The advertisement, which you can watch in the video below, was replaced shortly after the allegation arose with a different video, which ended up being the ad shown on television and elsewhere. Eight Mile Style contacted the ad agency Wieden+Kennedy that made the advertisement in April, and received a response back via an attorney working with the company on April 29, according to the Detroit Free Press. In the response, the publisher was reportedly told it couldn’t “assert copyright” because Eminem’s song had been copied from Michael Jackson’s “Give In To Me,” released back in 1991.

Wieden+Kennedy is no stranger to using Eminem’s music in advertisements, having done so (with permission) in 2011 during a Chrysler commercial. Rather than denying the accusations that it ripped its beat from the rapper’s song, the company instead says that copyright infringement can’t be claimed because the song that was infringed was itself an infringement of another song.

Eight Mile Style’s Joel Martin said in response to the attorney’s statement: “I find it so arrogant, after they did so well with the Chrysler-Eminem campaign, that they would say Dr. Dre stole this from Michael Jackson.” That’s not the only claim the attorney made, however, saying that steps have been taken to make “Airplane” no longer available to the public, which is strange considering that it is still available on the social network’s YouTube account (we have it attached above, after all).

The advertisement agency is also claiming that the Facebook Home advertisement’s soundtrack “simply is not substantially similar” to the song cited in the lawsuit. Facebook isn’t the first company to offer an advertisement that used the artist’s music without permission: Audi and Apple have both done the same. Thus far, Facebook hasn’t made a statement regarding the allegations.

SOURCE: Detroit Free Press

The ongoing national debate over gun violence and gun control has made a lot of companies rethink the relationships they have with gun makers, including video game developers and publishers. Electronic Arts is one publisher who will be distancing themselves from relationships with gun makers, but will still continue to use real gun names in future games.

EA president of labels Frank Gibeau says that video game developers share the same rights of free speech as authors do, noting that novel writers don’t pay gun makers to use real gun names in their books. Video games are the same way, saying that Electronic Arts is “telling a story” through a point of view.

Video games have been at the forefront of the gun control debate for a while now, and it seems that video game publishers are finally buckling under the pressure and severing ties with gun manufacturers. However, none of that looks to change the ways that violent video games are made, and we’re guessing that war games like Call of Duty and Battlefield will continue on as normal.

[via Reuters]

If you’ve never seen Nyan Cat, prepare to have the 3-minute video stuck in your head for the next ten or so hours. As the lawsuit specifies, the video features a cat-faced character with “a body resembling a horizontal breakfast bar with pink frosting sprinkled with light red dots” (aka, a cat stuck in a Poptart) soaring through the air beyond a tail of rainbows colors. Without further ado, check it out in the video below.

Keyboard Cat, meanwhile, is cute in direct proportion to Nyan Cat’s annoyance factor, featuring a cat wearing a tiny suit jacket in front of a keyboard, jamming away at the keys with a half-asleep look on his face that says, “Charlie Schmidt has made me do this a million times.” You can check it out in its full 55-seconds of 480p awesomeness in the video below.

If you liked those two videos, you’re not the only one – Warner Bros. published a a video game called Scribblenauts that features them, which was developed by 5th Cell. Perhaps unbeknownst to the developer, both videos have been trademarked by their respective video creators. Adding insult to injury, the two characters were used to market the game, a transgression for which Warner Bros. has not yet made a comment. The case is being handled in California.

[via ars technica]

The pirates began testing out the Copyright Alert System shortly after it launched in late February. They proceeded to download many popular files illegally using Bittorrent and The Pirate Bay. They downloaded popular movies, TV shows, music albums, and even uploaded each file back into The Pirate Bay. These pirates made no attempts to mask their IPs and were intending to get caught.

But after quite a while, not a single warning was issued. Granted, these pirates were all using Verizon as their ISP, so we don’t really know just how efficient AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, or Cablevision’s system is. The pirates intentionally went after torrents that have been proven to trigger CAS alerts in countries like France and New Zealand, but apparently in the United States, they aren’t so heavily tracked.

The study lasted 3 weeks long, with the pirates downloading popular files and seeding them every day. But no warning was ever issued. A Verizon executive defended the company’s position, saying that despite the study performed by these pirates, they have been issuing copyright warnings frequently. While we know that Verizon’s Copyright Alert System needs a bit more tuning, we still don’t know yet how efficient the other ISPs are.

[via Daily Dot]

After a period of play – particularly if the pirate gamer is doing well, their in-game studio creating highly-rated titles – a message from one of the virtual dev team pops up warning them that piracy has become a problem:

“Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt”

After that point, it’s pretty much game-over for the player’s studio, with their bank account shrinking and bankruptcy the only result. Unsurprisingly, the clueless pirates weren’t too keen on a game that seemingly had no outcome but failure, missing the irony of their own behaviors in the process.

“Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me! I had like 5m and then people suddenly started pirating everything I made, even if I got really good ratings (that I usually get). Not fair” Anonymous complaint

After a single day out in the wild, over 90-percent of those playing Game Dev Tycoon were using the cracked version, Greenheart Games discovered, thanks to some phone-home anonymous usage code built into both versions. Unfortunately, attempts to actually encourage those who might be tempted to pirate the game to instead pay for a legitimate copy have floundered, the developers say.

