Music piracy 'rises' after festivals

 Festivals cause a rise in online music piracy, research from Spotify suggests.
The findings appear to show that festivals increase demand for artists' music, but that festival-goers mainly sample through unauthorized channels.

"Our analysis uncovered some examples of torrents spiking immediately after festival performances," says a statement from Spotify.

They suggest artists who delay releasing material are pirated more than those who release music directly.
A study carried out at the Dutch Stoppelhaene festival in 2012 showed that BitTorrent downloads for the artists Racoon and Gers Pardoel "skyrocketed" after the finished their sets.

Legal sales and Spotify's own streaming counts were not affected by the performances.
"Explanations for these spikes merits further study, but one intuitive driver is instant gratification," the report, titled Adventures in The Netherlands, says.

"Academics and policy makers who are researching this topic may want to consider other events such as awards and talent shows to see if similar spikes occur."

Spotify also believes that the need for "instant gratification" means that artists who release material to the streaming markets at the same time as putting it on sale, also reduce the likelihood it will be pirated.

According to one sample, One Direction's Take Me Home was the most popular album on Spotify and also had the best sales to piracy ratio of 3.79 copies sold per BitTorrent download.

Unapologetic, by Rihanna, was released the following week but not available on Spotify and did much worse in comparison, selling only 1.36 copies per BitTorrent download.

Not all artists support the music streaming service and some are critical of how much it pays artists for making their music available.

Earlier this week Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke pulled some albums from the site in protest at how much it pays artists.

The musician tweeted that he was "standing up for fellow musicians".
Subscription services like Spotify are the fastest-growing area in digital music, making up 13% of worldwide sales.

But 57% of global recorded music sales still come from physical products such as CDs, down from 74% in 2008.

As well as Spotify, services like Rdio and Pandora, Xbox Music, Google Play Music All Access and the soon-to-launch iTunes Radio compete for streaming listeners. 

Ad networks agree to take steps against online piracy

A group of U.S. companies operating Internet advertising networks has pledged to bar websites trafficking in pirated goods from using their services and to take other steps to fight online copyright infringement.

Eight companies operating online ad networks, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, have agreed to best practices for fighting Internet piracy, they announced Monday.

The ad networks will prohibit websites “principally dedicated to selling counterfeit goods or engaging in copyright piracy” from advertising with them, according to the best practices. The networks will also allow copyright owners to file complaints about piracy websites running ads, in a process reminiscent of copyright takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

However, the ad networks may consider “any credible evidence” provided by the accused website in deciding whether stop running its advertising.

Victoria Espinel

President Barack Obama’s administration “strongly supports voluntary efforts by the private sector to reduce infringement and we welcome the initiative brought forward by the companies to establish industry-wide standards to combat online piracy and counterfeiting by reducing financial incentives associated with infringement,” Victoria Espinel, the U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator, wrote in a blog post. “We believe that this is a positive step and that such efforts can have a significant impact on reducing online piracy and counterfeiting.” Ad networks and copyright owners must also protect privacy, free speech and fair process in their antipiracy efforts, Espinel wrote. “We encourage the companies participating to continue to work with all interested stakeholders, including creators, rightholders, and public interest groups, to ensure that their practices are transparent and fully consistent with the democratic values that have helped the Internet to flourish,” she wrote. The agreement will help prevent copyright infringement, participants said. “Ultimately, we want to create and maintain a healthy online space, promote innovation, and protect intellectual property,” Laura Covington, Yahoo’s vice president for intellectual property policy, wrote in a blog post. “The best practices we have committed to will help all of us get there.”

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America both praised the agreement.

“The presence of advertisements by well-known brands on rogue websites that illegally distribute movies and television shows creates the false impression that such sites are legitimate, fostering consumer confusion and harm,” Chris Dodd, the MPAA’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “The announcement today is recognition by online advertising networks of the important role they play to help ensure a safe and secure Internet for all.”

Top EU court says printers can be taxed to compensate for piracy losses

Europe's top court ruled Thursday that it is legal for countries to impose a levy on printer manufacturers in order to compensate rights holders for unauthorized reproduction of their work.

 

Under European Union law, authors and other rights holders have the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit reproduction of their protected works, but individual member states may provide exceptions or limitations to those rights.

 

In many cases, making private copies, including reproductions on paper, of works by rights holders is permitted. However if national authorities decide to permit exceptions they must ensure that copyright holders receive "fair compensation." This grants E.U. member states broad discretion in determining how to impose levies.



The European Court of Justice made its ruling after it was asked by the Federal Court of Justice in Germany to examine a case brought by VG Wort, the authorized copyright-collecting society representing authors and publishers of literary works in Germany.

 

VG Wort had requested that authorities order Canon, Epson, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Kyocera and Xerox to provide information on the nature and quantity of printers that they have sold since 2001. In addition, VG Wort claims that Kyocera, Epson and Xerox should pay it remuneration by way of a levy on personal computers, printers and plotters marketed in Germany between 2001 and 2007.

 

The court said it is open to Germany implementing a system in which owners of any printer, including multifunction devices, contribute to compensating authors for harm suffered by reproduction of their protected works. This means a levy on printer makers, the cost of which the manufacturers can pass on to customers.

 

The court does however limit the amount that can be levied. "The overall amount of fair compensation must not be substantially different from the fixed amount owed for the reproduction obtained through the use of one single device," the ruling said.

