RIAA

[Analogman]

Studios win $110 million in TorrentSpy suit

 

By Leslie Simmons Thu May 8, 5:19 AM ET

 

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - TorrentSpy bit the dust only weeks ago, shuttering its peer-to-peer file-sharing site. Now a federal judge has ordered the company to pay the Motion Picture Association of America $110 million for infringement of thousands of copyrighted film and TV shows.

 

In a four-page final ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper entered the multimillion-dollar judgment against TorrentSpy parent company Valence Media for willfully inducing, contributing and vicariously allowing copyright infringement on its Web site.

 

Cooper also issued a permanent injunction against the Web site, which shut down March 24.

 

The MPAA, which represents the Hollywood studios, filed suit against TorrentSpy in February 2006, claiming that the site's torrent files were illegally uploaded.

 

"This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites," MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said. "The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios."

 

Whether the MPAA will collect the $110 million from TorrentSpy remains to be seen. Court records show that Valence and TorrentSpy principles Justin Bunnell and Wes Parker have filed for bankruptcy.

 

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

[Analogman]

Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

Insider provides details of new 'protocol agnostic' solution

04:15PM Tuesday May 06 2008 by Karl

tags: business

[Analogman]

How It Does It: The RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates

 

 

To catch college students trading copyrighted songs online, the Recording Industry Association of America uses the same file-sharing software that online pirates love, an RIAA representative told The Chronicle at the organization's offices during a private demonstration of how it catches alleged music pirates. He also said the group does not single out specific colleges in its investigations.

[ction]

http://torrentfreak.com/oink-investigation...arrests-080530/

[Guest Cousin Tupelo]

No doubt the RIAA makes a lot of money, and surely much of that is at the expense of the artists, but if no one buys music, who's going to produce the artists' albums?

 

Technology is in the hands of most any band to produce their own stuff. Distribution is the big issue -- getting into Best Buy, Circuit City, Target and Wal-Mart. But with MySpace, YouTube, iTunes and other venues, I think RIAA is also worried that they're guarding the front door and the artists are going round back.

 

The only place these bands are making money from is touring and merchandise.

[bjorn_skurj]

http://torrentfreak.com/oink-investigation...arrests-080530/

May 30, 2008 at 17:14 by Mr.Afghanistan

 

UK Sucks

It

[Analogman]

British Police have just confirmed that several users of BitTorrent site OiNK were arrested recently. TorrentFreak broke the news last Friday after sitting on the story for a while but the mainstream press have been holding back over the weekend, waiting for confirmation. Just seconds ago, confirmation came.

 

Last week TorrentFreak reported that Cleveland Police had arrested a user of OiNK, who was questioned and later released on police bail.

 

We also discovered that other people had been arrested and deduced from our sources that this police action was taken against alleged pre-release uploaders - those that share before the retail date.

 

A few minutes ago in an email to TorrentFreak, Cleveland Police confirmed that a total of six individuals were arrested, all in connection with the uploading of pre-release music.

 

Three of the arrests were made on Friday 23rd May and three more on Wednesday 28th May. The arrested individuals are five men aged between 19 and 33, and a 28-year-old woman.

 

Suspects were taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints. According to our sources, they were arrested on suspicion of

[Analogman]

Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

Monday June 2, 5:37 pm ET

By Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer

Time Warner Cable starts customer trial with metered Internet access in Texas

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?

 

Time Warner Cable Inc. customers -- and, later, others -- may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful.

 

ADVERTISEMENT

On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.

 

Metered billing is an attempt to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among Time Warner Cable's subscribers, said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology.

 

Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.

 

"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Leddy said.

 

Metered usage is common overseas, and other U.S. cable providers are looking at ways to rein in heavy users. Most have download caps, but some keep the caps secret so as not to alarm the majority of users, who come nowhere close to the limits. Time Warner Cable appears to be the first major ISP to charge for going over the limit: Other companies warn, then suspend, those who go over.

 

Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured differently.

 

Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.

 

A possible stumbling block for Time Warner Cable is that customers have had little reason so far to pay attention to how much they download from the Internet, or know much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could scare off new subscribers.

