THE COPYKAT

This CopyKat is the first from our new intern, Mateusz Rachubka

The Author of ‘White Noise’ Video Claims that the Youtube’s Content ID System is Broken

Following the report made on the CopyKat [read here], as well Tibbie McIntyre’s insightful blog post on limitations of the YouTube Content ID system [read here], the story of 10-hour White Noise video published by Sebastian Tomczak continues. In his recent interview Mr Tomczak indicated that the Content ID system used by YouTube “incentivises to make spurious copyright claims”. In brief, the system allows copyright holders to upload their content to YouTube, which is then automatically matched against other content of YouTube videos and where a copyright infringement is detected, it generates automatic copyright claim. Although the author of the White Noise video was released from copyright claims two days following his tweet, he hopes that the cases like his will get YouTube to introduce changes to its automated system and prevent copyright claimants who do not have claims in a given work from diverting the money.

Negotiations over ‘Safe Harbour’ in NAFTA Talks

With North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations being underway the debate is heating up over the ‘Safe Harbour’ provisions. Internet law experts and advocacy groups want to expand the provisions that already exist in the US into Canada and Mexico, which allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to be shielded from copyright infringement liability provided that they promptly remove pirated content following the request of copyright holder. Certain organisations believe that the current balanced copyright system should be preserved and promoted into trade agreements.

On the other hand, 37 content groups being aware of the ‘whack-a-mole’ problem in trying to prevent copyrighted works being illegally posted online argue against ‘Safe Harbour’ measures. In their view, such provisions “fail to adequately protect our industry, disincentivize taking reasonable measures to protect intellectual property, and provide immunity from liability without sufficient safeguards for copyright holders”. Therefore, only passive platforms, which are not “engaged in communicating and do not generate any revenue from pirated content” shall be subject to ‘safe harbour’ protection.

Whether the position of both sides can be reconciled, remains to be seen. At the same time, there are many doubts if the agreement will still be in place, following threats of President Trump to withdraw from NAFTA if there is no substantive progress made.

Irish and Dutch Courts Order ISPs to Block More Copyright Infringing Websites

The music industry, which successfully took action in Ireland in 2013 against The Pirate Bay, in order to prevent pirate sites from freely distributed copyrighted works was recently followed by the film-makers. Last year the movie studios secured a court order to block three websites with infringing content. To the delight of Motion Pictures Association, representing inter alia Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Columbia and Sony Pictures, last week the Commercial Court issued injunction and ordered internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to eight more pirate websites. In the view of the Court these sites were illegally streaming films and TV shows, some of which also provided an extensive library of unauthorised copies of works.

Provisional blocking injunctions were also granted by the Dutch district court of Lelystand, in the Netherlands ordering major ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay within 10 days. The order contains around 200 domains names that access the service and are used by the site. The decision and obligation on ISPs to block the websites will remain in force until the final decision will be given by the Supreme Court, expected later this year.

The Pirate Bay and vKontakte Appear on the Annual US Notorious Markets List

The annual Notorious Markets List prepared by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has come out. The report observes positive developments in the fight against copyright infringing companies and websites, such as successful closure of the ‘biggest stream-reaping’ Youtube-MP3 website.  Although the Office notes that the stream ripping sites may have legitimate uses, majority of operations “contribute overwhelmingly to copyright infringement”.

The USTR list also identifies prominent online websites, on which pirated works are reportedly available. One of such is The Pirate Bay, which despite numerous efforts and enforcement actions across various jurisdictions is still among top 100 most popular sites worldwide, continuously enables users to illegally download copyrighted content. Another worth mentioning website on the list is popular in Russia and neighbouring countries social networking site, vKontakte. VK according to the publication reportedly “facilitates the distribution of copyright-infringing files” and despite taking steps to fight piracy it is still a “hub of infringing activity”.

The Story of Copyright Trolling: On the Rise in Finland, Troubled in the US

Copyright trolls, who often in a dubious and ‘extortion-like’ practices aim to extract money through litigation or settlement from alleged pirates, have been present in the United States for over fifteen years. Recently, it can be observed that the move, starting from 2013, has been increasingly popular in the Scandinavian countries, particularly in Finland. As examined by NGO activist Ritva Puolakka, in the period between 2013 and 2017, the Market Court in Finland, which deals with the matters of Intellectual Property, has ordered internet service providers to release the details of almost 200,000 Finnish internet users. TorrentFreak notes that even though each IP address provided “might not lead to a unique individual, the number is huge when one considers the potential returns if everyone pays up hundreds of euros to make supposed court cases go away”.

