YouTube’s users upload millions of hours of videos every month. As with any user-generated content site, this also includes copyright-infringing content.

This abuse is a thorn in the side of some copyright holders. Although they can send takedown requests to remove pirated content, some companies want to go after the infringers.

This is what happened in Germany, where the local company “Constantin Film” went after three YouTube users. These account holders had uploaded copies of the movies “Scary Movie 5” or “Parker” without permission, which were then viewed thousands of times.

The movie company demanded that Google and YouTube should share the email addresses, IP-addresses, and phone numbers that were tied to these accounts and took the matter to a local court.

Initially, this request was turned down by the Frankfurt District Court, but the Higher Regional Court later ruled that YouTube should hand over the associated email addresses, but not the IP-addresses and phone numbers.

Neither party was happy with this outcome and the case was sent to Germany’s Federal Court of Justice for another ruling. Before making a final judgment, the German court sent some questions to the EU Court of Justice, asking for input on how to interpret EU law in this matter.

While both German and EU legislation grant copyright holders the right to know who the copyright infringer is, it’s not clear what information should be handed over. Article 8 of the EU Copyright Directive from 2004 doesn’t go any further than mentioning “names and addresses” without any further specification.

To clarify the position, Germany’s Federal Court asked whether the law should be interpreted in a way that also covers email addresses, phone numbers, and IP-addresses. In an advisory opinion released by EU Advocate General Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe, this should not be the case.

The Advocate General believes that the ‘names’ and ‘addresses’ mentioned in Article 8 should be interpreted literally. In other words, it refers to the usual meaning in everyday language, which doesn’t cover email addresses, IP-addresses, and certainly not phone numbers.

“There is little doubt that, in everyday language, the concept of a person’s ‘address’, about which the referring court asks in particular, covers only the postal address, as YouTube and Google have rightly submitted,” Saugmandsgaard Øe writes.

The Advocate General understands that Constantin Film would like this language to be updated, so it also includes digital addresses, but he adds that this is something that lawmakers must address, not the court.

“Article 8(2) […] must be interpreted as meaning that the concept of ‘names and addresses’ set out in that provision does not cover, in respect of a user who has uploaded files which infringe intellectual property rights, the email address, the telephone number, the IP address used to upload those files or the IP address used when the user’s account was last accessed.

“Accordingly, the Member States are not obliged, under that provision, to provide for the possibility, for the competent judicial authorities, to order that that information be provided in the context of proceedings concerning an infringement of an intellectual property right.”

This means that, based on this opinion, Germany’s Federal court can order YouTube and Google to hand over the names and postal addresses of the uploaders, but not the emails, IP-addresses, and phone numbers.

The Advocate General’s advice is not binding. However, in most cases the recommendations are followed by the EU Court of Justice, which will likely issue its final verdict later this year.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

A paper published back in 2007 pondered the possibility that on any given day, regular people may commit dozens of copyright infringements, without really knowing it.

While all pitfalls are difficult to predict, the public is much better informed 13 years on and tech-savvy individuals are now more likely to spot potential pitfalls, especially when they carry out more obvious acts such as uploading copyrighted content to social media.

But despite the millions of takedown notices filed every year alongside thousands of lawsuits, even those with massive legal teams and vast resources can make costly errors. Case in point – Kendall Jenner, her Instagram account, and a video for which the model allegedly doesn’t own the copyrights.

Titled ‘bye nyc’ and posted to Instagram on September 13, 2019, it features Jenner leaving a building and being greeted by the usual crowd of photographers aiming to get a shot of the superstar model. It lasts just a few seconds but was nevertheless gobbled up by Jenner’s army of fans who, to date, have viewed the clip almost 22.8 million times.

While many of these kinds of clips attract no negative attention from the people who took them, that isn’t the case here. A lawsuit filed Tuesday in a California district court has New York resident Angela Ma suing Jenner (and her company Kendall Jenner, Inc.) for blatant copyright infringement.

“This is an action for copyright infringement under Section 501 of the Copyright Act,” the complaint reads.

“This action arises out of Defendants’ unauthorized publication and public display of a copyrighted video (the ‘Video’) of defendant Kendall Jenner. The Video and the copyright in the Video are owned and registered by Plaintiff.”

Ma says she has registered the video with the Copyright Office (Reg. # PA 2-211-871) which is important as without an application she wouldn’t be able to sue. But sue she is.

Claiming that the video was viewed “over 13 million times” (a figure that is soon set to double), Ma says that the clip wasn’t licensed to anyone for any use and therefore Jenner did not have permission to post the video on Instagram.

