Last year, we talked about some language in a contract being used by a company that was supposedly trying to help copyright holders track down content being shared online, for the purpose of sending out threatening “pre-settlement” letters. The contract appeared to indicate that the copyright holders were giving the tracking company permission to put their works on file sharing programs, for the sake of “catching” people downloading the content:

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Peter Sunde, a co-founder of the Pirate Bay, said Monday that he’s resigning as the file-sharing service’s spokesman.

In a blog post, Mr. Sunde cited time constraints for the departure. “I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and many more books are waiting to be read,” he wrote. “I am simply leaving a role in order to be a person instead.”

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Lots of attention is being paid today to an article in the Guardian about a new study claiming that illegal file sharing has collapsed in the UK and is being replaced by streaming music found on YouTube and through services like Spotify. The premise of the article is that now that kids have alternatives, they’re willing to dump unauthorized file sharing and get by with streaming.

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Just how many file-sharers has the RIAA gone after? Those in the know were widely reporting a figure just north of 30,000 cases–the RIAA never liked to provide exact numbers–but the music trade group stated in a recent court filing that the real number of people sued is only 18,000. What’s going on?

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Thursday’s $1.92 million file-sharing verdict against a Minnesota mother of four could provide copyright reform advocates with a powerful human symbol of the draconian penalties written into the nearly-35 year old Copyright Act. Then again, maybe not.

A Minnesota federal jury stung Jammie Thomas-Rasset with the enormous fine after concluding she infringed copyrights on 24 music tracks by sharing them on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. It was the defendant’s second trial: The first ended in a $222,000 verdict for the same songs, but was nullified after the judge presiding over the case said he provided faulty jury instructions that favored the recording industry.

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File-sharing, to the (very large) extent that it involves copyright infringement, has affected the music business. But, as a pair of academic researchers happily point out in a working paper they’ve posted online, copyright law was never meant to protect the music business in the first place—instead, it is intended to foster creative production in the arts, which happen to include music.

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New Zealand agreed this week to reconsider a controversial law that cut off Internet access to people accused of copyright violations.

The country’s parliament passed Section 92a of the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act in 2008, also known as the “three-strikes” rule, which would have come into play in February 2009. If an Internet user was even accused of file-sharing or otherwise violating copyright laws, his or her Internet-service provider would cut off service.

The implementation of the amendment was pushed back to March 27 so that ISPs could agree on a code of conduct, but the rallying cry from Internet free-speech organizations such as the Creative Freedom Foundation pushed the Parliament to rethink its strategy.

How could a democratic government consider cutting off Internet access for people who haven’t been convicted of a copyright violation? Danny O’Brien, the international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that New Zealand changed its copyright law to be in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S., but then chose to interpret the language differently than the U.S.

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The success of “graduated response” programs in the U.S., U.K., France, New Zealand and elsewhere around the world may depend, in large part, on just how quickly file sharers will buckle. If most will quit after a simple warning, the campaign to enlist ISPs (and back down on the mass legal threats) may be a huge success.

But, if only draconian sanctions like disconnection are enough to “stop the swap,” the entire graduated response program could arouse critical opposition from the public and from lawmakers. The European Parliament, which has already considered the issue, has voted several times against such “three strikes” laws, largely due to the possibility of extreme sanctions such as Internet disconnection.

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If you pay any attention to the endless debates over intellectual property policy in the United States, you’ll hear two numbers invoked over and over again, like the stuttering chorus of some Philip Glass opera: 750,000 and $200 to $250 billion. The first is the number of U.S. jobs supposedly lost to intellectual property theft; the second is the annual dollar cost of IP infringement to the U.S. economy. These statistics are brandished like a talisman each time Congress is asked to step up enforcement to protect the ever-beleaguered U.S. content industry. And both, as far as an extended investigation by Ars Technica has been able to determine, are utterly bogus.

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On Sept. 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against the people that should be the recording industry’s best customers: music fans. Five years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against at least 30,000 individuals. … But suing music fans has proven to be an ineffective response to unauthorized P2P file-sharing.

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Propaganda is probably too light of a term to describe this piece of propaganda.

We’re referring to an educational comic strip (fat .pdf) on unlawful file sharing of music developed by judges and professors to teach students about the law and the courtroom experience.

It was produced by the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit describing itself as an “organization dedicated to improving the administration of justice by providing leadership and service to court systems in the United States.”

But the story line here is a miscarriage of justice at best–even erroneously describing file sharing as a city crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

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In the universe of the free (”free” as in beer), getting ripped off is the norm. Yes, many products and services are deliberately priced at zero these days, but a significant portion of consumers will gravitate to illegitimate free versions of not-free stuff. Free versions of pricey digital products are not hard to find on underground file trading sites, or in bits and pieces on above ground aggregators like YouTube. Most high-priced wares like expensive commercial software can be had for literally nothing. But very cheap things are widely pirated for free as well. 

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The music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing Web sites, according to a study of Radiohead’s last album release that found huge numbers of people downloaded it illegally even though the band allowed fans to pay little or nothing for it. “Rights-holders should be aware that these non- traditional venues are stubbornly entrenched, incredibly popular and will never go away,” said Eric Garland, co-author of the study, which concluded there was strong brand loyalty to controversial “torrent” and peer-to-peer services.

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This month’s announcement of a backroom deal between internet service providers and the big record companies to spy on suspected copyright infringers and reduce the quality of their Internet connections is just the latest paragraph in the record industry’s long, self-pitying suicide note, and it’s left me wishing they’d just pull the trigger already and stop beating their chests and telling us all how unfair it all is.

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For Warner Bros., the mission was to keep “The Dark Knight” from seeing the light of day. In an era of instantaneous digital copying and widely available high-speed Internet access, the premature and unauthorized release of a movie to the public–especially a coveted summer blockbuster–can spell disaster. If the movie’s a stinker, the word will travel at the speed of a mouse click, ruining chances of making back money. And if the movie’s popular, piracy can rob ticket sales and cut into revenue.

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