Legal news stories and other items of interest

[tunebud]

Count me if I am wrong hasn't P/B bailed out a lot of other P2P networks taking them under there wing?

What happened to Sweden being a neutral country to all things?
Has the long arm of the RIAA reached out from the U.S. and touched them? And how did they do that?
Surly it cannot be a financial stand point seeing how the dollar isn't worth much

[battye]

Count me if I am wrong hasn't P/B bailed out a lot of other P2P networks taking them under there wing?

What happened to Sweden being a neutral country to all things?
Has the long arm of the RIAA reached out from the U.S. and touched them? And how did they do that?
Surly it cannot be a financial stand point seeing how the dollar isn't worth much

I think that's Switzerland, although I don't know what their or Sweden's stance on file sharing has been before now.


http://www.redherring.com/Home/23612

The Louisiana startup Network Foundation Technologies believes it is revolutionizing the way live video is broadcast over the Internet.

NFT President Marcus Morton said its peer-to-peer technology reduces by more than 50 percent bandwidth needs, one of the biggest costs for companies looking to broadcast live over the Internet. That means companies can more easily pay for the cost of broadcasting through advertising, he said.

“This is a TV model brought to the Internet,” said Mr. Morton.

At least a handful of companies appear convinced. NFT on Tuesday announced that beginning in March arenafootball2 will broadcast the league’s games for free over the Internet. The Central Hockey League and the International Baseball Federation are already clients.

Mr. Morton said sports leagues are their “low-hanging fruit” because their content—sporting matches—are best watched live.

Viewers must first download a video player, custom-built for each content owner. But then fans get to kick their feet up and watch for free—like the old days of broadcast television.

Other companies, like Akamai and Brightcove, also have live broadcasting services for the Internet.

NFT received its first funding round in early 2007 from private investors. The startup was founded by Mike O’Neal, who is its current chief scientist and is the former chair of the computer science program at Louisiana Tech University.

Sounds like a less appealing version of Sopcast, but it says it's free, and if it's free and legal then power to it.

[p2p-sharing-rules]

Italy makes a mistake, legalises MP3 P2P

p2pnet news | P2P:- Andrea Monti, an expert on copyright and Net law, interprets the new Italian copyright law as authorizing users to, "publish and freely share copyrighted music (p2p included)," says Slashdot, quoting plainwhitetoast.

"The new law, already approved by both legislative houses, indeed says that one is allowed to publish freely, through the Internet, free of charge, images and music at low resolution or "degraded," for scientific or educational use, and only when such use is not for profit,. says the post, adding:

"As Monti says in the interview, those who wrote it didn’t realize that the word ‘degraded’ is technical, with a very precise meaning, which includes MP3s, which are compressed with an algorithm that ensures a quality loss.

"The law will be effective after the appropriate decree of the ministry, and will probably have an impact on pending p2p judicial cases."

[p2p-sharing-rules]

IFPI Forces Danish ISP to Block The Pirate Bay

The battle between the IFPI and the Pirate Bay continues. A Danish court ruled in favor of the IFPI, and ordered the Danish ISP “Tele2″ (DMT2-Tele2) to block all access to the popular BitTorrent tracker. The Pirate Bay, currently ranked 28th in the list of most visited sites in Denmark, is working on countermeasures.

[p2p-sharing-rules]

Major Microsoft counterfeiter sentenced to 4 years in prison

A group of counterfeiters that Microsoft claims was responsible for over 90 percent of the world's supply of fake Microsoft software has been sentenced to prison. The sentences were handed down in Taiwan late last month, and Microsoft hails them as a huge victory against global counterfeiting. According to the software giant, Taipei-based Maximus Technology, Inc., and its owner, Huang Jer-sheng, had been distributing the "high-quality" pirated software to over 600 cities in 22 countries between 1997 and 2003. Huang got four years in prison from Taiwanese authorities for his efforts; his three partners in crime received terms ranging from 18 months to three years. Huang's sentence was the longest for this type of crime in Taiwanese history, says Microsoft.

[p2p-sharing-rules]

MediaSentry role in RIAA lawsuit comes under scrutiny

MediaSentry's role in the RIAA's cases is coming under new scrutiny in Lava v. Amurao, with the defendant's attorney arguing that the testimony from the company be excluded on the grounds that Media Sentry is operating as a private investigator without the license that is required by New York state law.

