In one fell swoop, Facebook may have changed its mind about how the online news media will operate from here on out. Undermining a now age-old assumption, Facebook told Ars Technica on Thursday that embedding from Instagram may not shield news organizations from freely cross-posting on their sites. A spokesperson said:

While our terms allow us to grant a sub-license, we do not grant one for our embeds API. Our platform policies require third parties to have the necessary rights from applicable rights holders.

The dry statement could mean upheaval for online publishing, implying that a news organization (or anyone running a for-profit site) would have to obtain a license for an Instagram post directly from the poster before they can embed it. Some will worry that it bodes a future in which publications retroactively strike every Instagram embed from its archives in order to avoid lawsuits.

On one hand, it’s good news for professional photographers and artists who would otherwise be paid for the use of their work embedded on a personal website. Photographers like the ones who separately sued Mashable and Newsweek for embedding their Instagram posts, both after they explicitly declined to license the images to the respective publications. On the other hand, this might be the last gasp for Instagram commentary, the bread of the news, the spice of the tea blogs.

Source: Did Instagram Just Say It’s Rewriting Online Copyright?

Today, member companies [Note only four members – ed] of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Internet Archive (“IA”) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the Court to enjoin IA’s mass scanning, public display, and distribution of entire literary works, which it offers to the public at large through global-facing businesses coined “Open Library” and “National Emergency Library,” accessible at both openlibrary.org and archive.org. IA has brazenly reproduced some 1.3 million bootleg scans of print books, including recent works, commercial fiction and non-fiction, thrillers, and children’s books.

The plaintiffs—Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House—publish many of the world’s preeminent authors, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Newbery Medal, Man Booker Prize, Caldecott Medal and Nobel Prize.

Despite the self-serving library branding of its operations, IA’s conduct bears little resemblance to the trusted role that thousands of American libraries play within their communities and as participants in the lawful copyright marketplace. IA scans books from cover to cover, posts complete digital files to its website, and solicits users to access them for free by signing up for Internet Archive Accounts. The sheer scale of IA’s infringement described in the complaint—and its stated objective to enlarge its illegal trove with abandon—appear to make it one of the largest known book pirate sites in the world. IA publicly reports millions of dollars in revenue each year, including financial schemes that support its infringement design.

Source: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive for Systematic Mass Scanning and Distribution of Literary Works – AAP

This is book publishers filing against a library. Copyright has gone nuts.

The lawsuit was filed in Federal court in New York City by Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, John Wiley & Sons, and HarperCollins Publishers.

The complaint notes that these four publishers are all members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). AAP was one of 40 signatories, including the NWU, of a joint Appeal from the Victims of Controlled Digital Lending issued in 2019. Two of the four publishers bringing the lawsuit are US subsidiaries of European parent companies (Hachette Livre, which is part of the Lagardère Publishing group, and Bertelsmann) that are affiliated with the Federation of European Publishers (FEP), which also co-signed the Appeal.

The court complaint, however, was brought only by the four named publishers, and not as a class action. At least as originally filed, neither AAP, FEP, nor any authors or organizations of authors are parties to the lawsuit. The NWU had no advance knowledge whatsoever regarding this lawsuit.

Source: Publishers Sue the Internet Archive for Scanning Books (National Writers Union)

Obviously though a large group of self serving copyright vampires is congratulating the serving monkeys for killing off culture in favor of money in their collective pockets.

There are a variety of opinions concerning the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library in response to the pandemic. I’ve made it clear in multiple posts why I believe the freakout from some publishers and authors is misguided, and that the details of the program are very different than those crying about it have led you to believe. If you don’t trust my analysis and want to whine about how I’m biased, I’d at least suggest reading a fairly balanced review of the issues by the Congressional Research Service.

However, Kyle Courtney, the Copyright Advisor for Harvard University, has a truly masterful post highlighting not just why the NEL makes sense, but just how problematic it is that many — including the US Copyright Office — seem to want to move to a world of permission and licensing for culture that has never required such things in the past.

Licensing culture is out of control. This has never been clearer than during this time when hundreds of millions of books and media that were purchased by libraries, archives, and other cultural intuitions have become inaccessible due to COVID-19 closures or, worse, are closed off further by restrictive licensing.

What’s really set Courtney off is that the Copyright Office has come out, in response to the NEL, to suggest that the solution to any such concerns raised by books being locked up by the pandemic must be more licensing:

The ultimate example of this licensing culture gone wild is captured in a recent U.S. Copyright Office letter. Note that this letter is not a legally binding document. It is the opinion of an office under the control of the Library of Congress, that is tasked among other missions, with advising Congress when they ask copyright questions, as in this case.

Senator Tom Udall asked the Copyright Office to give its legal analysis of the NEL and similar library efforts, and it did so… badly.

The Office responded with a letter revealing their recommendation was not going to be the guidance document to “help libraries, authors, and online outlets,” but, ultimately, called for more licensing. It also continued a common misunderstanding of an important case, Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., 910 F. 3d 649 (2d Cir 2018).

We’ve written about the Redigi case a few times, but as Courtney details, the anti-internet, pro-extreme copyright folks have embraced it to mean much more than it actually means (we’ll get back that shortly). Courtney points out that the Copyright Office seems to view everything through a single lens: “licensing” (i.e., permission). So while the letter applauds more licensing, that’s really just a celebration of greater permission when none is necessary. And through that lens the Copyright Office seems to think that the NEL isn’t really necessary because publishers have been choosing to make some of their books more widely available (via still restrictive licensing). But, as Courtney explains, libraries aren’t supposed to need permission:

Here’s the problem though: these vendors and publishers are not libraries. The law does not treat them the same. Vendors must must ask permission, they must license, this is their business model. Libraries are special creatures of copyright. Libraries have a legally authorized mandate granted by Congress to complete their mission to provide access to materials. They put many of these in copyright exemptions for libraries in the Copyright Act itself.

The Copyright Office missed this critical difference completely when it said digital, temporary, or emergency libraries should “seek permission from authors or publishers prior” to the use. I think think this is flat-out wrong. And I have heard this in multiple settings over the last few months: somehow it has crept into our dialog that libraries should have always sought a license to lend books, even digital books, exactly like the vendors and publishers who sought permission first. Again, this is fundamentally wrong.

Let me make this clear: Libraries do not need a license to loan books. What libraries do (give access to their acquired collections of acquired books) is not illegal. And libraries generally do not need to license or contract before sharing these legally acquired works, digital or not. Additionally, libraries, and their users, can make (and do make) many uses of these works under the law including interlibrary loan, reserves, preservation, fair use, and more!

[…]

Source: Libraries Have Never Needed Permission To Lend Books, And The Move To Change That Is A Big Problem | Techdirt

For those of us of a certain age, MTV defined culture. It was where we learned about not just music, but wider pop culture. Of course, MTV lost its cultural place atop the mountaintop with the rise of the internet, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a key source of culture in the 1980s. Historically, the way that society preserves and remembers culture is to share it and spread it around. This is actually how culture is created. Yet copyright is the opposite of that. Copyright is about locking up content and denying the ability to create shared culture around it. And the best evidence of this is the fact that someone (it is not entirely clear who…) with the power to do so, demanded that the Internet Archive take down a bunch of old MTV videos that were uploaded.

