Digital Economy Bill, would essentially force all public wi-fi points offline by requiring impossibly high levels of copyright protection by libraries and small businesses. The bill, which bears some similarity to the controversial DMCA here in the US, is ostensibly aimed at providing copyright holders the means of controlling their content online.

But while an ISP may detect a violation by one of its subscribers and send a nastygram to the appropriate party, it’s difficult to do that when your “subscriber” is a pub or café that offers free wi-fi to customers. If someone buys a cup of coffee, downloads a few songs, and then leaves and never returns, who is at fault? According to the Digital Economy Bill, the café.

The FCC has formally issued their draft net neutrality rules, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is calling foul. The document contains language covering so-called “reasonable network management”. According to the EFF, this creates a loophole that would allow ISPs to block BitTorrent.

The net neutrality debate really took off when in 2007, Comcast began blocking BitTorrent connections. Eventually the FCC forced them to stop, but Comcast is still appealing the decision. This copyright loophole in the draft could be used by content producers to encourage ISPs to enforce copyright law. In fact, the EFF claims the exact behavior that got Comcast in hot water, and kicked off the debate could be perfectly acceptable under the proposed regulations.

It may not be feasible for the FCC to be intimately involved in every aspect of an ISP’s network management. What’s the solution? Can they just require protocol agnostic management?

You didn’t really expect the RIAA to roll over and accept the latest verdict in the Jammie Thomas trial, did you? There’s too much at stake for that to happen. To quickly recap, the Minnesota mother who opted not to settle with the RIAA for $5,000 over copyright infringement allegations ended up being hammered in court to the tune $222,000, an award that was later increased to $1.9 million following a retrial last June.

The shocking turn of events came last Friday when District Court judge Michael Davis reduced the award by 97 percent, dropping the "monstrous and shocking" damages to $54,000. Davis then gave the RIAA seven days to challenge his ruling and schedule a trial on the damages.

Since then, there’s been yet another twist in a case which has already had more twists and turns than a Six Flags theme park. While $54,000 is a far cry from $1.9 million, Thomas’ lawyers have challenged the constitutionality of not just the current ruling, but the minimum amount of statutory damages. That’s what we call a game changer, and as CNet words it, one that puts the RIAA in a pickle.

"This means that the RIAA cannot avoid the constitutional issue, even if (it accepts the latest ruling on the reduced damages)," said Kiwi Camara, one of Thomas’ attorneys.

But even if Thomas’ side doesn’t challenge the ruling, the RIAA almost has to, lest the organization let a legal precedent remain that could impact any future copyright claims.

"There’s some interesting language in (Davis’ decision)," said Denise Howell, a Silicon Valley-based attorney. "The constitutional nature of statutory damages comes up over and over again. If you’re in any kind of copyright case, and you’ve gotten a very high damage award entered against you, you’re going to want to bring this up and use Judge Davis’ reasoning. I know a few folks in other copyright cases that have nothing to do with P2P file sharing but think this is quite an interesting development."

So do we, and like everyone else, we’ll have to wait to see how it unfolds.

Minnesota resident Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, was thrust into the public eye in 2006, when the music industry chose her for the most unenviable role imaginable: the poster girl of the brand of digital piracy that the average Joe practices from the comforts of his home. Several record companies sued her for copyright infringement  on April 19, 2006.

Though the court originally ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay a fine of $220,000 after finding her guilty, the fine was raised to a vertiginous $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song, at a retrial. She was now left with a three-pronged hope: a court will scrap the fine or at least lower it; or a bankruptcy court will pave the way for her escape; or she will land a major book deal.

But she can now heave a sigh of relief as a U.S. District court has lowered the fine to relatively manageable levels. Michael Davis, chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, lowered the fine to $54,000. "The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music," the Judge remarked in his verdict.

The decision leaves the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with seven days to either accept the fresh fine or request a retrial. Joe Sibley, one of the defendant’s attorneys, told Cnet that the judge had made “it much more equitable and this was much closer to the $0 award that we were seeking."

Cnet’s Greg Sandoval has learnt from his sources that RIAA is not too keen on taking this any further as it only wanted to use the case as a deterrent. Sandoval also reminds everyone that Thomas-Rasset’s  refusal to settle with RIAA left it with no choice but to drag her to court.

Jammie in Grimmer Times

Image Credit: Wired

Maybe Verizon spokesperson Bobbi Henson thought she was being reassuring, but her recent statement to CNET actually reads like more of a veiled threat. When asked about Verizon’s ongoing handling of illegal file sharing Henson said, “We’ve cut some people off. We do reserve the right to discontinue service. But we don’t throttle bandwidth like Comcast was doing. Verizon does not have bandwidth caps.” Well, as long as they’re not throttling, right?

