Govna su uplutala u Piratski zaliv

[Albedo 0]

Daj Bati, njemu je hitnije!

i sad kad nema karagarge, šta mi miševi da radimo!

[Filaret]

Kako nema KG?


https://karagarga.in/

[Meho Krljic]

Copyright Trolls Get Videos Pulled For Using The Word 'Pixels'

[Meho Krljic]

Stvari su još i gore. Čak i originalni kratki film koji je poslužio kao inspiracija za celovečernji Pixels je uklonjen sa Vimea 



'Pixels,' Adam Sandler's Latest Film, Used By Copyright Troll On Vimeo                                                      

[Albedo 0]

Kako nema KG?


https://karagarga.in/

meni ne otvara!

i tako otkad je kg pao prije 3 mjeseca




EDIT: pobrisah kolačiće i otvori prvu stranu ali na login mi zbacuje ''Unable to complete secure transaction''


al možda je kratkotrajno, možda kasnije proradi, uklanjanje kolačića je bar stvorilo prvu stranu

[Meho Krljic]

Meni, neregistrovanom, uredno izbaci naslovnu stranu i formular za login. Probaj preko proksija.

[Albedo 0]

za sada otvara naslovnu i sa i bez proksija, a login ne otvara opet u oba slučaja

I want the love!

[tomat]

Nisam sada pored kompa, pa probaj ti preko gugl translejta, neki put upali.

[Albedo 0]

haha, koji fazon, otvorila mi se login stranica preko gugltranslejta, ukucao sam user i pass ali onda naredni korak opet propas'

[tomat]

sada sam proverio, meni otvara normalno početnu stranicu i login stranicu, pošto nisam registrovan ne mogu da proverim dalje, ali mi uredno javi da ne prepoznaje moj nik i šifru kada ukucam neku glupost.

[DeHickok]

Meni ne otvara ni pirate bay (ni jednu ekstenziju se,mk,la itd...)

Poruka je ova

ERR_SS[/size]L_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
[/size][/font]
a i AVAST mi javlja da neki sertifikat nije dobar pa ne ucita stranicu. To mi se desava poslednjih mesec dana (otprilike)

[Meho Krljic]

Meni thepiratebay.se otvara normalno, firefox, najnovija verzija i avast apdejtovan.

[DeHickok]

Meni thepiratebay.se otvara normalno, firefox, najnovija verzija i avast apdejtovan.

Izgleda da je u pitanju zacin C

Moj kucni racunar ima XP a sada sam probao na laptopu (takodje firefox+AVAST) koji ima Windows 7 i tu se ucitava sve normalno

[tomat]

evo probah sa kompa koji tera XP, bez problema.

išao na thepiratebay.org, on mi sam izabrao .la

[Albedo 0]

koji brauzer, firefox?

[Usul]

Firefox 39 i Chrome 40 su uveli neke izmene u vezi tretiranja ssl konekcija. Probajte sa starijim verzijama ili sa IE

[Meho Krljic]

Moj firefox je 40 ali ipak se kači bez problema. Možda čišćenje keša može da pomogne?

[Filaret]

Hm, sa Chrome bez problema i na KG i na TPB.

Sad čitam na forumu KG šta bi bilo rešenje za Batin problem i jedino kažu da se normalno loguju sa starim nikom i lozinkom kad obrišu kolačiće u Firefoxu. Pre desetak dana je bilo obaveštenje da čiste sajt jer mnogi su se sa različitim nikom prijavili na trejker i na forum. Ako ne ide napiši mi na pm tvoj nik na KG i mejl, pa ću ih pitati šta treba da uradiš.

[tomat]

koji brauzer, firefox?

firefox 40.

[Albedo 0]

firefox 40 riješio stvar. Hvala svima!

[Meho Krljic]

Šta je gore, da ste nekakav prdež na internetu koji torentuje film pa time deli taj film sa drugima, bez zarade i pomisli o profitu, ili da ste zaposleni u američkoj vladi i koristite hardver u kancelariji da kopirate piratske filmove i prodajete ih kolegama i drugim ljudima i tako zaradite hiljade dolara? Sud misli da je ovo prvo gore, naravno:


Ex-Supervisor Admits Bootlegging DVDs at Labor Dept. Headquarters

A veteran U.S. Labor Department supervisor admitted running a movie bootlegging operation inside the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters. He sold more than 1,200 pirated films, worth an estimated $19,000, using the agency's internal email system, including to his colleagues in the office.
Ricardo Taylor, 57, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating copyright law. A judge sentenced Taylor to serve 24 months of probation for the crime.
In an interview with the News4 I-Team, Taylor said Labor Department colleagues were his customers.   The agency and its Inspector General's Office declined multiple requests for comment.
Court records obtained by the I-Team said Taylor, who earned more than $60,000 per year at the Labor Department,  illegally sold bootlegged DVDs between 2008 and 2013, some of them for as little as $4 a copy. Taylor was mailroom supervisor for the Labor Department's Office of Workers Compensation, inside the agency's headquarters at 200 Constitution Ave. NW near the U.S. Capitol. Court records said Taylor maintained a log of his sales, including customers' names.
"Taylor used a five-bay DVD burner to duplicate the illegal copies he purchased," Court filings said.
During Taylor's sentencing, a federal prosecutor said Taylor engaged in a "serious crime ... to enrich himself."
Taylor had worked for the agency since 1974.  He retired shortly after his crime was discovered, according to court deliberations observed by the I-Team.
"I want to put this behind me," Taylor told the I-Team. "That part of my life is over. I made a big mistake. I'm sorry to everybody involved, especially the Department of Labor."
David Williams, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said the Department of Labor should release more details about who was involved in the bootlegging operation. "Fellow employees who bought the DVDs are also complicit in this crime and should have reported the bootlegger immediately," Williams said. "It is clear that better safeguards must be put in place to ensure federal resources are not used to break the law.  We hope this is a wake-up call to all employees and IGs that criminal activity of any kind will not be tolerated."
Taylor's crime was "brazen and greedy," a federal judge said. Taylor's lack of a criminal history was a factor in her decision to spare him jail time, she said.

[Meho Krljic]

We Need the Right to Repair Our Gadgets

[Alexdelarge]

Policajac: Piraterija nas je održala, hvala joj!

Funkcioner Ministarstva unutrašnjih poslova Srbije (MUP) Dragan Jovanović pobrao aplauze na regionalnoj konferenciji o trendovima u telekomunikacijama i medijima u Beogradu

Srpska policija ima samo jednu službu, samo jedno odeljenje koje se bavi visokotehnološkim kriminalom, ili jednostavnije rečeno - kriminalom na internetu, koje je osnovano pre sedam godina.

Ovaj vid kriminala je, naravno, u usponu, zahvaljujući vremenu u kojem živimo u kojem se svaki dan "izmišlja" nešto novo, neko novo tehnološko dostignuće... Organi vlasti (ne samo u Srbiji, već u celom svetu), najčešće, kaskaju za "tehno-prestupnicima".

O ovome se govorilo na regionalnoj konferenciji o trendovima u telekomunikacijama i medijima u Beogradu, na kojoj je predstavljeno i istraživanje u kojem su ispitanici odgovorili na ovo pitanje: Koliko ste puta u prethodnih godinu dana ilegalno pogledali film na internetu?

Više od 50 odsto ispitanika je odgovorilo da je to učinilo do 50 i više puta. Više od 20 odsto njih je reklo da je to učinilo između tri i 10 puta. Tek 24,5% je odgovorilo da to nije učinilo.

Svojevremeno je pokojni novinar Aleksandar Tijanić, dok je bio direktor TV Politika u vreme sankcija, rekao da se oseća kao Robin Hud jer gledaocima pruža mogućnost da gledaju najnovije holivudske filmove. I to besplatno!

Tada, u vreme sankcija, 90-ih godina prošlog veka, snalazili smo se kako smo znali i umeli. Bilo je tu svega i svačega, presnimavanja filmova, muzike...

Da je tako nešto radio priznao je i Dragan Jovanović, sada policajac, upravo iz pomenutog odeljenja MUP-a Srbije koje se bavi sprečavanjem visokotehnološkog kriminala.

Upitan da li je moguće stati na put torentu - omiljenom "drugaru" svih nas na Internetu, odgovorio je:

"Protiv toga nema leka! To ne mogu da reše ni američki FBI, ni durge institucije u svetu, a kamoli mi. Pokušavali su da ugase Pirate Bay, ali videli ste da je to trajalo par dana. To je nemoguće. Znate, i ja sam '90-ih bio neverovatan korisnik piraterije, I to nije ništa čudno, kupovao sam i gramofonske ploče manijakalno, opet neobično za policajca. Da nije bilo tog SKC-a (Studentski kulturni centar, berze ploča i kaseta, prim. aut.) ja ne znam da li bismo mi mentalno preživeli to vreme".

A onda je dodao rečenicu koja se dočekana aplauzom u sali hotela "Metropol":

"Pirateriji hvala - ona nas je održala!".

http://mondo.rs/a830338/Mob-IT/Vesti/Piraterija-na-internetu.html

[Meho Krljic]

 Netflix Is Being Sued For Illegally Streaming This Classic Film

As unbelievably ironic as it sounds, Netflix have apparently been caught streaming a feature film without having attained the proper rights.


Corinth Films, the copyright holders for the classic 1948 film 'Bicycle Thieves', claim that one of the versions available to Netflix subscribers isn't in the streaming service's possession and are subsequently suing them for copyright infringement.

The problem stems from different language versions having different copyright agreements. Corinth accept that in its original form - that's Italian language - it is in the public domain, after two squabbling parties were unable to agree on who owned it after copyright renewal wasn't filed.
However, the dubbed or subtitled version is still deemed to be under the company's copyright, which puts Netflix in a precarious position.
Corinth say copyright notices were in fact placed on the subtitled version and has been registered and all appropriate steps taken. Clearly this will be challenged by the Netflix lawyers, but it's still a headache for them.

The worst scenario for Netflix is that it'll be sued for copyright infringement and have to pay out for illegal streaming and distribution, which won't look too good from a PR angle.
Netflix is worth a whopping $32.9 billion with around 70 million subscribers and continues to grow in popularity each year. Suffice to say the hugely successful online streaming service will have a competent team of lawyers ready to fight off this unwanted attention.

[Meho Krljic]

The New DMCA Rules Don't Go Far Enough

[Father Jape]

! No longer available

[Meho Krljic]

YouTube's Finally Starting To Change Their Disastrous Copyright System

[Meho Krljic]

Swedish court: 'We cannot ban Pirate Bay'

In a landmark decision, a Swedish court on Friday ruled that the country's internet service providers cannot be forced to block controversial Swedish file-sharing site Pirate Bay.


After considering the case for almost a month, the District Court of Stockholm ruled that copyright holders could not make Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget block Pirate Bay.

The court found that Bredbandsbolaget's operations do not amount to participation in the copyright infringement offences carried out by some of its 'pirate' subscribers.

Pirate Bay is blocked by many European ISPs but anti-piracy outfits have always hoped that one day the notorious site would be restricted in Sweden.

The action was brought by Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry, who teamed up in a lawsuit last year designed to force Bredbandsbolaget to block the site.

They claimed that, unless it blocks Pirate Bay, Bredbandsbolaget should be held responsible for the copyright infringements of its customers.

Bredbandsbolaget refused to comply, stating that its only role is to provide customers with internet access and ensuring the free-flow of information.

In the ruling the court said that it considers that the actions of Bredbandsbolaget do not constitute participation in crimes in accordance with Swedish law.

"A unanimous District Court considers, therefore, that it is not in a position to authorize such a ban as the rights holders want and therefore rejects their request," said presiding Chief Magistrate Anders Dereborg.

Daniel Westman, an IT researcher at Stockholm University told the Swedish news agency TT, "It was a little unexpected, but it is not unlikely that a higher court may judge differently. Most countries where this thing has been tried the courts ruled in favour of blocking. The only EU country that has not done so has been the Netherlands."
  Story continues below...   The Pirate Bay, which grew into an international phenomenon after it was founded in Sweden in 2003, allows users to dodge copyright fees and share music, film and other files using bit torrent technology, or peer-to-peer links offered on the site – resulting in huge losses for music and movie makers.

In 2009 Fredrik Neij and three other Swedes connected with The Pirate Bay were found guilty of being accessories to copyright infringement by a Swedish court.

They were each given one-year jail terms and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in compensation.

[Meho Krljic]

A Pirate Bay cofounder built a computer that is basically a middle finger to the recording industry

However you feel about his politics, Pirate Bay cofounder Peter Sunde certainly sticks by his beliefs.