 

The court also said that even if rights holders don't take any measures to prevent copying of their work, such as using the EURion Constellation (a pattern of dots that will cause modern color copiers to lock up when they detect it), they are still entitled to fair compensation, since the use of such measures is voluntary.

 

However, E.U. countries may take into account whether such measures were used when determining the rights holders' compensation in order to encourage their use.

 

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Appeals Court Upholds College Student's $675,000 Piracy Penalty

In the long-running case of Joel Tenenbaum, who was ordered in 2009 by a jury to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs online, the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided on Tuesday that the penalty should stand.

The penalty came to $22,500 for each song infringed, which Tenenbaum argued was unconstitutionally excessive under the due process clause.

But in a case that was first brought in 2007 as part of the RIAA's aborted legal campaign against individual file-sharers, the appeals court doesn't see anything wrong with that.

"Tenenbaum carried on his activities for years in spite of numerous warnings, he made thousands of songs available illegally, and he denied responsibility during discovery," says the appellate court. "Much of this behavior was exactly what Congress was trying to deter when it amended the Copyright Act. Therefore, we do not hesitate to conclude that an award of $22,500 per song, an amount representing 15% of the maximum award for willful violations and less than the maximum award for non-willful violations, comports with due process."

Tenenbaum argued that the actual injury to the record labels was $450, the cost of the 30 albums.

The appeals court retorts, "But this argument asks us to disregard the deterrent effect of statutory damages, the inherent difficulty in proving damages in a copyright suit, and Sony's evidence of the harm that it suffered from conduct such as Tenenbaum's."

In making the ruling, the First Circuit had to analyze different precedents for how to apply damages and settled on one brought in a Supreme Court case that held that a statutory damage award violates due process only "where the penalty prescribed is so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable."

Punishing piracy with a large award doesn't meet that test because Congress designed statutory damages to be a deterrent, the judges conclude.

 

Disney Premieres Dubbed 'Lone Ranger' in Italy Amid Alleged Piracy Fears

TAORMINA, Sicily – The international launch of Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger at the Taormina Film Festival has been switched to the Italian-language version of the film due to what festival officials said were piracy concerns.

Officials said they were surprised to find the copy of the film Disney supplied was dubbed into Italian with no subtitles. They said they had been promised an original language copy of the film, with Italian subtitles. Until Saturday afternoon, the festival had advertised the film would screen in the original language, requiring them to make hasty additions to posters (see photo).

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In Los Angeles, Disney denied there were ever plans to provide an original version copy of the film to the festival: "This was always planned as a dubbed screening given the release date around the world, and subtitles were never considered for the festival," a spokesman said.

But it is extremely unusual for a major film festival to screen a dubbed version of the film. Festival observers said it is the first time in recent memory a dubbed film will be shown at the 59-year-old Taormina festival.

Though it is not billed as such, the Taormina screening of The Lone Ranger is technically its world premiere since -- due to the nine-hour time difference between Sicily and California -- the film is screening in Italy several hours before its official world premiere at Disney’s California Adventure Park in Anaheim.

The film will be released in the U.S., Italy, and a handful of other territories July 3.

The Lone Ranger is the closing film of the event, which has become a regular launching pad for summer tentpoles, including Disney’s Brave last year, and Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, which opened this year’s edition of the festival a week ago with Snyder and most of the film's stars on hand for the event. The Superman reboot, like all the previous blockbuster releases in Taormina, premiered in English at the festival.

Though illegal recording and sharing of film and TV shows is a huge problem throughout Europe, there have been no known piracy issues with big Taormina premieres in the past. Security was especially tight at the Man of Steel screening, the film’s continental Europe premiere, and it appeared tight again for the screening of The Lone Ranger.

With all of the stars in Los Angeles for the official world premiere there, there was no one from the cast on hand in Taormina for Saturday's screening. The film was introduced by Disney-Italia exec Daniel Frigo, who made no mention of the controversy around the dubbed version of the film.

Festival officials said they were forced to refund the ticket price to dozens of non-Italian-speaking tourists who bought their tickets expecting to see the original version of the film. But it is also likely that the dubbed version attracted more locals in a country where most foreign films are dubbed.

In the end, the festival’s signature Teatro Antico venue, which seats 4,500, was nearly full for the screening, the second near capacity screening of the eight-day event, following the Man of Steel premiere. The two crowds were among the largest the festival has seen. Italian-speaking moviegoers in the Teatro Grande said they were not put off by the decision to screen the dubbed film.

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The screening was preceded by a tribute to 51-year-old Sopranos star James Gandolfini, who had been scheduled to appear at the festival but who died of a heart attack in Rome the night before traveling to Sicily.

Italian-American actress Marisa Tomei -- who drew applause when she noted she had distant relatives from nearby Messina -- and Italy's Gigi Proietti were both honored before the screening. Pursuit of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino was expected to be on hand as well, but he cancelled at the last minute.

Mario Sesti, Taormina’s second-year artistic director, declined to comment about the developments related to the dubbed version of The Lone Ranger when contacted. Sesti, one of the founders of the International Rome Film Festival, is working to revitalize the storied Taormina event little more than a year after it was nearly forced to shut down for budgetary reasons.

In addition to The Lone Ranger, Man of Steel, and Brave, tent pole films to have launched in Taormina the last half-dozen years include Kung Fu Panda II, Toy Story 3D, and Transformers.