After years of discussions, the EU’s copyright reform plans are in the final stages.

Last month there was a temporary hiccup when negotiations were canceled after member states failed to agree on various crucial elements.

However, that was never expected to be the end of it. And indeed, following a deal between Germany and France this week, things are moving forward once again.

Both countries previously disagreed on the scope of Article 13. This article requires service providers to license content from copyright holders or, if that’s not an option, to make sure that infringing material isn’t re-uploaded to their servers.

France and Germany agreed on these basics, but not on which services should be bound by it. France argued that commercial companies of any size should be covered, while Germany preferred to exclude small services with less than €20 million in annual turnover.

This week the countries came together to reach a compromise. The new deal, made available via Politico, excludes companies if they fit within a set of three clear boundaries.

If a service is publicly available for less than three years, with fewer than 5 million monthly unique visitors, and an annual turnover of less than €10 million, it is excluded.

Companies that are excluded will still have to do their best to obtain licenses from rightsholders. However, they will not be forced to prevent infringing content from being re-uploaded.

While the compromise protects smaller startups, Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda warns that it’s actually worse than some of the earlier proposals. The new obligations would also apply to older forums, including those of Ars Technica and Heise.de, she warns.

“Countless apps and sites that do not meet all these criteria would need to install upload filters, burdening their users and operators, even when copyright infringement is not at all currently a problem for them,” Reda notes.

The Pirate Party MEP calls on the public to share these concerns with their representatives, making it clear to them that Article 13 puts the future of the Internet at stake.

EU copyright rapporteur Axel Voss, who’s one of the driving forces behind the plans, clearly disagrees. He believes that Article 13 and other proposals are needed to make sure that copyright holders get the money they deserve.

In an op-ed in Parliament Magazine, Voss argues that Internet services are using their ‘safe harbor’ protections to escape liability and profit handsomely from distributing copyrighted material, while rightsholders don’t get proper compensation.

“This cannot continue to apply. The platforms do much more than simply providing the infrastructure, which is why they can make the profits that they do,” Voss writes.

Interestingly, the EU’s copyright rapporteur goes on to stress that, even though European companies are directly affected by Article 13, US-based services are the real target here.

“Do we want to protect the creative sector in Europe, or do we want to leave it defenseless against the large US platforms? What is the value of our Europe’s creative industry to us?” the op-ed reads.

With the new deal between France and Germany in hand, the Council will try to agree on a unified negotiation position for the final trilogue negotiation. If an agreement is reached there, the EU Parliament will vote on it a few weeks later.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

The Walking Dead is one of the most talked about and popular TV shows of recent times.

The blood-and-guts zombie-fest is followed by millions of dedicated fans, who clamor to watch each new episode as soon as they air.

The AMC show was renewed January 2018 for an impressive ninth season, which got underway early October last year. On November 28, 2018, episode eight (‘Evolution’) marked the mid-season break, with episode nine (‘Adaption’) set to air on TV this coming Sunday.

AMC, however, dangled the carrot by offering S09E09 a week early to subscribers of its $4.99 per month AMC Premiere service. With no ads and on demand, it’s likely the offer will have tempted some Walking Dead fans to part with their cash. For everyone else, there are pirate sites.

Visitors to torrent and streaming sites can now easily find ‘Adaption’ available to download or stream. The source for most copies is cited as WEBRIP, which means that they most probably originate from AMC’s service.

While traffic to streaming sites for specific titles is not easy to measure, the main torrents for the latest episode of the hit show are proving to be very popular with downloaders, as they have for pretty much every episode since the show started. As it happens, last year the show reached somewhat of a peak on the pirate high seas.

In TorrentFreak’s 2018 annual list of most-torrented TV shows, The Walking Dead took the top spot, with The Flash and The Big Bang Theory taking second and third places respectively.

However, instead of going bananas over the revelation, AMC took to Twitter to celebrate the event, even though they chose to link to another publication reporting on our stats instead. Awww…

Whether this leak of ‘Adaption’ will have an impact on viewing figures, either positively or negatively, will remain to be seen but AMC will have definitely figured piracy into the equation.

The company is clearly well aware of its popularity among the pirating masses so it was always a matter of when the episode leaked, not if.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

When it comes to civil anti-piracy enforcement, BREIN is without a doubt one of the best-known players in the industry.

Backed by Hollywood and other content industries, the group has been active for more than two decades in the Netherlands.

Aside from shutting down sites and going after sellers of pirate streaming boxes, BREIN is also planning to go after BitTorrent users. By using in-house software that automatically gathers IP-addresses of seeders, hundreds if not thousands of copyright infringers can be easily pinpointed.

At first sight, this practice is very similar to the “copyright trolling” efforts that are common around the world. However, the Dutch anti-piracy group is taking a more reserved approach.

Instead of going after the IP-addresses of anyone who’s connected to a torrent swarm, BREIN is mostly interested in structural seeders who upload content for a longer period of time. In other words, the group wants to target those who frequently offer pirated content.

This decision was brought up by BREIN director Tim Kuik in the Dutch podcast “Met Nerds om Tafel” recently.  There, he explained that his organization represents a wide variety of rightsholders and not all of them support the idea of going after casual downloaders.

“Our enforcement efforts apply to all these copyright holders. Therefore, they all have to agree on how this takes place. At the moment there is no consensus within that group on how to deal with individual end-users,” Kuik says.

BREIN’s director believes that focusing on structural uploaders is the best approach in the case anyway.

“Personally, I have always had my doubts about going after individual downloaders. I believe you have to focus on the supply side,” he notes.

