CHICAS PRODUCTIONS: Piracy

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Showing posts with label Piracy. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Web piracy: Sites in Russia, China, Ukraine, Canada top MPAA list...

Websites registered in China, Russia, Ukraine and Canada continue to dominate the list of "most notorious" markets for distributing pirated movies and TV shows, an industry report shows.

The survey, compiled by the Motion Picture Assn. of America at the request of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, ranked websites and other technologies used to distribute illegal copies of movies and TV show based on how much web traffic they generated, among other indicators.

The MPAA list includes peer-to-peer networks, Bit Torrent portals, infringing download and streaming hubs, linking websites and newsgroups, as well as physical markets located in the Ukraine, Australia, Canada, China, Indonesia, Ireland, Brazil, Russia, Thailand, Mexico and India.

PHOTOS: Billion-dollar movie club

"The rogue overseas marketplaces highlighted in the filing undermine the people who work hard to create the movies and TV shows audiences love, and jeopardize the billions of dollars they contribute to the U.S. economy," Chris Dodd, chairman of the MPAA said in a statement. "The MPAA commends the USTR's commitment to protect and enforce intellectual property rights abroad and, in so doing, protect U.S. jobs."

Among the top sites identified in the survey were: Extratorrent.com in the Ukraine, which had 16.1 million unique visitors in August, including features highlighting "the most pirate movies" and "first cams," which are camcordings of movies showing in theaters; and Russia-based Rutracker.org, a BitTorrent portal launched in 2010 that is one of the world's most visited sites, with 11.7 million unique visitors in August.

Also on the list were two sites from Canada: Kickass.to, which changed names after U.S. authorities seized its previous domain; and Torrentz.eu, one of the most popular BitTorrent websites on the Internet, which had 45.5 million visitors in August.

China also two websites on the list: Xunlei.com, which features a high speed file sharing system that distributes unauthorized copies of movies and TV shows; and QVOD, or Kuaibo.com, widely used by Chinese rogues linking sites.

"The criminals who profit from the most notorious markets through the world threaten the very heart of our industry and in doing so threaten the livelihoods of the people who give it life," wrote the MPAA's Michael O'Leary, the report's author. "These markets are an immediate threat to legitimate commerce, impairing legitimate markets' viability and curbing U.S. competitiveness."

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Study Suggests Studios Aren’t Offering Enough Online Legal Options to Counter Mo

Adding to a growing body of competing data on who bears the blame for rampant online infringement, two George Mason U scholars unveiled a website that claims that few of the most pirated movies are even available online legally.

Shorter windows would help counter piracy, the authors say, though theater owners are unlikely to agree with changing windows substantially in the near future.

The site — piracydata.org — shows that of the top 10 most pirated movies in the past week, none are available for streaming, three were available for digital rental and six were available for digital purchase. The authors of the study, Jerry Brito and Eli Dourado from GMU's Mercatus Center and developer Matt Sherman, relied on data from TorrentFreak and Can I Stream It. The top pirated movie, "Pacific Rim," was available only for digital purchase, their study showed.

The study showed that over the past three weeks, 53% of the most pirated movies have been available legally in some digital form. In the same period, only 25% have been available for rental or streaming, and 0% have been available on a legal streaming service.

Brito said that he decided to do the study after the MPAA unveiled a study several weeks ago showing that search engines like Google lead users to infringing movies and TV shows. At a congressional hearing, Cary Sherman, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, urged more voluntary agreements between search engines and the content industry to try to curb piracy.

Brito wrote in a blog post that "while there is no way to draw causality between the fact that these movies are not available legally and that they are the most pirated, it does highlight that while the MPAA is asking Google to take voluntary action to change search results, it may well be within the movie studio's power to change those results by taking voluntary action themselves. That is, they could make more movies available online and sooner, perhaps by collapsing the theatrical release window."

