Monthly Archives: March 2011

What is Piracy?

Terry Hart • March 29, 2011 • Posted in General • Comments closed

What is piracy? When used to describe copyright infringement, the term causes a lot of debate. Some say the term is inaccurate, since “piracy” only describes sea-faring buccaneers of the “Aaargh, matey” type.1 Others suggest it is inappropriate when applied to anything but large-scale, commercial counterfeiting of copyrighted works — an effort to invoke negative [...]

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Friday’s Endnotes – 03/24/11

Terry Hart • March 25, 2011 • Posted in Friday's Endnotes • Comments closed

There’s an old joke that, after the Bible, Johann Gutenberg’s second book printed was about the demise of the publishing industry. The future of the book continues to be the subject of a great deal of debate over 500 years later. This week especially, I’ve noted quite a bit of interesting book-related news and articles. [...]

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ICE Seizures Criticism: Magic Words

Terry Hart • March 21, 2011 • Posted in Copyright Criticism • Comments closed

The seizure of around 100 domain names over the past eight months by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) continues to draw discussion. Silicon Valley Representative Zoe Lofgren has recently voiced her criticisms of the domain name seizures to Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel. Additional criticisms come from attorney and Sites and [...]

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Friday’s Endnotes – 03/18/11

Terry Hart • March 18, 2011 • Posted in Friday's Endnotes • Comments closed

Reports this week — The US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s White Paper on Legislative Recommendations to Congress was released this week, as well as ICE and CBP’s 2010 report on counterfeit seizures. Is Netflix building a ‘House of Cards’ in original programming? — The LA Times Blog reports on Netflix’s efforts to produce original content. Game [...]

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Copyright and Buggy Whips

Terry Hart • March 14, 2011 • Posted in Copyright Criticism • Comments closed

A familiar trope of copyright critics is that those involved in creating content — whether record labels, movie studios, or book publishers — are stuck in the past. The challenges facing these industries stem from their refusal to embrace innovation. The tech industry is especially fond of this trope and seem to have settled on the [...]

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Friday’s Endnotes – 03/11/11

Terry Hart • March 11, 2011 • Posted in Friday's Endnotes • Comments closed

A Blogging Hiatus — Ben Sheffner has put his site, Copyrights and Campaigns, on hiatus after his recent move from NBC Universal to Content Protection Counsel at the MPAA. Since the end of 2008, Ben has brought solid, in-depth reporting and analysis on copyright issues from a reasonable, pro-copyright-owner perspective. His voice will be missed [...]

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Friday’s Endnotes – 03/04/11

Terry Hart • March 4, 2011 • Posted in Friday's Endnotes • Comments closed

I’m out of town this weekend, so today’s endnotes is a bit short. Enjoy! The Cost of Free Music — The Arbiter Online, Boise State’s Independent Student Media, presents this well-written piece by Eva Hart (no relation) exploring the harm of illegally downloading music. Appearing less than three months after a similar student op-ed in [...]

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How Much More Evidence

Terry Hart • March 3, 2011 • Posted in Copyright Criticism • Comments closed

How much evidence about the negative effects of online piracy can be ignored? This week, the Canadian Intellectual Property Council released a report on The True Price of Peer to Peer File-Sharing. The report re-examined Don’t blame the P2P file-sharers: the impact of free music downloads on the purchase of music CDs in Canada, a [...]

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.torrent = .crime

Terry Hart • March 1, 2011 • Posted in Secondary liability • Comments closed

I sometimes see the phrase “.torrent = .crime” used online in discussions about enforcing copyright online. It is considered by copyright critics as a dig against efforts to enforce the widespread copyright infringement occurring within the bittorrent ecosystem1 — the idea being that content producers have mistakenly declared torrent technology categorically unlawful. Most recently, it has [...]

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