Movie Studios Next to Sue Pirate Bay in Latest Act of Futility

A few months ago, one of the larger and better known sites to index torrent files, the Pirate Bay, was successfully sued by a group of music industry types for all sorts of copyright violations resulting in large fines and possible prison sentences.

Of course, this has done nothing to curb music piracy since the Pirate Bay is only one of literally hundreds of sites providing the EXACT SAME links to potentially infringing torrent-files.  In addition to, oh, I dunno, Google and Bing, some of these sites include Mininova, SumoTorrents, Demonoid, Thunderbytes, IsoHunt and, no kidding, hundreds more.

Now comes word that the movie studios are going after the Pirate Bay:

Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Universal Studios (NYSE:GE) and 10 others are demanding the site’s operators be fined and prevented from distributing TV-series including “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” and films such as “Batman.”     LINK

Now, a huge percentage of TV piracy is due to FANS of the show living in regions that do not broadcast current episodes.  This piracy is not an act of protest against the show but a major show of love, of a willingness to do whatever it takes to get the latest episode.  You’d think studios would want to figure out how to meet the needs of these super-fans instead of trying to hinder them but that would be far too forward-thinking for this dying Industrial Age model of doing business.

While one might argue that suing the Pirate Bay sends a message to other sites, this same thinking has done nothing to slow the rate of music piracy and force a natural evolution of the industry.  Film and TV is next, whether they like it or not.  In the meantime, they are going to waste millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours trying to shut down the Pirate Bay, after which nothing will have changed but their bank balance.

Girl Talk Deconstructed Makes Strong Case as Original Work

Wired has created a really cool graphic that deconstructs all of the tracks sampled in a single song created by “mash-up” artist extrordinaire Girl Talk.

If the old-world gang of the RIAA et. al. would like you to believe that this combination of samples is, in fact, a copyright infringement of every single artist sampled and that Girl Talk should be stopped, sued and probably drawn and quartered.

If one can’t see how this re-use of existing materials hasn’t resulted in a wholly new piece of art then all art will have to be classified as theft.  I mean, if I use the 2×4 I got at Home Depot to build a stool, should I pay a royalty to Home Depot in addition to the original cost of the wood I rightfully purchased?

MPAA Wonders Why Public Views Them (and RIAA) So Poorly

There is a devestating post in response to comments made by Fritz Attaway, executive vice president and senior policy adviser for the MPAA at the World Copyright Summit, who said:

”The enemies of copyright have really done a good job at creating the false premise that the interest of copyright holders and the interest of society as a whole are antagonistic, and they always talk about the need for balance.”   LINK

ZeroPaid’s Drew Wilson asks, “Gee, why would the public view them as antogonistic?” He then answers with a few possibilities:

…destroying Napster and Audio Galaxy and not creating an alternative for the get-go, raiding people’s homes because they uploaded Star Wars (not necessarily leaking it in the first place), hacking the URN hash and polluting FastTrack, hacking The Pirate Bay, having Viacom serve DMCA notices to people posting video’s of people eating in a restaurant on YouTube, suing tens of thousands of average American’s including fining one individual $222,000 for sharing a couple songs, saying that files in a shared directory is copyright infringement in court, saying that evidence is too hard to get and that the industry shouldn’t be burdened to prove their cases in court, suggesting that iPods are little more than little pirate ships…

And that’s just  a taste of the entire post.  When people of the future look back at how the massive entertainment industries of the late-20th Century crumbled, this post would be a good starting point.

Music Industry “Caves” to Chinese Pirates

The New York Times has an interesting article about a plan from Google and the Major Record Labels to distribute their music for free in China and make their money solely through advertising.

Why would the labels just cave in like that in China while their still dragging American’s into court for downloading a pirated Jay-Z track?  This pretty much sums it up:

According to the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, which represents the global record makers, 99 percent of the music downloaded in China violates copyrights.

Lawsuits by major music labels and promises by the Chinese government to crack down on Internet piracy have failed to deter the practices.

Gee, this sounds oddly prophetic when you think about the state of the music industry in the US and Europe.  So, this revelation that you can’t sell songs for a profit and need a new business model that offers the music for free must be a sign of what’s to come here, right?  Well, not according to the industry execs:

…they say the China deal is not a model for the rest of the world. They say different regions call for different approaches — some that charge for downloads, some that stream music for a single subscription price and some that are supported by advertising.In China, they decided an advertising-supported model was best.

Exactly what makes these execs think that they can quarantine segments of the internet from region to region?  Yet more pie-in-the-sky dreaming or total misunderstanding of how the internet works?

It is difficult to see how this decision in China will not basically force the music industry’s hand worldwide.  The truth is, they’ve been losing on all fronts simply because they refuse to let go of a dead business model.

LINK

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PirateBay On Facebook Forces the Issue

Like so many other sites have done, The Pirate Bay is no providing on-click links that allow its users to post directly to their Facebook streams.

As Mashable puts it:

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 150 to 200 million people signed up already. It’s one of the best ways to share links, blog posts, and content. Many websites, including our own, have links for easily sharing content to Facebook. So it makes sense as to why The Pirate Bay would want to encourage people to share torrent links on Facebook. But because many of these files are illegal to download, it also makes sense that copyright infringement organizations are not very happy.

Since Facebook is likely to want to avoid major legal action by the friends folks at the RIAA and MPAA it seems almost definite that Facebook will move to block this feature.