The Swedish provocateur spent time in prison last year for his role in facilitating copyright infringement, but he refuses to give up publicly proclaiming his ideology, which revolves around people being able to copy and distribute any work.

His latest endeavor is a computer called "Kopimashin." Sunde built it out of a Raspberry Pi and an LCD display.

What does it do?

Sunde programmed it to make 100 copies of the Gnarls Barkely track "Crazy" every second. This means the machine makes more than eight million copies per day, which is about $10 million in 'losses' based on industry copyright standards, according to TorrentFreak.
"I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy," Sunde told TorrentFreak.


Sunde's point is that the millions of dollars he still owes the industry in damages have no correlation to actual damages sustained by record labels. His position is that filesharing actually increases music sales.

"The machine is made to be very blunt and open about the fact that it's not a danger to any industry at all," Sunde said.

See a video of the computer below:

KH000//Kopimashin on Vimeo

[Father Jape]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/derek-walmsley/brandenburgs-dream

[Meho Krljic]

Retro-tech: 2015 was an astounding year for one cassette tape factory

[Meho Krljic]

Odlična lista ključnih (i ekstravagantnih) tužbi i slučajeva vezanih za autorska prava sa sve relevantnim linkovima:



20 Hollow Copyright Claims

Entire professions now exist which add no value to society other than their attempts to take others' money. Certain industries are particularly rife with this behavior (high-speed trading and pharmaceutical pricing being good examples), but almost all aspects of our culture, from arts to sciences and everything in between, are pervaded by profiteering.
Much has already been written on the inherit problems with intellectual property, copyright, and patents, as well as the shrinking public domain and seemingly perpetual copyrights that undermine the benefits of sharing ideas. Below are some contemporary examples—by no means the most egregious incidents that have occurred—of flawed mindsets regarding copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
20. Home Taping Is Killing What?
Before BitTorrent and Napster, the entertainment industry fought another purported threat: the video cassette recorder. Testifying before congress in 1982, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America stated, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
19. The Streisand Effect
When she found a picture of her mansion on an obscure policy site about coastal erosion, Barbara Streisand sued to have it removed. Not only did the lawsuit fail, but the intimidation tactic had the opposite effect of making the photograph famous.
There are analogies here to the larger issues of what copyright restrictions are warranted in a digital age. As Lawrence Lessig wrote, "some of the ways in which we might protect authors will have unintended consequences for the cultural environment, much like DDT had for the natural environment."
18. How Old Are You Now?
"Happy Birthday to You" is based on a nineteenth-century melody, but that didn't stop Warner from collecting royalties on it up until last year, when a district judge ruled that the song was in the public domain.
17. We finally really did it...
"It's killing my business," stated the photographer whose equipment was used for the famous monkey selfie, after the image was posted without his permission.
16. Echo & the Moneymen
Remixing others' musical work has gotten the likes of Vanilla Ice and Robin Thicke in hot water, but the legal case of John Fogerty contains a peculiar twist: he was sued by his old label for copying himself.
15. Mighty Casey Has [Restricted Content]
According to Major League Baseball, you can't tell me who won the last World Series because you're forbidden from delivering an account of the game's telecast without their express written consent.
14. One Cash Cow to Rule Them All
Professor Tolkien died over forty years ago, but that hasn't stopped his estate from raking in money from his writings about Middle Earth. Legal threats have been made over everything from unauthorized online games to pub names.
13. ICANN.sucks
Typo squatting and other illegal tactics of registering domains containing trademark brand names are common (Princeton Review once owned kaplan.com). Besides buying out existing owners, people and companies can petition the governing body to take over a website they feel is rightfully theirs.
A redirection to the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital wasn't enough to keep madonna.com from being seized by Madonna the singer, while a gamer who went by the handle "Sting" successfully defended his right to keep sting.com from the musician of the same name.
12. Gaming the System
Video game companies have evolved considerably since the days of Atari and arcades. The DLC and F2P models have had an especially devastating effect on gameplay. What's left are businesses trying to own basic words such as "Candy" and "Let's Play" rather than making meaningful gaming experiences.
11. They're Called Illusions, Michael
Magic tricks have long been closely guarded trade secrets, complete with a magician's code to not spoil how they're done. In 2014, Teller (of Penn & Teller fame) successfully sued for the protection of one of his copyrighted tricks.
10. From the Home Office in Litigiousness
David Letterman's move to CBS was a contentious one, complete with the claim that his signature Top Ten Lists were the "intellectual property of NBC" and couldn't be done on the new show.
9. Where Silence is Leased
Most of us are likely familiar with John Cage's experimental piece 4'33", although few have probably bought it on the iTunes store. However, a lawsuit was settled over a copycat piece containing one minute of silence.
8. I Fought the Law (by Printing It)
Although federal publications are not subject to copyright protection, Carl Malamud's project to publish the annotated Georgia statues got him sued by the state for his efforts to free the law.
7. Copyright is for the Birds
Companies that hold copyrights regularly check YouTube for infringing materials, which are then removed. The problem is, their zealousness often results in the censorship of false matches, and these errors are difficult to remedy.
6. Dewey, Cheetham & Howe
The Dewey Decimal System is a proprietary classification system used at many public libraries in the United States. A "Library Hotel" that organizes floors by this structure found itself slapped with a lawsuit for trademark infringement which was later settled.
5. You Click It You Buy It
Amazon owns, and has enforced and licensed, a patent for the concept of instantly buying something online.
4. 123 Fake Street
For years, mapmakers have purposefully inserted imperfections into their craftsmanship to serve as bait to catch plagiarists. Thankfully, trap streets are afforded thin protection in the United States as uncopyrightable "non-facts."
3. I Have a Profit Motive
You can't legally watch Martin Luther King's public "I Have a Dream" speech for free, due to the King family's efforts to monetize his legacy.
2. In United States, FBI Arrests You
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act includes provisions against reverse engineering software. Consequentially, a magic marker can be used as an illegal copy-protection circumvention tool. And did you know illegal numbers now exist? Cory Doctorow, speaking about DRM, sums up the technology quite well: "Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit."
The DMCA also led to Russian citizen Dmitry Sklyarov being arrested and jailed for writing code that bypassed Adobe's e-book restrictions. The case went to court, where the jury found him not guilty.
1. Scholars as Shysters
It's an historic anomaly that, in an era of digital publishing and institutional repositories, so many academic authors willfully embargo their work, usually by signing over their copyrights to publishers who restrict access. There has been some progress toward updating this archaic system, thanks to both government support for unlocking funded research and author boycotts of overpriced journals.

The people who made cave paintings didn't do so for the royalties. For thousands of years, we were all hobbyists. Participatory culture grew and thrived amidst oral traditions and other mashups. Artists and scientists were not compensated for their work, at least not in the financial sense that they and their descendants are today.
Imagine if Aristotle's or Newton's writings and their derivatives were kept under lock and key, or if Shakespeare and Mozart had great-grandchildren who could prohibit their ancestors' creations from being performed. What other losses and missed opportunities for advances are we now experiencing because someone's work sits behind a paywall?
Copyright, in its current form, is an impediment to my job as a librarian. Focusing on profits from sharing knowledge needs to go the way of trial by combat. Technology now gives you the ability to spread ideas like never before. Why not return the favor and do so freely?

See also

   
• Copying Is Not Theft Music video
• Lessons from fashion's free culture TED Talk
• Open Access Explained! PHD Comics video
• Rethinking Research Data TEDx Talk
• Unwelcome Mat Is Out at Some of New York's Privately Owned Public Spaces Related issue about communal property

Doduše, kako ukazaše u slešdot komentarima, ispustili su recentan primer eklatantnog iživljavanja:


Anne Frank's Diary Gains 'Co-Author' in Copyright Move

[Meho Krljic]

Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

How many people does it take to fix a tractor? A year ago, I would have said it took just one person. One person with a broken tractor, a free afternoon, and a box of tools.
   I would have been wrong.
   When the repair involves a tractor's computer, it actually takes an army of copyright lawyers, dozens of representatives from U.S. government agencies, an official hearing, hundreds of pages of legal briefs, and nearly a year of waiting. Waiting for the Copyright Office to make a decision about whether people like me can repair, modify, or hack their own stuff.
   But let's back up—why do people need to ask permission to fix a tractor in the first place? It's required under the anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—a law that regulates the space where technology and copyright law collide. And boy, do they collide. In 2014, Washington had to intervene to make it legal again to unlock your cellphone, after the Copyright Office disastrously ruled that the practice violated copyright. Phones are just the beginning.
   Thanks to the "smart" revolution, our appliances, watches, fridges, and televisions have gotten a computer-aided intelligence boost. But where there are computers, there is also copyrighted software, and where there is copyrighted software, there are often software locks. Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, you can't pick that lock without permission. Even if you have no intention of pirating the software. Even if you just want to modify the programming or repair something you own.
   Enter the tractor. I'm not a lawyer. I'm a repairman by trade and a software engineer by education. I fix things—especially things with computers in them. And I run an online community of experts that teaches other people how to fix broken equipment. When a farmer friend of mine wanted to know if there was a way to tweak the copyrighted software of his broken tractor, I knew it was going to be rough. The only way to get around the DMCA's restriction on software tinkering is to ask the Copyright Office for an exemption at the Section 1201 Rulemaking, an arduous proceeding that takes place just once every three years. A record-breaking 27 proposed exemptions were considered last year—including one for repairs made to the software in farm equipment.
   Unfortunately, getting an exemption is easier said than done. Anyone can petition the office for an exemption, but realistically speaking, you can only shepherd an exemption through the process if you possess (a) limitless free time and a superhuman knowledge of copyright law or (b) the funding to hire expensive intellectual property lawyers.
   I did everything a layperson could do. I wrote comments in support of several exemptions; I helped document how difficult it was for local farmers to repair their equipment; I testified in front of the Copyright Office; I helped collect 40,000 public comments in support of copyright reform. But when it came down to it, the Copyright Office required a well-defended legal argument for proposed exemptions. And a well-defended legal argument meant lawyers—lots of them—working on the issue for a year.
   Regular people can't hire an army of copyright lawyers. The financial burden would be crippling. The only people who have enough money to participate in the process are the people trying to defeat the exemptions in the first place. Almost every exemption, including security research for vehicles and DVD ripping for educational uses, was met with opposition from the well-funded, well-lawyered Big Copyright interests—the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Entertainment Software Association, and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
   The rulemaking process is stacked heavily in the favor of copyright interests. It's up to supporters to show that an exemption is necessary, and that it meets the legal standard for fair use. Which means petitioners are caught in a Catch-22: In order to meet the standard for relevance, they need to show that there's overwhelming market demand if only it were legal. But in order to argue they are practicing fair use, they have to admit to already breaking these locks, and therefore the law. Consequently, the very people who need the exemption most are often reluctant to participate. Especially since few proposed exemptions historically survive the rulemaking.
   Last year, however, was different. A huge group of pro bono intellectual property lawyers—from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the University of Southern California's Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, and other organizations—donated their time and expertise to get exemptions passed. And following Congress' support for cellphone unlocking, the Copyright Office granted more exemptions than ever before in 2015, including one for tractor repair.
   It's a victory, but an imperfect one. Even when an exemption like tractor repair is granted, it's often been whittled down by the Copyright Office until it's so narrow as to become functionally useless. By the time we got an exemption to repair tractors, the Copyright Office said that only the farmer, and not her mechanic, could tinker with the software. This restriction is out of touch with the real world, where independent technicians are a critical part of our food supply chain.
   Even worse? These hard-won exemptions last only until the next rulemaking. (That's how unlocking your cellphone went from legal to illegal, before Congress stepped in.) In three years, proponents will have to find a way to do this all over again.  This is not sustainable process—not for participants and not for the Copyright Office.
   It's time to level the playing field. Let's make these exemptions less restrictive and shift the burden of proof a little. Instead of making supporters go to extreme lengths to show that an exemption is absolutely necessary, how about asking the opposition to show that an exemption is absolutely unnecessary? At the very least, Congress should remove the expiration date on exemptions. Once granted, exemptions should be permanent.
   I'm a repairman. I recognize broken things when I see them. I got into this fight because I wanted to help people repair their broken stuff. Turns out, copyright law is the thing that was broken all along.

[lilit]

so good! in more ways than one
http://kotaku.com/after-4419-days-the-worlds-oldest-torrent-is-still-bei-1754856354

[Meho Krljic]

so good! in more ways than one
http://kotaku.com/after-4419-days-the-worlds-oldest-torrent-is-still-bei-1754856354

I sad:

Chattanooga man responsible for world's oldest torrent file

This week, tech websites across the world have been discussing the world's oldest torrent file, now active for more than 12 years.