Good news from TechDirt is that is seems that copyright trolls are not always as successful in their pursuits against alleged infringers. This has reportedly happened in the US to Venice Pi, which claimed to have rights in the movie called ‘Once Upon a Time in Venice’ and attempted to sue 91-year-old man, who later passed away. With concerns over the quality and validity of the evidence Judge Zilly demanded information about the way in which evidence was collected. However, the details provided have raised even more concerns as to the company filing the lawsuit, evidence collection process or even existence of the key experts. The Judge being suspicious over the trolling activities has order against Venice Pi and required the company provide details in over dozen cases. This may open up the copyright troll to even more troubles.

Sports Fans Coalition to Stream NFL Games For Free

Sports Fans Coalition (SFC), a non-profit advocacy group is planning to use its recently launched Locast service to stream NFL games through local broadcast networks in the New York City, without making a payment for a license. In their view, such service will be legal and in accordance with exception in 17 U.S. Code § 111(5), which allows non-profit organisation to rebroadcast programs provided that there is no commercial motive. Since its launch on 11^th January, as stated by SFC’s founder David Goodfriend “tens of thousands of New Yorkers have taken advantage of Locast”, which is “more than double the number of users we wanted to have after 30 days.” The enthusiasm cannot be however observed on the side of the pitch, namely the reaction of the sports broadcasters. According to the National Association of Broadcasters such service must be illegal and similarly to efforts made by its predecessors (think of Aereo or FilmOn), SFC is unlikely to “survive legal scrutiny”.

Is Formula 1 on the Track of Copyright Dispute Over its New Logo?

 Formula 1 enthusiasts would also be aware that at the end of the last race of 2017 season a new logo was unveiled replacing the iconic logo designed in 1987.  The rebranding however has not received a particularly warm welcome amongst the fans and the drivers (although perhaps not as bad as the reaction to the now dropped new logo for Leeds United Football club in the United Kingdom). It now turns out that the new logo too closely resembles a logo of US-based company 3M, which claims infringement of copyright. The similarity of the branding appears in the slanted letter ‘F’, which is comparable to the one used in 3M’s ‘Futuro’-branded flight compression tights. 3M has not confirmed yet whether it will seek legal action against F1 or whether F1 will aim to pay settlement fee to be able to use the logo on the merchandising. Nevertheless, with potential copyright action, as well as the fact that 3M has filed applications for both US and the EU trademarks, a new F1 logo story may bring a lot of interesting off-track action before the lights go out and the season officially begins in the end of March.  

Cat Celebrity has Won $710,001 in a Copyright Case Against Californian Coffee Company

And finally, we come to an end of this CopyKat with the story of a cat, which became a hero of internet memes, gathered over 6 million likes on Facebook and is estimated to have generated about $100 million in revenue – Grumpy Cat. Grenade Beverage, as part of the license agreement with Grumpy Cat owners, has paid a one-off $150,000 fee for the use of Grumpy Cat’s image on its iced coffee products branded as ‘Grumppucions’. However, the coffee-selling company was sued by the owners of the cat for ‘blatantly infringing’ their copyrights and trademarks by selling other types of coffee and T-shirts with the cat’s image. Following the long-lasting dispute between Grumpy Cat Limited and Grenade Beverage the California federal court awarded the cat’s owner the sum of $710,001 for the copyright and trade mark infringement. In a brief comment, the attorney representing Grumpy Cat Limited stated that “Grumpy Cat feels vindicated and feels the jury reached a just verdict”.

The CopyKat

Video-sharing website Vimeo LLC cannot be held liable for copyright infringement for unknowingly hosting older music uploaded by its users, a U.S. appeals court ruled, dealing a blow to record labels seeking broader protections. In a victory for internet service providers, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York also held that the mere fact that Vimeo employees had viewed videos with copyrighted sound recordings was not enough to prove the company ignored red flags of infringement. The case, pursued by Capitol Records and Sony Corp units, was closely watched in Silicon Valley, with Vimeo's appeal drawing support from Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google, and other companies.

