Before getting hired by Google back in 2010, lawyer Fred von Lohmann was a senior attorney at the EFF dealing with intellectual property matters.

In March 2018, after serving as Google’s legal director for copyright issues, von Lohmann left the company, having fought many battles in favor of Google’s right to use third-party content on its services.

This led to Google advertising for a new Head of Copyright, highlighting all the great qualities a candidate must possess to qualify for such a lofty position. While it’s unclear if the role has been filled, the posting has since been removed – but not before pro-copyright group CreativeFuture got its hands on it.

The coalition, which claims to represent more than 520 companies and organizations and over 160,000 creative individuals, published a “corrected” version this week, in which it highlights the qualities it believes a person will need to get the job. It pulls no punches.

“Following a thorough analysis by our in-house team of creativity defenders, we at CreativeFuture have determined that certain key details of the posting may be in need of revision – so as to present a more accurate portrayal of what the position truly entails,” CreativeFuture begins.

“We have taken the liberty of making these edits for you, presented below as red-lined corrections to the original document. Though the job posting has since been closed online, we trust you will make whomever steps into the role aware of the suggested changes, so that they may conduct their work with Google’s usual high regard for creative professionals and the security of their works in the digital space.”

In case it’s not entirely obvious already, that’s a pretty sarcastic hors d’oeuvre. The main course, resplendent in its bright red edits, fills up the consumer with anti-Google rhetoric so rich, there’s no room left for dessert.

Head of Anti-Copyright, interested?

The full ‘revised’ posting, which can be found here, goes on to accuse Google of manipulating Members of Congress, conspiracy, nurturing a corrosive business, evading liability, failing to implement a repeat infringer policy, and displaying a “willingness to turn a blind eye to pirated content being uploaded to [its] servers on an overwhelming scale.”

Finally, CreativeFuture determines that the successful candidate for Head of Anti-Copyright should have “strong bullshitting skills”, “low self-respect,” and “questionable judgment.” Oh, and a passion for playing Whack-a-Mole.

It’s worth reiterating that CreativeFuture speaks for dozens of industry giants. All the big Hollywood and TV studios are involved, not to mention companies like Warner Music Group and even Microsoft. Of course, they’re entitled to argue as passionately as they see fit, but one has to go back a long way to find this level of bitterness in the copyright wars.

Indeed, this brand of half-joking-yet-serious insult approach hasn’t been seen since Anakata of the Pirate Bay demanded the strategic placement of a retractable baton inside a person of importance at Dreamworks. It’s a real surprise that we’re back on that level again many years later, not least since it’s now billion dollar companies hurling the insults.

While this is clearly a great time to be alive, something is missing from this battle of the barbs. Google, it seems, doesn’t want to get sucked in.

Every single day the company finds itself lambasted over its supposed anti-copyright practices but until now has managed to avoid rolling round in the mud with its accusers. That’s a real shame, not least since public shit-flinging contests on this scale tend to get a lot of views on YouTube, if both sides can be bothered to put in the effort. Ask Logan Paul and KSI.

If a public conflict does indeed come to pass, there’s always the option of monetization. YouTube might not pay the going rate but it’s better than the big fat nothing being offered by Twitter, where most of the war drums are being banged at the moment.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

In recent years file-sharers around the world have been threatened with lawsuits, if they don’t pay a significant settlement fee.

These so-called “copyright trolling” efforts have been a common occurrence in countries such as Germany and the United States, and in recent years they have conquered Sweden as well.

The process is fairly simple. Copyright holders ask local courts for a subpoena so they can demand the personal details of the subscribers that are connected to allegedly pirating IP-addresses.

The ISPs are then required to look these up in their databases and hand over the relevant personal information. The rightsholders use this to send a settlement claim to the subscribers, asking them to pay up, or else.

Most providers are not happy with this practice, but they see no other option than to cooperate. However, Swedish ISP Bahnhof is different. It is yet to hand over any data to copyright holders and publicly despises the copyright-trolling business model.

