Internet piracy taking big toll on jobs | Reuters
A study into Internet piracy by a Paris-based consultancy published on Wednesday showed that 1.2 million jobs in the European Union could be lost over the next five years if more is not done to clamp down on illegal downloading.
The study by TERA Consultants for the International Chamber of Commerce focused on piracy in Europe’s music, film, television and software industries.
Those industries generated 860 billion euros ($1.186 trillion) and employed 14.4 million people in 2008. But in the same year, 10 billion euros and 186,000 jobs were lost to piracy, the study found.
If that trend continues — and the rapid increase in illegal downloads and advancing piracy techniques suggest it will — then up to 1.2 million jobs and 240 billion euros worth of European commerce could be wiped out by 2015.
“In the near future and even today in 2010, we observe increasing bandwidth, increasing penetration rate in terms of the Internet,” said TERA Consultant’s Patrice Geoffron, explaining that piracy was only likely to escalate.
“If we combine all those elements, obviously the impact in a few years won’t remain stable compared to what it was in 2008.”
ARTISTS SUFFER
The bulk of illegal downloading targets music, television and video sites, with consumers using “peer-to-peer” formats to download songs and video clips onto their laptops and home computers from websites without paying a fee.
In that respect it has a disproportionate impact on the creative industries, with musicians, actors and artists standing to lose the most from unfettered downloading, experts say.
Agnete Haaland, the president of the International Actors’ Federation, believes consumers need to be made more aware of the damaging economic and social impact of their illegal activity.
“We should change the word piracy,” she told reporters at the unveiling of the report on Wednesday.
“To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we’re talking about a criminal act. We’re talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do,” she said.
Haaland, whose group supported the study, said one of the best ways to reverse the situation would be stricter EU legislation to enforce existing laws against piracy.
IT | Tudomány: Százból csak öt magyar blogol – HVG.hu
Saját bevallásuk szerint a netezők fele legalább heti rendszerességgel oszt meg és tölt le főként zenét, illetve filmes tartalmakat, több mint egyharmada legalább hetente tölt fel képeket. Minden második internetező már rendszeresen vesz igénybe online banki szolgáltatásokat, és egyharmaduk a számláit is a weben keresztül fizeti ki. A megkérdezettek fele ugyanakkor soha nem intézi hivatalos (adóbevallási vagy más ügyfélkapus) ügyeit az interneten.
Ars technica
Access to the Internet is a fundamental right to nearly four out of five adults across the globe, and those in South Korea, Mexico, and China seem to have the strongest feelings on the topic. This is according to a report (PDF) by the BBC World Service, which polled 27,973 adults on their feelings about, usage of, and concerns about the Internet. Although users are somewhat divided on whether the Internet should be regulated, they are in agreement on its usefulness for learning and information discovery.
Across all 26 countries, 79 percent of Internet and non-Internet users said that they felt that Internet access should be “the fundamental right of all people.” When isolated for people who already use the Internet, that number went up to 87 percent. Almost universally (90 percent), respondents said that the Internet was a good place to learn and almost 80 percent said the Internet brought them greater freedom.
ekonyvolvaso.blog.hu
Decemberben már emlegettük,
hogy a négy nagy magyar terjesztő közül a “kicsi, de dinamikus”, a
Bookline belecsap az elektronikus-tartalom értékesítésébe is. Az
anyacégtől átvett idegennyelvű anyagok azért nem verték le forgalmukkal
a biztosítékot (az áraik már inkább).
Szerencsére nem állt meg itt az élet, a magában sem kicsi Bookline közös céget alapított az elsősorban nagykereskedelmi vonalon erős Lírával, a beszédes eKönyv Magyarország Kft néven. A
téma még nagyon friss, ezért mélyelemzésbe még nem mennék bele, de
talán végre látható közelségbe került az értelmes (értsd kurrens
tartalom, megfizethető áron, szabványos formátumban) magyar
e-könyvkiadás. A Bookline erős az internetes piacokon, a Lírának nagyon erős saját brandjei (kiadói) vannak, és a nem sajátokkal sem rossz a kapcsolata.
Elfért
nagyon ez a manőver az Alexandra és Libri uralta kicsit langyos
állóvízben, de ne felejtsük el, hogy nekik is lehet még egy-két szavuk
a dologhoz.
Maradjanak velünk, a reklám után jövünk a részletekkel.
