So you won't see the bogus DMCA "good-faith belief" rubber-stamping. Even judges have been smacked down for "rubber-stamping." It used to be that piles of traffic tickets that weren't contested would be brought to the clerk, and the clerk would sign off on the conviction. The judges got caught doing this, and the convictions reversed. Judges HAVE to review every request, just like they have to review every ticket, not leave it to their clerks to rubber-stamp.
With the DMCA "rubber stamping" without even the most basic review appear to be a requirement. An ISP/hoster can get in big trouble for ignoring a "legitimate" takedown but not for acting on a bogus one. It dosn't even appear to matter if the same entity has sent 999 bogus requests before sending 1 legitimate one.
Unlike with a takedown notice and argument with your hosting company, the label will need to take you and you into court (the host and the client, who are the same person) and show a judge how you don't have legal permission to distribute that song. You show your permission to the judge, state they never once contacted you about it to find out otherwise, and are acting in bad faith from the start.
Or, alternativly, you state this on a form/letter to the court together with a copy of your permission and the judge tells them they don't have a case thus a court hearing would be a waste of everyone's time..
If you were only told that, and don't have it in writing, it doesn't mean a thing. And even if you have it in writing, you might still want to take a close look at your contract. (You did get a printed copy of it, right?) Chances are it has one of those clauses saying that they can change anything in it at any time without notifying you.
In the latter case any written version dosn't mean much either...
Of course they will instead issue another DMCA takedown notice, for the very same content, which they are not allowed to do.
It isn't unknown for ISPs/Hosting Providers to act on such notices. Even when a counter notice has been filed. Even if they have done nothing to change or ofuscate matters, such as using a different law firm.
And upon second unlawful takedown of your content you are free to sue THEM, and demand serious damages. Of course while the law is on your side, the money is not, you still have to pay all the attorney fees and so on, and this can get very costly to get through. And of course your papers need to be in perfect order.
Is it now a requirement in the US to always use a lawyer? Even for a "small claim"...
Um... well, if you lie about being the copyright holder (or their agent) you've committed a criminal act (perjury).
People who lie under oath in court, even when their lies result in innocent people being punished, rarely face any sanction at all. If perjury in front of a room full of people is unlikely to result in punishment what is the risk to someone doing so in writing? (Especially if they are a great distance from the recipient.)
Google could have handled the situation a bit better, perhaps, but they're really stuck in the middle. They must comply with the takedown notice UNLESS a counter-claim is filed or they become liable. What Google *could* do is make it easier for people to file counter-claims when they receive takedown notices -- which effectively ends the issue unless the original claimant decides to take it to court.
There appear to be cases where takedowns are acted upon even where a counterclaim exists. Also it it only possible for a counterclaim to exist after a takedown has been made (and possibly acted upon). If the aim was to censor time sensitive information then the "damage" can already have been done.
However, ample evidence has shown that the legal system is well and truly broken, and that if you have sufficient money/power/political weight behind you, there will be no penalty regardless of the crime.
It also appears to be the case that these kind of laws are not much use against the "big boys". e.g. how often do you hear about takedowns against big software companies for pirating software or news media for using photographs without permission...
When you file a DMCA complaint, you declare that you are the copyright holder or an agent of the copyright holder, and that there has been a good reason to suspect copyright infringement. If that is not the case, then the DMCA complaint is actually a criminal act.
Are the police going to be interested in doing anything about it? If the complaint is malicious what's to stop it originating from a ficticious entity.
And since the blogger claims that he had the permission of the copyright holder, it seems that a criminal act happened (assuming the blogger is telling the truth). And I think damages would be awarded against the complainant anyway if the complaint was not justified (that is if the complainant had good reason to believe there was copyright infringement, but turned out to be wrong).
A judgment against an entity which dosn't exist is of little use, nor is one against one which does exist, but which has no assets. e.g. some sort of "shell company".
So, I have copyright on MyDumbSong. And I am totally free to file DMCA against _anyone_ and everyone_ and _anything_ and _everything_, claiming it infringes on my rights to MyDumbSong. And then it's their burden to prove they don't. And taking content down is so much easier than proving its legality.
You don't even need to own the copyright (or represent the copyright holders). Takedowns of material in the public domain have happened.