So, The Internet Archive had someone upload a few hundred hours of MTV recordings. VJs, Commercials, and of course Music Videos, from the 1980s. Today, it was asked to be taken down by someone who could ask for that and it’s down. pic.twitter.com/tZ7Ka2sGMy

— Jason Scott (@textfiles) May 9, 2020

From a purely legal standpoint, it seems quite likely that whoever issued the takedown did have a legal leg to stand on. The real question, however, should be whether or not they have a moral or cultural leg to stand on. After all, if the entire point of copyright — as per the Constitution — is to encourage “the progress” then how does taking these old clips down do anything to support that goal?

There are a number of other points worth mentioning to demonstrate how crazy this whole thing is, starting with the fact that MTV itself knew how important it was to build on cultural touchstones in that its whole logo/image was built off a public domain image from just a few years earlier. The moon landing was in 1969, and MTV launched in 1981. Imagine if this image had been locked up under copyright?

MTV knows that creativity comes from building on the past; it created its most iconic moon landing imagery on top of public domain government videos and photographs. Another big company pulling up the ladder behind it https://t.co/9pamGhNAbb

— Parker Higgins (@xor) May 10, 2020

This also demonstrates a separate point we’ve been making for years, which is that the actual commercial value of a piece of work locked up behind copyright, tends not to be that long, and yet we locked it up for basically a century for no good reason at all. In the earliest copyright times in the US, copyright initially was for 14 years, which could be renewed for another 14 if the copyright holder felt it was worth it. A maximum of 28 years would mean that most of the uploaded clips would now be in the public domain if we had kept those terms. And, as we’ve pointed out repeatedly, back when copyright was 28 years, renewable for another 28 years, very few works were renewed, suggesting that the vast majority of copyright holders did not see any reason to retain their copyright beyond 28 years (indeed, the numbers suggest many would have been fine with significantly shorter copyright terms):

Yet, today copyright automatically lasts beyond most of our lifetimes. And, for what purpose? Right now, MTV is not particularly culturally relevant. You’d think that someone might jump at the chance to get renewed interest in MTV’s past cultural relevance, but the belief that copyright means we must lock up culture seems to prevail over common sense.

Taking down these cultural touchstones may have been perfectly legal, but all it’s really done is help demonstrate the many, many problems of today’s copyright law and how it destroys, rather than enhances, culture.

Source: Copyright Making Sure That MTV Remains An Irrelevant Relic, Rather Than A Cultural Icon | Techdirt

Much of the fun of internet drama comes from its frivolousness, but sometimes an online shitfest points to something bigger. Last week, the AI-powered furry art site thisfursonadoesnotexist did just that, igniting a fandom firestorm while also highlighting an important debate about digital art. Trained on more than 55,000 images pulled (without permission) from a furry art forum, the algorithm was a simple case of art theft to some. For others, it was a chance to break out the popcorn. But legal scholars who spoke with Gizmodo said the conflict raises thorny questions about ownership in the age of AI—questions that may ultimately have to be answered in court.

Arfa, the programmer behind thisfursonadoesnotexist, says he used the same GAN (generative adversarial network) architecture behind the site thispersondoesnotexist to generate around 186,000 furry portraits. When he posted the project on Twitter last Wednesday, dozens of commenters rushed to weigh in. While many were fascinated by the project, some in the furry community objected to Arfa’s unauthorized use of art from the furry forum e621.net as training data. At least one person tried (and failed) to find proof that the algorithm was copying images from e621.net outright. And within days, the entire site was slapped with a DMCA copyright infringement complaint. (The company whose name the DMCA was issued in, according to Arfa, denied filing the notice and requested it be withdrawn.)

[…]

The creator of thisfursonadoesnotexist thinks it would’ve been impossible to contact all the artists involved. Arfa told Gizmodo that he scraped 200,000 images that were then narrowed down to a 55,000-image training set representing approximately 10,000 different artists—creators who may go by different names now or have left the fandom entirely. According to Arfa, he’s more than willing to take an image down from thisfursonadoesnotexist if it clearly copies an original character, but he says he has yet to see credible evidence of that.

In defense of the AI’s originality, the site has produced a collection of mushier fursonas whose delirious weirdness inspired a flurry of memes. “Some of these have designs that are so… specific? Holistic?” a commenter on Hacker News wrote, linking to a fursona with a tail sticking out of her head and an adorably half-formed feline mouse. Do these Cronenberg-esque misfit furries, with their wild-eyed gazes, scream “LOVE ME”or “SAVE ME”? The art world adores liminality—that’s value added right there.

Furry artists aren’t alone in facing the dilemma of digital manipulation. Just last month, Jay Z filed DMCA takedown notices against a YouTuber who used speech synthesis software to make his voice read the Book of Genesis and cover Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” While experts explained to Gizmodo that Jay Z’s issue isn’t copyright, since copyright doesn’t cover speech patterns, both incidents suggest a future where machine learning art is widespread, even commonplace. In such a future, can an artist’s original work be used as training material? If so, to what end? (In Jay Z’s case, YouTube ultimately allowed the videos to stand.)

Source: The Internet Furry Drama Raising Big Questions About Artificial Intelligence

The question of whether you own your digital purchases, or whether you’re simply licensing that content from whatever tech giant du jour hosts it, has always been a bit of a black box for consumers. Recently, this lack of transparency has prompted one California user to file a lawsuit against Amazon for saying customers can “purchase” movies on Prime Video when, in actuality, the company can cut off access to that content at its discretion.

Yeah, in case you didn’t know, you don’t really own what you buy on Prime Video. Even though the service bills this content as “Your Video Purchases”, Prime Video’s terms of service outlines how all purchases are really just long-term rentals that can disappear from your library at any time:

“Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming.”

None of this is made apparent unless you go digging into Prime Video’s ToS pages, though, which lawyers for the suit’s plaintiff, Amanda Caudel, argue is Amazon’s attempt to “deceive, mislead and defraud consumers.” Per the class action complaint, as first spotted by TechDirt:

“Reasonable consumers will expect that the use of a “Buy” button and the representation that their Video Content is a “Purchase” means that the consumer has paid for full access to the Video Content and, like any bought product, that access cannot be revoked.

Unfortunately for consumers who chose the “Buy” option, this is deceptive and untrue. Rather, the ugly truth is that Defendant secretly reserves the right to terminate the consumers’ access and use of the Video Content at any time, and has done so on numerous occasions, leaving the consumer without the ability to enjoy their already-bought Video Content.”

Defendant’s representations are misleading because they give the impression that the Video Content is purchased – i.e. the person owns it – when in fact that is not true because Defendant or others may revoke access to the Video Content at any time and for any reason.