 

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

 

Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a "gas gauge" on the company's Web page.

 

The company won't apply the gigabyte surcharges for the first two months. It has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but only new subscribers will be part of the trial.

 

Billing by the hour was common for dial-up service in the U.S. until AOL introduced an unlimited-usage plan in 1996. Flat-rate, unlimited-usage plans have been credited with encouraging consumer Internet use by making billing easy to understand.

 

"The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL," information-technology consultant George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP practices in April.

 

Metered billing could also put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream of Internet video for as little as $8.99 per month.

 

Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, has suggested that it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month. Bend Cable Communications in Bend, Ore., used to have multitier bandwidth allowances, like the ones Time Warner Cable will test, but it abandoned them in favor of an across-the-board 100-gigabyte cap. Bend charges $1.50 per extra gigabyte consumed in a month.

 

http://www.timewarnercable.com

 

http://www.bendcable.com

[Analogman]

BitTorrent seed farmer found guilty, faces 10 years in jail

 

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: June 29, 2008 - 08:18PM CT

 

The MPAA has won a jury conviction for criminal copyright infringement, opening the doors to many more cases like it in the future. A federal jury convicted 26-year-old Daniel Dove for both felony copyright infringement as well as conspiracy, the US Department of Justice announced on Friday. Dove, the last remaining administrator of EliteTorrents.com who did not plead guilty, now faces up to 10 years in prison.

 

The case goes all the way back to 2005, when investigators raided EliteTorrents and shut the site down with the help of the MPAA. At the time, EliteTorrents was one of the most popular Bit Torrent trackers around and had gained notoriety for making available prerelease movies like Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. Search warrants were served on 10 people in the US and the site admins immediately faced criminal charges.

 

Two administrators, Scott McCausland and Grant Stanley, pleaded guilty in 2006 in hopes of avoiding a jury trial. Stanley got the first sentencing of five months in jail along with a $3,000 fine. McCausland also ended up serving five months in prison before going on probation, part of which involved an odd request from his probation officer to start using Windows (instead of Linux) so that monitoring software could be installed on the machine. Dove was the last holdout, refusing to plead guilty and apparently hoping that the jury would throw him a bone when he finally went to trial.

 

According to the DoJ, the jury was presented with evidence that Dove was in charge of a small group (known as the "Uploaders"), recruiting members with high-speed Internet connections to seed illegal content to the rest of EliteTorrents' users. Dove apparently ran a server himself, distributing the content to the Uploaders first before they seeded it to the rest of the world at large. Other evidence presented to the jury included "massive amounts" of software, video games, and music being made available through EliteTorrents, much of which was before they were officially available in stores. The evidence was apparently enough to convince the jury of Dove's involvement. He now faces up to 10 years in prison and will be sentenced on September 9, 2008.

 

The FBI and DoJ don't often go after file sharers as aggressively as they have in this case, but they appear willing to act when evidence collection has already been done for them. US Attorney John Brownlee's office acknowledged in 2006 that much of the evidence used in the case was supplied by the MPAA, showing that the recording industry can indeed convince the government to help fight its legal battles. With legal precedent on its side from cases like this and Jammie Thomas (even if Thomas may soon get a new trial), the recording industry is likely even more confident than ever before. The MPAA and RIAA are sure to keep going, supplying new evidence to law enforcement in hopes of winning even more convictions.

[Analogman]

Comcast Ordered to Stop BitTorrent Traffic Interference

Written by Ernesto on July 11, 2008

 

ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for years now, but only recently has this turned into a political issue. In a huge victory for BitTorrent users, the FCC has now announced that it will order Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic.

 

comcast throttlingAlmost a year ago we first reported that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Now, after numerous debates and false promises from Comcast, the FCC has ruled that Comcast

[uncool2pillow]

Go FCC! Did I just say that?

[Analogman]

BitTorrent Users Seek Compensation from Comcast

Written by Ernesto on July 23, 2008

 

Comcast is facing a nationwide class action lawsuit for cutting off the BitTorrent traffic of their subscribers. The lawsuit aims to stop the misleading advertising used by Comcast, and to compensate BitTorrent users for the disruption to their service.