“Defendants infringed Plaintiff’s copyright in the Video by reproducing and publicly displaying the Video on the Website. Defendants were not, and have never been, licensed or otherwise authorized to reproduce, publicly display, distribute and/or use the Video,” the complaint notes.

“The acts of Defendants complained of herein constitute infringement of Plaintiff’s copyright and exclusive rights under copyright in violation of Sections 106 and 501 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 106 and 501.”

The lawsuit says that Jenner’s infringement wasn’t accidental. On the contrary, it was “willful, intentional, and purposeful” and in disregard of Ma’s rights as the copyright holder. As a result, Jenner must now compensate for the damage caused in one of two ways.

On the one hand, Jenner could pay damages and hand over all the income generated by the infringement. In that case, Ma wants Jenner to “account for all profits, income, receipts” so that can be entered into the calculation.

On the other, Ma states that she is entitled to statutory damages of up to $150,000 for the “willful” nature of the infringement. In any event, the New York resident also wants to be compensated for attorneys’ fees and full costs.

In addition, Ma’s attorneys want the court to order Jenner to remove the video from Instagram. Why that wasn’t actioned earlier directly with the social media company isn’t detailed.

Angela Ma is demanding a trial by jury but it seems unlikely that the case will progress that far. Like many such actions, it will probably disappear into the ether following a private settlement.

The copyright infringement lawsuit filed in California can be found here (pdf)

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

Three years ago, the torrent community was hit hard when the popular torrent site ExtraTorrent suddenly shut its doors.

The site provided a safe harbor for millions of file-sharers and was also the birthing ground for several popular releasers and distribution groups. This includes ETTV, which is short for ExtraTorrent TV.

With its home gone, ETTV decided to carry on independently by launching its own website. Over the past years, this has grown out to become a medium-sized torrent site with a dedicated and vetted group of regular uploaders.

Although the site has operated as usual in recent months, behind the scenes staff faced a critical problem. The main ETTV operator who controlled the domains, servers, and ads, suddenly went missing.

TorrentFreak spoke to ETTV administrator ‘sidekickbob’ who informed us that the operator last logged in December last year. Around the same time, he also sent out an email telling the staffer that he had experienced health issues.

After almost four months had passed without an official word from the operator, ‘sidekickbob’ decided to step into action. The first step was to disable the ads since he had no control over them. Coincidence or not, two days later someone canceled the server.

The admin doesn’t believe that ETTV’s operator did this. However, someone clearly was responding, as the server that hosted the torrents was also canceled. After paying the bills, Sidekickbob was able to get the site’s server back, but for the time being ETTV will use magnet links only.

To guarantee that he retained full control, Sidekickbob then decided to switch to a new domain name, ETTVdl.com. While he has access to the registrar login of the other domains, as well as root access to the server, he wants to prevent a ‘third-party’ from taking over.

“I redirected all traffic from ettv.to,” sidekickbob tells us, adding that the other domains are set to expire later this year.

This domain change was also communicated in the forums, without any further background detail.

Unless the original operator reappears, the ‘new’ admin will also reinstate some ads so he can pay the bills. However, sidekickbob has no intention of steering the ship any longer than needed. He is currently looking for a trusted person to take the lead, or else he will shut it down.

“It’s all left to me, and if I don’t manage to ‘transfer’ it to somebody else I will eventually shut it down, most likely at the end of this year,” he says, adding that he doesn’t have enough time to manage the site himself.

This means that ETTV’s future is highly uncertain. In any case, the new admin doesn’t simply plan to sell the site to the highest bidder. If a third-party takes over, it has to be someone with a good track record and some experience

“Ultimately my intention is to sell it to somebody that wants to run the torrent site. Preferably somebody that has experience in running a medium traffic torrent site. I’m not going to give it to some random kids,” sidekickbob concludes.

Shutting down ETTV will certainly have an impact. While the site is not crucial, the ETTV and ETHD bots supply torrents to a wide variety of even more popular torrent sites. If these go down as well, it will surely be noticed.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

With the world in turmoil right now, today is not the ideal time for jokes, pranks, and frivolity usually associated with April 1. That being said, US-resident Dani Payson could be forgiven for thinking that someone was yanking her chain this morning.

Payson (who uses the handle Andrea Marie on Twitter) operates a store on Australia-founded print-on-demand site RedBubble. She’s currently selling printed mugs, shower curtains and phone cases – plus t-shirts, of course. Visitors to her page today, however, will discover a notable omission – the removal of a photograph of the world-famous Copenhagen statue The Little Mermaid.

