August 1 Russia introduced new legislation aimed at reducing online copyright infringement.

Targeted initially at the unauthorized distribution of movies and TV shows, there were soon calls for the program to undergo expansion to include music, lyrics and other copyright works.

This Thursday the initiative, which will see non-conforming sites blocked at the ISP level, will have been underway for exactly three weeks. But while some critics envisioned a Russian Internet in tatters at the hands of over-zealous copyright holders, thus far things haven’t panned out that way.

Righthsolders have reported at least two file-sharing sites – rutor.org and turbofilm.tv – to the authorities for infringement of their copyrights. However, neither domain has been added to Russia’s blocklist and for good reason. A source close to one of the sites told TorrentFreak that both chose to delete the infringing links in question and are now continuing business as usual.

While both Rutor and Turbofilm were the subject of successful complaints, it appears that rightsholders are really struggling to meet the requirements of the law. Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the State Duma Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Legislation, revealed yesterday that four out of every ten blocking requests have been rejected so far.

“I contacted the chairman of the Moscow City Court – 19 applications were submitted, 11 of them were accepted, eight were declined,” Krasheninnikov said.

In order to have a blocking request accepted rightsholders are required to provide lots of documentation, including evidence that they own the content in question. It appears that is more easily said than done.

“The application process is quite time-consuming and costly. For example, certified translations of all documents of title are required,” Cinema Without Borders’ Sam Klebanov told Russia’s CommNews.

In order to overcome some of these kinds of administrative problems, particularly when dealing with Internet companies, there are suggestions that all rightsholders should have the option of coordinating their anti-piracy efforts through a non-profit agency accredited by the Ministry of Culture.

According to Vedomosti, the plan is to pre-verify the identities and managed properties of rightholders so that those processing complaints do not have to seek additional verification documents from those making them.

Klebanov’s company Cinema Without Borders was the first to have a filed complaint rejected on the basis of inadequate paperwork but he says that even with that failure, companies like vKontakte, the subject of their complaint, do seem to be taking note of the law. That, however, is only part of the problem.

“The big players that exist in the legal space are starting to pay attention to the law, but there are quite a lot of ‘wild’ pirates, who still continue their activities,” he said.

The question now is what will happen when rightsholders get their blocking requests in shape. Will it have terrible consequences for the free flow of information? Not so says Leonid Agronov from the National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI).

According to Agronov, out of 120 million websites located in Runet, only around four thousand are involved in the unauthorized distribution of copyright works. Since this is a small proportion the effect of any blocking on the Internet as a whole would be minimal, Agronov argues.

Nevertheless, those kinds of assurances haven’t placated the masses. More than one hundred thousand people signed a petition against the new law, which led to an announcement yesterday by the State Duma’s Pavel Krasheninnikov.

“The Duma will consider the petition,” he promised.

It seems unlikely that any review of the law will change the course of the government but as the cases of Rutor and Turbofilm show, compliance is achieved by simply deleting a link. With several billion of those still online (each requiring lots of work to take down), rightsholders still have plenty to do.

Source: Russia’s SOPA Sees 42% of All Anti-Piracy Blocking Requests Rejected

While it might not yet have the high profile of the major Hollywood studios, the UFC is currently out-punching the movie business when it comes to anti-piracy activities.

As the leading mixed martial arts promotion in the world the UFC is hugely protective of its content. In recent times it has spent considerable sums lobbying in an attempt to have U.S. copyright law changed in its favor. Owned by Zuffa, the UFC would like to see streaming turned into a felony, with the aim of protecting their lucrative PPV events.

But while the instant money comes from their live shows, the UFC also makes money from selling post event DVDs and in order to protect that market the company hires several anti-piracy outfits to take content down.

The most visible of these actions are the DMCA notices Zuffa has outside companies send to Google. According to the search engine’s Transparency Report, Zuffa has used three companies to have more than 535,000 infringing links removed from Google’s indexes. Most of the time these are pretty standard fare, as the notice below illustrates.

