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Wednesday, December 18th, 2019

    Time Event
    10:55a
    Cox Wants Judge, Not Jury, to Rule on Crucial Piracy Liability Questions

    Regular Internet providers are being put under increasing pressure for not doing enough to curb copyright infringement.

    Music rights company BMG got the ball rolling a few years ago when it won its piracy liability lawsuit against Cox Communications.

    The ISP eventually agreed to pay millions of dollars in damages, but that didn’t end the troubles. Last year a group of RIAA labels filed a similar piracy liability suit which is currently under trial.

    For more than two weeks, Cox and the music companies have presented their case to the jury in a Virginia federal court. However, now that both parties have been heard, the ISP would prefer the court to rule on the matter.

    Yesterday Cox submitted a motion for a judgment of federal law. If granted, this will leave the judgment of several crucial issues up to the court instead of the jury.

    Such a request is allowed when the evidence can only lead the jury to reach one conclusion, or if the verdict would be based on speculation and conjecture. Both of these issues can play a role in this case, according to Cox.

    In its motion, the ISP asks the court to rule that there is no evidence of direct infringement by Cox subscribers. This is a crucial matter, as it’s a requirement to prove contributory and vicarious infringement, which are at the basis of the liability claims.

    According to Cox, the music companies presented no evidence which proves that all affected subscribers reproduced pirated content. While it’s clear that subscribers made music available through BitTorrent, these files could have been purchased legally, the company argues.

    “The MarkMonitor system cannot determine whether the purported copies of Plaintiffs’ works on devices associated with Cox subscribers’ IP addresses were initially purchased from iTunes, legally uploaded from a purchased CD, or obtained from another legal source,” Cox notes.

    MarkMonitor’s tracking system revealed that subscribers made files available for others to download. However, it didn’t always show that these files were illegally obtained. According to a witness, most subscribers already had a full copy and ‘only’ 15% were still downloading files.

    The 15% figure would leave the jury with guess-work, Cox argues, which can be a critical shortcoming.

    Furthermore, it’s argues that the music companies have no proof that any subscribers distributed infringing copies. while there was an easy option to actually prove the matter if the tracking systems were configured properly.

    “The easy and obvious way to prove that a Cox subscriber ‘actually disseminated’ a particular recording would have been to use a file-sharing protocol to actually download that recording directly from the subscriber’s computer,” Cox writes.

    The music companies also failed to show that piracy acted as a “draw” to potential customers, the ISP notes.

    “There is no evidence showing that any subscribers were drawn to Cox’s service by the availability of unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs’ works, or for that matter the availability of any infringing works.”

    In addition, the ISP argues that it can’t be held liable for alleged infringements of business subscribers. While Cox was made aware of these, businesses can have hundreds or thousands of users, and Cox can’t identify these based on a single IP-address.

    Based on these and various other arguments Cox argues that it’s clearly not liable for contributory or vicarious infringement. As such, it asks the court to rule on these issues, instead of leaving it up to the jury.

    Finally, the ISP requests a similar judgment when it comes to potential damages. The music companies request statutory damages for sound recordings, compositions, compilations, and other derivatives that point to the same tracks. As such, it requests to limit the damage claims to one award per work.

    The above is obviously all based on Cox’s viewpoint and the music companies are likely to argue the opposite. Many of these issues were previously argued earlier in the legal proceedings when Cox asked for summary judgment.

    At the time, the court opted to leave the issues open for the jury to decide. Whether it will rule differently now that both parties have presented their arguments in court will become apparent in the near future.

    A copy of Cox Communication’s motion for a judgment of federal law is available here (pdf).

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

    4:08p
    Documentary Detailing How “Geniuses Steal” Hit With Blurred Lines Copyright Complaint

    The phrase declaring that there is “nothing new under the sun” is well known.

    At least in part, it suggests that everything we say, do, or create is copied from the people or material we learn from, after being processed through the intricacies of our own experiences.

