Hitting US theaters this week, the latest Bond movie ‘Quantum of Solace’ has already been released in the UK. However, despite searching the bags of paying customers, monitoring movie audiences with Bond-style night vision goggles and proffering misinformation, the industry has failed to stop the movie leaking to the Internet.

There’s no doubt about it, Bond movies are very big business indeed and MGM will be hoping James’ latest outing in ‘Quantum of Solace‘ will prove no different. However, movies of this importance are usually released in the US first and, on the whole, they enjoy the first couple of days at the box office without pirate copies being widely available. Inevitably, and within a short period, copies do appear on the Internet - certainly by the time the movie migrates to other territories. However, Quantum of Solace was released in the UK first, so additional effort has been made to stop the movie appearing online in advance of the US theatrical release.

Last week, the extent of the measures became clear, when reporter Kathryn Carr spoke with Alan Coward, a team leader at Vue Cinemas in the UK. “We have staff going in for the first 20 minutes with the goggles, and the last 15 minutes. They also make regular checks in between,” said Alan, adding, “We have also been searching people’s bags on the way in.”

Spying on theater audiences is not an unusual event - US theater-goers have been subject to this treatment for a while now, but such actions are comparatively rare in the UK. Not that the UK is completely innocent when it comes to being a source for camcorded movies. It has been in the past, with movies such as X-Men: The Last Stand, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pirates of the Carribbean 2 and V for Vendetta, all rumored to have first hit the ‘net from a UK cammer. But despite this handful of high-profile leaks, UK theaters are not a hotbed of camcorder piracy.

The fact that the UK is not a major source of camcorded movies is probably down to most movies being released elsewhere first. ‘Cammers’ like to get the movie quickly, and that usually means recording it from a US or Canadian source, so a UK release is usually unattractive since it comes too late.

However, there are other attractions for those looking to cam a movie in Britain. “If someone is found to be recording the film they would be banned from the cinema for life, and they would probably be arrested,” said Alan Coward. One can’t argue with the ban, but Mr Coward’s assessment of an arrest is fanciful. While criminal law in the UK makes it illegal to offer for sale (or rent) an infringing copy of a copyrighted movie, unlike the United States, Canada and Japan (and much to the disappointment of the MPAA), simply ‘camming’ a movie on its own is not a criminal offense in Britain.

In September 2007, Dan Glickman of the MPAA visited the UK to have meetings with senior people from the UK government and representatives of the UK Film Council. His mission was to persuade the government to introduce legislation to change ‘camming’ from a civil infringement, to a serious criminal offense. So far, that legislation has not appeared. Since theater staff cannot detain a suspected ‘cammer’ by force because the law simply does not allow it, they instead attempt to disrupt the recording by ‘peaceful means’ and notify FACT for further instruction.

However, all the lobbying, bag searches and James Bond-style night vision goggles in the world don’t seem to make any difference to the availability of pirate material. Quantum of Solace is already available on the Internet in Telesync format (video recorded via a good camcorder, with audio added from a ‘direct’ source, such as a T-Loop). It has been available for a few days in French and maybe even another couple of languages but it is now fully available in English, with what many will consider to be a half-decent picture quality.

I’d end this post with a Bond catchphrase, but for Quantum they banned them all. Shame.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Last week TorrentFreak reported that South Africa’s answer to the RIAA had taken down the country’s largest torrent site and an affiliated Usenet NZB site. According to the lawyer representing the sites for free, the recording industry had no standing to make a complaint. Furthermore, the actions of the sites’ host were unconstitutional. Both sites, BitFarm and NewsHost, are coming back online.

Following legal threats from the Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA), last week we reported that the country’s biggest torrent site, BitFarm, and its sister site NewsHost (which deals with UseNet NZBs), were both closed. In many similar cases around the world, the threats would’ve been enough to permanently close the sites, but fortunately lawyer Reinhardt Buys, an expert in IP law, noticed their predicament and stepped up to represent them for free.

In order to get the sites closed, RiSA sent copyright complaint letters to ISPA (the South African ISP association) demanding that BitFarm and Newshost should “be taken down with all access to the domain name blocked”, claiming the sites breach Section 27 (1) (b) of the Copyright Act 98/1978. However, according to the site’s lawyer there are several problems, not least that the sites do not host any infringing content.

In fresh correspondence with ISPA, Reinhardt Buys refutes the allegations made against BitFarm and NewsHost. He states that not only did RiSA fail to comply with the Electronic Communications and Transaction Act 25 of 2002 due to the manner in which it presented the takedown requests, but ISPA acted unconstitutionally in dealing with the takedown requests from RiSA. The relevant section from the South African Constitution is highlighted below:

Everyone has the right to have any dispute that can be resolved by the application of law decided in a fair public hearing before a court or, where appropriate, another independent and impartial tribunal or forum.

According to the correspondence, Buys states that it is uncertain if ISPA even considers the legality of takedown requests before initiating the disconnection of a site, and notes that their current takedown procedures seem to be “directed only at the protection of ISPs from possible liability for third party content, regardless of the evident harm done to online free expression, fairness and equality”.

