51 Million Take Down Notices and Counting

2012 appears to be the year when the surge in copyright take-down notices may have tipped search engine sites into considering proactive downgrading the results of repeat offenders or self policing by de-listing them. This action if taken will be significant step, but the sheer rise in number of take-down requests may now necessitate it being taken.

Google and other hosting services, have an obligation to remove infringing content upon receiving a valid DMCA request from copyright holders. Google publish weekly stats on the number of take-down notices they receive and process. In 2012, copyright holders requested Google to remove a staggering 51.3 million links, which is a significant increase compared to previous years. Google is currently processing half a million take-down requests per day and the number is not stable, but increasing week by week. The last week saw a record 3.5 million requests, which itself is 15 times greater than that receive in the whole of last January.

As expected the RIAA is the most active sender of requests with 7.8 million over the year. Surprisingly, the Pirate Bay were only cited in around half a million requests this year, whereas the file sharing site FilesTube topped the rankings with 2.2 million requests.

The increasing trend in requests and take-downs highlights the problem of their management and the challenges of dealing with and resolving take-down notices against legitimate content. It is therefore more likely that companies such as Google will increasingly downgrade the search results of repeat offenders and maybe even take the ultimate step and de-list them.

The current system is more of a case of ‘sticky tape and plaster’ than a resolution and as bodies such as the RIAA continue to automate their detection and servicing of notices, we appear to be climbing onto a treadmill that is just getter faster and bigger. The ideal solution for much of the copyright infringement is a open copyright register, but we have seen that the associations appear to be devoid of funds and the commitment to take that bold step and instead are happy to continue to add more sticky tape to the issue and pass the blame down the chain to the likes of Google who ironically offered one to the book industry, albeit with many unacceptable strings..

A Tsunami Hits A DMCA Safe Harbour?

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, service providers are allowed ‘safe harbour’ on content posted, but must act on any infringement notice that is served on them. Pretty straight forward and it is a process that happens everyday.

However, it can break down and go wrong and in the case one notice appears to have closed down not one piece of content infringement but 1.5 million teacher and student blog articles.

Pearson raised a takedown notice on ServerBeach who host Edublogs' websites. Edublog claims to be the oldest and second largest WordPress Multisite setup on the web. The infringement cited was aimed at a teacher's blog, which in 2007, had shared a copy of a 1974  Beck’s Hopelessness Scale's questionaire with his class.

Pearson requested $120 for the 38 year questionnaire, which was posted in 2007 and ServerBeach contacted Edublogs. The notice sent to Edublogs had apparently already been actioned and the offending post removed and not being displayed. However as many of us know, deleting something doesn’t remove it from the search engines’ cache so it is still effectively there and in this case ServerBeach spotted a copy of the disputed blog entry stored in the working memory of Edublogs. When Edublogs did not respond within 24 hours to emails alerting it to the allegedly infringing content, ServerBeach shut down the entire site and some 1.5 million innocent blogs. The action over one DMCA notice impacted a whole community. Was this in fact compliance or over zealous compliance? 

There then followed a open internet spat between ServerBeach and Edublogs.  

A whole innocent community of teachers and students have been effected by something that they should not have been exposed to. Who was right, wrong and whether it could have been handled better is subjective today. What is clear is that it is a bad day’s PR for DMCA, Pearson, ServerBeach and Edublogs and a worse day for a significant education community.

Digitise Your Books For Chump Change

Sometimes we all miss the launch of something and its only when someone discovers it do some of the ramifications come home and the service become ‘news’. We were alerted to a piece in Publishers Weekly ‘1DollarScan Takes Service to Cloud, Authors Guild Worried’

So who and what is 1DollarScan?

The company is based in San Jose and operates under a Japanese company Bookscan. The object of its service is to offer consumers the ability to digitise their books for a 'cent a page' making a 200 page book digital for just 2 dollars, or less than the cost of the postage to 1DollarScan. The book is destroyed in the process, which first cuts the spine, then using high-speed Canon scanners, with optical-character recognition, scans and OCRs the content turning it into a PDF file, which can be read on literally a host of devices.

So what’s the difference with scanning your own books using standard off the shelf equipment and software and creating digital copies using1DollarScan? What’s the difference between copying a CD to create a MP3 file or taping a TV programme to create a digital copy? The reality is that the day is fast approaching when everyone will be able to do it themselves effectively at home and this service is just offering the economies of scale and scope. If the consumer only uses the files for their own use it is ‘fair use.’