A new letter, signed by a host of recording stars including Lady Gaga, Sir Paul McCartney, Ryan Adams, Cher, Sir Elton John, Fall Out Boy, Yoko Ono Lennon, Bette Midler, Queens Of the Stone Age, Pink, Maroon 5, Mark Ronson, Elton John, Bon Jovi, Rod Stewart, Lionel Richie, Aerosmith's Steve Tyler (pictured) Pusha-T, Sade, Gwen Stefani, Sting and Beck has been sent to Congress asking lawmakers to "please protect" future artists and songwriters by enacting "sensible reform" of DMCA - adding that the current version of the YouTube-shielding ' safe harbor' law "simply doesn't work" and has allowed tech companies to generate “huge profits” while the earnings of artists and songwriters “has plummeted”

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has been ordered by the Helsinki District Court to pay E350,000 ($395,000) to record labels including Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI, after their content was shared illegally via the platform and costs of around $62,000 (55,000 euros) - the payment has to me mad to the local branch of IFPI. Sunde also faces a fine of one million euros if the content continues to be shared via The Pirate Bay but - as he says he is now unconnected to the site - how he is supposed to do anything about that isn’t clear.

A building design firm is suing Lion Enterprises, Inc., Bastian Homes Ltd. and Eugene J. Bastian, citing alleged copyright infringement. Design Basics LLC filed a complaint on in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania against the defendants, alleging that they violated Copyright Act and the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act by publishing, distributing, marketing, and advertising certain architectural designs for residential homes similar to the plaintiff's Plan No. 2316 – Franklin – and Plan No. 6715 – Sycamore. The defendants allegedly violated and continue to violate the plaintiff's exclusive rights in each of the copyrighted works. Design Basics is asking for a jury trial and and injunction prohibiting the defendants from further infringing on its copyrighted works, an order directing the U.S. Marshals Service to impound all copies of the copyrighted works in possession of defendants, and an award for all damages, costs and reasonable attorney’s fees and for such other relief as it may show itself to be entitled.  U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Case number 1:16-cv-00922]

TechDirt reports on two more decisions from the US Courts that confirm "legal threats against alleged infringers, based on nothing more than IP addresses" will not succeed in the courts.  In the first case, New Jersey Judge Kevin McNulty disagreed with Malibu Media's request for default judgment, pointing out that the limited info it was working with could not rule out a successful defense being raised by the accused infringer. In the second case brought against defendant Thomas Gonzales, Oregon Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman said The only facts Plaintiff pleads in support of its allegation that Gonzales is the infringer  is that he is the subscriber of the IP address used to download or distribute the movie, and that he was sent notices of infringing activity to which he did not respond. That is not enough. Plaintiff has not alleged any specific facts tying Gonzales to the infringing conduct. While it is possible that the subscriber is also the person who downloaded the movie, it is also possible that a family member, a resident of the household, or an unknown person engaged in the infringing conduct."

And finally, the Walt Disney Company is taken legal action against three Chinese companies over the animated film “The Autobots” which Disney claims infringes the Disney copyright in the hit animated movie “Cars”. According to Reuters, the three defendants are the production firm Blue MTV, media firm Beijing G-Point and online content platform PPLive Inc. A notice on the Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court website states that Disney are suing for copyright infringement and unfair competition.

The CopyKat

Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda has got herself into a bit of a pickle after a tweet on World Intellectual Property Day saying that she was “trying to read Anne Frank’s Diary” but couldn’t because of the EU copyright term. The Anne Frank Foundation has claimed that despite Anne's death in 1945,  the Diary is still protected under EU law as the co-author of the Diary was Anne's father Otto, who edited the published editions, and he didn't die until 1980. However, putting aside whether or not the book should be in the public domain,  Canadian poet and head of the Writers Union of Canada, John Degen pointed out that Ms Reda could of course read the book (its available on Kindle for as little as $1.99) - its just she did't want to pay to read it - and her 'struggle' somewhat pales into insignificance when compared to Frank's own persecution at the hands of the Nazis. The Register has more here.

YouTube is promising to update its Content ID system - not just to appease the record companies and movie studios who complain about it is remarkably unsophisticated nature - not least as Google are a leading technology company - but also to appease YouTubers who say that their material is sometimes taken down by mistake, and revenues they are due withheld. Following the update to Content ID which YouTube says will take place in "the coming months," YouTube will continue collecting revenue from those disputed videos, holding it 'in a kind of escrow' and releasing it to the eventual winner of any copyright dispute. More CBC.

