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"SeraphSephiroth / pacjollymac / darkark are banned! Site down, until i sort out internal staff problems!" At first all three of them were seen as banned in the site's forum, but noone seemed to know more about this. Update: From SeraphSephiroth: We're sorting stuff out now. Fingers crossed everything works out the way I hope it does.

@Soliarock please send me an email to pm.

A proposed new European copyright law could make memes illegal and threaten the future of the internet as we know it. On June 20, the European Parliament will set in motion a process that could force online platforms like Facebook, Reddit and even 4chan to censor their users' content before it ever gets online. A proposed new European copyright law wants large websites to use "content recognition technologies" to scan for copyrighted videos, music, photos, text and code in a move that that could impact everyone from the open source software community to remixers, livestreamers and teenage meme creators. In an open letter to the President of the European Parliament, some of the world's most prominent technologists warn that Article 13 of the proposed EU Copyright Directive "takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users." The directive includes a great deal of useful legislation to update copyright law and better reflect modern technologies. But Article 13 is problematic. PROPOSED EU COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE ARTICLE 13.1 Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter. It's a direct threat to the established legal notion that individual users, rather than platforms, are responsible for the content they put online. "Article 13 effectively deputizes social media and other Internet companies as copyright police, forcing them to implement a highly invasive surveillance infrastructure across their entire service offerings," says cryptographer and security specialist Bruce Schneier, one of the letter's signatories. "Aside from the harm from the provisions of Article 13, this infrastructure can be easily repurposed by government and corporations – and further entrenches ubiquitous surveillance into the fabric of the Internet." Schneier and his fellow technologists, including figures responsible for the internet as we know it, like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf, are campaigning alongside the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wikimedia and the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance, among many others. The first Legislative Committee votes on the final form of the proposal on Wednesday, June 20. The version they vote through will be referred to the parliamentary plenary session, to be – almost certainly – voted into European law on the week of July 4 or, failing, after the European parliament returns from its summer recess in late September. The Save Your Internet campaign is urging European internet users to contact their MEPs before the critical June 20 vote, and includes tools to facilitate communication with them via email, phone or social media. Area of effect Although it's primarily intended to prevent the online streaming of pirated music and video, the scope of Article 13 covers all and any copyrightable material, including images, audio, video, compiled software, code and the written word. Internet memes— which most commonly take the form of viral images, endlessly copied, repeated and riffed on— could fall into a number of those categories, creating an improbable scenario in which one of the internet's most distinctive and commonplace forms of communication is banned. https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image...8924161536.png The definitions used in Article 13 are broad by design, says writer and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow: "This system treats restrictions on free expression as the unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage of protecting copyright. Automated systems just can't distinguish between commentary, criticism, and parody and mere copying, nor could the platforms employ a workforce big enough to adjudicate each case to see if a match to a copyrighted work falls within one of copyright's limitations and exceptions." Meme makers don't have the kind of organised front of code-sharing platforms or the Wikimedia Foundation, but there've been a few, albeit rather muted efforts to raise a fuss among meme-making groups on Reddit, Facebook and 4chan, with leftist meme creators in particular expressing concerns that the new law "will result in blanket meme bans because they can't keep up with actually checking against parody laws". A redditor from r/dankmemes has passionately proclaimed that "you can take our internet and our rights, but you can never take our memes." And it gets weirder the further right you go, as conspiracy theories proliferate. One denizen of 4chan's /pol/ went so far as to suggest that attempts to muster support against Article 13's content platform filtering are "a pro-Article 13 psyop meant to make the opposition look uncool", while other comment threads on 4chan and Breitbart focussed on the always fertile alt-right tactics of blaming the Jews, female MEPs, and hedge fund magnate George Soros. The technology to filter out memes —or for that matter any copyrighted materia— would require a significant investment of time and money to develop. This means that we could see the detection of copyrighted material outsourced to companies with the means to carry it out effectively— that's likely to be US internet giants such as Amazon and Google. A filtering system would be very likely to see European users' posts analysed by US firms, which could expose their data to the US's far less stringent privacy controls, despite the EU-US Privacy Shield framework for data protection. The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition's formal response to Article 13 also notes that this kind of automatic filtering is in breach of both the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 15 of the E-Commerce Directive, which prohibits Member States from "imposing on providers that enjoy the protection of a safe harbour, general obligations to monitor the information which they transmit or store, as well as general obligations actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity." Article 13's statements that it concerns sites that provide "large amounts of works" and that "measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate" may give leeway to smaller platforms to avoid intensive copyright filtering, while some proposed alternative versions of the article even omit reference to content recognition. However, that's by no means certain, and the additional burden of policing copyright, Doctorow says, could stifle the the development of new platforms and technologies within the EU for years to come. Detection tech Google, Facebook and Amazon have advanced image recognition algorithms based on machine learning. TinEye uses hashes as unique signatures to identify specific images in whole or in part and Google uses a similar technique to spot specific screener copies of movies if they're uploaded to Drive. Text checking is more straightforward. Plagiarism detection services for the written word are provided by companies such as Grammarly and Plagiarism Checker X, although they're limited in scope by the available content for them to check against, while CopyLeaks allows copyright holders to see if their work has been plagiarised online. YouTube's Content ID system detects copyrighted materials by matching its users' uploaded videos with audio tracks that copyright holders can upload via the platform's content verification program portal. However, false and inaccurate copyright claims are a frequent occurrence, while a great deal of copyrighted material goes onto the platform unnoticed, either due to clever evasion tactics such as re-editing content or because the copyright holder hasn't been in a position to upload a reference file. "These systems are