Interestingly, Buys points to a 2004 submission by ISPA itself, on the ‘Proposed Guidelines for Recognition of Industry Representative Bodies’.

ISPA believe that is it critically important for freedom of speech that a service provider be given an option to take stance on content that is of unclear legal status. Clearly, a service provider should not host content that a court of law or some other authority has ruled to be illegal. But in a case where the legal status of content is unclear (perhaps, for example, if an unproven accusation of hate speech had been made against a particular web page), an ISP should not automatically be required to remove the content. Such a requirement would have a chilling effect on free speech.

However, all of this might be considered moot, since it appears that the complainant, RiSA, had no locus standi or ‘legal standing’ to request the takedown of the sites:

In terms of section 24 of the Copyright Act 98 of 1978, only the copyright owner may institute proceedings related to copyright infringement. The Complainant is not a copyright owner and merely a unit within an organisation that claims to represent the South African recording industry

To this end, Buys has advised the administrator of BitFarm and NewsHost to re-enable both sites and to re-engage in their previous activities, while considering claiming for losses, damages and legal costs from both ISPA and RiSA via civil litigation. In the face of further harassment or intimidation from RiSA, the sites may seek a protective interdict from the courts. Buys has also called on ISPA to implement takedown procedures “which are free of constitutional concerns”.

The full legal response can be found here (pdf).

Post from: TorrentFreak

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Traitor” tops the chart this week followed by WALL-E and Step Brothers.

We do not link to actual torrent files because linking to files that link to files that may be copyrighted is something that might get us in trouble.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

Post from: TorrentFreak

In 2006, isoHunt was one of the first BitTorrent sites to get caught up in a legal battle with the MPAA. In a guest post for TorrentFreak, Fung gives his view on this copyfight, the right and wrong of the current copyright system, and how it’s abused by lobbyists for the wrong reasons.

Guest post by Gary Fung, founder of isoHunt.com.

Since I’ve been sued by both the MPAA (Hollywood) and the CRIA (Canadian recording industry), I’ve talked about what’s been happening with our cases. Our CRIA case has also recently received mainstream press attention by the Canadian Press and Globe & Mail. But the question is why? Why do they insist on suing their own customers? Why do they sue search engines like us, who make the Internet more useful for everyone?

The problem lies in something fundamentally broken with the copyright system. A choice quote from Cory Doctorow’s article on the “copyfight”:

So the natural inclination of anyone who is struck by a piece of creative work is to share it. And since “sharing” on the Internet is the same as “copying,” this puts you square in copyright’s crosshairs. Everyone copies. Dan Glickman, the ex-Congressman who now heads up the Motion Picture Association of America (as pure a copyright maximalist as you could hope to meet) admitted to copying Kirby Dick’s documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated (a scorching critique of the MPAA’s rating system) but excused it because the copy was “in [his] vault.” To pretend that you do not copy is to adopt the twisted hypocrisy of the Victorians who swore that they never, ever masturbated. Everyone knows that they themselves are lying, and a large number of us know that everyone else is lying too.

When the head of the MPAA has to admit to copying the film that criticizes the very industry he represents, an industry group of lobbyists and litigators against such copying, it highlights an important fact beyond the obvious hypocrisy. The Internet has completely changed the economics of sharing. When sharing equals copying on the Internet and the direct cost of that sharing is effectively $0 (it doesn’t cost you anything to share videos on Youtube or BitTorrent), it makes copyright infringement so easy that even Dan Glickman can do it. So easy that a mom like Stephanie Lenz can do it when she posted a video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince’s music. And I mean no disrespect to them.

This is an age of rampant sharing and remixing, and if you can make the connection between sharing and culture as Doctorow has, you will see this war between rightsholders and consumers will never end and the rightsholders will never win. The band Girl Talk, Lessig , James Boyle, Terry McBride of Nettwerk and isoHunt all echo a common point: Remixing and sharing is good for culture, suing consumers and technologists that enables sharing is destructive for everyone.

The Internet is a more efficient information machine than the printing press or VCR ever was, and also a whole different animal. It’s time for the content industries to learn to put it to better use as well, by discarding past notions of how business is done based on an economy of scarcity. In Star Trek, currency becomes irrelevant with virtually unlimited “copying” of physical objects with the Replicator. The Internet is the Replicator of information. When a 13-month-old dances to Prince’s music, copyright infringement is nowhere near his consciousness. It’s an endorsement that he likes it, pure and simple.

I’ve said a number of times that I’m not against copyright, but copyright needs significant reform in the Internet age. If all this rampant copying on BitTorrent and the Internet has not made a dent in Hollywood’s record earnings, why can’t we all just get along without rabid lawsuits? Why can’t they see that sharing and remixing is a human urge for culture, and when we share and remix art, it’s not a liability but an endorsement for the artist or author or producer?

When the majority of society has no ethical conviction of wrongdoing when they violate copyright law, it’s not society that’s wrong, it’s the law. Because no one can really own ideas. Newton once said, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” It’s how the arts and sciences work. We share, we inspire and we remix. For more on Copyfight and where the word came from, go here.

Post from: TorrentFreak