According to Payson, she took the photograph herself with her own DSLR camera during a visit to Denmark and uploaded it to RedBubble so that people could have it printed to an item of their choice. Given the subject matter, the photograph is similar in many respects to thousands of others online, as this image of the listing shows.

The problem for her is that the listing has now been deleted by RedBubble following a takedown request by a rightsholder.

“We’re sorry, but we had to remove some of your artwork from the RedBubble marketplace because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights,” RedBubble told the entrepreneur. “We identified this material in your artwork based on guidance provided to us by the owner of those rights.”

The owner of the rights in question was none other than Disney Enterprises, Inc. The basis for the movie giant’s claim is that Payson’s image depicts one of its “Disney Princesses”.

“Because Disney likes to show how evil they can be they’re trying to remove my personal photos from the internet of this statue stating they own it,” Payson complained this morning.

The claim is laughable, of course. Not only is Payson the copyright holder of the image in question, but the subject matter is a statue that is 107-years-old, is not animated, and is not owned by Disney. Only adding to the ridiculous mix are several other awkward facts.

The statue was unveiled in Copenhagen to celebrate the fairy tale ‘The Little Mermaid’ that was published in Denmark by Hans Christian Andersen on April 7, 1837 – almost 183 years ago. Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ was released in 1989 and is actually based on the original story by the Danish author.

It’s noteworthy that despite claiming the rights to an image that has nothing to do with them, Disney paid absolutely nothing to Hans Christian Andersen for his story because his book fell into the public domain long ago. The same is true for Disney’s ‘Frozen’, which is based on Anderson’s ‘Ice Queen’.

These movies, based on someone else’s work, have together made hundreds of millions of dollars and will be vigorously protected, by Disney, for decades to come. This is the basis upon which Disney took down the RedBubble listing, which was probably actioned following a basic and bungled keyword search.

April Fools…..

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

Earlier this year, popular hip-hop mixtape website and app Spinrilla filed a lawsuit against the RIAA.

Spinrilla accused the music industry group of sending false DMCA takedown notices that waste resources and harm the site’s goodwill and reputation.

“False takedown notices needlessly waste Spinrilla’s time, disrupts its personnel’s work and puts at risk for terminating a user as a ‘repeat infringer’ when in fact the user uploaded non-infringing content,” Spinrilla wrote.

Yesterday the RIAA responded to the complaint in court. In its filing, the music group reminds the court of the legal history between both parties, which are involved in a separate and ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit.

According to the RIAA, the original lawsuit has demonstrated Spinrilla’s “persistent and flagrant pattern of facilitating and encouraging massive copyright infringement.” The new case is “an obvious and baseless attempt” to draw the court’s attention away from this matter.

These references clearly set the tone but are irrelevant for the new case. However, the RIAA is convinced that Spinrilla’s false DMCA notice allegations are baseless so is asking the court to dismiss the case.

Spinrilla’s complaint only referenced one file that was falsely claimed, this mix, which allegedly infringed the copyrights for the Big Sean & Jhené Aiko track ‘2 Minute Warning.’ In its reply, RIAA explains that this wasn’t a false takedown notice.

According to the music group, Spinrilla doesn’t present any evidence that the RIAA knew that the contested audio file was not infringing. In addition, it says that the site fails to allege that the contested file was actually removed, as is required for such as claim.

“[The complaint] does not allege that Spinrilla ever removed or disabled access to the sole audio file it identifies, or that Spinrilla suffered injury as a result of removing or disabling access to the file,” RIAA writes.

In addition, Spinrilla’s allegation that the music group relies on a faulty text-searching purely speculative and unsupported, RIAA notes.

RIAA’s reply comes with a declaration from Traci Crippen, the group’s Vice President of Operations, Content Protection. She mentions that the contested file was reviewed by both a Universal Music Group (UMG) employee and herself.

From Crippen’s declaration

“Before sending the takedown notice, Ms. Crippen was informed that a UMG employee listened to the Audio File and determined that it infringed copyrighted UMG sound recordings. Ms. Crippen herself then listened to the Audio File and concluded it was infringing,” RIAA writes.

Although the track in question is mostly absent of any sound, the RIAA doesn’t believe that it can be classified under fair use. And even if it is non-infringing, Spinrilla’s false takedown claims are unwarranted because Ms. Crippen had “good faith belief” that it was.

Based on these and other arguments, the RIAA asks the court to dismiss the complaint. Or alternatively, issue a summary judgment in favor of the music group because it was not aware of any wrongdoing.

Whether Spinrilla has more examples of false takedown notices is unknown. If it does, it will likely present these in reply to RIAA’s response.

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A copy of RIAA’s response to Spinrilla’s complaint is available here (pdf).

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.