Tag: internetkrigen

Hur har ACTA förhandlats fram?

EDRi har publicerat fyra dokument som belyser hur förhandlingarna har framskridit och problemen EU har haft med de amerikanska positionerna.

ACTA: European Commission negotiation failures | EDRI

De förklarar även vad kommissionen har bett om och vad man fick:

What the EC asked for: What the EC got:
Transparency Some transparency for US companies, but nothing meaningful for European citizens and businesses.
Transparency EU Presidency actively choosing not to brief EU Member States.
No mandatory enforcement of intellectual property law by ISPs Mandatory obligations on states party to ACTA to encourage enforcement of intellectual property law by ISPs.
No change to substantive copyright law A further complication of EU law on copyright exceptions and limitations.
Prioritisation of health and safety issues in international cooperation Nothing.
Adequate environmental protection in the disposal of seized material A “safeguard” which creates no change to the status quo. In essence, nothing
Definitions of key terms in ACTA Nothing
Protection for geographical indications Nothing

Dokumenten visar dessutom hur kommissionen och EU-presidenten har vilselett parlamentet och EUs medborgare.

Amerikanska juridukprofessorer ifrågasätter ACTA-processen i USA

Law Professor Letter to Senate Finance Committee

Dear Members of the United States Senate Committee on Finance:

We write as legal academics with expertise in Constitutional, international, and intellectual property law to encourage you to exercise your Constitutional responsibility to ensure that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is submitted to the Senate for approval as an Article II treaty, or to the Congress as an ex post Congressional-Executive Agreement. It is our studied opinion that the administration has failed to identify ex ante authorization of ACTA by Congress, and that these are thus the only Constitutional bases for U.S. entry into ACTA. It is clear that other ACTA negotiating parties – including the EU, Australia, Mexico, and others—are treating ACTA as a binding international agreement requiring legislative ratification under constitutional standards similar to our own. We encourage you to demand the same element of public process in our own country.

De som skriver under det öppna brevet har stora problem med hur processen för ACTA har skötts i USA och hävdar att det är kongressen som måste besluta om detta och att det inte är ett vanligt handelsavtal. Den exekutiva delen av staten (presidenten) har enligt dem inte mandat att förhandla fram och skriva under ett så omfattande avtal.

Remedying this state of affairs is uniquely within Congress’s province. Congress, and specifically the Senate, as the Constitutionally recognized chamber with responsibilities for the approval of treaties, should secure from the Administration a public pledge to send ACTA to the Senate as a treaty, or to the Congress as an ex post Congressional-Executive Agreement. Absent a pledge to this effect, we encourage the Committee to hold hearings and to pass legislation that would prevent the United States from binding itself to ACTA without express Congressional consent.

Brevet är underskrivet av 53 personer kopplade till allt från Yale till University of Oregon och alla däremellan.

Storskalig attack mot bittorrent trafiken?

Cert.pl rapporterar att det finns en stor mängd trafik via μTorrent-nätverket: CERT Polska » An Anomaly in the μTorrent network

En stor mängd av trafiken verkar vara felaktig, något som kan användas för att störa riktig trafik.

De har även lite funderingar på om denna aktivitet är laglig:

Anomaly through it’s nature (large share in daily network traffic) produces visible disruption in IT systems and large amount of our false-positive high-level alerts is a good proof. In terms of Polish law, European Convention on Cybercrime and U.S. Codes (and probably many other sources of domestic law) legality of process producing the anomaly is questionable.

Den allmämna misstanken är att denna trafik, om den är medveten, kan härledas tillbaka till underhållningsindustrin, som står att vinna mest på om bittorrenttrafiken störs. Det som är intressant att fundera på är om man bör använda olagliga metoder för att, som privat organisation, bekämpa olaglig, och till viss del, laglig verksamhet…

sendthemyourmoney.com

Problemet:

The MPAA & RIAA claim that the internet is stealing billions of dollars worth of their property by sharing copies of files. They’re willing to destroy the internet with things like SOPA & PIPA in an attempt to collect that money.

Lösningen

Let’s just pay them the money! They’ve made it very clear that they consider digital copies to be just as valuable as the original. That makes it a lot easier to pay them back in two ways: a. We can email them scanned images of dollar bills instead of bulky paper and b. We don’t have to worry about the hassle of shipping huge quantities of cash.

Är det stöld att hoppa över tv-reklamen?

