Author: Andy

Throughout the heated exchanges of the SOPA anti-piracy debate in 2011 and 2012 the entertainment industries demanded tough legislation to deal with the growing menace of overseas pirate sites.

Now, four years later, the emphasis appears to have switched. While KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay are still somewhere on the agenda, Google has transformed into the new bad guy and the pressure is mounting in a way never witnessed before.

The U.S. Copyright Office’s request for comments into the efficacy of the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions has resulted in a wave of condemnation for both Google search and the company’s YouTube platform, with everyone from the major record labels to the MPAA and back again attacking the technology giant.

While the language has often been bitter and at times scathing, an attack this weekend by Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider really ups the ante by stating that YouTube is guilty of the same criminal acts that Megaupload is currently accused of.

“YouTube is guilty of criminal racketeering,” Schneider wrote in an open letter to the platform.

“YouTube has thoroughly twisted, contorted, and abused the original meaning of the outdated DMCA ‘safe harbor’ to create a massive income redistribution scheme, where income is continually transferred from the pockets of musicians and creators of all types, and siphoned directly into their own pockets.”

But Schneider didn’t step off the gas there. The 55-year-old composer and musical director also turned on lawmakers for allowing Google’s lobbying efforts to cloud their judgment.

“Congress seems to be too hypnotized by Alphabet lobbyists, swarming like locusts, for the lawmakers to stand up straight with a firm sense of right and wrong, and defend the Constitution and the citizens of this country,” she added.

“When we analyze the bullying behavior of YouTube, in my opinion YouTube has created an illegal business through intimidation – the classic Webster’s Dictionary definition of racketeering.”

The word ‘opinion’ appears no less than six times in Schneider’s letter, which is probably prudent when accusing one of the world’s most important companies of engaging in organized crime.

Still, Schneider doubles down by insisting that rather than hiding behind the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions, YouTube has lost its right to do so after encouraging its users to become pirates.

“YouTube and its parent Alphabet have obliterated the original meaning of the ‘safe harbor’ law with their bullying and coercive schemes to get their users to disrespect and ignore copyright,” Schneider wrote.

“YouTube has substantially influenced the behavior of hundreds of millions of its users toward infringement, fermenting a veritable pirate orgy. YouTube goes way beyond turning a blind eye to the marauding masses; it actively seduces its users into illegal behavior, and has even managed to make its users believe pirate behavior is beneficial to creators.”

These are bold words but really just the tip of the iceberg of a piece that derides every facet of Google’s “piracy factory” with terminology usually reserved for gangster movies. Accusing YouTube of
being “pusher” of pirate activity on its unsuspecting “users”, Schneider says the company bullies, demonizes, intimidates and threatens rightsholders into submission.

“The sweeping influence of their scam has succeeded in dismantling copyright from the inside, like a flesh-eating virus, influencing citizens to destroy themselves. Any company influencing behavior like this, especially for the purposes of eroding Constitutional rights, should lose their safe harbor,” she adds.

In closing, Schneider has several key demands. Front and center is a call for “takedown and staydown“, the mechanism championed by every Google critic thus far in this DMCA consultation.

Second, the musician wants stricter controls on upload, including the mandatory use of the latest digital fingerprinting technology. How these would allow for fair use isn’t discussed.

Finally, she wants copyright holders’ identities hidden when they carry out a takedown, to stop them being “intimidated” by the public.

The letter in its full glory is available here.

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

The controversy over the prevalence of copyrighted material appearing online without rightsholder permission has ramped up to new levels this year, with a somewhat predictable twist.

Apparently in no position to tackle the hundreds of ‘pirate’ sites online today, organizations including the MPAA and RIAA have turned almost entirely on Google, complaining that the search giant does little to stop infringing content appearing in its results.

