What goes round comes around... EU, Canada and IP law

Michael Geist has what for me is a depressing post on ongoing negotiations between the EU and Canada on trade.... including big changes in IP law.  Depressing because it is the EU that are pressing Canada to implement more stringent measures on copyright including measures against circumvention of digital locks, and copyright term extension from 50 to 70 years.  The EU aligns with the US... and then the EU presses Canada to align with the EU.

How about a new process for 2010?  The EU aligns with Canada.. and tells the USA that they need to get their act in order and liberalise their IP laws? 

Some of the things that are in the proposals include things I didn't even know existed under EU law... like that prohibition on circumventing digital locks - and a resale provision providing royalties for artists on second hand sales of portraits and statues...  (When did that arrive???)

Christian, HAX.....  what's the low down??????

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

300 000 strikes.... Record labels in court for piracy face $6Bn bill

Truth they say is stranger than fiction.... 

..so while record companies are complaining around the world about the costs of piracy, hiring lawyers to  demand money from alleged offenders and lobbying anyone who will listen to draft new draconian legislation against file sharers, they are meanwhile quietly ripping off artists by publishing tracks without permission and forgetting to pay the royalties.

Michael Geist reports on a case in Canada where since the eighties record labels have been issuing compilation discs without getting prior permissions and never getting round to settling their dues.  Three hundred thousand tracks later they are now in court facing a class action suit by artists...    and bearing in mind this is not non-commercial file sharing we're talking about, but out and out commercial exploitation, the artists are seeking statutory damages of $20 000 per track...  a cool six billion in total*. 

The companies in the dock are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada -  the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.  Now if I was a shareholder in a company that through ineptitude and bad practice exposed itself to the risk of damages on that scale I would expect heads to roll... 

Resignations gentlemen?  And don't forget to switch off your Internet as you leave.....

(via Rick Falkvinge)

* Don't forget that $6Bn is around 20 times the recording industries estimates of the annual losses to music piracy in the UK. (..if you believe them?)

Errata:  corrected from $60Bn to $6Bn... sloppy maths - sorry!

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Morons on copyright? Tell it like it is..

Boing Boing & Michael Geist report on a submission to the Canadian consultation on copyright by Access Copyright - an organisation that collects copyrights for writers.  As BB reports - they came out as opposing the right to record TV shows at home, and the right to "format shift"  media (e.g., load a CD on your MP3 player, or put an old ebook on a new reader or phone). They also say that almost all commercial use, no matter how trivial, should require a license and not fall under fair dealing.

I would comment on how stupid this is - but I found I don't need to...   this quote from BoingBoings comments says it all...

"What a bunch of well-intentioned albeit deluded and ignorant frickin' morons. As a Canadian writer I am stunned and embarrassed by their comments. They neither represent the true needs of creators nor reflect the reality we are now living in. Excuse me now whilst I go back to pounding my head against the desk and mutter: "What the fuck were they thinking?!" - Robbo

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Net Neutrality hearings in Canada - what's that all about?

In Canada they have just completed hearings on Net Neutrality - hearing evidence from operators, ISPs, consumer groups and media groups on whether and how the network should discriminate between different types of traffic. The Internet is a busy place, and at times lines get full to capacity - either on the link down to your house, in the network itself or in the links to the web servers you are accessing.

Operators commonly use a 'shaping' or 'throttling' to cut down the amount of traffic - basically putting caps on the rate at which data can be sent or received by users (or wholesalers). There are different ways to do this - you can limit everyone a bit, limit the highest users a lot, or limit certain types of traffic. Often it is the latter that is done. Operators use a technique called 'Deep Packet Inspection' - looking inside the data being carried - to find out what type of traffic t is and then selectively restrict what they see as bandwidth eaters - which usually means peer to peer traffic.

The problem for them is that a few users generate a high volume of traffic and that means less capacity to share amongst the rest - but for the consumer it means both that you don't always get the high speed connection you think you are paying for - and someone is looking inside your traffic to see what sort of things you are doing. Usually they don't keep records of who does what - but the potential exists....

You may think it is reasonable for the operators to cut back heavy users to ensure all their customers get a reasonable service even in busy times... (even thogh they thought they paid for a full rate service) but the evidence presented shows that some are throttling peer to peer traffic all the time, or between certain times of day, regardless how busy the network actually is. In other words the operators are deliberately degrading service to customers even when they don't need to.

It costs money to build network capacity - which is a cost that we consumers share. The thing is though that that capacity can also be used to provide fee paying services like IP-TV linked to the operator or ISP. These are often time critical services that need to have bandwidth available to deliver glitch free performance... and the service providers expect the operator to provide them with enough capacity for there to be no problems.

The public internet can also provide similar services downloaded from independent suppliers out on the web. They also want good access to bandwidth to get their service over - but there's no revenue in it for the operator - apart from the fact that you've already paid for your internet access.

So the point is... is your traffic being throttled to free up capacity for someone else's service? Are operators prioritising their opportunities to make money over providing an impartial service? The hearing make interesting reading on what the different players say they are up to.

You can find reporting on the seven day hearing on Michael Geist's blog... and more on net neutrality here.

Canuck Pirates in the press

Canadian press coverage of the formation of a Pirate Party in Canada. A lot of focus on copyright, and only passing mentions of integrity, privacy and state surveillance - but it is nice to see that they are getting publicity even from day one...

As spotted on Michael Geist's blog.