Yesterday Techdirt asked the question: Is BPI Trying To Setup Google For Copyright Infringement Lawsuit?

The article centered around a June 11, 2010 takedown notice sent to Google from the UK’s BPI. Groups such as the BPI, IFPI and MPAA send these notices on a regular basis and in a normal set of circumstances they’re so prevalent that they would hardly make news. However, Techdirt noted an interesting angle to this particular takedown demand.

Rather than supplying very specific URLs where infringing material could be located as is the norm with these type of requests, the BPI provided whole site URLs such as http://megaupload.com, http://sendspace.com and http://hotfile.com.

“My guess is that this is trying to set up Google, so that Google is officially ‘on notice’ that these nine sites host infringing content, and while Google will almost certainly take down the links to the specific files listed, it’s quite likely that similar files will quickly be found elsewhere on those sites — and BPI may then try to claim that Google should automatically know how to block those other files,” wrote Masnick.

Now, in a June 10 takedown request sent to Google, it seems the IFPI could be trying a similar tactic with the search giant, but being rather more clear about it, this time in connection with The Pirate Bay.

In a fairly lengthy preamble, the IFPI describes The Pirate Bay as “an internet-based service that facilitates copyright infringement on a massive scale” and one which provides access to “several hundred thousand infringing content files, including movies, games and software as well as copyright sound recordings owned by IFPI.” It also describes the guilty verdict handed down to the four Pirate Bay individuals in their 2009 criminal trial and references legal action to have the site blocked in Denmark and Italy.

A huge list of specific URLs which link to torrents is attached to the request and Google is asked to remove these from their search results – but IFPI goes further.

In light of the serious violations of copyright facilitated by The Pirate Bay service, and in accordance with Google’s policies (see http://www.google.com/dmca.html andhttps://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=58&ctx=sibling) we are asking for your immediate assistance in removing from your index, or otherwise disabling access to via your search engine, URLs linking to the website for The Pirate Bay including but not limited to the URLs specified in the attachment to this notice. [emphasis ours]

IFPI continues with:

In sending this letter we are seeking to ensure that infringing content is made inaccessible or removed from the Internet as quickly as possible through your cooperation. However, please note that we do not admit that we or the IFPI Represented Companies are responsible for detecting infringing material and notifying you of it.

Could this be similar situation to the one Mike Masnick referred to in his BPI article, but this time laying the ground for The Pirate Bay?

“Part of the DMCA safe harbors is that you need to remove content if you have ‘specific knowledge’ of the content,” he wrote. “This is at the center of the Google-Viacom lawsuit. Google claims it needs to know the specific files that are infringing, while Viacom claims that once Google knows that ‘content x on YouTube’ is infringing, it should be required to find and block all such content x’s, even if Viacom has not informed Google where they are.”

It remains to be seen how Google responds to this request but since attempts to take down The Pirate Bay have been an almost complete failure, removing it from the world’s most important search engine could be the next best step.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Although so-called “educational letters” will be sent out to those suspected of illicit file-sharing towards the end of this year and “technical measures” (throttling/account suspension) imposed if illicit sharing isn’t reduced by around 70% in the next 18 to 24 months, Taylor says that the music industry will probably have to start suing people again in the meantime.

Due to the fact that ISPs will have to keep lists of those subscribers who have received the greatest number of educational letters, ultimately the music industry will be able to identify, they say, those who are being most stubborn to change.

Armed with this information they will be able to proceed to court to obtain their real-life names and addresses. Taylor says that there is a possibility that even at the early stages of the letter sending campaign, the music industry will use this information to start suing the “most egregious infringers”.

Taylor insists that the BPI will take this action reluctantly, and would have preferred that the problem be solved through the early introduction of technical measures, but that wasn’t to be.

“Government disagreed with us, regrettably, and decided not to bring the technical measures into effect immediately and has said to us that it expects us to bring legal cases and that it will take that into account when it looks at whether or not to introduce technical measures,” he explained.

To this end, Taylor said that the BPI may well have to sue people “at some level”, a course of action that he claims the Government expects of them in advance of its decision to implement technical measures.

Of course, suing file-sharers is something that the BPI did before back in 2004. Taylor admitted that they were unable to carry out that campaign on a level which would become a deterrent to the masses but said at least this time round they will be able to target those who have offended the most and failed to change their ways.

This approach raises another interesting situation. Rather than just about anyone being a target for litigation – potentially for downloading a single album for example – the BPI is now saying that only the worst offenders will be targeted for action. Since their legal resources are limited, this could only conceivable aimed at the top 1 or 2% of aggressive file-sharers.

So, since many file-sharers download a hell of a lot more music than they’d ever really need, it could be argued that by only downloading the stuff that they really want, their chances of ending up at the top of the heap are very slim indeed.

This would of course result in a sizable reduction in file-sharing transfers, but would it drive people into music stores? It seems unlikely.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Of course, there will always be a way to acquire media free of charge, the last few decades have shown us that. But the media industries are now having to find new ways to defend their corner. There has always been talk of Big Movies or Big Music ‘owning’ politicians and lawmakers, but while this is true to the extent that their immense lobbying power allows, there has also been another more serious threat on the back-burner.