Yet the MPAA challenged some of the figures as well as the premise, pointing out the availability of movies like "This Is the End" on Vudu, Google Play, Sony Entertainment Network, iTunes and Amazon. The Piracydata.org figure was corrected, but it also lists "Pacific Rim" for digital purchase but not rental or streaming. Yet it is available on YouTube movies which, depending on how you look at it, is a streaming service as well as a digital rental and purchase service.

"More than half of the films they cite are in fact available to stream or download, including films they claim are not," said an MPAA spokeswoman. "And if a film is not available for stream or purchase at a given moment, it still does not justify stealing it from the creators and makers who worked hard to make it."

The MPAA offers its own tool to find legal movie options online, wheretowatch.org, but it is not a search tool for titles, but simply a listing of online providers like iTunes, Vudu and Amazon.

The movie "Elysium" is not going to be made available on iTunes until late November, according to the site, and on Blu-ray and Ultraviolet in December. But it was available for illegal streaming shortly after its August release, yet studios risk the ire of theater owners if they offer legal downloads of movies during their runs at the multiplex.

Britto acknowledged first-day glitches on his site in a lengthy blog post, and noted that data is being updated as movies become available.

"One thing is for certain: the dataset that we are proposing to build is important," he wrote. "We have provoked quite a reaction from people on both sides of this issue. We acknowledge that it has been a bumpy launch for our site, but we are committed to getting it right."

The site, glitches or not, is another instance of the back-and-forth between the content and tech policy communities in Washington over who is responsible for online infringement. A few weeks ago, the MPAA unveiled a study showing that search engines like Google play a major role in introducing audiences to pirated content via their search results. Yet Google and the trade group the Internet Assn. have for some time said that the greater availability of legal online alternatives will alleviate problems with piracy. That seems to be the premise behind the Piracydata.org site. Google provides support to the Mercatus Center.

The MPAA has promoted the availability of more movie and TV content online, but it also suggests that that alone won't solve the problems with piracy. The org noted that "The Walking Dead" was pirated 500,000 times within 16 hours despite the fact that it was available to stream for free over the next 27 days on AMC's website and distributed in 125 countries around the world after it aired.

"Our industry is working hard to bring content to audiences when they want it, where they want it, but content theft is a complex problem that requires comprehensive voluntary solutions from all stakeholders involved," the MPAA spokeswoman said.

Thank you Variety

U.K. Piracy Fight Aims at Educating a Younger Demographic...

The Industry Trust says there's been a "big spike" in pirated consumption among 11 and 12-year-olds.

LONDON – The fight against piracy in the U.K. has become more about persuasion and less about punishment than about trying to change behavior. And it's having to target an ever younger demographic.
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That's the message from the Industry Trust, the U.K. film and TV industry body backed by everyone from the U.S. studios to retailers and TV banners, set up to look after copyright issues and fight piracy.
At a Piracy and Distribution workshop hosted by the Industry Trust during this year's BFI London Film Festival, a high profile panel of industry reps and commentators discussed the role web search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing play in pushing consumers towards pirated material, the need to educate a generation of movie and TV consumers and the hope that changing habits will reduce piracy.
According to figures presented by the Trust, 40 percent of those infringing copyright are not even aware the sites they are being led too via search engines are illegal.
Kicking off the discussion and debate, Industry Trust for IP Awareness director general Liz Bales said that over the last few years the industry body has seen a "big spike" in pirated consumption among the 11 to 12-year-old demographic.
Bales said the days of trying to scare people off from illegal downloads or buying pirated goods is less relevant as a generation grows up in a digital online age.
"What we are trying to do now is to inspire people to consume it [content] through legal providers. It's all about directing them where to go and create that kind of behavior."
Bales noted that in her eight years of overseeing the Industry Trust fight, piracy was a matter of "habitual behavior" and that concentrating on changing consumer habit via gentle persuasion rather than scare tactics was almost certainly more appropriate, especially among younger demographics.
She also noted that while often genre-led, titles such as Oscar winning The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow had been one of the most heavily pirated releases in 2009 because it had not been as widely distributed as the public's appetite wanted.
The panel also discussed the role of the web search engine powerhouses with Google at the heart of the debate.
"We hope the changes they made to the algorithm will begin to take effect and make an impact," Bales said.
There was also frustration in the room that the much-vaunted Digital Economy Act, a piece of British legislation that is currently languishing in the Treasury government department and has several legal sanctions and measure to combat copyright infringement in the digital age, remains shelved as the coalition government shows no appetite to enact it and make it part of the British legal landscape.
But the softly softly approach to educating children was highlighted with the debut of a short film made for the upcoming National Youth Film Festival for schools and youth groups to point them in the right direction.
It shows two Muppet-like characters talking as the older one watches Fast and Furious 6 on a laptop "that he's streaming".
The smaller, younger puppet suggests that it might be an idea to pay for the film because without the money, there would be no "awesome" special effects and bits of flying debris.
He also suggests that the "seven quid" ($11) the older puppet thinks would make no difference might pay for at least one of Vin Diesel's socks.
The humorous exchange aims to highlight that if people stop paying for content, then the content will no longer be made.