With the recent Copyright Office DMCA efficacy consultation ringing in everyone’s ears, fresh attacks on Google are conveyed on an almost daily via friendly blogs run by industry supporters. Meanwhile, Google continues to silently process millions of takedown requests every week, precisely none of which relate to infringements carried out by the company.

But as the public criticism of Google mounts, what is less well reported is how impressively the company continues to deal with the abuses of the DMCA carried out by hundreds if not thousands of copyright holders and their hopeless automated bots. Case in point, recent attacks on the BBC.

As one of the world’s most famous and responsible broadcasters the BBC takes copyright infringement and indeed all aspects of the law extremely seriously. However, according to a whole bunch of copyright holders the company’s website is a hive of infringement.

As illustrated in the image below, the BBC has recently been subjected to a wave of copyright infringement allegations from several copyright holders, none of which appear to have any merit.

One of the worst blunders comes from Indian anti-piracy outfit Markscan who on their homepage refer to themselves as a “knowledge partner” of the MPAA.

In a notice sent to Google aiming to protect the rightsholders behind the 2016 Paris ePrix (electric Formula E racing) Markscan demanded the takedown of several hundred links supposedly showing the event live without a license.

Unfortunately the company’s bots fingered the wrong suspect, first trying to take down the BBC iPlayer version of BBC News and later the BBC’s flagship entertainment channel, BBC1.

We didn’t examine in detail all 574 links sent by Markscan but the Yahoo one shown above is also bogus. Furthermore, most of the links appear to reference live streams of the Paris race which took place on April 23, 2016. The notice wasn’t sent until the day after, long after the race had finished. Overall, Google rejected 97% of the Markscan claims.

But the fun doesn’t end there. Waves of notices sent by anti-piracy outfit Topple Track targeted the BBC late March, each informing Google that the broadcaster is infringing on the rights of recording labels. One demanded the takedown of 38 BBC pages, another 40 pages, and sundry others in between.

What all of these takedowns have in common is that they’re all bogus, they’re all abuses of the DMCA, and every single one was somehow spotted by Google and rejected. As outlined earlier, copyright holders are often extremely critical of Google but it appears that far from accepting every notice coming in, Google is actually taking the time to do the right thing and is regularly saving copyright holders from each other.

Some argue that the relatively small percentage of incorrect notices sent is hardly worth mentioning in the overall scheme of things, but when they are your URLs being removed from search, things take on a different light. Thanks to Google’s vigilance BBC iPlayer remains in its indexes, no doubt the Corporation will be grateful for that.

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

In 2010, U.S. authorities launched Operation in Our Sites, an anti-piracy campaign aimed at pushing copyright-infringing sites offline.

In its early days several high-profile sites including the infamous Ninjavideo were taken down but over time authorities focused more on sites connected to the supply of counterfeit physical goods.

In 2014, however, two music-focused piracy sites were on the radar of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators. RockDizFile.com and RockDizMusic.com were two interconnected operations and in October 2014 disappeared from the Internet to be replaced by the now famous ICE domain seizure banner.

RockDizMusic was an index for popular new music while RockDizFile was a file-storage site acting as a storage facility for its similarly named counterpart. Both were run by Rocky P. Ouprasith of Charlotte, N.C., who was arrested following the execution of a Homeland Security Investigations search warrant.

While the sites had a much lower profile than many of the world’s leading torrent indexes, in 2013 the RIAA branded RockDizFile “as the second largest online file-sharing site in the reproduction and distribution of infringing copies of copyrighted music in the United States.”

Subsequent court documents placed a value of $6 million on the amount of content pirated by the site. Ouprasith entered a guilty plea and last November was sentenced to serve a total of 36 months in prison with two years supervised release. The 23-year-old was also ordered to forfeit almost $51,000 and pay more than $45,000 in restitution.

This week, almost six months after the successful prosecution, the RIAA expressed gratitude to the U.S. law enforcement officers involved in the operation. During a special ceremony L. Carlos Linares, vice president of Anti-Piracy Legal Affairs at the RIAA, thanked ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents stationed in the United States, Canada, France and the Netherlands for bringing Ouprasith’s sites to their knees.