The service may be taken up by many people wanting to clear their shelves, or it may fail just as other smart ideas, which no one really wanted. However, the challenge is how we would regulate such a service? 1DollarScan claim that they will ensure consumer self validate their usage and that they will also provide an opt in/out service for the owner of the copyright. From the outside and without the detail it is hard to say how this will work, but given that they will know nothing about the copyright against the titles they are scanning, it would appear half baked and some would suggest 'aiding and abetting' potential infringement.

Do 1DollarScan retain an archive of the files and if so, are these fair use or an infringement?

If 100 requests for the same title are scanned, they will distributed the 100 PDF files to 100 people with little or no control over their future use. They will be effectively 'open files' which would be relatively easy to covert to other formats and trade. The files will once again fall under DMCA Safe habour protection for any trading services that  unwittingly got involved and the owner of the copyright will have to search, and issue take down notices.

When Google scanned books the process was restricted to one body. With this service there could be literally hundreds of the same files in circulation and onus is on the owner to ensure that they are not being traded and infringing copyright.

The challenge is that 1DollarScan will not be the first nor will they be the last service offer and the digitisation cost is going only one way. Without a rights registry we remain a rights industry that some would say is walking backwards into a digital world.

Related :

Publishers Weekly ‘1DollarScan Takes Service to Cloud, Authors Guild Worried’

EMI versus MP3tunes: A Question of Safe Habour

We have often raised a question of whether the “safe harbour” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) work. Our point is that it is a reactive process and depends on the party whose copyright has been infringed raising the appropriate notice and by the time the material is taken down the cat is probably out the bag and had many kittens. However, the recent Viacom versus YouTube found that the site was not liable for illegal content uploads, because it didn’t encourage them and quickly removed them.

Now we have a New York federal court deciding on another case between EMI and cloud based music service MP3tunes. MP3tunes enables users to store their music and access it from computers and mobile devices and also operates Sideload, a music search engine which allows users to discover music tracks and then copy them to their own space. They claim that their service only enables users to store their music online so they can listen to it anywhere and that it can’t held responsible for copyright infringement and are shielded from liability by the “safe harbour” provisions of the DMCA.

EMI claim that MP3tunes and Sideload represent a two-step mechanism for the discovery and acquisition of copyright music. EMI claim that MP3Tunes ‘does not own the music it exploits; nor does MP3tunes have any legal right or authority to use or exploit that music.’

The legal debate is also about whether someone who bought an EMI CD, ripped it to their computer and uploaded it to MP3Tunes for their own use and so they can listen to it anywhere, is in breach of copyright. It is further clouded by EMI initially claiming they did not place free downloads on the internet and that MP3tunes should have know that any their music on the internet was copyrighted. This was exposed when it was accepted that EMI had given away free copies of songs to the likes of Walmart, Amazon.com, MySpace, Facebook, Google, hoping the songs would go viral. The problem was that they went viral in a way the had not bargained for and made their somewhat righteous stance appear somewhat hypocritical when they had no way of distinguishing many of the music tracks they had leaked online with the tracks they accused MP3tunes of infringing.

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), filed an amicus brief along with others asking the court to protect the “safe harbour” provisions of the DMCA. DMCA defendants fear that the case could go beyond online music storage and impact e-mail, photo and video storage applications.

We don’t like DMCA and safe habour but until we can find a better way its what we have today. Closing down DMCA through this action could have serious implications on social network services and digital restictions on both legitimate as well as infringing material. Many say we should learn from music industry and yet again they are in showing us what not to do.

YouTube is a Safe Harbour

Safe harbour is one of those relatively new concepts which syas that in principle a Internet service can’t be held responsible for what others do on their service. Some would word it differently but in essence it’s a reactive approach to copyright infringement as opposed to a proactive one that attempts to check first.

In 2007 Viacom filed a lawsuit claiming that Google’s YouTube was based on copyright infringement and that it profited from knowing that the site was full of unauthorised copyrighted material. The US District Court for the Southern District of New York has ruled that YouTube is only liable for infringement once it has been told of specific videos that infringe specific copyrights and fails to act to remove them from its site.
The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows online service providers to avoid liability for their users' law-breaking actions and absolves them of any burden to monitor their service for infringements of the law. It gives them a safe habour in which to operate Under DNCA companies who are informed of law-breaking, must act quickly to disable, remove or block the content or become they become liable.