The torrent file was created to share a fan-created ASCII version of "The Matrix" with others on the Internet. Both the torrent file and the movie it shared were created in 2003 as a labor of love by Jack Zielke, then a student at Chattanooga State.

According to TorrentFreak.com, the file is "the oldest torrent that's still being actively shared." And the numbers are staggering: the torrent has been active for 4,420 days and downloaded tens of thousands of times. To put it in perspective, a 2007 study on torrent activity revealed that the average lifespan of a torrent file at the time was about 9 days and between 30-300 hours.

Zielke recently reuploaded the original website he built to share his version of the film, including more information on his process and, for the first time, allowing his name to be associated with the project.

Nooga.com spoke to Zielke about his motivation to create the ASCII version of the film, which he said he created as a parody. This is his first interview with media regarding the project.

An edited version of the interview is below.

Why create a version of "The Matrix" in ASCII?
I thought it would be fun to make "The Matrix" in green text. I wasn't anticipating it lasting more than a few months. It was supposed to be just a novelty. In fact, getting to the DVD took a long time. I was initially thinking of modifying a monitor or old TV to only light up with green. In the end, I went with a DVD because that could be played anywhere and I wouldn't have to lug around a broken TV with me to show off "The Matrix" in green text.

When did you create it?
There's a little bit of a discrepancy that I'm reading on some websites. Some people are pointing out the Dec. 20, 2003, date. And my website says January 2004. Basically, I created the torrent on Dec. 20, 2003, and it was put on my torrent tracker ... and if you knew that it was there, it was live at that point with a seed. So, it has been seeded since then.

How did you create it?
I actually patched a text ASCII rendering program in August 2002 to start doing this. The program running on my computer had to be the top window to take a screenshot to save the text as an image. So, if I was doing anything in front of it, it would put the window I was working on in the screenshot. I couldn't use my computer when I was running this, so I'd let it run overnight. I got married and let it run through the entire honeymoon. It was often on for months and months to get all the frames.

How did the torrent take off?
I had a really terrible internet connection at the time, and if you wanted to download over 4 gigabytes from me it was going to take a long time. So, I ended up burning DVD copies of it and then sending it out to my friends. I gave seven different people the DVD to seed. They could just copy it to their computer and connect to the torrent. Five of them were mailed to places like Oklahoma, Minnesota and California.

These people had a copy of it so when I officially announced it there would already be seeders with fast connections. Some people said they would seed it for a week and others said they would seed it for a month to help me get started. It was created and seeded and just kind of sitting there until Jan. 16, 2004, because I wanted it to debut at Chattacon. [Chattacon is an annual sci-fi convention in Chattanooga]

Have people tried to contact you throughout the years?
Yeah, I get emails every so often. Sometimes I get hate mail from people expecting a pirated version of "The Matrix" and they found green text instead. But usually it's people telling me they really like it and that they appreciate that I did it.

Were you ever concerned the Motion Picture Association of America was going to take issue with the parody?
I was always nervous about it. That's another reason I didn't post it before it debuted in the theater [at Chattacon]. If I had posted it online and Warner Bros. said "take this down" and a week later I played it in a theater, that would've been a really dumb move. That said, in 12 years I haven't heard a peep. I don't think I am reducing a single sale of theirs. But there's a chance—with the recent resurgence—that people might actually be buying copies of the original. It may have increased sales, actually.
Looking back, is there anything you'd do differently?
I don't know about doing it differently, but I guess it was a sign of the times. At the time, if you wanted to watch a movie you'd do it on your DVD player. Now, you watch on your computer or mobile device. You wouldn't burn it before watching it. So, in 2012 I put up the original, high-quality 7-gigabyte file that would not fit on a DVD. I thought if you're going to play it on a computer or a streaming player you might as well get the higher quality one. It didn't really dawn on me at the time that people would be streaming like they are now. I also did not own a DVD burner when I did this. I bought an external enclosure and an 80-gig hard drive and went to a neighbors house and burned copies of it.

This is the first time you've talked about this to media?
Yes. The website was hosted at Chattanooga State. I was a student there when I made this. There was a page there for years. That was removed last September, but the torrent was still going. The email associated with that page was a .edu domain, so unless you emailed me and I told you who I was it was really hard to turn that into a person. Yesterday, I put it on one of my domains. With a simple WHOIS search you have all my contact info. So, I guess I've kind of outed myself. I never got an email from Warner Bros. or a lawyer in 12 years, so I figure if they wanted to get me they would've a long time ago.

Would you do it over again?
Oh yeah. It was tremendously fun.

[Meho Krljic]

The Pirate Bay now uses Torrents Time to let you stream all its movies and TV shows

On Tuesday, a new simple solution for streaming torrents directly in your browser showed up on the Web. By Friday, infamous torrent site The Pirate Bay had already adopted it.

Torrents Time provides an embedded torrent client that lets users download and play the files inside torrents with one click. There is no need to download and install a separate BitTorrent client, download and open the torrent, or go in and actually play the download video file. After you install the plugin, everything happens in the browser.

The Pirate Bay now features "Stream It!" links next to all its video torrents. As a result, you can play movies, TV shows, and any other video content directly in the same window you use to browse the torrent site.

The new feature is clearly marked as still in beta:
But it does work just like the new Popcorn Time Online, the first torrent site powered by Torrents Time. You're prompted to install the plugin if you don't have it yet, but otherwise the process starts right away:

Just like Popcorn Time Online, The Pirate Bay warns you if you're not using a VPN. And while the warning is styled differently, this is still Torrents Time, so the recommendation is to use Anonymous VPN and hide your IP address:

Torrents Time includes automatic subtitles as well as Chromecast, Airplay, and DLNA support. As with any torrent streaming solution, the quality still largely depends on your Internet connection and how popular the torrent is.

Playback begins when enough peers have been found and a decent amount of content has been downloaded. Torrents Time supports Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox on Windows 7 and up, as well as OS X 10.8 and up. The developers told VentureBeat earlier this week that Safari support is currently being tested and should arrive in a few weeks. Microsoft Edge is currently not supported but may be in the future. Because the code is available on GitHub, any developer can potentially provide a similar experience to his or her users. And that's exactly what The Pirate Bay has done.

"Our launch attracts so much attention that we work around the clock, both to handle the requests to be embedded on so many torrent sites and answering questions," Torrents Time told VentureBeat. "We are certain that in no time we'll be embedded in all torrent sites who care to move on with this evolution. We will allow everybody to watch any movie they wish from torrent sites who embed us, when they want, without having to store someone's file on their hard disk."
So far, just a handful of torrent sites have jumped on board. In addition to The Pirate Bay and Popcorn Time Online, three other sites have implemented Torrents Time, the administrators tell us: Torrentproject.se, Videomax.is, and online.porntime.ws.

But The Pirate Bay is arguably the best-known, even despite a massive outage at the end of 2014, and then a slew of hiccups every few months in 2015. In addition, Torrents Time tells us that the most popular alternative to The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, will be adding the plugin Sunday or Monday.

Unless something drastic changes, Torrents Time looks set to become the de facto torrent client embedded right on torrent sites themselves.

[Meho Krljic]

New P2P torrent site 'Play' has no single point of failure

Legal complications and the constant blocking of online download platforms has resulted in many operators looking for new solutions for staying online in the future. Now, reports are pointing to Play, a new peer-to-peer (P2P) site for downloading torrents that is practically impossible to shut down and promises to be the latest technology to revolutionise online downloads.
The platform has appeared recently across ZeroNet, a Budapest-based open source site which is looking to offer a home to decentralised platforms which employ Bitcoin-crypto and BitTorrent technologies. Users visiting ZeroNet are not only viewing it, but hosting it also. In this way, once a user joins the network, and requests a page, they will be retrieving it from other ZeroNet users.
As no central server exists, every additional user is a further point of connection inside the network, helping to avoid potential failures. If one of the connections fails, this does not necessarily compromise the entire downloads platform.
As the first torrent site to appear on the network, Play can be accessed directly through a ZeroNet URL (only available with the tool installed). The site serves magnetic links sourced from RARBG, with which users can download films, series and other media files, in varying qualities. A YouTube link is also provided to the related trailer, where possible.
However, as TorrentFreak notes, ZeroNet is not entirely anonymous as user IP addresses remain public, unless Tor or a VPN is in use. While ZeroNet itself is not an illegal platform, Play is identical to any other P2P download site in that it could face legal challenges over violating copyright.
In January 2014, The Pirate Bay discussed its plans to create a P2P network which could help them avoid being taken down or blocked. While ZeroNet has achieved this aim, The Pirate Bay's idea seems to have fizzled out somewhat. Last year, the company behind file-sharing client uTorrent, BitTorrent, also revealed plans to launch its own people-powered browser, called Maelstrom. The project still remains in beta testing – currently limited to Windows only.

[Meho Krljic]

Google Questions & Unofficial Answers: "Why does Google's YouTube seem so biased against ordinary users who upload videos?"