If the RIAA or MPAA owned – literally – all the major ISPs, they could affect the piracy landscape quicker than ever before. A simple rewrite or tweaking of subscriber’s Terms of Service would ensure that anyone proven to be a pirate could be ejected from the Internet in an instant, no laws needed. While this is unfeasible right now, there are easier ways of encouraging the same, like business partnerships and promises of profit.

According to a new study titled “Is There A Commercial Argument For ISP Music Services” commissioned by the BPI on behalf of Universal Music and carried out by industry analyst Ovum, if the UK’s most prominent ISPs all more or less immediately launched subscriber packages that included bundled music, they could generate new revenues of £103 million by 2013.

The BPI say this figure is based on a ‘medium adoption scenario’ and is an amount equal to 41% of the total 2009 digital music market. In an ‘accelerated adoption scenario’ the study says that the revenues could nearly double to £203m.

Aside from the profitability implied by these revenues, the report seems keen to offer other incentives to the major ISPs – Virgin Media, Sky, BT, O2, Orange and TalkTalk – to get involved in the music business. The study suggests that the inclusion of a music element to bundles would reduce subscriber ‘churn’ – the rate at which customers cancel their contracts. The example given is that an ISP with 3.5m customers could save £20m if the bundling of music cut churn by 10%, although there is no information to show that it actually would.

While suggesting good business is to be had in getting a little involved in the music business, the BPI is keen to point out that for ISPs, the more involved they get, the more they can make.

“The revenue prospects for bundled ISP music services would be substantially increased if services were offered to consumers in tandem with meaningful action to tackle illegal music downloading,” say the BPI.

We approached TalkTalk, an ISP referred to in the study, for a comment.

“TalkTalk thanks the BPI for its strategic business advice. Though some may question the value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models and is pressing the Government to criminalise its biggest customers,” a spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

Clearly TalkTalk doesn’t want to do the music industry’s dirty work for them, but if other ISPs got heavily involved in the music distribution business it might be considered natural for them to try and protect their revenues. That said, the leap from simple common carrier to having a vested interest could complicate their position.

Nevertheless, another issue the report highlights is that heavy competition is driving down the price of broadband services while consumer desire for bandwidth continues to increase. In any business working in plain commodities, the desire to bring in more profitable “added-value” products is strong.

“It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe’. This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs,” said BPI Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor.

So let’s imagine that the ISPs want to get involved in this market, offering bundled music for an extra £6.49 (the price level suggested in the report) – what would be so wrong with that? It’s pretty affordable after all, so why not give it a chance?

“With the right service platform, user experience and merchandising strategy, ISPs have an opportunity to reach a green-field digital music market that mainstream download-to-own services such as iTunes do not reach today,” explains report co-author and Ovum’s principal analyst, Adrian Drury.

So these suggested services aren’t of the “fill up your iPod” type, but of the “can only be used sitting-at-your-computer streaming services with limited download allocation” type. Surprised? Us neither.

Trying to convert those currently using file-sharing services over to paid models is already a big challenge. Trying to switch them to an inferior product whilst being hounded by their ISP on behalf of the music industry is a different matter altogether, and something TalkTalk refuses to be drawn into.

“Perhaps there is a goldmine for ISPs in legal downloads but that will not alter the fact that the copyright protection proposals being proposed threaten human rights,” their spokesperson told us. “They will penalise innocent broadband customers. They are expensive, unwieldy and utterly futile.”

If the record labels really did own your ISP, this is the type of environment subscribers would be pushed into. And you’d still have to fill up your iPod elsewhere at additional cost.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Carried out in November, the study found that while P2P use remains constant, usage of other other methods and techniques for acquiring music are on the increase.

Sources being exploited by the 16 to 54 year-old respondents include blogs and forums which publish links to music stored on so-called ‘cyberlockers’, a generic term for hosting sites such as Rapidshare. These showed an 18% increase in usage by respondents during the last 6 months.

Other non-P2P sources enjoying increased usage from respondents during the same period include MP3 search engines such as SkreemR (up 28%), and newsgroups which show a big leap of 42%.

While the BPI’s Chief Executive Geoff Taylor points out that there are as many as 35 legal digital music services in the UK for Internet users to acquire music from, the biggest gaining ‘alternative’ source with respondents is not a free mechanism such as BitTorrent.

During the last 6 months, overseas MP3 pay sites (such as those listed here) enjoyed an increase in usage of 47% with the respondents who admitted to getting their music from ‘alternative’ sources. This seems to be an indication that people are willing to pay for music, just not at the levels being demanded in their home market. While these sites are labeled as ‘unlicensed’ by the BPI, they maintain they are completely legal in their own countries.

Rather than focusing on the usual P2P/BitTorrent bogeyman, this report puts emphasis on other methods of acquiring music, in the hope that the UK government will indeed grant itself the power to introduce new laws quickly to deal with these ‘new threats’, as mentioned in the Digital Economy Bill.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.