That's what Google claim is the case. Is there actually an entity of the planet that exclusivly follows their published polices.
It always amazes me when people talk as if people are Google are casually browsing through your email, gossiping about your personal secrets.
The kind of people who are interested in finding out secrets are rarely doing so randomly. They are more likely to be interested finding people who are doing X, are a member of group Y, etc
Of course, my main objective to universities switching to Google has nothing to do with functionality. GMail is proprietary software, and universities should not be locking themselves into solutions provided by specific corporations. Hey, maybe I am just too much of a free software guy, but if nobody voices the concern...
Even if they used free software. You'd still be trusting anyone Google trusts with your email.
Lordy Mandy is one of the more infamous characters of our Labour government. Several times he's been fired/forced to resign over corruption (taking bribes) and effectively fraudulent behaviour.
Like the rest of them are honest?
Each time, he keeps getting hired back by the government when they think most people will have forgotten.
He's shown himself to out only for his own personal profit, with flagrant disregard for the public, though a side effect is he also feathers the beds of his political allies in his bargains.
Isn't that more or less "business as usual" for career politicians, whatever their nationality or claimed policies?
Qui buono? Who benefits? The people? Or copyright holders? This one is obviously the latter.
The vast majority of copyright holders are unlikely to benefit, in the same way that they havn't benefitted from other recent changes to copyright law.
How do they get such favors? Through some obscure mechanism to earn support. Most likely party funding.
Many people complain about the US system (&Japan) where individual candidates raise their own campaign funds. And would like to limit them. But at least these systems produce independant legislators.
How many independent congressmen and senators are there right now?
The Media Idiots don't get it - if the only choice for obtaining their product was to pay for it they'd end up selling less and not making the record-breaking profits they are now because their products would not get as much exposure as they do.
They are only "idiots" if they believe their own propaganda...
It would be less trouble and cost exponentially less for the copyright holder to ask the local government for the retail price of each illegally downloaded copyrighted material than to jail them.
In other words, get real. Copyright infringement doesn't deserve jail nor does it deserve thousands and millions of dollars in damages.
Why should government do anything at all. Even if this really was a "lost sale" any actual losses would be lower than the retail price. People (including "corporate people") who are subject to thefts or frauds of much greater amounts can claim only from private insurers. Quite often government, in the personage of law enforcement, are uninterested in doing much actual investigation unless the amount of money involved is at least tens of thousands to millions of times greater than that involved here.
Doesn't Au have more pressing matters to address in its country? I think so. This is just another ploy to generate more lawyer jobs that bollocks up yet another world icon-www. GET a REAL LIFE au- Don't be so pitiful.
I suspect that Australia has the same problem that many other countries have. That is far too many career politicians...
Well it will certainly stop when there are no more humans around.
It might be a grand awakening in people all over the planet that taking stuff without paying is just somehow wrong.
Before that expect announcements that Qantas will put pigs in the cockpits of their aircraft, several hundred British MPs will appologise for overclaiming expenses, etc:)
It might be that worthwhile content is just not being created except in ways that make piracy impossible.
It would be easier to do things in ways that "piracy" is simply irrelevent.
The motivation to do this would come from the simple truth that people that pirate aren't going to pay, ever.
That's more a motivation to stop making any kind of fuss about it. Certainly to stop wasting money don't anything about it.
However, the real possibility to look out for is government intervention. It is simple economics. Not only are there fewer sales due to piracy but even more so there are fewer taxes paid.
Even if "piracy" means that people are not spending money buying content, which is itself questionable, this does not mean that people are spending less of their "disposable income". It's even possible that if people pay less money to big media for tax revenue to increase.
You might be able to convince the government that less money for a record company is important and worth devoting the government's attention to through law enforcement and other means, but it is probably far more interesting to governments in general that their tax income is being reduced. Slightly, this is true, but the decrease is still there. In today's economic times do you really believe a government isn't interested in spending $10 to get $1 more in tax revenue?
Plenty of governments already do (and have been doing for decades) this kind of thing . e.g. with drug prohibition. Where it's apparently acceptable to spend vast amounts of public money and ensure that what could be revenue from taxation goes into the hands of criminal gangs.
Again the people in charge of the country show their complete ignorance of the Internet.
