Big Tech executives may find themselves facing UK prosecution or jail time sooner than expected as the target date for Online Safety Bill (OSB) enforcement collapses to within two months of becoming law, rather than the two years originally proposed. Several new offenses have been added to the bill, including criminal liability for those who destroy evidence, fail to cooperate with Ofcom investigations or impede regulatory inspections. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube can all expect audits for the sort of harmful content the OSB seeks to address. Continue reading Criminal Liability Will Be Added to the UK’s Online Safety Bill

Amazon’s live-streaming platform Twitch was a haven for musicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, attracting “an average of 30 million visitors a day,” who watched 1+ trillion minutes of content last year. More importantly, its economic model, unlike that of Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube, allows musicians to monetize fan interactions. Musicians cultivate a loyal base that, in turn, patronizes them, to the tune of several thousand dollars a month. In contrast, last year, 97 percent of Spotify’s artists earned less than $1,000. Continue reading Twitch’s Business Model Lets Musicians Monetize Fan Loyalty

Last month, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the Music Managers Forum, the American Association of Independent Music and SAG-AFTRA chastised Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos for his company Twitch’s copyright violations. Twitch finally conceded that it ignored the use of unlicensed recorded music by its video creators and issued a blog post urging them to no longer do so and to delete any older VODs and Clips with unlicensed music. Continue reading Twitch Responds to a Flood of Copyright Takedown Notices

A group of U.S. music organizations — including the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA), the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the Music Managers Forum, the American Association of Independent Music, and a dozen more — penned an angry letter to Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos and Twitch chief executive Emmett Shear. Their complaint is that the Amazon-owned Twitch, a popular live-streaming platform, is not securing synch and mechanical licenses for its Soundtrack tool. Continue reading Music Groups Accuse Twitch of Streaming Unlicensed Music

In July, a bipartisan group from the Senate Judiciary Committee reintroduced the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act, by which the U.S. Copyright Office will create a three-person Copyright Claims Board that will supervise a ‘small claims-style’ system for damages. The Copyright Alliance and the Graphic Artists Guild approved the move, which allows a copyright owner whose content was used without permission to claim for damages up to $15,000 for each work and $30,000 in total. However, some groups are opposing the Act and question the cost of such an approach. Continue reading CASE Act’s Copyright Enforcement Draws Mixed Response

In the process of updating the Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement to help combat online piracy, the government’s IP czar Vishal Amin has sent out a call for input. The Motion Picture Association of America has suggestions, chief among them that Internet service providers be forced to take more responsibility for referral traffic from piracy sites. Currently, under the law, ISPs are regarded as neutral networks, but the MPAA wants them to play a role in filtering copyright-infringing content. Continue reading MPAA Proposes Updates to Intellectual Property Enforcement

Sony Music, EMI Music, Universal Music, and Warner Bros. Records, among others, filed a piracy liability lawsuit against Cox Communications, claiming the ISP ignores persistent lawbreakers using its network. The suit lists more than 10,000 copyrighted works, and damages could potentially exceed $1 billion. Under U.S. law, copyright holders send takedown notices to ISPs to warn them of subscribers sharing copyrighted material and the ISP is obliged to cut off repeat offenders “in appropriate circumstances.” Continue reading Record Labels File Lawsuit Against Cox for Persistent Piracy

According to the Recording Industry Association of America and 14 other groups, the 19-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) needs to be updated. They’re telling the U.S. Copyright Office that new piracy controls are required. Currently, ISPs that “expeditiously” remove copyrighted content when alerted by rights holders get legal immunity or so-called safe harbor. But the RIAA and others say this process is not sufficient, as the pirated copy reappears instantly, requiring yet another takedown notice. Continue reading Copyright Holders Demand DMCA Update, Addition of Filtering

Cisco rolled out its Streaming Piracy Prevention (SPP) platform that uses third-party forensic watermarking to take down pirate streams in real-time. The company says the platform can shut down the streams — which have become a favored method of distribution for pirates — without sending takedown notices or requiring third-party cooperation. Pirates capture feeds from sources such as subscriber accounts, and then re-stream them to thousands of sites, posing a threat to PPV TV and subscription content providers. Continue reading Cisco’s SPP System Shuts Down Pirate Streams in Real Time

The Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s highest court, has narrowed an April decision by the court’s advocate-general that determined that links to copyrighted material shouldn’t be considered a breach. Now the CJEU has specified a distinction: anyone profiting from posting a copyrighted link is responsible for researching whether the linked material is copyright protected, and any such link is considered an infringement if approval has not been secured from the rights holder. Continue reading EU’s Highest Court Rules For-Profit Links Infringe Copyrights

Video creators have been complaining for months that their content is being stolen and re-uploaded elsewhere on Facebook, a practice called freebooting. Now Facebook has released Rights Manager, a tool that video producers and companies can use to keep track of their content and prevent it from being re-uploaded without permission. The tool lets them create a reference library of their video content and a dashboard to keep track of the matches, which they can either permit or report based on criteria they set. Continue reading Facebook Rolls Out Rights Manager to Curb Video Freebooting

An International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) report points out that 20 million Americans, and 20 percent of the world’s population, still pirate music. Now, the IFPI will soon join the record labels’ trade group the RIAA in complaining that YouTube doesn’t pay a fair price for the music it gives away for free. At the same time, Universal Music Group, Sony and Warner Music Group are about to renegotiate their contracts with YouTube, and they say the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hurts their bargaining power. Continue reading Music Labels Cry Foul at YouTube and DMCA’s ‘Safe Harbor’

Video has skyrocketed on Facebook to 8 billion views a day, and now the social media giant is also bombarded with takedown requests from video content creators. They’re complaining about “freebooting,” which is when clips are taken from YouTube, where creators make money from advertising, and re-loaded without permission on Facebook, where they’re not making a dime. Although Facebook is working on new rights-management software, creators say the current copyright infringement is negatively impacting their income. Continue reading Video Creators Complain of ‘Freebooting’ Trend on Facebook

In the first 12 weeks this year, Google received takedown requests for 213 million links, representing a 125 percent increase over the same period in 2015, to remove copyright infringing sites, as per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The spike does not represent a dramatic increase in piracy but, rather, new automated tools for finding copyright violators as well as more copyright holders actively looking for infringers. The MPAA and Recording Industry Association of America say it’s proof that the DMCA isn’t working. Continue reading Spike in Takedown Requests Questions Effectiveness of DMCA

YouTube, no stranger to copyright infringement battles, says it will pick up the legal costs of four video creators that are the focus of takedown demands. The company says it chose creators that used third party content legally permitted under the “fair use” provisions for commentary, criticism, news and parody. The company has stated it wants to protect free speech, but it is also signaling its support to video creators to help build loyalty in an increasingly competitive online video environment. Continue reading YouTube Stands Up For Video Creators Fighting Takedowns