Thank you Hollywood Reporter

How Hollywood Convinced California's Senate to Pass a Bill Increasing Piracy Dam

An obscure case last year challenged the value of damages from piracy. Now, California law on calculating restitution could be on the verge of changing what pirates owe.

Statistics about the economic damage from piracy tend to be controversial because of a dispute about methodology. When calculating the loss to an entertainment company from someone who pirates a song or movie, do you assume the pirate would have purchased that song or movie at full wholesale price? The difference between "Yes" and "No" amounts to billions of dollars in estimated damages for Hollywood each year.
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The problem is not merely academic. Those who are arrested for piracy, and then convicted, often have to pay restitution. If a jury orders them to pay actual damages as restitution for harm, what do they pay? The question led to a decision last year by a California appellate court that the industry hated, and now a possible change in state law.
On Thursday, somewhat underneath the radar, the California Senate passed SB-1479 by a 36-0 margin with four state senators not voting. The bill would amend state law pertaining to how victims of crime who incur economic loss as a result of a crime receive restitution from a defendant.
Among the changes is that now, when someone is convicted of a crime involving the infringement of a "phonograph record, disc, wire, tape, film, or other device or article from which sounds or visual images are derived," restitution will be calculated "based on the aggregate wholesale value." This includes unreleased works, and according to the bill, "Proof of the specific wholesale value of each nonconforming device or article is not required."
In March, the RIAA provided some support for the changes, and specifically pointed to the case, People v. Garcia, decided last year by a California appellate circuit which it said had "dramatically changed the landscape."
In the case, Hector Garcia and Martin Avila were arrested and convicted for intending to sell thousands of pirated DVDs and counterfeit music CDs.
At the trial, the RIAA provided a wholesale value for approximately 4,000 seized CDs of $7.15 each. The MPAA testified that that more than 10,000 confiscated DVDs were worth an average wholesale value of $11.10 each.
As a result, the defendants were ordered to pay more than $61,000 to the RIAA and nearly $174,000 to the MPAA for a total just north of $235,000.
But last April, those restitution fines were knocked out by California appeals judge Roger Boren, who ordered the total award be trimmed to $87,113. According to the decision, "assigning the aggregate wholesale value as the loss where there is none violates the intent of the victim restitution statute."
The appellate judge took a look at the statutory language, debate, and interpretation over how to award restitution for "potential losses." The appellate court completely rejected the industry's theories on how to calculate this.
The judge notes that in passing the original law, the RIAA submitted a "victim-impact statement" that estimated that it was losing $5.33 billion per year. But the judge also notes a comment made by lawmakers in drafting the legislation at committee:
"Industry representatives have argued that a music or audio-visual pirates' unsold inventory of illegally produced or copied works represents a lost wholesale sale. This appears to ignore that a pirate would never obtain pirated works from a legitimate wholesaler. Only legitimate retail sales were preceded by a legitimate wholesale sale. Any illicit work sold at the retail or street level never went through the legitimate wholesale market."
The judge took this as evidence that "clearly shows that the RIAA's rationale was rejected" during the drafting of the legislation.
After the decision, the entertainment trade associations appear to have gone back to lawmakers to get the state to accept their calculations on damage from piracy and to overturn the precedent from last year's appellate decision. The bill has now passed the Senate and is closer to becoming law.