“On behalf of the major U.S. record labels, we are grateful for the excellent work of the ICE agents involved in this historic case,” said RIAA Chairman & CEO Cary Sherman.

“Music creators cannot make a living doing what they love when sites like RockDizMusic and RockDizFile are allowed to permeate the marketplace with illegal music, creating a damaging domino effect throughout our entire economy.

“This agency has repeatedly shown that it will work vigilantly to protect consumers from illicit sites and preserve one of America’s greatest exports – the intellectual property of our creative industries.”

ICE-HSI Executive Associate Director Peter Edge said that cooperation with groups such as the RIAA is a vital aspect of anti-piracy operations.

“Collaboration with industry is absolutely critical to conducting effective intellectual property enforcement. The dedication from agents involved in this case is a testimony to the importance we place on defending the U.S. economy, protecting consumers and cracking down on criminal organizations engaged in counterfeiting and other forms of IP theft,” Edge said.

According to ICE, the RIAA initially referred the case to the Department of Justice’s Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) before it was transferred to Homeland Security Investigations offices in Norfolk, Virginia.

While music piracy remains as rampant as ever, this prosecution sent a message to would-be pirates in the United States that the highest levels of law enforcement are at the RIAA’s disposal, should they be required. That being said, most large sites are operated from outside U.S. borders.

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

Consumers of audio-visual content – video in particular – are often granted access to different libraries of movies and TV shows depending on which country they’re accessing services from.

Netflix is a prime example. US customers get the best selection by far and even subscribers in various member states of Europe are restricted depending on their home country. This means that those traveling within the region can sometimes be denied access to content.

So-called “geo-blocking” is extremely unpopular with consumers who often go to some lengths, via the use of VPNs etc, to unblock content in other regions. However, last December a light appeared at the end of the tunnel when the European Commission published a proposal which would require streaming services to ban the practice as part of the EU’s wider copyright reforms.

“We want to ensure the portability of content across borders. People who legally buy content – films, books, football matches, TV series – must be able to carry it with them anywhere they go in Europe,” said Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market.

The proposals were generally well-received and after a report was published in March which further condemned widespread geo-blocking, it appeared that the European Commission was determined to move ahead with its plan.

However, a leaked document just published by Politico (subscription) reveals that the EC intends to propose exemptions for audio-visual services such as Netflix.

The revelation is tucked away on page 11 of the draft which states the following:

“The material scope of the proposal is aligned with that of Directive 2006/123/EC to the extent possible in order to ensure maximum legal certainty for traders and customers,” it reads.

“This means that, inter alia, non-economic services of general interest, transport services, audio-visual services, gambling activities, healthcare services and certain social services are excluded from the scope of this Regulation.”

Later, on page 18, the European Commission again references exemptions for services offering products that are subject to territorial licensing.

“Audio-visual services, including services the main feature of which is the provision of access to broadcasts of sports events and which are provided on the basis of exclusive territorial licenses, are therefore excluded from the scope of this Regulation,” the draft adds.

While the EC’s proposals are likely to be seen as a negative for consumers, copyright holders will be pleased that the prospect of having to rewrite their licensing agreements has disappeared into the distance.

It is believed that the European Commission will officially unveil these proposals during the next two weeks. Should they be made official they’re expected to come into force during 2017.

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

In 2013, anti-piracy prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad filed a motion targeting two of The Pirate Bay’s most recognizable names, ThePirateBay.se (the site’s main domain) and PirateBay.se (a lesser used alternative).

Rather than take on the site and its operators directly, Ingblad filed a complaint against Punkt SE (IIS), the organization responsible for Sweden’s top level .SE domain.

Ingbland argued that since The Pirate Bay is an illegal site the domains are tools used to infringe copyright and should be suspended. Furthermore, the prosecutor insisted that as the controller of those domains, IIS should also be held liable for copyright infringement.