While the above is an example of a highly targeted takedown (very specific URLs containing torrents to the actual infringing content) there is a growing trend at anti-piracy companies to employ a carpet-bombing mentality, rather sending in the required precision strike.

The terrible results of this broad brush approach can be seen in this very embarrassing notice sent by Zuffa / IP Arrow to Google on August 14. As can be seen from the screenshot, Zuffa is claiming that some pretty awful content is their property, and (worst still) the original copies can be found at UFC.com, which they obviously can’t.

So how is this needless embarrassment being caused? No prizes if you guessed “automated crawlers.”

Instead of pinpointing specific pages carrying UFC torrents for example, the crawlers will target any other pages (even those created dynamically by search engines) that link to them, meaning that the generated DMCA notices deindex hundreds of other items that have nothing to do with the specific rightsholder. This, while often leaving the actual torrent page intact.

For example, this DMCA notice sent by Zuffa targets many URLs which initially appear to have nothing to do with UFC content. We’ve highlighted just one as an example.

On closer inspection the X Factor page has a section at the bottom titled “related torrents”. Sure enough, links to other pages that carry UFC content are listed. Instead of taking those down though, Zuffa’s anti-piracy company shot the messenger instead.

This carpet-bombing approach to takedowns is no doubt causing legitimate content to be censored too, so one might hope that embarrassing content in public DMCA takedowns will be enough for these companies to be a little more accurate in their work.

Anti-piracy companies working in this field have a difficult job, no one is doubting that. But wiping the freeway off the map when a mere side road has caused offense is hardly an acceptable strategy.

Source: UFC Just Sent the Most Embarrassing DMCA Notice Ever

In the aftermath of the Megaupload shutdown the legality of many file-hosting services was called into doubt, RapidShare included.

During the past several years RapidShare has made tremendous efforts to cooperate with copyright holders and limit copyright infringements. But this hasn’t prevented the company from getting involved in a handful of lawsuits against rightsholders.

Last year a regional High Court in Germany confirmed two separate verdicts by a lower court, in cases that were initiated by book publishers and a music rights group.

The court clarified that RapidShare has no obligation to proactively monitor files that are uploaded by its users. However, the company is required to monitor external sites that link to copyrighted files on RapidShare, and ensure these files become inaccessible to the public.

In addition, the ruling noted that when these measures prove not to be effective enough, the file-hosting site should restrict the opportunity for people to use the site anonymously. RapidShare already logs IP-addresses but to decrease anonymity customers may also have to show proof of identity.

Arguing that this decision went too far RapidShare took the case to the Supreme Court, but that appeal has now been rejected. The full decision is yet to be published but it is clear that the court affirmed the earlier judgment.

Copyright holders are happy with the Supreme Court confirmation. According to them it proves that service providers have an obligation to actively address piracy, and do more than simply responding to takedown notices.

“The confirmation of the judgment is groundbreaking because it clarifies that it’s a fundamental responsibility of online storage services towards rightsholders, whose works are shared en masse through their platforms,” music rights group GEMA comments.

TorrentFreak asked RapidShare for a comment on the Supreme Court decision but we have yet to receive a response.

Initially, not much is expected to change for the file-hosting service as they have already been “policing” the Internet for quite a while.

“That is exactly what RapidShare has already been doing for many years. If the Anti-Abuse Team identifies a download link on such pages which results in a file that has clearly been published illegally being on the company’s servers, the file in question is immediately blocked,” the company told us previously.

However, RapidShare believed that making this policy mandatory goes too far. “We believe that being obliged to carry out such actions is questionable from a legal perspective,” RapidShare said.

Aside from monitoring forums and linking sites for infringing links, over the past few years RapidShare has made several other adjustments to its service to decrease unlawful use. Most recently the company restricted the ability of all users to share files in public, hoping that would drive away pirates.

These measures resulted in an exodus of users and as a result RapidShare fired 75% of its employees earlier this year.

It is expected that the Supreme Court decision will have massive implications. Not only for RapidShare, but also for many other file-hosting services that operate in Germany. More on what will change exactly for RapidShare and its users will become apparent when the full verdict is released a few weeks from now.

