Earlier this month Greenpeace released a new campaign in which it targets LEGO for promoting Shell on its toys.

The campaign video titled “Everything is NOT Awesome” is inspired by the popular “Everything is Awesome” song, a callback to the LEGO movie. The video shows LEGO figures drowning in oil with a cover of the song playing in the background.

Over the past several days more than three million people have watched the video on YouTube. However, a few hours ago the video suddenly became unavailable due to a copyright claim by Warner Bros.

Censored

TorrentFreak contacted Greenpeace who informed us that the email YouTube sent doesn’t clarify on what grounds the video was taken down. The group assumes that the use of the song is the culprit, but says it won’t let this case go without a fight.

“Our film was designed as a creative way of letting people know about the threat to the Arctic from Shell and the role LEGO has in the story. It seems to have struck a nerve with some important corporate bigwigs, but this crude attempt to silence dissent won’t work,” Greenpeace’s Ian Duff says.

Greenpeace will appeal the takedown request, a process that can take up to 10 days to complete. In the meantime the group has uploaded the video to Vimeo, along with a call to its millions of social media followers and mailing list subscribers to re-upload it elsewhere.

“We fully intend to challenge this claim, and we’re asking supporters to upload the video wherever they can,” Duff says.

In the appeal Greenpeace will argue that the video uses satire and parody and that it is in the public interest. The video should therefore be protected under the right to free speech.

This is not the first time that Greenpeace has had one of its campaign videos removed from YouTube. Previously a video featuring several Star Wars characters was taken down. The video was later reinstated after Greenpeace successfully appealed the takedown request.

Warner Bros’ motivation for the takedown remains unclear. It seems unlikely that it is an automated request since there are still more than 700 video on YouTube that use the same ‘Everything is Awesome’ song.

Whatever the reason may be, the takedown attempt will clearly backfire.

During the days to come the rift between Greenpeace and Warner Bros. will be widely covered by the media while hundreds of copies of the video will be uploaded and shared.

The censored campaign video

Update: The video is back online.

“18 hours later we’ve seen that the video has been re-instated. WB have withdrawn their complaint. It seems who ever wanted it censored has spotted the error in their ways,” Duff informs TorrentFreak.

Update 2: Warner Bros. now removed the video from Vimeo….

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Anyone running a user-generated content site needs to seriously consider the implications of its users uploading infringing material, because it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen on a very large scale indeed.

Once the world’s largest recording labels and movie studios see this happening, things can go bad quickly, unless certain preventative steps are taken. Bringing the business into line with the DMCA is a necessary first step, one which will see the hosting site respond to takedown notices in a timely fashion.

Other sites have gone a step further. As underlined by the MegaSong debacle, YouTube gives some big record labels the right to take down content they don’t like, even if there are no apparent copyright infringement issues. YouTube doesn’t appear to get involved much in the process either, leaving the labels to decide what goes and what does not.

Another company that headed down that route recently was SoundCloud. The audio upload site has been coming on in leaps and bounds over the past five years, in part due to the popular and sometimes illegal content uploaded by its users. Recently, however, it was revealed that not only had the company given Universal Music the ability to take down infringing content, but to do so without oversight.

YouTube allows the labels to do that because it struck a distribution deal with them, but why would Soundcloud follow suit? News today suggests that this particular question answers itself.

According to a Bloomberg, Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group are “closing in” on a deal with Soundcloud which will see the service obtain licenses to host and distribute content from these major labels.

An anonymous source familiar with the negotiations said that the deal will not only see the labels getting a share of future Soundcloud revenue, but Universal, Sony and Warner each picking up a 3% to 5% stake in the business.

On top of that and most importantly, Berlin-based Soundcloud will receive assurances that it won’t get sued, a valuable stability that US-rival Grooveshark is unlikely to enjoy anytime soon.

No one involved in the talks is speaking on the record, but sources suggest that the agreement would value Soundcloud between $500 million and $600 million, not bad for company that was nibbling at the heels of MySpace just five years ago.

The 200 employee company is definitely on the up. One year ago Soundcloud reported having 200 million unique users, but by November 2013 that had increased to 250 million.

A target of one billion users leaves Soundcloud with plenty to do, but with the threat of large-scale litigation off the table, the process will be much, much easier.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

There can be little doubt that Adobe products are a crowd pleaser among digital creatives. Designers love them, photographers and videographers do too, and Adobe’s Photoshop, Flash and Acrobat brands are recognized worldwide.