wildly imperfect and will not merely catch matches for copyrighted works, but also false positives," Doctorow says. "Big media companies – with the ear of the big platforms – will be able to pick up the phone and have someone unblock a piece of media that was falsely flagged, but the rest of us will be stuck firing off an email and crossing our fingers. https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image...8925229426.png Even now, firms accidentally claim copyright over works they don't own. Doctorow highlights the example of US news programmes broadcasting public domain government footage such as Nasa launches and Congressional debates, include them in their newscasts and then claim the newscasts on YouTube. Then, he says, "when NASA or C-Span or whomever tries to upload their footage, they're blocked because a newscaster has sloppily filed a false copyright claim." With no ability to identify context, automated copyright flagging systems are also likely to remove important content because of the incidental appearance of copyrighted material in the background, ignoring principles of fair dealing enshrined in the copyright laws of many EU countries: "something like having your protest footage blocked because of a passing motorist whose car radio was blaring a pop song – it is a match, but not one that infringes copyright." Doctorow highlighted the potential for unanticipated abuse of any automated copyright filtering system to make false copyright claims, engage in targeted harassment and even silence public discourse at sensitive times. "Because the directive does not provide penalties for abuse – and because rightsholders will not tolerate delays between claiming copyright over a work and suppressing its public display – it will be trivial to claim copyright over key works at key moments or use bots to claim copyrights on whole corpuses. The nature of automated systems, particularly if powerful rightsholders insist that they default to initially blocking potentially copyrighted material and then releasing it if a complaint is made, would make it easy for griefers to use copyright claims over, for example, relevant Wikipedia articles on the eve of a Greek debt-default referendum or, more generally, public domain content such as the entirety of Wikipedia or the complete works of Shakespeare. "Making these claims will be MUCH easier than sorting them out – bots can use cloud providers all over the world to file claims, while companies like Automattic (Wordpress) or Twitter, or even projects like Wikipedia, would have to marshall vast armies to sort through the claims and remove the bad ones – and if they get it wrong and remove a legit copyright claim, they face unbelievable copyright liability."

A day after tapping into Sony channels from DTH signals, Manthan cable operators on Monday switched off the pirated signals, fearing legal action. But pressure from football fans, who were desperate the catch the highlights of the latenight matches broadcast during the day, forced many of them to bring the channels back. The pirated channels are being beamed on a different slot on the MSO’s platform. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...327/Master.jpg A Manthan operator’s office in south Kolkata was flooded with calls from subscribers after the signals disappeared on Monday morning. The former tried to reason with subscribers that channels will be back in time for the match but few were willing to listen. “Many had to skip the live telecast of the Brazil-Switzerland match that started at 11.30pm on Sunday. They were desperate to catch the match replay and highlights on Monday. So, the channels were brought back in the morning,” said the operator. It left football fans happy but few liked the uncertainty about the channels. “I missed the Portugal-Spain match and had to call it a day after watching the first half of the Brazil match since I had to get up early for office. This morning, I had switched on the channel hoping to catch a few moments of the match but found the channels missing. The operator’s office told me that since the channels are pirated they are scared of legal action. It would be on before the match but why should I be deprived of the highlights? It’s not possible to catch every match live but I can watch the highlights at my convenience. The legal hassle is Manthan’s problem,” said Chetla resident Jayangshu Ray. Sony switched off its channels from the Manthan platform at midnight on Friday following a payment dispute. The Spain-Portugal match was on while the channels were taken off. Operators tapped signals from DTH platforms and other MSOs on Saturday to avoid viewer discontent. “Tapping signals is an illegal act. But Manthan operators have no option now and they must take the risk. You can’t afford to blackout a channel which is beaming World Cup matches live. They will have to continue the piracy till the payment dispute is sorted out. But Manthan will find it difficult to clear its dues for it is short on resources,” said a cable industry veteran.

After flagging a more streamlined process for dealing with foreign piracy websites, the Australian Federal Court has approved the block of more than 15 additional torrenting and streaming sites. The Federal Court has ordered Australia's internet service providers to block another swathe of allegedly illegal torrenting and streaming websites, after a far speedier decision came just one day after the hearing. The one-hour hearing, which took place on Monday, saw counsel for Foxtel present evidence against 11 to 15 torrent websites and 10 streaming sites, including streaming site HDO and torrenting sites ETTV and Torrents.me, as well as a new version of the Pirate Bay, which was blocked years ago under a previous Foxtel case. Foxtel had begun proceedings back in April, saying it was targeting around 27 domain names to be blocked by internet service providers. Counsel for Foxtel said that with so many previous site-blocking cases, the aim is now to "try and streamline this process a little further, both from the point of view of costs for the applicant and efficiency for the court". No ISPs showed up for the case-management hearing on Friday, after last year establishing the procedure of not being present during piracy site-blocking trials. Two other piracy site-blocking cases currently facing the Federal Court have been brought by Roadshow and the world's largest producers of Chinese media content, TVBO Productions and Television Broadcasts (TVB), with Roadshow emerging victorious in April. The TVBO/TVB and Roadshow cases began proceedings in December 2017, with both involving slightly different technologies for the court to deal with: Smart TV boxes and how they use apps linked to app marketplaces to stream copyright-infringing content. Previous site-blocking hearings saw content owners including Foxtel successfully seek blocks against Kickass Torrents, and more than 200 additional alleged piracy sites. Under the initial ruling, rights holders are to pay a AU$50 fee per domain they want to block, with the websites to be blocked within 15 business days. Website blocking was legislated under the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Act, which passed both houses of Parliament in mid-2015 and allows rights holders to obtain a court order to block websites hosted overseas that are deemed to exist for the primary purpose of infringing or facilitating infringement of copyright under Section 115A. The Australian government then opened consultation on the piracy site-blocking laws in mid February, with the Department of Communications seeking feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of the mechanism, whether the application process and injunctions are operating well, and whether any amendments are required. According to the Department of Communications, there has been a "correlating" reduction in copyright infringement since the legislation was passed -- although this also coincides with the launch of streaming services in Australia, as noted by a previous report by the department.

