Articles about Copyright

Kodi has had a rough time of things lately, and the same can be said for a number of companies and addons associated with the media center software. In particular, addons site TVAddons has been fighting legal battles, and in its case with Dish Network the operators of the site have been identified.

An amended version of Dish Network's complaint says the site is owned and operated by Adam Lackman from Canada, and they also identify the developer of the ZemTV Kodi addon as Shahjahan Durrani from London. In the complaint, both Lackman and Durrani are accused of copyright infringement, but TVAddons insists it "is not a piracy site, it's a platform for developers of open source add-ons for the Kodi media center."

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Facebook is said to be offering hundreds of millions of dollars to music publishers and record labels to avoid having to take down user-generated videos that feature copyrighted music.

Bloomberg cites "people familiar with the matter" as saying Facebook's payments will allow for the legal use of songs in uploaded videos. At the moment rights holders can tell Facebook to remove any videos that feature copyrighted music, and the social network is keen to create a frictionless experience for users if at all possible.

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YouTube-mp3.org -- "the easiest online service for converting videos to mp3" -- is closing down. The ripping site faced action from numerous record labels, but it has now come to an arrangement with the RIAA.

The site is one of many that make it possible to convert YouTube videos into MP3 format, but it has piqued the interest of copyright lawyers. Millions of users meant the site was able to rake in ad revenue -- something the RIAA and record labels were less than happy about. An arrangement with the RIAA means YouTube-MP3 will close, leaving users looking for another site to cater for their YouTube ripping needs.

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Kodi has been in the news a great deal recently, thanks largely to a surge in interest in addons for the media center software. High profile addons like Phoenix disappeared, as did (temporarily) the addons site TVAddons.

The latest victim is a Plex addon from MetalKettle -- MK Plex. Eager to avoid legal action after receiving a letter from Plex's legal team, MetalKettle decided to shut up shop rather than continue to provide an addon that could be used to access Plex through Kodi without a paid-for Plex Pass subscription.

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It has been hard to avoid stories about Kodi in recent months as broadcasters and copyright holders panic about the software's potential for piracy.  The controversial site TVAddons was the subject of a lawsuit from Dish Network, and shortly after this it disappeared from the web completely.

Rather than originating from the US as many people suspected, the lawsuit against TVAddons that led to its disappearance comes from Canadian telecoms firms Bell Canada, TVA, Videotron and Rogers. Now TVAddons is back, but the story about its legal battle -- involving claims of piracy of Game of Thrones -- is rather more complicated than just about anyone could have thought.

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In recent weeks numerous Kodi add-ons have disappeared, and the popular site TVAddons also suffered the same fate. It had been presumed that the disappearances were related to a lawsuit taken out by Dish Network, and now the broadcaster has been granted subpoenas to help identify those developing the ZemTV Kodi addon and running the TVAddons website.

The subpoenas relate to a number of online services including Facebook and Twitter, and successfully identifying defendants will be key to the success with any lawsuits relating to copyright infringement.

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The Pirate Bay may be something of a battered ship after an onslaught of attacks over the years but, somehow, it remains afloat. The latest blow, however, comes from the European Court of Justice which has just ruled that the site -- despite not hosting any content itself -- can still be held liable for copyright infringement.

The landmark ruling means that the site could be considered to have broken the law for simply directing people towards copyrighted material. There are implications for a wide range of sites and services, but the focus is very much on that stalwart of the torrenting world, The Pirate Bay.

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Mozilla has teamed up with design studio Moniker and launched a new "digital advocacy tool" called Paperstorm with the aim of modernizing copyright laws in Europe. The tool makes it easy for ordinary internet users to carpet bomb European lawmakers with virtual leaflets demanding change.

The campaign is looking to drop millions of leaflets on cities around Europe to send a message to EU policymakers. The timing is important because copyright laws are due to undergo amendments, and proposals need to be in by the end of the year. Mozilla says that existing rules are outdated, and now is the time to make sure the laws are appropriate to modern needs.

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Back in October there was a mixture of great excitement and huge worry that the controversial Pirate Party could end up winning the general election in Iceland. That didn't happen, but with no clear winner there was an attempt to create a five-way coalition that ultimately failed after weeks of talks, paving the way for the radical party made up of poets, hackers and online freedom activists.

The Pirate Party -- which says it would offer exile to Edward Snowden and also embrace Bitcoin -- could still end up in power after being invited to form part of the government by Iceland's president. But even if the controversial, anti-establishment party does end up wielding power, it's unlikely that its more radical policies would come to fruition.

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Oracle has once again been unsuccessful in its latest effort to obtain a new trial in its Java API copyright claim against Google. Judge William Alsup of the San Francisco District Court has denied Oracle's latest motion to have its case reheard on the grounds of misconduct on the part of Google's lawyers.

Since 2010, the two companies have been in an ongoing legal war that was ruled in Google's favor. However, in the six years that have passed Oracle has repeatedly appealed the ruling multiple times.

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Google's regular Transparency Reports make for interesting reading for those with an interest in how the company operates. As well as revealing how Google responds to government requests for data, they also show how it deals with copyright removal requests.

Now the company has updated its reports to make the data easier to read and easier to interpret. It also shows more information about the sites and companies associated with removals.

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Mozilla has called out the European Union, asking it to reform its copyright laws. The current one, according to the organization, is holding innovation and economic development down. Writing a blog post on the topic, Mozilla CIO Katharina Borchert says EU’s copyright laws are stopping great ideas in their tracks.

"The internet brings new ideas to life every day, and helps make existing ideas better. As a result, we need laws that protect and enshrine the internet as an open and collaborative platform", Borchert says.

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With the likes of ISIS understanding the power of social media, Facebook and other online services find themselves under increasing pressure to counter terrorist and other extremist content. A report by Reuters says that a number of online companies are using automated tools to remove videos that violate terms of use.

Such tools have previously been used to prevent the spread of copyright videos online, but now it seems that they have been put to a new task. While automation can do little, if anything, to prevent the initial appearance of extremist videos, social networks can use them to stem the flow of republishing.

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Google has won a case brought against it by Oracle in which it was accused of infringing on copyright by using Java APIs in Android. But at the end of a two-week trial, the jury found in Google's favor saying that 'fair use' was an acceptable defense.

Had Google lost the case, it could have cost the company billions of dollars and would have set something of a precedent. This was the first major case in which a company tried to use copyright law to control the use of APIs.

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Google is already embroiled in one antitrust case in Europe where the company stands accused of abusing Android's dominance. Now photo agency Getty Images is accusing Google of promoting piracy and engaging in anticompetitive behavior by 'scraping' images from third party sites.

In a familiar-sounding complaint, Getty Images also says that Google skews search results in favor of its own services -- such as Google Images. The photo agency says that this directly impacts upon rival services, but perhaps the big charge is that a change made to Google Images provided access to copyrighted material and "promoted piracy, resulting in widespread copyright infringement".

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