Whereas Greenheart Games says it will still continue with non-DRM on its titles, that isn’t the approach some teams have decided to take. Notably, Microsoft is believed to be adding a mandatory internet connection requirement to its next-gen “Xbox 720” which would require titles be installed to the console’s hard-drive, and then connect to a server to be validated before play can take place.

Greenheart’s site is currently up and down, probably due to interest in this little life-lesson, but you can find the Google cache here.

While the situation doesn’t quite seem to add up, it’s said that the books were uploaded by third-parties rather than by Apple themselves, and it’s unclear exactly who uploaded them in the first place, but in any case, the court ruled that Apple had a duty to make sure that the uploads didn’t breach copyright, whether or not they were the ones who uploaded the content.

Of course, this is nothing but pocket change to Apple, so it doesn’t affect them financially by any means, but it further develops bad PR for the company in China, where they’ve already been in hot water recently — most notably for the iPhone warranty debacle, but Apple ended up apologizing and is working to improve customer satisfaction in that area.

One of the writers involved in the lawsuit was Mai Jia, whose books are often on multiple best-seller lists across China. The judge took the time during the court case to also warn other tech companies running an online store that they should learn from this lawsuit and be make sure that their uploading processes won’t create similar disputes.

[via ZDNet]

We knew the six-strikes system was coming for quite some time, with it suffering a delay before its targeted roll-out date last year, finally going into effect on February 25 of this year. The system is being utilized by the big-name ISPs – Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Cablevision – to curbstomp piracy via education using a variety of punitive methods often decried as draconian in nature.

While leaked memos and such had revealed ahead of time the various punishments subscribers would face under the six-strikes system, they were officially revealed a couple days after the system went live. You can read a detailed write-up of each ISP’s six-strike system here, but the basic idea is that when a copyright alert is triggered, the subscriber will face throttled speeds, an educational session, limited website access, or other similar effects.

Now, a little over a month after the system went into effect, a Verizon subscriber is facing legal action from Malibu Media, producer of adult entertainment, over alleged sharing of copyrighted materials. Malibu Media has subpoenaed Verizon for copies of the six-strike notices the subscriber received under the new system, as well as information on how much bandwidth he used and a list of viewed pay-per-view films he watched.

The twist in the case is that Verizon said “No.” It says that in addition to Malibu having harassed it in the past, the ISP wishes to protect its subscribers from “shakedown tactics against Doe defendants.” The studio has pushed back and is trying to force Verizon’s hand, but that issue aside, there’s a larger one at play: will the six-strikes system, which was designed and intended to serve merely as an educational tool on the realities of copyright and infringement, be used as a weapon against the browsing public?

[via Torrent Freak]

Essentially, the Copyright Alert System is just the latest implementation in a line of anti-piracy initiatives, and it works in the same fashion as past systems have worked. Movie studios and music labels will join public P2P networks to see if their content is being pirated, and if it is, they’ll contact the ISP. From there the ISP will contact the offender and issue a strike.

These strikes will come in three different steps or phases. Your first two strikes will be all about education, where the ISP will point you to information on how you can obtain content legally. The next level is acknowledgement, where ISPs will force users to complete something, such as watching an anti-piracy video, and the last phase is throttling your internet connection, since the ISP can’t legally cut you off.

However, it doesn’t seem like a huge deal at this point yet. From the looks of it, it seems that users will have to be caught four times before they’re actually legitimately punished. Of course, no one can really say how well this new system will work, but if it’s like any other system that ISPs have tried in the past, it probably won’t make a huge splash at this point.

Image via Flickr

Specifically, the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy organization BREIN and the RIAA, which both represent a handful of media companies, wants to increase the daily DMCA cap to 40,000, but wants to eventually remove the cap altogether at some point. Google has seen a huge spike in takedown requests recently, and it’s large enough amount that Google is worried that it violates freedom of speech, but copyright holders say they are just looking out for their businesses.

However, it doesn’t look like Google will budge on its set daily limit. The company says it can’t increase the limit because it may cause technical problems due to unexpected peaks in server performance. However, the RIAA isn’t having none of that, and has said that Google has the resources to increase the limit. They also say that Google’s number of allowed requests per day is “minuscule.”

Copyright holders are afraid that if Google doesn’t lift the limit of daily takedown requests, they fear that they will be unable to keep up with the numerous links (in the hundreds of thousands) that are added to Google search results every day. However, Google notes that BREIN is currently only sending under 5,000 takedown requests per day, far below the current 10,000 request limit. Then again, this certainly won’t be the last that we hear from the RIAA and BREIN, so get out the popcorn and stay tuned.

[via TorrentFreak]

It would seem the problem lies with sites that index the content on Mega, with one site in particular – Mega-search.me – getting some attention today. Users can submit submit links for their Mega files to Mega-search.me, allowing others to access them. Apparently, these copyright holders are finding their content through indexes like Mega-search.me and then issuing takedown requests.

That all appears to add up, but now we run into another problem, as content that’s completely legal is also being taken down. Many of the links on Mega-search.me have gone dead in just a matter of hours, with users seeing their legal content disappearing after receiving a DMCA takedown request. This isn’t very easy to explain, but TorrentFreak suggests that someone out there is filing fake DMCA requests and Mega is complying with most of the copyright warnings.

