Yesterday, the International Intellectual Property Alliance released its 2010 SPECIAL 301 REPORT ON COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT AND PROTECTION. The report notes that “its statement in the 2007 Special 301 report – submitted three years ago – remains, disappointingly, true today: “Canada remains far behind virtually all its peers in the industrialized world with respect to its efforts to bring its copyright laws up to date with the realities of the global digital networked environment. Indeed, even most of the major developing countries have progressed further and faster than Canada in meeting this challenge.”
Posts Tagged ‘Piracy’
Canada again in the penalty box over poor IP laws and enforcement according to 2010 IIPA 301 report
February 19th, 2010Stealing is not a form of flattery, nor is it sincere…
February 9th, 2010Take a look at Deadline Dames’ guest blog by Jeaniene Frost who wrote a good piece on e-pirating of books debunking 13 popular justifications for piracy. She closes with the following summary:
The fallout from iiNet: markets and laws failing in face of net piracy
February 8th, 2010Last 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.
Challenges for Digital Britain: broadband access, copyright and business models
January 25th, 2010Last week, the UK Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, gave a speech outlining the main challenges ahead for the government in moving forward with its Digital Britain initiative. He focused on three challenges, broadband; copyright; and new business models.
With respect to broadband, he outlined that the government had two major broadband projects: a commitment that every home in the country should be able to obtain a 2 Mbit/s broadband service – and so be able to use the applications which most people are using broadband for today; and a next-generation fund to support national scale investment in much higher speed services.
The Italian Pirate Bay Case: What did the court order and why?
January 19th, 2010On December 23, 2009, the Italian Supreme Court released its ruling in a case involving criminal charges against the operators of the Swedish website, Pirate Bay. The case raised a number of interesting issues including whether, under Italian criminal law, the operation of a BiTtorrent site is illegal when the operators get a financial return such as by showing advertising on the site; the seizure of a p2p file sharing website is possible; a court can grant injunctive relief requiring ISPs to block access to a site that facilitates infringement; and the criminal law extends to online digital piracy that in part takes place abroad. In line with evolving precedents, the Italian Supreme court answered all of these questions in the affirmative.
The Epidemic of Online Book Piracy
January 18th, 2010When 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”.
Critiquing copyright canards
January 7th, 2010I just came across a paper published by the US based Copyright Alliance entitled Critiquing Copyright Canards. Written by Patrick Ross, the paper sets out to debunk some of the arguments or “canards” that are used by opponents of copyright.
ITIF Report: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy
January 1st, 2010Earlier this month, The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a paper called Steal These Policies: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy. The aim of the paper is to advance a policy in which illegal sources of digital content is reduced while legal content becomes more accessible. The executive summary provides the following overview of the problem as follows:
Toying with funny math to downplay Canada’s role as a piracy haven
December 28th, 2009Several weeks ago TorrentFreak published its Top 25 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2009. In a blog commenting on the rankings, I pointed out that out of the top 25, 7 of them are located or have connections to Canada and that of the top 10, 4 are located or have connections to Canada. I also pointed out that this meant that Canada, alone, is home to more than 25% of the world’s public English language unauthorized bitTorrent sites and 40% of the leading ones are in Canada.
Fung and Isohunt found liable for inducing worldwide copyright infringement
December 25th, 2009Earlier 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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