IIS naturally took an opposing stance and said that any decision on the fate of the domains should be decided by the court. Meanwhile, IIS refused to suspend The Pirate Bay’s domains.

The case was heard in April 2015 and a month later the Stockholm District Court ruled that The Pirate Bay should forfeit both ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se.

But despite ordering the domain seizures the case against IIS was essentially rejected, with the District Court dismissing the prosecution’s case and awarding the registry close to $40,000 in costs. As a result the prosecution took the case to appeal.

This morning, however, the Svea Court of Appeal handed down its decision which upholds the decision of the Stockholm District Court.

“In common with the District Court ruling the Court of Appeal finds that there is a basis for confiscation since the domain names assisted crimes under the Copyright Act,” the Svea Court of Appeal said in a statement.

This means that ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se are now set to be forfeited to the Swedish state and The Pirate Bay will have to find alternatives.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, IIS counsel Elisabeth Ekstrand says that her organization is pleased that the decision of the District Court has been upheld.

“We are pleased that the Court of Appeal chose to uphold the decision from the District Court. We think it is good that this issue has been examined. Now we need some time to read through the verdict before we can make any further comments,” Ekstrand told TF.

Both of the domains are held in the name of Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij and the District Court previously ruled that he is the owner.

“The prosecutor’s primary claim with respect to Fredrik Neij should be upheld and domain names should be confiscated from him in accordance with the Copyright Act,” the Court said.

However, speaking with TorrentFreak a few minutes ago, Neij denied that he is the owner of the domains and will file an appeal to the Supreme Court to protest.

“I will appeal on the grounds that I do not own the domain and that I did not commit copyright infringement as I am not involved with the site anymore,” Neij explained.

All of the parties involved are allowed to appeal so this case seems far from over.

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

When Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom launched his new Mega cloud-storage company in January 2013, the company was focused on one key issue – privacy.

Mega encrypts all files uploaded by users, meaning that no one other than the uploader can see what is in those files unless he or she shares their private key with a third party. But while Mega is secure in many respects, users can not expect complete anonymity.

From the start Mega made it clear it would carry communication logs, the IP addresses used by subscribers to access the service, and other personal information.

Nevertheless, although Dotcom is no longer part of the company (his current stance is actually one of hostility), Mega’s commitment to privacy has been maintained by its current operators. Just recently, however, their stance of keeping user information private has been challenged in court.

The case involves a hack on a Kazakhstan government computer system which is said to have taken place in August 2014 but was not unearthed until 2015.

According to the Kazakh authorities the hackers made off with a trove of information including thousands of sensitive documents and emails between the government and advisors in the United States. These were then uploaded and stored on Mega by either the hackers or individuals closely linked to them.

In order to begin tracking the hackers down, in May last year Kazakhstan filed a lawsuit in the United States against 100 unnamed “John Does” seeking an injunction and damages. The EFF became involved in the case after the Kazakhstan government tried to stop Respublika, a site which reports critically on Kazakhstan’s ruling regime, from publishing the leaks.

Subsequently the Southern District of New York sought assistance from authorities in New Zealand in an effort to gain access to the hackers’ personal details. The request was processed by the New Zealand High Court which was asked to order Mega to hand over the information it holds on the supposed hacker(s).

The application was opposed by Mega, who told the Court that handing over the information would undermine the privacy of its users and was not guaranteed to assist in the U.S. hacking case.

However, in a ruling handed down today Mega’s attempt at protecting user privacy was dismissed by the High Court.

“[This] information is neither particularly revealing nor particularly sensitive; it does not, for instance, carry the same degree of confidentiality as an individual’s email or phone records,” wrote Justice Simon Moore.