(This is a new entry from my recently formed Google+ Community "Google Questions & Unofficial Answers" -- located at: https://plus.google.com/communities/111481685962796128662 )
Why does Google's YouTube seem so biased against ordinary users who upload videos? I've unfairly had my videos blocked, received copyright strikes for my own materials, and even had my account suspended -- and it's impossible to reach anyone at YouTube to complain!
No, YouTube isn't biased against you -- not voluntarily, anyway. But it could definitely be argued that the copyright legal landscape -- particularly in the mainstream entertainment industry --  is indeed biased against the "little guys," and Google's YouTube must obey the laws as written. What's more, YouTube exists at the "bleeding edge" of the intersection of technology and law, where there's oh so much that goes bump in the night.
Let's begin with a fact. The amount of video being uploaded by users around the globe into YouTube at any given moment is staggering.  As of July 2015 last year, something like 400 hours of video were being uploaded every minute (!), up from 300 the previous November. You can only imagine how much is pouring in today. That's one hell of a lot of video.
When we talk about uploaded videos, it's not just Internet bandwidth and disk space, it's also processing such as transcoding, sorting, analysis, and much more -- a whole array of activities triggered by every single "simple" YouTube upload.
At these kinds of data volume levels, pretty much everything has to be entirely automated for the overwhelmingly vast majority of videos. Manual processing, or manual responses to every or even most user queries or complaints, would be utterly impractical.
Obviously, money is an important aspect of YouTube. Content owners can earn revenue from user views of their content via ads, and Google generates income in the process. Since there are crooks around attempting to game that system (e.g., through false clicks and fake views), significant resources must be devoted to detecting and eliminating their impact as well. And YouTube operations don't come cheap. Outside of the uploading numbers above, think about all the people using YouTube-related resources to view videos at any given moment around the world. YouTube has over a billion users. Hundreds of millions of video hours are viewed via billions of YouTube clicks every day! And yes, Google wants to quite appropriately make a profit with YouTube as well.
This brings us to the real heart of the matter, where brilliant YouTube engineering meets The Twilight Zone -- in other words (drum roll, please): the legal system.
Here is a truism that may give you a headache to even think about: Many of the key aspects of YouTube that ordinary video uploaders consider to be the most bizarre and unfair are fundamental requirements to helping make YouTube possible at all!
Without YouTube's Content ID system that permits content owners to detect and monetize material they own that YouTube users have uploaded without permission or rights (e.g. popular music clips, to name but one of many examples), the likely outcome in the vast majority of cases would be complete takedowns under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and other laws -- again, all of which Google/YouTube must comply.
A big plus for all of us from Content ID -- and key to keeping so many great videos available on YouTube -- is that it provides content owners with alternative options to total takedowns -- such as blocking only in certain geographic areas, monetization by the content owner rather than the unauthorized uploader, and so on. Similarly, the YouTube "three strikes" copyright violations policy, and other related Terms of Use policies, are themselves alternatives to the otherwise "most likely under the law" outcomes of immediate account terminations and even legal actions being taken against unauthorized uploaders by content owners.
None of this is to suggest that everything is butterflies and rainbows with Content ID. Like any system -- especially one that rides the thin line between technology and the volatile world of courts and lawyers -- it is not a perfect mechanism.
Crooks are continually trying to circumvent Content ID, to monetize videos over which they have no rights at all. I've made a sort of a hobby (yeah, I have some eclectic hobbies) of watching for these and reporting them to YouTube, but they're fairly easy to find. Just do a search on YouTube for pretty much any well known movie you've ever heard of, or most popular television shows even many decades old. Odds are you'll get lots of results, many of them seeming incredibly recent (like uploaded only a day or even just a few hours ago). Their large quantity suggests automated systems doing the uploading, usually to short-term "throw-away" accounts. If you actually try to view these videos, you'll typically find they're either nothing but raw spam -- displaying a link urging you to go to pirate sites to see the actual videos (where you're likely to be met with dubious credit card requests, malware, or worse), or monetized versions of the films or shows that have been altered in ways to try evade Content ID for as long as possible (the methods employed range from comparatively subtle, to horrific and bizarre visual distortions).
I hate these kinds of outright cheaters. They're trying to manipulate users into viewing spam and/or substandard perversions of the original films or programs, to try make money from content over which they have zero rights. YouTube is constantly working to fight them, but as a fan of classic movies and TV -- and of YouTube -- I personally feel that this category of copyright violators deserve no leniency.
The flip side is that there are situations where innocent users can become inappropriately targeted by Content ID or YouTube's copyright strikes reporting systems, via false positive Content ID hits, inappropriate copyright claims, and associated video demonetizations, takedowns, and account suspension/termination actions.
False claims against YouTube videos by content owners (or purported content owners), either purposefully and accidentally, both by design and sloppiness, occur every day. At YouTube scale, significant numbers of users are affected.
Such situations can get pretty "meta" too. There are all sorts of complexities surrounding figuring out what is actually "public domain" video, and how to deal with it. For example, think about the case of a content owner who uses public domain material in their own production, who then inappropriately claims rights against a third-party production that happened to use the same public domain clip as that claiming party. There are also cases of content claimants claiming the rights to materials completely produced by someone else, when that original material was partially or wholly incorporated into a larger production by the claimant. Your head spinning yet?
The concept of "fair use" -- tough even for the courts to deal with over the years -- is currently very difficult to incorporate in a useful form into scanning algorithms. Classical music has been a traditional problem as well. I personally know one YouTube user who performs long classical pieces on the piano, who has repeatedly had his YouTube videos demonetized because Content ID was trying to incorrectly claim his performances for other parties (this is a tough kind of case, because high quality performances of the same classical piano composition performed by two different excellent players can sound very similar). The poor guy actually was resorting to purposely incorporating errors into his piano recordings to try differentiate them when uploaded. Fortunately, YouTube has been making considerable technical strides in minimizing the problems that have affected him and other users related to these kinds of analysis.
Yes, when false claims or other similar problems hit an ordinary uploader's YouTube video, it could indeed seem like a Kafkaesque, automated forms ordeal to try resolve them. This situation is improving -- YouTube has actually been making dramatic improvements in their claim/counterclaim resolution flow -- although some problems in these respects still definitely persist.
Keep in mind -- as was noted earlier -- that at these video upload volume levels, most or all stages of the process must by definition involve automated rather than human-based analysis, but also crucially, the DMCA and other related laws impose an extremely limited range of options with which YouTube can deal with these situations and stay within those laws as YouTube must -- even in some cases when faced with abusers of the DMCA who make repeated false content claims.
Google knows there's a lot more work to do in this context. YouTube last month publicly announced ( https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/x3aGmn_MsqI ) the creation of a new team specifically to improve transparency, communications, and associated processes across a range of these issues. What we also need is reform of the entire copyright ecosystem to more fairly treat ordinary users instead of the "guilty until proven innocent" skew that current content ownership/copyright laws tend to require -- though given our current toxic political environment I wouldn't bet the farm on the likelihood of positive legal changes in this regard anytime soon.
The various Google/YouTube teams who breathe this stuff 24/7/365 try very hard to get it all right. But when it comes to video and the Internet, especially when one considers the multitude of complicated, multidisciplinary aspects, nothing is trivial nor comes easily in the associated technical, policy, or legal realms.
Be seeing you.
--Lauren--
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.

[Meho Krljic]

Heh heh. Dakle, svi znamo kako u nekim zemljama u razvoju određene firme - često Fejsbuk - odluče da svima koji imaju ikakvu spravu koja može da se prikači na inrternet podare "besplatan" internet uz određena ograničenja. "Određena ograničenja" najčešće znače da se bez plaćanja može pristupiti samo Fejsbuku. Zapravo, to imamo i kod naših mobilnih operatera pa pretspostavljam da je džouk on as, i mi smo neka jebena zemlja u razvoju.

Enivej, ovo deluje kao simpatična inicijativa i ko bi se uopšte žalio na besplatnost ičega, ali opet - ovo je još jedan primer korporacijskog monopolisanja jednog resursa koji danas legitimno smatramo esencijalnim u domenu društvenog života gotovo jednako servisima kao što su električna energija, kanalizacija ili telefonske komunikacije. Plus je potpuno suprotno ideji net neutralitija i etici interneta kao repozitorija svog svetskog znanja...

Elem, u Angoli su Facebook i Wikimedia fondacija narodu ponudili slobodan pristup svojim, jelte, servisima i šta Angolanci aka Srbi tamnije boje kože rade? Piratuju filmove tako što ih kače na wikipedija stranice i šeruju linkove telefonima 




Angola's Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems With Digital Colonialism

Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive.
It's an undeniably creative use of two services that were designed to give people in the developing world some access to the internet. But now that Angolans are causing headaches for Wikipedia editors and the Wikimedia Foundation, no one is sure what to do about it.
In 2014, Wikimedia partnered with Angolan telecom provider Unitel to offer Wikipedia Zero to its customers. Wikipedia Zero is a somewhat-controversial program that "zero rates" Wikipedia and other Wikimedia properties (such as image and video database Wikimedia Commons) on mobile phones in developing countries, meaning customers don't have to pay for any data use on the Unitel network, as long as the data use is associated with a Wikimedia domain.



The argument in favor of zero rating is that it gives people access to information who would otherwise not be able to afford it (Unitel normally charges $2.50 for 50mb of mobile data; the median Angolan salary is $720 annually, according to Freedom House). The argument against zero rating is that by providing people with a closed ecosystem, you're creating a tiered internet system—people who can afford it get the "real internet," people who can't are stuck with Facebook, Wikipedia, and a couple other services, and may never get the chance to upgrade to the full, open internet. Facebook's program, called "Free Basics," has come under fire—and was banned in India—because some see it as a user grab technique for Facebook, but Wikipedia Zero has gotten less flak because Wikimedia's a nonprofit organization and its sites often skew to be purely informative.



The controversy usually ends with those two arguments—rarely does anyone ever consider what happens if creative people find loopholes in these zero rated services.
That brings us to what's going on in Angola. Enterprising Angolans have used two free services—Facebook Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero—to share pirated movies, music, television shows, anime, and games on Wikipedia. And no one knows what to do about it.
Because the data is completely free, Angolans are hiding large files in Wikipedia articles on the Portuguese Wikipedia site (Angola is a former Portuguese colony)—sometimes concealing movies in JPEG or PDF files. They're then using a Facebook group to direct people to those files, creating a robust, completely free file sharing network. A description for a Facebook group with 2,700 members reads: "created with the objective of sharing music, movies, pictures, and ANIMES via Wikimedia." I was not admitted into the Facebook group and none of its administrators responded to my messages for an interview.
Wikipedia's old guard, however, are concerned with this development. Wikipedia has very strict copyright guidelines and some editors of the site say they're tired of playing whack-a-mole.
"I am reporting a possible misuse of Wikimedia projects and Wikipedia Zero to violate copyright," one editor wrote on a Wiki discussion forum. "I am not sure if users are doing it in bad faith, but they have been warned and keep doing it. I don't think that Wikipedia Zero should stop existing there of course, but maybe something could be done, like preventing them from uploading large files or by previously instructing them in local language about what they can or [can] not do."
In several cases, wide swaths of IP addresses suspected to belong to Angolans using Wikipedia Zero have been banned from editing stories on Wikipedia, which has had the side effect of blocking Angolans who are using Wikipedia Zero to contribute to Wikipedia in a more traditional way. (In one case, IPs were unblocked because a Portuguese Wikipedia editor decided that an Angolan amateur photographer's photos were "of immense value.")
In an email thread on the Wikimedia-L listserv and on Wikipedia talk pages, users in the developed world are trying to find a compromise.



Few seem to agree that actively blocking Angolans from editing Wikipedia articles is a good solution, but other editors say they are sick of manually deleting pirated content from Wikipedia articles and suggested that those using Wikipedia Zero should only be allowed to read Wikipedia, not edit it or upload files.
Adele Vrana, head of the Wikimedia Zero program, told me in a phone interview that the foundation has been aware of the situation since at least last summer, and said that blanket bans or alterations of the Wikipedia Zero are "not on the table." She wrote in an email to the listserv that the Wikimedia Foundation is as stumped as its editors.



"We would prefer to catch it much earlier or simply prevent it outright (without significant limits being placed on good faith editors). Last fall, we had internal discussions on finding technical solutions for this problem," she wrote. "We understand that it's challenging for our existing editing community to handle a sudden influx of new editors. This seems to be a crucial and important conversation for the movement at large to have. I hope we can figure out a way to turn this moment in Angola into an opportunity to learn how to deal with new readers and editors."



I spoke with experts at three different digital rights groups that have all weighed in on international zero rating in one way or another. None of them were willing to say on the record whether they thought what's going on with Angola and Wikipedia Zero was a good or a bad thing. But one line of reasoning came up in one of the conversations that made a lot of sense: In many ways, this debate is about what Wikimedia—a community and organization that prides itself on the free transfer of information—fundamentally wants to be.
Vrana told me that Wikimedia is "looking into the legal aspects and understanding local legislation and how copyright might work in Angola," but Juliet Barbara, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, said that for the time being Wikimedia will use the community-developed framework to remove copyrighted material.
"With the existing framework, what we have to go on are policies developed by volunteers about the information that appears on Wikipedia," Barbara said. "Those are pretty specific about the information being knowledge oriented information rather than personal. I'm not saying that's always going to be how it is, that's just the restriction we're working with."
Many on the listserv are framing Angola's Wikipedia pirates as bad actors who need to be dealt with in some way so that more responsible editors aren't punished for their actions. This line of thinking inherently assumes that what Angola's pirates are doing is bad for Wikipedia and that they must be assimilated to the already regulated norms of Wikipedia's community. If the developing world wants to use our internet, they must play by our rules, the thinking goes.
But people in developing countries have always had to be more creative than those for whom access to information has always been a given. In Cuba, for instance, movies, music, news, and games are traded on USB drives that are smuggled into the country every week. A 20-year-old developer in Paraguay found a vulnerability in Facebook Messenger that allowed people to use Free Basics to tunnel through to the "real" internet. Legal questions aside (Angola has more lax copyright laws than much of the world), Angola's pirates are furthering Wikipedia's mission of spreading information in a real and substantial way.



"When users are faced with a choice of partial access to internet services but not to the entire internet, they might come up with ways to use that partial internet in creative ways that might negatively affect the entity giving it to them," Josh Levy, advocacy director at Access Now, told me. Facebook Free Basics was criticized widely, but Access Now is one of the few groups that has said Wikipedia Zero is a bad idea because it creates a tiered internet.
While the "misuse" of zero rated systems is a new problem, it closely mirrors ones that have been going on in the wider internet for decades, and the smart money is on allowing Angola's burgeoning internet community to develop without our interference, even if it means growing pains for Wikipedia. Proposed copyright protection laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have censored sites that hosted pirated content, was widely believed to be one that could have fundamentally ruined the internet; limiting how Angolans (or anyone else using Wikipedia Zero) access the site could have detrimental impacts.
The Wikimedia Foundation, for its part, seems to have good intentions with its wait-and-see approach. The foundation gives no money to Unitel as part of the program; a good solution here, probably, would be cheaper or free access to the entire internet. While Wikipedia editors in Portugual can simply go to another website to download or share pirated files, Angolans don't really have that option
"This is the type of thing that reflects larger battles that have gone on about the internet overall," Charles Duan, a copyright expert at Public Knowledge, told me. "In general, it's better to allow people more openness and freedom to use Internet tools because you never know what ends up being useful."
Angolan's pirates are learning how to organize online, they're learning how to cover their tracks, they are learning how to direct people toward information and how to hide and share files. Many of these skills are the same ones that would come in handy for a dissident or a protestor or an activist. Considering that Angola has had an autocratic leader in power for more than 35 years, well, those are skills that might come in handy one day.