Det är seriöst en fråga som tv-bolagen funderar på att låta domstolarna ska ta ställning till:

TV Network Execs Contemplate Going To Court To Say Skipping Commercials Is Illegal | Techdirt

Late last week Charlie Ergen and the folks at Dish Networks presented the TV networks with a bit of a conundrum. You see, the company decided to actually give consumers what they want: setting up a special DVR system, called Auto Hop, that would let viewers not just automatically DVR the entire primetime lineup of all the major networks with the single push of a button — but also to automatically skip commercials when watching the playback, as long as it wasn’t the same day the shows aired.

Vi tar det en gång till:

fildelning. är. inte. stöld.
kopiering. av. en. digital. fil. är. inte. stöld.
att. inte. se på. en. reklamfilm. är. inte. stöld.

För att det ska vara stöld så måste den som blir bestulen förlora möjligheten att nyttja det stulna…

Fildelning är ett brott mot upphovsrätten och det är möjligen, men inte garanterat, en missad försäljning.

RIAA anser att limewire ska betala 75 000 miljarder i skadestånd

RIAA Thinks LimeWire Owes $75 Trillion in Damages | PCWorld

The music industry wants LimeWire to pay up to $75 trillion in damages after losing a copyright infringement claim. That’s right . . . $75 trillion. Manhattan federal Judge Kimba Wood has labeled this request “absurd.”

You’re telling me. To put that number into perspective (I bet a lot of you didn’t even know “trillion” was a real number), the U.S. GDP is around 14 trillion — less than one fifth of what the music industry is requesting. Heck, the GDP of the entire world is between 59 and 62 trillion. That’s right, the music industry wants LimeWire to pay more money than exists in the entire world.

Låt oss se nu, RIAA tycker alltså att Limewire ska betala 75 000 miljarder för fildelning av 11 000 musikfiler. USA har en BNP på ungefär 15 000 miljarder. 75 000 miljarder är mer än jordens all BNP tillsammans. RIAA har just bevisat att de inte bor på samma planet som oss andra…

Uppdatering: Det verkar som denna historia var mer än ett år gammal och stämningen förlikades med ett skadestånd på $105 miljoner. Jag hittade den först via en notis på Brooks review: RIAA Math — The Brooks Review, där länkades vidare till PC World artikeln jag har länkat till ovan och jag missade att den var daterad den 26 mars 2011. Mike Masnick har skrivit en bra artikel som verkar reda ut begreppen: No, The RIAA Is Not Asking For $72 Trillion From Limewire (Bad Reporters, Bad) | Techdirt

Anyway: basically this story is bogus. Well over a year ago, the RIAA made a ridiculous attempt to seek damages on every download. No specific amount was named, and no matter how you do your math, that $72 trillion number never made any sense at all. It was just a reporter looking for a good headline. Either way, the judge totally rejected that plan 15 months ago, and the entire case settled a year ago.

Album som läcks innan skivsläppet säljer bättre

New Study Says Leaked Albums From Popular Artists Lead To More Sales | Techdirt:

TorrentFreak alerts us* to an interesting new research paper from Robert Hammond, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, looking at the direct impact on sales when albums are leaked early online. The study is pretty thorough in trying to separate other factors and isolate the actual causal impact. It’s a bit of an extrapolation to claim that the study says “file sharing boosts music sales,” as I don’t think the paper actually goes that far. It seems to suggest, however, that for popular artists, having an album leaked appears to lead to a small, but significant, increase in sales. The impact is not seen for newer or less-well-known artists.

* BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds | TorrentFreak

93891327-Hammond-File-Sharing-Leak

För mycket upphovsrätt

Too Much Copyright: This Generation’s Prohibition | Techdirt

The Mickey Mouse curve: längden på upphovsrätt följer Musse Piggs ålder

Vartefter Musse Pigg har riskerat att inte vara upphovsrättsligt skyddad så har skyddstiden förlängts.

En kuggfråga: Hur många verk blev släppta från upphovsrättsligt skydd den 1 januari 2012 i USA?

Om man har skydd 70 år efter upphovsmannens död så borde ju en del verk komma över den gränsen varje nyår?

Svaret är 0 verk. Läs mer på sidan Public domain day.

What is entering the public domain in the United States? Nothing. Once again, we will have nothing to celebrate this January 1st. Not a single published work is entering the public domain this year. Or next year, or the year after that. In fact, in the United States, no publication will enter the public domain until 2019. And wherever in the world you live, you will likely have to wait a very long time for anything to reach the public domain. When the first copyright law was written in the United States, copyright lasted 14 years, renewable for another 14 years if the author wished. Jefferson or Madison could look at the books written by their contemporaries and confidently expect them to be in the public domain within a decade or two. Now? In the United States, as in most of the world, copyright lasts for the author’s lifetime, plus another 70 years. And we’ve changed the law so that every creative work is automatically copyrighted, even if the author does nothing.