“Therefore, I am satisfied that the privacy interests in this case should not carry significant weight. I am also satisfied that any potential harm could be mitigated by the imposition of properly worded protection orders”

As a result, Mega will now have to reveal the IP addresses, email addresses, contact and payment details of the users in question. When it does, that information will have to be sent to the New York district court, although Mega will be compensated for its trouble.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Mega chairman Stephen Hall says that he has concerns about the Kazakhstan Government and the process it has undertaken.

“The Kazakhstan Government has a poor record as documented by international groups (1,2). Mega holds concerns that this is not a mere civil case about seeking damages from a hacker as the only damages that have been mentioned are the costs of the investigation,” Hall says.

“By construing it as a civil case [the Kazakhstan Government] has bypassed the usual discretion that needs to be exercised by a Minister of the NZ Government under the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act 1992 process.

Furthermore, Hall says that Mega is not convinced that the party who uploaded the content to Mega is the original hacker as no evidence to that end has been provided. Additionally, it appears there has been little effort to take the content down.

“Mega has only received one request to take down any of the material. This request which related to the contents of a Gmail account of an official in the Finance Ministry was implemented immediately,” he explains.

“However, takedown requests were not received for the remaining material, suggesting that finding the hacker was more important than preserving secrecy of the material.”

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

In many countries it’s accepted that whoever commits a crime or a civil tort in the file-sharing space is the person that should be held directly responsible for it.

For example, if someone shares the latest movie online without permission, that is the only person copyright holders should have an interest in for that particular offense. Certainly, innocent third parties should not be held liable.

In Germany, however, the position is more complex. Due to a concept known as Störerhaftung, a third party who played no intentional part in someone else’s infringements can be held liable for them. This type of liability has raised its head in many file-sharing cases where open WiFi owners have been considered liable for other people’s infringements.

Now, however, this stifling situation is probably in its dying days. According to a Spiegel report, Germany’s ruling coalition have agreed to abolish the so-called ‘interferer liability’.

This means that both private and small scale WiFi operators (such as café owners) will soon enjoy the same freedom from liability enjoyed by commercial operators.
No splash-pages or password locks will be required meaning that open WiFi hotspots will at last become as freely available in Germany as they are already in countries such as France and the UK.

Pressure had been mounting on the German government following a European Court of Justice opinion published in March which held that entities operating unsecured wireless networks should not be held liable for the copyright infringements of third parties.

The case involves Pirate Party member Tobias McFadden who received a claim from music company Sony who alleged that his open WiFi was used to offer an album without permission. Sony demanded that McFadden prevent future infringement by password protecting his network, blocking file-sharing ports, and logging/blocking users sharing copyrighted content. The Pirate objected to Sony’s claims of liability and the case went to the European Court of Justice.

The final judgment from the ECJ is not expected for a few months but in most cases early recommendations from experts are upheld by the ruling judge.

Should all go smoothly, the removal of the liability from German law has the potential to shake up the massive file-sharing settlement letter business. While those accused of infringement already have some means to fight back, the absence of third-party liability for connection owners could remove much of the pressure placed on them to settle, whether they were directly involved in an infringement or not.

According to reports the legislative amendments are set to be passed by Parliament next week and could be in place as early as this fall.

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

In various publications and reports in recent months, the UK has been described as a world leader in intellectual property enforcement. Indeed, news of various operations and dozens of arrests carried out by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) have regularly appeared in the media.

This morning the UK Government has announced that it intends to build on this reputation with the publication of a new strategy titled Protecting Creativity, Supporting Innovation: IP Enforcement 2020.

The document outlines a four-year strategy which aims to provide an environment in which UK rightsholders have access to “proportionate and effective mechanisms to resolve disputes and tackle IP infringement” both at home and overseas.

The strategy has six key points, with reducing the level of illegal online content placed at the top of the list and strengthening the law closely after. The government also wants to increase its educational programs with the aim of building respect for intellectual property.

A significant emphasis on dealing with online infringement sees the government focus on a number of key areas, from those sharing files online to the sites facilitating infringement. Search engines also come under the spotlight.