Another possibility is that Mega itself is targeting these indexes as a way to prevent users from finding and sharing copyrighted content uploaded to the site. Whatever is happening, it’s got some Mega users understandably upset, and the rest of us scratching our heads. We’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for more information, so keep it here at SlashGear for additional details.

As opposed to the first two quarters of 2012, the number of information requests has gone up to 1,009 from 849, while the number of government removal requests have jumped 600% from the first half of the year — granted it jumped to 42 from a lowly 6. As for copyright takedown notices, Twitter actually saw a 3% decrease in that area.

In total, Twitter withheld 10,832 tweets in 2012, and various requests affected 13,079 users. However, Twitter doesn’t comply with every request. Out of the several thousands of copyright takedown requests, Twitterthe company removed around 45.3% of them. So, while the company gets many takedown requests, they don’t exactly take care of all of them.

In the blog post that Twitter posted up today, the company says that it has been “thinking about ways in which we can more effectively share this information, with an aim to make it more meaningful and accessible to the community at large.” They reiterated that it’s important to be transparent to its users about various notices.

The takedown requests concern a mixture of both infringing and legitimate links, with the proportion of legitimate links being exceedingly high. Several movie studios are swept up in the takedown requests, including Lionsgate, BBC Films, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Summit Entertainment, and Disney Pictures. Fortunately for them, Google has not censored most of the links.

Some examples include a takedown notice on behalf of Lionsgate, that, if it were followed through, would end with copies of Cabin in the Woods available via Blockbuster, iTunes, Comcast, and Amazon all being censored. This same sort of issue strikes the other studios, with other legitimate links including the Family Guy Wikipedia page, movie reviews on sites like The Independent and the Daily Mail, news pieces published on various websites, including CNET and Forbes, as well as links related to films other than the ones specified in the takedown notices.

There is speculation, however, that the takedown notices are not valid. The website YesItIs.org, which issued the takedown notices on behalf of the movie studios, now leads to a Go Daddy landing page. There’s no official word yet on whether the takedown notices were authorized, but if they weren’t, this is an excellent example of how the system can be abused by those with ill intent.

[via Torrent Freak]

The Center for Copyright Information is a collective of five major Internet service providers, including Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. Alongside the MPAA and RIAA, the service providers formed an agreement wherein copyright-infringing subscribers will receive some sort of alert, depending on which provider they use. Upon receiving a certain number of alerts, the subscriber will then receive a punishment, which also varies based on which provider the individual uses.

Each service provider has its own system. We first got a peek into what Internet users have in store thanks to a leaked AT&T memo, which detailed a large portion of the anti-piracy system the company will use, which includes several warnings when infringement is detected, followed by an “online education tutorial on copyright.” Verizon users will be given two warnings before being forced to sign an acknowledgement of infringement, followed by severely throttled Internet speeds for a couple of days. Time Warner subscribers will be directed to a landing page rather than having their speeds reduced.

The system was slated for launch today, November 28. However, the Center for Copyright Information has announced that the launch date has been bumped due to Hurricane Sandy, and won’t be implemented until early next year. “Due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy which have seriously affected our final testing schedules, CCI anticipates that the participating ISPs will begin sending alerts under the Copyright Alert System in the early part of 2013, rather than by the end of the year.”

As the story goes, the little girl’s father received a letter from CIAPC stating that his Internet account had been linked to illegal file sharing and demanding a payment of €600 to stop legal action. The man refused to pay the money and some days later a knock on the door saw police with a search warrant rifling through his home.

As it turns out the man’s nine-year-old daughter had previously downloaded music from an artist called Chisu via The Pirate Bay. The girl’s father said that the downloads didn’t work so they went and purchased music the next day. The man also says that the police hinted that he should just pay the fine and get on with his life.

The father argues that you can’t expect young children to understand what they’re doing online. Anyone with children knows they don’t make the best decisions frequently. The man says he felt like the “people from the Mafia were demanding money.” Surprisingly, Chisu, the artist whose music the little girl was accused of pirating says that she doesn’t want to sue anyone and no one needs this sort of media attention. However, the artists appear powerless to stop any legal action taken in their name. The case is ongoing at this time.

The girl’s father said, “We have not done anything wrong with my daughter. If adults do not always know how to use a computer and the web, how can you assume that children or the elderly – or a 9-year-old girl – knows what they are doing at any given time online?”

[via TorrentFreak]

Tolkien’s estate filed a suit against Warner Brothers in Los Angeles District Court earlier this week seeking $80 million in damages. The Tolkien estate is joined in the suit by book publisher HarperCollins in alleging that Warner Bros., New Line, and the rights holder to the movies Saul Zaentz Co have infringed on copyrights owned by the estate and breached contract.

The source of the ire against Warner Bros. comes from the fact that the rights agreement Warner has enables them to create only tangible merchandise based on the books. However, Warner Bros. has apparently launched some sort of online slot machine and other digital offerings that the state finds offensive. The estate says that its attorney learned of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Online Slot Game via a spam e-mail sent to its attorney in 2010.