The Court said that Viacom can have no quibble with how YouTube's current system operates and that when Viacom sent a mass take-down notice on February 2, 2007, by the next business day YouTube had removed virtually all of them by the next working day. The Court also said that previous cases made it clear that the responsibility to find and identity infringing material was the copyright holder's, not the online service provider's.

What does this mean to other safe habour operators? It clearly differentiates those who file share knowing that material is violating copyright from those who provide a platform and are ignorant of any abuse until notified. It also clearly enforces the owners responsibility to catch the offence and offender. So maybe we do now need an industry police force or maybe everyone should follow Macmillan’s lead and have a Digital Piracy Director.

Panorama – Are the Net Police Coming for You

Last night the topical BBC news programme reported on the proposed Digital Bill going through parliament and asked what is impact is likely to be on the controversial three strikes rule.

Prohibition never solves mass social issues it merely drives it underground. It’s also clear that technology is more than capable of adapting to hoodwink and deflect the monitoring of file downloads. It’s amazing that although you can go to the likes of Google, which ‘advertise’ the offenders, enter a search and be connected. You can go to sites who provide files and operate under ‘safe habour’ rules which when notified by a rights owner will take up the illegal file after the horse has bolted. Yet governments believe they should go after the people in the middle, the ISP providers, who just provide the pipe and the owners of the connection, who pay the bill.

The reporters demonstrated that tracking copyright infringement could be a nightmare with the broadband owner being responsible for access that is almost impossible to control. They analysed the downloading habits of a ‘typical’ three children family and a group of students at university and the level of illegal downloading was significant. However they also showed how easy it was to steal ‘secured’ wifi access and use dynamic IP addresses. The point being that the serious infringers will bypass the law which is likely to catch the unsuspecting and the guardians. Making parents, guardians and providers of WiFi access hot spots, institutional accesses responsible for something they will find difficult to control.

Musicians interviewed were clearly divided on the issue but the debate appeared at times to be more about the role record companies and the machine than the artist.

The hypocrisy is that at a time when broadband is becoming a basic right and creativity is sought, the use of the service is being potentially strangled by a law, that is targeted not at the source, but at the user and will create uncertainty and apprehension where freedom and confidence are needed.

If you are able to watch BBC iPlayer click here to see it.

Google Acts On Copyright Infringement?

Google has deleted a number of popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. Some may say that this is an ironic twist at this moment in time.
The sites, hosted by Google's Blogger and Blogspot services, received DMCA complaints and were issued notices only after their sites and their content were wiped from the internet.

Google’s notice stated, 'Upon review of your account, we've noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger's Terms of Service ... [and] we've been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding.'

This is despite the open relationship between labels to review and promote and as one blogger Lipold wrote to Google, 'I assure you that everything I've posted for, let's say, the past two years, has either been provided by a promotional company, came directly from the record label, or came directly from the artist.'

However, we would like to ask Google why we can enter a search on torrent ebook sites and get many results of sites who are clearly sailing close to the copyright wind. We appreciate that these are not blog sites controlled by Google and DMCA take down applies to the site, but they can be discovered through Google and Google derives revenues from associated advertising.

Is Scribd Doing Enough?

The US law firm of Camara & Sibley is seeking class action status against document-sharing website Scribd in a Texas federal court. The charge: Scribd makes it just too easy to upload copyrighted content without permission, and the company should be held liable. We have long said that the DMCA's "safe harbour" provisions which protects websites such as Scribd is reactive and not proactive and act after the horse has bolted. The lawyers are used to controversy and could be said to court it having been those that defended Jammie Thomas against the RIAA.

They now represent Elaine Scott, a Houston author who found her entire book ‘Stocks and bonds: profits and losses’ available for download on Scribd and that the book had been downloaded over 100 times. The case is not about the prompt action on take down but the fact that it was put up in the first place under a ‘safe harbour’ protection and profiting from them until a copyright issues a take down notice. The onus they say and we agree should not be on the rights owners. Kiwi Camara, Scott's lawyer, is quoted in Ars Technica saying, "The West coast technology industry has produced a number of startup firms premised on the notion that commercial copyright infringement is not illegal unless and until the injured party discovers and complains of the infringing activity and the infringer fails to respond to such complaints... Scribd, is one such egregious infringer."