Elfért nagyon ez a manőver az Alexandra és Libri uralta kicsit langyos állóvízben, de ne felejtsük el, hogy nekik is lehet még egy-két szavuk a dologhoz.
Maradjanak velünk, a reklám után jövünk a részletekkel.
EXCESS COPYRIGHT: Some Thoughts on the Google Book Settlement Hearing of February 18, 2010
1. Is this an appropriate use of the class action process, especially in view of the many prestigious groups, corporations and individuals who have objected to the ASA? In other words, to what extent does the class involved adequately represent affected authors and publishers, not to mention countless other stakeholders, including librarians and scholars?
2. Can a class action settlement go well beyond the original pleadings and, effectively, change the law both for the past and for the future in a way that would otherwise be impossible at this point in time if it were to be attempted in Congress and/or through a treaty?
3. Given the extraordinary complexity of the settlement documentation and the relatively short notice period, can affected authors, publishers and other stakeholders realistically come to informed conclusions?
4. Is it appropriate to use class action litigation to arguably transform the normally “exclusive rights” basis of copyright law, which requires explicit permission, into an opt-out regime, where permission will be given unless specifically refused in writing? The deadline for total “opting out” was January 28, 2010. Google argues that even those who didn’t opt out by January 28, 2010 will have plenty of opportunities to exercise control over their works down the line for many purposes – but this will still require further “opt out” or other action.
5. Would the Settlement, if approved, put the United States into contravention of international law with respect to such basic concepts as those of national treatment, mandatory exclusive rights, and the three step test? None other than the Hon. Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights raised the national treatment issue in her testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.
6. What will be the antitrust implications of the ASA, given the dominant or monopoly position that Google will have with respect to several markets that it is creating by virtue of this Settlement, i.e. access to orphan works, and, above all the sole portal to search engine access to the database of tens of millions of books (the great “Library to Last Forever”, as Sergey Brin himself calls it)?
7. What are the implications of views such as this by prominent US IP antitrust lawyer Gary Reback?
8. What are the extraterritorial implications of this agreement, which requires authors of books published in Australia, Canada (including French language books) and the UK (the “foreign publishing countries”) to have opted out by January 28, 2010 or be bound by it? It also covers books published in these countries, even for the countless authors who are not citizens or residents of these foreign publishing countries or the USA. Unlike United States works, there is no requirement for the foreign works to have been registered in the US Copyright Office. Given the practice of simultaneous or near simultaneous publication of countless English language books in the foreign publishing countries, Google will acquire an enormous number of books in their database that would not fit into the necessarily tighter definition of a US work, which requires publication and registration in the USA. Moreover, many French books published in Quebec but originating from anywhere in the world including France would be included.
9. What about the countless past agreements signed between authors and publishers that were silent or at best ambiguous about electronic rights?
10. What about the privacy rights of potential users?
Here are some Canadian-focussed questions, which Judge Chin will not likely answer but others may eventually have to face:
1. Why has the Government of Canada apparently been uninvolved and uninterested in the GBS? There has been no public consultation that I am aware of. France and Germany have become engaged at the official level. On the other hand, Canadian officials who would normally be involved in an issue such as this haven’t been.
2. Where are the several prominent Canadian trade associations and collectives that should have provided some useful specific advice and potentially some representation for Canadian authors, publishers, librarians etc. on these issues?
3. What are the implications of the Google Partner Program, which appears to allow publishers to feed into Google’s database for very extended access the books of many authors, who may have been and still may be unaware of the Program?
4. Why is this shaping up to be a battle between scholarly and other individual authors. ranging from the most obscure to J. K. Rowling herself on the one hand and big corporate publishers on the other? I note that the Canadian Publishers’ Council and the Association of Canadian Publishers (which together represent the big multinational and major Canadian publishers) are recommending approval of the Settlement at the same time that they attempting to intervene to fight “flexible fair dealing” and push back on the CCH v. LSUC decision in the Access Copyright K-12 case currently before the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal. On the other hand, many independent Canadian authors and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (“CAUT”) are opposing the GBS. Naturally, the database will be far more important for innovation and research purposes with respect to scholarly works than, for example, light romance novels (no offence to the fan fiction crowd).
5. Although vast numbers of Canadian published books by thousands of Canadian authors will be drawn into this settlement, most of the bells and whistles of the Google Books database will presumably not be available in Canada with respect to most of the database. This is because Google is necessarily putting up something of a firewall around this database since, even though there may be some extraterritorial aspects to the settlement, the Settlement not surprisingly purports not to affect activities implicating copyright rights in foreign countries outside of the USA.