The estate says that after an investigation into that machine it learned that Warner Bros. is planning traditional slot machines with characters from the books and other products outside the limited original rights deal. The estate and the book publisher are seeking an injunction against infringing games and $80 million in damages. It appears that downloadable video games for mobile devices and Facebook are also being targeted by the Tolkien estate.

[via Hollywood Reporter]

The reason for requesting to see the search warrants was to determine the grounds authorities used to seize the data. The judge overseeing the case granted the request and the search warrants have now been unsealed for all to see. What Goodwin and his legal team found was very disturbing.

The search warrants reportedly make no mention of legitimate users on the Megaupload site. The warrant reportedly describes Megaupload as nothing more than a place where copyright infringing files are stored. None of the records released by the judge mentioned legitimate users of the site.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says that nearly half of all the files stored on the website were never downloaded. That would seem to mean that 50% of the data seized by the government was simply put there for storage by legitimate users. The court documents also accuse Megaupload of not removing files that were deemed infringing, that Megaupload was informed of in 2010. Court documents show that 36 of the 39 infringing files were left on the servers. Dotcom says that the files were left alone because they were never asked to remove them and they didn’t want to interfere with evidence in a criminal case.

[via Torrentfreak]

Thanks to this deal, viewers can now shell out cash to buy on-demand access to any of the 300 Sony titles. Options include Dracula, Groundhogs Day, The Fisher King, and Sense and Sensibility. If those sound kind of…aged, there will also be some modern offerings, including Men in Black 3, 21 Jump Street, and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Said Huilong Zhu, Tudou’s Vice President of Movie Operations: “We’re delighted to be working with Sony Pictures Television to enrich our film library. Since launching Youku Premium in 2010, Youku Tudou has been committed to building the best platform for viewers and copyright holders alike, and our strong working relationships with all eight major Hollywood studios allow us to offer our viewers a wealth of licensed content.” He went on to explain that unanticipated subscriber numbers lead them to believe that viewers are willing to pay for quality content.

Youku’s first paid content was a live broadcast of Guo Degang’s comedy show in 2009. Soon after, the company launched Youku Premium in 2010, which provides high-resolution and ad-free programming via both on-demand and subscription-based models. Presently, Youku Tudou enjoys two million paying users, and is “China’s first premium video platform.”

According to Twitter’s official DMCA policy, the company reserves the right to restrict access to a contentious tweet before a final decision on whether copyright infringement has actually taken place:

“Twitter’s response to notices of alleged copyright infringement may include the removal or restriction of access to allegedly infringing material. If we remove or restrict access to user content in response to a notice of alleged infringement, Twitter will make a good faith effort to contact the affected account holder with information concerning the removal or restriction of access, including a copy of the takedown notice, along with instructions for filing a counter-notification” Twitter

While in the past, however, such tweets were deleted, they now read “This Twitter from @Username has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder,” together with a link to the appropriate policy. A similar message can be shown for media subject to a copyright take-down report.

A Twitter spokesperson claims that the blocking system is preferable to the old approach, which saw the company manually recreating tweets that had been deleted but then deemed not to infringe:

“[W]hen we get a valid DMCA request, we withhold the tweet until such time as we get (if we ever do) a valid counter-response from the user. In this case, if someone with the permalink tries to navigate to the tweet, they’ll see that it is being withheld for copyright reasons. We also send the requests to Chilling Effects for publication. Our prior policy was to delete the Tweet without any language explaining the takedown, then manually repost the Tweet if/when we got a valid counter response” Twitter spokesperson

The increased transparency of the process is being welcomed by many, but the extra visibility of how Twitter reacts to copyright claims is also prompting some confusion from users.

[via GigaOm]

The notices from CAS will be just that: a notice, and it will be up to internet service providers to take further action on offenders. This includes punishments, which could range from throttling download speeds to terminating internet services entirely, depending on the ISP. However, offenders can request a review of their network activity by paying a $35 billing fee. If the offender is found not guilty, the $35 will be refunded.

The Center for Copyright Information has partnered with several major ISPs, including AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon. Each ISP will use their own version of the CAS. In general, though, the system will detect illegal downloading by using a mix of humans and automated processes provided by MarkMonitor.

The CCI noted that they won’t have the ability to obtain personal information from the data they collect, and the overall goal of the CAS is to simply inform users rather than punish them. The CCI says that the system is designed to make users “aware of activity that has occurred using their Internet accounts, educate them on how they can prevent such activity from happening again, and provide information about the growing number of ways to access digital content legally.”

[via Ars Technica]

This settlement has the US publishers able to make available or choose to remove their works – books and journals of all kinds – digitized by Google for their Library Project. For works that the publishers decide to leave in the Library, Google will give the option of receiving a digital copy of for their use. This essentially means that if they want to use the digitized versions of their books in the future as made possible by Google, they’ll have to let Google work with a copy as well – but if they don’t, Google will toss the data entirely.

“We are pleased that this settlement addresses the issues that led to the litigation. It shows that digital services can provide innovative means to discover content while still respecting the rights of copyright-holders.” – Tom Allen, President and CEO, AAP

The agreement also works with Google Books, a program that already has users able to read up to 20% of a book before purchase. The agreement notes that books scanned by Google in the Library Project may be included by publishers in this program if they wish – of course the book would need to be submitted separately to the store, but that’s beside the point. Further details surrounding the settlement will likely remain confidential.