Interestingly he contends that Scribd isn't a "service provider" at all, but a publisher—which would remove the DMCA immunity—and also that Scribd by displaying adverts makes money directly off of infringing works, which could also threaten safe harbour protection.

The Rights of Man

You switch on your Kindle and are just about to resume reading your latest novel only find it has gone. Not only have you lost it from your Kindle, but also from your library. You quickly scan the library to check that everything is there and find that Amazon, in a truly Orwellian move has gone in and removed it. The irony today is that Amazon removed George Orwell's ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’.

Amazon state, "These books were added to our catalogue using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers."

"The Kindle edition books were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase.," The consumer notification email is reported as reading, “When this occurred, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available."

Irrespective how the take down, user communication and refund was achieved, the event highlights several digital issues.

Who owns what?Whose property is it once a sale has been achieved? We respect it may be an illegal copy but given the rights owner has to follow a take down process, why is there not a similar defined process with respect to the consumer?

If the copyright status of well known books can be confusing, what chance has the less well known books or even orphans of being protected? The industry requires a right registry but everyone wants to continue to slope their shoulders and expect others such as Google to set it up. Why don’t have a rights registry today and why have the appropriate associations and secondary publishers failed so miserably to step up to the mark? Why are we continuing to rely on the reactive and inefficient DMCA take down process that has failed so many times and given ‘safe harbour’ to the status quo?

What about the annotations and bookmarks added to any work by a consumer for the purpose of research or study? Once the file goes the wholes file goes, extras and all. Their own work is effectively taken without recall.

Amazon told the Register.co.uk, "We're changing out systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances," but what does that mean and what comfort does that give both copyright owner and the consumer? Will there be a standard for all ,or will it be as today, or everyone make it up as they go?

Publishers should also be accountable for copyright errors, after all how can the likes of Amazon know better? However, it is Amazon who gets the blame and whose reputation is tarnished not the publisher. It is Amazon who the consumer will point the finger at. However, even here there is a twist to the tale in that 1984 and Animal Farm were being sold as a public domain works by a digital packager, MobileReference. However how do they determine copyright when we live in a global connected world where1984 is out of copyright in Australia but in copyright in the US. This may penalise the US consumer today and yet tomorrow the Google rules could easily flip this for many books around the world. Who is going to police the global situation and territorial restrictions that are almost impossible to control?

We have read much on the Google settlement from those who advocate that it will be better than today and even scaremonger on what the alternative could be. However, incidents such as this clearly demonstrate once again that its time that a rights registry is established and not just for the benefit of one offer or one country but for all. In a business that is all about rights it is often embarrassing that we all sit and wait for others to tidy up the mess.

Wattpad Goes Android

Love them or hate them the self publishing online services are here. Some may say that the likes of Scribd and Wattpad often hide behind their DMCA (digital Millennium Copyright Act)safe harbour sanctuaries and act irresponsibly towards vetting content, others that the service they offer is long overdue and its up to copyright owners to police infringement not the service provider. Its an argument that isn’t going away and is at the heart of much infringement debate – do take down notices work or are they trying to bolt the stable doors after the horse has bolted?

Today Wattpad announced the availability of its popular mobile application on Google’s Android Market. This will now comptiment its iphone and Blackberry and Nokia Ovi applications and means that they have the major mobile smartphones covered. Wattpad claim to generate more than 2.5M visits, 20M pageviews per month from its website and mobile site and over 3 million downloads.

Scribd and Wattpad could clearly be very positive forces into the future and offer both writers and publishers new opportunities. The question is whether the content can be controlled proactively and they can become a trusted player, or whether they stay on the fringe offering so much but never quite trusted by all.

Fighting the Flood of Digital Piracy

The UK Publishers' Association is reported last week in the Bookseller as having recorded around 800 illegally uploaded texts and successfully helped to remove almost 90% of them from the web in February. The PA’s infringement software adopts the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) approach of issuing take down notices and tracking the files removal and offenders.

The one thing that is certain is that relying on take down notices is akin to Hans Brinker sticking his finger in the dyke at Haarlem to plug the hole, but this time it doesn’t work, is too much effort and we only have so many fingers.