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$1.2 Billion Anti-Piracy Suit Filed in Russia...

Hollywood majors and local players hope it could create an important precedent in fighting online piracy.
MOSCOW– The highest profile criminal case for copyright infringement is launched in Russia, which Hollywood majors and local players hope could create an important precedent in fighting online piracy.

'Hurt Locker' producer files massive antipiracy lawsuit
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The country's general prosecutor's office has accused Andrei and Natalia Lopukhov, a Moscow-based married couple, of illegal online distribution of features and animated films through the web sites interfilm.ru and puzkarapuz.ru back in 2007 and 2008. The prosecutors claim that the damages caused by the Lopukhovs for their activities during nearly 18 months caused the damages of 38 billion roubles ($1.24 billion), which makes the case the biggest ever copyright lawsuit in Russia.
The films illegally distributed by the defendants include, among many others, Shrek the Third, Resident Evil: Extinction and 28 Weeks Later.
STORY: British Telecom Ordered to Block Newzbin2 Filesharing Site Within 14 Days
Among the companies whose movies were illegally distributed are 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney Enterprises, Sony Pictures and Universal, as well as the domestic film producers Central Partnership, Riki, STV and Paradiz.
"We don't disclose the figure [of our claims], but our calculations were based on the values of relevant deals with [legitimate] video services," Zlata Polishchuk, executive vice president of Central Partnership, which also represents Paramount in the Russian market, told The Hollywood Reporter.
The plaintiffs don't expect that the damages could be actually paid to them but hope that the case could create an important precedent that would help to fight online piracy in the future.
"A lawsuit of such a high value has been filed for the first time here," Alexei Ryazantsev, general director of Karo Premier, which represents Warner Bros. in the Russian market, told THR. "It is unlikely that the damages will be paid, but the case could really scare off some people and dissuade them from pirate activities in the future."
A date for court hearings has not yet been set.

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Australia High Court Agrees to Review Closely-Watched Hollywood Piracy Case

In Australia, the High Court has agreed to hear an appeal from a coalition of Hollywood studios continuing to pursue claims that iiNet, one of the country's largest ISPs, contributed to its users illegally sharing copyrighted material.

In February, 2010, a trial judge found that iiNet was not liable for the downloading habits of its customers, and that decision was affirmed by a lower appeals circuit in February.
The plaintiff says that iiNet should have responded more forcefully to evidence of copyright infringers on its networks, including possible suspension of customer accounts.
Since the decision, there has been growing movement both internationally and in the U.S. to push ISPs to take responsibility for copyright infringement.

The decision by the High Court to hear an appeal allows Hollywood an attempt at erasing one of its worst legal losses on the piracy front.

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Hollywood's Next Big Piracy Fight: Digital Merchandising...

Imagine watching Inception at home and being able to instantly own one of those spinning tops. Or picture leaving a screening of Transformers 3 and immediately buying an autobot of your own.
Such technologies are coming, and they probably constitute an entirely new form of digital merchandising (and perhaps even a new revenue stream). But before these products get off the ground, studios are looking to handcuff the creators to ensure they aren't doing anything without a proper license.

Todd Blatt, a mechanical engineer from Baltimore, has been working on the physical recreation of digital data. Using a 3D printer, movie viewers may be able to print out objects they see on screen. Check out these transformers or this full-size version of Star Wars' Hans Solo in carbonite.

But Paramount isn't happy.

According to one report, the studio recently sent out a cease-and-desist letter to Blatt after he bragged about his work on a movie prop website.
Paramount wouldn't comment to us about this, but the studio sees such efforts as counterfeiting.
Is it? If someone creates a technology that allows movie fans to recreate Angelina Jolie's exact eyeshadow in one of her films on their face, is that copyright infringement? Think of this as the Mike Tyson tattoo controversy in reverse.

