If an entity is being threatened with extinction it has two options: evolve, or die. The Pirate Bay has chosen the former, shutting down its BitTorrent tracker and moving instead to a decentralized DHT system.

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is refusing to die. It’s been the largest and one of the most popular torrent trackers in the world for a few years now. But its notoriety and ability to taunt copyright owners meant trouble was never far away.

The Pirate Bay’s legal woes came to a head in February when a three-year investigation into the site arrived in court. By April, the four defendants had been found guilty and it looked as though this was the beginning of the end for TPB.

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ZillionTV has had some trouble moving from being a good idea to an actual product. This has led to some particularly critical articles around the Web concerning the company, its management, and whether ZillionTV will actually ever deliver. ZillionTV is now fighting back, but the fight hasn’t started well.

ZillionTV or ZeroTV?

ZillionTV was announced back in March to some very positive comments and feedback. I myself stated that “good backers, a man in charge who knows the business, and a couple of innovations which could drive the sector forward” meant it had a chance of succeeding, despite entering a crowded market.

However, in September a delay in launching the service was announced. It was originally thought to be due for a launch in late 2009 but that slipped to the second half of 2010, which is nigh on a year later than first expected.

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What do you do if your current policy is failing to pay dividends? Change your strategy and try something new or up the current efforts to even more extreme levels? If you’re the MPAA you do the latter. Oh, and the change the name of what you’re doing as well. Like it matters.

Piracy Peaks

The people who run the big media companies clearly have a vested interest in keeping everything the way it is, or at least was maybe a decade ago.

While piracy has always existed in some form or another, the popularizing of the Internet and the trend for file-sharing saw the “problem” get a little out of control as far as those in charge are concerned.

If It Don’t Work, Don’t Fix It?

The problem is, rather than embrace the new technology or even trying to fight piracy by offering innovative and fair alternative means of obtaining digital copies of movies, television shows, music, games, etc. they try to maintain the status quo. Even though the horse bolted a long time ago.

The latest attempt at locking the stable door is to change the terminology used from “anti-piracy” to “content protection” and to push even harder against illegal file-sharing. Because that will clearly work.

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As a trial begins in Italy against Google employees over an offensive user-uploaded video, the question of who is responsible for user-generated content has to be asked. Is it the user or is it the Web site that has to morally and legally take the blame for what is uploaded?

Online Video Wild West

In 2006, before Google had bought YouTube, Google Video was its entry into the online video market. Looking back now, both Google Video and YouTube were pretty lawless back then, with few of the checks and balances on content being uploaded to the sites.

This lawlessness lead to Viacom suing YouTube for $1 billion over the copyrighted clips it claims were allowed on the site. But it also lead to another lawsuit, smaller, and less publicized, but still important.

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Hollywood has just enjoyed a record breaking Summer at the U.S. box office. This despite the studios and filmmakers constantly warning us that online piracy is the devil’s own work and that if movies continue to be shared illegally we’re all doomed. Which is clearly a myth.

Hollywood Hype

Following in the fine tradition set by the music industry a decade ago, Hollywood is set on going after online piracy and the illegal sharing of copyrighted movies. Fair enough, I suppose, as an industry it’s the logical thing to do to try and keep a vice like grip on how we all consume movies.

However, logic will only get you so far. And I’m afraid Hollywood is missing the bigger picture that’s been proved time and again in the last few years: that movie piracy isn’t harming the film industry in the way it would have us believe.

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CBS is the only one of the four major U.S. television networks which doesn’t offer any content through Hulu. And doesn’t look like changing anytime soon.

The reason? Because a free Hulu is evil and is killing network television. Apparently.

Traditional TV Vs. Web TV

And there I was thinking that the TV industry was finally getting it. Thinking that it was managing to embrace the idea that there are alternative ways of consuming content than the traditional ones using the old-fashioned business models. But it would seem not.

There has been much talk recently from the people in charge of the companies which own Hulu, especially News Corps. chairman Rupert Murdoch, over the possibility of turning Hulu into a cash cow by either going all-out for a subscription-based model or at least running a paid option parallel to the free one.

And now CBS has got involved in the argument.

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Although the case isn’t technically over yet, the fact that the judge in Universal Music Group’s copyright case against Veoh has stated the video site qualifies for protection from DMCA’s safe harbor provision leaves little to litigate over. So what effect does this decision have on Viacom’s case against YouTube on similar charges?

DMCA Safe Harbor Provision

All online video sharing sites, and sites which accept other forms of media, which allow users to upload content, run the risk of copyrighted material making its way onto their servers. Whether that in effect means the site itself is infringing on copyright law is open to interpretation.

The safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, otherwise known as the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) is designed to end this debate by exempting Web sites and hosts as long as they follow certain rules.

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