You could probably "most things" for "the Internet" and the statement would still be true. That's a somewhat fundermental problem with career politicians, these people tend to be out of touch with the "real world".
Short of pulling out the cable there is no possible technical solution to stop people copying files across the Internet because that's what it's for.
It isn't even necessary to have a "cable" either:)
Here's a better idea: Force the movie/music industries to provide an attractive/convenient alternative at a realistic price. eg. You pay $2 to watch a movie on demand.
Another idea would be to tell the industries that if the song/TV/movie/etc isn't available in Australia then any "piracy" is their own stupid fault for not sorting out things with the Australian radio/TV stations and cinemas.
There was a time when the data was inconclusive, but that time has passed.
Which has actually rendered quite a lot of data, e.g. that from poorly sited monitoring stations, inconclusive.
We have amassed so much data in favor of man-made global warming that to deny it as this point just doesn't make sense.
Yet when asked to produce this data the result is much handwaving. Maybe even some data showing warming. But where's the evidence for the "man-made" claim?
It has been shown that large subsets of the the base data is bogus, that leading 'scientist' have manipulated their data, and intimidated competing scientist.
As well as producing computer models where the data dosn't even have much effect on the output.
How do you debunk that a large subset of the data is based on bullocks (http://surfacestations.org).
You might get better data from cattle:)
There is no way to "correct" corrupted primary data.
At least not without a whole set of other data which may not even exist...
Humans don't adapt. We change our environment to suit us.
The local environment around us. It's rather a big jump to to try and change the environment of the entire planet...
How exactly do you explain the Little Ice Age (google it) in the 1700s? Were we too "carbon free" so the Earth had to freeze us? But now we are too dependent on "carbon" so it's going to burn us up?
Or maybe "carbon" isn't the issue here at all. Maybe some other mechanism is at work here. There appears to be a fairly strong correlation between sunspot activity and temperature. But, possibly because this cannot in any way be affected by human activities climate "scientists" are apt to ignore it.
As AC already pointed out, that presumes going 'carbon free' would change anything.
Rather that it would make any positive changes. The whole "carbon trading" thing is starting to make 419ers look like honest businessmen:)
Furthermore, if we burned every single ounce of known fossil fuels on the planet tomorrow, that would approximately double the atmospheric CO2 to about 720ppm.
Which probably would produce quite a bit of warming, due to the exothermic chemical reactions involved.
During the Carboniferous period, this planet witnessed an ice age with atmospheric CO2 levels on the order of 4200ppm. That is very strong evidence that CO2 is a bit player in the climate game.
As are ice cores. Which show CO2 concentration following temperature by several hundred years.
And yet, they can provide no evidence that warming would be a bad thing. They are pretty empty handed when you ask for evidence of any sort. Here's a nice little factoid for the Cult of Climate Change: 70000 years ago, mankind nearly went extinct... DURING AN ICE AGE. Honestly, what do you think is going to be more hospitable to man? Icy barren tundra or lush tropical forests?
There's quite a bit of historical evidence that humans did very well in previous warm periods.
Seriously? CO2? They want to scare us into doing something good for the environment, and THAT is their boogeyman? They could've gone for the mercury in coal fired plant emissions that is poisoning our seafood in the pacific. They could have gone with the fact that coal emissions are radioactive as all fuck.
No, they go with the clear odorless gas that makes plants happy.
Also it dosn't become a problem for humans until something like 5% concentration in the atmosphere. This is one the biggest problems with this whole "carbon" obsession. Far more serious pollution issues are ignored.
It certainty of the data depends on the question you're trying to answer. Is the earth warming? Absolutely. We have numerous bits of evidence from ice cores, tree rings, and soil samples that confirm that the earth's climate is warmer now than it was before.
Depending which "before" you choose... A different choice and you can state that "The Earth's climate is cooler now than it was before."
Most climate scientists say that the Earth is headed for a 4 C rise in temperature, regardless of what humans do at this point. To put that into context, 4 C was the worst case scenario being considered during the 1990s.
In a different context this would be about the temperature of a period known as "The Holocene climatic optimum"
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So you won't see the bogus DMCA "good-faith belief" rubber-stamping. Even judges have been smacked down for "rubber-stamping." It used to be that piles of traffic tickets that weren't contested would be brought to the clerk, and the clerk would sign off on the conviction. The judges got caught doing this, and the convictions reversed. Judges HAVE to review every request, just like they have to review every ticket, not leave it to their clerks to rubber-stamp.
