Last month several copyright holder groups sent their annual “Notorious Markets” submissions to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).

The U.S. Government uses this input to create an overview of threats to various copyright industries. The recommendations usually include well-known piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, but this year Cloudflare was also added to the mix.

For example, both the MPAA and RIAA mentioned the CDN provider as a key player, claiming that it frustrates enforcement by helping pirate sites to “hide”.

Cloudflare was not pleased with this description, to say the least, and has now sent a rebuttal to the USTR. The company highlights that it’s a legitimate business and scolds the MPAA and RIAA for their misleading descriptions.

“The submissions by the RIAA and MPAA present distorted descriptions of services that companies like Cloudflare provide. These descriptions fail to provide the USTR with an accurate description of the true intent, purpose, and value of Cloudflare’s services,” Cloudflare’s General Counsel Doug Kramer writes.

The company is disappointed in the industry groups, which fail to mention the efforts they have taken so far to address abuse.

“Potentially even more troubling than the RIAA and MPAA’s descriptions of Cloudflare’s services is their complete omission of Cloudflare’s efforts to address the small minority of users about which they complain.”

In fact, it’s not hard at all for the MPAA and RIAA to find out where notorious pirate sites are hosted.

Both RIAA and MPAA are part of the “Trusted Reporter” program Cloudflare has created. This allows rightsholders to obtain the actual IP-addresses of Cloudflare-hosted websites that engage in widespread copyright infringement.

Kramer says that the industry groups are frequent users of the system. In addition, Cloudflare is currently discussing with the MPAA and RIAA how the program can be improved to make it more efficient in the future.

The bottom line, according to Cloudflare, is that the company is following the law. They swiftly process thousands of complaints every week and don’t make it any harder for rightsholders to enforce their rights.

“Cloudflare does not make the process of enforcing intellectual property rights online any harder — or any easier. We follow all applicable laws and regulations,” Kramer explains.

The CDN provider believes that the submissions of the MPAA and RIAA are tainted. Together they list 48 websites which are supposedly obfuscated by Cloudflare, even though Cloudflare already identified the real IP-addresses of 27 of those sites following complaints.

For the remaining 21 “notorious” pirate sites, they apparently didn’t even bother to use the Trusted Notifier program to get more info.

“What they fail to mention is that the RIAA and MPAA requested the allegedly ‘obfuscated’ information from Cloudflare for 27 of those sites and received the relevant host information in a matter of hours,” Kramer writes.

“Even though they were well aware of the system, they never even requested information on the remaining 21 sites mentioned in their letters. Yet they included those sites in their submission to the USTR without attempting to use available resources to get the information.”

Cloudflare hopes the USTR understands that all accusations of its alleged involvement in illegal activities are unwarranted, and that the company has no place in the USTR’s Notorious Markets inquiry.

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Cloudflare’s full rebuttal is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is known globally for its quality conferences and talks. Operated by the nonprofit Sapling Foundation, notable speakers have included former president Bill Clinton and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Under the slogan of “Ideas Worth Spreading”, TED talks cover a broad range of sometimes controversial topics. This week it was the turn of Kelli Jean Drinkwater to provoke discussion with her talk Enough with the Fear of Fat. Originally recorded in May, Drinkwater’s talk pushed the notion that “unapologetic fat bodies can blow people’s minds.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, her talk had its share of critics, among them a YouTuber called Bearing. Hailing from Australia, Bearing’s 253,000 subscriber channel appears to spend considerable time criticising videos made by feminists. However, when he made a video criticizing Drinkwater’s talk and uploaded it to YouTube, things didn’t go to plan.

“If you visit [TED’s] website’s ‘about’ page, you will learn that TED is a ‘nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas’, their mission is ‘to spread ideas’, and their agenda is to ‘make great ideas accessible and spark conversation’,” Bearing says.

“So when I saw Kelli’s video, I had a few of my own ideas and decided to spark a conversation, you know, in that true TED spirit. Needless to say, I was a little bit baffled when TED sent me a DMCA takedown notice a few hours after my video was uploaded. Yup, apparently some ideas are worth silencing.”

According to Bearing, TED filed a DMCA notice against the video which resulted in YouTube taking it down. He believes that TED acted incorrectly and he should have been able to publish portions of the video while being protected by fair use.

“My response video to Kelli was for the purpose of offering criticism and comment. I used three minutes and 54 seconds, around 29% of her total video. It made up around 20% of my video, which ran for 16.5 minutes,” he explains.

How much of a video can be taken is one of the tests of fair use. As a general rule, the smaller the part someone copies, the more likely it is that the use will be considered fair. Almost a third could be considered a lot but may also be needed if there’s a lot of criticism to squeeze in.

“There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work,” says advice from the US Copyright Office. “Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.”

