01.24.14
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Posted in Intellectual Monopoly at 10:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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With the New Year the corporate lobbyists and the Obama administration are stepping up their drive for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new trade deal being negotiated in secret by the United States and eleven countries in the Pacific region. The key at the moment is Congressional approval of fast-track authority. This would give any agreement a straight up or down vote on an accelerated timetable.
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Critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement — a purported free trade deal between 11 countries, including the U.S., Canada and Japan, which has been in negotiations for some years — have noted that the deal has little to do with free trade. Rather, the TPP is about limiting regulation, helping corporate interests and imposes fiercer standards of intellectual property (to, again, largely benefit corporate interests).
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All week we’ve been posting stories for Copyright Week, discussing important elements of copyright law that are at risk of getting trampled or destroyed in the effort to reform copyright. These are issues that will be squashed almost entirely if we leave it to the lobbyists to hash out what a new copyright law looks like. Today is the final day of Copyright Week, which happens to coincide with the second anniversary of Internet Freedom Day — the day that the internet spoke up and said NO!! the last time a group of lobbyist sought to change copyright in dangerous ways, with SOPA/PIPA.
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Anakata – Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, and an early technical assistant of WikiLeaks – is still held in Danish solitary confinement without much intellectual stimulus at all. I thought we could send some books to him, and I’m starting with sending one of my own.
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Just four months after dropping the first hints, Kim Dotcom is now openly discussing his plans for New Zealand’s political arena. The entrepreneur has just confirmed the founding of the Internet Party, a new political group preparing to shake up the 2014 elections. With information on party co-workers now leaking out, this year should be another exciting one for the charismatic German.
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Marking the second anniversary of the raid on his New Zealand home, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is today enjoying the release of his brand new album, the launch of a brand new music service, the one-year anniversary of Mega.co.nz, and the eve of his 40th birthday. There’s certainly a lot going on, but that’s how this born entertainer likes it.
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The larger-than-life tycoon behind Megaupload.com, in New Zealand facing US piracy charges, has made a dance album to distract himself from his woes. But how does he fit that in with playing Call of Duty all night?
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Despite the growing availability of legal music services, piracy is still seen as a major threat to the industry. Today we take a look at the most pirated artists on BitTorrent in 2013, with Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Daft Punk topping the chart. Interestingly, the number of pirated downloads are a drop in the ocean compared to the plays on other free services such as YouTube, which generate millions in revenue.
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In a first-of-its-kind case, a Spanish court has ordered a local ISP to sever the Internet connection of a copyright infringer. The case, brought by Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI, involved the unauthorized sharing of thousands of music tracks on a P2P network. An earlier decision found that no copyright infringement had occurred but that has now been overturned on appeal.
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During a debate on the UK’s Intellectual Property Bill, the Prime Minister’s Intellectual Property Adviser has again called for a tougher approach to online file-sharing. In addition to recommending “withdrawing Internet rights from lawbreakers”, Mike Weatherley MP significantly raised the bar by stating that the government must now consider “some sort of custodial sentence for persistent offenders.” Google also got a bashing – again.
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Several countries including the US and France have implemented so-called “strikes” systems to warn and punish P2P file-sharers. The goal of these programs is to reduce piracy, but do they have any effect on people’s downloading habits? New findings published by U.S. and French researchers show that these anti-piracy measures don’t stop or even reduce piracy.
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