Ever since the concept became public there have been fears over potential misuse of Google Glass. The advent of the wearable computer has sparked privacy fears and perhaps unsurprisingly, concerns that it could be used for piracy.

Just this January the FBI dragged a man from a movie theater in Columbus, Ohio, after theater staff presumed his wearing of Google Glass was a sign that he was engaged in camcorder piracy.

While it’s possible the device could be put to that use, it’s now less likely that patrons of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater chain will be able to do so without being noticed. Speaking with Deadline, company CEO and founder Tim League says the time is now right to exclude the active use of Glass completely.

“We’ve been talking about this potential ban for over a year,” League said.

“Google Glass did some early demos here in Austin and I tried them out personally. At that time, I recognized the potential piracy problem that they present for cinemas. I decided to put off a decision until we started seeing them in the theater, and that started happening this month.”

According to League, people won’t be forbidden from bringing Google Glass onto the company’s premises, nor will they be banned from wearing the devices. Only when the devices are switched on will there be a problem.

“Google Glass is officially banned from drafthouse auditoriums once lights dim for trailers,” League explained yesterday.

Asked whether people could use them with corrective lenses, League said that discretion would be used.

“It will be case by case, but if it is clear when they are on, clear when they are off, will likely be OK,” he said.

But despite the theater chain’s apparent flexibility towards the non-active use of the device, the ban does seem to go further than the official stance taken by the MPAA following the earlier Ohio incident.

“Google Glass is an incredible innovation in the mobile sphere, and we have seen no proof that it is currently a significant threat that could result in content theft,” the MPAA said in a statement.

However, recording a movie in a theater remains a criminal offense in the United States, so the decision as to whether a crime has been committed will be the decision of law enforcement officers called to any ‘camming’ incident. Given then the MPAA’s statement, it will be interesting to see if the studios will encourage the police to pursue cases against future Google Glass users.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Last month Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis labeled his citizens the worst pirates on the planet and vowed to help content holders turn that position around. But Brandis’ industry-leaning position soon became clear as he repeatedly refused to answer questions as to whether he’d properly consulted with consumer groups.

Brandis has, however, consulted deeply with the entertainment industries. His proposals for solving the piracy issue are straight out of the MPAA and RIAA cookbook – three strikes and account terminations for errant Internet users plus ISP blockades of torrent and similar sites.

The reason why the debate over these measures has dragged on so long is down to the defeat of the studios in their legal battle against ISP iiNet. That case failed to render the ISP responsible for the actions of its subscribers and ever since iiNet has provided the most vocal opposition to tough anti-piracy proposals. Today, iiNet Chief Regulatory Officer Steve Dalby underlined that stance with a call for consumers to fight back against “foreign interests.”

“The Hollywood Studios have been relentlessly lobbying the Australian Government on a range of heavy-handed solutions, from a ‘three strikes’ proposal, through to website filtering – none of which take consumers’ interests into account,” Dalby explains.

On three strikes, Dalby notes that even though customers will be expected to pick up the bill for its introduction, there’s no evidence that these schemes have curtailed piracy or increased sales in any other country.

“This leaves us asking why Hollywood might think this approach would work in Australia when it doesn’t even work in their own patch,” he says.

While Dalby believes that the studios’ imposition of ‘three-strikes’ will do little to solve the problem, his opposition to overseas interference is perhaps most visible in his attitudes towards site blocking.

“Why would the Australian government let a foreign company dictate which websites our citizens can access? Are our legislators captured by foreign interests? Should we allow American commercial interest to dictate Australian national policy?” he questions.

Perhaps inevitably, Dalby says that piracy has only blossomed in Australia due to a failure to serve the market, and the studios must address that first.

“Copyright holders have shown us that they’re not interested in new models for Australians, despite the success of services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu in the USA,” he explains.

“The pattern of US traffic Internet now depends on what content is made available via legitimate distribution channels like Netflix, rather than on the Pirate Bay. Giving your competitor a ten-year head start distributing a ‘free’ alternative is pretty stupid. No wonder the content industry is uncompetitive, with that attitude.”

Demand for legal content exists, Dalby says, but only if consumers aren’t subjected to release delays and uncompetitive pricing.

“And that’s the fundamental difference between iiNet and the rights holders. They want to tackle how customers are pirating content. We want them to look at why, and then move forward, addressing the cause, not the symptom,” he says.

Alongside calls for Australians to lobby their MPs, Dalby says he hopes that Hollywood and the government decide to take a more positive approach to solving the problem.

“Until that time, we’ll continue to push for a better future for Australian content users, one removed from the constraints being discussed in Canberra,” he concludes.

Dalby’s attack on the proposals currently on the table shows that a voluntary agreement between iiNet and rightsholders is as far away as ever, an indication that the years-long battle is far from over.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

There is a theory in the entertainment industries that if running torrent, file-sharing or streaming sites makes no commercial sense to their operators, then they will soon wither and die.

Every week there are often aggressive opinions published on why cutting off revenue is perhaps the most powerful weapon in the online piracy war. This crescendo has already grown into notable action in both the United States and United Kingdom.