Another test of fair use is whether use of a copyright work is likely to deprive the original copyright holder of income or undermine the work’s potential market. Bearing thinks he’s in the clear on this count too.

“Considering I directly opposed many of her talking points, it’s extremely unlikely my video would harm Kelli’s video market, or in other words it’s extremely unlikely that Kelli’s video would miss out on any views as a result of my video existing,” he says.

“The point i’m making here is that by any reasonable standard, my video qualifies as fair use of copyrighted material. So I’ve sent TED a DMCA counter-notice. If they come to their senses and withdraw the copyright claim, we’ll have the video up sooner rather than later. If they decide to pursue the matter and file a legal claim against me, it will be later rather than sooner.”

Bearing’s opinion on TED

To find out the basis for the takedown, TorrentFreak contacted TED for comment. We asked the organization why the video had been taken down and asked them to comment specifically on why they believe Bearing breached their rights.

“The video you’re referring to was taken down for violating our usage policy,” TED told TF. That policy reads as follows;

At TED, our goal is to spread ideas. We encourage the TED community, non-profit organizations, bloggers, news media and the like to share TED Talks through social media and to embed individual talks in contextually relevant ways on non-commercial websites using embed code on TED.com. Non-commercial usage of TED Talks should follow the terms of our specific Creative Commons license Attribution – NonCommercial – NonDerivative (BY-NC-ND).

While TED has its own rules, a correctly applied case of fair use can trump them. We asked TED to explain how Bearing’s use amounted to a breach of copyright.

“Regardless of content, if a Youtube video fails to follow these guidelines we request that it be removed,” TED said. A further request to elaborate on the fair use aspect went unanswered.

Bearing says he does his best to stay out of legal disputes but he describes this one as “just too tempting.”

“Imagine being the independent content creator that TED tried to sue for spreading ideas and starting a conversation. FUCKING LOL,” he concludes.

The situation is certainly awkward. A legal battle would not be in either party’s interests but for now the ball is in TED’s court. Will it accept Bearing’s counter-notice and put the matter to bed, or will this continue to a messy conclusion?

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Earlier this year, RIAA chief Cary Sherman accused YouTube of running a protection racket.

The DMCA requires the site to take down infringing content on request. However, millions of pieces of content are missed or are reuploaded after being taken down, meaning that YouTube is able to monetize them, without paying an appropriate license fee. Services like Spotify and Apple Music, on the other hand, must license all the content they offer.

While YouTube acts within the law, industry players have been working to get law in the United States and Europe tightened up so it cannot continue to exploit was has become known as the “value gap”.

This week the issue was raised again, this time as part of the debates surrounding the UK’s Digital Economy Bill. In order to assess the government’s position, Kevin Brennan MP tabled a probing amendment to section 19 of The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, which deals with service provider safe harbor.

“The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, which put into law the EU’s e-commerce directive 2000, include certain exemptions from liability for online services, including copyright-protected works,” Brennan said.

“The fundamental concern from the music industry is that the hosting defense provided by regulation 19 of the 2002 regulations acts as a safe harbor and allows some services, including user-uploaded services such as YouTube, to circumvent the normal rules of licensing.”

Noting that this situation has led to the “value gap”, Brennan cited some figures from UK Music.

“User-uploaded service YouTube, the most widely used global streaming platform, increased its payments to music rights holders by 11% in 2015, despite consumption on the service growing by 132%. That is the value gap in a nutshell. Further industry analysis indicates that video streams increased by 88% year on year, but generated only a 0.4% increase in revenues,” he said.

To deal with the issue, Brennan suggested a new clause which would only permit sites like YouTube to enjoy safe harbor if they do not “play an active role in the storage of information including by optimizing the presentation of the uploaded works or promoting them.”

Brennan told MPs that the status quo is distorting the digital market, since YouTube benefits while services like Spotify do not. A line needs to be drawn in the sand, he said, to ensure that music services don’t enjoy the same protections as ‘dumb’ service providers.

“There was, and continues to be, a justification for exemptions in some areas for passive hosts, but those must reflect the balance between the rights of rights holders and users. The industry is concerned that existing ​provisions are not sufficiently defined and as a result are open to deliberate manipulation,” he said.

Minister of State for Digital & Culture Matt Hancock said he understood the concerns.

“As we have debated, the Bill sends a clear message about copyright infringement, not least because we are increasing the penalty for online copyright ​infringement from two to 10 years,” Hancock said.

“Of course, I know about the concern in the music industry and elsewhere that online intermediaries need to do more to share revenues fairly with creators. That is what this new clause seeks to tackle, and I agree with that concern.”

However, as the government seeks to make new laws it also has to consider current European Union law and what will happen when the UK eventually leaves the block. Hancock says that the new clause tabled by Brennan is already supported by European Court of Justice case law, a position supported in the UK.