The problem we have written about is that this is based on a safe habour approach for the services hosting the files and is reactive and not proactive, so acts after the cat is often out the bag. Service suppliers can only go so far in vetting files being loaded before their safe harbour status can be brought into question.

Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, that potentially offer so much, are caught between a safe harbour and a hard place. However they are only the tip of what is and remains a big iceberg. We have been shown a pirate copy of a highly expensive and prized work which the publisher had not digitised for fear of being pirated. Some may say an open invention to the pirates and one which they have taken. The quality of the pirated work was impressive and amazingly it was being given away by the pirate for free.

So we now have the altruistic pirate who is not even after the money and will spend considerable time to create a near perfect digital rendition of a complex work. This is a digital cover made from the physical book being scanned, OCRed, and then text over image and links being applied to match any digital rendition. This cat is certainly out the bag and having kittens.

So like rabbits you shoot at one and ten more appear all over the place all in different sizes and shapes!

The UK government look set not to follow the French ‘3 strikes law’ and move instead to a half way house where ISP have to slow the pirates down by reducing their access speed. It’s akin to condemning a driver to the slow lane because they broke the speed limit. We can’t see the music industry liking it, nor the ISPs, so it’s a perfect compromise and will leave all unhappy. Importantly it fails to address the cause and merely sticks yet more plasters on the patient.

There doesn’t appear to be an answer or a route that at least mitigates some of the risk? Some would argue that the problem is small, on a similar level to store shrinkage and maybe not worth any extra effort. We would disagree.

Today the book industry is ill prepared for the potential risk. On one hand everyone is jumping up and down heralding the digital dawn and ebooks and ereaders and getting more publicity than previously dreamt of. On the other hand the digital content is for many reasons only slowly materialising, which fuels the appetite of the pirates. We have exclusive device deals which restrict and marginalise the market. We have a lack of clarity on pricing which confuses the consumer and again is a green light to pirates who can make their offer simple and uniform. We have DRM.

Scribd today iTunes Tomorrow?

Last December Social publishing firm Scribd announced that it has raised $9 million and had hired George Consagra, former chief operating officer of Bebo, as its president. Since then the news has been ‘mixed’, it now claims 60 million visitors a month, has got some support from some publishers uploading their content and on the downside a significant amount of bad press over their hosting of copyright infringed materials. Inherently it is a document sharing site – a YouTube for documents, letting anyone upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like. Users can read documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail. It claims to have amassed 35 billion words in a mix of books, PowerPoint presentations, legal briefs, and other documents.

Today Scribd has moved up a gear announcing it will be an ecommerce site enabling publishers, authors and owners to charge for their materials so moving from YouTube to eBay, or as they hope iTunes. A logical step and one that should result in a deluge of previously self published materials, publisher experiments and without doubt some more questionable pirate works. The new store will enable users to set their own price for their work and keep 80% of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with DRM security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied.

Scribd has also announced plans for an application for the iPhone next month and that it is also building a database of copyrighted works in an attempt to help filter out pirate works and negate publisher’s fears and frustrations. Scribd may hope that by enabling publisher to make money it can mollify its critics but may be hard for publishers to back a venture that is at the same time seen to be undermining them.

The interesting aspect will be not the mainstream publishing works which will no doubt be poured in by many eager to see if they can make extra revenue at no cost but with self published works. Will it change the vanity market from print on demand to online? Will it bring more short stories or serialised stories to the market? Will it undermine the position of the publisher who will now clearly site alongside every budding author on what may be a level playing field? Will it provide the market tested slushpile of the future? Will the database of copyright be seen to perform or undermine its adoption?

We now await the market reaction and obvious response from others such as Wattpad.

Book Piracy: A Case of Whack-A-Mole

Last month we wrote about the issue of digital book piracy and along with others such as Peter Cox at Litopia, raised the bar on the public awareness of the issue. Today the New York Times wrote an article ‘Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web’, which again raises the agenda further.

One quote from the article which can best describe the problem was made by Russell Davis, an author and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a trade association that helps authors pursue digital pirates who said “It’s a game of Whac-a-Mole, you knock one down and five more spring up.”

When Litopia raised the issue of Scribd, some said it was unfair and the site shouldn’t be targeted, as it tried and was responsive when take down notices were sent. Others said the same about Wattpad. Our defence would be to browse Scribd and see the volume of taken downs that have been actioned and where they state the file has been removed. There isn’t a takedown without an infringement!