 

comcastAugust last year we reported - based on findings from network expert Robb Topolski - that Comcast actively disconnected BitTorrent users. Comcast initially denied our allegations, even though we had proof to back up these claims, and they continued to do so for months. Now, a year later, there is no doubt that Comcast offered a degraded service to BitTorrent users, and they now face a nationwide class action lawsuit (doc).

 

 

[mfwahl]

Comcast got bitch-slapped by FCC, but I would have liked to have seen some fines.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-comc...0,7253725.story

 

By a 3-2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission found that the cable company failed to tell its subscribers about the blocking, lied about it when confronted by the commission and tried to cripple online video sites that compete with its on-demand service.

[Analogman]

Music, movie lobbyists push to spy on your Net traffic

Posted by Declan McCullagh

 

Shira Perlmutter of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an RIAA affiliate, talks up the benefits for broadband providers of policing users' online activities.

 

ASPEN, Colo.--Recording industry and motion picture lobbyists are renewing their push to convince broadband providers to monitor customers and detect copyright infringements, claiming the concept is working abroad and should be adopted in the United States.

 

A representative of the recording industry said on Monday that her companies would prefer to enter into voluntary "partnerships" with Internet service providers, but pointedly noted that some governments are mandating such surveillance "if you don't work something out."

 

"Despite our best efforts, we can't do this alone," said Shira Perlmutter, a vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. "We need the help of ISPs. They have the technical ability to manage the flow over their pipes...The good news is that we're beginning to see some of these solutions emerge, in particular in Europe and Asia." (IFPI is the Recording Industry Association of America's international affiliate.)

 

During a discussion at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's technology policy conference here, Perlmutter said one filtering solution would involve identifying particular files that are (or are not) permitted to be sent to particular destinations. That would be a "very tailored approach," she said.

 

The idea isn't exactly new: the Motion Picture Association of America said nearly a year ago that ISPs should police piracy, and one of its member companies asked federal regulators to make this a requirement. AT&T said in January that it's testing technology that would let it become a copyright network cop, and the MPAA subsequently suggested that piracy-prone users should have their accounts terminated because they're "hogging the bandwidth."

 

In a statement sent to CNET News on Monday, an AT&T spokesman said: "There is nothing inherently wrong with P2P applications, which are legal technologies that are used and welcomed on our network. We have consistently said that AT&T will not become an enforcement agent on the Internet, nor will we inhibit the ability of our customers to access any legal content they want."

 

Not one of multiple AT&T representatives we contacted responded to our followup question, which was: "Can you confirm that AT&T is not monitoring and has no plans to monitor its customers' traffic or other online activities to detect possible copyright infringements?"

 

(What's a little odd is that the conference organizers said they couldn't find any broadband provider representatives to participate in the panel discussion--even though Jeff Brueggeman, AT&T's vice president for regulatory planning and policy, was listed as attending the event, and executives from Comcast and Verizon were sitting, silently, in the audience.)

 

Also at the conference on Monday, IFPI's Perlmutter rattled off a list of countries that have taken at least some steps toward antipiracy filtering, through laws enacted by the legislature or other means: France, South Korea, New Zealand, Belgium, and Australia. In addition, Canada's copyright lobby has pushed for legally-mandated filtering.

 

In the U.S., she said, referring to broadband providers, "increasingly they will be partnering with us--they will be doing deals with us."

"Despite our best efforts, we can't do this alone. We need the help of ISPs. They have the technical ability to manage the flow over their pipes...The good news is that we're beginning to see some of these solutions emerge, in particular in Europe and Asia."

--Shira Perlmutter, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry

 

Michael O'Leary, a senior vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, said the relationship between content companies and broadband providers had become less adversarial than before and both sides had left the "us against them era" behind. (This was probably a reference to the political trench warfare that led Verizon to reject the RIAA's request to identify a subscriber and the fuss over one proposal in Congress to implant anticopying technology into consumer devices.)

 

O'Leary welcomed what he described as today's "multifaceted approach that involves working effectively with the ISPs and universities."