Disney, Paramount and Fox must contend with a lawsuit over "stolen" technology. The judge looks at past piracy cases and finds this situation more comparable to Napster than Google. Is it possible that some of the entertainment industry's biggest blockbusters from the past decade — Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Deadpool, among others — could be wiped from this Earth? That might sound an outlandish and alarmist prospect, but one VFX firm is alleging that Hollywood has used "stolen" facial motion-capture technology and is demanding that these motion pictures literally be impounded and destroyed. On Monday, a federal judge gave this plaintiff a green light to go after Disney, Paramount and Fox for vicarious and contributory copyright infringement. Rearden, founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman, was previously involved in a complicated fight against Digital Domain 3.0 and the Chinese company Shenzhenshi Haitiecheng Science and Technology Co., Ltd. Ultimately, Rearden came out ahead on tech known as the MOVA Contour Program, which has been used to capture the motion of the human face to create computer graphic images in movies. What happened next was follow-up lawsuits against various studios that had contracted with Digital Domain to use the technology. In February, U.S District Court Judge Jon Tigar allowed Rearden to move forward with its claims that the studios violated trademarks as well as claims the studios induced patent infringement. However, Tigar rejected copyright claims in his earlier decision. The following month, Tigar amended the complaint and tested a new copyright theory. This one generates more success. Originally, Rearden alleged that it owned the copyright in a software program's output and that as such, CG characters in blockbuster films represented unauthorized derivatives. Tigar didn't find it plausible that the MOVA Contour output is created by the program without any substantial contribution from the actors or directors. The issue came down to who was performing "the lion’s share of the creativity" in the facial motion capture. In the amended version, Rearden focused less on the output and more on the software. The plaintiff asserted that its program is an original literary work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression when stored on computer hard drives. Rearden looked to hold the studios as vicariously responsible for infringement because the studios are "in a position to police DD3 and/or had the right and ability to supervise and control DD3's performance." The defendants responded that Rearden hadn't plausibly alleged they had the right to stop or limit infringing conduct, which had Tigar examining whether the studios were more like Google or Napster. With regard to Google, in the case of Perfect 10 v. Amazon, the 9th Circuit noted that Google had the contractual right to terminate Perfect 10's "adsense partnership" but this did not add up to any right by Google to stop direct infringement by third-party websites. With regard to Napster, in A&M Records v. Napster, the peer-to-peer music company had a closed system requiring user registration and could terminate its users' accounts and block their access. The 9th Circuit found this was enough to give Napster the right and ability to prevent its users from engaging in infringing activity. "Here, the Studios are more similarly situated to the swap meet operator and Napster," writes Tigar in his order Monday. "Rearden alleges that DD3 provided services pursuant to contracts that gave each studio 'the unrestricted right to cancel any portion of the Services.' Thus, Rearden alleges that the Studios had the right to prevent DD3 from engaging in the infringing activity because they had the unrestricted right to cancel the use of the MOVA Contour program. Unlike in Amazon.com, where Google only had the right to terminate the Adsense partnership — which would not have stopped direct infringement by third parties — the studios could have ended the direct infringement by cancelling the use of the MOVA Contour program." The judge also says that Rearden has, at least at this stage, made a plausible showing that the studios received direct financial benefit in exploitation of Rearden's copyright in the Contour program. The decision represents a blow to the studios, which had warned the judge of consequences. Repeatedly throughout the litigation, for instance, defendants' attorney highlighted how under plaintiff's theories, Microsoft could be deemed the owner of what authors create in Word. The use of technology shouldn't add up to infringement, argued Kelly Klaus of Munger Tolles & Olson. Steve Berman, the attorney representing Rearden, has been aggressive. On Monday, he gets the judge to sign off on both vicarious and contributory copyright claims. For the latter, Rearden has to show that the studios had knowledge of someone else's infringing activity, and induced, caused or materially contributed to that infringing conduct. Tigar notes that allegations that Disney performed due diligence on intellectual property when it contracted with Digital Domain and knew its vendor didn't have the right to provide services and works are "unquestionably thin, but they are enough to survive a motion to dismiss." The judge also says it "is not implausible" that Fox and Paramount became aware of the infringing situation when reviewing color and grayscale Contour output works consistently and extensively marked with Rearden's copyright notice. "Defendants argue that 'hiring a vendor does not materially contribute to the vendor’s infringing use of unlicensed software,'" continues the judge. "But, Rearden does not simply allege that Defendants hired a vendor. It alleges Defendants directed that vendor to use the copyrighted MOVA program by contracting with DD3 to use the MOVA Contour program." The judge says the truth will be tested at a later stage. On a brighter note for the studios, they were once again able to fend off allegations of direct patent infringement. Here's the judge's order.