[Meho Krljic]

Sve ono što sam napisao u prva dva pasusa prošlog posta, sada napisano od strane nekog pismenijeg & pametnijeg od mene:


Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC

The nation's largest internet service providers are undermining US open internet rules, threatening free speech, and disproportionately harming poor people by using a controversial industry practice called "zero-rating," a coalition of public interest groups wrote in a letter to federal regulators on Monday.
Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T use zero-rating, which refers to a variety of practices that exempt certain services from monthly data caps, to undercut "the spirit and the text" of federal rules designed to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, the groups wrote.
The letter, which was signed by the Center for Media Justice, the Open Technology Institute, Free Press, and dozens of other groups, increases the pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to address zero-rating, which has become the latest battlefront in the decade-long war between policymakers, industry giants, and consumer advocates over how best to ensure internet openness.
Zero-rated plans "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech, and restrict consumer choice—all harms the rules were meant to prevent," the groups wrote. "These harms tend to fall disproportionately on low ­income communities and communities of color, who tend to rely on mobile networks as their primary or exclusive means of access to the internet."
The groups point the finger at several industry giants, including AT&T, which offers a "sponsored data plan" that allows wireless customers to access certain services that don't count against monthly data limits; T-Mobile and its "Binge On" plan, which exempts some video services from data caps, while counting others against the monthly limits; and Comcast, which exempts its "Stream TV" service from monthly data caps, while counting rival services against the limit.


By excluding certain services from data caps, open internet advocates say these companies are engaging in a kind of reverse discrimination by favoring some services over others, thereby creating an economic incentive for customers to avoid services that remain subject to the caps. The principle of non-discrimination is at the heart of the FCC's landmark net neutrality rules, which are designed to ensure the internet remains an open, dynamic platform for economic growth, technological innovation, and citizen empowerment.
"These plans distort user choice by pushing people toward websites with deep pockets and away from smaller applications who can't afford the toll," the groups wrote. "This includes start­ups, small players, and non­commercial providers. In this way, sponsored data plans create the same kinds of harms to innovation and free speech as online fast lanes."
Malkia Cyril, co-founder and director of the Center for Media Justice, said in an interview that zero-rated wireless plans disproportionately affect people in underserved communities who are more likely to use mobile devices to connect to the internet.
"Poor people, communities of color, and people who have been pushed to the margins of society need equal and affordable access to the whole internet, not just these companies' preferred portions of it," Cyril told Motherboard. "Companies frame these services as a gift to consumers, but they're actually discriminatory profit-making schemes."
In response to such criticism, the industry giants argue that they are merely experimenting with new and innovative services. Comcast, in particular, has vehemently pushed back against critics, going so far as to argue that "Stream TV" is not an example of zero-rating because the service "does not go over the internet," but rather is delivered via the same "closed path" as its traditional cable offering.
Comcast's critics don't buy this argument. Earlier this month, the cable giant was hit with a complaint filed by DC-based consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge alleging that "Stream TV" is anticompetitive, illegal, and in violation of commitments Comcast made when it bought a controlling stake in NBCUniversal in 2011.
The FCC knows that zero-rating has become a contentious issue, and the agency has been holding discussions with some of the nation's largest broadband companies about their practices. In its net neutrality policy, the FCC did not explicitly prohibit zero-rating, but rather indicated it would address the issue on a case-by-case basis.
A FCC spokesperson declined to comment on the public interest groups' letter or the status of the agency's inquiry into zero-rating.

[Meho Krljic]

Rightscorp Plans to Hijack Pirates' Browsers Until a Fine is Paid

Anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp says that it's working on a new method to extract cash settlements from suspected Internet pirates. The company says new technology will lock users' browsers and prevent Internet access until they pay a fine. To encourage ISPs to play along, Rightscorp says the system could help to limit their copyright liability.


Earlier this week, anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp published its results for 2015. They make for dismal reading, with the company recording a net loss of $3.43m, up from the $2.85m net loss recorded in 2014.
The company has a number of problems. First and foremost it has too few clients and somehow needs to expand the catalog of copyrights under its protection. With a wider spread and greater volume it could do better, but that's only part of the problem.
Internet service providers in the United States aren't generally fans of copyright trolls like Rightscorp. They prey on valuable customers who often incorrectly conclude that their provider has been spying on them. Of course the sting in the tail is the compensation that Rightscorp demands, all conveniently delivered to the Internet subscriber by their ISP.
In its filing this week Rightscorp blamed falling revenues on a reluctance by ISPs to pass on these automated fines. Nevertheless, the company isn't giving up on improved cooperation with service providers since it has a plan that could streamline its business and more or less force users to pay up.
Rightscorp says this could be achieved via a "next generation technology" its developing called Scalable Copyright, which will shift warnings and settlement demands away from easily ignored emails and towards an altogether more aggressive delivery method.
"In the Scalable Copyright system, subscribers receive each [settlement] notice directly in their browser," the company reports.
"Single notices can be read and bypassed similar to the way a software license agreement works [but] once the internet account receives a certain number of notices over a certain time period, the screen cannot be bypassed until the settlement payment is received."
The idea of locking browsers in response to infringement allegations is nothing new. Users of some ISPs in the United States already receive these warnings if too many complaints are made against their account. However, to date no company has asked for money to have these locks removed and the idea of 'wheel clamping' a browser is hardly an attractive one, especially based on the allegations of a third-party organization.
Still, Rightscorp seems confident that it can persuade ISPs to come along for the ride.
"Its implementation will require the agreement of the ISPs. We have had discussions with multiple ISPs about implementing Scalable Copyright, and intend to intensify those efforts. ISPs have the technology to display our notices in subscribers' browsers in this manner," the company notes.
While ISPs do indeed have the ability to hold their customers to ransom on Rightscorp's behalf, the big question is why they would choose to do so. On the surface there seems no benefit to ISPs whatsoever, since all it will do is annoy those who pay the bills. But Rightscorp sees things somewhat differently and says that the system will actually be both cheap and beneficial to ISPs.
"We provide the data at no charge to the ISPs. With Scalable Copyright, ISPs will be able to greatly reduce their third-party liability and the music and home video industries will be able to return to growth along with the internet advertising and broadband subscriber industries," the company explains.
That third-party liability is the requirement under the DMCA for service providers to terminate repeat infringers or face the prospect of losing their safe harbor protections.
"U.S. ISPs have a safe harbor that is conditional on terminating repeat copyright infringers. Rightscorp has the technology to identify these repeat infringers. ISPs either need to work with copyright holders to reduce repeat infringers identified by Rightscorp or face significant liability," the company warns.
As the recent case between BMG and Cox Communications illustrates, ISPs do need to be cautious over the issue of repeat infringers and they must have policies in place to deal with them. However, the notion that a browser-lock system like this one needs to be deployed is unlikely to be on the agenda of many ISPs, especially considering Rightscorp's track record.
While the MPAA/RIAA Copyright Alerts program limits the numbers of warnings that can be sent to single subscriber in order to avoid labeling them as repeat infringers too quickly, Rightscorp is on record as sending 112 notices to a single Comcast user in less than 48 hours over the sharing of a single torrent.
But despite all the rhetoric, these ambitious plans to hijack browsers to generate revenue will require ISPs to co-operate more with Rightscorp, not less, so the current downward trend in forwarding the company's notices is hardly encouraging.

[Meho Krljic]

http://youtu.be/nWDsD6Zs_p0

[Meho Krljic]

Pajratbej izgubio glavne domene na švedskom sudu:


http://thehackernews.com/2016/05/pirate-bay-torrent-website.html

The Pirate Bay has fought many legal battles since its launch in 2003 to keep the website operational for the last 13 years.

However, this time The Pirate Bay is suffering a major blow after the Swedish Court ruled Thursday that it will take away the domain names 'ThePirateBay.se' and 'PirateBay.se' of the world's most popular torrent website and will hand over them to the state.

As its name suggests, The Pirate Bay is one of the most popular file-sharing torrent site predominantly used for downloading pirated or copyrighted media and programs free of charge.

 

Despite the criminal convictions, the torrent site remains functioning although it has moved to different Web domains several times.

However, this time, The Pirate Bay loses its main .SE domain, the world's 225th most popular website according to the Alexa ranking, according to Swedish newspaper DN.

"In common with the District Court ruling the Court of Appeal finds that there is a basis for confiscation since the domain names assisted crimes under the Copyright Act," a statement on the site of the Svea Court of Appeal reads. "This means that the right to the domain names falls to the state."

Back in 2013, the anti-piracy prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad took a different approach to shutting down the file-sharing website.

Must Read: The Pirate Bay Founders Free Of Criminal Copyright Case.

Instead of suing the operators of the site or going after The Pirate Bay directly, the prosecutor decided to take two of its more popular domains from it and filed a complaint against Punkt SE (IIS), the company that manages .SE domain names.

The lawsuit filed against Punkt SE claimed that The Pirate Bay was an illegal torrent site and that all tools, including the domain names thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se, used in connection with the illegal site should be suspended.

Last year, the Stockholm District Court ruled in favor of the prosecution, saying that both ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se would be taken from the owners of The Pirate Bay.

Punkt SE then appealed and won the case and also awarded the body compensation of US$40,000 for legal costs.

Also Read: The Pirate Bay Runs on 21 "Raid-Proof" Virtual Machines To Avoids Detection.

As a result, the prosecution appealed, and now the decision came in the prosecution's favor, which means The Pirate Bay's popular domains names are set to be forfeited to the Swedish state.

Both ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se are held in the name of The Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij, so the next step of the legal battle will now be against him.

Although there is still the possibility of another appeal, it is hard to say at this time whether both .SE domains of The Pirate Bay will still be active in the coming months.

[Meho Krljic]

YouTube Are Criminal Piracy Racketeers, Grammy Winner Says

YouTube is guilty of criminal racketeering. That's the headline-grabbing claim of Grammy award winning musician Maria Schneider, who claims that the Google-owned site is abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to siphon money away from musicians into its own pockets.

Throughout the heated exchanges of the SOPA anti-piracy debate in 2011 and 2012 the entertainment industries demanded tough legislation to deal with the growing menace of overseas pirate sites. Now, four years later, the emphasis appears to have switched. While KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay are still somewhere on the agenda, Google has transformed into the new bad guy and the pressure is mounting in a way never witnessed before.
The U.S. Copyright Office's request for comments into the efficacy of the DMCA's safe harbor provisions has resulted in a wave of condemnation for both Google search and the company's YouTube platform, with everyone from the major record labels to the MPAA and back again attacking the technology giant.
While the language has often been bitter and at times scathing, an attack this weekend by Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider really ups the ante by stating that YouTube is guilty of the same criminal acts that Megaupload is currently accused of.
"YouTube is guilty of criminal racketeering," Schneider wrote in an open letter to the platform.
"YouTube has thoroughly twisted, contorted, and abused the original meaning of the outdated DMCA 'safe harbor' to create a massive income redistribution scheme, where income is continually transferred from the pockets of musicians and creators of all types, and siphoned directly into their own pockets."
But Schneider didn't step off the gas there. The 55-year-old composer and musical director also turned on lawmakers for allowing Google's lobbying efforts to cloud their judgment.
"Congress seems to be too hypnotized by Alphabet lobbyists, swarming like locusts, for the lawmakers to stand up straight with a firm sense of right and wrong, and defend the Constitution and the citizens of this country," she added.
"When we analyze the bullying behavior of YouTube, in my opinion YouTube has created an illegal business through intimidation – the classic Webster's Dictionary definition of racketeering."
The word 'opinion' appears no less than six times in Schneider's letter, which is probably prudent when accusing one of the world's most important companies of engaging in organized crime.
Still, Schneider doubles down by insisting that rather than hiding behind the DMCA's safe harbor provisions, YouTube has lost its right to do so after encouraging its users to become pirates.
"YouTube and its parent Alphabet have obliterated the original meaning of the 'safe harbor' law with their bullying and coercive schemes to get their users to disrespect and ignore copyright," Schneider wrote.
"YouTube has substantially influenced the behavior of hundreds of millions of its users toward infringement, fermenting a veritable pirate orgy. YouTube goes way beyond turning a blind eye to the marauding masses; it actively seduces its users into illegal behavior, and has even managed to make its users believe pirate behavior is beneficial to creators."
These are bold words but really just the tip of the iceberg of a piece that derides every facet of Google's "piracy factory" with terminology usually reserved for gangster movies. Accusing YouTube of
being "pusher" of pirate activity on its unsuspecting "users", Schneider says the company bullies, demonizes, intimidates and threatens rightsholders into submission.
"The sweeping influence of their scam has succeeded in dismantling copyright from the inside, like a flesh-eating virus, influencing citizens to destroy themselves. Any company influencing behavior like this, especially for the purposes of eroding Constitutional rights, should lose their safe harbor," she adds.
In closing, Schneider has several key demands. Front and center is a call for "takedown and staydown", the mechanism championed by every Google critic thus far in this DMCA consultation.
Second, the musician wants stricter controls on upload, including the mandatory use of the latest digital fingerprinting technology. How these would allow for fair use isn't discussed.
Finally, she wants copyright holders' identities hidden when they carry out a takedown, to stop them being "intimidated" by the public.
The letter in its full glory is available here.

