Tech copyright holders and allies told the U.S. Trade Representative's office of the risk BitTorrent portals, cyberlockers and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in Asia, Europe and North America pose to industry because of piracy, in comments posted online throughout the week (see 1602080061), 1602090053 and here). Comments on USTR's so-called Special 301 report on countries that infringe on U.S. intellectual property from a group that includes the Entertainment Software Association, MPAA and RIAA cited a September report on cyberlockers, which are centralized file-hosting sites for user-uploaded content and often used to infringe copyrighted material. Online security company NetNames wrote the report, which was commissioned by the Digital Citizens Alliance, a coalition with an advisory board that it said includes union, National Consumers League and tech officials. DCA analyzed 30 cyberlocker sites -- split evenly between streaming and direct download cyberlockers -- saying they collected nearly $100 million in revenue in the past year. Cyberlockers, P2P networks and various physical locations across the globe are havens for piracy and copyright infringement, said the International Intellectual Property Alliance, with members including ESA, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, MPAA and RIAA. “Online content theft poses a significant and ever-evolving challenge,” it said. “Content thieves are taking advantage of a wide constellation of easy-to-use, consumer-friendly online technologies such as direct download and streaming cyberlockers, which, in turn, have given rise to a lucrative form of secondary infringement on the part of ‘linking sites’ that index stolen movie and television content hosted on other sites.” Alibaba-owned Taobao, a Chinese e-commerce company that had faced scrutiny for infringing goods, said it removed 99.23 million allegedly infringing website listings between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30. Almost 94 percent of those takedowns were done “proactively,” it said. More than 33 percent of the takedowns were a result of a “special” campaign between Taobao and 1,208 copyright holders in the U.S., it said. That campaign resulted in penalties for more than 200,000 Taobao merchants, it said. Time Warner's HBO Latin America, meanwhile, focused on the region. It said "many Caribbean and Central American governments often fail to enforce HBO LA’s copyrights and licenses, permitting piracy of HBO LA’s IP [intellectual property] without legal consequence." The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers also said Caribbean countries and China don't always respect IP rights: "Unfortunately, there has been little progress over the past year in the conditions that ASCAP’s members face in these markets."
American Library Association Program on Public Access to Information Director Carrie Russell praised as “good news” the Internet Policy Task Force’s white paper recommending legislation to amend guidance to courts for determining statutory damages in copyright infringement cases (see 1601280065). The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) and others have “lobbied for a review of copyright statutory damage framework for several years, so it is promising that the task force realized this was a problem,” Russell said Friday in an American Libraries blog post. “Whether Congress will act on this recommendation, time will tell.” ALA is a member of LCA. The IPTF’s recommendation against extending the first-sale doctrine to include digital transmissions “is not surprising” but the task force “took seriously” LCA’s input on e-book business models, saying “further action may be advisable” if libraries aren’t able to adequately serve patrons due to publishers’ restrictions, Russell said.
The HEVC Advance patent pool for H.265 technology put a brave face on founding member Technicolor's withdrawal from the group to license its H.265 patent portfolio directly to device makers. Technicolor believes doing so will “accelerate adoption” of the H.265 standard, the company said in a Wednesday statement. Contrary to an HEVC Advance statement that Technicolor’s recent acquisition of Cisco’s connected device business had direct bearing on its decision to withdraw, that wasn’t the case, a Technicolor spokesman emailed us Thursday. “Our decision to pursue direct licensing is mostly related” to the fact that “we do not support some decisions of the pool -- such as licensing content streaming,” he said. Moreover, "we initially thought that establishing a pool would help to avoid fragmentation," he said. "However, this has not been the case.” Since Dolby Labs, General Electric, Mitsubishi, Philips and Technicolor formed HEVC Advance in March (see 1504010051), “various players have delayed adoption of HEVC technologies and redirected their investment into alternative technologies,” Technicolor said in its withdrawal statement. “However, HEVC is today the best video compression technology to meet industry needs." HEVC Advance's statement said Technicolor's “acquisition of Cisco's set-top box business and their recent changes in management” appear to have made “bilateral licensing” a “better fit for Technicolor's current business dynamics.” That referred “primarily” to the recent departure of Stephane Rougeot, “who previously oversaw Technicolor's involvement with HEVC Advance,” Pete Moller, the patent pool’s CEO, emailed us.
