U.S. companies help piracy websites evade the law
U.S. based companies assist pirate websites by providing cover for their illegal piracy business while pocketing their own dirty money in the process.
Read MoreU.S. based companies assist pirate websites by providing cover for their illegal piracy business while pocketing their own dirty money in the process.
Read MoreU.S. based companies assist these efforts by literally providing cover for their illegal piracy business while pocketing their own dirty money in the process.
Read MoreThere was a lot of talk about fair use and takedown abuse at last week’s the U.S. Copyright Office’s Section 512 roundtables in San Francisco. Many of those who spoke, bemoaned how poor, innocent uploaders were victimized, time after time, by malicious DMCA takedowns.
It’s a tried and true talking point, convenient, but disingenuous all the same. Some of us, myself included, tried to make the point that creators, whose work is routinely (and massively stolen), are often (doubly) victimized by malicious fair use claims.
I thought I’d share an example of this that occurred just this week on YouTube. On Tuesday a full-copy of the Swedish indie film “Kyss Mig” (all 147 minutes of it) was uploaded to YouTube by a user aptly named “Free Movies.” As an added flourish, the user-name included the notation, “free movies bitches.”
The threat of malware could turn people away from piracy Last week the Digital Citizens Alliance...
Read MoreThe movie industry makes record profits so piracy doesn’t matter after all.…that’s the gist of many headlines following MPAA Chief Chris Dodd’s recent speech at Cinemacon’s Las Vegas convention last week where he said, “the state of our industry has never been stronger.” We’ve seen this phenomenon before. Positive news about record global box office revenue is twisted into justification for the pro-piracy mantra that piracy doesn’t hurt filmmakers.
Read MoreLast fall Google introduced a series of steps to strengthen its Safe Browsing initiative announcing it would include protection against, “social engineering attacks – deceptive tactics that try to trick you into doing something dangerous, like installing unwanted software or revealing your personal information (for example, passwords, phone numbers, or credit cards).
Sounds like a positive step against online piracy since malware and deceptive advertising is online piracy’s bread and butter right? WRONG…
I’ve written about Google’s laborious and time-consuming DMCA takedown maze, a process that forces creators to find, then fill out cumbersome online forms. I’ve also written about the fact that Google makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find the email address for its DMCA Agent–in apparent violation of the law’s requirements.
Read MorePoor Google….bad, bad copyright holders….that’s essentially the subtext beneath headlines that scream, “Google received over 75 million copyright takedown requests in February-The company is processing over 100,000 links each and every hour.” My response–why not try a different approach?
Read MoreEvery week it seems there’s a new headline bemoaning content that has been mistakenly removed from YouTube due to bogus copyright claims. This so-called “takedown abuse” makes for good headlines, but per usual, there’s much more to the story of what happens behind-the-scenes on YouTube with various types of claims on copyrighted content.
Read MoreAs the U.S. Copyright Office solicits public comments for its study to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the safe harbor provisions contained in section 512 of the (DMCA) Digital Millennium Copyright Act it’s worth examining how Google–the Sugar Daddy of pirate purveyors– openly skirts the law to obstruct the process at every turn.
Of course Google would have you believe it’s the victim when it comes to enforcing the DMCA. Its flacks regularly bleat about the millions of DMCA notices the company processes each week–a small price for profiting (indirectly) off the lucrative myriad of online exchanges it provides for pirated content. As I’ve written before, Google’s millions of takedowns is a “mess of its own making.”
Another ally joins the war against online pirates The battle against online piracy has been fought...
Read MoreIf you haven’t had the opportunity to read David Newhoff’s thoughts regarding Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde’s recent interview published on Motherboard please take the time to do so. It’s truly a must read. Sunde spent a brief time in prison in 2014 for his role in operating the notorious torrent site whose popularity spawned clones around the globe and gave rise to the well-entrenched meme that piracy was somehow morally and politically justifiable.
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