With the DMCA "rubber stamping" without even the most basic review appear to be a requirement. An ISP/hoster can get in big trouble for ignoring a "legitimate" takedown but not for acting on a bogus one. It dosn't even appear to matter if the same entity has sent 999 bogus requests before sending 1 legitimate one.
Unlike with a takedown notice and argument with your hosting company, the label will need to take you and you into court (the host and the client, who are the same person) and show a judge how you don't have legal permission to distribute that song. You show your permission to the judge, state they never once contacted you about it to find out otherwise, and are acting in bad faith from the start.
Or, alternativly, you state this on a form/letter to the court together with a copy of your permission and the judge tells them they don't have a case thus a court hearing would be a waste of everyone's time..
If you were only told that, and don't have it in writing, it doesn't mean a thing. And even if you have it in writing, you might still want to take a close look at your contract. (You did get a printed copy of it, right?) Chances are it has one of those clauses saying that they can change anything in it at any time without notifying you.
In the latter case any written version dosn't mean much either...
Of course they will instead issue another DMCA takedown notice, for the very same content, which they are not allowed to do.
It isn't unknown for ISPs/Hosting Providers to act on such notices. Even when a counter notice has been filed. Even if they have done nothing to change or ofuscate matters, such as using a different law firm.
And upon second unlawful takedown of your content you are free to sue THEM, and demand serious damages. Of course while the law is on your side, the money is not, you still have to pay all the attorney fees and so on, and this can get very costly to get through. And of course your papers need to be in perfect order.
Is it now a requirement in the US to always use a lawyer? Even for a "small claim"...
Um... well, if you lie about being the copyright holder (or their agent) you've committed a criminal act (perjury).
People who lie under oath in court, even when their lies result in innocent people being punished, rarely face any sanction at all. If perjury in front of a room full of people is unlikely to result in punishment what is the risk to someone doing so in writing? (Especially if they are a great distance from the recipient.)
Google could have handled the situation a bit better, perhaps, but they're really stuck in the middle. They must comply with the takedown notice UNLESS a counter-claim is filed or they become liable. What Google *could* do is make it easier for people to file counter-claims when they receive takedown notices -- which effectively ends the issue unless the original claimant decides to take it to court.
There appear to be cases where takedowns are acted upon even where a counterclaim exists. Also it it only possible for a counterclaim to exist after a takedown has been made (and possibly acted upon). If the aim was to censor time sensitive information then the "damage" can already have been done.
However, ample evidence has shown that the legal system is well and truly broken, and that if you have sufficient money/power/political weight behind you, there will be no penalty regardless of the crime.
It also appears to be the case that these kind of laws are not much use against the "big boys". e.g. how often do you hear about takedowns against big software companies for pirating software or news media for using photographs without permission...
When you file a DMCA complaint, you declare that you are the copyright holder or an agent of the copyright holder, and that there has been a good reason to suspect copyright infringement. If that is not the case, then the DMCA complaint is actually a criminal act.
Are the police going to be interested in doing anything about it? If the complaint is malicious what's to stop it originating from a ficticious entity.
And since the blogger claims that he had the permission of the copyright holder, it seems that a criminal act happened (assuming the blogger is telling the truth). And I think damages would be awarded against the complainant anyway if the complaint was not justified (that is if the complainant had good reason to believe there was copyright infringement, but turned out to be wrong).
A judgment against an entity which dosn't exist is of little use, nor is one against one which does exist, but which has no assets. e.g. some sort of "shell company".
So, I have copyright on MyDumbSong. And I am totally free to file DMCA against _anyone_ and everyone_ and _anything_ and _everything_, claiming it infringes on my rights to MyDumbSong. And then it's their burden to prove they don't. And taking content down is so much easier than proving its legality.
You don't even need to own the copyright (or represent the copyright holders). Takedowns of material in the public domain have happened.
Privacy concerns for Google apps in general are addressed here: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60762
That's what Google claim is the case. Is there actually an entity of the planet that exclusivly follows their published polices.
It always amazes me when people talk as if people are Google are casually browsing through your email, gossiping about your personal secrets.