[Meho Krljic]

Fox 'Stole' a Game Clip, Used it in Family Guy & DMCA'd the Original 

This week's episode of Family Guy included a clip from 1980s Nintendo video game Double Dribble showing a glitch to get a free 3-point goal. Fox obtained the clip from YouTube where it had been sitting since it was first uploaded in 2009. Shortly after, Fox told YouTube the game footage infringed its copyrights. YouTube took it down.

Just when you think you've seen every ridiculous example of a bogus DMCA-style takedown, another steps up to take the crown. This week's abomination comes courtesy of Fox and it's an absolute disaster.
In last Sunday's episode of Family Guy titled "Run, Chris, Run", Peter and Cleveland play the 1980s classic Nintendo video game Double Dribble. Peter doesn't play fair though and exploits a glitch in the game that allows his player to shoot a three-point goal every time. The clip is available on YouTube.

Perhaps surprisingly the game glitch is absolutely genuine and was documented in a video that was uploaded to YouTube by a user called 'sw1tched' back in February 2009.
"This is an automatic shot my brothers and I found on the NES Double Dribble back in the 80's when it was released. I know others know this also, but as long as you release at the right point it is automatic. The half court shot I took at the end goes in 80% of the time, but i didn't want to keep recording....HAHA," sw1tched wrote.
Interestingly the clip that was uploaded by sw1tched was the exact same clip that appeared in the Family Guy episode on Sunday. So, unless Fox managed to duplicate the gameplay precisely, Fox must've taken the clip from YouTube.
Whether Fox can do that and legally show the clip in an episode is a matter for the experts to argue but what followed next was patently absurd. Shortly after the Family Guy episode aired, Fox filed a complaint with YouTube and took down the Double Dribble video game clip on copyright grounds. (mirror Daily Motion)

Faced with yet another example of a blatantly wrongful takedown, TorrentFreak spoke with Fight for the Future CTO Jeff Lyon. Coincidentally he'd just watched the episode in question.
"It's most likely that this is just another example of YouTube's Content ID system automatically taking down a video without regard to actual copyright ownership and fair use. As soon as FOX broadcast that Family Guy episode, their robots started taking down any footage that appeared to be reposted from the show — and in this case they took down the footage they stole from an independent creator," Lyon says.
"The problem with an automated DMCA takedown system is that robots can never know the difference between fair use and copyright infringement. It is not hyperbolic to call this mass censorship," he continues.
"Instead of copyright holders having to prove a video is infringing, their scanning software can take it down automatically, and then it falls on the creator to prove they had a right to post it. Creators are discouraged from filing counter-notices to stand up for their work, facing lost revenue and permanent bans from online platforms. This erodes fair use and free speech on the Internet."
The entire situation is indeed bewildering and utterly ridiculous. The original Double Dribble game came out in 1987, some 12 years before the very first episode of Family Guy aired in 1999. The clip of the glitch was uploaded by sw1tched more than seven years ago. Then somehow Fox came along, copied it, put it into their TV show, claimed copyright on it, and then nuked the original clip from the Internet.
You couldn't make it up. Nor would you want to.
Update1: The folks at Takedownabuse.org are featuring this story in a petition.
Update2: The video has now been restored
Update3: A Fox spokesperson sent in the following comment: "The video in question was removed as a result of Fox's routine efforts to protect its television show Family Guy from piracy. As soon as we became aware of the circumstances, the content was restored."
Update 4: YouTube user Hamza informs TorrentFreak that a clip he recorded of the game Tecmo Bowl was also used in the same Family Guy episode. It too was taken down and later restored.

[Meho Krljic]

Revealed: How copyright law is being misused to remove material from the internet

When Annabelle Narey posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet, the last thing on her mind was copyright infringement

Writing a bad review online has always run a small risk of opening yourself up to a defamation claim. But few would expect to be told that they had to delete their review or face a lawsuit over another part of the law: copyright infringement.
Yet that's what happened to Annabelle Narey after she posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet.
Narey, who is the head of programme at an international children's charity, had turned to London-based BuildTeam for a side return extension, but almost six months later, the relationship had turned acrimonious. The build, which was only supposed to take 10–14 weeks, was still unfinished, she wrote. "On Christmas day a ceiling fell down in an upstairs bedroom," she says, apparently due to an issue with the plumbing. "Mercifully no one was hurt. [That] there seem to be so many glowing reports out there it is frankly curious. Proceed at your own risk," the review concluded.
BuildTeam disputes her account. In a letter sent to Mumsnet, which the site passed on to Narey, the builders complained that the comments were defamatory. They say it is "untrue" that the ceiling fell down due to an issue with plumbing, and cited a total of 11 statements they claimed were defamatory.
Mumsnet, following UK law on libel accusations, passed the letter on to Narey and offered her the chance to delete the post or get in touch with BuildTeam to sort out the matter.
"BuildTeam have been in touch persistently with us at Mumsnet since mid-March, asking for the thread to be removed," a spokeswoman said. "We're keen to defend our posters' freedom of speech and to ask complainants to follow due process, so previously we had referred them to Section 5 of the 2013 Defamation Act."
By this point, the thread on Mumsnet had grown to include other posters claiming to have had bad experiences with the building firm. Some of them decided to remove the posts in response to the legal threats from BuildTeam, but Narey wanted to keep hers up.
BuildTeam says that "at no point has ... Build Team Holborn Ltd stated that they are to pursue a defamation claim against any individual. Enquiries were made to the relevant web hosts as to their position for such posts being made, thus resulting in the relevant documentation being lodged with the aforementioned hosts. At present Build Team Holborn Ltd are currently assessing the situation and/or their options in respect of reserving their rights should any action be required in the future."
Narey says that after she heard from Mumsnet about the defamation claims, BuildTeam got in touch personally to ask for the post to be removed. "Staff even came to our house holding printouts of it. They never acknowledged the contents or made any apology, but distanced themselves from the context of the review, asking only for it to be taken down," she said.
But in April, the decision was made for her, in a very peculiar way. Mumsnet received a warning from Google: a takedown request had been made under the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), alleging that copyrighted material was posted without a licence on the thread.
As soon as the DMCA takedown request had been filed, Google de-listed the entire thread. All 126 posts are now not discoverable when a user searches Google for BuildTeam – or any other terms. The search company told Mumsnet it could make a counterclaim, if it was certain no infringement had taken place, but since the site couldn't verify that its users weren't actually posting copyrighted material, it would have opened it up to further legal pressure.
In fact, no copyright infringement had occurred at all. Instead, something weirder had happened. At some point after Narey posted her comments on Mumsnet, someone had copied the entire text of one of her posts and pasted it, verbatim, to a spammy blog titled "Home Improvement Tips and Tricks". The post, headlined "Buildteam interior designers" was backdated to September 14 2015, three months before Narey had written it, and was signed by a "Douglas Bush" of South Bend, Indiana. The website was registered to someone quite different, though: Muhammed Ashraf, from Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Quite why Douglas Bush or Muhammed Ashraf would be reviewing a builder based in Clapham is not explained in "his" post. BuildTeam says it has no idea why Narey's review was reposted, but that it had nothing to do with it. "At no material times have we any knowledge of why this false DCMA take down was filed, nor have we contracted any reputation management firms, or any individual or a group to take such action on our behalf. Finally, and in conjunction to the above, we have never spoken with a 'Douglas Bush,' or a 'Muhammed Ashraf.'"
Whoever sent the takedown request, Mumsnet was forced to make a choice: either leave the post up, and accept being delisted; fight the delisting and open themselves up to the same legal threats made against Google; or delete the post themselves, and ask the post to be relisted on the search engine.
"Although we understood the user's argument that something odd had happened, we weren't in a position to explain what - our hope was that by zapping one post we might ensure that the thread remained listed."
Mumsnet deleted the post, and asked Google to reinstate the thread, but a month later, they received final word from the search firm: "'Google has decided not to take action based on our policies concerning content removal and reinstatement' which (it turned out) meant that they had delisted the entire thread".
The motivation of Ashraf can only be guessed at, but censorship using the DMCA is common online. The act allows web hosts a certain amount of immunity from claims of copyright infringement through what is known as the "safe harbour" rules: in essence, a host isn't responsible for hosting infringing material provided they didn't know about it when it went up, and took it down as soon as they were told about it.
In practice, however, this means that web hosts (and the term is broadly interpreted, meaning sites like YouTube, Twitter and Google count) are forced to develop a hair-trigger over claims of copyright infringement, assuming guilt and asking the accused to prove their innocence.
As such, a very easy way to remove something from the internet is to accuse its creator of infringing copyright. Worse, the potential downside of such a false claim is minimal: the accused would have to first file a counterclaim, proving they own the copyright; then file a private lawsuit, and prove material damage; and then track down the offending party to actually recover any monies granted by the court.
That doesn't happen all that often.
But in recent years, big web companies have started funding lawsuits themselves, to fill the gap in the law and tilt the scales a bit further in favour of content creators wrongly accused.
Oliver Hotham is one beneficiary of that change. In 2013, the journalist posted an interview with "Straight Pride UK", a homophobic group that expressed support for anti-gay polices in Russia. Seemingly embarrassed by their own statements, Straight Pride UK then filed a takedown request with Hotham's blog host, Wordpress.com, claiming that they owned the copyright to the answers they gave Hotham, and they had not intended the text to be published. "Straight Pride UK thought as he was a student that we would add fun to it, dress it up and make him feel like a reporter by adding 'press release' to the document," the group's spokesman, who went by the name "Peter Sidorove", told the Guardian at the time.
Automattic, the parent company of Wordpress.com, called the takedown request "censorship using the DMCA", and vowed to fight it. Eventually, Hotham and Automattic were victorious, with a Californian judge granting over $20,000 in damages, but it was a hollow victory: Sidorove and Straight Pride UK had disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving little chance of the money being paid out.
In November, YouTube announced a similar plan, to "offer legal support to a handful of videos that we believe represent clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns".
"We're doing this because we recognise that creators can be intimidated by the DMCA's counter notification process, and the potential for litigation that comes with it," Fred von Lohmann, Google's copyright legal director, wrote.
But the company can't offer legal support for every video on YouTube, nor even every video with an obvious case. And when it comes to takedown requests for Google Search, the numbers are staggering: the company received 88m copyright takedowns in the last month. Despite that, a Google spokesperson said that "we use a variety of techniques to try to identify [fraudulent] claims, and when we do identify possible fraud, we push back very strongly against the claim. Indeed, we do this for millions of URLs every year."
Google is aware of cases like Narey's, and is looking at how to improve fraud detection, but there's a limit to what it can do in general. The scale is too large for it to take the sort of personal approach that Automattic did with Hotham's case, and ultimately the law doesn't allow for it to hit back against fraudulent claims without some involvement of the accused – which, technically, was Mumsnet, not Narey. And while Mumsnet was offered the chance to file a counterclaim, the forum couldn't, because it too couldn't be certain the claim actually was fraudulent.
For Narey, it's a bit late. "For the law governing the internet to allow decisions regarding my integrity to be taken without any investigation at all seems shocking," she says. "I have no ambition other than to bring our experience to public attention."

[Meho Krljic]

  Obama's Web Rules Upheld in Win for Google, Loss for AT&T

A federal court upheld net-neutrality regulations designed to ensure an open internet, handing a victory to the Obama administration and a defeat to telephone and cable providers.