Obviously, the creator of such a product might run into trouble depending on how the technology is packaged. "Bring home a character from Transformers" might imply a false endorsement. "Look like Angelina Jolie" might constitute a violation of the actress' publicity rights. But copyright? Is a physical re-creation of an object on-screen a derivative work?

Here's another example of the technology -- a video showing the re-creation of the extraterrestrial shapeshifting white cubes from the film Super 8. The object in question is now being packaged as a "super vibrating jewelry box" instead of "Super 8 Cubes." Does that get it off the hook from any legal trouble?

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MPAA Sues Movie-Streaming Service Zediva...

UPDATED: It files a copyright infringement suit, claiming Zediva illegally streams movies to its customers without obtaining required licenses from the movie studios.

The MPAA is taking action against one of the hottest, if legally questionable, online streaming services, Zediva, which has gained a boisterous following since its launch earlier this year by going places that Netflix won't -- streaming relatively recent films like The Fighter, The Social Network and Black Swan.

Zediva claims its business model is innovative yet completely legitimate. The company rents its users a DVD player and a DVD, and customers use their computers like remote controls, playing a movie from afar. Streaming 10 movies costs users only $10, a cheap enough price that consumers, perhaps looking for piracy alternatives, have been signing up in growing numbers.
The question, though, is whether Zediva needs a studio's license before exhibiting these films to audiences.

Zediva believes itself to be akin to a traditional brick-and-mortar rental company like Blockbuster in the 1990s. It points out that when a customer "rents" a movie, that film is taken out of circulation. Zediva doesn't create a digital copy. Instead, it's just playing a video remotely at a customer's bequest in what it deems to be a private exhibition.

In a federal copyright lawsuit filed Monday in California District Court, the MPAA disputes the private nature of the streaming service. Instead, the movie industry believes that Zediva is infringing its "exclusive rights to perform their works publicly."

According to the complaint, Zediva's comparison of its service "to a rental store is disingenuous, and Defendants are attempting to rely on technical gimmicks in an effort to avoid complying with U.S. Copyright Law. Defendants operate an online VOD service, not a neighborhood rental store."
Zediva will likely hope a court will see this issue similar to how the Second Circuit Court of Appeals saw a plan a couple years back from Cablevision to begin offering its customers remote storage DVR capabilities for television programming. In that lawsuit, studios sued on the ground that Cablevision was violating its copyrights and its exclusive authority over public performances, and similarly to the latest lawsuit, claimed Cablevision had created "an unauthorized video-on-demand service."
The Second Circuit disagreed, ruling that Cablevision had no control over what programs were being delivered and saying that a single customer transmitting to oneself wasn't any more public than a customer recording a program with his or her own DVR.
However, television is a different bulwark than movies. By the time Cablevision's remote-DVR plan had hit the court, services like Tivo and Slingbox had already established itself on the marketplace without much legal challenge. Cablevision was merely asking a court to let it take a step a few mere inches forward.
In contrast, movie studios are arguing that Zediva's plans will upend their business model and relationships with iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, and others, and can point to its own body of favorable case law on the subject.
Copyright scholar James Grimmelmann, for one, points to several cases that will work against Zediva, including one involving a brick-and-mortar rental store named Maxwell's, which rented videotapes to customers, along with private 4'x6' exhibition booths in the rear of the store. Similar to how Zediva operates, Maxwell's customers reserved a so-called "private exhibition" of these movies as the video stores' clerks queued up the videos from afar. A court later found this operation to be "not distinguishable in any significant manner from the exhibition of films at a conventional movie theater."
It was, in the court's opinion, a "public performance."
The MPAA is claiming maximum statutory damages in the amount of $150,000 per infringement for Zediva's alleged copyright violations.
Zediva hasn't yet issued a response to the movie industry's claims.

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Unions Speak Out Against Piracy...