    This ‘human remix’ theory is the premise of a new documentary series produced by Copy-Me.org, a group that was featured on the main page of The Pirate Bay back in 2013. Titled the Creativity Delusion, the latest installment in the series declares that “Geniuses Steal.”

    “We know geniuses are not real and minds don’t have Eureka moments. But we still cling to the idea of an original artist. That romantic notion of someone who creates something out of nothing, with their mind alone,” the introduction reads.

    Speaking with TorrentFreak, Copy-Me’s Alex Lungu further explains that the episode focuses on the rarity of originality in history, art, and inventions.

    “From Morse to Beethoven, from Shakespeare to Orwell, from Lynch to Tarkovsky, everything is a constant remix,” Lungu says.

    “It makes us feel good to believe in a somewhat supernatural idea of a creator. But I think it’s much more liberating for anyone who makes anything to not put so much pressure on themselves, as it’s too much already. And yeah, one of the biggest downsides is that we lock our culture up believing that this will somehow lead to more creativity, not less.”


    In common with any good documentary, The Creativity Delusion: Geniuses Steal goes into detail, providing clear examples of well-known quotes, pieces of art, film scenes, musical compositions and more, that were either copied from pre-existing works or provided inspiration for new creations.

    Unfortunately, uploading such a documentary to YouTube is a risky endeavor, since the platform’s automatic ContentID system has no way to determine whether a piece of content had been truly pirated or should be subject to fair use exemptions.

    As a result, after the documentary was uploaded on December 8, 2019, it was immediately targeted by YouTube’s bots. They determined that highlighting the similarities between well-known tracks, such as the Robin Thicke/Pharrell Williams track Blurred Lines and Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give it Up, with appropriate short samples, are an infringement of the labels’ copyrights.

    This resulted in the documentary being subjected to not just one but four separate ContentID matches.

    Copy-Me disputed all of the claims but fast forward ten days and the hits against the video remain in place and look to remain so for another three weeks. The disputes are reportedly “under review” but in the meantime, the entities behind these tracks get the benefit of the doubt that their content is being used illegally.

    While the documentary highlights many clear instances of artists copying or basing their work on that of others, the fact that the section focusing on Blurred Lines seems to have caused the most issues is ironic, to say the least.

    After a long legal battle that finally came to a close in 2018, a judge ruled that Thicke and Pharrell must pay $5m to the family of Marvin Gaye for copyright infringement because Blurred Lines bore too many similarities to Got to Give it Up.

    Interestingly, just after that case went to an unsuccessful appeal, more than 200 musicians filed an amicus curiae brief in support of Thicke and Williams which warned that the verdict in the case “threatens to punish songwriters for creating new music that is inspired by prior works.”

    This, of course, is the entire point of the Copy-Me documentary, that all artists and creators in various niches rely on those who went before to provide ideas and artistic inspiration. There truly is nothing new under the sun, but sadly that also includes highly questionable copyright hits on YouTube, pointing out that very thing.

    “We used samples [from the songs] to make the point that the biggest copyright lawsuit of the decade ($5m) is a travesty that can have serious repercussions on inspiration and creativity,” Lungu says.

    “The two songs are similar in the way any two funk songs are similar, and we play other samples from other songs to make that point. There’s no other way to show that… other than to actually play them. This is clearly covered by fair use: to use a fragment of a song in an educational material, for non-commercial purposes to make a point about that very song.”

    It remains to be seen whether this problem will be resolved quickly, or indeed resolved at all. However, Lungu firmly believes that if a platform like YouTube uses automated detection systems, there must be a clear and simple way to dispute false positives.

    “[The platform] should explain what you can do in the easiest way possible. It should explain how copyright actually works and how using someone else’s work can be completely legal, even without anyone’s permission,” he says.

    “Copyright isn’t property, but not that many people know that. And we should have a strict way of taxing those who claim works that aren’t theirs. Why should repeat infringers have a three-strike policy, but repeat abusers shouldn’t?”

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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