The Professional Photographers of America is backing proposals to create a “small claims option” for adjudicating copyright infringement cases as the association’s top copyright-related legislative priority for 2016, said Copyright and Government Affairs Coordinator Lindsey Forson in a Tuesday blog post. The Copyright Office and the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force have backed the creation of a separate small claims copyright court (see 1601280065). PPA CEO David Trust met with House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga., and other House Judiciary members last week on copyright issues, Forson said. Several House Judiciary Committee members have indicated that addressing copyright small claims cases is among their “desired accomplishments” in the committee’s ongoing Copyright Act review, Forson said. PPA’s other copyright priorities for 2016 include modifying the current copyright registration process “to improve participation and functionality” and modernizing the CO.
Congressional Creative Rights Caucus co-chairs Judy Chu, D-Calif., and Doug Collins, R-Ga., are preparing a letter to be sent to fellow House members noting ways that “industry efforts to fight digital content theft can complement government efforts.” A draft version of the letter notes a December opinion piece in The Hill by Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Vice President Daniel Castro and ITIF Trade Policy Analyst Nigel Cory that highlighted the Copyright Alert System, the Trust Accountability Group's Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy and other voluntary industry-led partnerships that “combat online piracy and complement government efforts.” A recurring theme of the House Judiciary Committee's ongoing Copyright Act review has been the "the important role that online intermediaries can play in taking steps to address the ongoing problem of online content theft," Chu and Collins said. Congress "has an important role here in promoting the benefits of such voluntary agreements for creators and consumers, ensuring that existing agreements are effective, and encouraging additional key players in the online ecosystem to take similar steps," Chu and Collins said.
The Copyright Office said it’s using the federal government’s regulations.gov website as its portal for collecting and posting comments on its proceedings, including its ongoing studies on Digital Millennium Copyright Act sections 512 and 1201 (see 1601050055) and its study on how copyright law affects software-enabled consumer products. Comments on the software-enabled consumer products and Section 1201 studies are due later this month, while comments on the Section 512 study are due March 21, the CO said in a news release.
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) urged Congress to “carefully consider -- and implement” the Internet Policy Task Force’s recommendations for amending U.S. copyright law on statutory damages to address issues that may result in excessive awards. The IPTF included the legislative recommendations in a white paper that also recommended nonlegislative solutions on the first-sale doctrine and the eligibility of remixes to claim fair use protections (see 1601280065). The IPTF recommended amending Copyright Act Section 504 to require courts and juries to consider nine factors when determining statutory damages awards, including whether the infringement was willful. Requiring consideration of those factors “would bring statutory damages in copyright cases closer in line with the goals of compensating the rightsholder and deterring future infringement without deterring legitimate activity or resulting in damage awards so beyond the pale that they undermine respect for our copyright system,” said CDT Open Internet Project Director Erik Stallman in a Friday blog post. The IPTF also recommended allowing courts more discretion to depart from the “per work” calculus in awarding damages in cases of nonwillful secondary liability by online services for large numbers of infringed works, and urging expanding eligibility for lowered “innocent infringement” damages awards. The recommendations make “abundant sense,” Stallman said. “These proposals will go a long ways toward a statutory damages regime that still achieves goals of compensation and deterrence, without overly encouraging 'copyright trolling' or unduly interfering with legitimate innovation and free expression.”
Committing to "clear and consistent" copyright infringement policies should be a condition before Charter Communications gets regulatory approval to buy Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 15-149. While TWC is taking part in the Copyright Alert System developed by some ISPs and copyright holders to tackle infringement on their networks, "recent litigation has raised serious doubts about other ISPs' commitment to complying with the law." New Charter should be required to take part in the Copyright Alert System "and pledge to work with copyright owners to address infringement on its network," NMPA said. Charter didn't comment Thursday.
Q1 revenue in Qualcomm’s QTL technology licensing business was higher than expected “and would have been even higher if not for a contract dispute with LG” that prompted QTL to defer revenue of more than $100 million for the quarter, Qualcomm President Derek Aberle said Wednesday on an earnings call. “Although LG continues to report and pay, we're not recognizing revenue while the arbitration regarding the dispute proceeds,” Aberle said. “We believe LG's claims are without merit. The deferral of this revenue has the effect of depressing the implied royalty rate as you would calculate it, as their shipments are included in total reported device sales without the corresponding revenue. Assuming we conclude this matter successfully, as we have done with others in the past, we would expect to recognize the deferred revenues at that time.” LG representatives didn’t comment Thursday.
Dish Network and Fox Entertainment may settle a 2012 complaint against the satellite company for its PrimeTime Anytime VOD service. In a joint status report filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the two said they "are presently engaged in business negotiations which include discussions about settlement of this case." Barring a settlement, Dish and Fox said they proposed a Sept. 6 trial date. Fox argued in its 2012 lawsuit that PrimeTime Anytime and its AutoHop service, which strips out commercials from network programming, was an "attempt to camouflage" copyright infringement (see report in the Aug. 28, 2012, issue).