 

MovieLabs did conduct tests last year of about a dozen "digital fingerprinting" technologies from companies such as Gracenote, Vobile, and Audible Magic. Certain products worked well in some environments, like on user-generated Web sites and on university networks, MovieLabs' chief executive told us in January. But that's not the same as saying it'll work well for tens of millions of AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon subscribers.

 

Even if the content industry can sign deals with broadband providers, there are still a slew of unanswered questions--including ones about customers' privacy and how filtering will work in practice. Will piratical transfers be automatically interrupted? Or just slowed? Will piracy-prone users merely find--this is what the IFPI suggests--their accounts suspended? How to detect whether content is licensed, or protected by fair use rights, which vary based on the situation? What if the transfer is encrypted?

 

Looking ahead a few years from now, the content industry may not be satisfied with voluntary agreements. Let's say that AT&T and some of its larger rivals start to filter pirated material and demonstrate (at least to a first approximation) that it's possible, but one ISP does not. Look for the RIAA and MPAA and their political allies to ask Congress for a law that would transform theretofore "voluntary" agreements into mandatory ones.

 

CNET News reporter Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report

[Analogman]

Comcast to slow down heaviest 'Net users to DSL speeds

 

By Nate Anderson | Published: August 21, 2008 - 11:43AM CT

 

The FCC yesterday issued its Order officially directing Comcast to stop using its current P2P-focused delaying technology to relieve network congestion. The company has until the end of the year to switch to a new throttling system that doesn't discriminate based on protocol, and Comcast is now offering more details about how it will do this. Heavy Comcast Internet users: prepare to be deprioritized.

Related Stories

 

Nothing about Comcast's proposed "protocol agnostic approach" is new; the company has talked it up for months and is already running trials of the technology in Virginia, Florida, and Colorado, testing various approaches and pieces of equipment. Many of the questions surrounding the approach remain unanswered, but Comcast has settled on a basic approach that will "deprioritize" the packets of the heaviest users during periods of network congestion.

 

Comcast Senior Vice President Mitch Bowling explained the idea to Bloomberg News yesterday, but offered no details except to say that the deprioritization would only drop perceived speeds to the level of a "really good DSL experience.

[Analogman]

Comcast to limit customers' broadband usage

 

By Yinka Adegoke Thu Aug 28, 10:20 PM ET

 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, said on Thursday it will cap customers' Internet usage starting October 1, in a bid to ensure the best service for the vast majority of its subscribers.

 

Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies.

 

"If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use," according to the company's updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use.

 

Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year.

 

Comcast said up to 99 percent of its 14 million Internet subscribers would not be affected by the new threshold, which it said would help ensure the quality of Internet delivery is not degraded by a minority of heavy users.

 

U.S. Internet subscribers are typically not aware of any limit on their Internet usage once they sign up to pay a flat monthly fee to their service provider.

 

As Web usage has rocketed, driven by the popularity of watching online video, photo-sharing and music downloading services, cable and phone companies have been considering various techniques to limit or manage heavy usage.

 

But Comcast has come under fire from a variety of sources for its network management techniques.

 

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission investigated complaints by consumer groups that it was blocking peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent, and earlier this month ordered Comcast to modify its network management.

 

Comcast has said that by the end of the year it will change its network management practices to ensure all Web traffic is treated essentially the same, but has also been exploring other ways to prevent degradation of its Internet service delivery.

 

One consumer group said while Comcast's new 250 GB limit was "relatively high," it could eventually ensnare customers as technology progresses.

 

"If Comcast has oversold their network to the point of creating congestion problems, then well-disclosed caps for Internet use are a better short-term solution than Comcast's current practice of illegally blocking Internet traffic," said S Derek Turner of Free Press, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group that filed a complaint about Comcast's network management practices earlier this year.

 

The Philadelphia-based company is not alone in trying to come up with ways to limit heavy Internet usage.

 

Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, said in January it would run a trial of billing Internet subscribers based on usage rather than a flat fee.

 

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said Comcast was also considering so-called consumption-based billing, but no decisions had been made.

 

(Editing by Braden Reddall)

[Spawn's dad]

"stealing is legal up to a point"

[howdjadoo]

Walt Disney's interpretation:

 

 

 

 

 

[Analogman]

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9755/Comin ... ent+System

 

Coming Soon: Automated Piracy Identification & Settlement System

 

Nexicon auto-generates DMCA notices to a suspected illegal file-sharer's ISP which is then forwarded with an e-mail link for the "GetAmnesty" website.