Joining federal lawmakers at a piracy press conference, the labor organizations denounced "profiteers" who traffic in illegally obtained content.
Representatives from the DGA, AFTRA, IATSE and SAG joined Congressional lawmakers at a press conference today on Capitol Hill to discuss fighting copyright infringement and Internet theft.
RELATED TOPICS
•Labor
The unions released a statement decrying "Illegal downloading and streaming of the content made by our members" and stating that those practices "pose a devastating threat to the future of the hundreds of thousands of working men and women who make up the American entertainment industry."
The release noted that those guilds and unions represent 300,000 creators, performers and craftspeople who create films, television programs and sound recordings. The Writers Guild was not part of the press conference, but both the WGA West and East have spoken out against piracy as well.
The union statement argued that "Professional content is a driving force behind the massive popularity of the Internet" and blasted "profiteers who knowingly traffic in content they have obtained illegally and played no role at all in creating or financing."
The press conference did not appear to be connected to any new legislative efforts to address unauthorized downloading or streaming.

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China's Top Online Search Engine Baidu Encourages Music and Movie Piracy

A report on so-called "Notorious Markets" by the United States Trade Representative showed that Baidu linked to illegal pirating websites.
BEIJING – Baidu, China's top online search engine, perpetuates theft of copyright and undermines respect for the rule of law, a report on so-called "Notorious Markets" issued late Monday by the United States Trade Representative said.
RELATED TOPICS
•International News
The USTR accused Baidu, the most visited website in China, of "inducing" consumers to consume pirated movies and music by producing search results linking websurfers to illegal third party web sites.

China has more websurfers on earth than any other nation – numbering more than 450 million by the end of 2010 – and Baidu is among the top 10 visited websites in the world.

The NASDAQ listed company declined media requests for comment Tuesday in China.

Shares in the Beijing based company were down nearly 2% in early Tuesday trade in New York to $118.86 each.

The USTR report comes weeks before China is supposed to tell the World Trade Organization how it has moved to comply with a Dec. 2009 ruling insisting it allow greater foreign participation in the distribution of copyrighted cultural content. Critics say that China protects domestic Internet, movie and music companies by freezing out competitors visiting from overseas and wishing to do business.

The USTR said that the production and sale of pirated goods is bad for the growth and success of legitimate businesses across the globe. "Piracy and counterfeiting undermine the innovation and creativity that is vital to our global competitiveness," USTR's Ron Kirk, President Barack Obama's principal trade advisor, said in a statement.

By Baidu's own admission, its popularity stems in part from a service that aggregates links to illegal materials, including pirated music and movies. The Recording Industry Association of America said in a statement. "Few if any of the links provided by Baidu connect the user to legitimate versions of copyright-protected materials. It is undoubtedly one of the largest distributors of infringing music in the world," said Neil Turkewitz, RIAA evp, International.

The RIAA is to the music industry what the Motion Picture Association is to Hollywood. The trade organization claims its members create, manufacture and/or distribute about 85% of all legitimate recorded music produced and sold in the United States.

The USTR report named 33 violating companies in total, including Canada's isoHunt and allofmp3.com clones in Russia and Ukraine.

"Whether online or in the physical space, these are firms who either directly profit from the sale or other distribution of illegal materials, or who profit from facilitating such theft -- in many cases through the sale of advertising," Turkewitz said.

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Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Web piracy: Sites in Russia, China, Ukraine, Canada top MPAA list...

Study Suggests Studios Aren’t Offering Enough Online Legal Options to Counter Mo

U.K. Piracy Fight Aims at Educating a Younger Demographic...

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

How Hollywood Convinced California's Senate to Pass a Bill Increasing Piracy Dam

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

$1.2 Billion Anti-Piracy Suit Filed in Russia...

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Australia High Court Agrees to Review Closely-Watched Hollywood Piracy Case

Friday, July 1, 2011

Hollywood's Next Big Piracy Fight: Digital Merchandising...

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

MPAA Sues Movie-Streaming Service Zediva...

Unions Speak Out Against Piracy...

China's Top Online Search Engine Baidu Encourages Music and Movie Piracy