This case originally had a $125 million dollar settlement that would have allowed Google a registry of online books. This registry would have allowed US consumers and institutions of all kinds the ability to purchase access to the material. Judge Denny Chin overturned the decision in 2011 after an extended review starting in 2009, deciding that the court never had the power to set up a business arrangement such as the one that was made. It also noted that such an agreement would not allow anyone to possibly compete with Google, nor did it give Google any incentive to, as PC mag‘s recounting notes, “track down the authors of orphaned works.” Such is life!

[via AAP]

Apple’s negotiations with Sony/ATV were reportedly down to the per-song rights fees which Sony/ATV asked to be higher than the standard tenths of a penny per stream standard. The NYPost also noted this week that “executives close to the matter” have said Sony/ATV will be pulling out of the two main copyright associations Ascap and BMI by January of 2013. If they do indeed pull out of these groups, licensing songs by businesses across the map will be more difficult as they’ll have to go through Ascap/BMI as well as Sony/ATV instead of working with a one-stop-shop, as it were.

Apple’s service would act as a main competitor for Pandora as it would be able to lower costs between free streams and final song purchases as they’ve already got a music store that can facilitate purchases. With iTunes, Apple is already a massively beastly music-toting group, but with a free radio streaming service that could give a more “human” way to the music discovery process, they could move on to a new level.

When word that a Pandora competitor was in the works for the iPhone 5 earlier this year, Pandora company stocks dropped significantly. This new news source notes that “They didn’t put whatever they needed to put in the app,” and that “It seems they were rushed into it.” This same source notes that music streaming from Apple on devices like the iPhone 5 is still a possibility for a software update months in the future – stay alert!

Both the MPAA and the RIAA have praised Google for its newfound intolerance of copyright infringement. It wasn’t too long ago that Google was at odds with the MPAA and RIAA, as the search giant stood against SOPA, a bill which the MPAA and RIAA both loved. Now, however, Google is understandably caught between a rock and a hard place. PCWorld reports that Google needs partners in Hollywood, and one of the best ways to do that is to crack down on copyright infringement. Indeed, Google may have just earned those partners in Hollywood, as the MPAA and the RIAA both seem pleased as punch by the implementation of this new policy.

No one is going to argue that copyright infringement is a good thing, but groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are worried that some sites may unjustly get caught in the crossfire. “In particular, we worry about the false positives problem,” the EFF wrote on its website. “For example, we’ve seen the government wrongly target sites that actually have a right to post the allegedly infringing material in question or otherwise legally display content.” The EFF continues by saying that since this new policy is so vague, it worries that Google will end up doing the same thing – punishing law-abiding websites, “without recourse” for those who have been wrongly demoted.

There’s also the matter of false take down notices. It isn’t exactly a secret that some business like to file fake take down requests against their competitors as of way of gaining an edge, so Google will have to be watching out for that as well. Google will definitely have its work cut out for it when it rolls out this new policy next week, so it’s easy to understand why it’s making some Internet advocates a little worried. Stay tuned more details as this whole thing develops.

There have been allegations in the court case that the law enforcement officers and FBI agents who executed the raid on the Dotcom home used excessive force. A video of the raid showing footage from surveillance cameras on the property and police video recordings from helicopters has hit the Internet. The video also shows some footage of the courtroom testimony with law enforcement officers remaining anonymous.

The video shows at least two helicopters landing on the property and heavily armed police officers storming the Dotcom home with little warning. Shortly behind the officers who were deployed via helicopter came multiple police vehicles filled with yet more heavily armed police officers. Dotcom notes during court testimony on the video that he was in what is called “The Red Room” and didn’t come out to meet police officers because he feared he would be shot.

He does point out that The Red Room had a door that he could have easily locked, but he left it unlocked so police could gain entry. Interestingly, the police knew that The Red Room existed and even had plans of the home, yet it still took 13 minutes for them to find Dotcom. At least, one police officer testified that “deliberate force” was applied to Dotcom. Dotcom says he was punched in the face, thrown to the ground, kicked in the ribs, and one officer stood on his hands even know he was sitting with his hands in the air and offering no resistance.

[via TheNextWeb]

Anyone who follows gaming probably knows that being accused of stealing is nothing new for Zynga. Many of Zynga’s games can look similar to other games out there, and usually the games Zynga is accused of copying were made by small teams of independent developers. This means that most developers don’t have the financial backing to be able to take Zynga to court, so nothing typically happens aside from a bit of bickering.

Anyone who follows gaming also knows that Electronic Arts isn’t a small indie developer. EA has more than enough money to throw at a lawsuit against Zynga, and in a 36 page complaint filed with a federal court in San Francisco, EA makes no bones about pointing out the similarities between the two games. It also gets in a few zingers at Zynga, like this one from point four of the complaint:

As The Sims Social increased in popularity and visibility, Zynga turned to its well-known competitive playbook: “Steal someone else’s game. Change its name,” then cross-promote the Zynga clone to its extensive user base. It has been widely reported that much of Zynga’s current position in the online social gaming market is not the result of creativedevelopment and innovation, but rather has been achieved through cloning rivals’ games.

