Falkvinge: Private Communications or Mass Corporate Surveillance, Pick One

In his most recent column for Torrent Freak, Richard Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, argues that we have a simple choice before us. We can opt for retaining some semblance of private correspondence and communication that is outside the scope of government and corporate surveillance, or we can acquiesce to the demands of the entertainment industry.  Excerpt:

There is no way to enforce the copyright monopoly without reading all the private communications in transit – mass eavesdropping and mass surveillance. There is no magic way to just wiretap the violations and ignore the rest; the act of finding which communications may violate the copyright monopoly requires that you sort all correspondence into legal and illegal. The act of sorting requires observation; you cannot determine if something is legal or illegal without looking at it. At that point, the postal secret and the privacy of correspondence have been broken . . .

So we’re at a crossroads where we as a society must determine which is more important – the right to communicate in private at all, or the obsolete distribution and manufacturing monopoly of an entertainment industry. These two are completely mutually exclusive and cannot coexist. This is, and has been, the problem since the cassette tape.

Wikileaks Obtains Draft Text of TPP Copyright Agreement

From the Guardian:

WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations.

The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties.

Negotiations for the TPP have included representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei, but have been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision.

RIAA Complaint Demonstrates Their Incomprehension of Technologies They Oppose

Really, laugh out loud.  From Torrent Freak:

The RIAA alerted the U.S. Government to several notorious pirate websites this week, including The Pirate Bay. While the inclusion of the infamous torrent site doesn’t come as a surprise, the RIAA did raise a novel issue. The music labels point out that The Pirate Bay has embraced the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which they believe makes it harder to seize and trace the site’s funds. While the former is certainly true, a quick look at TPB’s Bitcoin wallet easily reveals where the donation money is being spent.

Spain to Criminalize Linking

Coming off a recent proposal to tax sunlight, the government of Spain appears to be on a roll, and is poised to criminalize linking to allegedly infringing copyrighted content.  From ZDNet:

Spain is introducing tough new penalties for owners of websites that link to pirated versions of copyrighted material, after pressure from the US over its piracy record.

Under new legislation introduced as part of a wider reform of the country's penal code, owners of sites found to be making money from linking to pirated material will face prison sentences of up to six years and the closure of their site.

Copyright Extremists Seek Censored Search

Copyright extremists and their lobbying organizations such as the MPAA and the RIAA are at it again.  From Tech Dirt:

Remember how back after SOPA ended, the MPAA's Chris Dodd kept going on and on about how he was going to take a more conciliatory and partnership-based approach to the tech industry (which he mistakenly seems to believe is defined by "Google")? Apparently that's out the window. Today both the MPAA and the RIAA have launched a one-two punch on Google, which is clearly designed to do one thing: get Google to start censoring its search results so that it no longer returns what people are looking for, but instead returns what the MPAA and RIAA think should be the right search results. The fundamental problem, of course, is that the MPAA and RIAA both seem to think that Google is supposed to deliver the answers they want the public to see, when everyone else recognizes Google's role is to return the results its users are searching for.

Irony Alert: Microsoft Asks Google to Remove Links to their Own Website

From Torrent Freak:

Earlier this week we reported that Google has already received takedown requests for more than 100 million URLs this year.  While most of the submitted URLs do indeed link to infringing content, not all requests received by Google are correct.

The automated systems used by many of the copyright holders often trigger notices that include links to perfectly legitimate content, and sometimes even their own work. The latter happened in a recent DMCA takedown request sent by LeakID on behalf of Microsoft. Instead of listing URLs of infringing material, Microsoft asked Google to remove links to their own websites . . .

Tech Companies Debunk Claims of Copyright Trolls

From Torrent Freak:

On Thursday the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet organized a hearing on the role of copyright as a driver of innovation in the United States . . . 

The CCIA, which includes members such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook, submitted a statement debunking what they see as copyright industry propaganda. The tech industry association explains that tougher copyright can actually hinder innovation.

“Arguments that ever stronger regulation incentivizes innovation overlook the ways in which excessive protection can inhibit innovation,” the CCIA writes.

“Every year that a work is covered by a copyright is a year that subsequent users cannot build on that work. While incremental protection may provide additional reward to the author, society pays for this reward by being deprived of follow-on use, while the author and his or her heirs accumulate profits.”

“For this reason, protection exceeding the amount necessary to incentivize innovation represents a dead weight loss to the economy” . . .

Washington Post Pretends Legislative Process Is Not Dominated by Special Interests

The United States federal government is today a wholly owned subsidiary of a handful of powerful corporations.  These corporations own our so-called "elected representatives" and write our laws. Things do not have to be this way, but unfortunately, barring a popular insurrection, things are very unlikely to change anytime in the near future.  From the Washington Post:

Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has vowed to conduct a comprehensive review of our nation’s copyright laws to determine whether they are “still working in a digital age.” That’s a long overdue task. But there’s a danger that the process will be dominated by a handful of special interest groups that have long been reflexively hostile to technological progress [emphasis added].

Last year’s defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) caused industry groups to intensify their lobbying efforts. And they haven’t been subtle about it. In the wake of the SOPA defeat, Motion Picture Association of America chairman Christopher Dodd warned legislators: “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.” . . . 

There's a danger that the process will be dominated by a handful of special interest groups?  What planet is this author from?  It is a veritable certainty that any such process in the US Congress is dominated by a handful of special interest groups.  Pretending otherwise is certainly not helpful.  

Court: You Cannot Sell Your MP3s

From the BBC:

A company which allowed customers to resell their digital music "second hand" breached copyright, a US judge has ruled.  ReDigi billed itself as the first legal way to resell music bought online - but soon provoked the ire of record labels.  It was sued by Capitol Records in January 2012, and on Monday a New York judge said ReDigi was making unauthorised copies of music.

The ruling could have broad implications for digital reselling.  Unlike physical music CDs, Judge Richard Sullivan ruled that the "first sale doctrine" did not apply.  The doctrine is a long-established rule which allows the reselling of goods to a new owner. In other words, selling a CD once you no longer want it.
But in the digital world, where duplication is much easier, the first sale doctrine was not appropriate, the judge said.  "It is simply impossible that the same 'material object' can be transferred over the internet," he wrote in his ruling.