Source: Supreme Court Orders RapidShare to Police the Internet

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Iron Man 3 is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Week ending August 18, 2013

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	Iron Man 3	7.5 / trailer
2	(1)	The Conjuring	7.9 / trailer
3	(5)	The Great Gatsby	7.4 / trailer
4	(…)	Pain and Gain	6.7 / trailer
5	(2)	Oblivion	7.1 / trailer
6	(4)	Epic	6.6 / trailer
7	(3)	The Iceman	7.0 / trailer
8	(6)	The Wolverine (CAM)	7.2 / trailer
9	(9)	R.I.P.D (TS)	5.5 / trailer
10	(…)	Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara! (DVDscr)	6.3 / trailer

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week

We’ve all heard the objection to sharing culture and knowledge many times – “How will the artists get paid, if you manufacture copies of their creations without paying them?”

This question is delusional on so many levels I’ve lost count.

First, artists that are copied do get paid, only not by a per-copy sale but in other ways. I encourage copying of my leadership handbook Swarmwise, for example, because I know the book promotes other avenues of income. The average income for musicians has risen 114% since people started sharing culture online on a large-scale, according to a Norwegian study. Other studies agree with this observation.

Second, even if they didn’t get paid, people who share still don’t carry any kind of responsibility for the business models of other entrepreneurs. Because that’s what artists are once they go plinking their guitar in a kitchen looking for sales: entrepreneurs. Same rules apply to those entrepreneurs as to every other entrepreneur on the planet: nobody owes an entrepreneur a sale, you have to offer something which somebody else wants to buy. Wants. To. Buy. No excuses, nothing deserved, just business.

Third, we don’t live in a planned economy. Nobody is held accountable to the question of where somebody’s next paycheck is going to come from except that very person. In Soviet Russia, you could tell Vladimir Sklyarov that his guitar plinking was highly artistic (meaning nobody liked it) and that his next paycheck would therefore come from the Bureau of Incomprehensible Arts. But we don’t live in a planned economy, we live in a market economy. Everybody is responsible for their own paycheck – of finding a way to make money by providing value that somebody else wants to pay for. Wants. To. Pay. For. No excuses, nothing deserved.

Fourth, even if this set of entrepreneurs magically deserved money despite not making any sales, control of what people share between them can still not be achieved without dismantling the secrecy of correspondence, monitoring every word communicated – and fundamental liberties always go before anybody’s profits. We never determined what civil liberties we have based on who can profit and who can’t.

But let’s go to the root of the question. It’s not a question, it’s an insult. One that has stuck around for as long as artistry itself, for it implies that artists need or even deserve to get paid. No artist thinks in these terms. The ones who do are the parasitic business people middlemen that you find defending the copyright monopoly and then robbing artists and their fans dry, laughing all the way to the bank while exploiting a legal monopoly system ruthlessly: the copyright monopoly.

Meanwhile, among artists, there is one insult that has remained consistent throughout artistry in history. An insult between artists that rips somebody’s artistry apart, that tells somebody they’re not even worthy of calling themselves an artist. That insult is “You’re in it for the money”.

“How shall the artists get paid?”, implying artists won’t play or create otherwise, that they’re doing it for the money, is a very serious insult.

There’s a reason “sellout” is a sharply negative word in artistry. The large majority of artists aren’t happy at all when you’re asking them if they’re playing to make money; it’s a grave insult. The frequently heard notion that you don’t create culture if you’re not paid for it comes from those who exploit artists, and never from artists themselves.

After all, we create not because we can make money off it as individuals, but because of who we are – how we are wired. We have created since we learned to put red paint on the inside of cave walls. We are cultural animals. Culture has always been part of our civilization, rewarded or not.

If an artist wants to sell their goods or services and become an entrepreneur, I wish them all the luck and success in the world. But business is business, and there is nothing that entitles an entrepreneur to sales.

Source: “How Should Artists Get Paid?” Isn’t a Question, it’s an Insult