In recent comments on the matter, Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung says that subscribers of many of its competitors, including Comhem, Telia, and Bredbandsbolaget, have received a letter of formal notice in recent months.

“Many Swedes have been innocently accused of downloading a movie from the web. It is not just a legal scandal that this will happen. The letters also appear to be based on false information, but the individuals who get them still have difficulty defending against unfair bills of thousands of dollars,” he notes.

The CEO says that Bahnhof is the only major ISP to consistently refuse to disclose any data to these copyright holders, which the company describes as “blackmailers.”

There’s no magic involved really. Not keeping any extensive log files does the trick.

“How? The ingeniously simple solution is that we do not save log files. There is, therefore, nothing to share. The question, however, is why all the other operators save sensitive data about their customers,” Karlung adds.

Bahnhof’s solution is not new. When the first wave of copyright trolls came to Sweden the company severely limited the logs it kept. The company also urged other ISPs to follow suit, but most didn’t.

The question, is why? Karlung urges subscribers of the affected ISPs to ask about their logging policies, and in particular, the motivation behind them.

“There is something not right here. Why do the other broadband operators save as much information about you as a customer, when they are not technically in need of it to deliver a contracted service? Ask them about it!”

Bahnhof itself says that it keeps IP-address logs for a maximum of 24 hours. They base this practice on a European Court of Justice ruling which concluded that the Swedish adoption of the data retention directive is invalid.

“To our knowledge, it’s Bahnhof and Tele2 who operate their IP logs in this manner, other Swedish ISPs are likely to follow the data retention directive and keep IP logs over the last six months,” Bahnhof Communicator Carolina Lindahl tells TF.

This issue isn’t only limited to Sweden of course. It also applies to the United States and other countries where some providers keep logs for months, or years, without a legal requirement.

How long the other ISPs in Sweden keep their logs is unclear. If any readers get an answer from their ISP, they are welcome to share it below.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

There’s a bit of a trend emerging in which gaming companies use copyright legislation against cheaters.

Take-Two Interactive Software, the company behind ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (GTA V), is one of the players. The company has filed several lawsuits in the US targeting alleged cheaters.

In one case, a New York court recently issued a preliminary injunction ordering a man to stop working on and distributing the ‘Menyoo’ and ‘Absolute’ cheats.

The defendant, Georgia resident David Zipperer, didn’t deny his involvement and said he had already ceased working on the cheats. However, he had to find a lawyer as Take-Two was not letting the case go easily.

Following a referral from the EFF, Zipperer received “pro bono” help from attorney Joel Rothman. That didn’t last long. After a failed attempt to transfer the case to another district or otherwise resolve the case, the attorney is withdrawing from the case.

According to the attorney, Take-Two is increasing the costs and time for Zipperer’s defense, to “shake him free” of his pro bono counsel.

“I do not have the resources to go up against Kirkland & Ellis in scorched-earth discovery in a pro bono case. I cannot afford the time and money to fly around the country taking the depositions of Take-Two employees,” Rothman wrote to the court.

The attorney discussed a possible settlement with Take-Two, but the “tens of thousands” of dollars the company wants is not something his client can pay, he says.

“My client has no money. He swore to this Court that the money he earned from selling ‘cheat menus’ was used to support his family, that the money is gone, and that he has none left.

“He is an unemployed day laborer with a ninth-grade education who taught himself to write code. I have told this over and over to Take-Two’s lawyers, but they continue to demand a pound of flesh from Zipperer.”

Rothman, therefore, asked the Court to halt the discovery proceedings for thirty days so his client can find a new attorney, or prepare to represent himself.

Take-Two clearly sees things differently. A day after the attorney’s request was filed the company submitted a scathing reply, painting an opposing picture. According to the company, Zipperer has repeatedly misled the Court regarding his financial situation.

Through a subpoena, they learned that the defendant’s profits exceed $100,000 and that the most recent payment only dates a few months back. Some of the profits were spent on expensive electronic equipment and other personal purchases.