Electronic Arts is demanding a jury trial, and is seeking damages and all of the profits made by Zynga’s perceived copyright infringement. EA definitely isn’t shy about claiming that Zynga copied The Sims Social, but ultimately that decision rests with the jury (if there’s a trial at all). Stay tuned, because this is sure to be a very interesting lawsuit.

[via AllThingsD]

The new date for the extradition hearing has been set as March of 2013, which will make the hearing about 13 months after his original arrest. The delay is a result of mounting legal complications that include a New Zealand High Court judge invalidating the warrants that were used for seizing property in the original raid. The judge has also ruled that the shipping of cloned hard drives by the FBI was unlawful because the warrants used to seize the property were too general.

Dotcom and the other founders tied up in legal court are all out on bail, but still face extradition to the United States. The company founders face as long as 20 years in prison and multimillion dollar fines after being accused of conspiring to commit large-scale copyright infringement. Dotcom and the other accused maintain their innocence and say that Megaupload was nothing more than a legal file sharing site, and that they had even complied with takedown requests even though as a non-US company Megaupload didn’t have to.

[via Wired]

“As you come to make your choice about how to vote tomorrow,” De Gucht wrote in an open letter to members yesterday, “you should make no mistake: a vote against ACTA will be a setback for the protection of our intellectual property rights around the world. Neither are there any quick fixes for its rejection. Those who think that we can come back anytime soon with a revised agreement or with a new treaty have been misled.”

However, while that’s undoubtedly music to opponents’ ears – and there are plenty of them, with the vote coming in at 478 against and just 39 in favor – the commissioner implied that there were still workarounds so that he and ACTA’s other backers could have things their way.

“What is true is that, if Parliament votes this treaty down, the Commission will continue to wait for the opinion of the Court and study it closely” De Gucht continued. “Why? Because citizens have raised concerns over its potential impact on fundamental rights, because many of you have raised similar questions – so let’s get some answers. I consider it my obligation, my responsibility as European Commissioner – indeed the responsibility of us all – to ask for clarity from Europe’s highest court.”

The fear is that, while Parliament may disagree, the court’s decision might end up carrying more sway, allowing De Gucht and the recording industry to push through ACTA-style regulations.

“Furthermore, we will also look at how the debate on intellectual property rights evolves over the coming months. There are legitimate issues to be discussed and clarified about some rules on intellectual property rights in the digital environment. For instance, the definition of “commercial scale” and what sharing information means in relation to the challenges one faces with respect to the protection of intellectual property” Karel De Gucht, European Commissioner

ACTA is pushing for strong regulations around counterfeit goods, generic medicines and internet-based copyright infringement, among other things. It would also pave the way for a new governing body – outside of the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, or the United Nations – which would decide what constituted infringement and not. However, opponents have criticized the Agreement as discriminatory of developing nations, among other groups.

“I hope that these discussions will be able to happen in their proper context – which is in debates about the substantive law of the European Union, not about international enforcement” De Gucht concludes. “Besides the European Parliament, the Commission would also discuss the outcome of the Court referral with other signatories of ACTA and would then consider further steps to take.”

The court also said that when the software is sold, the company enters into an implied contract, with the customers allowed to use the software for an unlimited period of time. The key ruling is that other companies and customers are allowed to resell the software, so UberSoft looks to be in the clear. Having said that, the court also mentioned that once the software is resold, all copies have to be removed from the original customer’s computer.

It’s a problem that others have faced in the past as well. Developers and publishers get no income from a second hand sale, prompting the industry to move towards tighter DRM, online only software, and licenses locked to a single user. Blizzard’s games are a good example, with its latest release, Diablo III, requiring an active internet connection even for single-player in order to avoid piracy issues.

[via Boing Boing]

According to Winkelmann, the initial raid on DotCom’s property – which saw not only multiple computers and external drives grabbed, but a cavalcade of luxury cars and motorcycles - was far too broad in the net it cast. The warrants the police used “fell well short” of describing the offenses DotCom was to be charged with; “they were general warrants” Winkelmann said, “and as such, are invalid.”

An independent lawyer will now be appointed, to comb through everything that was seized and figure out what evidence is relevant to the investigation. The US authorities will have access to that information, but must return all other data copied from the New Zealand police.

“These categories of items were defined in such a way that they would inevitably capture within them both relevant and irrelevant material. The police acted on this authorisation. The warrants could not authorise seizure of irrelevant material, and are therefore invalid” Justice Helen Winkelmann

Exactly what happened in that data exchange process will also be investigated. According to DotCom’s lawyer, Paul Davison QC, the Crown legal team assured him back in February that “the evidence is required in its original form to be sent to the US. That has not happened and will not happen without prior warning” when he wrote to them insisting that no evidence leave the country. However, he was subsequently informed that the FBI had visited New Zealand and cloned drives, returning with the data to the US.

The Crown legal team argues that the original warrants made it clear that evidence would be shared with US authorities, and have said they are in discussions about the implications of the warrant decision on the ongoing case.

