[mojo]

[Not exactly sure where to put this or if it should even be posted on this site. Let me float one out and we will see how it goes.]

Usenet Provider and BREIN Continue Battle Over Piracy Keyword Filter

This is an article over a court fight between the Dutch anticopyright organization called Brein (means brain in Dutch) and a Usenet provider. In it Brein is demanding that keywords be used to eliminate links to infringing material. News-Service.com has said doing so would be too expensive to do and it would have to shut down the service on the internet as a result. The court has issued a stay so that News-Service does not at this point have to initiate the keywords filter while it is being decided in court or to go dark in the internet. Of course Brein wants to say everyone else does it so it has to be done here.

I'd like to point out what is not being said by Brein. News-Service is not posting infringing content. It's users of the service are. This is a case where laws of a nation have carefully been picked as to where to take the case. In the US, this would not hold up in court and would be thrown out. Safe Harbor Law says the hoster of a service is not responsible for the uses of its' service by individuals outside the company.

Since the internet is global in reach, the decision of this court won't just be effective for this one country of The Netherlands but rather, every copyright holder globally will be able to send take down requests and expect News-Service to attend to them. Failure to do so, will have Brein back in court to see it upheld.

The problem News-Service says is it's not feasible to do this keyword filtering. For one thing they have a point. To illustrate it, I'd like to point to Google. Google receives something like 100,000 requests per hour to remove links from the search engine results. Google has the funds to hire a complete section of people to tend to this. This option is not available to smaller outfits.

Worse is there are no penalties for false claims for infringing links. When a mistake is made and caught, those sending in the links just say, "oh well" and continue to send in more links. But often the links are not to a single hyperlink but rather to a site address, meaning that if Google were to ok this request, a site on the internet would just disappear from search results, which is not the purpose for the DMCA law in the US, which similar laws have been inserted into trade treaties signed by other countries to observe. One of the purposes is not to remove sites from search engine results but rather to remove results from that one link.

These submissions are by large not done by human hands but rather by bots that crawl the internet looking for infringing content. The programming of many bots make some serious mistakes, such as using keywords that have sites show up that have nothing to do with infringement. The source site for this article is one such that is often taken off line even though they host no infringement links at all but rather discuss the issues surrounding copyright and it's results to the internet in general.

What becomes a rib tickler at times is the bots will list legal authorized sites such as the home page of one of the labels, studios, or a site for purchasing such digital goods. So mistakes are made and they are not that rare. Google often refuses to take a mistaken link down. This is a chancy move in the US as it opens the company that fails to take a link down on request to the same penalties as the infringer if the infringer is taken to court and found guilty. Those Google refuses to remove are most probably checked over by a legal department before refusal as the owners of the bots do not take Google to court over refusing to remove links. Especially when it is one of the official authorized site links where a mistake has been made.

[SEO]

It's in the right board. Internet related: Google, search results, Usenet, DMCA, links, bots... 100% to the right place. 

[Gay]

It's a very suitable thread for here.

Google receives something like 100,000 requests per hour to remove links from the search engine results.

Wow-wow! It's like 1666~1667 per minute and 277~278 per second!

[MSL]

 This makes me think that it will be perfect, if the laws are the same in every country.

[mojo]

It's like 1666~1667 per minute and 277~278 per second!

At one time a year or two after the DMCA law came into effect, no one was sending in take downs. Google was receiving less than 10 a month. The RIAA went to Congress demanding a new law to assist in dealing with piracy. Google got that attempt nullified by stating they didn't need new laws when they weren't using the one's they had.

After that point, slowly at first new requests started being made to remove content from search results. Then about two months before the negotiations for the SOPA started, suddenly the requests started ramping up. I thought at the time they would use the ramp up action as confirmation they needed a new method to deal with piracy.

For all the foo-faw-raa over piracy, it is not hurting the copyright industry as much as they would like to present to the public and to law makers. Lacking one or two years, every year has been a banner box office year of record profits for the movie industry. Yet when the month passes that they no longer have to present actual numbers to their stock holders, suddenly we are back to piracy is killing the copyright industry. It's a statistics game and little else, where there are falsehoods, lies, and damn lies.

As an example of these look at Star Wars. Actor David Prowse, who played the part of Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi, as the one who actually wore the costume, has not been paid royalties from the movie. After being the 15^th highest grossing movie of all time. David has went public with the funny money accounting and has since received the cold shoulder from Hollywood over it.

My last point in all this, is that several independent research papers have turned up that the ones that copyright enforcers are wanting to sue over infringement as pirates are often their very best customers, being more intimately involved and willing to spend more money on legal purchases than the more causal fan. So suing pirates is one, a black hole for money in court matters and a nonstarter for damaging the appeal of their products.

[PageRank]

Which method to deal with the piracy do you think is the best?

[mojo]

What those in these industries don't want to do. They will have to be dragged into the modern age, kicking and screaming all the way.

The major reasons for piracy as I see it, are lack of availability and lack of reasonable pricing.

On  the lack of availability, look at places like Hulu and Netflix. Both are available on the net but have denied global access. If you run a VPN to appear to be within the US they will no longer allow you to connect. It's not available in their home countries or they would not be showing up there. Another tactic that is tried to address this by the industry is to claim these latest greatest are on line and available but fail to mention they are not all at the same site. In order to get access you must be a paying member to that particular site. So when you go  to look at how much it is going to cost you for access to these various sites you start adding up $20 here and $15 there, next thing you know you're looking at 20 different sites costs just for access and then not talking about the rental or viewing fee.

World release windows are not a product that is supported by the internet  nativity. Take Australia as an example of a place where they are last on the geo-release window plan. A particular show may show up a year later after release, or a couple of years later, or not at all.

My point being that those showing up at legal places to purchase can't get access to do so. If a movie or a song hasn't been released yet in their area, they can't buy it for love nor money.

On the lack of reasonable pricing. You're talking digital download when it comes to the internet. To get a copy doesn't require the hosting site to create a new copy just for you. Once a copy is made, there is no reproduction costs. When you see the break down on charges for digital, where was the jewel case that money was reserved for paying for in the digital download? Where's the cost of transportation and warehousing fit in? All of these items and many more are in the break down of supposedly why say a movie costs what it does digitally. Most of them are hog wash. We are no longer in the age of needing to buy a container to hold the item, such as a DVD jewel case or the cost of printing a label for it. You don't need to buy say a cassette to obtain the music on. Basically digital is containerless with you supplying the container on a hard drive.

[Gay]

I understand your point. Very good answer. I didn't know that about Australia. You're so right about the digital!

[MSL]

 This

lack of availability and lack of reasonable pricing

is also my point, but I developed it in another way giving example with the cinema tickets in the 80's, when I watched some films 10+ times!
 Now the pricing is (in so many cases) not very reasonable and the availability is also a problem (which is already a different sort of problem, depending on what we're searching for).