Interestingly, the main points are all framed at helping the consumer to both recognize and then avoid copyright infringing websites.

Notice and takedown, notice and trackdown

Given the Copyright Office DMCA review currently underway in the United States, it’s no surprise to find a review of notice and takedown procedures heading the list in the UK. The government says that it wants to “improve and streamline the process” while considering the scope for introducing a Code of Practice for intermediaries.

More controversially, the four-year strategy also includes the possibility of introducing a system of “notice and trackdown” which would enable rightsholders to not only send notices but also take action directly against identified infringers.

Safe harbor (or platform liability as its referred to in the report) will come under the spotlight as well, with the government seeking clarification from the EU on current rules.

Dealing with pirating Internet users

On top of the “notice and trackdown” elements detailed above (presumably for the minority who post infringing links on websites etc), the report envisions effort being placed on encouraging consumers to buy from legitimate sources. Mainly, this will be achieved through the long-delayed warning notice system under development at ISPs.

“This government will also build on progress made under our voluntary anti-piracy projects to warn internet users when they are breaching copyright and work to ensure that search engines do not link to the worst-offending sites. This is in recognition of the fact that the clear majority of consumers want to do the right thing, to abide by the law and support our creative industries,” says Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe.

“Helping those consumers to understand what is, and is not, allowed online, and helping guide them to legal content when they search, will help ensure that the vast appetite that exists for new and creative content benefits the legitimate creators, and not those criminals who cynically exploit the hard work of others.”

To help users make the right choice, the government is promising to give more support to industry initiatives such as FindanyFilm.com and the GetitRight campaign while encouraging education campaigns focused on children and students.

“We will work with intermediaries, rights holders and trade bodies to highlight all the UK’s legal sources of content,” the government says.

Targeting pirate sites, services, and their operators

In addition to honing the existing Infringing Website List (IWL), emphasis will be placed on depriving sites of their income via the “Follow the Money” approach and reducing the numbers of visitors they currently enjoy.

“We will continue to work with brand advertisers, advertising intermediaries and
law enforcement partners to highlight the value of the IWL and will support groups
such as the Digital Trading Standards group (DTSG) in promoting their UK good
practice principles,” the report notes.

Existing efforts to deprive sites of the ability to process funds will be maintained, with the government promising to seek commitments from payment processors such as PayPal, MasterCard and VISA to make it more easy for service to be declined following complaints from law enforcement.

Of course, no “pirate site” strategy would be complete without the inclusion of a blocking regime and as expected the UK government leaves no stone unturned.

“This government has also pledged to protect intellectual property by continuing to require internet service providers to block sites that carry large amounts of illegal content, including their proxies,” Baroness Neville-Rolfe explains.

“The UK has a good track record in the development of injunctive relief for online infringement, but this is something that must be preserved, and even enhanced to cope with the sheer numbers of infringing websites that spring up every month, and the new business models they employ.”

The government further sees an opportunity to make the blocking process easier to access for smaller businesses.

“We will continue our work to support businesses of any size to navigate and utilize the civil court system by improving the guidance that is currently available, including guidance on the minimum levels of evidence required for website blocking orders, and by ensuring that court judgments and cases are published on a regular and consistent basis,” the report reads.

The UK also sees potential for cooperation with the EU on injunctions, more on that in a moment.

Interestingly, it appears that ‘pirate’ set-top streaming boxes have rightsholders and by extension the government pretty rattled. They get a special mention in the report with the government noting that a greater understanding of the challenges they present is required. Furthermore, the report says that the government will consider what kind of new legislation might be needed to tackle them.

Search engines and social media

According to the report, the government will work with search engines and social media platforms to reduce the availability of infringing content. This will include a review of their current “notice and takedown” procedures and see the government considering the options for rightsholders to challenge infringers under “notice and trackdown” as detailed above.