Beyonce & Jay-Z’s just-released album is a smash hit — on piracy and torrent channels worldwide. The development follows a restrictive weekend exclusive on Tidal and premium-only restrictions elsewhere. What happens when two of the biggest artists in the world release an album, then restrict it to paying customers only? The answer to that question may be painfully obvious. Shortly after a Tidal weekend exclusive, Beyonce and Jay-Z decided to quickly spread their latest album, Everything Is Love, to other music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Deezer. We’re not sure what prompted the abrupt change-of-heart, or if a limited, weekend exclusive on Tidal was the plan all along. Either way, the duo have insisted that their album remain restricted to paying customers only. That means no YouTube, and no free Spotify. Now, The Carters’ just-released Everything Is Love is getting downloaded like mad on torrenting channels. The album quickly shot to the top of the torrent charts over the weekend, possibly because fans were confronted with the restrictive exclusive. A quick check on thepiratebay.org shows that The Carters’ release is crushing the second-ranked torrent, Kanye West’s ye. West’s album is widely available on platforms like Spotify, including free channels, and is easily one of the biggest albums of the year. Also worth noting: the other top-ranked albums are mostly rap albums, including DAMN from Kendrick Lamar and Nas’ latest release. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-...nce_piracy.jpg Another heavily-used torrent tracker, limetorrents.cc, shows a similar surge. In fact, the torrented FLAC was pulled from Tidal itself. After the weekend, Everything Is Love became the second most-torrented music release for the month, despite being uploaded over the weekend. The source file is actually a higher-resolution version, which Tidal offers to customers that pay more. Which means that, yes, a $20-a-month higher-end streaming subscriber helped feed the piracy beast. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-...imetorrent.jpg Meanwhile, the power-couple of Beyonce and Jay-Z appear to be restricting their album from YouTube almost completely. That’s taking a little of the sizzle out of YouTube Music’s global expansion, though it’s probably not helping the Carters control the piracy wildfire. Still, the album’s lead track, ‘Apeshit,’ was heavily promoted on YouTube as a teaser. And yeah: it’s pretty damn good!

The pictures flashed around the world of FIFA president Gianni Infantino sitting majestically between his two new best friends, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia on his right and Valdimir Putin on his left at the opening match of the 2018 World Cup, will have left FIFA’s high paying rightsholders wondering if there is another game in play that they are not part of. Saudi-backed broadcaster satellite beoutQ, which has been transmitting via the Arabasat satellite, has been stealing sports rights content on an industrial scale. That now includes every game so far of the FIFA World Cup from Russia, a copyright issue FIFA seems to be tacitly tolerating despite a statement saying it “takes infringements of its intellectual property very seriously and is exploring all options to stop the infringement of its rights, including in relation to action against legitimate organisations that are seen to support such illegal activities.” The issue for Infantino is that the piracy is not just that of a rogue satellite operator, but of a state-supported broadcaster deliberately stealing rights to undermine a neighbour in a sports rights war that has become part of a wider geo-political agenda. A further complicated for Infantino is that he still has his eyes on a $25 billion infusion of new money for the commercial rights to a revamped Club World Cup and a world Nations League – a proposal he failed to bully through prior to the World Cup but which is still on the agenda. While Infantino has been coy about the origin of that money, all indications are that the bulk of it is coming from Saudi Arabia. It is a sum of money that most rights brokers believe is not attainable in the current rights markets, which would again point to a soft geo-political power play in the disruption of the global football calendar and the run-up to the Qatar 2022 World Cup. beoutQ launched soon after the Qatar blockade began, in August 2017. Claiming that it is a Colombian and Cuban venture, investigations have shown it is linked to Saudi companies and is actively promoted by Saud Al Qahtani, a media advisor to the Saudi Royal Court, holding the rank of Minister. BeoutQ’s channels are broadcast using satellite frequencies on Arabsat, an intergovernmental satellite operator headquartered in Riyadh and 36.6% owned by the givernment. Since December 2017, beIN has repeatedly requested Arabsat to stop beoutQ’s illegal transmission of beIN’s bought and paid-for media content via Arabsat’s satellites. Arabsat has refused to cooperate, despite repeated cease and desist letters. Tom Keaveny, managing director of beIN MENA, said: “Our investigations have revealed that beoutQ is connected with Saudi Selevision Company, a media company owned by a well-known Saudi family, the Khusheims.” It is not just beIN that has had its broadcasts pirated. As beIN has taken anti-piracy measures to prevent the theft of its signal, beoutQ has turned to stealing broadcast feeds from other rightsholders and beaming the matches to a footprint it hasn’t paid a rights fee for. Most recently it has stolen from Comcast, taking NBCUniversal Telemundo’s World Cup feed of the World Cup and inserting their own commentary on top. In a statement release last Friday FIFA said: “FIFA is aware that a pirate channel named BeoutQ has illegally distributed the opening matches of 2018 FIFA World Cup™ in the MENA region. FIFA takes infringements of its intellectual property very seriously and is exploring all options to stop the infringement of its rights, including in relation to action against legitimate organisations that are seen to support such illegal activities. We refute that BeoutQ has received any rights from FIFA to broadcast any FIFA event.” The warnings from FIFA and the Confederation of African football over the pirating of their competitions, have fallen on deaf ears in Saudi Arabia. A beoutQ statement issued at the weekend said: “Our dear viewers, beoutQ informing its viewers that it is carrying out regular maintenance for its channels, resulting from the desperate attempt led by the qatari side represented by its sports group affecting its Cuban satellite today and yesterday through illegal and failed means which we thwarted. These attempts contravenes with international law. We declare this and comfort our viewers that their viewing of the World Cup is in safe hands, and we request the viewers to keep their boxes on all the time on our channels l, connected to internet until the next match so that we can carry out the needed updates in the coming hours to resume broadcast gradually.” Talk is cheap, but rights are expensive. With more than 10 games of the 64 game World Cup already pirated, FIFA could very soon be facing aggressive demands for rightsholders for action rather than platitudes. For an organisation that last week trumpeted its sound financial footing and made promises of even more money to its members, it is showing very little respect or protection for the buyers of those rights. This could also lead to demands for compensation. Then Infantino might have to pluck up courage to have a word with his pal sitting on his right hand side.