And since renting movies for 30 days also costs significantly less than purchasing it on Prime Video, usually around $5 compared to $14.99-19.99, the lawsuit argues that Amazon uses this deceptive distinction to earn profit at the expense of consumers. Particularly since there’s no user agreement that pops up upon purchase to explain to customers that they won’t actually own the video content after hitting “Buy”. There’s no such disclaimer on the movie’s purchase page either.

Source: Amazon Sued for Acting Like Users Own “Purchased” Movies (Spoiler Alert: You Don’t)

Last year, Apple accused a cybersecurity startup based in Florida of infringing its copyright by developing and selling software that allows customers to create virtual iPhone replicas. Critics have called the Apple’s lawsuit against the company, called Corellium, “dangerous” as it may shape how security researchers and software makers can tinker with Apple’s products and code.

The lawsuit, however, has already produced a tangible outcome: very few people, especially current and former customers and users, want to talk about Corellium, which sells the eponymous software that virtualizes iPhones and Android devices. During the lawsuit’s proceedings, Apple has sought information from companies that have used the tool, which emulates iOS on a computer, allowing researchers to probe potential iPhone vulnerabilities in a forgiving and easy-to-use environment.

[…]

“I don’t know if they intended it but when they name individuals at companies that have spoken in favor [of Corellium], I definitely believe retribution is possible,” the researcher added, referring to Apple’s subpoena to the spanish finance giant Santander Bank, which named an employee who had Tweeted about Corellium.

[…]

A security researcher, who specializes in offensive security and asked to remain anonymous, said that he would definitely “have legal look into it beforehand if I needed [Corellium’s] stuff,” arguing that he’d be wary of Apple getting involved.

Three other researchers who specialize in hacking Apple software declined to comment citing the risk of some sort of retaliation from Apple.

[…]

In January, Apple subpoenaed the defense contractor L3Harris and Santander Bank, requesting information on how they use Corellium, all communications they’ve had with the startup, internal communications about their products, and any contracts they’ve signed with the company, among other information.

Mark Dowd, the founder of Azimuth Security, a cybersecurity startup that specializes in developing hacking tools for governments that’s now part of L3Harris, said last year that he couldn’t comment about Corellium “because [Apple] mention[ed] us in the original filing.” (Dowd did not respond to a request for comment this week.)

[…]

Some researchers, however, are not afraid of Apple. Elias Naur uses Corellium to test code written in the Go language for mobile operating systems. Before Corellium, Naur said he had to test code on two busted old phones plugged in under his couch. Naur said he’s “not worried Apple will come after Corellium’s customers” and is still using the software.

[…]

In this David v. Goliath battle, as Forbes called it, many people are choosing to stay away from David even before seeing who wins.

Source: Apple’s Copyright Lawsuit Has Created a ‘Chilling Effect’ on Security Research – VICE

Law professor Brian Frye has spent the last month or so making a really important point regarding the never-ending “is copyright property” debate — saying that if copyright is property, then copyright holders should be seen and treated as landlords. This whole approach can be summed up in the slightly snarky and trollish phrase: “OK, Landlord” used to respond to all sorts of nonsensical takes in support of more egregious copyright policies:

Like everyone, the copyright cops want to have their cake and eat it too. They claim that copyright is a kind of property, so the law should protect it just like any other kind of property. But they also claim that authors are morally entitled to copyright ownership because of their special contribution to society. I find both claims uncompelling, but in any case, they can’t have it both ways. If copyright is a property right, they have to own it and can’t claim the moral high ground.

What’s been most telling about this useful analogy is just how angry it seems to make copyright holders and copyright-system supporters. They react very negatively to the suggestion that they are “landlords” and any money they make from copyright licensing is a form of “rent.” But if you’re going to claim that your copyright is profit, then, well, the landlord moniker fits.

But the copyright cops persist, insisting that copyright is property, so copyright owners are entitled to the entire value of the works they create because that’s what property means. Accordingly, copying a work of authorship without permission is theft, even though it only increases the number of copies, because the copyright owner didn’t profit. And even consuming a work of authorship without permission is wrong because copyright owners are entitled to profit from every use of the work they own.

The circularity of these claims should be obvious: copyright is property because copyright owners receive exclusive rights, and copyright owners receive exclusive rights because copyright is property. But let’s run with it. Okay, copyright is property and copyright owners are property owners. Why are copyright owners entitled to profit from the use of their property?

Because they’re landlords. Copyright owners want to own the property metaphor? Then, let ‘em own it. If copyright is property, then they are landlords and copyright profits are rent. Just like landlords, copyright owners simply make a capital investment in creating or acquiring a property, then sit back and wait for the profits to roll in.

As Frye notes, the whole idea that copyright holders are landlords (even as they claim that they are holding property that you need to pay them to use), shows the sort of emotional trickery that copyright holders use in also claiming some sort of moral right to their works as “creators.” They’re picking and choosing which arguments to use when — and, have long tried to imbue some sort of magical mystical status on holding the copyright to creativity (which is often quite different than creating itself).

Of course, the real issue at play is that many of the most vocal copyright system supporters want to believe that they’re “artists” who are fighting the system and speaking for the oppressed… and being a “landlord” who is renting out their property goes against that self-image. But as Frye notes, they can’t really have it both ways. If they want to declare that they have property rights, they should be perfectly find with recognizing that they are the current landlords for that “property.”

Source: OK, Landlord: If Copyright Supporters Are Going To Insist Copyright Is Property, Why Are They So Mad About Being Called Landlords? | Techdirt

Yes, we’ve seen lots of folks using COVID-19 to push their specific agendas forward, but this one is just bizarre. UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is an organization that is supposed to be focused on developing education and culture around the globe. From any objective standpoint, you’d think it would be in favor of things like more open licensing and sharing of culture, but, in practice, the organization has long been hijacked by copyright maximalist interests. Almost exactly a decade ago, we were perplexed at the organization’s decision to launch an anti-piracy organization. After all, “piracy” (or sharing of culture) is actually how culture and ideas frequently spread in the developing countries where UNESCO focuses.

So, I guess it isn’t so surprising a decade later that UNESCO is using COVID-19 to float the idea of an eternal copyright. I only wish I was kidding:

In our #ResiliArt launch debate on how to support culture during #COVID19, #UNESCO’s Goodwill Ambassador @jeanmicheljarre suggested eternal copyright. What do you think?

We’ve started the conversation, now we count on you to join it.

ℹ️ https://t.co/CdGXKOKnhd #ShareCulture pic.twitter.com/iuRrR3j9DW

— UNESCO (@UNESCO) April 19, 2020

They phrase this as “just started the conversation,” but that’s a trollish setup for a terrible, terrible idea. In case you can’t see the video, it’s electronic music creator Jean-Michel Jarre suggesting eternal copyright as a way to support future artists:

Why not going to the other way around, and to create the concept of eternal copyright. And I mean by this that after a certain period of time, the rights of movies, of music, of everything, would go to a global fund to help artists, and especially artists in emerging countries.

