17 August 2009

Austrian Supreme Court holds that ISP is not obliged to provide copyright enforcer with file-sharing user’s data.

 

Austria’s Die Presse reports about a recent decision of the Austrian Supreme Court (4 Ob 41/09x), according to which the

File-Sharing User’s Right of Privacy Has a Higher Priority

than a copyright enforcer’s right of information.

The Supreme Court had to deal with a case where a collecting society requested an ISP to disclose the personal data of a file-sharing user, whose IP address the collecting society had already obtained.

By so deciding

The Supreme Court Overruled the Lower Instances

which found the defendant ISP liable to provide the claimant collecting society with the requested information.

The decision is considered to have a certain signalling effect.

25 July 2009

British ISP disonnects customers for file-sharing suspicion

IMG_5139photo © 2004 Guenter Mandl | more info (via: Wylio)

 

The Khoisan word Karoo refers to a semi-desert region of South Africa.

According to the information BBC brought yesterday, the British ISP landscape is threatened by a sort of

Desertification

Karoo, a local internet service provider based in north eastern England intends to adopt a

Three Strikes

rule, in which suspected file-sharers will receive three written warnings prior to disconnecting them from the internet.

By doing so the ISP hopes to comply with “copyrights holders’ expectations” in terms of customers treatment.
Quit interesting what the customer reaction will be.

7 May 2009

No three-strikes out – EU Parliament rejects Sarkozy’s plan

Berkman strikephoto © 2006 Michael Glasgow | more info (via: Wylio)

Do you rememeber Mr Sarkozy’s “three-strikes and you are out plan to fight file-sharers?

The intention of the french presidency was to use the reform of the EU telecommunications regulatory framework to insert provisions restricting the internet access of users engaged in copyright infringement. The plan aimed to primarily fight the use of P2P file-sharing platforms. Fortunately for file-sharers, because the plan is unlikely to be realized as the EU Parliament amended an informal agreement previously reached with the EU Council.

I personally have an understanding for the entertainment industry’s attepmts to achieve protection for its content in the digital era. It is also true that the internet constitutes an obstacle regarding the detection of and the law enforcemenet against copyright infringers. The internet service providers thus appear to be the convinient victim as they can barely run and/or hide.

On the other hand the entertainment industry must acknowledge that many users, due to several reasons, are more than limited in their efforts to lawfully access content. The infinging one remains then the only possibility they have in today’s entertainment coined society. That is why these users neither understand nor support the measures undertaken by the industry.

In my view, the industry should reconsider its current business models for content dissemination and attept to create new ones. This could be the path leading to reconcilliation with the users, not the “three-strikes” model.

10 April 2009

Catch the Ipredator if you can

Ipredator setupphoto © 2009 Espen Klem | more info (via: Wylio)

The music and entertainment industry representatives have very often during the, say, last decade set up the theory that the growth of broadband internet access has a causal connection with the more and more increasing

File Sharing

Some recent developments demonstrate the falling internet traffic in Sweden following a more rigid legislation in the course of IP rights enforcement, obviously dictated by the trial against the Pirate Bay.

The operators of the Pirate Bay have thus decided to technically enable an anonymity service for their users, called

Ipredator

The idea behind the Ipreadtor is not to log the users’ data in order not be obliged to provide right holders therewith. I am wondering as to whether this act does not conflict with the general obligation to retain communication related data imposed by the Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC.

But even assuming the prevailing provisions of the Directive, a further maybe much more interesting question arises: does an alleged copyright infringement constitute a

Serious Crime

in the sense of the Directive, which would entitle law enforcement agencies to process user related information on the grounds of the Directive?

24 March 2009

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch or the clash between YouTube and Warner Music

YouTube and its “broadcast yourself” is such a nice thing, isn’t it? One can view and listen to different content, either user generated and implicitly licensed or copyrighted and allegedly infringed, but in any case free of charge.
Many of the readers, however, will know that communicating a work of copyright to the public represents an exclusive right of the author of the work or of the respective copyright holder, such as a record label.

But how many of the users willing to broadcast them selves to the world at large have considered a possible copyright infingement prior to upload their videos showing them singing a Christmas song, providing tips and tricks with regard to a dificult piece of music or even dancing to a song hearable from the background? Appearantly very few…

The New York Times reports on the ongoing disputes between YouTube and Warner Music, meanwhile leading to removals of copyrighted material or to setting said material mute in order not to infringe the copyrights in dispute.

No doubt, Warner have a just cause to protect their rights. Nevertheless they will have a serious issue to deal with, as any omission of theirs to undertake appropriate protective measurements could be interpreted as a weakness. On the other hand Warner are about to disgruntle their customers, for what the customers might respond on a tit-for-tat basis and punish Warner by boycotting their content.

Anyway an interesting case, where the last word has not yet been spoken.

20 February 2009

How to kill a headless snake or about the prosecutor’s troubles with Pirate Bay

Apoyando a The Pirate Bayphoto © 2009 Enrique Dans | more info (via: Wylio)

 

No doubt, copyright infringement is a serious thing. And whether Pirate Bay’s torrent technology infringes copyright in digital works is currently to be decided by a Swedish court.

No doubt, many of you know or are aware of Pirate Bay, but maybe also of other possibilities to download and upload digital works.
Unlike other technologies, the Pirate Bay does not host any content itself but acts as a search engine for video and audio information held on users’ computers.
Thus, it has so far successfully dodged lawsuits for a number of years, arguing that it is a not-for-profit site. Unlike Napster and other file-sharing sites like Kazaa (which both now sell music legitimately after being on the end of a string of lawsuits), the Pirate Bay does not have a central hub that can be closed down. Besides, the Pirate Bay does not have a typical hierarchy structure and this is about to become the prosecution’s nightmare.

As the present case has the potential to get a leading one in the course of (authorised) copyright infringement, I secretly support the prosecution and hope it will not give up quickly allowing also the court to derive a sound ruling on that serious thing!

17 January 2009

Open source software licenses are not contracts

The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal District has recently resolved an uncertainty within US copyright law, namely whether open source licenses’ terms constitute a (copyright) “license” or  a mere  “contract”.

This may appear quite funny to a (European) civil lawyer as in his or her understanding the license is just one type of contract. However, this is not the case in the US.

Accordingly, the major difference between “licenses” and “contracts” lies in the realm of procedural law.
In a copyright infringement procedeeings the possibility to seek and obtain injunctive relief is available only if a license is affected, whereas this door is closed in the event of contract enforcement.

Although the authority in Jacobsen does not deal with GNU GPL, being the most important open source license, it is still very important as open source issues have so far not been settled before court.

One may remain curious as whether further authorities will follow.

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