[battye]

Italy makes a mistake, legalises MP3 P2P

p2pnet news | P2P:- Andrea Monti, an expert on copyright and Net law, interprets the new Italian copyright law as authorizing users to, "publish and freely share copyrighted music (p2p included)," says Slashdot, quoting plainwhitetoast.

"The new law, already approved by both legislative houses, indeed says that one is allowed to publish freely, through the Internet, free of charge, images and music at low resolution or "degraded," for scientific or educational use, and only when such use is not for profit,. says the post, adding:

"As Monti says in the interview, those who wrote it didn’t realize that the word ‘degraded’ is technical, with a very precise meaning, which includes MP3s, which are compressed with an algorithm that ensures a quality loss.

"The law will be effective after the appropriate decree of the ministry, and will probably have an impact on pending p2p judicial cases."

Haha! Fantastic. I wonder if the wording will be amended though.

[p2p-sharing-rules]

Practice tip : collecting materials on MediaSentry relating to (a) illegality, (b) discoverability, and (c) admissibility

There is going to be lots of litigation in the days ahead over the issues of (a) MediaSentry's unlicensed investigations, which are a crime in most or all states of the United States, (b) the discoverability of the underlying MediaSentry materials, and/or (c) the admissibility of the doctored text printouts, prepared for litigation, upon which the RIAA will seek to base its case.

From clues left about by the RIAA's PR hacks and other agents, it can be anticipated that their lawyers will argue that (a) MediaSentry wasn't really 'investigating', (b) it was doing what any other KaZaa (or other Fasttrack) user could do, (c) it isn't an expert witness, and (d) what it was doing was secret and "proprietary". (If you find any inconsistencies among these, please don't complain to me; complain to Richard Gabriel and Matthew Oppenheim, the architects of the house of lies).

Read more @ the above link.

[p2p-sharing-rules]

Record labels can't win for losing

the labels are apparently being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department -- for something they haven't even done yet. Reports surfaced earlier this week about a DoJ preliminary investigation into a project called "Total Music," in which the four major labels would contribute songs from their catalogues to create a kind of ultimate music library for consumers, with the cost of that library borne by Internet service providers and device manufacturers.

Apparently, the Justice Department is concerned about collusion and price-fixing (although, surprisingly enough, it isn't concerned about Apple's control over about 80 per cent of the market for downloadable music). And it's easy to see why there might be that kind of concern, since the major labels were the subject of a lengthy investigation not that long ago, which found that they had conspired to keep CD prices high at retail outlets and as a result had overcharged consumers by almost $500-million. There were also reportedly concerns about Pressplay and MusicNow, two label-backed ventures from the late 1990s, which the authorities believed were primarily an attempt to maintain the industry's control over pricing and distribution of recorded music.

[battye]

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14903

[p2p-sharing-rules]

nice

[p2p-sharing-rules]

http://courtblog.thepiratebay.org/
Check out the above blog for info about the the Pirate Bay case.

[p2p-sharing-rules]

Danish Pirate Bay Block Breaks EU Law
Last week a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2″ to block its customers access to The Pirate Bay. The decision heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering, and it now turns out that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law.

ShareReactor Admin Found Guilty of ‘Commercial’ Copyright Infringement
The administrator of eDonkey link site, ShareReactor has been found guilty of ‘commercial’ copyright infringement. Following police raids in 2004, it’s taken 4 long years for the case to come to a conclusion, and after all that, Christian Riesen, aka Simon Moon, has to pay a token fine of just $4200.

World Leader in Movie Piracy Flees from the Mounties
Last month we reported that Geremi Adam, producer of some of the highest quality pirate movie copies ever seen on the Internet, had been caught and had been ordered to appear in court in January. Adam, aka ‘maVen’ had other ideas - and has disappeared.

Internet users could be banned over illegal downloads
People who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.

Internet service providers (ISPs) will be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material, The Times has learnt.

Users suspected of wrongly downloading films or music will receive a warning e-mail for the first offence, a suspension for the second infringement and the termination of their internet contract if caught a third time, under the most likely option to emerge from discussions about the new law.

[tunebud]

for example when customers claim to have been the victim of “wi-fi piggybacking”, in which users link up to a paid-for wireless network that is not their own.

wonder if anyone has ever heard of a coffee shop or a library?

[battye]

..

for example when customers claim to have been the victim of “wi-fi piggybacking”, in which users link up to a paid-for wireless network that is not their own.

wonder if anyone has ever heard of a coffee shop or a library?

Maybe people do it for the thrill