First, we can all agree that helping to enable and support artists in emerging countries is a good general idea. I’ve seen a former RIAA executive screaming about how everyone criticizing this idea is showing their true colors in how they don’t want to support artists. But that’s just silly. The criticism of this idea is that it doesn’t “support” artists at all, and will almost certainly make creativity and supporting artists more difficult. And that’s because art and creativity has always relied on building upon the works of those who came before — and locking up everything for eternity would make that cost prohibitive for all but the wealthiest of creators. Indeed, the idea that we need copyright and copyright alone to support artists shows (yet again) just how uncreative the people who claim to support copyright can be.

[…]

Source: UNESCO Suggests COVID-19 Is A Reason To Create… Eternal Copyright | Techdirt

Can you imagine – every time s omeone read your email, you asked them for $0,10 because that email is your copyright? What a complete scam

Update: The full video is now back up and it’s even worse than the original clip we posted. It’s unclear if it went back up thanks to YouTube deciding it was fair use, or Pinsky removing the bogus takedown. Either way, watch it here:

Copyright system supporters keep insisting to me that copyright is never used for censorship, and yet over and over again we keep seeing examples that prove that wrong. The latest is Dr. Drew Pinsky, the somewhat infamous doctor and media personality, who has been one of the more vocal people in the media playing down the impact of the coronavirus. In a video that had gone viral on Twitter and YouTube, it showed many, many, many clips of Dr. Drew insisting that COVID-19 was similar to the flu, and that it wouldn’t be that bad. Assuming it hasn’t been taken down due to a bogus copyright claim, you can hopefully see it below:

Dr. Drew is a snake oil salesman. Really terrible stuff here. What a disgrace. pic.twitter.com/Eh35Ky8yVO

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 4, 2020

As you can see, for well over a month, deep into March when it was blatantly obvious how serious COVID-19 was, he was playing down the threat. Beyond incorrectly comparing it to the flu (saying that it’s “way less virulent than the flu” on February 4th — by which time it was clearly way more virulent than the flu in China), he said the headlines should say “way less serious than influenza,” he insisted that the lethality rate was probably around “0.02%” rather than the 2% being reported. On February 7th, he said your probability of “dying from coronavirus — much higher being hit by an asteroid.” He also mocked government officials for telling people to stay home, even at one point in March saying he was “angry” about a “press-induced panic.” On March 16th, the same day that the Bay Area in California shut down, he insisted that if you’re under 65 you have nothing to worry about, saying “it’s just like the flu.” This was not in the distant past. At one point, a caller to his show, again on March 16th, said that because it’s called COVID-19 that means there were at least 18 others of them, and that’s why no one should worry — and Drew appeared to agree, making it appear he didn’t even know that the 19 refers to the year not the number of coronaviruses, and even though there are other coronaviruses out there, this one was way more infectious and deadly, so it doesn’t matter.

To give him a tiny bit of credit, on Saturday, Pinsky posted a series of choppy videos on Twitter in which he flat out said that he was wrong and he was sorry for his earlier statements, and said that he regretted his earlier statements. He also claimed that he signed up to help in California and NY if he was needed. But, even that apology seems weak in the face of what else he said in those videos… and, more importantly, his actions. In terms of what he said, he kept saying that he always said to listen to Dr. Fauci and to listen to your public health officials. Amazingly, at one point in his apology video, he insists that he thinks the real reason why New York got hit so bad is because of hallways and trains. Yet, in the video above, at one point he literally mocks NYC Mayor de Blasio for telling people to avoid crowded trains, saying: “de Blasio told them not to ride the trains! So they’re not riding the trains! So I am! [guffaw] I mean, it’s ridiculous.”

Given that, it’s a bit difficult to take him seriously when he claims that all along he always said to listen to your public officials, when just a few weeks ago he was mocking them. Indeed, as multiple people have pointed out, the issue here isn’t so much that Pinsky was wrong — in the early days, when there wasn’t as much info, lots of people got things wrong about COVID-19 (though Pinsky kept it up way way after most others recognized how serious it was), but that he acted so totally sure about his opinions that this was nothing to worry about. It was the certainty with which he said what he said that was so much of the problem, including deep into it already being a pandemic with local officials warning people to stay home.

But, even worse, just as he was doing the right thing and mostly apologizing… he was trying to hide those earlier clips that made him look so, so, so bad. His organization began sending out DMCA notices. If you went to the original YouTube upload you got this:

That says: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Drew Pinsky Inc.” Now, some might argue that it was just some clueless staffer working for Dr. Drew sending off bogus DMCAs, or maybe an automated bot… but nope. Drew himself started tweeting nonsense about copyright law at people. I originally linked to that tweet, but sometime on Sunday, after thousands of people — including some of the most famous lawyers in the country — explained to him why it was nonsense, he deleted it. But I kept a screenshot:

That says, amazingly:

Infringing copywrite laws is a crime. Hang onto your retweets. Or erase to be safe.

The wrongness-to-words ratio in that tweet is pretty fucking astounding. First of all, the layup: it’s copyright, Drew, not copywrite. Make sure you know the name of the fucking law you’re abusing to censor someone before tossing it out there. Second, no, infringing copyright is not a crime. Yes, there is such a thing as criminal copyright infringement, but this ain’t it. Someone posting a video of you would be, at best, civil infringement. For it to be criminal, someone would have to be making copies for profit — like running a bootleg DVD factory or something. Someone posting a 2 minute clip of your nonsense is not that.

Most important, however, this isn’t even civil infringement, thanks to fair use. Putting up a 2 minute video showing a dozen or so clips of Drew making an ass of himself is not infringing. It’s classic fair use — especially given the topic at hand.

So it’s really difficult to believe that Drew is really owning up to his mistakes when at the same time he says he’s sorry, he’s actively working to abuse the law to try to silence people from highlighting his previous comments. Also, someone should point him to Lenz v. Universal in which a court said that before sending a takedown, you need to take fair use into consideration. It certainly appears that Drew hasn’t the foggiest idea how copyright law works, so it seems unlikely he considered fair use at all.

I certainly understand that he likely regrets his earlier comments. And I appreciate his willingness to admit that he was wrong. But to really take ownership of your previous errors, you shouldn’t then be working doubletime to try to delete them from the internet and hide them from view. That’s not taking ownership of your mistakes, that’s trying to sweep them under the rug.

Source: Dr. Drew Pinsky Played Down COVID-19, Then Tries To DMCA Away The Evidence | Techdirt

In 2018, Target wrote an article about Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron who some credit as being the world’s first computer programmer, despite being born in 1815. Unfortunately, however, those who search for that article today using Google won’t find it.

As the image below shows, the original Tweet announcing the article is still present in Google’s indexes but the article itself has been removed, thanks to a copyright infringement complaint that also claimed several other victims.