Section 230 of the CDA gave us the internet we know today. It has allowed hundreds of tech companies and dozens of social media networks to flourish. To some people, however, Section 230 immunity is the internet's villain, not its hero. Recent legislation has created some damaging holes in this essential protection, but it's still insular enough to fend off most legal action in which plaintiffs choose to sue service providers rather than the end user who did/said whatever the plaintiff finds tortiously offensive. Similar to what has been argued in multiple piracy-related lawsuits, the plaintiff in this lawsuit filed against Snapchat alleged one of the company's photo filters encouraged users to break the law. This lawbreaking had particularly tragic consequences. Christal McGee allegedly drove recklessly (over 100 mph) to capture her accomplishment in Snapchat’s speed filter. McGee’s car hit Maynard’s car and caused permanent brain damage to someone in the car. This is where Snapchat comes in. It wasn't that the driver was just using the service when the accident occurred. It's that the driver was using a certain filter when she hit the other vehicle. The Maynards sued Snapchat, alleging “Snapchat knew that its users could ‘use its service in a manner that might distract them from obeying traffic or safety laws.’ Further, the Maynards allege that Snapchat’s Speed Filter ‘encourages’ dangerous speeding and that the Speed Filter ‘facilitated McGee’s excessive speeding[,]’ which resulted in the crash.” As Eric Goldman points out, the lawsuit doesn't allege McGee posted a photo using the Speed Filter. It's simply enough the filter existed, according to their arguments. The lower court rejected this argument, granting Snapchat's Section 230 motion to dismiss. The state appeals court, however, has more sympathy for the Maynards' argument. The plaintiffs aren't trying to hold Snapchat liable for any photo McGee was trying to create at the time of the crash. (Testimony from McGee's passenger says McGee was "trying to get the car to 100 m.p.h." and had the app open on her phone, which was aimed at her speedometer.) Instead, the Maynards want Snapchat to be legally liable simply for creating a filter that might encourage users to take photos of themselves speeding. The appeals court decides [PDF] that this isn't actually a Section 230 case since the Maynards aren't attempting to hold Snapchat accountable for user-generated content. Instead, it points out Section 230 does not immunize service providers from being held liable for software features they themselves create. Snapchat argued that if it's not a Section 230 case, it should still be dismissed because the Maynards' complaint fails for other reasons. The appeals court disagrees: Although Snapchat contends that this Court should affirm the trial court’s grant of its motion to dismiss under the right for any reason rationale, because the Maynards allegedly did not properly state negligence claims against Snapchat and that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over Snapchat, these issues were not decided by the trial court below. Back to the trial court it goes to hear arguments about the points Snapchat raised, but did not fully address in its Section 230-based motion to dismiss. Eric Goldman disagrees with the appeals court's assessment of the Section 230 issue. First, even if she hadn’t completed the publication, McGee allegedly was preparing the speed filter-motivated content for publication. If she had been generating the speed filter only for her personal bemusement, without any plan or ability to share the content with her audience, then I can see why the claim wouldn’t treat Snapchat as the publisher/speaker of her content. But here, McGee’s creation of the speed filter video only makes sense as a preparatory step towards sharing the video with third parties, and I would extend Section 230’s coverage to preparatory steps in addition to the actual publication of content. Second, as a practical matter, the complaint will probably fail on prima facie grounds–similar to how the promissory estoppel and failure-to-warn workarounds to Section 230 are not very significant because the plaintiffs usually can’t win those claims on the merits. Though the accident was a terrible tragedy, the odds are good that Snapchat’s role in the accident isn’t covered by the applicable torts. So now the case will consume more litigation cycles only to end up in the same place. One of Section 230’s strengths is moving such cases out of the court system early when they relate to publishing third party content. The second part may seem cold-hearted but there's not much to like about racking up legal fees just to lose on other issues rather than Section 230 immunity. While the plaintiffs may have a point that Snapchat's Speed Filter (which has since been removed) possibly encouraged lawless and dangerous actions, the app had no power to actually force users to drive recklessly while using the app. It's a bit disingenuous to place all the blame on the end users. It was a very stupid addition by Snapchat. But the driver who caused the accident is at fault, not the filter Snapchat created.