The review process will also determine whether Codes of Practice are required for platforms including Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Overseas cooperation

While there are issues locally, the government sees the piracy problem as one to be solved cooperatively on an international basis. To this end there will be requests to partners overseas to carry out “domain and hosting enforcement action” when UK interests are at stake.

“This will include exploring with European colleagues the options for mutual recognition of the evidence required for injunctions and court orders in various member states,” the report reads.

This item is of particular interest since around 1,000 ‘pirate’ sites are already blocked by injunction in the UK. Streamlining the process EU-wide would be a major bonus for rightsholders.

The UK Government’s four-year IP enforcement strategy can be found here (pdf)

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

Every month millions of people download and share movies, TV shows, music, software and ebooks without obtaining permission from copyright holders.

In most countries that activity is illegal, meaning that huge numbers of Internet users are breaking the law on a daily basis.

While there are plenty of criminals around, most illegal downloaders don’t equate their hobby to being tantamount to theft, despite huge efforts by copyright holders to paint it so. To most it just doesn’t ‘feel’ the same and now scientists in Australia think they may have discovered why.

A three-stage study published by Robert Eres, a PhD student within the Social Neuroscience lab led by Dr Pascal Molenberghs at the Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, investigated why normally law-abiding people don’t have a problem with breaking laws which cover intangible items.

To that end the researchers investigated what happens inside the brains of people when they pirate intangible digital content versus stealing a physical item such as a handbag.

To begin, the researchers issued a questionnaire to discover whether people are more likely to “steal” non-tangible items (such as movie or music files) than their physical counterparts (DVDs and CDs). They found that their test subjects were indeed more likely to “steal” items that have no physical embodiment, no matter what their cost or associated risk of getting caught.

Next up the researchers carried out two sets of brain scans to try and understand why people are more happy to “steal” items that have no physical presence.

“The first brain imaging experiment revealed that people’s brains were much more active when trying to imagine intangible compared to tangible objects, which suggests people have more difficulty with representing intangible items,” the researchers write.

During the second set of scans, test subjects were asked to imagine themselves illegally or legally obtaining physical and digital versions of items such as movies, music, TV shows and software.

What the researchers found was that when imagining stealing an item, participants showed much more activation in the lateral orbital frontal cortex of their brains. Among other things, this part of the brain is associated with feelings of moral sensitivity and it was much more active when test subjects were thinking about stealing physical items than it was for intangible items such as digital files.

“The findings from the two brain imaging experiments suggest that people are processing the intangible and tangible objects very differently within their brains,” Mr Eres says.

Social Neuroscience lab head Dr Pascal Molenberghs says that this suggests that people have less problem breaking laws covering intangible items since they experience more difficulties imagining them so their brains feel less guilty when they “steal” them.

“Evolutionarily, we have interacted more with physical goods – particularly in respect to ownership so that is why we are hardwired to respect these more compared to intangible items such as ideas or software,” Dr Molenberghs says.

Finally, the researchers believe that the results of study have wider implications to other areas of online life, beyond Internet piracy.

“Overall, the data presented here suggests that the differences we see in moral behaviors (particularly concerning contexts of non-physical interactions; piracy, online surveillance and espionage) may be due to the differences in their neural representation and the discerning level of guilt felt for tangible items compared with intangible,” they conclude.

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

Like everyone reading this piece I have often seen pirated content on YouTube. The site is littered with hundreds maybe thousands of movies and TV shows, none of them uploaded by copyright holders.

Equally, if one wants to listen to just about any rare song, no matter how old, a YouTube search will uncover it. In most cases those songs haven’t been uploaded by their owners but when looking for any kind of desirable content, you have to have massive self-control to immediately click off.

Well this week, I did. And I was pretty infuriated while doing so.

While browsing one evening I noticed what I believed to be a new video from the Hydraulic Press Channel (HPC). For those who aren’t familiar with HPC it’s a channel, on YouTube, dedicated to crushing things in a hydraulic press. It’s almost as simple as that. It’s basic. It’s fun. And in a few months it has amassed a huge following.

What I clicked on was a video compilation of the top 10 things crushed by the channel, but something was wrong. The massively entertaining voice of channel host and resident crusher Lauri Vuohensilta was entirely missing. His wife wasn’t giggling in the background as she usually is either.

In fact, all I was witnessing was items getting crushed, one after the other and it left me cold. Then it dawned on me. I looked at the uploader name expecting the worst. I didn’t recognize it. Yep, this was an imposter. A freebooter.

This was definitely not the Hydraulic Press Channel and a quick look at the video notes confirmed it.

“A compilation of everything hydraulic press channel has crushed yet. None of it is mine, all belongs to hydraulic press channel.”

So why take it then? It’s already available for free on the official channel, I found myself shouting.

Worse still, this “stolen” video had amassed more than 400,000 views and i’d contributed to that not just once but twice when I went back for the screenshot. Somehow I felt disproportionately annoyed that this stupid compilation was taking revenue away from the hugely funny Lauri and his giggling wife.

And in that i’m not alone. At the time of writing a third of the video’s votes are in the downward direction versus around one in 35 on the original channel. Furthermore, the comment section is littered with people angry that RandomStuff98 “stole” the content from Hydraulic Press Channel (HPC).

And here’s another interesting twist. I chatted with a couple of uploaders on a popular torrent site and although one didn’t express an opinion either way, the other said that he didn’t agree with people “stealing” YouTuber’s videos. This is coming from someone who uploads at least two dozen torrents a day.

With that in mind, one has to question how many of the outraged commenters on YouTube would also have concerns over the ethics of grabbing the latest leaked DVD screener from The Pirate Bay. My estimate is not very many of them.

I wasn’t sure why people “stealing” HPC’s content was so irritating but I presumed that it was partially down to the fact that the guy running the channel feels like “one of us”. He seems like an ordinary guy that you could go out and have a beer and a laugh with. That in itself makes it more personal, I suppose.

To get a bit more of an insight I shared my thoughts with musician and YouTube star Dan Bull who has tens of millions of hits under his belt. Did he have any idea why myself, a prolific torrent uploader, and plenty of YouTuber’s feel protective of more ‘amateur’ content?

“I think I can give you an explanation as to why mirroring a YouTube video is ethically different to sharing a Hollywood movie despite them being the same legally,” Dan told me.

“It’s a difficult topic as the same rationale that can be used for file-sharing, or abolition of copright, can be used to say that this kind of behavior is fine.
However, if you look a bit more closely, it’s really much more of a dick move than hosting a torrent file,” he continued.

“When you share a movie, you’re making something accessible to people who perhaps otherwise wouldn’t be able to see it. In contrast, when you simply mirror someone else’s YouTube video on your own channel, it’s not making the media any more accessible, it’s just redirecting traffic from the original uploader, who in most cases on YouTube is a small-time independent content creator.”

Dan notes that the DMCA and Content ID on YouTube allow original creators to takedown or monetize mirrored content, but he prefers not to use them.

“I am not a fan of either of those practices in any case as I don’t believe in the validity of intellectual property. But I do think that when uploading someone else’s content, you should always take a moment to consider whether it’s a dick move or not,” he concludes.

Of course, infringement is infringement, whether it’s ripping off the work of Hydraulic Press Channel or sharing the movies made by the studio members of the MPAA. Yet somehow it feels quite different. Few (if any) YouTube users complain about people uploading infringing blockbuster movies to the site yet HPC “pirates” get it with both barrels from commenters with no obvious respect for copyright law, only a sense of what is “right”.

If there was a way to bottle that kind of reaction and apply it to mainstream content, Hollywood might crack the piracy problem. But what aspect of this strange situation can they harness, what’s the secret recipe, and how can it be utilized? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

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