Wozniak explained in a phone interview that while visiting New Zealand, he was not able to go see Dotcom due to him being put under house arrest. Sticking up for Dotcom, Wozniak said that the way they were making him live was absurd, and pointed out that MegaUpload had been used legitimately by lots people before it was shut down in January with criminal charges filed against Dotcom and others.

“You don’t just shut down the whole street because somebody is speeding,” Wozniak said in the interview. Though mentioning that he does indeed believe in paying for good content, Wozniak also made it clear that he also believes in keeping the Internet open to help boost innovation. He said that this case doesn’t belong in the criminal court and is actually a political debate between “Hollywood and new cloud storage technology.”

[via Associated Press]

“The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online” Wales insisted. “When operating his site, Richard O’Dwyer always did his best to play by the rules: on the few occasions he received requests to remove content from copyright holders, he complied. His site hosted links, not copyrighted content, and these were submitted by users.”

O’Dwyer’s site, TVShack.net, was in some ways a more focused Google or Bing, offering users a way to hunt down streaming versions of their favorite shows. Although he did not host the files, his linking to them caught the attention of content rights holders.

“Copyright is an important institution, serving a beneficial moral and economic purpose. But that does not mean that copyright can or should be unlimited. It does not mean that we should abandon time-honoured moral and legal principles to allow endless encroachments on our civil liberties in the interests of the moguls of Hollywood” Jimmy Wales, founder, Wikipedia

Wales has become an increasingly outspoken critic of what he sees as over-reaching content rights pandering, blasting app stores as a “dangerous chokepoint” and using Wikipedia to support anti-SOPA/PIPA protests earlier this year. The online crowd-sourced enciclopedia went offline for a day to highlight how important access to information is.

“Richard O’Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public” Wales concludes. “Earlier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second.”

[via Phys.org]

Skeptics of the UK ruling have pointed to the fact that ways to circumnavigate the ban – such as using VPN services – are so straightforward as to make implementing it ridiculous. Be Broadband in particular could face especially loud protest, as its subscribers are often more frequent downloaders who were drawn to the provider over its lack of download throttling.

That’s part of Be Broadband’s defense today, in which it argues that it has little choice faced with a court decision. “Unlike other ISPs, we never slow down or limit your connection artificially no matter what protocol or site you’re using” the ISP said in a statement. “Legally we need to comply with court orders but wherever possible we leave it up to you.”

Visitors attempting to access The Pirate Bay through Be Broadband connections will now see the message “The page you’re looking for has been blocked. We’re complying with a court order that means access to this website has to be blocked to protect against copyright infringement.” Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk and O2 are all expected to move to block the site themselves, being cited in the original court order.

The judge went on to say that when there is “only one way to express an idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and no one can monopolize that expression.” Copyright protection doesn’t extend to the names and short phrases used that Oracle claimed were infringed. As for the nine lines of code that were duplicated, it’s said that Joshua Bloch planned to submit the code to an open Java implementation for the community’s benefit.

Judge William Alsup also seems to be trying to restrict the broad patent litigation that’s so prevalent in technology nowadays. In the 41-page summary of the verdict, Alsup notes that “we should not yield to the temptation to find copyrightability merely to reward an investment made in a body of intellectual property.” The judge goes on to say that Oracle has overblown the whole case, which casts doubts on Oracle’s ability to appeal the verdict. While it’s a big win for Google, it’s surely a case that will be cited down the road in future lawsuits regarding copyright infringement.

[via Electronista]

Recently, it was reported that YouTube users were uploading about 72 hours of video each minute. One of the methods some in Hollywood would undoubtedly like to see YouTube employ to prevent copyright infringement is pre-screening video as it is uploaded. The problem with pre-screening the massive amount of video uploaded to YouTube is that it’s insanely expensive. TechDirt reports that would cost about $37 billion per year pre-screen all the video uploaded to YouTube.

Considering YouTube hasn’t yet figured out how to make money off the huge number of viewers the website gets, pre-screening is simply not going to happen. Granted, that $37 billion figure is far from what many would consider accurate. The figure takes into account using real people, specifically judges, rather than software or any old YouTube user. The cost number comes from the average pay of a judge in Silicon Valley pegged at $177,454. TechDirt figures it would require 199,584 judges to screen video based on the number of uploads and hours in a single working day. It works out to slightly under $37 billion yearly.

[via TechDirt]

A New Zealand judge wants to see the evidence the United States has against Megaupload. The judge in the case, David Harvey, has given law enforcement officials in New Zealand three weeks provide documentation and evidence against Megaupload management that supports the allegations of encouraging massive copyright infringement.

The extradition hearing for Dotcom and the other managers is set for August 6. Judge Harvey wants the legal team fighting for the Megaupload founder and other management to have a chance to review the evidence ahead of the extradition trial. Apparently, the US Department of Justice has provided some e-mail conversations and other documents in the indictment, but the judge wants to see everything.

“This [court decision] makes the playing field more even,” said Ira Rothken, the attorney who is overseeing MegaUpload’s worldwide defense. “I think this is a very significant ruling for New Zealand because it demonstrates that New Zealand courts will intervene to protect the rights of its residents from foreign intrusion…we’re looking forward to this disclosure. Once there is full transparency into the government’s claims we believe Kim Dotcom and the rest of those involved with MegaUpload will prevail.”