From lax enforcement in the region to big perpetrators in Silicon Valley, CEOs of MENA-based broadcasters offered a candid breakdown of the menace of piracy at BroadcastPro ME’s inaugural Anti-Piracy Conference held on May 2 at the Ritz-Carlton in Dubai. The Middle East is notorious for its piracy, but also for not having enough regulation in place to protect the media business. A 2017 report from MUSO, for instance, points out that the UAE is ranked “29 in the world for the volume of TV piracy consumed, seeing a total of 750.90 million visits to all piracy sites in 2017”. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have even worse records. Over the last couple of years, the MENA Anti-Piracy Coalition, which launched in 2014, has had a number of successes in closing down pirate channels thanks to close collaboration between partners, which mainly comprise broadcasters, satellite operators, production and distribution companies, telcos and more recently anti-piracy firms. The broadcasters have put their legal teams to work, undertaken significant investigation in most cases and spent time, money and effort to bring pirates to book. But is it enough? At BroadcastPro Middle East’s inaugural anti-piracy conference, the CEO panel, moderated by Christophe Firth, Principal at AT Kearney Middle East, was unified in its call for regulators to up their game in the MENA region. Sam Barnett, CEO of MBC Group, pointed out that regulation is currently the single biggest missing element in the fight against piracy. “Today, we can take down a site in three to six weeks, which is good. The challenge is it takes them only an hour to return with another name. We now need the support of regulators to ensure they stay down … People are very keen on building media cities, studios and infrastructure which supports the production and development of media assets, but without the protection of those assets, you are limiting the development of what should be a vibrant and successful media industry in the Middle East,” Barnett said. Martin Stewart, CEO of OSN, agreed, reiterating that “the tolerance of piracy in this region is damaging to everyone” and must be curtailed “in order to have a successful media sector”. He reiterated the economic implications in terms of the jobs at risk from online piracy. “If more is not done through regulation and empowering telcos to take down sites by putting pressure on rights holders and international players like Google, none of the ambitions that are being sought in various documents will be realised.” Mukund Cairae, CEO of Zee Middle East, asked why the same measures put in place to curtail traffic violations couldn’t be enforced where content rights are concerned. “Pay TV for us as an Asian player should be four to five times what it is today, and the reason it is not so is because people have this perceived demand that they should have 300 channels, even if they only watch four or five. If they can’t get this in the present geography, they deploy illegal means and they know there is nobody to check them. This can only be curtailed if people know that they can be fined for downloading illegal content. It’s like traffic violations.” Barnett stepped in at this point to add that “enforcement should be on the supply side and not on the demand”. Firth introduced the notion that there are three types of pirate users: unashamed, where they knowingly use an illegal service and have no issue with doing so; unaware, where they are using an illegal service but do not know it is a pirate one; and unwilling, where they knowingly use a pirate service and would prefer to use a legal one, but there is no legal service available with the content, features or price that meets their needs. Firth pointed out that content owners and service providers are spending a lot of effort blocking unashamed users and educating unaware users, and questioned whether they are doing enough to address unwilling users. As the only CEO representing an exclusive OTT platform, Firth asked Maaz Sheikh, CEO of Starz Play, if the streaming service was doing enough with its packages and pricing to make illegal services irrelevant. While agreeing that packages tailored to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of the region served as a differentiator and acknowledging the success stories of the anti-piracy coalition, Sheikh queried why the studios, Google and Apple did not share the burden of curtailing piracy along with telcos, satellite operators and broadcasters, as most people tend to download content from the internet. He pointed out that legal platforms like Starz Play have had to provide “heaps of information” to the likes of Google and Apple to prove they had the rights to the content they have paid for, while studios turn a blind eye to their content being downloaded illegally on apps available through these platforms. “Their latest movies are being pirated on Apple apps that are available globally. I think the Googles and Apples and Facebooks of the world must be a part of this anti-piracy effort, because the latest movies and shows that are being pirated online and being shown on apps are downloaded illegally from their stores. Why are the studios and Hollywood not doing anything about that? Why should regulators and telcos alone bear this burden?” Barnett agreed that packaging content for local consumers certainly helped make a regional broadcaster’s bouquet more attractive than illegal alternatives. He pointed out that today’s kids are not going to websites to download content, but “to illegal apps that are easily available” on the internet. “This is why regulation and cooperation with telcos is important. But it is equally important for the studios to work with Google and Apple to block these apps,” he reiterated. Barnett took the opportunity to point out that MBC has also tried to differentiate its user experience by tailoring it for a regional audience and highlighted the network’s recent kids’ VOD offering, which he says will be particularly attractive to parents concerned about their children downloading pirated content which may also have content deemed unsafe. “We package our content for local values. If you watch a movie with your family, you won’t be embarrassed. That’s a value-add, because we chop out what’s embarrassing. You don’t get that on the pirate sites. People may watch pirated content, but they are often concerned about what content their kids can watch, and on a pirated site, nothing is censored. We have launched Goboz, which is our kids’ VOD, and I suspect that people who download movies for themselves will be much more willing to pay money for Goboz so they can guarantee that what their children are watching is safe,” commented Barnett. He cited a recent example, where what looked like a harmless version of Peppa Pig on YouTube had some objectionable content in the middle of the video, whereas packages from legitimate sources would protect children from such material. OSN’s Stewart pointed out that the pay TV network had a similar discussion with the studios, but it was futile. He also decried how a lot of the premium content that OSN pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for turns up on YouTube and “then we have to go through the same tortuous process of taking them down, and it takes weeks”. Stewart brought the discussion back to regulation, raising the very valid point that if certain videos, VoIP services and the like have been blocked effectively in this region and never show up on YouTube or Google, then it’s evident that such content can be blocked but is being overlooked because regulators don’t view content piracy as a serious criminal offence. “It’s just a matter of will. If you take it seriously and think it is important to protect intellectual property and genuinely want the media sector to properly flourish, you can make it happen. You don’t make it happen at present because you don’t think it’s important,” he commented. Cairae explained that an Indian anti-piracy coalition seems to be successfully taking down 100,000 links every month. “In the last four months, the content from main broadcasters doesn’t seem to be available [on those illegal sites] anymore. That means a concentrated effort to speak to Google, Facebook and Apple has worked for them.” Barnett stated that MBC has had a lot of success with YouTube, “where we are taking down half a million links every quarter and they are done pretty quickly. We put fingerprints on our legal content and it disappears, and we are in discussions to have them removed from Google search and that has been effective.” The issue, he pointed out, is new entities coming to the region and having to start a fresh dialogue with them and waste another two to three years in the process. “It