Posts Tagged ‘copyright infringement’

The fallout from iiNet: markets and laws failing in face of net piracy

February 8th, 2010

Last week the Federal Court of Australia released its important decision in the iiNet case. As many commentators have pointed out, the court declined to require Australia’s ISPs to disconnect those of its subscribers who are repeat copyright infringers.

In the course of reaching this decision, the court made a number of important rulings about the liability arising from the use of BitTorrent networks including the following:

  • Seeders and peers that make music available for sharing are infringers under Australia’s making available right.
  • The transmission of copyright files as part of a BitTorrent swarm constitutes a transmission (communication) to the public by participants in the stream and is infringing.
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Posted in Copyright, Graduated Response, ISP Liability, Piracy

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The Epidemic of Online Book Piracy

January 18th, 2010

When people think of unauthorized file sharing, they often focus on music, movies and TV programs, and software. Often forgotten is the magnitude of the illegal file sharing in the book publishing industry. A recent study published by Attributor documents what the Association of American Publishers calls an “Epidemic of Online Book Piracy”.

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Posted in Copyright, Piracy, book piracy

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Fung and Isohunt found liable for inducing worldwide copyright infringement

December 25th, 2009

Earlier this week, a US district court granted summary judgement to MPAA members holding that Gary Fung and four websites operated by him, including Isohunt one of Canada’s largest bittorrent sites, contribute to massive worldwide copyright infringement.

Operators of bittorrent sites like isoHunt often claim they are nothing but content neutral search engines like Google. The Isohunt court disagreed holding, based on uncontested expert evidence, that approximately 95 percent of all files made accessible through Isohunt were infringing or highly likely to be infringing.

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Posted in Copyright, ISP Liability, Piracy, WIPO Treaties

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Non-commercial P2P file sharing is not fair use says court in Sony BMG v Tenenbaum case

December 14th, 2009

A U.S. district court has now issued a wide area injunction in the Sony BMG  Music Entertainment v Tenenbaum case, 2009 WL 4723397 (D.Mass.Dec 7. 2009). The order is as follow:

“…defendant shall be, and hereby is, enjoined from directly or indirectly infringing plaintiffs’ rights under federal or state law in any sound recording, whether now in existence or later created, that is owned or controlled by plaintiffs (or any parent, subsidiary, or affiliate record label of plaintiffs) (“Plaintiffs’ Recordings”), including without limitation by using the Internet or any online media distribution system to reproduce or distribute any of Plaintiffs’ Recordings, except pursuant to a lawful license or with the express authority of plaintiffs. Defendant also shall destroy all copies of Plaintiffs’ Recordings that defendant has downloaded onto any computer hard drive or server without plaintiffs’ authorization and shall destroy all copies of those downloaded recordings transferred onto any physical medium or device in defendant’s possession, custody, or control.”

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Posted in Copyright, Piracy

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Mininova gone, who’s left and where are they located?

November 27th, 2009

In August of this year a Dutch court ordered Mininova to remove all infringing torrents within three months. Yesterday, Mininova complied with the court’s order and disabled all torrents, except those in the licensed “content distribution” part of the service.

Mininova was the world’s second most popular unauthorized BitTorrent site. It facilitated infringement on a massive scale, with more than 10 billion downloads. Its demise follows Pirate Bay which was also ordered shut down following a decision by a Swedish court this past April which found Pirate Bay’s operators criminally responsible for copyright infringement.

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Microsoft Wins Substantial Damages Award for Unauthorized Distribution of its Software

July 28th, 2009

 A federal court has granted Microsoft Corporation default judgment against two PC Village businesses and two individuals associated with the businesses in an action for copyright and trade-mark infringement. Microsoft’s investigators had purchased computers from two separate PC Village locations. The judge found that one computer contained seven unauthorized Microsoft software programs, while the other had eight.

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