The owner of Surfthechannel, a website which linked to content on the likes of Megavideo and Tudou, has been sentenced to four years in jail for a “conspiracy to defraud.” FACT is celebrating, but most other people are questioning the sense in such a verdict.

Surfthechannel Background

Surfthechannel was once a site linking out to other sites on the Web hosting video content. Some of this content was legit, some was not, but Surfthechannel only ever linked to the places where it was being hosted. Which many felt would protect it from any legal troubles.

Not so. Several years ago the police raided the owner’s house accompanied by anti-piracy group FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). While the police dropped the case, FACT did not, embarking on a private prosecution for “conspiracy to defraud.”

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There has long been a question mark over whether linking to or embedding copyright-infringing videos is as illegal as actually hosting the videos on your own servers. The appeals court judge in the case of Flava Works vs. myVidster has given his views on the subject.

MyVidster Embeds

Video bookmarking site myVidster was sued by gay porn production company Flava Works in 2010 over the latter’s videos being shared on the former’s platform. The videos in question were of course infringing on Flava Works’ copyrights, but they were merely embedded on myVidster while being hosted elsewhere.

Flava Works won a preliminary injunction against myVidster last year, but the case made it to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals where Judge Richard Posner overturned that earlier decision on the grounds that what myVidster was doing couldn’t be classes as copyright infringement.

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The Pirate Bay has effectively been banned in the UK after the High Court issued a court order demanding ISPs block their customers from accessing the site. Not that doing so will make a scrap of difference, naturally.

Block The Pirate Bay!

The British High Court has ruled that six major ISPs – BT, Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, O2, and Everything Everywhere – must start blocking their customers from having access to The Pirate Bay. Five are bowing to pressure, while BT has requested extra time to consider its position.

This is hardly the first legal woes that The Pirate Bay has faced. Similar court orders have been handed down in Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Finland previously, while a major police investigation into the site led to some of the people behind the site being found guilty of breaking copyright laws.

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water assume Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement was dead and buried, an appeals court brings it back to life once again. When will this madness end?!

Background

The background to this long and winding case in a nutshell: YouTube was born, thousands of clips were uploaded to the site, many of them infringing on copyrights. Google acquired YouTube, Viacom pulled its content, and then sued the search giant for $1 billion on 63,000 alleged copyright infringements. Let the fun and games begin.

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Wait, what? There’s a music label executive who thinks the Internet is a force for good? Wonders will never cease. Unfortunately his viewpoint will not enable German music fans to watch music videos on YouTube anytime soon.

GEMA

In Germany GEMA handles the rights of copyright owners. Unfortunately its monopoly position means it has pushed for higher rates per performance. With music videos on YouTube the group asked Google to pay 16 cents per stream, and music videos have consequently not been available in Germany since March 2009.

From what I gather this is a lot higher than the rate set by other performance rights organizations around the world. Many of which Google is happy to work with to ensure music videos are playable and that everyone gets paid fairly.

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Hollywood will, and has been for many years now, tell us all that piracy is the big, bad wolf that is threatening to burn Hollywood down. This is not actually the case. There is a much simpler explanation for dwindling box office takings.

Piracy Isn’t Killing Hollywood

Piracy isn’t killing Hollywood. In fact, it’s having no discernible effect on U.S. box office receipts. It is harming international box office receipts, but for one very good reason: the delay between movies being released in the U.S. and being released elsewhere around the world.

This is according to a paper from researchers at the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College titled, ‘Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales.’

The research finds that there is no evidence that piracy is affecting box office takings in the U.S. Internationally there is evidence of such, but it’s directly proportional to how long a delay between the U.S. release and the international release. In other words, release a film in every country simultaneously and minimize the problem at a stroke.

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MegaUpload is no more, at least in its former capacity. We can now look forward to a long and expensive legal battle, and no difference whatsoever being made to how content is shared over the Internet.

MegaUpload Goes Down

One of the biggest websites in the world, and the most-trafficked cyberlocker services on the Web, MegaUpload, has been taken offline. Furthermore, several of the company’s key employees, including founder Kim Dotcom, have been arrested and charged.

The takedown and arrests were the culmination of a two-year investigation into the site and its alleged breaching of copyright infringement laws. 20 search warrants were executed in at least seven countries.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that those involved with the company made millions of dollars by turning a blind eye to the file-sharing of copyrighted content that was happening on MegaUpload’s servers. This despite MegaUpload complying with DMCA notices from media companies.

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