copyright

YouTube-Viacom lawsuit looms over antipiracy plans

Three days after Google released its copyright-filtering technology for YouTube, the major studios have announced an alliance and guidelines of their own. It's all well and good, but things will remain in limbo until Google settles its copyright lawsuit with Viacom.

Given that Google's YouTube is the most popular viral video site on the Internet, the absence of Google from the alliance is significant. Until that lawsuit is resolved and Google and all media companies are aligned, the solution is theoretical.

"Keep your eye on the billion-dollar lawsuit at Viacom," says Josh Bernoff, a Forrester Research … Read more

U.S. wants end to Allofmp3 spinoffs

WASHINGTON--Allofmp3.com, the controversial Russian online music store, may be effectively dead for now, especially if its sprawling mother country has any hopes of joining the World Trade Organization any time soon.

But Russia's allegedly lackluster copyright enforcement and the rise of successor services like Alltunes.com continue to rattle U.S. politicians and bureaucrats.

The nation does not yet meet "international standards" in its intellectual property laws, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) said at a hearing about international piracy convened here Thursday by a U.S. House of Representatives intellectual property subcommittee, which he leads.

In addition … Read more

Web Sheriff: YouTube's copyright filters aren't good enough

YouTube can't guarantee that its new filtering system will catch every case of piracy. But one company says it can help plug the hole.

Web Sheriff, the British company hired by performers such as Prince and the Village People to protect their music from Web piracy, is now branching into a new service on the heels of Monday's announcement by YouTube.

The juggernaut video-sharing site owned by Google rolled out a long-awaited filtering technology that's designed to automatically detect whether a piece of digital video uploaded to the site is pirated or not.

Here's the rub: … Read more

Episode 585: We love you, too

… Read more

RIAA threatens 19 universities with lawsuits

Updated at 12:03 p.m. PDT: Just in time to welcome many students back from fall break, the Recording Industry Association of America on Thursday dispatched a new round of "prelitigation" letters to 19 U.S. universities from coast to coast, alleging that campus networks are being used to commit copyright infringement.

For those keeping score at home, this marks the ninth time the RIAA has launched such an initiative.

As usual, each of the 411 letters reveals that a student or employee of the school is about to be sued for copyright infringement. The letters also … Read more

Studios unveil their copyright protection guidelines

Updated 12:30 p.m. PT

A coalition of major media and technology companies that notably does not include Google appears to be getting serious about copyright on the Internet.

A who's who of media companies--CBS, News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Disney--as well as Microsoft and the News Corp.-owned MySpace, along with video-sharing sites Dailymotion and Veoh Networks released a set of guidelines Thursday designed to halt online piracy.

Notably absent from the list is Google, which unveiled filtering technology for its YouTube video-sharing site on Monday. Sources familiar with the coalition plan … Read more

Report: Antipiracy coalition of big media, tech on the way

The announcement has been made--read CNET News.com's full coverage here.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that an impressive cast of major media and technology companies plans to announce a high-profile list of joint guidelines for preserving copyright and fighting piracy online. Sources told The Journal that the companies involved include media moguls CBS Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox (and its MySpace social network), Viacom, and Disney, as well as tech icon Microsoft and French video-sharing site DailyMotion.

It's unclear whether these are the only parties involved in the deal. Inquiries to several of … Read more

Report: Entire 'Daily Show' going online

About 13,000 video clips comprising the entirety of Comedy Central's fake-news program, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart will be hitting the its official Web site later in the day, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday morning.

They won't be full episodes, but rather short clips of segments from the program; the more individual files there are, after all, means that there are more opportunities for Comedy Central to insert advertisements. "Designers have been experimenting with ads that appear for two or three seconds at the start of a clip, recede, then emerge briefly from a … Read more

Are universities protecting students from the RIAA?

As I wrote earlier this week, the Recording Industry Association of America has now expanded its campaign against illicit file-sharing to students at George Washington University.

One thing I noticed when reading through the court documents is how sluggish the RIAA's attorneys and its MediaSentry contractor have been in filing these lawsuits. Even though the complaint was filed on September 19, this excerpt lists IP addresses in use as long ago as February:

Doe # 1 IP Address: 128.164.100.11 2007-02-02 05:59:17 EST Doe # 2 IP Address: 128.164.100.11 2007-03-05 04:29:42 EST … Read more