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Last month, members of the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and Australasian collecting society APRA AMCOS teamed up to file the music industry’s first ‘pirate’ site blocking application Down Under.

Filed at the Federal Court under section 115A of the Copyright Act 1968, member labels Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music and J Albert & Son demanded that leading torrent site KickassTorrents (KAT) should be blocked by the country’s ISPs.

“Online infringement continues to be a major threat to the sustainability of the Australian music industry. Illegal offshore sites like Kickass Torrents show a complete disrespect for music creators and the value of music,” said Jenny Morris OAM, Chair of the APRA Board.

But now, exactly one month later, the case has been temporarily suspended in an effort to cut down on costs. The problem lies with two other key cases already underway in Australia, both of which involve similar requests to block ‘pirate’ sites. All three are likely to become bogged down with the same problems.

The first involves a case brought by TV giant Foxtel which targets The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, isoHunt and TorrentHound. The second features the movie division of Village Roadshow, Roadshow Films, taking on streaming portal Solarmovie.

In those cases ISPs including TPG (including subsidiary iiNet), Optus, Telstra and M2 say they don’t intend to oppose the studios’ requests for a blockade. However, there is a dispute over who will pay for the blocks to be put in place. The ISPs feel they are innocent parties and shouldn’t be forced to finance the operation, the studios disagree. There is also a dispute over how the blocks will be carried out from a technical perspective.

With these problems in mind, the record labels appeared in court yesterday with a request for their case against KickassTorrents to be suspended until after the other cases have been settled. The labels see little point in going over the same ground in parallel and feel that agreement in the other cases will provide a template for theirs.

“Given that the form of relief is a major component of the dispute between Roadshow and Foxtel and the ISPs, and there’s been a considerable amount of time spent between the applicants and respondents negotiating forms of orders and final relief in an attempt to standardize the forms of order sought by the applications,” counsel for the music industry said.

“We propose deferral of consideration of the relief elements for this proceeding until after determination of the Foxtel and Roadshow applications.”

A delay, which would save time and money, was also endorsed by the Internet service providers.

“We want to minimize the costs that are expended. In that light it’s certainly prudent to come back after that other hearing,” Optus counsel said.

Justice Katzmann agreed to the delay and ordered a case management hearing for July 11 to take place after the film studios’ hearing next month. A final hearing will take place in October following a judgment in the film studios’ cases.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

The NVIDIA Shield TV may have been the first Android TV set-top-box to support 4K video, but when the Xiaomi Mi TV launches later this year, it’ll give NVIDIA’s TV box some competition. But NVIDIA isn’t sitting still.

While the company isn’t ready to launch any new hardware just yet, NVIDIA has announced a new software update that will bring new features to its Android-powered media streamer and game system.

The software update brings support for streaming videos from Vudu at 4K resolution and for streaming High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos from Netflix.

Continue reading NVIDIA Shield TV gains Netflix HDR, Vudu 4K support at Liliputing.

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Prof. Adam Jaffe's staff photo from Brandeis University. (credit: Brandeis University)

SAN FRANCISCO—An economist hired by Oracle was sworn in and took the stand in federal court today, opining that Google's use of Java APIs in Android shouldn't be considered "fair use."

The testimony by Adam Jaffe wrapped up day eight of the Oracle v. Google trial, a legal dispute that began in 2010 when Oracle sued Google's use of the 37 Java APIs, which Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems. In 2012, a judge ruled that APIs can't be copyrighted at all, but an appeals court disagreed. Now Oracle may seek up to $9 billion in damages.

If Google hadn't copied the 37 Java APIs in question, Android "very likely would not have been as successful," Jaffe opined. He also believed that Java was "poised to enjoy continued success" in the mobile space, a point also made earlier today by former Sun licensing executives.

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(credit: Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—Lawyers for Oracle Corporation summoned a hostile witness to the stand today here in federal court, revealing what they surely hope will be a "smoking gun" e-mail in their copyright infringement case against Google.

One big problem: the writer of that e-mail, Stefano Mazzocchi, didn't work for Google at the time. Mazzocchi is one of three people who created the Apache Harmony program, which Google leaned on heavily when it created its Android mobile operating system.

The case began in 2010, when Oracle, which acquired Java when it purchased Sun Microsystems, sued Google for using Java APIs in Android. In 2012, a judge ruled that APIs can't be copyrighted at all, but an appeals court disagreed. At the jury trial now underway, Oracle may seek up to $9 billion in damages, while Google is arguing that its use of the 37 APIs constitutes "fair use."

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