While there could be dozens of reasons the article infringed someone’s copyrights, the facts are so absurd as to be almost unbelievable. Sinclair’s article was deleted because an anti-piracy company working on behalf of a TV company decided that since its title (What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?) contained the word ‘DID’, it must be illegal.

This monumental screw-up was announced on Twitter by Sinclair himself, who complained that “Computers are stupid folks. Too bad Google has decided they are in charge.”

At risk of running counter to Sinclair’s claim, in this case – as Lovelace herself would’ve hopefully agreed – it is people who are stupid, not computers. The proof for that can be found in the DMCA complaint sent to Google by RightsHero, an anti-piracy company working on behalf of Zee TV, an Indian pay-TV channel that airs Dance India Dance.

Now in its seventh season, Dance India Dance is a dance competition reality show that is often referred to as DID. And now, of course, you can see where this is going. Because Target and at least 11 other sites dared to use the word in its original context, RightsHero flagged the pages as infringing and asked Google to deindex them.

But things only get worse from here.

Look up the word ‘did’ in any dictionary and you will never find the definition listed as an acronym for Dance India Dance. Instead, you’ll find the explanation as “past of do” or something broadly along those lines. However, if the complaint sent to Google had achieved its intended effect, finding out that would’ve been more difficult too.

Lo, here it is in its full glory.

As we can see, the notice not only claims Target’s article is infringing the copyrights of Dance India Dance (sorry, DID), but also no less than four online dictionaries explaining what the word ‘did’ actually means. (Spoiler: None say ‘Dance India Dance’).

Perhaps worse still, some of the other allegedly-infringing articles were published by some pretty serious information resources including:

-USGS Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (Did You Feel It? (DYFI) collects information from people who felt an earthquake and creates maps that show what people experienced and the extent of damage)

– The US Department of Education (Did (or will) you file a Schedule 1 with your 2018 tax return?)

– Nature.com (Did pangolins spread the China coronavirus to people?)

Considering the scale of the problem here, we tried to contact RightsHero for comment. However, the only anti-piracy company bearing that name has a next-to-useless website that provides no information on where the company is, who owns it, who runs it, or how those people can be contacted.

In the absence of any action by RightsHero, Sinclair Target was left with a single option – issue a counterclaim to Google in the hope of having his page restored.

“I’ve submitted a counter-claim, which seemed to be the only thing I could do,” Target told TorrentFreak.

“Got a cheery confirmation email from Google saying, ‘Thanks for contacting us!’ and that it might be a while until the issue is resolved. I assume that’s because this is the point where finally a decision has to be made by a human being. It is annoying indeed.”

Finally, it’s interesting to take a line from Target’s analysis of Lovelace’s program. “She thought carefully about how operations could be organized into groups that could be repeated, thereby inventing the loop,” he writes.

10 DELETE “DID”
20 PROFIT?
30 GOTO 10

Source: Don’t Use the Word ‘Did’ or a Dumb Anti-Piracy Company Will Delete You From Google – TorrentFreak

It’s a really good expose on copyright and why it’s a bad, bad thing in the music business.

A YouTuber who used a royalty-free track supplied by YouTube itself has had all of his videos copyright claimed by companies including SonyATV and Warner Chappell. According to the music outfits, Matt Lownes’ use the use of the track ‘Dreams’ by Joakim Karud means that they are now entitled to all of his revenue.

[…]

In common with many YouTubers, Matt didn’t want any copyright issues on his channel. So, to play things safely, he obtained the track ‘Dreams‘ by Joakim Karud from YouTube’s very own audio library for use in his intro. Unfortunately, this strategy of obtaining supposedly risk-free music from a legitimate source still managed to backfire. (See update below, YouTube statement)

Very early last Friday, Matt says he received a “massive barrage” of emails from YouTube, targeting “pretty much all” of his KSP videos. The emails said that Matt’s videos “may have content owned or licensed by SonyATV, PeerMusic, Warner Chappell, Audiam and LatinAutor.”

[…]

A clearly exasperated Matt took to YouTube, noting that any ads that now show up on his videos “split up the revenue between all the companies listed” in the emails, with Matt himself “allowed to keep what’s left of that.” He doesn’t know what that amount might be, because he says there’s just no way of knowing.

After highlighting the vague use of the word “may” in YouTube’s emails to him, Matt then went on to describe the real “kick in the gut”, which revolves around the track itself.

‘Dreams’ composer Joakim Karud allows anyone to use his music on YouTube, even commercially, for free. And the fact that Matt downloaded the track from YouTube’s own library was the icing on this particularly bitter cake.

Matt said he had to time out to manually protest the automated claims against his account but he says his overtures were immediately rejected, “almost like it’s an automated bot or something.” But things get worse from there.

After contesting each claim and having all of those rejected, Matt says the only option left is to appeal every single one. However, if an appeal is lost, the video in question will be removed completely and a strike will be placed against his account.

It’s three strikes and you’re out on YouTube, so this is not an attractive option for Matt if the music companies somehow win the fight. So, instead, Matt is appealing against just one of the complaints in the hope that he can make some progress without putting his entire account at risk.

[…]

“SonyATV & Warner Chappell have claimed 24 of my videos because the royalty free song Dreams by Joakim Karud (from the OFFICIAL YOUTUBE AUDIO LIBRARY BTW) uses a sample from Kenny Burrell Quartet’s ‘Weaver of Dream’,” a Twitter user wrote on Saturday.

Sure enough, if one turns to the WhoSampled archive, Dreams is listed as having sampled Weaver of Dreams, a track from 1956 to which Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC and Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. own the copyrights.

[…]

YouTube have been in touch to state that the music in question was not part of its official audio library. In a tweet directed at Matt Lowne, YouTube further added that it may have been made available by an unofficial channel that confusingly calls itself the YouTube Audio Library.

Source: ‘Royalty-Free’ Music Supplied By YouTube Results in Mass Video Demonetization (Updated) – TorrentFreak

There we go, copyright is completely insane.

The US office responsible for patents and trademarks is trying to figure out how AI might call for changes to copyright law, and it’s asking the public for opinions on the topic. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a notice in the Federal Register last month saying it’s seeking comments, as spotted by TorrentFreak.

The office is gathering information about the impact of artificial intelligence on copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property rights. It outlines thirteen specific questions, ranging from what happens if an AI creates a copyright-infringing work to if it’s legal to feed an AI copyrighted material.

It starts off by asking if output made by AI without any creative involvement from a human should qualify as a work of authorship that’s protectable by US copyright law. If not, then what degree of human involvement “would or should be sufficient so that the work qualifies for copyright protection?”

Other questions ask if the company that trains an AI should own the resulting work, and if it’s okay to use copyrighted material to train an AI in the first place. “Should authors be recognized for this type of use of their works?” asks the office. “If so, how?”

The office, which, among other things, advises the government on copyright, often seeks public opinion to understand new developments and hear from people who actually deal with them. Earlier this year, the office similarly asked for public opinion on AI and patents.