“Mr. Zipperer clearly has significantly more resources than he has repeatedly represented to this Court. We believe that these PayPal records reflect only a small fraction of the proceeds Mr. Zipperer has received from his illegal businesses,” the company writes.

Take-Two says that the case should not be delayed any further, also because there’s a chance that this will help the defendant to hide his assets.

“There are many litigants who need legal services and who legitimately do not have the means to pay for them. Mr. Zipperer is not one of them,” the company informs the Court.

“He is a man that has collected over a hundred thousand dollars by distributing an infringing work that harmed Take-Two and its customers who wanted to play Take-Two’s game without being ‘griefed’.”

After reviewing the submissions from both sides the Court sided with Take-Two (pdf), which means that the case won’t be delayed.

While Take-Two’s approach, in this case, may seem aggressive, it’s not always that way. Earlier this week it settled its case with Christopher Pei, who worked on the Infamous and Menyoo cheats. While Pei admits the infringing activities, both parties agreed to pay their own costs.

Meanwhile, Take-Two also filed a new lawsuit late last week. The company sued (pdf) Florida resident Jhonny Perez, accusing him of copyright infringement by creating and distributing the cheating tool “Elusive.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

In March 2017, the Premier League obtained a blocking injunction from the High Court which compelled UK ISPs including BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media to block ‘pirate’ streams in real-time.

The order, granted under Section 97a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, allowed the Premier League to target illegal streams including those consumed by Kodi users and premium IPTV subscribers.

Encouraged by the success of this pioneering action, the football organization obtained a second order in July 2017, one which quickly began causing disruption for unauthorzied providers.

This July, the Premier League obtained an extension from the Hight Court and as soon as the new season began, a new wave of blocking was launched. Judging by the number of complaints being aired online, the negative effects of the scheme are widespread.

Sources familiar with the IPTV landscape inform TF that the Premier League and its anti-piracy partners wasted no time, with stream interference reported within minutes of the opening match of the season getting underway. The problems are persisting too, with IPTV providers previously unaffected by the measures now being blocked by UK-based ISPs.

The solution to most of these problems is for IPTV subscribers to get themselves a VPN, which hides their traffic from their ISPs and bypasses all of the Premier League’s blocking measures. However, this is not always as straightforward as one might think.

While experienced torrent and streaming site users are familiar with VPNs, it appears that large numbers of more casual fans “who just want to watch the footy” are struggling with the learning curve. We’re told that huge numbers of blocked users are filing support tickets with providers when streams go off, only to balk at the notion of buying another service (a VPN) on top of their IPTV subscription.

For those prepared to fork out a bit more cash, the VPN solution is just a few minutes away. However, it seems clear that large numbers of people don’t really understand VPNs and don’t know how to set them up, particularly those trying to watch on set-top devices that require much more effort to configure than a desktop PC, mobile phone, or tablet.

Also causing problems is the decision by some IPTV providers not to enable VPN access to their service by default. Although their customers are being blocked from accessing their service in the UK, some still refuse to allow VPN access, until the customer opens a support ticket asking for it. This is causing frustration.

All that being said, some IPTV providers are finding ways to avoid the measures. None wish to speak about them publicly but there appears to be a mix of technical solutions combined with the ability to remain under the radar.

One source told us that some smaller IPTV outfits are getting through unhindered by being more obscure. However, this means they’re risking their heads appearing above the parapet when they try to grow their customer bases. This makes any form of advertising an accident waiting to happen since “one bad subscriber [an anti-piracy operative] ruins it for everyone.”

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects to the disruption is how widespread it is, considering how targeted it’s supposed to be.

The Premier League’s action is supposedly designed to prevent unauthorized streams of Premier League copyrighted content, i.e football matches, reaching the public. However, it is crystal clear that it is actually blocking all or most streams of the services it targets, meaning that people who use IPTV services to watch any other content are being affected as well.

A source with experience of this problem told us that discussions aimed at countering the blocks are always taking place but there is a growing feeling that Premier League content is a golden goose drinking from a poisoned chalice.