The kind of people who are interested in finding out secrets are rarely doing so randomly. They are more likely to be interested finding people who are doing X, are a member of group Y, etc
We have 40MB account limits and professors routinely send out 10MB worth of attachments.
Maybe the problem is with those sending the attachments. Especially if they are sending the same thing to multiple people at once...
Of course, my main objective to universities switching to Google has nothing to do with functionality. GMail is proprietary software, and universities should not be locking themselves into solutions provided by specific corporations. Hey, maybe I am just too much of a free software guy, but if nobody voices the concern...
Even if they used free software. You'd still be trusting anyone Google trusts with your email.
Lordy Mandy is one of the more infamous characters of our Labour government. Several times he's been fired/forced to resign over corruption (taking bribes) and effectively fraudulent behaviour.
Like the rest of them are honest?
Each time, he keeps getting hired back by the government when they think most people will have forgotten. He's shown himself to out only for his own personal profit, with flagrant disregard for the public, though a side effect is he also feathers the beds of his political allies in his bargains.
Isn't that more or less "business as usual" for career politicians, whatever their nationality or claimed policies?
Qui buono? Who benefits? The people? Or copyright holders? This one is obviously the latter.
The vast majority of copyright holders are unlikely to benefit, in the same way that they havn't benefitted from other recent changes to copyright law.
How do they get such favors? Through some obscure mechanism to earn support. Most likely party funding.
Many people complain about the US system (&Japan) where individual candidates raise their own campaign funds. And would like to limit them. But at least these systems produce independant legislators.
How many independent congressmen and senators are there right now?
The Media Idiots don't get it - if the only choice for obtaining their product was to pay for it they'd end up selling less and not making the record-breaking profits they are now because their products would not get as much exposure as they do.
They are only "idiots" if they believe their own propaganda...
It would be less trouble and cost exponentially less for the copyright holder to ask the local government for the retail price of each illegally downloaded copyrighted material than to jail them.
In other words, get real. Copyright infringement doesn't deserve jail nor does it deserve thousands and millions of dollars in damages.
Why should government do anything at all. Even if this really was a "lost sale" any actual losses would be lower than the retail price. People (including "corporate people") who are subject to thefts or frauds of much greater amounts can claim only from private insurers. Quite often government, in the personage of law enforcement, are uninterested in doing much actual investigation unless the amount of money involved is at least tens of thousands to millions of times greater than that involved here.
Doesn't Au have more pressing matters to address in its country? I think so. This is just another ploy to generate more lawyer jobs that bollocks up yet another world icon-www. GET a REAL LIFE au- Don't be so pitiful.
I suspect that Australia has the same problem that many other countries have. That is far too many career politicians...
Piracy will stop, eventually. One way or another.
:)
Well it will certainly stop when there are no more humans around.
It might be a grand awakening in people all over the planet that taking stuff without paying is just somehow wrong.
Before that expect announcements that Qantas will put pigs in the cockpits of their aircraft, several hundred British MPs will appologise for overclaiming expenses, etc
It might be that worthwhile content is just not being created except in ways that make piracy impossible.
It would be easier to do things in ways that "piracy" is simply irrelevent.
The motivation to do this would come from the simple truth that people that pirate aren't going to pay, ever.
That's more a motivation to stop making any kind of fuss about it. Certainly to stop wasting money don't anything about it.
However, the real possibility to look out for is government intervention. It is simple economics. Not only are there fewer sales due to piracy but even more so there are fewer taxes paid.
Even if "piracy" means that people are not spending money buying content, which is itself questionable, this does not mean that people are spending less of their "disposable income". It's even possible that if people pay less money to big media for tax revenue to increase.
You might be able to convince the government that less money for a record company is important and worth devoting the government's attention to through law enforcement and other means, but it is probably far more interesting to governments in general that their tax income is being reduced. Slightly, this is true, but the decrease is still there. In today's economic times do you really believe a government isn't interested in spending $10 to get $1 more in tax revenue?
Plenty of governments already do (and have been doing for decades) this kind of thing . e.g. with drug prohibition. Where it's apparently acceptable to spend vast amounts of public money and ensure that what could be revenue from taxation goes into the hands of criminal gangs.
Hollywood just had its highest box office year EVER! Clearly piracy is taking a huge toll, and... ...uh... wait...
