Hi all:

Sorry the posts are a bit scant today, and same yesterday. I’m still only one guy and there are a few things I have to deal with offline so I can stay online. If you see what I mean.

So yeh, I know there are more stories out there but for now, here’s a roundup.

Cheers!
Jon

_____________________

Copyright staff get more than they give to authors and artists The Australian
The body established to pay authors for the use of their copyright last year spent more on its own staff — including more than $350,000 for a chief executive — than it paid authors and artists directly. The Copyright Agency Limited was formed in 1989 to raise money from institutions using copyrighted works, such as newspaper articles, photographs and book excerpts, to reward the creators of these works. But the collection agency last year paid $9.4 million in salaries, compared with a $9.1m direct allocation for authors and artists. Among the highest paid at CAL was its chief executive Jim Alexander, who earned more than $350,000 last year, while another senior staff member earned between $250,000 and $299,000, another between $200,000 and 249,000, and five others between $150,000 and $199,000. A further 21 staff earned between $100,000 and $149,000. In addition, the agency spent more than $300,000 on travel for its top executives, including a trip for its three senior executives to an International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations conference in Barbados, and a trip for four employees and board members to the Beijing Writers Festival.

Spanish Societies Reject Concerns Over Anti-Piracy Law Billboard
Four Spanish collecting societies have dismissed a report by the district attorney’s office’s advisory body, the Fiscal Council, which gives a damning assessment of the government’s proposed anti-download legislation. The Fiscal Council’s non-binding report on Feb. 16 said the proposal to set up an administrative Intellectual Property Commission with the power to propose the closure of Web sites that offer download links to unauthorized content, “has an enormous potential to invade the sphere of fundamental rights.” In that sense, the Council shares the view of a growing number of business and Internet user groups, such as RedSOStenible.net, who argue that the proposed legislation to protect intellectual property infringes other basic rights. Even culture minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, who proposed the new legislation, commented that the Council report was “very valuable and constructive.”

French Net Filtering Plan Moves Forward IDG News Service
French lawmakers voted Tuesday to approve a draft law to filter Internet traffic, a measure the government says is intended to catch child pornographers. The bill will now go on for a second and final reading. Critics of the catch-all “Bill on direction and planning for the performance of domestic security” say that filtering won’t stop the spread of child pornography — but could allow the government to censor other materials. The bill, known as Loppsi II in French, was approved by 312 votes to 214 in a vote in the National Assembly on Tuesday. The government has a large majority in the Assembly; two of its deputies abstained, with the others all voting in favor of the bill. The Senate, where the government also has a majority, will soon give the bill a second reading. If the Senate makes no amendments to the text, that will also be its final reading, as the government has declared the bill “urgent,” a procedural move that reduces the usual cycle of four readings to two. Any disagreements between the two parliamentary chambers will be reconciled by a commission appointed by the government.

Music Journalism is the New Piracy EFF
Imagine you’re a music journalist who maintains a blog. You’ve just found a great, new, virtually-unknown artist that you want to tell the world about. How can you do so, in a way that is simple and convenient for your readers, but does not place you or your blog’s host at risk of being sued? Thanks to the increasingly aggressive copyright-enforcement tactics of the music industry, this has become a startlingly complicated question with no good answer. In the latest signal of this conundrum, at least six music blogs were deleted last week by Blogger due to copyright complaints. It’s uncertain who made the accusations that lead to the deletions, but the most likely culprit is the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a copyright-enforcement organization which had previously filed copright takedown notices against some of the targeted blogs. Although the takedowns were made in the name of stopping piracy, the deleted blogs do not appear to have been hotbeds of illegal file-sharing. Indeed, some had operated for years and acquired a serious and substantial readership. Like many music blogs and magazines, they mostly posted reviews of artists, albums and concerts.

Conference Board of Canada issues new, balanced copyright report IT Business
The Conference Board of Canada has issued a report on intellectual property that offers a balanced, non-partisan look at technology issues including digital locks and private copying. Most importantly, it isn’t plagiarized. Last May, the Conference Board retracted a trio of reports about copyright in the digital age and admitted much of the content was plagiarized. Worse still, the reports borrowed statistics and comment from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a U.S.-based lobby group for the entertainment industry. The reports claimed Canada had the most copyright infringement per capita. But the report issued last week, Intellectual Property in the 21st Century, penned by Osgoode Hall Law School professor Ruth M. Corbin, backs away from such claims and strikes a balance between the arguments put forward on all sides of the copyright debate.

77% of domain registrations stuffed with rubbish The Register
An incredible 77 per cent of internet domains – nearly 90 million internet addresses – are registered with false, incomplete, or unverifiable information. An extensive review of 1,419 representative domain names conducted by overseeing body ICANN, including direct contact with over 500 individual domain owners, produced some startling results (PDF). Example: only 23 per cent of domain registrations display the owner’s correct name and physical address. Worse, an extraordinary 29 per cent of domains are registered with patently false or suspicious information – a shady sign of online criminalty. The remaining 48 per cent of faulty registrations are in a grey area where people are either unaware or unwilling to hand over their identifying details.

“Tube Sites” Threaten Porn Studios Forbes
Online porn moguls are getting all hot and bothered — and not in a good way. Ventura Content, the copyright-holding company for adult entertainment studio Pink Visual, announced Tuesday that it had filed a $6.75 million complaint against Mansef Productions and Interhub, the owners of tube-site operator Brazzers, for copyright infringement. Pink Visual is a prominent adult entertainment studio that recently made headlines by making former late-night comedian Conan O’Brien a job offer. “Tube sites” are portals for online streaming adult video that have been at the center of controversy for years now. Just as Hollywood went to war against copyright infringement on sites like YouTube, so have the major adult studios been grappling with these highly viewed tube sites, which offer free videos and are unsurprisingly ranked among the most-visited websites in the world. In a suit filed with the U.S. District Court in New York, Ventura lists 45 pieces of infringing content on Brazzers’ “pornhub network” — including keezmovies.com, pornhub.com, extremetube.com and tube8.com — despite the Brazzers’ being served takedown notices.

Indonesia looks to block offensive Internet pages Agence France-Press
Indonesia is considering proposals to block Internet sites that are deemed to violate “public decency” and privacy, provoking a barrage of criticism from bloggers and web users. Fresh from a round of film and book bans, the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is now turning its sights on the Internet in what critics say is a throwback to general Suharto’s “New Order” dictatorship. “Our main objective is very simple. We want to minimise the negative effects of the Internet,” communication and information technology ministry spokesman Gatot Dewabrata told AFP, without explaining what effects these were. “There are myriad violations by Internet users in Indonesia. We don’t have any intention to move backward… but we don’t want people to think that the government ignores matters like pornography on the Internet.” Yudhoyono backed a controversial anti-pornography law adopted by parliament in 2008 which criminalises an array of traditions unique to Indonesia’s multicultural society, such as certain regional dances and costumes.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 3:37 pm and is filed under P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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