Some say that piracy is small and only the same as shrinkage and theft in physical stores, but is that a real excuse, or merely a case of apathy?

Plead all they can, the sites simply allow any material to be posted and only if it is a know infringement, or they get a take down notice, do they respond. They may claim that taking proactive action could land them with the liability so to take no proactive action is safer. The problem is that the mechanism of the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) is inherently flawed, as it is retrospective action and is like trying to put the cat back in the bag – its too late its out its out and having kittens!

The efforts being expended by publishers in tracking infringements is growing, with many large house having to have dedicated staff continuingly trawling, tracking and issuing take down notices. This may work for the large corporate, but is it realistic across the thousands of medium or small publishers? Some may say that it’s like giving each a shovel and asking them to all to ‘wack-a-mole’?

Today we are only talking about whole works and not even attempting to cover part works or content of sufficient size to warrant permissions. Rather than build infringement databases that just generate take down notices, why not address the problem. We are trying to manage a rights business with no rights management.

This has been raised over and over and the proposed BRR registry isn’t the answer but only part of the answer. We have bibliographic agencies who catalogue all titles. We know that you can’t resell a digital file and each rendition and manifestation is unique. We have identifiers which identify genuine booksellers, publishers, libraries. Yet we can’t join the dots up and create a proactive environment. Some may say that we let businesses hide behind ineffective DCMA.

If leadership is not taken, then we may all find that ‘Whack-a-Mole’ becomes an increasing part of the publishing business.

Can You Copy A DVD?

The big six film studios take RealDVD to court this week in San Fransico. They claim RealDVD violates copyright an if they win will be questioning whether consumers can make copies as they have done with music, video and audio for many years.

RealDVD, made by RealNetworks, allows DVD owners to make digital copies of their discs onto a computer or laptop hard drive for their own personal use. However online dwnloadable versions can now be purchased and some studios let users make a digital copy of a movie onto a computer by paying extra for an "expanded edition" of a DVD.

As RealDVD effectively bypasses DRM controls, the movie studios, represented by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), claim it is illegal under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). The movie studios fear a ‘rent, rip and return’ culture where the end copy can get shared and loose revenues.

RealNetworks, claim that the digital version made using RealDVD can only be played on the computer that made the copy. The National Consumers League, a consumer watchdog group, said a survey it conducted in conjunction with RealNetworks showed consumers want choice.

RealDVD is not alone in what it does, but that is no defence. So is the question more about behaviour and education or about control and restrictions? We all know that the more you restrict and control the more the incentive to break it. The next problem is defining the loss. One side says its huge, crippling and could bring the industry to its knees, the other that it may be a likened to shrinkage in a store – it happens.

It’s somewhat ironic that the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is being heard by Judge Marilyn Patel. She presided over the Napster case and eventually shut down the original peer-to-peer music file-sharing service.

The Abdication Crisis: UK Publishing Meekly Follows US Digital Marketing

We attended the London Book Fair this week and hence the lack of articles. Was this due to a lack of real digital news or the fact that many in the UK digital world appear on hold awaiting the US to lead or to settle GBS (Google Book Settlement)decision?

Whilst we ponder the future, we ask ourselves a number of questions, some we can answer or are confident to predict, others where we are far from the answers. The one think that is certain, is that UK publishers large and small now are taking digital seriously and many are taking their first tentative steps forward.

Some thoughts on the digital UK landscape:

Will the retail model still hold water over the library model? Free rental access has appeal over pay. Who seriously wants to own an ebook for life? The existing library model needs to be revisited and the UK needs to be wary of US suppliers dumping their library repository content into the UK market. This is not happening tomorrow but today.

The thoughts of repositories brings us to observe the current ‘aggregator’ bragging model – ‘mine’s bigger than yours’. In the physical book world size mattered, but in the virtual digital world size often marginalises the offer. When it comes to changing suppliers in the future we have to assume, or hope, that the encrypted licences can still be validated, however we have already seen the problems of changing distributors.

The major digital repositories are US controlled and focused and we are all aware that territorial rights are a challenge. Despite UK publishers public statements, privately they many still compromised.

Will digital be ceded to Google , Amazon, Adobe, Sony, Apple. These are an interesting group of technology companies and with the exception of ‘fortress Amazon’ are all from outside publishing.

Will Amazon break free of their wireless constraints and make it to the UK, or leave the market to the likes of Sony? Where do publishers place their bets?