Football is some of the most popular content on IPTV services as far as UK subscribers are concerned but transmitting it ensures that all of a provider’s content gets blocked, something which upsets all users, no matter what they’re watching.

This situation has prompted at least one supplier to consider moving away from Premier League matches in order to safeguard the rest of its service.

While this will definitely be bad for business short term, we’re told that extra effort could be put into trying to attract more customers from outside the UK, since they’re less likely to be buying the service with the primary aim of watching Premiership football. Another option is to segregate football content “in other ways” but TF’s questions on what that might mean went unanswered.

Whatever the outcome, it seems clear that as planned, the Premier League is having an overall negative effect on the illegal streaming market. Of course, that only happens when live football is underway, which may be a sacrifice some providers and subscribers will be prepared to endure.

Nevertheless, providing and streaming live football is not the cakewalk it once was.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

The DMCA’s “repeat infringer” issue is a hot topic in US courts, leading to much uncertainty among various Internet services.

Under the DMCA, companies are required to implement a reasonable policy to deal with frequent offenders.

This applies to residential ISPs but also to websites that host user-uploaded content, such as video and image hosting platforms. Services that fail to implement a repeat infringer policy risk being held liable for the piracy activities of their users.

This is what happened to Cox previously. While the ISP settled its case last week, the issue is not off the agenda. In fact, a related matter is currently before the US Supreme Court.

The petition was submitted by adult content producer Ventura Content. The company previously lost its case against the video upload site Motherless.com, through which hundreds of thousands of copyright infringing videos were made public.

Ventura argued that the sole operator of the site was liable, as he failed to write down the details of the site’s repeat infringer termination policy. However, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed.

The fact that the details of the policy were not spelled out doesn’t mean that Motherless has no safe harbor protection, the Court concluded, noting that this may be different for large companies. In addition, Motherless was not required to keep a log of all infringements, as long as the operator keeps track of these in his head.

The adult company was obviously not happy with this outcome. It requested an ‘en banc’ rehearing review of the published opinion, but that was denied as well. The next logical step, therefore, was to take the matter to the Supreme Court.

“Plain and simple, the lower courts are in a state of DMCA disarray,” Ventura writes in its recent Supreme Court petition.

“The result of the DMCA disarray is that abject bootlegging in the offline, brick-and-mortar world remains unlawful, but the same conduct online by an OSP-turned publisher garners absolute summary judgment immunity.”

From the petition

The adult company is asking the Supreme Court to take on the case, noting that various circuit courts have issued conflicting decisions. For example, in the present case an “I Know It When I See It” policy was good enough for a summary judgment in its favor, while MP3tunes was previously denied the same because it failed to monitor users.

Ventura asks the Supreme Court to clearly define a standard which can be uniformly applied by lower courts. At the moment it appears that there is too much room for interpretation, which causes confusion and seemingly conflicting decisions.

This vagueness has been recognized in previous “repeat infringer” cases. To illustrate this, even judges themselves are not clear what a repeat infringer actually is, as the DMCA doesn’t clearly define it.

“How does somebody know a third party is an infringer? ‘Cause you say so?” Judge Shedd previously said in a BMG vs. Cox hearing.

The adult producer obviously hopes that if the Supreme Court takes on the case, which is far from certain, it will work out in its favor. If not, they fear that things will only get worse.

“The lower courts, acting out of a fear of derailing the internet’s development have instead given birth to a new monster: the OSP publisher that is brazenly rich only from others’ content, never pays for any content it publishes, knows the content is infringing, has full control over what is published on its platform, does not have to terminate known repeat infringers because unwritten ‘I Know Repeat Infringement When I See It’ policies suffice, and thus enjoys full immunity from copyright law,” Ventura writes.

“It is time for this Court to bring balance to the DMCA, which never intended, nor facially permits, such staggering dissonance between online and offline liability standards,” the company concludes.

—

A copy of Ventura Content’s petition to the US Supreme Court is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.