QuickTake What Net Neutrality Means

The Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals Tuesday acted after a decade of debate over web access that pitted Silicon Valley against companies that provide internet access to homes and businesses. The court likened internet service providers to utilities, saying they "act as neutral, indiscriminate platforms for transmission of speech."
The ruling is a triumph for the Federal Communications Commission's Democratic majority that passed the rules last year. It is a win for Alphabet Inc.'s Google, online video provider Netflix Inc. and others who championed the notion of an open internet where internet service providers are prevented from offering speedier lanes to those willing to pay extra for them.
"The open internet rules are here to stay," Pantelis Michalopoulos, an attorney who represented Netflix and Dish Network Corp. in the case, said in an e-mail. "There is no doubt who is the winner: the open internet. The gatekeepers may not block or throttle our information. They may not ask information to pay tolls."
Challengers including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. said the rule would discourage innovation and investment. AT&T said it would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.'Unfettered Access'The three-judge appellate panel heard arguments on Dec. 4. U.S. Circuit judges David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan voted to uphold the FCC. Judge Stephen Williams dissented, saying the FCC ignored market conditions.
"Today's ruling is a victory for consumers and innovators who deserve unfettered access to the entire web," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who led the agency to a 3-2 Democratic-led vote to pass the rules, said in an e-mailed statement. "It ensures the internet remains a platform for unparalleled innovation, free expression and economic growth."
For more on the net neutrality debate, see this QuickTake.
President Barack Obama backed the rules. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in a Tweet said that, "Today's decision will help ensure we don't turn over our democracy to the highest bidder."
"We have always expected this issue to be decided by the Supreme Court, and we look forward to participating in that appeal," David McAtee, AT&T's general counsel, said in an e-mailed statement.Congressional OptionsThe wireless industry "will pursue judicial and congressional options to ensure a regulatory framework that provides certainty for consumers, investors and innovators," Meredith Attwell Baker, president of CTIA, a trade group with members including AT&T and Verizon, said in an e-mailed statement.
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, with members including top U.S. cable provider Comcast and Charter Communications Inc., said in a statement it was reviewing the decision.
The decision comes as AT&T, Comcast and T-Mobile US Inc. face regulatory scrutiny for offering customers free data for viewing certain web videos, raising concerns as to whether they're indeed treating all content equally.
The notion behind the FCC measure, that broadband service providers must treat all content the same, had the support of the Obama administration as well as Twitter Inc., the American Civil Liberties Union and other interest groups.Telephone CompaniesTwo years ago, another three-judge panel that included Tatel rejected the FCC's earlier effort to implement internet traffic rules in a Verizon-filed case, concluding the regulator had tried to treat broadband service providers as common carriers tantamount to telephone companies after having previously classified them as exempt from that designation.
In 2010, a U.S. court ruled federal regulators lacked authority to censure Comcast for interfering with subscribers' internet traffic.
The FCC in response wrote rules that in 2014 were again rejected for lack of authority.
The agency tried again with the rules passed last year. This time it said broadband service providers, both mobile and fixed, were indeed common carriers that could be regulated under a 1996 telecommunications act, an assertion disputed in court by the challengers' attorney Peter Keisler.
Defending the measure before the three-member panel was FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet.
The revised measures took effect last year.
The case is USTelecom v. FCC, 15-1063, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia (Washington).

[Meho Krljic]

From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

Soon after the domain was registered in Hong Kong, the now-defunct Megaupload.com grew into one of the world's most popular file-sharing sites. At its peak, the site engaged nearly 50 million users a day and took up around four percent of the world's Internet traffic. Users uploaded nearly 12 billion files overall.
But the infamy of the site's rise is only matched by the infamy of its fall. In January 2012, US authorities closed down Megaupload.com and the network related to it. The feds arrested seven people and froze $50 million in assets. The FBI claims that the site not only failed to take down illegal material, Megaupload also helped to spread it. Perhaps it was simply a case of brazen arrogance. When the authorities finally raided founder Kim Dotcom's large villa in New Zealand, they found a number of luxury cars (Lamborghini, Maserati, Rolls Royce) with the license plates "God," "Mafia," "Hacker," "Evil," and "Police."
In total, seven men associated with the site were arrested and indicted on 13 charges (including copyright infringement and money laundering). Dotcom remains notably free and has been continually fighting in New Zealand against his extradition to the USA. Others were not as lucky.
Take for instance self-taught programmer Andrus Nõmm. The now 37-year-old grew up in a small Estonian town called Jõhvi. When he built up the Mega advertising platform Megaclick and the video hosting service Megavideo, Nõmm earned as much as $10,000 a month—more than he could've ever imagined as a child. But when US authorities came after the entire Megaupload operation, suddenly he found himself in the middle of the world's most sensational criminal copyright infringement scandal.
The legal saga dragged on for three years. In 2012, Nõmm was first arrested by authorities in the Netherlands and placed under house arrest. Like Dotcom, Nõmm next spent a significant amount of time fighting extradition. But eventually in 2015, he voluntarily traveled to the US and was arrested in Virginia. Nõmm pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement and was sentenced to a year and a day in a US federal prison. The US Attorney General's office called the conviction, "a significant step forward in the largest criminal copyright case in US history." In court documents, Nõmm acknowledged the financial harm to copyright holders "exceeded $400 million."
While in prison, Nõmm's teenage son and Turkish wife lived through all of this drama back in their home in Izmir, Turkey. Today, Nõmm is back with them. He' a free man looking to set his life back on track. And recently, he agreed to share his side of the story—from Megaupload glory through prison time—with Estonian journalist Toivo Tänavsuu.
The following Q&A is made of selected excerpts from Tänavsuu's interview, which was originally published in the Estonian weekly Eesti Ekspress this past April. It has been translated into English and lighted edited for clarity. It's reprinted here with permission from Tänavsuu.
Tänavsuu: Describe your life in the Netherlands up to February 2015.
Nõmm: I lived on Katendrecht Peninsula in Rotterdam. At first I had to wear a GPS device and stay within 500 meters of my home. The supermarket was 550 meters away. I had to walk to the edge of this area and wait there until someone bought my goods and brought them to me. After a while, they relaxed the restrictions and the area in which I was allowed to move increased until finally the GPS device was removed altogether. I was allowed to move around everywhere in the Netherlands, except anywhere within 50 kilometers of the border. When my son was visiting and we wanted to go to an amusement park in a town near the border, I had to get a special permit.
I wasn't allowed to go to the airport either. Since most trains run through Schiphol, I had to drive the long way around to get from Rotterdam to Amsterdam.
Why did you initially fight against your extradition?
First of all, I couldn't understand why I was being hunted down. The Dutch court papers didn't include at least half of the accusations which had been in the media. For example, we do not have a single section in the law in Europe about racketeering, which in the USA automatically leads to a 25-year sentence. Secondly, I did not know what was going to happen to me if I went to the USA. The maximum possible penalty for all 13 counts would have been 55 years in prison.
Were you able to work?
The Netherlands wanted me to work. I didn't have any money because my bank accounts in Turkey and Hong Kong had been seized and the US government confiscated about $40,000 from them. The FBI put me on the black list, which meant that I couldn't transfer my earnings to a bank. I had to let them transfer my salary to a friend's account.
The Americans wanted to use you against Kim Dotcom. What were the FBI's proposals?
They tried to get in contact with me, but when my lawyer asked why, they didn't reply.
I had three lawyers in total. The first, appointed by the state, didn't even notify me that the FBI were trying to get in contact. The second was famous but turned out to be a complete fake—taking money from clients, but not doing much at all and now facing trial. My last lawyer came through Megaupload and was really good. But Kim never paid the man a single cent. All Kim ever cared about was how to promote himself on Twitter. He has never given me any real help.
In February 2015, you voluntarily decided to fly to the US. Why?
The US prosecutors kept insisting that I should talk to them. Finally, we met with a couple of FBI representatives at my lawyer's office in Amsterdam. The Americans confirmed that they had strong evidence against me, and that I didn't stand a chance. They claimed that I had either uploaded or downloaded some sort of illegal movie in Megaupload. Since I myself programmed the video converter system for the site, I downloaded and uploaded files constantly without watching them.
They wanted me to confess to knowing that Megaupload was earning big money from illegal movies. This I read only later on the Internet. I didn't deal with financial issues in the company.
What options did you have?
I had the chance to fight for another 10 years and .00001 percent probability of winning in court, to live week-to-week worried about how to support my family. They would've extradited me sooner or later and I would've received a tough punishment in the USA: I most likely would have spent 5-10 years behind bars.

"I had the chance to fight for another 10 years and .00001 percent probability of winning in court, to live week-to-week worried about how to support my family. They would've extradited me sooner or later."

I chose a shortened procedure. I pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement and made an agreement with the prosecutors to sit in prison for a year. All the bigger accusations, such as money laundering, dropped away since I wasn't the owner of the company. I also had to sign my name to all of the evidence that had already been collected—for example, to the fact that Megaupload ignored complaints from time to time and did not remove illegal content fast enough. If anyone had any doubts about a file, Kim always calmed them down and said there was nothing to worry about. I had to be made an example of as a warning to all IT people who were intending to work in similar companies.
Deep down, did you feel guilty of anything?
I still think I shouldn't have been on the list of defendants.
At the beginning, the Dutch Attorney-General was involved, then less and less important prosecutors until my case landed in the lap of some random intern. That shows how important the issue really was. It turned out that I was the only defendant in the last 29 years to voluntarily go from the Netherlands to the USA. I was asked to come to the police station 24 hours earlier. There I was shoved in the punishment cell with all the lowlifes. Since I'd been playing computer games and talking to my friends from dusk till dawn for two or three days in a row, I was so tired that I immediately fell asleep.

Did they think you were some kind of gangster?
I quickly learned that if you act normally and don't do anything stupid, they treat you normally. I watched some movies during the flight and asked them to loosen the handcuffs while I was eating.
Did you fly on an ordinary commercial flight?
Yes, we flew to Washington, DC. From there, I was taken by car to Alexandria in Virginia. I was held in a detention center for a few weeks, and that was worse than prison. You share a closed room which is maybe two by three meters, and you only get out for six to seven hours a day. There are no beds. You only get a 3-4 centimeter thick piece of polyurethane foam which you can lay down on the concrete floor. The toilet is in the same room. If you need to "feed the jaruzel" [Polish saying] as they call it, you try and time it to coincide with your daily walk.
There are no books. You just stare at the wall or talk to your cellmate. My cellmate had been caught drunk-driving for the third time. Luckily, we'd both travelled a lot and this made it easy to talk to each other.
And outside the cell?
You just got to sit around and watch those meaningless American TV shows, take a shower, or eat.
Did they give you enough food?
They gave us enough so that we didn't die. I was starving all the time. There were three or four different menus with a list of different things: hamburgers, meatloaf, steak. But no matter what you asked for, they always brought you a tiny, bland burger.
Did you go to court?
They took me from the detention center to the court across the road about four or five days after I arrived. Virginia is an army state and its courts have the toughest laws going. If you do something wrong, do it anywhere else—not in Virginia. It turned out at the court that the agreement I'd signed in the Netherlands had disappeared!
I actually had to sign a paper with counts to which I hadn't confessed—for example, the claim that I knew that Megaupload was earning millions.
Did you feel as if you were being blackmailed?
The whole case was blackmail. They were just waiting for the defendant to get tired of fighting and give up. It's not the one who's in the right who wins, but the one who has the most staying power.
We signed the new agreement half an hour before the hearing. But then the judge started rambling on that the case was big and he needed at least 90 days to decide—something else new! They brought in a bunch of papers again and my financial and psychological profile was compiled. They used very specific English in court, but nobody was interested in whether I needed an interpreter or not.
In the end, you were sentenced to a year and a day in prison with three years' probation, right?
As was agreed. The lawyer put me under pressure and demanded that I agree to a year and a day because if you are sentenced to a prison for less than a year, then there is no way to be released 15 percent earlier for good behavior.
It was said in the media that you gave the FBI valuable information which will help put together a better case against others involved in Megaupload. Is that true?
I wasn't interrogated. They had factual evidence in the form of digital correspondence and Skype logs. I didn't tell them anything they didn't already know.