The High Court in Johannesburg has found that news articles can be protected by copyright law. The Court held that the Copyright Act provided that literary works‚ including news articles‚ are eligible for copyright if they are original finding that Moneyweb had been able to prove that three of its seven articles used in part by defendant Fin24 were original works. However‚ the court found that Moneyweb had failed to show that Media 24’s financial website Fin24 had reproduced substantial parts of two of the articles found to be original works.

The UK government has published its strategy for tackling IP infringement over the next four years. The document reveals some interesting times ahead, including a review of the effectiveness of notice and takedown regimes and the possibility of rightsholders tracking down infringers within them. The strategy Protecting Creativity, Supporting Innovation: IP Enforcement 2020 has six key points, with reducing the level of illegal online content placed at the top of the list and strengthening the law closely after. The government also wants to increase its educational programs with the aim of building respect for intellectual property. TorrentFreak explains all here. Image (c) Ben Challis. Yes, really!

Billboard reports that anti-piracy firm Rightscorp is questioning its own viability after releasing some dismal first-quarter financial results. The company reported an operating loss of $784,180 during the three months ended March 31, a slight improvement from the $930,000 loss a year earlier. But the bad news is that Rightscorp only generated revenues of $68,283, a 78 percent drop from 2015 Q1’s $307,904, and its services accrued only $49,142 due to copyright holders -- a third of the $153,952 gathered during the first three months of 2015.

The CopyKat - keeping bang up to date with the technoKats

Facebook has responded to criticism from top web video creators who have accused the social networking giant for failing to prevent Facebok users  from posting their videos without permission.  Facebook already has a technology partner, Audible Magic, that helps it identify unauthorized video content through audio fingerprinting and Now the company is introducing a video matching technology product designed to quickly identify videos uploaded by people that are duplicates of videos already uploaded directly by the creators. As it stands, the new technology will not be fully automated. Creators will have access to a Web-based dashboard that will allow them to identify videos they’d like to monitor. If the system finds a matching video, the creators then have the option to report the clips to Facebook. More here.

Having recently 'upgraded' to Windows 10 operating system  I can't say that I am that impressed with Microsoft at the moment. The new software is counter intuitive - clunky - and all the bad things that Microsft should probably avoid developing when faced with the growing dominance of all things Apple. What I didn't notice was that Microsoft had recently announced further steps to protect Windows 10. Luckily Ian Dowling at Reddie & Grose did and in a very good article on digital piracy, Ian notes that according to an updated End User License Agreement from Microsoft, "Windows 10 will allow Microsoft to download software updates or configuration changes, including those that prevent access to services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices. Presumably in an attempt to roll out such countermeasures against all users, Microsoft has been offering free upgrades to Windows 10 to all users of Windows 7 or 8.1, including those running non-genuine versions of the operating system, seemingly an attempt to lure copyright infringers into its anti-piracy net." 

The DRM protection on Netflix's ultra-high definition content has been broken for the first time, allowing pirates to upload a 4K episode of Breaking Bad to a private torrent site - a mighty 18GB of high quality piracy. TorrentFreak reports that iON uploaded the episode to a private torrent tracker. It has already been downloaded a few times and is expected to make it to public providers eventually.  Leaked drafts of the 4K copy protection agreement between Sony and Netflix reveals that the streams are generally well-protected. They also include a watermark so that leaks can be traced back to the source.

And so it comes to this: ABS Entertainment, which owns a catalogue of golden oldie recordings, including tracks by Al Green, has filed lawsuits in both California and New York against US radio giants CBS, iHeartMedia and Cumulus, claiming the broadcasters are infringing its copyrights by playing pre-1972 repertoire without licence. The radio firms are expected to argue against any suggestion that they need licences to play pre-1972 sound recordings, with CBS Radio already saying it will "vigorously defend" the lawsuits. You can read more on this whole topic, and the current claims brought by Flo & Eddie of the Turtles , the claims brought by the record labels and much much more on pre-1972 copyright legal shenanigans on CMU here. 

Thanks to a recent contract with Sony Music, Russia's Zvooq has become the country's only fully licensed and independent music service. The platform was already licensed by Warner Music and Universal. Currently, Zvooq uses a freemium model - incorporating both ad-sponsored and subscription tiers -- and is planning to introduce a new subscription model for the market, in which a specific advertising brand will pay for subscriptions of selected users.