6. Canadians may wish to read, if nothing else, the submissions of Google itself and the US Department of Justice (which supports the basic goals of the ASA but reiterates that it is still “a bridge too far” and should not be approved as is). Canadians will also want to read the few but important submissions from Canada. As well, there are “must read” submissions from Pam Samuelson and many notable advocacy groups on all sides, and corporate interests, including Microsoft and AT&T.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Total number of books in the world = 174m.
Total number of books held by Google partner libraries = 42m.
Total number of books subject to the amended settlement = 10m.
~5 million are in-print
~5 million are out-of-print
~1 million of the out-of-print works would turn out to be true “orphan works”
Google has scanned 12 million books so far,
2 million scanned through its Partner Program,
2 million public domain works, and foreign works that are outside the amended settlement.
Authors Guild claims a membership of over 8,500
Association of American Publishers claims to represent over 300 publishers,
30,000 authors and publishers have already struck deals to be in Google Books through Google’s Publisher Partner Program.
44,450 claim forms (both
online and hardcopy) have been received as of February 8, claims relate to
approximately 1.13 million books and 21,829 “inserts” (i.e., things
like a short story or article in an anthology).
Of the 1,107,620 books
claimed online,
619,531 are classified by Google as out-of-print
488,089 are classified as in-print.
Total number of claimants: 44,450
Total books claimed: 1,125,339
Total inserts claimed: 21,829
Percentage of books claimed (online only) that Google classifies as out of print: 56%
Percentage of books claimed on Google’s numbers: about 10%
50,000 rightsholder
responses,
87% choosing to participate in some form
13% opting out altogether.
Percentage of books claimed by publishers: 71%
Percentage of books claimed by authors: 29%
Copyrights & Campaigns:
Remember when we were told how peer-to-peer networks would be used for benevolent purposes, like making available the King James Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and The Odyssey? (See n.3.) Well, not so much. From a “census” of files available on BitTorrent conducted by Princeton University student Sauhard Sahi and Professor Ed Felten, a frequent critic of the entertainment industry and its copyright enforcement efforts:
Overall, we classified ten of the 1021 files, or approximately 1%, as likely non-infringing, This result should be interpreted with caution, as we may have missed some non-infringing files, and our sample is of files available, not files actually downloaded. Still, the result suggests strongly that copyright infringement is widespread among BitTorrent users.
Ars technica
The data appears to be “anonymous” only in the sense that it consists of IP addresses and not usernames. When deployed by an ISP, however, linking IP addresses to one’s own user accounts is trivial.
Do ISPs even have the authority to install such systems on their network? “Anonymous” or not, DPI tools might be considered wiretap devices, and a group called Privacy International promptly complained to the European Commission about the issue (during the debates over a similar DPI-based ad-serving system called Phorm, the UK government made clear it would not do much to stop such trials).
Today, the European Commission indicated that it took the Privacy International complaint seriously and would watch Virgin’s actions closely.
The BBC also went to Virgin, asked a couple of obvious questions about how CView would work, and elicited some amazing responses from an ISP spokesman.
“He admitted that potentially 40 percent of Virgin Media’s customers could have their data scrutinised and confirmed that it has no plans to inform them beforehand. He also conceded that it would not be technically difficult to link up deep packet inspection technology with the IP addresses which would identify individuals but stressed that was not the plan currently.”
Ars technica
On Thursday, Macmillan CEO John Sargent met with Amazon representatives to discuss the pricing of the publisher’s titles on the Kindle e-book reader. Negotiations didn’t go so well, with Sargent wanting to exercise absolute control over the prices of e-books sold through Amazon. According to the New York Times’ sources, Macmillan wanted Amazon to raise prices from $9.99 to $15.
Since launching the Kindle, Amazon has kept the price of best-sellers steady at $9.99, reportedly taking a loss on each title in order to make content for its e-book reader more attractive and drive hardware sales. That hasn’t gone over too well with some publishers, but the dispute with Macmillan is the first one to carry over from the boardroom into public.
In an advertisement (via Silicon Alley Insider) that ran Saturday in Publishers Lunch, Sargent gave his company’s side of the story. He says that Macmillan would make less money under a new distribution model that it will be using with other retailers (including Apple) beginning in March. Called the agency model, it has Amazon and other retailers taking a 30 percent commission on all sales, but with the publisher setting the price on each title. New releases would retail for between $12.99 and $14.99, while older titles would be as cheap as $5.99. Amazon would prefer to go with a one-price-fits-all model.
Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The first hour of the final season of ABC’s “Lost” has leaked online, and the reaction is not what industry insiders expected.
Though preview content for heavily serialized dramas such as “Lost” are typically and frantically consumed online by fans, the sixth season of the ABC hit has managed to build such an epic level of anticipation that many fans are doing the unthinkable: refusing to watch the leaks.
When the opening scene from the premiere popped up online after a fan promotion Friday, users of one popular social network site voted to “bury” the video.
“Why spoil it now?” wrote one fan with the moniker MyWhiteNoise. “I’d rather watch it in hi-def and surround sound than ruin the surprise and watch some (low-quality) video.”
To TV executives, such statements are like something from an alternative universe, the polar-bear opposite of how young, Web-savvy viewers typically respond to content. Fans usually embrace any short cut that skips the linear TV and advertiser-supported experience.
“We never had a show like ‘Lost’ before that had these kind of fans that love it so much that they don’t want to know what happens before the premiere,” said Michael Benson, co-executive vice president of marketing at ABC. “Fans feel like they own this thing, just like we do.”
On Monday, fan commitment was given an even greater test when the entire premiere episode appeared on YouTube. The video was taken from hand-held cameras discretely shooting during a fan screening on Oahu. The Hawaii event itself was a revelation — can any other TV drama rally 12,000 fans to an island in the South Pacific? Some flew in just to see the 44 minutes of video that ABC will air Tuesday night.
NOT INTERESTED
Yet when the inevitable YouTube copies appeared Sunday, many videos received only a few hundred hits as online fans registered their lack of interest in crummy bootlegs. “Are people so impatient that they would rather watch a cell phone camera version of the ‘Lost’ premiere than wait one day?” Kyool wrote on Twitter.
The lavishly shot “Lost” is the original Must-See HD drama. Yet for its final bow, ABC’s marketing effort has shown no new footage, which producers wanted to keep under wraps. Until last week, all trailers used material from previous seasons, which the ABC marketing team tried to turn into an advantage.
“We wanted to go back and retell the stories of the characters and the larger situation that they’re in,” said Marla Provencio, co-executive vice president of marketing at ABC.
Catching up viewers on the complicated drama has always been a big part of the network’s strategy with “Lost,” but never more so than this year. After a serialized drama peaks, its ratings usually fall in a downward trajectory as infrequent viewers perceive themselves to be further and further behind the story. Ratings for the season premiere of “Lost” have fallen each year since Season Two. Reversing that trend is a major challenge, and ABC has aired repeats (complete with on-screen pop-up information) and has circulated various forms of recap videos online.
Though viewers tend to tune in for a show’s last episode, the final season as a whole typically isn’t as fortunate. Industry estimates have “Lost” tracking about the same as last year, which would be a victory if the show manages to maintain its previous rating. But — as with the online reaction to the video leaks — ABC is hopeful that “Lost” will surprise.
“‘Lost’ is like ‘American Idol,’ it’s not your everyday show,” Benson said. “From the buzz we’re seeing right now, there’s an obsession with this show. So who knows?”
Readwriteweb
According to 4chan’s Twitter account and status update blog, they have been “explicitly blocked” by the Verizon wireless network.
Google shuts down music blogs without warning | Music | guardian.co.uk
In what critics are calling “musicblogocide 2010″, Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google’s Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet.
“We’d like to inform you that we’ve received another complaint regarding your blog,” begins the cheerful letter received by each of the owners of Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap and Living Ears. All of these are music-blogs – sites that write about music and post MP3s of what they are discussing. “Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service … [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding.”
TorrentFreak
Last week an Italian court ruled that ISPs should block access to The Pirate Bay. A few days later this block was enforced, but it is doubtful that the blockade will affect the piracy rate at all since other torrent sites are experiencing a massive increase in Italian visitors.
tpbThe Italian Pirate Bay case came to an end last week after a lengthy legal battle. The Court of Bergamo concluded that The Pirate Bay was engaging in criminal activity by linking to torrents that point to copyrighted material.
The judge ordered all Italian ISPs to block the site’s DNS and all current and future IP-addresses. A few days later the blockade went into effect, preventing millions of Italians from accessing The Pirate Bay.