You didn't turn your friends in?
Kim wasn't my friend. We worked in different countries. I talked to him online a couple of times a year. The last time we met was at a company party in Hong Kong in 2010. I was just dealing with technical stuff. I didn't get wasted like the others.
It was also said that you all had to pay a couple of million dollars to compensate losses.
To be precise, the deficit is $450 million! Hollywood lost $500 million in revenue due to piracy, minus $50 million in seized property. Since I didn't have a penny and I wasn't a shareholder of the company, the judge decided I only had to pay $100 in legal costs. I'll never get back the $40,000 that was seized by the USA.
Did they take you to prison by car?
Prisoners in the US are taken from one place to another on grey buses with bars just like in the movies. You're put in shackles, so you can only take very small steps at a time, and you're handcuffed. It doesn't matter whether you're a high or low security risk. Everyone's put on the same bus. You don't get any food, you can't go to the toilet, and sometimes you drive for 12 hours straight.
They never send you straight to where you're going. You drive through a number of other prisons first. If you make trouble, say by complaining to the judge that your rights are being violated, you're put through this thing called "diesel therapy." They bounce you back and forth between prisons like a ping-pong ball.
Did they do this to you, too?
I was taken from Alexandria to Brooklyn, from there to Pennsylvania, from there back to Brooklyn, and from there to Pennsylvania again—a total of about 16 hours of driving. Before I got to where I was meant to be going, I was put in two different prisons, one of which was a supermax prison where they keep the worst of the worst. I was there for 10 days. There are more than 2.5 million prisoners in the United States. Almost one percent of the whole population is in prison, and that's a huge problem. But what surprised me most was that there are private prisons in the US. The more prisoners, the more money you get from the state. It's big business.
You were sent to Moshannon Valley prison in Pennsylvania. What kind of place is it?
Since I was an immigrant, I'd never been to the US. I went there without a visa and I'd leave without one—they put me in the correctional center for foreigners. It was in a forest in the middle of nowhere. An acquaintance of mine wanted to visit me and it took him several hours just to find the place. GPS didn't help. The nearest airport was 6-7 hours' drive away.
The prisoners were in barracks, 80 men to a block. There were five buildings altogether, each of them with six blocks like some kind of big hospital. We had two large gardens with a soccer field on one side and a baseball field on the other. In the middle was a large area where you could lift weights. Most of the inmates did sports. I wasn't interested in body-building or getting tattoos. I just walked around for hours or read.
There were no walls, just a chain-link fence and barbed wire. Every now and then some girls drove past and stuck their heads out of the window, waving and screaming. Half the guys rushed to the fence to stare at them.

Who did you share your cell with?
In Brooklyn, I shared my cell with a young American IT guy. We could talk for days. We played soccer barefoot just to fill in the time. The worst thing was if you didn't get tired during the day that meant you couldn't sleep.
What did you do in the prison in Pennsylvania?
I read a lot, four or five books a week. I scribbled some plans and specifications for my projects, or watched stupid American TV series. I took Spanish and Chinese courses. Not much of either stuck, but at least it took up my time. I also took alternative energy courses; one of the prisoners was the former owner of a huge green energy company. In my last few weeks there I myself gave some computing courses. I talked about how to make a website, what HTML was, and so on.
You had computers there?
No, I taught them on paper. I talked about the hardware: what a hard drive is, and a monitor, and a smartphone; why we need passwords. Some of the men had been in prison for 20 years. There were Jamaicans, Slavic guys, and Spanish-speaking people in the group.
Did the Estonian state support you while you were in prison?
Estonia was the only country that didn't give its people any support. All the other countries gave their prisoners at least some pocket money. Even 10-20 euros would've been a great help, because you don't even get normal soap for free there, not to mention shampoo. You're given toothpaste whose "best before" was in 2005 and two 20 x 40 cm towels for your whole body for half a year.
But there's a shop. If you have money, you can buy everything. Some friends and my family sent me money.
Did you get your own little corner?
I was given a tiny metal box, but it was impossible to lock it. Still, nobody stole from anyone else. Otherwise they would have been blacklisted. The guards don't have full control of prisons in the US. Each nationality group has its own go-between who, if they need to, sorts out strife. The Hispanics have their own, the black guys have their own, the Chinese have their own, and so on.
Weren't you afraid?
It was a low-risk prison. Most of the inmates had come across the border or been caught living in the US without a passport. There were some habitual criminals, of course. You just need to know when to keep your mouth shut and walk away. I come from Ida-Viru County. I have some experience with people like that. It wasn't particularly easy being an Estonian in Ida-Viru County when Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union.
I only ever saw two fights in prison. One of them started because somebody switched the channel on the TV. The second one was when somebody made a bad joke about the other guy's girlfriend.
Did you also get to work and earn money?
Everybody had to work at least 20 hours a week: unclogging the toilets, digging pits, painting, or helping sort the books. But guess how much we were paid per hour? Twelve cents per hour! A pack of coffee cost $4. You work for a month and get a pack of coffee! One prisoner told me he'd started fighting in his last prison so he'd be sent away. It was located near a cornfield in Louisiana and the prisoners were working in the field for a dollar a day.
What was the most frustrating aspect of the whole experience?
You're like a sheep in the US prison system. When you're being transported from one place to another and it's cold outside, they make you stand outside in your socks and T-shirt. It's perfectly normal to be put in solitary for three weeks with nothing to read. It's your own problem if you go crazy. You don't have any rights.
What about your health?
I had a few problems. All of them were solved with painkillers.
You were in prison for 10-and-a-half months. Then you applied for parole?
If you don't do anything wrong, freedom's granted automatically after you've served 85 percent of your time. I was taken to a prison in New York for a few days before my flight home. My release day was 25 November—Thanksgiving. As this was followed by days off, I was held in prison for five days longer. I called the Estonian Embassy and said that in my view this wasn't right. They didn't see the problem. Other countries vigorously defended the rights of their own prisoners. It's weird how the Estonian government kowtows before the USA.
I had two options: either I buy a plane ticket myself or let the US government buy one for me. My family bought me the ticket. One Belarusian guy who was meant to be released on the same day let the officials buy him a ticket. So he sat in prison for another three months.
How are you different today to the person you were a year ago?
Prison didn't change me. It was like detention in school. But I'm different today from what I was before 2012. I have less trust in all sorts of state affairs, especially big countries. I saw the dark side of the American dream in all its glory. Many people think it's some paradise. Actually, it's just one big system. The US, China, Russia—take your pick.
It sounds like you've lost faith in American democracy.
Can you call forcing your policies on other countries "democracy?" If you have the money, you have the right. Since the US is a capitalist country, that principle is particularly relevant.

"Kim keeps babbling on about how he helps everybody and is such a great freedom fighter, but the reality is something else. Kim's always been interested in the well-being of just one person, and that's Kim himself."

I don't believe the US will help Estonia in any war. They also promised to help Ukraine, but did they really?
What do you regret most?
I was a bit blind before. It cost me several years of my life. I learned a lot of new things while working in Megaupload. I met some brilliantly clever people. But I should have understood better what kind of person Kim actually was.
Kim has said that he sent you money during the hard times in Rotterdam.
Bramos (Bram van der Kolk, one of the key Dutch players in Megaupload) helped me. His parents transferred some money to me. I don't know who was actually behind the transfer. Some of the guys were flying around in helicopters in New Zealand while I was languishing in Rotterdam. Kim keeps babbling on about how he helps everybody and is such a great freedom fighter, but the reality is something else. Kim's always been interested in the well-being of just one person, and that's Kim himself. As time went by, I realized more clearly that I was fighting on my own.
You're the only one from Megaupload who's faced court in the USA, right?
The police used the special unit, helicopters, semi-automatics, and dogs to catch Kim Dotcom during a raid in New Zealand, which turned out to be a total mess. A lot of those things weren't in accordance with the law. They put on a show of strength to win the favor of the United States. The whole extradition process got stuck in court. As for me, everything in the Netherlands was done exactly as in the papers, which means correctly.
When did you last talk to Kim?
He called me two or three months after all of this began, but we haven't communicated since.
I know how much money they were wasting in the company, and my salary wasn't worth doing the job for that last year. Kim offered me a million dollars as an option if he would eventually sell the company. Back then I believed him.
He has said he understands your decision to plead guilty, do the time, and move on?
He's only saying that to make himself look better. He even tried to go into politics in New Zealand to win the elections and change the law so they couldn't extradite him.
Does he hold a grudge against you?
Even if he does, he's not stupid. He understands that social media has a massive influence. Civil war within Megaupload isn't in his best interests. He's this martyr, this freedom fighter....
He'll eventually end up in the US. He'll most likely throw everyone under the bus. Kim's only interested in Kim. The show he gives online isn't Kim.
How did your son cope with all of this?
He's 13. He knows exactly what happened. He's not a kid any more.
At least you're famous now.
Yes, loads of US publications have requested interviews. I've turned them all down. For example, Vice TV kept on me for several months. I'm not interested in the tabloid press. I was afraid that when I got out of prison, I'd really have to work hard to find a job. But it wasn't a problem. I received all sorts of interesting offers during my last couple of months in prison. I was asked to contact them as soon as I got home. I still don't understand how everybody knew when I was getting out. There's enough work, but I avoid sharing any files!
So, your life is now back on track?
There are still a few problems I have to deal with. I need to pay my friends back for the Rotterdam period. I also owe the bank money. They didn't care that I was in another country for some time and couldn't pay my bills.
Are the FBI haunting you any more?
I'm a 100 percent clean, and that won't change. However, they might start questioning me if Kim faces court in the USA.
What do you dream of?
All my dreams were fulfilled by the time I was 25. I grew up in a poor family and left Estonia in 2000. My goal was to find a decent place to live—not some villa, but not a one-bedroom apartment in a dodgy neighborhood either. I wanted a normal car, a family, and an income which could get me anything I wanted. I had all of this before 2006, when I started working for Megaupload. At the moment, I just want to heal all of the wounds from the last four years.

[Tex Murphy]

Куку...

[Meho Krljic]

That Digital Music Service You Love Is a Terrible Business

Digital music appears to be dead as a standalone business, or at least on life support.
  Every few months, the ongoing upheaval in the digital-music business forces its way into the public consciousness—Rdio goes bankrupt, Pandora hangs out a "For Sale" sign and then gets rid of its CEO, artists and labels ramp up their criticism of YouTube. Now we have Tidal in acquisition talks with Apple, while Spotify complains about Apple treating it unfairly.
The media and music community seem divided on whether an Apple-Tidal combination would be a good idea. Some say it would be a huge mistake for Apple    AAPL 0.30%  , in part because Tidal hasn't proven to be successful in either adding users or growing its business—although it has a number of popular features, including its access to artist exclusives.
Others, however, argue that buying Tidal may make sense for a number of reasons, depending on the price.
From a macro perspective, there's a common theme among all of these developments: Namely, that the digital music business is becoming an industry in which only a truly massive company with huge scale and deep pockets can hope to compete. And that spells trouble for Spotify and every other independent music service.
Rdio went bankrupt last year in large part because it couldn't afford to make the licensing payments the record industry requires of streaming services. Deezer, a European service, postponed a planned initial public offering partly because its business is financially shaky for the same reason.
And within months of announcing that it was acquiring Rdio last year, Pandora was reported to be on the block (although co-founder Tim Westergren has downplayed that idea since he took over as the company's CEO).

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Tidal, meanwhile, has been shopping itself around almost since it premiered last year. It got a tidal wave of publicity because it was backed by hip-hop musician and producer Jay Z and a number of other artists, including his wife and fellow superstar Beyoncé. But the service has had trouble adding users, and is reportedly losing money at a fairly rapid pace.
Realistically speaking, Tidal must be acquired by someone, whether it's Apple or Amazon (which is also trying to grow its music service) or even Rhapsody, another music service with which Tidal has also apparently had discussions.
Rhapsody—which recently announced that it is renaming itself Napster, after the pioneering file-sharing network it acquired in 2011—has been around longer than almost any other streaming service, but is still racking up massive losses for parent RealNetworks.
Then there's Spotify. Over the past couple of years, it has become one of the world's most popular streaming services with 100 million subscribers, 30 million of whom pay a monthly fee. But like every other music service, Spotify has found it almost impossible to make money, primarily because of onerous licensing payments.
You can feel some of the tension coming through in the letter that Spotify sent to Apple, complaining that the company is using its control over the app ecosystem to harm a competitor. This behavior "continues a troubling pattern of behavior to exclude and diminish the competitiveness of Spotify," the company said (Apple responded that Spotify's latest software update was a clear breach of its developer rules, and that the company is "resorting to rumors and half-truths").


Last year, Spotify lost $200 million and had to raise $1 billion in debt financing just to remain in business. More than 85% of the revenue it takes in goes to music licensing costs. And yet, various players in the recorded-music industry—record labels, publishing companies, music distributors and even individual artists—routinely argue that services like Spotify aren't paying enough, and that advertising-supported services like YouTube are even worse.
Who is to blame for this state of affairs? That's a difficult question to answer. The recording industry may want to blame YouTube and Napster, or even Apple, but the reality is that the way music is consumed has changed forever, and we are still figuring out how that works.
At this point, all the available evidence seems to show that the digital-music business, at least the way it is currently structured, simply isn't economic. The only way for anyone to even come close to making it work is to make it part of a much larger company, like Apple or Amazon or Google. That way they can absorb the losses, they have the heft to negotiate with the record industry, and they can find synergies with their other businesses.
In other words, music as a standalone business appears to be dead, or at least on life support.