But they believe that they'd be making even more without "piracy". This being an issue of faith.
You can't argue faith with logic or even facts.
Again the people in charge of the country show their complete ignorance of the Internet.
:)
You could probably "most things" for "the Internet" and the statement would still be true. That's a somewhat fundermental problem with career politicians, these people tend to be out of touch with the "real world".
Short of pulling out the cable there is no possible technical solution to stop people copying files across the Internet because that's what it's for.
It isn't even necessary to have a "cable" either
Here's a better idea: Force the movie/music industries to provide an attractive/convenient alternative at a realistic price. eg. You pay $2 to watch a movie on demand.
Another idea would be to tell the industries that if the song/TV/movie/etc isn't available in Australia then any "piracy" is their own stupid fault for not sorting out things with the Australian radio/TV stations and cinemas.
There was a time when the data was inconclusive, but that time has passed.
Which has actually rendered quite a lot of data, e.g. that from poorly sited monitoring stations, inconclusive.
We have amassed so much data in favor of man-made global warming that to deny it as this point just doesn't make sense.
Yet when asked to produce this data the result is much handwaving. Maybe even some data showing warming. But where's the evidence for the "man-made" claim?
It has been shown that large subsets of the the base data is bogus, that leading 'scientist' have manipulated their data, and intimidated competing scientist.
:)
As well as producing computer models where the data dosn't even have much effect on the output.
How do you debunk that a large subset of the data is based on bullocks (http://surfacestations.org).
You might get better data from cattle
There is no way to "correct" corrupted primary data.
At least not without a whole set of other data which may not even exist...
Humans don't adapt. We change our environment to suit us.
The local environment around us. It's rather a big jump to to try and change the environment of the entire planet...
How exactly do you explain the Little Ice Age (google it) in the 1700s? Were we too "carbon free" so the Earth had to freeze us? But now we are too dependent on "carbon" so it's going to burn us up?
Or maybe "carbon" isn't the issue here at all. Maybe some other mechanism is at work here. There appears to be a fairly strong correlation between sunspot activity and temperature. But, possibly because this cannot in any way be affected by human activities climate "scientists" are apt to ignore it.
As AC already pointed out, that presumes going 'carbon free' would change anything.
:)
Rather that it would make any positive changes. The whole "carbon trading" thing is starting to make 419ers look like honest businessmen
Furthermore, if we burned every single ounce of known fossil fuels on the planet tomorrow, that would approximately double the atmospheric CO2 to about 720ppm.
Which probably would produce quite a bit of warming, due to the exothermic chemical reactions involved.
During the Carboniferous period, this planet witnessed an ice age with atmospheric CO2 levels on the order of 4200ppm. That is very strong evidence that CO2 is a bit player in the climate game.
As are ice cores. Which show CO2 concentration following temperature by several hundred years.
And yet, they can provide no evidence that warming would be a bad thing. They are pretty empty handed when you ask for evidence of any sort. Here's a nice little factoid for the Cult of Climate Change: 70000 years ago, mankind nearly went extinct... DURING AN ICE AGE. Honestly, what do you think is going to be more hospitable to man? Icy barren tundra or lush tropical forests?
There's quite a bit of historical evidence that humans did very well in previous warm periods.
Seriously? CO2? They want to scare us into doing something good for the environment, and THAT is their boogeyman? They could've gone for the mercury in coal fired plant emissions that is poisoning our seafood in the pacific. They could have gone with the fact that coal emissions are radioactive as all fuck.
No, they go with the clear odorless gas that makes plants happy.
Also it dosn't become a problem for humans until something like 5% concentration in the atmosphere.
This is one the biggest problems with this whole "carbon" obsession. Far more serious pollution issues are ignored.
It certainty of the data depends on the question you're trying to answer. Is the earth warming? Absolutely. We have numerous bits of evidence from ice cores, tree rings, and soil samples that confirm that the earth's climate is warmer now than it was before.
Depending which "before" you choose... A different choice and you can state that "The Earth's climate is cooler now than it was before."
Most climate scientists say that the Earth is headed for a 4 C rise in temperature, regardless of what humans do at this point. To put that into context, 4 C was the worst case scenario being considered during the 1990s.
In a different context this would be about the temperature of a period known as "The Holocene climatic optimum"