would really help if the regulators have that conversation with them. Then it is less about us individually trying to persuade big companies to obey the law, and it would be a much quicker and more effective way of doing it.” The panel also decried the sale of Kodi and similar illegal boxes that can easily be bought on shopping sites in the region. Stewart mentioned at this point that while regulation and customer experience, including the price and the packaging designed for a safe experience, are relevant, awareness and education are equally important. Taking the example of the controversial BeoutQ box, which is readily available side by side with legal boxes in some markets, Firth queried if enough is being done by law enforcement agencies to contain this. “Governments have to decide what their priorities are. Most of the countries that we operate in say they want to support the media sector, and places like the UAE are doing this, but if BeoutQ is able to go into countries and steal huge amounts of content, that ultimately weakens the sector,” Barnett said, but he also added that the coalition has had many success stories through collaboration. “Awareness goes a huge way. It’s not just about the consumer. The success of our coalition was that we pulled the broadcasters and the satellite operators together and were able to show them that there were about 75 channels among the 800 channels that were stealing content. When operators and satellite distributors were told that they were carrying some pirate channels, the vast majority stopped doing it. That’s how we got those channels taken down. But there are operators who refuse to acknowledge that at the moment.” Barnett cited the example of MX-1, a new entry into the MENA market, which is selling capacity to some channels identified as allegedly running illegal content. “They have 8-12 pirate channels and we sent them notices saying some of the channels on their platform are pirating content, but they say it has nothing to do with them because they are just providing a platform. “That does not work when you are selling stolen goods. I doubt anyone wants to be dealing with organised crime and taking cash from pirates. We have a challenge to communicate that to the executives at the company. I’m sure that once they understand it, they will also clamp down as did the rest of the satellite market. That is the point about awareness and ultimately, people will try to make it better.” Firth then queried if set-topbox piracy was still relevant today or was diminishing in importance as compared to piracy on streaming services. Stewart pointed out that working with good encryption providers has always been vitally important. “It’s a multi-faceted fight; we are going further with fingerprinting and watermarking. Once we track down boxes that are being used for illegal distribution, they can be killed remotely. All of us may have a predilection to one part of the problem, but together we need to ensure that we address all forms of piracy.” Firth deftly brought the discussion to the music industry, commenting that this sector seems to have cracked the code to fighting piracy and making money. “2018 is the fourth year in a row that the music sector is growing as a whole. This hasn’t happened since the 1990s. After many years focusing their efforts on litigation and other measures to fight piracy, music label executives shifted their efforts to refining themselves and their business models for the new reality of the music sector, and have since been doing very well. But downstream companies distributing music locally have suffered as a result of these new business models. Is there a lesson here for the video sector? Are the content owners and studios going to change the way they do business, and what implication will that have for local broadcasters and distributors?” he questioned. Cairae stepped in at this point to say that the length of a music piece, as opposed to video content, puts the latter at a disadvantage. “The length of the content is the basic difference between music and video. When the length of the content is 45 minutes broken up into nine tracks, it is pretty short. The amount of money you put into creating that content is a fraction of what it takes to create a whole series of Arabic, Western or Indian content. So will video move the way music did? It is highly unlikely, considering the capital required to create that amount of video. Short-form videos are relatively inexpensive to produce, but if you have 30 episodes and three seasons, the game changes.” Stewart, who was in the music business at one point of his career, says there are some lessons to be learned from the music industry. “From a price and experience POV, the music business realised that it is better to get five bucks a month from a subscription streaming service or get people to buy 99 cents for a single and massively increase the percentage of people who purchase the music. This is because in the ’80s and ’90s, only a minority could afford to buy full albums so they lowered the price and increased the access and affordability. So the number of people consuming music also increased. “The other thing was that with the music industry growing, they found other ways to distribute their music and exploit different distribution models. For instance, live music has been booming in the last five to seven years. We have some lessons to learn from there. For instance, massively increasing the number of people who consume video content in this region by lowering prices and increasing accessibility is the way to make a meaningful contribution to removing the desire to pirate.” Clearly, there are several variables in the piracy debate and not all of them are in black and white. For instance, back episodes of popular content are not always available on legal platforms, and people tend to source them from illegal platforms. With time running out, Firth questioned if things would get better in five years. Barnett said he was hopeful the regulators would step up and improve significantly what they are doing. “Technology, which in the past has been used to steal can be used to track, monitor, and can be used by the regulators as well. The pendulum will swing back and it will be more positive in five years’ time.” Stewart said his greatest wish would be to see each country in the region hit their five- or 10- year vision. To do that, “they will need a vibrant media economy to be part of their overall success, so hopefully they will execute on what is in those documents”. Cairae commented that there are proven successes with coalitions working and talking in one voice to regulators, and the combination of these with technology will definitely help beat the pirates. Sheikh reiterated that the issue of online streaming and piracy will not be resolved until it is addressed in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. “Until these two entities do something about it, there is not much we can do about the problem. What we can do is deliver a safer user experience and package the content for regional audiences. But the online piracy debate needs to be addressed in the US and globally.” A significant question from the audience was whether advertisers should also stay away from pirate sites. “Pirates are in this for the money, so are there any efforts to cut that cash flow?” an attendee asked. While Cairae said search engines were cognisant of these issues and had started a new set of algorithms, other panellists said advertisers and digital media agencies should make a conscious effort to eliminate illegal panels from their list of platforms for advertising. Sheikh left the crowd with a very pertinent but disconcerting issue at this point, commenting that the move from linear channels primarily to digital advertising took place because platforms supposedly had a more detailed understanding of the profile of their viewers. “The whole idea with digital advertising was to control your message based on the profile of your audience. We were not getting that with linear. But now, there is so much secrecy around who your ads are reaching and what platforms and what publishers and what websites your ads are ending up on. I can’t say I can only advertise on these three websites. I don’t go to Google and say I want my ads only on these three publishers, because that’s not how it works. “The challenge we have is that algorithms and AI are being used to place these ads. So there is no human behind assessing whether a site is legal or not legal, and those are proprietary algorithms used by the Googles of the world. As long as those apps and websites exist, this is the reality of the business we have to deal with. This is why I said this problem has to be addressed in Silicon.