[via CNET]

The new section will detail how many takedown requests Google receives from copyright owners. Google says that search results are removed due to copyright claims more than any other reason, and wants to provide information on who is requesting the takedowns, as well as how often they’re doing so.

Google will be offering data starting from July 2011. The stats so far are staggering: 1.25 million URLs have been requested to be removed by 1,296 copyright owners, and Google says that 250,000 requests are received every week. That’s more requests than Google received during the whole of 2009.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as to who is requesting the takedowns, and who is being targeted. Microsoft sits at the top of the league, followed by the British Phonographic Industry, plus NBC Universal and the RIAA. Sites targeted include torrent sites such as KickAssTorrents and Torrentz EU, plus online locker services like 4shared.

[via Google]

Oracle sued Google back in August 2010, claiming that Google recklessly copied Java code for its Android platform. Google says it built Android from scratch and was not aware of any copyright or patent infringement until the lawsuit was filed. Google also argues that Oracle should not be able to copyright or patent parts of Java, an open-source platform.

Although the jury had sided with Oracle last week, the group has not given a verdict on whether Google has fair use, which would help Google in the case. The jury said that Google has indeed copied nine lines of code from Java and the judge later ruled that Google also infringed eight Java files.

Oracle is seeking about $1 billion in copyright damages and a much lower figure in patent damages. Google has offered to pay $2.8 million in damages on two patents for the period through 2011. Google also offered to pay 0.5 percent of Android revenue on one patent and 0.015 percent on another unti their expiration dates. However, Oracle has rejected this settlement offer.

According to statistics from TorrentFreak, the camcorder video of a pre-release screening was downloaded more than half a million times in the week leading up to The Avengers’ release, with 100,000 downloads coming from the United States. Even assuming that everyone who saw the low-quality “CAMrip” declined to see the movie in theaters (a rather large and almost certainly incorrect assumption), the net loss to the movie’s gross earnings would have been less than one half of one percent. Other recently leaked blockbusters like Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in 2010 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine the year before met with a similar lack of detrimental effects.

This certainly doesn’t negate the fact that copyright infringement in general and piracy in particular are illegal and immoral. (I’m giving about half a million of you the wagging finger of shame.) But it does demonstrate that a major blockbuster probably won’t be derailed by the movie leaking early. As TorrentFreak notes, piracy of DVD and Blu-ray movies represents a much more substantial monetary threat to film production studios, since high-quality versions available for free, or for vastly reduced amounts of money via bootleggers, can compete directly with home video sales.

Google immediately called upon Judge Alsup for a mistrial, and Oracle’s attorney has stated that the company is owed a portion of Google’s profits due to Android’s use of Java’s RangeCheck code. At this point it’s unclear how the trial will proceed – the judge could make a determination on the incomplete ruling, or he could acquiesce to Google’s request and start the trial over. The verdict reached was only relevant to the copyright portion of Oracle’s case – the patent infringement charges won’t be discussed until the latter half.

The jury’s conclusion mirrors that of experts and pundits, who have been divided over the validity of Oracle’s claims. Google does not deny that it used portions of Oracle’s copyrighted Java code when developing Android, the company only denies wrongdoing thereof. One of the most dramatic portions of the trial so far was when former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz took the stand in Google’s defense, testifying that the 37 APIs in question were open and could not be used in a copyright case.

The Oracle vs Google case will certainly continue for weeks to come, no matter what is decided today.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

The ISP is the first of five – Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media – instructed to do so. At time of writing, access to The Pirate Bay from users of the other ISPs is still apparently permitted, and it’s unclear what deadline they each have in order to prevent it.

The ruling was welcomed by the British Phonogaphic Industry, which said that The Pirate Bay “operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them.”

However, those users still wishing to access the magnet links provided by the site still have plenty of options to work around the ISP ban. VPNs and other encrypted re-routing systems are all expected to be implemented so as to avoid the ruling.

[Image credit: Rory Cellan-Jones]

When attempting to turn around what Google presented a bit earlier today Oracle’s Mike Jacobs referred to Google’s touting of former Sun CEO Schwartz. This man, said Jacobs, was never the boss in charge of the copyrights and legal business of the company, he was answering to board chairman Scott McNealy, another personality who took the stand this week and one who has this week defended Oracle in the idea that Google never had the right to the JAVA they used in Android. Now that Google is defending themselves with the argument that the code they’ve used was included under fair use, Oracle had to prove that this possibility was simply out of the question.

“If Google can just take the APIs and be forgiven under fair use, that licensing falls apart. That is the deep threat that Android represents to the entire Java community. … “A blog post is not permission. A blog post is not a license. Google knows better than to claim a blog post is official permission.” – Oracle’s Jacobs

Noting that even if Sun did not defend their right to own the codes that Google used in Android back when it was first compiling them, Oracle certainly should have been expected to, and definitely is here and now. Oracle’s closing statement took what the case had presented to the jury and laid it all out with a simple questioning of the jury, asking whether or not they saw Google’s actions as lawful.

We’ll continue to follow this case to completion of course, given its monumental consequences one way or another there’s no knowing how long it will take for the final verdict to be passed down – and when its passed down if it will be allowed to rest here in 2012. Stay tuned!

[via ZDNet]