Source: The USPTO wants to know if artificial intelligence can own the content it creates – The Verge

Startup insurance provider Lemonade is trying to make the best of a sour situation after T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom claimed it owns the exclusive rights to the color magenta.

New York-based Lemonade is a 3-year-old company that lives completely online and mostly focuses on homeowners and renter’s insurance. The company uses a similar color to magenta — it says it’s “pink” — in its marketing materials and its website. But Lemonade was told by German courts that it must cease using its color after launching its services in that country, which is also home to T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom. Although the ruling only applies in Germany, Lemonade says it fears the decision will set a precedent and expand to other jurisdictions such as the U.S. or Europe.

“If some brainiac at Deutsche Telekom had invented the color, their possessiveness would make sense,” Daniel Schreiber, CEO and co-founder of Lemonade, said in a statement. “Absent that, the company’s actions just smack of corporate bully tactics, where legions of lawyers attempt to hog natural resources – in this case a primary color—that rightfully belong to everyone.”

A spokesman for Deutsche Telekom confirmed that it “asked the insurance company Lemonade to stop using the color magenta in the German market,” while adding that the “T” in “Deutsche Telekom” is registered to the brand. “Deutsche Telekom respects everyone’s trademark rights but expects others to do the same,” the spokesman said in an emailed statement to Ad Age.

Although Lemonade has complied with the ruling by removing its pink color from marketing materials in Germany, it’s also trying to turn the legal matter into an opportunity. The company today began throwing some shade in social media under the hashtag “#FreeThePink,” though a quick check on Twitter shows it’s gained little traction thus far: Schreiber, the company’s CEO, holds the top tweet under “#FreeThePink” with 13 retweets and 42 likes. 

Lemonade also filed a motion today with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, or EUIPO, to invalidate Deutsche Telekom’s magenta trademark.

Source: T-Mobile says it owns exclusive rights to the color magenta | AdAge

What. The. Fuck.

There are lots of reasons to patent something. The most obvious one is that you’ve come up with a brilliant invention, and you want to protect your idea so that nobody can steal it from you. But that’s just the tip of the patent strategy iceberg. It turns out there is a whole host of strategies that lead to “zany” or “weird” patent filings, and understanding them offers a window not just into the labyrinthine world of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and its potential failings, but also into how companies think about the future. And while it might be fun to gawk at, say, Motorola patenting a lie-detecting throat tattoo, it’s also important to see through the eye-catching headlines and to the bigger issue here: Patents can be weapons and signals. They can spur innovation, as well as crush it.

Let’s start with the anatomy of a patent. Patents have many elements—the abstract, a summary, a background section, illustrations, and a section called “claims.” It’s crucial to know that the thing that matters most in a patent isn’t the abstract, or the title, or the illustrations. It’s the claims, where the patent filer has to list all the new, innovative things that her patent does and why she in fact deserves government protection for her idea. It’s the claims that matter over everything else.

[…]

For a long time, companies didn’t really worry about the PR that patents might generate. Mostly because nobody was looking. But now, journalists are using patents as a window into a company’s psyche, and not always in a way that makes these companies look good.

So why patent something that could get you raked across the internet coals? In many cases, when a company files for a patent, it has no idea whether it’s actually going to use the invention. Often, patents are filed as early as possible in an idea’s life span. Which means that at the moment of filing, nobody really knows where a field might go or what the market might be for something. So companies will patent as many ideas as they can at the early stages and then pick and choose which ones actually make sense for their business as time goes by.

[…]

In some situations, companies file for patents to blanket the field—like dogs peeing on every bush just in case. Many patents are defensive, a way to keep your competitors from developing something more than a way to make sure you can develop that thing. Will Amazon ever make a delivery blimp? Probably not, but now none of its competitors can. (Amazon seems to be a leader in these patent oddities. Its portfolio also includes a flying warehouse, self-destructing drones, an underwater warehouse, and a drone tunnel.

[…]

David Stein, a patent attorney, says that he sees this at companies he works with. He tells me that once he was in a meeting with inventors about something they wanted to patent, and he asked one of his standard questions to help him prepare the patent: What products will this invention go into? “And they said, ‘Oh, it won’t.’ ” The team that had invented this thing had been disbanded, and the company had moved to a different solution. But they had gone far enough with the patent application that they might as well keep going, if only to use the patent in the future to keep their competitors from gaining an advantage. (It’s almost impossible to know how many patents wind up being “useful” to a company or turn up in actual products.)

As long as you have a budget for it (and patents aren’t cheap—filing for one can easily cost more than $10,000 all told), there’s an incentive for companies to amass as many as they can. Any reporter can tell you that companies love to boast about the number of patents they have, as if it’s some kind of quantitative measure of brilliance. (This makes about as much sense as boasting about how many lines of code you’ve written—it doesn’t really matter how much you’ve got, it matters if it actually works.) “The number of patents a company is filing has more to do with the patent budget than with the amount they’re actually investing in research,” says Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, a professor at Stanford Law School

[…]

This patent arm wrestling doesn’t just provide low-hanging fruit to reporters. It also affects business dealings. Let’s say you have two companies that want to make some kind of business deal, Charles Duan, a patent expert at the R Street Institute, says. One of their key negotiation points might be patents. If two giant companies want to cut a deal that involves their patent portfolios, nobody is going to go through and analyze every one of those patents to make sure they’re actually useful or original, Duan says, since analyzing a single patent thoroughly can cost thousands of dollars in legal fees. So instead of actually figuring out who has the more valuable patents, “the [company] with more patents ends up getting more. I’m not sure there’s honestly much more to it.”

Several people I spoke with for this story described patent strategy as “an arms race” in which businesses all want to amass as many patents as they can to protect themselves and bolster their position in these negotiations. “There’s not that many companies that are willing to engage in unilateral disarmament,”

[…]

While disarmament might be unlikely, many companies have chosen not to engage in the patent warfare at all. In fact, companies often don’t patent technologies they’re most interested in. A patent necessarily lays out how your product works, information that not all companies want to divulge. “We have essentially no patents in SpaceX,” Elon Musk told Chris Anderson at Wired. “Our primary long-term competition is in China. If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”

[…]

In most cases, once the inventors and engineers hand over their ideas and answer some questions, it’s the lawyer’s job to build those things out into an actual patent. And here is where a lot of the weirdness actually enters the picture, because the lawyer essentially has to get creative. “You dress up science fiction with words like ‘means for processing’ or ‘data storage device,’ ” says Mullin.

As distrust of technology corporations mounts, the way we read patents has changed.

Even the actual language of the patents themselves can be misleading. It turns you actually can write fan fiction about your own invention in a patent. Patent applications can include what are called “prophetic examples,” which are descriptions of how the patent might work and how you might test it. Those prophetic examples can be as specific as you want, despite being completely fictional. Patents can legally describe a “46-year-old woman” who never existed and say that her “blood pressure is reduced within three hours” when that never actually happened. The only rule about prophetic examples is that they cannot be written in the past tense. Which means that when you’re reading a patent, the examples written in the present tense could be real or completely made up. There’s no way to know.

If this sounds confusing, it is, and not just to journalists trying to wade through these documents. Ouellette, who published a paper in Science about this problem recently, admitted that even she wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell whether experiments described in a patent had actually been conducted.

Some people might argue that these kinds of speculative patents are harmless fun, the result of a Kafkaesque kaleidoscope of capitalism, competition, and bureaucracy. But it’s worth thinking about how they can be misused, says Mullin. Companies that are issued vague patents can go after smaller entities and try to extract money from them. “It’s like beating your competitor over the head with a piece of science fiction you wrote,” he says.

Plus, everyday people can be misled about just how much to trust a company based on its patents. One study found that out of 100 patents cited in scientific articles or books that used only prophetic examples (in other words, had no actual data or evidence in them), 99 were inaccurately described as having been based on real data.

[…]

Stein says that recently he’s had companies bail on patents because they might be perceived as creepy. In fact, in one case, Stein says that the company even refiled a patent to avoid a PR headache.* As distrust of technology corporations mounts, the way we read patents has changed. “Everybody involved in the patent process is a technologist. … We don’t tend to step back and think, this could be perceived as something else by people who don’t trust us.” But people are increasingly unwilling to give massive tech companies the benefit of the doubt. This is why Google’s patent for a “Gaze tracking system” got pushback—do you really want Google to know exactly what you look at and for how long?

[…]

there is still real value in reading the patents that companies apply for—not because doing so will necessarily tell you what they’re actually going to make, but because they tell you what problems the company is trying to solve. “They’re indicative of what’s on the engineer’s mind,” says Duan. “They’re not going to make the cage, but it does tell you that they’re worried about worker safety.” Spotify probably won’t make its automatic parking finder, so you don’t have to pause your music in a parking garage while you hunt for a spot. But it does want to figure out how to reduce interruptions in your music consumption. So go forth and read patents. Just remember that they’re often equal parts real invention and sci-fi.

Source: Why do tech companies file so many weird patents?

That science fiction concepts can be patented is new for me. So you can whack companies around with patents that you thought of but didn’t implement. Sounds like a really good idea. Not.

YouTube is suing a Nebraska man the company says has blatantly abused its copyright takedown process. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act offers online platforms like YouTube legal protections if they promptly take down content flagged by copyright holders. However, this process can be abused—and boy did defendant Christopher L. Brady abuse it, according to YouTube’s legal complaint (pdf).

Brady allegedly made fraudulent takedown notices against YouTube videos from at least three well-known Minecraft streamers. In one case, Brady made two false claims against a YouTuber and then sent the user an anonymous message demanding a payment of $150 by PayPal—or $75 in bitcoin.

“If you decide not to pay us, we will file a 3rd strike,” the message said. When a YouTube user receives a third copyright strike, the YouTuber’s account gets terminated.

A second target was ordered to pay $300 by PayPal or $200 in Bitcoin to avoid a third fraudulent copyright strike.

A third incident was arguably even more egregious. According to YouTube, Brady filed several fraudulent copyright notices against another YouTuber with whom he was “engaged in some sort of online dispute.” The YouTuber responded with a formal counter-notice stating that the content wasn’t infringing—a move that allows the content to be reinstated. However, the law requires the person filing the counter-notice to provide his or her real-world name and address—information that’s passed along to the person who filed the takedown request.

This contact information is supposed to enable a legitimate copyright holder to file an infringement lawsuit in court. But YouTube says Brady had another idea. A few days after filing a counter-notice, the targeted YouTuber “announced via Twitter that he had been the victim of a swatting scheme.” Swatting, YouTube notes, “is the act of making a bogus call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.”

YouTube doesn’t provide hard proof that Brady was responsible for the swatting call, stating only that it “appears” he was responsible based on the sequence of events. But YouTube says it does have compelling evidence that Brady was responsible for the fraudulent takedown notices. And fraudulent takedown notices are themselves against the law.

Section 512(f) of the DMCA says that anyone who “knowingly materially misrepresents” that content is infringing in a takedown notice is liable for costs they impose on both accused infringers and platform owners. While this law has been on the books for more than 20 years, it has rarely been used because most misrepresentations have not been blatant enough to trigger legal liability.

For example, Ars covered the decade-long fight over a “dancing baby” video that happened to have a few seconds of Prince music playing in the background. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that the music was clearly allowed under copyright’s fair use doctrine—and that Universal Music should be held liable for submitting a takedown request anyway. A 2016 appeals court ruling made it clear that music labels had some obligation to consider fair use before issuing takedown requests, but the court set the bar so low that the targets of bogus takedowns have little hope of actually collecting damages.

Source: Man sued for using bogus YouTube takedowns to get address for swatting | Ars Technica

Going forward, copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of music via YouTube’s “Manual Claiming” tool. Instead, they can choose to prevent the other party from monetizing the video or they can block the content. However, YouTube expects that by removing the option to monetize these sorts of videos themselves, some copyright holders will instead just leave them alone.

“One concerning trend we’ve seen is aggressive manual claiming of very short music clips used in monetized videos. These claims can feel particularly unfair, as they transfer all revenue from the creator to the claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed,” explained YouTube in a blog post.

To be clear, the changes only involve YouTube’s Manual Claiming tool which is not how the majority of copyright violations are handled today. Instead, the majority of claims are created through YouTube’s Content ID match system. This system scans videos uploaded to YouTube against a database of files submitted to the site by copyright owners. Then, when a match is found, the copyright holder owner can choose to block the video or monetize it themselves, and track the video’s viewership stats.

The Manual Claiming tool, on the other hand, is only offered to partners who understand how Content ID works. It allows them to search through publicly available YouTube videos to look for those containing their content and apply a claim when a match is found.

The problem with the Manual Claiming policy is that it was impacting creator content even when the use of the claimed music in videos was very short — even a second long — or unintentional. For example, a creator who was vlogging may have walked past a store that was playing the copyrighted song, but then could lose the revenue from their video as a result.

In April, YouTube said it was looking to address this problem. And just ahead of this year’s VidCon, YouTube announced several well-received changes to the Manual Claiming Policy. It began to require that copyright owners specify the timestamp in the video where the claim occurs — a change that YouTube hoped would create additional friction and cut down on abuse.

Creators were also given tools of their own that let them easily remove the clip or replace the infringing content with free-to-use tracks.

These newly announced changes go even further as they remove the ability for the copyright owner to monetize the infringing video at all. Copyright holders can now only prevent the creators themselves from monetizing the video, or they can block the content. However, given the new creator tools for handling infringing content, it’s likely that creators in those situations would just address the problem content in order to keep their video online.

Source: YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyright claims to steal creator revenue | TechCrunch

This piece shows you how insane the copyright system is (if you walk past a shop playing some music you can consider it an infringement!) and how the large music maffia can muscle out small players – just calling something an infringement leads to a kafka-esque system where you can’t appeal easily. It’s a good thing that this muscling is now no longer easy to do and so automated.