Fans of music have it pretty good on YouTube. It is possible to view and/or listen to your favorite tracks in the studio and live, and unlike a streaming service like Spotify, it is free. While ad revenue can be made, the music industry has an uneasy relationship with YouTube. In terms of YouTube downloaders, record companies have been much less tolerant. https://winbuzzer.com/wp-content/upl...er-696x395.jpg MP3 conversion tools essentially allow users to turn YouTube videos into MP3 music files. Yes, this means free, albeit illegal, music. Record companies have gone after developers behind such tools aggressively. It seems the war has paid off as some MP3 conversion tools folded this past week. Legal pressure seems to be the cause of the closures. Pickvideo.net says it is shuttering after receiving a cease and desist order. Video-download.co and EasyLoad.co are also closing, citing the YouTube-MP3 legal action as the reason. The music industry has been clear in stating MP3 conversion tools are a bigger threat than torrents. Major regulatory bodies like the IFPI, RIAA, and BPIhave gone after YouTube-MP3, the largest MP3 ripping site. That case resulted in a settlement when the website agreed to shut its doors. Industry Win If the biggest developer, which enjoyed one-million daily visitors, was closed to close, what about smaller companies? The last week has provided an answer as many smaller providers have closed. The music industry is enjoying a major victory in its battle against piracy. Of course, these kinds of victories have also occurred against torrent websites like Pirate Bay. As we have seen in those cases, websites have a habit of cropping back up under a different name or hosted in a country that is more tolerant of piracy. Whether websites like Pick-Video will return in one guise or another remains to be seen. In May, YouTube announced its own music streaming service.

In a rather archaic approach to battling piracy has once again been proposed by the Canadian music industry in the form of "smartphone tax" aimed at recouping alleged potential revenue lost at the hands of piracy. Every electronic device capable of storing data is just another tool in the pirate's chest. If you think your phone or mp3 player or hard drive is just something for storing data and perhaps even purchased software, movies, and music, think again. The simple fact you've decided to purchase any of these devices pretty much ensures content creators everywhere will go bankrupt. The "you must be a pirate" tax is being pitched again. The senseless fee tacked on to blank plastic discs for so many years continues to migrate to electronic devices, including the tiny chips stashed away inside smartphones. Apparently, the Canadian music industry needs something to replace the revenue stream that dried up when people stopped buying blank CDs. Michael Geist, working with documents secured through a public records request, reports the Canadian music industry is looking for a hefty payout from the government. According to documents released under the Access to Information Act, the collective arrived with a startling demand, asking the federal government to pay $160 million over the next four years to compensate for music copying. The demand, which now forms part of the platform of demands from the Canadian music industry, is based on a $40 million annual handout. While the industry has not provided details on how it arrived at its figure, notes (likely from Graham Flack) reveal the basis of the demand. This apparently breaks down to $3.50 a device, according to the cocktail napkin math handed in by the industry. https://i.imgur.com/o9TpiNb.jpg But the industry isn't willing to wait around for devices to be sold. The CPCC (Canadian Private Copying Collective) wants the government to just hand it $40 million a year and assume it all adds up in the end. So, it's a much broader "you must be a pirate tax" that calls all Canadians pirates, whether or not they've actually purchased a new piratephone during the fiscal year. What's more, the document [PDF] makes it clear the CPCC wants a new revenue stream just because an old one has vanished. It points out revenues from "pirate" taxes have dropped from a high of $38 million back in the heyday of blank media to an expected $2 million in 2017. It also notes that streaming services are replacing music sales, accelerating this decline in "pirate" taxes. However, the report carefully does not point out revenues from streaming services have increased from $3.4 million in 2013 to $49.3 million in 2017. It also ignores the fact that much less copying -- authorized or unauthorized -- is taking place. The business model this "pirate" tax depended on -- copying of music to media or devices -- is slowly being eliminated. That doesn't mean taxpayers owe CPCC a living. It just means sales are being replaced with "rentals." If the CPCC failed to capitalize on the shift to streaming, it shouldn't be allowed to make up its "lost" revenue by taxing smartphones just because that's where most music streaming takes place. It makes as much sense as envelope manufacturers demanding a per-device tax because email and instant messaging has replaced snail mail as a means of communication.

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