The problem with the UK is its love of exclusive deals. Digital deals such as Sony/ Adobe, Overdrive/ Waterstones and Blackwells / Espresso may move the agenda forward but can also marginalise the competitive position against the real competitors.

Will UK copyright and deals be controlled and determined in the UK and subject to UK law or be effectively usurped by the back door and rail-roaded by the US interests. The impact of change is not restricted to the finished book but goes rights across the life cycle from acquisition and rights contracts, to what was once death but is now GBS (Google Book Settlement). Will the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) approach be adopted by all and will take down notices, reactive contention and copyright disputes be the norm tomorrow?

The UK market appears to be placing a great deal of trust in the US to sort out the digital landscape and for the UK to merely follow. After all, the precedent was set not many years ago by Bush and Blair, but one would hope that we have learnt from that abdication of independent leadership.

Exposing the Pirates

We applaud the UK Publishers Association for their development and free members access to a powerful new tool, which simplifies the process of having infringing content taken down. The tool effectively distributes the workload and leverages the benefits of information sharing between members. Members simply log, enter the details of the infringement. The system identifies the ISP, checks for repeat infringers, and automatically drafts and serves an appropriate notice.

More info at http://www.publishers.org.uk/en/home/enforcement/copyright-infringement-portal/

This is a great start. Unlike many of the other media sectors book publishing is not consolidated and there are thousands of publishers and copyright owners. Asking them all to police this is unworkable. But it goes past publishers and also impact agents and authors and they should surely also have access and share the same resource. Then we have the global position and yet more fragmentation. Finally we have the orphan works which will be unable to be defended. Who will protect them, or are they fair game for all?

If we are to have any hope in suppressing the pirates we must move from reactive measures to proactive ones.

We would go further and suggest that industry papers such as the Bookseller and PW should publish the statistics, a worst offenders top ten and raise the profile, such that it becomes uncomfortable for those merely waiting for take down notices and not doing anything to avoid them. Naming and shaming could work both ways, but we would suggest that it should also start to raise public awareness now before it becomes an epidemic. The public conscious must be raised and as proven this week in Sweden, many will wish to live within the law. The key is not to go after the individual’s but to stop their source of distribution and close down their visibility.

No one is Immune to the Pirates

As we look increasingly at the world of peer sharing, we find more and more dubious postings. One would expect them to be hidden away on unknown sites and only know by word of mouth, but they aren’t and the problem appears to be far greater than we envisaged. This last week we have highlighted the clear infrigements that are happening in eBay, others have identified them on Scribd and on following up on news about Wattpad.com we believe we have found yet more piracy of books.

Wattpad was founded back in 2006, and claims to be ‘The world's most popular ebook sharing community’ its trademarked strap line says ‘read what you like, share what you write’. It has iPhone and Blackberry apps and is obviously creating attention with them claiming to be the number 4 iPhone app in Canada and also to have ‘delivered over 150 million pages to mobile devices with millions more every month.’ ‘Using any mobile phone or the latest smartphone, you have instant access to hundreds of thousands of novels, short stories, fan fiction, essays, jokes and more. Anyone in the community can upload whatever they wish to read from.’

They clearly state in their terms:

Restricted Material
Do not submit any material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially offensive, or is otherwise inappropriate. We will promptly remove any such material submitted to the service.

Copyrighted Material
Do not upload copyrighted material for which you do not own the rights to or have permission from the owner. If you are a copyright holder and believe any user submitted content infringes on your copyright, you may notify us here or by email at report@wattpad.com. Include a reference to the copyrighted work and contact information of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner. We will act promptly to investigate such claims.

Repeat offenders will have their accounts terminated and access revoked

It all sounds great and a novel way to share and encourage writing. When we searched we had no problem finding what clearly appeared to be in copyright material from authors such as; John Grisham, Tolkien, Margret Atwood, even ‘The Audacity of Hope’ by Barak Obama! There are also many excerpts and part works from books some with curious hyperlinks on words to sell products.

As a creative writing and sharing site we would fully support the aims of Wattpad, but it is clearly open to abuse operating within the DMCA and is yet another one to be watched by copyright owners. How can we move from reactive to proactive copyright protection?

Fortress Amazon Breached?

