Generation gap on copyright, P2P

When New York Times tech writer David Pogue gives talks on copyright law and ethics he has a little interactive segment where he describes lots of situations involving copying songs, CDs, DVDs, broadcast movies, etc., and asks for a show of hands from people who think this or that situation is ok, Pogue writes. He's illustrating all the shades of gray - or at least people's perceptions of the shades of gray - of copyright rights and wrongs. "Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first time I'd ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young people. And the demonstration bombed.... I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids' morality alarm. They listened to each example [of what he usually finds some people saying is wrong], looking at me like I was nuts." That there might be something wrong with file-sharing, etc., simply does not compute. But there isn't just a generation gap here, of course. There's also a reality gap: the media industry's reality vs. that of its increasingly digitally literate customers. Speaking of that, in a new move to combat piracy the IFPI (the global equivalent of the US's RIAA), is "asking European lawmakers to require Internet service providers to use filters to block" file-sharing, the New York Times reports.

Copyright protction on social Web: Latest

If your child loves creating his or her own music, ski, or skateboard videos or mixing others' footage and music into new mashups, that is really cool. But now would be a good time to talk with him or her about how Web sites are getting more strict about protecting copyrights. A handful of very large media and social-Web companies have created a coalition designed to protect copyrights on sites such as MySpace, the Associated Press reports. YouTube would logically be one of them but didn't join the coalition, possibly because of Viacom's lawsuit against it; it did, however just announce its own copyright protection plan (more on that in a moment). The coalition announced some copyright-protection guidelines for the industry to follow, including 1) having in place by the end of the year "filtering software that blocks all content media companies flag as being unauthorized," 2) keeping the filters up to date, and 3) "cooperation between media and Web companies to allow 'wholly original' user-generated videos to be posted and to accommodate 'fair use' of copyrighted material as allowed under law. Coalition members include Disney, Viacom, CBS, NBC, and News Corp. on the media side and Microsoft, MySpace (whose parent is News Corp.), Veoh Networks and Dailymotion on the Web side. YouTube's new copyright-protection system employs "software to find unique characteristics in the clips so it can detect copies posted by YouTube users without permission," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Media companies can ask Google to automatically delete every unauthorized copy - or to slap ads on the clips and promote them." Both the AP and the L.A. Times said neither the new coalition nor YouTube have as yet defined "fair use," though both said fair use of copyrighted material would be allowed. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, interest in watching TV shows on the Web is growing. "This week, two research organizations, TNS and the Conference Board, issued a report indicating that the number of people who watch TV shows online has doubled in the last year," the New York Times reports.

Jail time for a film clip?

Tell your kids not to mess around with digital cameras in movie theaters. A 19-year-old in the Washington, D.C., area went to see Transformers at her local movie theater with her boyfriend. She told the Washington Post she was enjoying the movie so much she thought she'd shoot a 20-second clip to show her 13-year-old brother how good it was. While she was doing so, two police officers order the couple out of the theater confiscated the digital camera, and charged the college sophomore "with a crime: illegally recording a motion picture," the Washington Post reports. She told the Post that it was her birthday and the two had borrowed the camera from a relative to "make [birthday] memories," so she happened to have the camera when they went to see the film. She "faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 when she goes to trial this month in the July 17 incident." The Post adds that copying a movie in a theater "is a felony under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, punishable by up to three years in a federal prison," and several states have anti-piracy laws in addition to the federal one.

Downturn in P2P downloads

Illegal file-sharing by US youth has dropped sharply in the past few years, a new study sponsored by the Business Software Alliance has found – though music remains the biggest reasons for P2P file-sharing. The percentage of US 8-to-18-year-olds “who acknowledged illegal downloads of software, music, movies or games fell from 60% in 2004 to 36% in 2007, Australian IT reports. Last year it was 43%. The reasons? Accidentally downloading a virus (62%), getting into legal trouble (52%), downloading spyware (51%), and getting into trouble with one’s parents (48%). “The survey found 66% of young people said their parents set rules on what they could do on the Internet.” Another study, by NPD Group, found that “unauthorized sharing of digital music remains a huge issue for the global music business,” but maybe now not so much from file-sharing as from CD-burning, ArsTechnica.com reports. Then you read headlines like: “P2P breaking Internode’s bank” about how the Adelaide ISP is struggling to keep up with file-sharing customers’ demand for bandwidth (in Australian IT).

Piracy genie won't return to bottle

Heard of 1Dawg.com? It’s a video-sharing site that claims to be growing 40 times faster than YouTube, Forbes reports. Then there’s DailyEpisodes.com. Its users “vote for their favorite portal, so that when lawyers manage to shut down one copyright-breaking link site, viewers can quickly flock to the next best,” according to Forbes. But far more than these or US-based YouTube as a media-companies’ headache is Sweden-based ThePirateBay.org, which is basically the global nexus for copyright infringement. This “world's largest repository of BitTorrent files … helps millions of users around the world share copyrighted movies, music and other files” for free, with the help of Sweden’s easygoing copyright laws. The Pirate Bay has also “distributed its servers to undisclosed locations and is even soliciting donations to purchase a small island where it can avoid copyright laws altogether,” Forbes says. It’s a fascinating, well-reported article that illustrates very effectively how tough it is for laws, governments, companies, or parents to control what users do on the Internet. Meanwhile, CNET writer Declan McCullagh reports that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is “proposing a new crime: ‘Attempted Copyright Infringement’." Here’s a San Jose Mercury News blog’s tongue-in-cheek version of the story.