 

Copyright holders have a new weapon at their disposal with word that Nexicon, a Malibu, CA-based anti-piracy services and technology company, has developed an automated copyright infringement identification and settlement system.

 

 

Set to debut perhaps as early as next week, the service will allow copyright holders to examine some 19.6 billion file transmissions from the likes of such P2P and file-sharing services as BitTorrent, eDonkey, Gnutella, Ares, KaZaA, and newsgroups each day.

 

How It Works

[follow link above to see diagram]

 

From the Nexicon website:

 

"Nexicon monitors a variety of Internet protocols such as Ares, Limewire, Kazaa, BitTorrent, auctions and newsgroups, and tracks the identity of the computer that is illegally downloading different copyrighted files. Nexicon confirms that the files downloaded violate a copyright through its technology platforms

[Analogman]

AT&T, NBC lump piracy in with spam, malware as net pollution

 

By Nate Anderson | Published: September 25, 2008 - 05:39PM CT

 

Have you heard of "net pollution"? If not, you soon will, because it's a term being pushed by Arts+Labs, the new group backed by AT&T, Viacom, NBC Universal, Cisco, and Microsoft. Arts+Labs wants to be a sort of Internet plumber, using its Roto-rooter to clear all that caked-on nastiness from the tubes, allowing nice, clean

[Analogman]

Bush signs controversial anti-piracy law

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush signed into law on Monday a controversial bill that would stiffen penalties for movie and music piracy at the federal level.

 

The law creates an intellectual property czar who will report directly to the president on how to better protect copyrights both domestically and internationally. The Justice Department had argued that the creation of this position would undermine its authority.

 

The law also toughens criminal laws against piracy and counterfeiting, although critics have argued that the measure goes too far and risks punishing people who have not infringed.

 

The Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America backed the bill, as did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 

"By becoming law, the PRO-IP Act sends the message to IP criminals everywhere that the U.S. will go the extra mile to protect American innovation," said Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 

Counterfeiting and piracy costs the United States nearly $250 billion annually, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 

Rick Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, said the bill would give movie and music makers more tools to fight what he called a "tidal wave" of counterfeiting and piracy of everything from medical devices to automobile parts to media by organized crime.

 

"That is at the core of what this discussion is about," he said. "It is not about teenagers."

 

Cotton said he did not expect an IP czar to be named before Bush's term ended in January.

 

Richard Esguerra, spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he was relieved to see lawmakers had stripped out a measure to have the Justice Department file civil lawsuits against pirates, which would have made the attorneys "pro bono personal lawyers for the content industry."

 

But the advocacy group Public Knowledge had argued that the law went too far, especially given that fair use of copyrighted material was already shrinking.

 

Public Knowledge particularly opposed a measure that allowed for the forfeiture of devices used in piracy.

 

"Let's suppose that there's one computer in the house, and one person uses it for downloads and one for homework. The whole computer goes," said Public Knowledge spokesman Art Brodsky.

 

Brodsky argued that, at best, the bill was unnecessary because the recording and movie industry had the right to take accused infringers to court.

 

"There's already lots and lots of penalties for copyright violations," he said. "They've got all the tools they need."

 

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Bernard Orr, Gary Hill)

[mfwahl]

Rick Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, said the bill would give movie and music makers more tools to fight what he called a "tidal wave" of counterfeiting and piracy of everything from medical devices to automobile parts to media by organized crime.

 

"That is at the core of what this discussion is about," he said. "It is not about teenagers."

 

BULLSHIT.

[Vacant Horizon]

Counterfeiting and piracy costs the United States nearly $250 billion annually, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 

i'd like to see where they got this info. it's more like lost sales due to putting out crappy product, not supporting artists, bad business practices, and charging too much for product!!. haven't seen a movie at the theater for ever. bit the bullet and saw burn after reading. terrible film for $12. i'm done. cd's for $20 at big box stores. no way. the reality is that the shit people download is stuff they would never buy in the first place, so it's not lost sales.