Later this week a new initiative will be presented to the public, and the fact that Google is onboard will no doubt help to promote the completeness of the effort. Continuing the European effort after the UK, this Thursday in Rome, Italy, a coalition of key advertising players plus the main anti-piracy groups of the music and movie industries will announce the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding.

The announcement, taking place at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s IAB Events 2014 conference, will see the IAB, music industry anti-piracy group FPM and Fapav (the Italian MPAA) announce a new coalition to deprive revenue from pirate sites.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Enzo Mazza, chief at music industry group Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI), explains how the initiative will work.

“IAB Italia, the local branch of Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has been very active in discussing with music and movie associations a self-regulation approach to promote an effective action to prevent advertisers from posting ads on rogue sites,” Mazza explains.

“IAB already educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. In our goal the agreement should promote a cooperation in order to implement effective measures to prevent ads being placed on rogue sites and to quickly remove any ads that are found to have been so placed.”

Having Google on board is also a plus, Mazza says.

“Google is already doing a lot of efforts in this area and the company promoted a strategy so-called ‘follow the money’ which we consider part of a general strategy based on enforcement on one side, self-regulation and legal offer on the other side.”

Mazza says that a joint committee compromised of MoU signatories will be created to oversee the technical implementation of the project, with consideration given to how similar schemes are operating elsewhere. This will include the auditing of advertising companies and networks for compliance with a code of conduct respectful of intellectual property rights.

On a day-to-day basis the committee will receive complaints from rights holders detailing the appearance of advertising on “rogue sites” and take action on these with brokers and the advertisers themselves. Whether they will be able to cut through the complex and labrynthine mechanisms often employed by such sites will remain to be seen.

The Memorandum of Understanding has been passed to the Italian competition authority for approval and while the project is clearly in the early stages, momentum is clearly there.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

During the last quarter of 2013, anti-piracy group Rights Alliance (Rettighetsalliansen) announced that it had begun the planning for a Norwegian web blockade of copyright-infringing websites. First up, The Pirate Bay.

Speaking with Norway’s Aftenposten, Rights Alliance chairman Willy Johansen now confirms that his group will file a case at the Oslo District Court within a few weeks with the aim of having the country’s ISPs block The Pirate Bay and other similar sites.

Johansen says Rights Alliance has already written to the ISP Telenor with a list of sites it wants blocked. He wouldn’t reveal any other contents of the letter but as expected Telenor isn’t going to do anything voluntarily.

“We can not act as a court or a police authority to act for third parties who want sites to be closed. We will only deal with a court decision,” Telenor’s Jørn Bremtun said in a statement.

New legislation in Norwary does allow for the blocking of sites, but cases have to be taken to court in order to balance copyright protection with freedom of information.

“When [the ISPs] will not block voluntarily, we must prove the illegality of the different sites,” Johansen said.

Rights Alliance hope to do that during the summer with a decision from the Court expected in the fall.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Slowly but steadily various entertainment industry groups are applying increasing pressure on Google. Previously the movie industry and record labels have highlighted that Google has a significant stake in pointing the public to pirate sites, and they are now joined by News Corp.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation spin-off owns various major newspapers and also has a significant stake in Foxtel, the Australian pay television network which airs the heavily pirated Game of Thrones series.

News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson says its a thorn in the side of the company that hundreds of thousands of Australians pirate the popular TV-show, instead of buying a Foxtel subscription. With the piracy numbers increasing year-after-year it’s now time for action, and Thomson believes that Google should step up its efforts.

“For a company to have a sophisticated algorithm that knows ­exactly where you are and what you’re doing and maintains ignorance on piracy is an untenable contradiction,” Thomson said in an interview with The Australian.

Thomson notes that Google could easily demote links to pirate sites in their search results, and eventually remove these sites altogether. Implementing these anti-piracy algorithms would be a significant step to address the ongoing piracy problems.

“There’s no doubt that search giants need to be held to account. It’s obvious that it is illegal content or content accessed illegally,” Thomson says.

Thomson is backed by Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein, who sees no excuses for the rising piracy rates now that they’ve made the show available in a timely manner.

“We made Game of Thrones available at a good price on Foxtel Play and yet it was still heavily illegally downloaded. The longer this goes on the more people don’t seem to think of it as theft which is what it is,” Freudenstein says.

The good price Foxtel’s boss is referring to is roughly $500 USD to access the fourth season of Game of Thrones, or $50 USD per episode. Needless to say, this is still rather expensive for the average teenager.

Thus far Google has taken some steps to address the piracy issue, but the search giant refuses to remove entire domains from its search results without proper takedown notices.

Contrary to Foxtel and News Corp, Google previously advised the Australian Government not to implement draconian ant-piracy legislation. According to Google piracy is mostly an availability and pricing problem, which is best tackled with innovation instead of legislation.

“We believe there is significant, credible evidence emerging that online piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem. We would encourage the Government to promote new business models and a free marketplace for legal purchasing of content,” Google noted.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.