The question is, do they have any real legal reason to do this and are they really helping anyone by blocking their users from posting the links?  For one thing, The Pirate Bay does not actual store or transmit any copyrighted content, they simply provide links to other places that do.  This is, in effect, no different than what Google does, just that The Pirate Bay (and hundreds of other torrent-tracker sites out there) specializes in searching only for torrent links.

While the MPAA et. al. might not like that links to freely available copies of their copyrighted content are being made all-the-more public on Facebook via The Pirate Bay feature, neither of these parties are the reason that piracy exists or that it flourishes in the face of broken business models that treat fans as criminals.

We’ll have to see if Facebook does, in fact, act against The Pirate Bay but you can be certain they’re being asked to do it.

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RIAA’s Battle Against Pirates HURTS Music Sales

It seems that a day doesn’t go by that more evidence emerges that RIAA’s battle against music piracy is both ineffective and ill-advised.

Today’s bit of news is the sort of data that just leaves me scratching my head.  According to a new study conducted by Angus Reid Strategies on Canadian music habits:

While the survey found that downloading still exceeds paid downloads, those downloading were also more likely to buy a CD (41 percent to 34 percent for non-downloaders) and more likely to have attended a concert in the past year (65 percent to 52 percent for non-downloaders).

That’s right.  The very same people RIAA wants fined and potentially jailed are their industry’s best customers!

Honestly, it makes my head hurt to think about how completely misguided RIAA and the music industry have become.

(via)

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These Are the Pirates in Your Neighborhood

Perhaps partially in response the ongoing court case against P2P site piratebay.org, a new site has been created to make the point that this so-called crime of piracy is something you or someone you know (or both) is probably guilty of…

That’s the point that an interesting campaign, created and paid for by the Norwegian political party Rødt (Red), is trying to make: while the owners of The Pirate Bay are being tried for copyright infringement, it’s the millions of users of the site that are actually sharing files.

Thus, they’ve started a site called Filesharer.org, where you can upload a mugshot of yourself, to show the world that you’re also sharing files and that you’re, well, just another regular person amongst millions that are doing it. (via)

Of course, this sort of argument isn’t all that different from those hoping to legalize marajuana – everyone’s doing it so how can it be a crime?  Still, it’s pretty clear that it has become a huge waste of time and money to seek out and prosecute individuals who have downloaded an episode of “The Simpsons” or the latest Madonna album.  Instead both governments and industries need to accept that these goods are no longer scarce and thus the business models and laws surrounding them must be ammended.

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NBC Living in Pirate-Free Dream World

I just don’t even know what to say about these comments (via):

NBC Universal general counsel Rick Cotton says that the threat of Internet video piracy and illegal video sharing is now “under control,” thanks to enforcement action and new technology for tracking copyrighted material.

“We’ve gone from a situation in video sharing where it was totally out of control to where, from a rights perspective, it’s under control,” said Cotton. He attributed the gains to the threat of enforcement action as well as the cooperation of video sites like YouTube Inc. , which have installed copyrighted content recognition software.

In what way does he feel that things are “under control”?  “Heroes” is illegally pirated over 5 MILLION times per episode. Don’t want the hassle of waiting for a bittorrent to download, try any one of the endless sites streaming the show without any official clearance (yes, surfthechannel.com I am looking you…and you megavideo.com… and you ovguide.com…).

The idea that stopping YouTube from hosting clips is somehow stopping pirating is just silly.  The only way NBC, or any other major media player, will stop piracy is to find a way to offer their content in a manner that rivals the ease and affordibilty of pirated fare.

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NH Woman Fights RIAA

Someday we will look back on the actions of RIAA and the rest of the music industry and laugh, or maybe cry.  For now, however, we will have to continue hearing stories like this:

The woman, Mavis Roy of Hudson, has called on legal clinics at the state’s only law school to represent her as she fights the charges in federal court this year.

The lawsuit brought by UMG Recordings, Interscope Records, Motown Record Co., and BMG Music alleges that Roy violated copyright infringement laws by downloading and distributing 218 audio files on April 24, 2007.

Roy’s defense team questions how that could be when she did not have a computer in her house at the time in question.

Why RIAA is allowed to behave in this manner is confounding.  Nearly every suit they bring reeks of intimidation and weak evidence.  Not only that, but going after grown women for allegedly downloads a few songs from a pirated source is simply not going to help save an industry that is built on a collection of obsolete business models.

(via)

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Will Machinima Videos Be the Next Victims of Copyright Takedowns?

If you aren’t familiar with Machinima, it’s basically when people use the graphics of games like Halo combined with voice-overs and sound-effects to create original videos.

One of the best examples of the form is the legendary Red Vs. Blue series:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BAM9fgV-ts&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

There are literally millions of other examples and tons of software to help you make your own.  For the time being it seems like various videogame companies are taking different approaches but I am curious to see where the lines will be drawn.

Take a look at this post from Tilzy about another Halo-based series.  Not only is the filmmaker using the game footage but he is also using “authorized” action figures.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyjLnvI4yE0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Halo is made by Microsoft and I can’t imagine they are real lax when it comes to copyright infringement and one can argue that some of these unauthorized third parties are making some amount of money, however small, by making these videos.

At the same time, even if they were making millions of dollars from this sort of work, would they owe some of it to Microsoft?  Have they re-imagined and re-purposed the original material in such a way as to make it a new, wholly original work? Not to mention how it acts as free publicity for Microsoft – but publicity with a message Microsoft doesn’t control.

Big questions to be explored.  Stay tuned.