He then turned to the issue of the EU’s Digital Single Market.

“We are heavily engaged in the digital single market negotiations and the discussions ongoing in Europe. While we are a member of the EU, we will continue to do that. The issue of the value gap, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, is important, and the development of ECJ case law in that direction has been helpful,” Hancock said.

Indeed, during September the European Commission issued its draft Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. It contains the following text:

Article 13 creates an obligation on information society service providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users to take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders and to prevent the availability on their services of content identified by rightholders in cooperation with the service providers.

“That brings me to Brexit because, as the e-commerce directive is EU single-market legislation, we will have to consider what the best future system will be as we exit the European Union,” Hancock continued.

“We will have to consider how the e-commerce regulations as a whole should work in the future. That will be part of the debate about leaving the European Union.”

Hancock said that given the progress in EU law he is “wary about making peacemeal changes” to the current UK regime, but offered assurances that he would take Brennan’s proposals into account as the UK leaves the EU.

“I acknowledge the need, through the Brexit negotiations and the process of setting domestic law where there is currently European law, to take into account the important considerations that have been raised,” he said.

Brennan subsequently withdrew the probing amendment but it’s clear that the value gap dispute won’t be going away anytime soon. However, in a sign that progress can be being made voluntarily, this week YouTube and German music rights group GEMA laid years of legal battles to rest with a landmark deal. Who knows what might follow next.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

^{If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits!}

In this episode we meet Mike Bonanno, aka Igor Vamos, one half of the dynamic, culture jamming activist duo The Yes Men. To date, they’ve produced three films: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009) and The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014).

In these films, they impersonate entities that they dislike, a practice that they call “identity correction”. In reality The Yes Men are maybe the original mass media trolls,  having successfully flummoxed the BBC, Chamber of Commerce, and even George W. Bush. But it’s trickery for good causes, from raising awareness around the Bhopals disaster to global warming.

After a news roundup from Jamie (AT&T/Time Warner merger, Pirate Party showing in Iceland elections, and copyright lobbies going after core Internet infrastructure) the episode explores the increasing power of media activists and the capacity figures like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have to affect the political stage. It’s a  bumper episode of STEAL THIS SHOW, weighing in at about 1hr 15mins. Some fun topics:

• The origins of The Yes Men in a bizarre, pornographic, surrealist piece of videogame sabotage;
• The Yes Men’s dubious claim to be the internet’s Original Trolls.;
• Trolling George W. Bush as a claim to fame;
• How to knock billions of dollars off  Fortune 100 company;
• The perils of liberating porn, and why you just do not (ahem) fuck with Big Porno;
• What it’s like to visit Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

—

Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Mike Bonanno

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Riley Byrne
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Siraje Amarniss

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Pirate movie streaming sites and services continue to gain popularity, with 123movies at the forefront of this movement.

Hollywood is not happy with this trend and reported the site to the U.S. Government’s Trade Representative last month, labeling it one of the most “notorious” pirate markets.

“123movies is a very popular streaming website that embeds popular movie and series content from third-party cyberlockers,” the MPAA wrote.

In addition, the movie industry group applied to have 123movies blocked by UK ISPs. In response, the High Court ordered the website to be blocked, alongside a dozen other streaming portals.

The people behind 123movies, who prefer to remain anonymous, fear that the blockade will hurt their visitor numbers so have decided to take counteraction. A few hours ago they started redirecting UK and Indian visitors to 123movies.gs, using a TLD from the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

The reason for the sudden move is clear, according to a site representative. “To give UK users a place to stream movies after the ban on 123movies.to,” we were told.

The .GS domain is not an arbitrary choice. The 123movies team believes that this is a relatively safe option. However, it’s worth noting that The Pirate Bay lost its .GS domain fairly quickly last year after the registry suspended it over copyright infringement issues.

With the switch, 123movies hopes to be safe for a while but they may have to relocate UK and Indian traffic again in the future.

The site’s operators say they don’t have a larger goal in mind for the site. Their main motivation is to provide free video content to the public at large, and with millions of visitors per day they are doing just that.

“We have no goal, we just want to provide free movies to users all around the world,” a 123movies representative told TorrentFreak.

“In some countries, it’s really expensive to buy a ticket at the cinema, and not all people can afford it. 123movies will help them to be able to enjoy their favorite movies at no cost.”

The Hollywood studios will cringe at 123movies’ deviant stance and are likely to take countermeasures of their own. In the UK they can request the new domain name to be blocked as well, which they are bound to do.

However, 123movies is not planning to give up anytime soon. They are thinking about starting a network of proxy sites, like The Pirate Bay has, to ensure that people will always be able to access the site.

And so it appears that Hollywood has another cat and mouse game on their hands…

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.