DRM (Digital Rights Management) is both loved and hated but is clearly focused at protecting copyright abuse and infringement. Often it can be transparent and the majority accept it as a necessary precaution. There will always be those that set out to break it in a mission to ‘free content’ or because they can and the more restrictive the restrictions the stronger the will to break it. It doesn’t apply to just content but also to locking devices to networks on an exclusive basis and a classic case of this is the iPhone.

The one thing that is certain in life is that it will be broken, the music, video and games sectors can vouch for that. If you buy an iPhone but don’t wish to use their exclusive network deals then there are a significant number of people queuing up to break it so it can be used elsewhere.

We new read about a breach of Fortress Amazon, which has effectively locked the content to their site, to the network and to their device – the kindle. In other words its exclusive, exclusive, exclusive and exclusive. Mobileread have been served with a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice which despite contesting they complied with.

Amazon asked an online forum to remove links to software that lets people load ebooks on their Kindles that they have bought from sources other than Amazon. The kindlepid.py script enables users to discover their device's personal ID (PID). Armed with their PID, a user can buy an ebook on a site other than Amazon or download one from a public libraray and the book will display on their Kindle.

Alexander Turcic, on MobileRead says, "Although we never hosted this tool (contrary to their claim), nor believe that this tool is used to remove technological measures (contrary to their claim), we decided, due to the vagueness of the DMCA law and our intention to remain in good relation with Amazon, to voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it." MobileRead has removed the pages.

Whichever side you take over DRM the exclusive restrictions applied by Amazon are crying out to be broken. Amazon makes money if people buy say a Mobibook elsewhere and download it as they own Mobibook. Enabling other resellers to sell ebooks for the Kindle would open up the device and make it more acceptable to many. It is claimed that the program can also enable users can to buy ebooks from Amazon for their iPhones and then transfer them onto readers other than the Kindle. iPhone application users are only allowed to transfer books to Kindles.

Some would suggest that ‘Fortress Amazon’ be it, Booksurge only POD, the the Audible stranglehold on audio market, or the ‘Kindle Only’ digital world is at best naïve and at worst could seriously backfire and damage Amazon’s consumer friendly image that they have built their empire on.

Safe Harbours in a Copyright and Privacy Storm

Can you determine who someone is and where reside by their computer IP address?

In the interesting and ground breaking Google versus Viacom, Google have argued that YouTube viewing data should be kept from Viacom, to protect the privacy of its users. However Google in the past has also rejected demands by privacy groups for more protection of I.P. address records, claiming that in most cases the addresses cannot be used to identify users. So that pretty unclear then!

A federal judge has ordered Google to give Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube as Viacom press it’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google. The judge requires Google to hand over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched it, and their IP computer address. The data covered by the order includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April this year, 82 million watched 4.1 billion clips some say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube at some time.

So we have on one hand the handing over of personal access information, on the other we must ask about the about of information the likes of Google has in its vaults.
Viacom claim that YouTube’s success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site and that the data will validate that but the user rights issues and data issues this case raises go far greater than the case itself.

We now read that from a different legal angle EMI has filed a federal suit against VideoEgg and its partner site Hi5, alleging that they are responsible for the EMI-controlled music videos that they display.

ISPs are generally not liable for the content passing through their networks, but the question now is whether the new social networks and sites like YouTube are in the same legal position. Viacom and EMI say they're not. They argue that both YouTube and VideoEgg knew about the material abuse VideoEgg claims to have "humans review every video."

Meanwhile ISP Virgin Media has begun sending out 800 letters to users who have allegedly been using their connections for file sharing purposes. The campaign is in partnership with the British Phonographic Industry(BPI). BPI has been reported as saying that "thousands more" would be sent in the near future. The envelopes state, "Important: If you don't read this, your broadband could be disconnected."
However, Virgin have stated to BBC Newsbeat that there was "absolutely no possibility" of legal action being taken against users as part of the current campaign, and that it wouldn't hand over user information "under any circumstances." A mixed message there then!

In 1998, US Congress passed the On-Line Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). Codified as 512 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the law shelters on-line service providers that meet the defined ‘safe harbour’ provisions from claims of copyright infringement made against them that result from the conduct of their customers. These ‘safe harbour’ provisions are designed to shelter service providers from the infringing activities of their customers.

So what is a ‘safe harbour’ and who will define the rules? Copyright infringement is a serious issue but so is personal privacy. We await more litigation and hope that common sense will prevail.