copyrights

Walk the plank: Pirate Bay documentary now online

The names Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrik Neij might not mean much to the average person, but in the annals of Internet history, they will always be known as the co-founders of The Pirate Bay -- one of the most popular file-sharing hubs of all time.

Now you can view an 82-minute documentary titled "TPB AFK" (The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard), a film that chronicles the people behind the Pirate Bay attempting -- and failing -- to navigate past Swedish authorities who accused them of numerous copyright infringement charges.

The movie, released under a Creative Commons license and directed by Simon Klose, officially debuted for free today online and at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Here's the official synopsis from the "TPB AFK" Web site:… Read more

Want to unlock your phone? Fix the DMCA

This week, a new federal mandate kicked in that makes it illegal for you to unlock a phone that you bought locked from a carrier. The rule states that unauthorized unlocking of a phone you bought -- even if you paid full price for it, minus a carrier subsidy -- is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Specifically, it violates a portion of the law enacted in 2000 that makes it illegal to bypass technology designed to restrict access to a certain product. And that provision has bedeviled consumers, researchers, and lawyers for 12 years -- it's … Read more

Swartz didn't face prison until feds took over case, report says

State prosecutors who investigated the late Aaron Swartz had planned to let him off with a stern warning, but federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz took over and chose to make an example of the Internet activist, according to a report in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

Middlesex County's district attorney had planned no jail time, "with Swartz duly admonished and then returned to civil society to continue his pioneering electronic work in a less legally questionable manner," the report (alternate link) said. "Tragedy intervened when Ortiz's office took over the case to send 'a message.'"

The report … Read more

CBS claims Dish concealed AutoHop ad-skipping technology

CBS amended its lawsuit against Dish Network today, claiming the satellite TV provider misled the network about planned ad-skipping technology during contract negotiations in 2011.

The lawsuit is part of a legal battle between Dish and the major television networks that erupted last year over "AutoHop," which allows customers to skip commercials at the touch of a button. The networks, including CBS, which is the parent company of CNET News, contend that the technology threatens to undermine an industry that depends on advertising revenue to help cover the cost of their shows.

In its amended lawsuit, CBS accused … Read more

China center to tackle IP disputes

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will be establishing a digital dispute-resolution center to deal with disagreements over intellectual property and online copyright issues.

According to the Sina Tech news site yesterday, the plans had been unveiled at an annual meeting by the Internet Society of China and the Mediation Center Internet Legal Professionals held in Beijing last week.

The dispute-resolution center will be an arm of MIIT responsible for IP disputes, and will provide third-party mediation services and dispute-resolution services to technology companies involved in disputes.

If everything goes according to plan, the center is likely to … Read more

Senator disputes Aaron Swartz's SOPA, Protect IP role

Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, is taking issue with a description of how a discussion with one of his aides led the late Aaron Swartz to campaign against Hollywood-backed copyright bills.

At an event in San Francisco last weekend, Peter Eckersley, Swartz's former roommate and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's technology projects director, told an audience that the late activist created the advocacy group Demand Progress after a fruitless meeting with one of Leahy's aides.

Aaron Cooper, who works for Leahy -- the author of the Protect IP Act -- as the chief intellectual property … Read more

How Aaron Swartz helped to defeat Hollywood on SOPA

SAN FRANCISCO -- A fruitless Capitol Hill meeting to discuss digital copyright legislation prompted the late activist Aaron Swartz to launch the Demand Progress advocacy group, his former roommate said at a gathering here last weekend.

Swartz was so frustrated with congressional willingness to break the Internet on Hollywood's behalf that he created a group to channel online outrage into political activism, said Peter Eckersley, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's technology projects director.

Eckersley said Swartz had met with Aaron Cooper, who works for Protect IP author Patrick Leahy as the chief intellectual property counsel for the Senate Judiciary … Read more

After a year in the grave, can SOPA and Protect IP return?

It was one year ago today that an unprecedented outcry against the Stop Online Piracy Act proved to Washington officialdom that sufficiently irritated Internet users are a potent political force. After Wikipedia, Google, Craigslist and other major sites asked their users to contact their representatives, the deluge of traffic knocked some Senate Web sites offline, and votes on both bills were indefinitely postponed.

The massive public outcry that, by some counts, involved more than 10 million Internet users concerned about the proposals' impact on free expression has turned the protests into a cautionary tale on Capitol Hill. Aides now worry … Read more

Judge: News agencies shouldn't have used Twitter photos

A Manhattan judge has decided that news organizations can't publish photos they find on Twitter without permission, because the photos are protected by copyright, Reuters reported.

The judge determined that the AFP news agency and The Washington Post infringed on the copyrights of photographer Daniel Morel when they published photos he took and posted on Twitter after the Haiti earthquake in January 2010.

AFP had argued that because the images were on Twitter, they were publicly available, but District Judge Alison Nathan pointed to Twitter's terms of service, which do not give news organizations the ability to publish … Read more

Feds: MegaUpload was not entrapped

Entrapment is one of MegaUpload's claims in its legal battle against the U.S. government. The feds are now saying this claim is "baseless."

"Megaupload's allegations are baseless, as even a cursory review of Megaupload's pleading and the search warrant materials at issue disproves the allegation that the government misled the court as part of a conspiracy to entrap Megaupload," the government wrote in a Friday filing (PDF).

MegaUpload, which was founded by Kim DotCom, is the highest-profile service to be accused of criminal copyright violations by the U.S. government -- and … Read more