©opyBites: Copyright Law Blog

MPAA goes after P2P and Torrent Sites

From the MPA Press Office:

The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) on behalf of the major motion picture studios today filed seven lawsuits in federal courts across the country against highly trafficked Torrent, eDonkey and Newsgroup websites that are responsible for facilitating illegal swapping of copyrighted files between millions of users around the world. They provide a massive directory of illegal content to users and encourage people to traffic in copyrighted motion pictures, televisions shows, music, software and games. Torrentspy.com and Isohunt.com are two of the most popular sites used for finding pirated content. By taking action against these sites today, MPAA aims to build on its effort to shut down major pirate networks by thwarting their supply of illegal materials and their means of distribution.

Read more from the press release here.

Adding Mistrust

Over at the University of Chicago Law School faculty blog, Randy Picker brings up the use of DRM and watermarks as a means for sowing distrust amongst P2P sharers of pirated material. On this topic, Picker provides the following four ideas, which are further discussed in his post:

1. The Sony BMG rootkit fiasco makes clear how difficult it will be to make add-on DRM work for music CDs.
2. Even when DRM is introduced into a technology from the getgo, such as was attempted with the digital television broadcast flag, that technology may fail as people who get the content will have a shared interest with professional decryptors in removing content limitations.
3. Meaningful DRM may need to be identity-based, meaning that we can glean the identity of the content purchaser from the content itself. Again, it will be hard to inject identity into one-to-many—broadcast—approaches to content distribution, be that for digital television or high-def audio. In contrast, as we drop physical media such as music CDs and DVDs and switch over to online distribution of content—iTunes and Google Video—we can add identity-based DRM if we want to do so.
4. Identity may suffice, but we might conclude that we need to do more. We may need to give content purchasers reasons to be reluctant to deal with professional decryptors. Put differently, we may need to add mistrust to DRM schemes.

Copyright Office on Section 119 Statutory Licensing

The Copyright Office has completed its report examining certain provisions of the section 119 statutory license that allows satellite carriers to retransmit over-the-air broadcast signals. The Copyright Office also provides further background information about this report here, which in addition includes the industry responses to the initial Notice of Inquiry sent out by the Copyright Office before it wrote the report.

Copyright Office on Orphan Works

The Copyright Office has completed its study of problems related to “orphan works”—copyrighted works whose owners may be impossible to identify and locate. The report is available by following this link.

At the end of the report, it suggests the following statutory reforms to alleviate the problems posed by orphaned works:

SECTION 514: LIMITATIONS ON REMEDIES: ORPHAN WORKS

(a) Notwithstanding sections 502 through 505, where the infringer:

(1) prior to the commencement of the infringement, performed a good faith, reasonably diligent search to locate the owner of the infringed copyright and the infringer did not locate that owner, and

(2) throughout the course of the infringement, provided attribution to the author and copyright owner of the work, if possible and as appropriate under the circumstances, the remedies for the infringement shall be limited as set forth in subsection (b).

(b) LIMITATIONS ON REMEDIES

(1) MONETARY RELIEF

(A) no award for monetary damages (including actual damages, statutory damages,
costs or attorney’s fees) shall be made other than an order requiring the infringer to pay
reasonable compensation for the use of the infringed work; provided, however, that
where the infringement is performed without any purpose of direct or indirect
commercial advantage, such as through the sale of copies or phonorecords of the
infringed work, and the infringer ceases the infringement expeditiously after receiving
notice of the claim for infringement, no award of monetary relief shall be made.

(2) INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

(A) in the case where the infringer has prepared or commenced preparation of a derivative work that recasts, transforms or adapts the infringed work with a significant
amount of the infringer’s expression, any injunctive or equitable relief granted by the court shall not restrain the infringer’s continued preparation and use of the derivative work, provided that the infringer makes payment of reasonable compensation to the copyright owner for such preparation and ongoing use and provides attribution to the author and copyright owner in a manner determined by the court as reasonable under the circumstances; and

(B) in all other cases, the court may impose injunctive relief to prevent or restrain the infringement in its entirety, but the relief shall to the extent practicable account for any harm that the relief would cause the infringer due to the infringer’s reliance on this section in making the infringing use.

(c) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, limitations or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

(d) This section shall not apply to any infringement occurring after the date that is ten years from date of enactment of this Act.