[Analogman]

French plans to throw persistent pirates off the net have got closer to becoming law.

 

The French Senate voted overwhelmingly in favour of the law, which aims to tackle ongoing piracy of music, movies, and games online.

 

Those caught illegally sharing digital media will get warnings e-mailed and posted to them before having their net connection terminated.

 

The proposed law now goes to the French National Assembly for final approval.

 

The idea to tackle piracy with such a three strikes law was first floated in November 2007, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy called it: "a decisive moment for the future of a civilised internet".

 

Under the plan, net firms will be enrolled as watchdogs that will keep an eye on consumers indulging in casual piracy.

 

Those spotted illegally sharing copyrighted works, such as music tracks or movies, will get two warnings, but if they do not heed these then their net connection with be terminated.

 

The French Senate voted 297 to 15 to back the law, which will also create a new governmental body that will oversee the anti-piracy work. Companies will be encouraged to install firewalls blocking content sharing by employees.

 

Prior to the Senate vote, French politicians rejected an amendment, by Bruno Retailleau of the right-wing MPF party, which suggested using fines instead of cutting people off.

 

Mr Retailleau said the net had become an "essential commodity" and cutting people off went too far.

 

If enacted, the law will put France on a collision course with Brussels, which rejected a call to impose such "three strikes" laws across Europe in April 2008.

 

Throwing people offline, it said, conflicted with "civil liberties and human rights".

 

At the same time Sweden is reportedly drawing up laws that will make it easier to track down and prosecute persistent pirates.

[Analogman]

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits

 

By SARAH MCBRIDE and ETHAN SMITH

 

After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.

 

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.

[us album sales]

 

Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take.

 

Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.

 

The RIAA said it has agreements in principle with some ISPs, but declined to say which ones. But ISPs, which are increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies, may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years.

 

The new approach dispenses with one of the most contentious parts of the lawsuit strategy, which involved filing lawsuits requiring ISPs to disclose the identities of file sharers. Under the new strategy, the RIAA would forward its emails to the ISPs without demanding to know the customers' identity.

 

Though the industry group is reserving the right to sue people who are particularly heavy file sharers, or who ignore repeated warnings, it expects its lawsuits to decline to a trickle. The group stopped filing mass lawsuits early this fall.

 

It isn't clear that the new strategy will work or how effective the collaboration with the ISPs will be. "There isn't any silver-bullet anti-piracy solution," said Eric Garland, president of BigChampagne LLC, a piracy consulting company.

 

Mr. Garland said he likes the idea of a solution that works more with consumers. In the years since the RIAA began its mass legal action, "It has become abundantly clear that the carrot is far more important than the stick." Indeed, many in the music industry felt the lawsuits had outlived their usefulness.

 

"I'd give them credit for stopping what they've already been doing because it's been so destructive," said Brian Toder, who represents a Minnesota mother involved in a high-profile file-sharing case. But his client isn't off the hook. The RIAA said it plans to continue with outstanding lawsuits.

 

Over the summer, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began brokering an agreement between the recording industry and the ISPs that would address both sides' piracy concerns. "We wanted to end the litigation," said Steven Cohen, Mr. Cuomo's chief of staff. "It's not helpful."

 

As the RIAA worked to cut deals with individual ISPs, Mr. Cuomo's office started working on a broader plan under which major ISPs would agree to work to prevent illegal file-sharing.

 

The RIAA believes the new strategy will reach more people, which itself is a deterrent. "Part of the issue with infringement is for people to be aware that their actions are not anonymous," said Mitch Bainwol, the group's chairman.

 

Mr. Bainwol said that while he thought the litigation had been effective in some regards, new methods were now available to the industry. "Over the course of five years, the marketplace has changed," he said in an interview. Litigation, he said, was successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal, but now he wants to try a strategy he thinks could prove more successful.

 

The RIAA says piracy would have been even worse without the lawsuits. Citing data from consulting firm NPD Group Inc., the industry says the percentage of Internet users who download music over the Internet has remained fairly constant, hovering around 19% over the past few years. However, the volume of music files shared over the Internet has grown steadily.

 

Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales.