The music and movie industries have been making a concerted attempt to introduce a "three strikes" rule for Net users in many countries simultaneously — pressuring ISPs to throw their customers offline, possibly permanently, if the rightsholders report that they have been infringing.
The response by national ISPs and governments has varied:
in the same week as Japanese ISPs declared they would voluntarily follow such a scheme, Sweden's Ministers for Justice and Culture came out strongly against shutting down subscribers in their country.
The furthest ahead in its plans is France. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
(IFPI) lobbied for France's "Olivennes Report," an agreement brokered last year between the ISPs, rightsholders and the French government to enforce such a system. Denis Olivennes, the author of the report, is also the director of FNAC, France's largest record shop chain.
The Swedish government, in rejecting "three strikes", noted that shutting down an Internet subscription was "a wide-reaching measure that could have serious repercussions in society". That's the kind of wider policy consideration that France and Japan needs to consider. This is more than a fight between the entertainment and broadband industries:
This is about infrastructure, and citizen's gel viagra access and freedoms online. But right now, some countries seem to be falling over themselves to discover its disadvantages — without any true investigation into what will happen to their citizens or their networks if they do.
For this complete post by EFF International Outreach Coordinator Danny O'Brien:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/three-strikes-three-countries
Phoenix File-Sharing Suit Based on Bogus "Making Available"
Argument
Phoenix, AZ – On Wednesday, EFF urged a federal judge in Phoenix to block the recording industry's effort to sue two Arizona residents for simply having music files in a "shared" folder on their computer.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is seeking thousands of dollars in damages from the defendants in the case, Pamela cheap viagra online without prescription and Jeffery Howell, for alleged unauthorized distribution of copyrighted digital music.
However, instead of proving that the Howells actually distributed music files, the RIAA claims only that they had songs in the "shared" folder of peer-to-peer file-sharing software Kazaa — without any proof that anyone other than their own investigators actually downloaded the songs from them.
EFF's Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann argued at Wednesday's hearing that the RIAA cannot take this shortcut in its lawsuit campaign.
"This amounts to suing someone for attempted copyright infringement — something the Copyright Act simply does not allow," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann.
"If the RIAA wants to keep bringing these suits and collecting big settlements, then they have to follow the law and prove their case. It's not enough to say the law could have been broken. The RIAA must prove it actually was broken."
For more about the case:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/eff-files-brief-atlantic-v-howell-resisting-riaas-attempted-distribution-theory
For EFF's amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/atlantic_v_howel/EFF_amicus_atlantic_howell.pdf
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/03/03
By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: February 29, 2008, 7:23 PM EST
Despite collecting millions in P2P related settlements from the likes of Napster ($270 million), Bolt ($30 million), Kazaa ($130 million), and other companies, those who are supposed to benefit from it – the artists whose rights had been allegedly infringed – are apparently not being compensated with the proceeds from the lawsuits.
Now, according this article, the managers of some major artists are starting to get very impatient to the point of threatening to file lawsuits against the RIAA if they don’t get paid soon. Of course, comments from the labels all claim that the money is on its way, and that it is simply taking longer due to difficulties calculating how to split the canada pharmacy viagra money with regard to the level of copyright infringement for each artist.
Not only that, but sources claim there may not even be much left to pay out after the outrageous legal fees are taken care of. If that’s the case, why sue in the first place then? Clearly this is just RIAA’s way of protecting an aging business model rather than finding a way to embrace the technologies that will eventually prove essential to the industry’s survival.
The recording industry's litigation campaign against individual file-sharers suffered a setback earlier this month when a federal judge ruled in Atlantic v. Brennan that the boilerplate complaint used by the recording industry in these cases would not support a default judgment.
Default judgments may be entered against defendants who never respond to a lawsuit, but only if the complaint lives up to certain minimum standards. In ruling that the recording industry's complaint fell short of this mark, the judge specifically rejected the recording industry's "making available" arguments, thereby endorsing the argument that EFF recently made in Atlantic v. Howell.
It remains to be seen whether the recording industry has the particularized evidence necessary to back up their boilerplate complaints. But this ruling suggests that courts are not prepared to simply award default judgments worth tens of thousands of dollars against individuals based on a piece of paper backed by no evidence.
For Ars Technica's summary of the legal standards involved in the ruling:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-riaa-fails-again-to-get-default-judgment-in-uncontested-case.html
For the judge's ruling on the RIAA's motion for default
judgment:
http://www.eff.org/files/atlantic_brennan_080213OrderDenyDefaultJudgment.pdf
For can women take viagra this complete post by EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/riaa-file-sharing-complaint-fails-support-default-judgment
February 11th, 2008
File Sharing issue overview, blog postsPosted by Richard Esguerra
The House passed the College Opportunity and Affordability Act (COAA) last week, leaving the troubling "Campus Digital Theft Prevention" requirements intact despite recent revelations that fears over unauthorized campus-based filesharing were drastically overblown by the motion picture industry.
The provision requires universities to combat unauthorized file sharing in two particular ways: by planning to engage entertainment industry-blessed downloading services and planning to use filters or other network tools to interdict infringing activity. It's unfortunate that a bill about college funding is being used as a vehicle for the entertainment industry, which has been making a concerted effort to target the youth and the higher education community with corny videos, invasive technology, and bad law.
The passage of this provision is particularly shocking in light of the recent revelation that the 2005 study that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) relied upon in lobbying Congress was tainted by a "human error." The secret, not-peer-reviewed MPAA study, which originally accused college students of being responsible for 44% of domestic revenue losses due to unauthorized downloading, was corrected to say that only college students were responsible for only 15%. And because only 20% of college students live on campus, then campus networks themselves are responsible for only a fraction of piracy-related losses. More importantly however, the MPAA is still hiding the study's methodology from the public — they state only that "the MPAA will retain a third party to validate LEK's updated numbers."
What's next? The House and the Senate must meet "in conference" to reconcile differences in their respective versions of the same college funding bill, and the Senate's version of the COAA does not contain the mandate for exploring alternative downloading services and network filters. There's still a chance that members of Congress involved in the conference process will see through the smoke and mirrors to stand up for students and universities in rejecting this unnecessary and dangerous mandate.
As we've said before, there are more sensible ways to get creators compensated while respecting buy viagra without prescription the privacy of students and faculty on university campuses.