And what of those MegaUpload servers - locked away and unused ever since the anti-piracy investigations into Kim Dotcom and his team? Well, the US government doesnt need them and doesn't want them and doesn't want to pay for them .... United States Attorney Dana Boente has now said: "The government has already completed its acquisition of data from the Carpathia servers authorised by the warrant, which the defendants will be entitled to during discovery. As such, there is no basis for the court to order the government to assume possession of the Carpathia servers or reimburse Carpathia for 'allocated costs' related to their continued maintenance". TorrentFreak says that Boente told the court "The United States continues to request that the court deny any effort to impose unprecedented financial or supervisory obligations on the United States related to the Carpathia Servers".

The online system used to register initial copyright claims at the U.S. Library of Congress has failed after scheduled maintainence on August 29th - with no solution to the problems with eCO on the horizon. sight. This means users will have to revert to 'snail mail' and post in paper copies of registration forms for the time being. The eCO website informs users that there is no "estimated time for service resumption." A spokesperson told FCW that the CIO team is "working to restore the system as quickly as possible."

A Canadian firm which had been releasing low cost CDs of public domain recordings by the Beatles, the Beach Boys  and the Rolling Stones, amongst others, is accusing two major record labels of using their clout and their combination of both recording and music copyrights to circumvent provisions of Canadian copyright law that had put some recordings by the Fab Four and others into the public domain. The term of copyright protection for sound recordings for Canada was extended from 50 years to 70 years this year. The extension was not applied retrospectively, so gives the extended term of protection to recordings from 1965 onwards. Now record label Stargrove has filed a 408 page complaint with the Canadian Competition Tribunal claiming market interference by the vertically integrated music giants, Universal and Sony, who have blocked releases of public domain sound recordings: It is alleged their publishing arms (for Sony this is Sony/ATV) instructed the local music collection society Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) to refuse mechanical licences for the compositions included in the recordings. The complaint says the refusal of licences means that rights holders are denying Stargrove mechanical licences on the usual trade terms (contra to Section 75(1) of the Competition Act), and that the moves are a violation of the illegal price maintenance provisions (Section 76 of the Competition Act) designed to keep Stargrove out of the market and maintain market share and higher pricing, and a further violation of Section 77 of the Competition Act. Stargrove has asked the Competition Tribunal to order a stop to the violations and to enter into an agreement on standard trade terms. More here.

And finally - here's a novel way to have a go at those who might, and might not, be illegally streaming or downloading movies. U.S. attorney Carl Crowell has taken the unusual step of using Oregon's"going equipped" state laws against them on behalf of movie company clients - in effect trying to argue that mere possession of Popcorn Time software (a service that has been called the "Netflix for Torrenting") is a criminal act under Oregon state law ORS 164.235 which bars the possession of "burglary tools" and which says that a person commits the crime of possession of a burglary tool or theft device if the person possesses a burglary tool or theft device and the person (a) Intends to use the tool or device to commit or facilitate … a theft by a physical taking; or (b) Knows that another person intends to use the tool or device to commit or facilitate a … theft by a physical taking. In the UK ISPs have been ordered by the High Court to block access to websites hosting Popcorn Time software. More on TechDirt here.

The CopyCat - as Blockbuster sinks, the Pirates set sail again

The games world is up in arms after what appeared to be concerted effort by content owners to target fan generated postings on YouTube, using YouTube's Content ID takedown system. Player-created videos on YouTube have been subject to copyright crackdowns in the past, but gamers say not on this scale - with Nintendo (perhaps unfairly) taking the brunt of the initial blame, with reports of thousands of videos being flagged over the last few days for alleged copyright violations. The videos - which range from YouTubers playing the games or providing commentary, or simply showing a trailer and talking about the game, are often monetized - and some gamers earn a living from recording game videos. YouTube responded to the furore by saying "We recently enabled Content ID scanning on channels identified as affiliates of MCNs. This has resulted in new copyright claims for some users, based on policies set by the relevant content owners. As ever, channel owners can easily dispute Content ID claims if they believe those claims are invalid."

It seems that the major record labels have decided that the new EU wide term extension for sound recordings does not apply to unreleased material - well not with 'use it or lose it' provisions out and about anyway: Rather than full scale releases, some of the labels have decided on limited releases only: A new Sony collection of unreleased Bob Dylan recordings — concerts, radio and television appearances, and studio outtakes, all from 1963 — has just appeared in a limited edition of 100 copies, on six vinyl LPs - “The 50th Anniversary Collection: 1963”. Universal and Apple are being a lot more generous to fans:  Universal plans to release, on iTunes only, “The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963,” a compilation of 59 recordings, among them a handful of studio outtakes; a few dozen BBC performances, drawn from the same well as the recent “On Air” BBC two-CD set; and informal demonstration recordings of two songs the group gave to other artists — Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s acoustic guitar duet version of “Bad to Me” and a Lennon piano demo of “I’m in Love.” Some interesting comment on the labels' thinking can be found on the NY Times website here and on the Independent here.

The Tennessean (fast becoming a favoured read!) reports that pop star Ariana Grande, along with her publishing company and record label, are facing copyright infringement lawsuit related to her hit song “The Way.” The suit claims Grande and producer/writer/co-performer Mac Miller copied from the 1972 disco song “Troglodyte” when they recorded “The Way,” which became a major hit earlier this year and iTunes no 1 single, selling more than 2 million copies. The federal suit from  Minder Music claims Grande and Miller duplicated the vocal beginning to the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “Troglodyte” when they recorded “The Way.” “Troglodyte" begins with Jimmy Castor speaking the phrase, “What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time.”  “The Way” begins with the spoken phrase “What we gotta do right here is go back, back into time.”  The attorney in the claim is Richard Busch of King & Ballow who has previously successfully brought claims against samplers - in particular of George Clinton and Funkadelic and  on behalf of Bridgeport Music.

Pirates Ahoy! Having been registered in Greenland, Iceland and most recently in the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten, it seems the Pirate Bay's domain name set sail yet again, this time to Ascension Island, located somewhere in middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, and hopefully (well for the Pirates at least) well out of the reach of those pesky rights organisations that represent the global sound recording and music publishing industries - and their artists. Oh, but that was not enough - less than a week later - anchors away - they are in Peru! a TPB spokesperson told Torrentfreak: "They should wait for our new PirateBrowser, then domains will be irrelevant. Once that is available then all links and sites will be accessible through a perfectly legal piece of browser software and the rest of it will be P2P, with no central point to attack via the legal system. By their actions [the entertainment industry] finally brought on the next generation of decentralised services".

CMU Daily reports that the  dispute between the Beastie Boys and American toy company GoldieBlox over the latter's use of a rework the former's track 'Girls' in an advert isn't going away, even though the toy maker swapped in an alternative piece of music on the ad and issued a positive statement professing admiration for the band. Whilst the surviving members of the Beastie Boys Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz issued an open letter said they respected GoldieBlox's mission to make toys for young girls that break down gender stereotypes, they added, they had previously made a conscious decision to not license their tracks for use in advertising, so much so that the third Beastie Boy, the late Adam Yauch, stated that desire in his will. 

Those Girls

Before the Beastie Boys' open letter, GoldieBlox had issued a pre-emptive legal strike anticipating the band’s claim seeking court confirmation that, because their version of 'Girls' mocked the sexist lyrics of the original, that constituted parody, and therefore the toy firm was allowed to use the track without permission under the doctrine of “fair use”.  Interestingly it seems GoldieBlox had posted similar adverts online before, including music by Daft Punk and Avicii, presumed to be without the artist or their record label’s or music publisher’s permission. Reports now say that GoldieBlox management added a caveat to an offer to withdraw their legal action asking the Beastie Boys to commit to never launch their own copyright litigation against the company.  It seems the band declined to make such a commitment, and in return asked GoldieBlox to issue a more apologetic statement over its use of 'Girls' without permission, and to make a suitable donation to charity. With little progress having since been made, the Beastie Boys have now filed a countersuit that formally accuses GoldieBlox of copyright infringement as well as unfair competition and misappropriation of publicity rights - more about this from Miri on the IPKat here. 

DVD and games rental firm Blockbuster UK is set to close. Prevously a favoured destination for hungover students set for a day of horror flicks, the entire American Pie series in a day and dodgy romcoms, The chain first went into administration back in January and  initially it seemed like the company might survive but administrators Moorfields Corporate Recovery have confirmed that no buyer could be found, and that the remaining 91 Blockbuster shops in the UK would close this weekend, resulting in 808 further job losses.

American Music Theatre, which as the CopyKat had previously reported is being sued for copyright infringement over the unapproved use of material from The Producers, Billy Elliot, Wicked, Jersey Boys, the Lion King and Disney's Mary Poppins in its "Broadway Now & Forever" production, has filed it's defence saying that it has blanket license agreements with the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc. to perform "all allegedly copyrighted works at issue." The theatre also denies it will be violating copyright when it opens "Music of the Night: The Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber" for a six-month run from April 2014. The Theatre now faces an action, in the Philadelphia federal court, to stop "Broadway Now & Forever" and prevent the upcoming Andrew Lloyd Webber focussed show featuring Cats,Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera from opening. The Pennsylvanian1,600 capacity theatre on Lincoln Highway East has now said it's productions fall under the fair use doctrine saying "… use of the allegedly copyrighted works was transformative in nature, only an insubstantial portion of each alleged work was used in relation to each work as a whole ...". Among it's other defences, American Music Theatre also claims the plaintiffs were misusing their copyrights and are asking a judge to dismiss the case and have the plaintiffs pay it's legal costs. American Music Theatre has until December 20th to address the initial suit by Disney and other plaintiffs. The Theatre has also now said that specifically for the use of Spider-Man copyrights,  the Theatre has a license agreement to use Spider-Man and that  Stan Lee Media Inc. and not Disney or its Marvel division holds the Spider-Man copyright. But that's another battle.

Online piracy, Content ID and the role of intermediaries: is this the right direction?

A few days ago the Wall Street Journal - this serious blogger's favourite and only (well, sort of) publication in her spare time - published an interesting article discussing the presence of illegally uploaded films on YouTube and asking a question which also 1709 Blog readers might have had for some time now: why isn’t YouTube's Content ID used by rights owners as widely as one might expect to identify and block illicit contents from YouTube?

As explained on the relevant page, since 2007 YouTube has made available for free use an advanced set of copyright policies and content management tools to give rights holders control of their content. Content ID allows rights owners to:

·         Identify user-uploaded videos comprised entirely or partially of their content and

·         Choose, in advance, what they want to happen when those videos are found. Make money from them. Get stats on them. Or block them from YouTube altogether.

Rights holders deliver YouTube reference files (audio-only or video) of content that they own, metadata describing that content, and policies on what they want YouTube to do when a match is found. YouTube compares uploaded videos uploaded against those reference files, and applies the requested policy: monetise, track or block content.

According to the latest Content ID statistics,

·         Content ID scans over 100 years of video every day

·         More than 3,000 partners use Content ID, including every major US network broadcaster, movie studio and record label

·         YouTube has more than eight million reference files (over 500,000 hours of material) in its Content ID database; 

·         Over a third of YouTube's total monetised views come from Content ID

·         More than 120 million videos have been claimed by Content ID.

Apparently, however, these numbers are not high enough. According to the Wall Street Journal, illegally uploaded copies of well-known films such as Disney's animated classics (including "Peter Pan," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and "Fantasia") have been available on YouTube to watch for as long as a year.

  

While the conditions under which liability of intermediaries such as YouTube may arise under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have been recently clarified in a landmark decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (on which see Ben's posts here and here), and YouTube has recently implemented a new appeals process to dispute Content ID claims (here), piracy levels remain high on platforms like YouTube.

While video scanning is not effortless,
it has to be graceful

"Hit one, countless others appear. Quickly. And the mallet is heavy and slow" summarises the New York Times.

For example, to get around Content ID, some YouTube users have started placing copyrighted videos inside a still photo of a cat that appears to be watching an old JVC television set. The Content ID algorithm has a difficult time seeing that the video is violating any copyright rules; it just sees a cat watching TV.

Besides this, rights owners have been increasingly involving intermediaries in their fights against online piracy. Just think about the high and growing numbers showed in the Google Transparency Report or the implementation of the so called 6-strikes enforcement plan in the US (here, here, here, here ...). 

But does all this work?

Do you need magic to contrast online piracy?
Perhaps some Fantasia is required first ... 

According to the co-director of Fight for the Future, "There’s a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it’s an inverse relationship ... The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are [were?] the ones that are not legally available online.”

While rights owners are having a tough time in curbing online piracy, and infringers themselves are finding new ways to get around piracy detectors, this blogger ventures to say, not only (and very originally indeed) that "the answer to the machine is in the machine", but also that the most effective way to contrast piracy would be to develop innovative services which allow users to enjoy copyright-protected materials legally, but also easily and at a reasonable price. Is this too banal? Yes, but it seems that not everybody has got it yet …