Verizon seems to have confirmed that multiple warnings for illegal file sharing could result in suspension of service. This policy is very similar to the one heavily favored by the recording industry. The RIAA originally announced their intention to work with ISPs in late 2008. The partnerships seemed not to have materialized, but this may be proof that Verizon has quietly fallen in line with the RIAA.

According to Verizon, the system works much as you’d expect. Content owners troll the p2p networks capturing IP addresses. They forward those along, and Verizon sends out infringement letters. No information was given to indicate how many infringement notices a customer will receive before being cut off. They did not give any information about what a customer can do if they feel they received a notice in error. Verizon claimed repeat offenses were rare, but are they just creating craftier, harder to catch file sharers?

This will sound all too familiar to anyone who followed the Jammie Thomas saga, but once again, a convicted file sharer’s legal team feels the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

The comments stem from the nation’s second file sharing defendant to take the RIAA to court. By doing so, Joel Tenenbaum was ultimately fined $22,500 per song for a total of $675,000 in damages for infringing 30 songs.

"Given that fact that Tenenbaum was one of many millions of people sharing music and that the plaintiffs have failed to show any actual damages from Tenenbaum’s particular actions, this award is obviously ’so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportionate to the offense and obviously unreasonable,’" wrote Charles Nesson, Tenenbaum’s attorney.

The problem for Tenenbaum and Nesson is that they’re clearly facing an uphill battle. Jammie Thomas, the first defendant to challenge the RIAA in court, also received a stiff penalty, only to have it increased to a whopping $1.92 million in appeals.

Everyone’s favorite fake conservative Stephen Colbert was apparently questioned by Google lawyers at a recent deposition relating the ongoing Viacom-Youtube case. At issue is Viacom’s assertion that Youtube willfully allowed copyrighted content to be uploaded illegally. The case has been ongoing for almost three years, but may actually go before a judge this year.

Google’s angle is to show that Viacom employees themselves uploaded some of the content. If they can prove this, Google argues that no line can be drawn between illegal content, and that which had Viacom’s permission.  Colbert told a crowd at Chicago’s Second City that he was confused if he was supposed to be answering questions as himself, or his TV alter ego. "I had a coffee cup, and I would move it from side to side to differentiate who I was answering for. It was insane," said Colbert. If only the recording of that interview were to find its way onto Youtube; both irony and hilarity would ensue.

Southpark creators Stone and Parker were not forced to answer any questions, presumable because the lawyers were all laughed out after talking to Colbert. They were, however, supposed to provide various documents. They have yet to comply.

Designers spend hours perfecting websites, whether their own or their clients’. When you’ve invested anywhere from a few days to months in a website, the last thing you want is for someone else to steal the design without even giving you proper credit (or compensation). And if you’re a template or theme designer, it’s an even bigger problem. After all, if your templates are available online for free, a lot of people won’t bother paying for them.

So what can you do if you’ve discovered that one of your designs has been ripped off? What should you do? Read on for a complete guide to steps you can take to protect your intellectual property.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to be one on TV, so the advice here should not be taken as legal advice. Before taking any of the actions mentioned below, check with a lawyer or other legal expert to see what is allowable in your state or country or to see if additional options are available to you.

You can rest soundly tonight knowing that the villain responsible for uploading the Wolverine movie a month before its theatrical release will probably serve time behind bars. That is, if the FBI has grabbed the right man.

The FBI early this morning arrested Gilberto Sanchez, 47, in Bronx, N.Y., and believe he’s the cold hearted criminal who leaked the 20th Century Fox feature film to the Internet in April. By the time the flick made it to the silver screen a month later, it had already been watched about 4.1 million times, says BigChampagne, a market research firm for file-sharing networks.

According to the indictment, Sanchez uploaded the film to Megaupload.com under one of his online aliases, which include "theSkilled1" and "SkillyGilly." But what the indictment doesn’t say is how Sanchez managed to get his hands on a working copy of the flim, even though the copy that was leaked was missing a bunch of computer-generated special effects.

It’s unclear how much jail time and fines Sanchez would face if convicted, but according to CNet, a New Jersey man who pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges for uploading the film "Hulk" a few weeks before its big screen debut was sentenced to six months house arrest and slapped with a $7,000 fine.

langelgjm sends in a piece from Wired, which details the background of a proposed treaty to allow cross-border sharing of books for the blind — a treaty which is opposed by an almost unified front of business interests in the US, with the exception of Google. “A broad swath of American enterprise ranging from major software makers to motion picture and music companies are joining forces to oppose a new international treaty that would make books more accessible to the blind. With the exception of Google, almost every major industry player has expressed disapproval of the treaty, which would allow cross-border sharing of digitized books accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Google’s chief copyright counsel believes the industry-wide opposition is mainly due to ‘opposition to a larger agenda of limitations and exceptions… We believe this is an unproductive approach to solving what is a discrete, long-standing problem that affects a group that needs and deserves the protections of the international community.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.