Many Italians described the ruling as outrageous and labeled Italy as “the new China,” but, as with most technical measures taken to hinder file-sharing, the Pirate Bay blockade is relatively easy to circumvent. True Pirate Bay fans can sign up at a free VPN service to regain access or simply move on to one of the many Pirate Bay alternatives.
The latter is what hundreds of thousands of Italian Pirate Bay users are doing.
The owner of BTjunkie has informed TorrentFreak that he has seen a huge jump in traffic from Italians after the blockade was enforced. His site today received 50% more Italian visitors compared to a week ago, indicating that Italian Pirate Bay users are not planning to stop using BitTorrent.
The problem remains that the Court ruling sets a worrying precedent, and leaves the door open for many more censorship requests to be made against other popular torrent sites. A virtual cat and mouse game will be the result, with the only beneficiaries being the lawyers.
Ars technica
Google has been awarded a patent that describes a software method for selectively restricting the availability of content on the basis of access privileges and geographical location. On the surface, it may look like this patent covers techniques for censoring politically sensitive content in specific countries—a practice that Google has recently spoken out against in its ongoing feud with China. A closer look at the patent’s claims, however, shows that it has little to do with censorship and may actually relate to the company’s controversial book scanning initiative.
The last few weeks were busy. I had many media appearances partly because of the p2p study, partly because of the interest generated by these appearances.
On the recently released p2p study:
On other issues in the media:
origo
Februártól nem ad ki több új DVD-t és Blu-ray lemezt a Fórum Home Entertainment, amely többek közt az Alkonyat és A Da Vinci-kód kiadója volt. A cég partnereinek filmjei ennek ellenére valószínűleg nem válnak hozzáférhetetlenné: hamar új otthonra találhatnak.
Index – Kultúr – Nem kell a briteknek Burton csodaországa
Milliók kíváncsiak a Tim Burton által 250 millió dollárból megálmodott Alice Csodaországban 3d-s világára, de lehet, hogy több ország bojkottálja a filmet a Disney megrövidített moziforgalmazása miatt.
A Disney úgy döntött, hogy az angliai március 5-ei bemutatása után 12 héttel már meg is jelenteti dvd-n és Blu Rayen a filmet a szokásos minimális 18 hetes vetítés helyett, hogy a marekting a dvd fogyásra is hasson. A moziforgalmazók cserébe bojkottálnák a filmet, írta a dailymail [1].
A Disney komoly veszteséget könyvelhet el, ha rövid határidővel hozza kereskedelmi forgalomba az Alice Csodaországbant [2]. Több mozihálózatnak sem nyerte el a tetszését, attól tartanak, hogy a potenciális nézők inkább kivárják a három hónapot és megveszik a dvd-t, ahelyett, hogy beülnének a filmre.
Angliában az ország három legnagyobb hálózata – az Odeon, a Vue és a Cineworld – is bojkottálná a mozit. A négy legnagyobb holland moziüzemeltető cég a moziüzemeltetők szövetségén keresztül már a hét elején nyílt levélben jelezte, hogy nemcsak a Burton-film, de más Disney-darab sem kerülhet holland mozikba az adott keretek között. Az olasz mozihálózatoknak sem tetszik a Disney döntése.
07
A Disney a bojkott mellett a jegyáron is veszíthet: számítások szerint 40 millió eurós bevételtől eshet el. A mozihálózatoknak békülésként máris 97 centet ajánlottak fel, minden eladott jegy után, és ez az alku is 8 hétig tartana. Általában 65 cent jár minden eladott jegy után, a 3d-s vásznakon vetített produkciók esetében 90 cent. Két fejest is küldtek a hálózatok vezetőihez, hogy találjanak megoldást a problémára.
Berkman Center
Media Piracy in Emerging Economies – Joe Karaganis, Social Science Research Council
Great talk of Joe about the research he and his team (including me) has done in developoing countries about the role of piracy.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Baen Free Library is a digital library of the science fiction and fantasy publishing house Baen Books where (as of December 2008) 112 full books can be downloaded free in a number of formats, without copy protection. It was founded in autumn 1999 by science fiction writer Eric Flint and publisher Jim Baen to determine whether the availability of books free of charge on the Internet encourages or discourages the sale of their paper books.
The Baen Free Library represents an interesting experiment in the field of intellectual property and copyright. It appears that sales of both the books made available free and other books by the same author, even from a different publisher, increase when the electronic version is made available free of charge.
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