But while millions of people use Adobe’s premium products, not everyone pays for that privilege. Unauthorized Photoshop releases have been appearing on computers worldwide for 25 years and other Adobe products are regularly pirated close to their launch. Over time this has led Adobe to invest substantial sums of money on anti-piracy measures including DRM and even legal action. But there are other ways to deal with the problem.

In May last year and much to the disappoint of Adobe’s millions of pirate ‘customers’, the company announcemend that it would be changing the way it does business. Boxed products, a hangover from the last decade and earlier, would be phased out and replaced with a cloud-based subscription model.

On the one hand, many pirates heard the word “cloud” and associated that with a lack of local machine control, something that can cause issues when trying to run unlicensed software. Adobe, on the other hand, appeared to be looking at product development and the piracy problem from a different angle.

While attempts at hacking its cloud service would present another technical barrier to piracy, with its new offering the tech giant also looked towards making its product more affordable. A few dollars a month rather than $700 in one go was aimed at providing an economic reason for even the most budget-restricted not to pirate. But has the strategy worked?

According to new comments from Fabio Sambugaro, VP of Enterprise Latin America at Adobe, unauthorized use of the company’s products is definitely down since the cloud switch.

“Piracy has fallen,” Sambugaro says. “It’s hard to measure, but we’ve seen many companies seeking partnerships that in the past wouldn’t have done so.”

According to information released to investors last month, Adobe exited quarter two this year with 2,308,000 subscribers of its Creative Cloud service, an increase of 464,000 over the first quarter of 2014. The company attributed 53% of the company’s quarter two revenue to “recurring sources” such as its Creative and Marketing Cloud services.

So have the pirates given up on Adobe? In a word, no.

One only has to scour the indexes of the world’s most popular torrent sites to see that Photoshop, Photoshop Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere, Indesign, After Effects and Acrobat Pro all take prominent places in the charts of most-popular torrents. No surprise then that on The Pirate Bay, Photoshop CS6 – the last version of Photoshop before the cloud switch – is king of the software downloads by a long way.

Also, and contrary to fears aired by pirates alongside Adobe’s original strategy change announcement, the cloud has not made it impossible to run unauthorized versions of Photoshop CC 2014, for example. Expected functional restrictions aside, torrent sites have plenty of working copies of Creative Cloud releases, but is this necessarily a bad thing?

There are those who believe that some level of piracy is useful as a try-before-you-buy option on a traditionally expensive product such as Photoshop. But what makes this notion even more interesting today is that Adobe’s switch to the cloud – and its much lower price point for entry – may see people investing a few dollars a month for increased functionality and a simple life, instead of one spent jumping through hoops with an inferior and oftentimes awkward product.

And Adobe knows it.

“I do not think people who pirate our software do it because they are bad people, or because they like to steal things. I just think that they decided that they can not afford it,” said Adobe’s David Wadhwani previously.

“And now, with the switch to subscriptions and with the ability to offer software at a cheaper price, we see that the situation is beginning to change and we’re excited.”

Richard Atkinson, Corporate Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy, admitted last year that the company would move away from “enforcement-led anti piracy” to a “business-focused pirate-to-pay conversion program.”

If the company is to be believed, that is now paying off.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To most consumers it’s common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this is currently illegal.

Earlier this year the UK Intellectual Property Office proudly announced that these restrictions would be lifted this summer. After consulting various stakeholders the Government decided that it would be in the best interests of consumers to legalize copying for personal use.

“Copyright law is being changed to allow you to make personal copies of media you have bought, for private purposes such as format shifting or backup,” the UK’s Intellectual Property Office writes.

“The changes will mean that you will be able to copy a book or film you have purchased for one device onto another without infringing copyright.”

To communicate the changes to the public the Government released a consumer guide which stated the change would go into effect in June. However, when June came the most crucial changes were still pending Parliamentary approval.

What exactly delayed the process remains a mystery. Copyright lobbyists are likely to have become involved and late last month lawmakers were casting doubt over the entire plan.

According to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments (JCSI) it is not clear whether the private copying exceptions are allowed under EU law if there’s no “fair compensation” for copyright holders.