In theory, it’s possible for rightsholders to go after casual downloaders but that’s not something BREIN can do collectively. They work with funds that come from various parties who all have to agree on an approach.

TorrentFreak reached out to Kuik to clarify who the main targets are. Kuik says that pirate sites and services are the prime focus and that the planned mass settlement effort will focus on the most prolific uploaders in this ecosystem.

“We focus on early and large uploaders that function as a source of unauthorized content and we will expand that to frequent and prolonged uploaders that function as a lubricant keeping unauthorized content available over time,” Kuik tells us.

“Hit & run end users are at the end of the chain. We think they can best be approached with measures that raise their awareness, such as blocking access to illegal sites with referral to a landing page that explains why,” he adds.

Sending informative alert emails to users whose IP-addresses are linked to sharing pirated material is also an option. However, that’s something ISPs will have to cooperate with.

Enforcement may eventually shift to downloaders if there’s a situation where it’s impossible to go after the suppliers, Kuik notes. Then it makes sense to target downloaders as well.

This could also apply to torrent users. Kuik tells us that if other enforcement measures, such as site blocking or going after a hosting company, fail structurally the demand side could get more into the spotlight.

For now, however, uploaders are the targeted only. When BREIN plans start its campaign is yet unknown.  That said, Dutch torrent users have more to fear than BREIN alone.

Movie distributor Dutch FilmWorks (DFW) also received permission from the Data Protection Authority to monitor and track BitTorrent pirates. They are expected to target downloaders as well.

In the podcast, Kuik also provided some further insight and commentary on piracy in general. The issue of availability also came up. In particular, the fact that Game of Thrones is only available through a single telecom provider in the Netherlands, Ziggo.

This means that some people can’t access it legally, even if they wanted to. Kuik agreed that this is “strange,” but also noted that it’s one of the exceptions.

“That’s a particularly strange situation, in my opinion, but that’s something that should be taken up with Ziggo,” he says.

For BREIN’s director, it was never a preconceived plan to become a public copyright enforcement figure. After his law study, he took a summer job at a joint venture between the movie studios Paramount and Universal. This is where it all started.

“That’s when ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’  premiered in theaters, which was heavily pirated on videotapes. This also happened with other movies but E.T. made a lot of money and Steven Spielberg was extremely concerned. In a meeting, he burst into tears about it. Something had to be done,” Kuik says.

As a young legal expert, Kuik was called in to help. That would eventually turn him into a leading figure in the copyright enforcement world who helped to found dozens of local anti-piracy outfits around the world.

This work is appreciated by many rightsholders, but it also results in quite a few hateful comments from people who disagree with BREIN’s efforts. That doesn’t really bother Kuik much through.

“My fans are at the copyright holders. If you don’t have any enemies then you never stood up for something,” Kuik concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

With millions of new videos uploaded every week, YouTube is the world’s most popular platform for user-uploaded content.

While the majority of uploaded works cause no issue, copyright holders regularly file strikes or claims against uploaders, complaining that they’ve used their content without permission.

As reported on many occasions, this can sometimes prove controversial and today the Kenyan government waded into a dispute after a rendition of the country’s national anthem was subjected to takedown demand.

The video was uploaded by 2nacheki, which claims to be the largest YouTube channel from Africa. It featured their take on the ‘Top 10 Best National Anthems in Africa’, with the Kenyan anthem coming out in the number one position.

Unfortunately, however, the channel soon received notification from YouTube that their video had infringed upon the rights of UK-based music company De Wolfe Music, a claim that was made via content monetization company AdRev Publishing.

Needless to say, the channel was pretty shocked to see this claim on their account. Not only does the Kenyan government consider the piece (titled ‘Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu’ (‘O God, of all Creation’)) to be its property, but it was written by the Kenyan Anthem Commission in 1963 to serve as the state anthem after independence from Great Britain, where De Wolfe is based.

Only adding to the complications is that since the anthem is more than 50 years old, it has officially fallen into the public domain. This has caused the Office of the Attorney General and Department of Justice to issue a joint press release denouncing the action against a piece of its heritage.

“The National Anthem is over 50 years and has thus fallen into public domain. However, given the place of National Anthem in any country and the provisions of the National Flags, Emblems and Names Act (Cap 99 laws of Kenya) there is additional protection of the anthem against misuse and improper use,” the statement reads.

“Under that Act, the use of the National Anthem, emblems, names and other similar symbols is restricted and its use shall be subject to written permission by the minister in charge of interior.”

Further muddying the waters is that variant of the anthem uploaded to YouTube by De Wolfe is not the same version as the one playing in the video it has attempted to take down, with the former completely devoid of the lyrics usually associated with the song.

It’s unprecedented for a national government to get so closely involved in a YouTube copyright dispute so it seems probable that the claim against the video will be resolved relatively quickly.

However, that a third-party company can so easily claim content of others as their own is a problem that will take a while to fix, unless there is a more vigorous response when dealing with controversial takedown attempts.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

This is part one of a two-part interview with @Rabble  — activist, technologist, co-founder of Indymedia, and one of the originators of Twitter.

We discuss the origins of Twitter in the protest organisation tool TxtMob; Evan’s work developing Indymedia and the early days of tech’s interaction with activism; how social media is continuing to mutate politics, for better and worse; how the sorting algorithms developed by Big Social are becoming indelibly embedded in our world — and finally Evan introduces the subject of part two: Silicon Valley’s hidden mission to restructure the world’s institutions via software.

—

Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing crypto, privacy, copyright and file-sharing developments. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Rabble

^{If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits!}

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Lucas Marston
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Eric Barch

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