In July, members of the federal Senate Judiciary Committee chose to move forward with a bill targeting copyright abuse with a more streamlined way to collect damages, but critics say that it could still allow big online players to push smaller ones around—and even into bankruptcy.

Known as the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (or CASE) Act, the bill was reintroduced in the House and Senate this spring by a roster of bipartisan lawmakers, with endorsements from such groups as the Copyright Alliance and the Graphic Artists’ Guild.

Under the bill, the U.S. Copyright Office would establish a new ‘small claims-style’ system for seeking damages, overseen by a three-person Copyright Claims Board. Owners of digital content who see that content used without permission would be able to file a claim for damages up to $15,000 for each work infringed, and $30,000 in total, if they registered their content with the Copyright Office, or half those amounts if they did not.

Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, and the Authors Alliance have opposed the bill, which such critics argue could also end up burdening individuals and small outfits, while potentially giving big companies and patent trolls a leg up.

[…]

In fact, in its present form, the bill establishes that content which is used without thinking does fall under the purview of the Copyright Claims Board—though reports of potential $15,000 fines for sharing memes are an obvious exaggeration.

According to the bill, “The Copyright Claims Board may not make any finding that, or consider whether, the infringement was committed willfully in making an award of statutory damages.” The Board would, however, be allowed to consider  “whether the infringer has agreed to cease or mitigate the infringing activity” when it comes to awarding statutory damages.

Ernesto Falcon argued in another EFF post last month that the bill would also present censorship risks, given that the current legal system for content “takedown” notices, as defined by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), is already abused.

Under the new, additional framework, Falcon wrote, “[An] Internet platform doesn’t have to honor the counter-notice by putting the posted material back online within 14 days. Already, some of the worst abuses of the DMCA occur with time-sensitive material, as even a false infringement notice can effectively censor that material for up to two weeks during a newsworthy event, for example.”

He continued, “The CASE Act would allow unscrupulous filers to extend that period by months, for a small filing fee.”

Source: CASE Act Tackles Online Copyright Abuse, But Critics Call The Cost Too High

One of the former attorneys behind dodgy copyright-demand factory Prenda Law has been sentenced to 60 months in prison. Yes, the same Prenda Law that seeded file-sharing networks with smut flicks it owned the rights to in order to extract eye-watering copyright infringement settlements from downloaders.

Judge Joan Ericksen, of a US federal district court in Minnesota, on Tuesday this week handed down the five-year term, along with two years of supervised release and a $1,541,527.37 restitution bill, after Steele copped to one count each of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. While technically given two 60-month sentences, Steele, 48, is being allowed to serve both terms at the same time.

Steele, who has since been disbarred, admitted that from 2011 to 2014 he and co-conspirator Paul Hansmeier, operating as Prenda Law, set up a series of shell companies and studios that either purchased the rights to existing pornographic films or funded the making of original films with the intent of anonymously sticking the dirty movies on the Pirate Bay.

The duo then tracked down people who had downloaded the films and threatened them with copyright infringement suits unless the target agreed to pay out a $3,000 settlement. When the piracy scam started to flounder, the pair took things a step further by accusing targets of hacking their shell companies’ machines.

“To facilitate their phony ‘hacking’ lawsuits, the defendants recruited individuals who had been caught downloading pornography from a file-sharing website, to act as ruse ‘defendants’,” US prosecutors noted.

“These ruse defendants agreed to be sued and permit Steele and Hansmeier to conduct early discovery against their supposed ‘co-conspirators’ in exchange for Steele and Hansmeier waiving their settlement fees.”

Both lawyers would eventually be found out, and charged with fraud and money laundering for their roles in the scheme. By the time the operation was dismantled, it is estimated the duo was able to extort nearly $3m in payouts from randy web-surfers.

While five years behind bars can hardly be considered a slap on the wrist, Steele’s willingness to cooperate with authorities allowed him to win a considerably lighter term than his co-conspirator 37-year-old Hansmeier, who last month was sentenced to 14 years incarceration for convictions on the same set of charges. ®

Source: Prenda Law boss John Steele to miss 2020 Olympics… unless they show it in prison • The Register

YouTube, under fire since inception for building a business on other people’s copyrights and in recent years for its vacillating policies on irredeemable content, recently decided it no longer wants to host instructional hacking videos.

The written policy first appears in the Internet Wayback Machine’s archive of web history in an April 5, 2019 snapshot. It forbids: “Instructional hacking and phishing: Showing users how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data.”

Lack of clarity about the permissibility of cybersecurity-related content has been an issue for years. In the past, hacking videos in years past could be removed if enough viewers submitted reports objecting to them or if moderators found the videos violated other articulated policies.

Now that there’s a written rule, there’s renewed concern about how the policy is being applied.

Kody Kinzie, a security researcher and educator who posts hacking videos to YouTube’s Null Byte channel, on Tuesday said a video created for the US July 4th holiday to demonstrate launching fireworks over Wi-Fi couldn’t be uploaded because of the rule.

“I’m worried for everyone that teaches about infosec and tries to fill in the gaps for people who are learning,” he said via Twitter. “It is hard, often boring, and expensive to learn cybersecurity.”

In an email to The Register, Kinzie clarified that YouTube had problems with three previous videos, which got flagged and are either in the process of review or have already been appealed and restored. They involved Wi-Fi hacking. One of the Wi-Fi hacking videos got a strike on Tuesday and that disabled uploading for the account, preventing the fireworks video from going up.

The Register asked Google’s YouTube for comment but we’ve not heard back.

Security professionals find the policy questionable. “Very simply, hacking is not a derogatory term and shouldn’t be used in a policy about what content is acceptable,” said Tim Erlin, VP of product management and strategy at cybersecurity biz Tripwire, in an email to The Register.

“Google’s intention here might be laudable, but the result is likely to stifle valuable information sharing in the information security community.”

Source: YouTube mystery ban on hacking videos has content creators puzzled • The Register

China’s largest stock photo flinger has been forced to backtrack after it tried to put its own price tags on images of the first black hole and the Chinese flag.

Visual China Group reportedly tried to hawk out the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole and its shadow, which was the painstaking work of boffins running the Event Horizon Telescope.

The website is reported to have tried to suck users into payment, describing the picture, on which it affixed its logo, as an “editorial image” and directed users to dial a customer rep to discuss commercial use.

According to Reuters, the firm said it had obtained a non-exclusive editing licence for the project for media use – but it was widely understood the images were released under a Creative Commons licence, specifically CC BY 4.0.

The pic pushers were also said to have drawn criticism for asking for payment for images such as China’s flag and logos of companies including Baidu.

After the Tianjin city branch of China’s internet overseer stepped in, Visual China apologised and said that it would “learn from these lessons” and “seriously rectify” the problem.

Source: Hole lotta crud: Chinese stock photo pusher tries to claim copyright on Event Horizon pic • The Register

Copyright is such a brilliant system!