“Only a court, and ultimately the CJEU, can give an authoritative ruling on whether the [EU Copyright] Directive precludes the private copying exception provided for in [the copying for personal use draft legislation] without the inclusion of a compensation scheme for rightholders adversely affected by the exception,” JCSI notes.

The Government previously concluded that compensation wasn’t needed since the changes would not result in any significant harm to copyright holders. However, the JCSI mentions that there are several stakeholders who disagree with this assessment.

Yesterday the new copying exceptions were discussed during a general committee debate. The overall consensus was that the current copyright regulations are too restrictive as they run counter to what millions of people are already doing.

“By criminalizing format shifting, we are potentially criminalizing 20 million people around the country who probably think they can do that already,” said Mike Weatherley MP, who’s also the Prime Minister’s Intellectual Property Advisor.

This opinion was shared by John Whittingdale MP who told the debate about his personal experiences with the issue.

“A long time ago I started transferring music that I purchased on one antiquated format — vinyl records — on to another antiquated format — cassette tapes — which I then played in my car. I was technically in breach of copyright law. Subsequently, I moved into the new age and transferred CDs that I had bought on to my iPod. I was still in breach of copyright law,” Whittingdale said.

This admission of criminality was met with laughter from the other lawmakers, which was telling for the issue at hand. None of the lawmakers appeared to view the criminal wrongdoing as a problem, yet it is under current law.

This mismatch between what’s morally accepted and what the law prescribes should be fixed according to Whittingdale.

“It is not good for the respect of law to give a message to consumers that it is fine to break some laws and not others. If the law is outdated and being widely ignored then it needs to change. That is why I welcome the private copying exception,” he said.

Minister David Willetts also responded to the doubts raised by JCSI. He confirmed that the European Court of Justice is the relevant legal authority in this case, but according to the legal experts that were consulted copyright holders don’t have to be compensated under the current regulations.

Willetts also waved away concerns about the potential losses the new regulations could cause to copyright holders. According to the Minister these concerns are unwarranted as the new rules clearly state that copies can only be made for personal use, so sharing with third parties remains illegal.

At the end of the hearing the current draft of the Copyright and Rights in Performances Regulations were passed, meaning that they are a step closer to becoming law.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The Popcorn Time phenomenon took the Internet by storm earlier this year. The software became the subject of hundreds of news articles by offering P2P streaming in an easy to use Netflix-style interface.

Overwhelmed by the response and the legal pressure that came with it the original team quickly retired. However, since the code is open source, many competing forks quickly adopted the project, each taking it in a different direction.

The storm calmed down somewhat after a few months, but it appears that the “Netflix for pirates” idea is here to stay. TorrentFreak reached out to one of the most popular Popcorn Time forks at time4popcorn.eu to find out how they are faring.

While the developers are hesitant to reveal any hard data about their software’s popularity, they note that they have acquired millions of users over the past several months. On an average day tens of thousands of people download the application, with Sunday being the most popular day by far.

The developers further reveal that roughly half of all Popcorn Time downloads are for the Windows platform. The Mac version is in second place with 25%, followed by Android and Linux with 20% and 5% respectively.

For the developers this popularity is one of the main reasons to continue innovating through new features. For example, last month they integrated a free VPN so users can hide their IP-address from the rest of the world.

“The million of users are the wind in our sails. We tell this to them all the time – they are the reason we’re putting in all the hard we’ve been putting in for the past 3.5 months,” the Time4Popcorn team tells TorrentFreak.

“In none of our previous projects did we experience this kind of ‘madness’. This is really what keeps us working around the clock on this project,” they add.

This week the Popcorn Time variant released another highly anticipated feature in their latest Alpha release, support for Chromecast. This means that users can now stream films directly to Chromecast with just a simple click.

Chromecast support was one of the most requested Popcorn Time features, the developers told us. It’s also directly in line with one of the main goals of the software, which is creating an optimal viewing experience.

“The first goal for Popcorn Time is to make the best viewing experience for all our users, and the other is to make the safest watching experience so all our users can fulfill the first goal without getting in trouble,” the Time4Popcorn team says.

While Chromecast support is a milestone, the developers mention that there is more exiting news ahead in the not too distant future.

“This week’s Alpha release with Chromecast support is nothing compared to what we have coming,” we were told.

Stay tuned…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.