‘End of the road’ for ACTA in Europe as EC withdraws court appeal over treaty.

‘End of the road’ for ACTA in Europe as EC withdraws court appeal over treaty.(RT).The European Commission has withdrawn its request to review ACTA’s compatibility with the EU law in the European Court of Justice. The move virtually ensures the treaty will never be adopted in the Union.

­The European Comission’s move was reported by MEPs from the Socialists and Democrats alliance.
“I welcome this news from the Commission today,” said SD Euro MP David Martin, the author of the parliamentary report on ACTA, as cited by The Register. 

“The EU cannot be party to an agreement without European Parliament ratification. MEPs overwhelmingly rejected ACTA in July and I am pleased that the Commission has acknowledged this is the end of the road for ACTA in the EU thanks to the Parliament.”

The European Commission made the appeal to the court in July, after ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) had received a knockout blow from the European Parliament. At the time MEPs roundly rejected the treaty with 478 votes against, and only 39 in favour.
Even before that, in February this year the adoption of ACTA was suspended due to mass protests against it, with critics slamming the agreement for its breaches of human rights, that it would protect copyright at the expense of freedom of speech on the Internet.
Intended as a global treaty, ACTA started to be developed in 2007 as a means to target copyright violations in a wide range of industries.ACTA has been signed by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Mexico, South Korea and 22 EU member states. Of all those countries, only Japan has ratified it so far. The treaty will come into force for the countries which ratified it when at least 5 more pass the relevant legislation.Read the full story here.

YouTube to start paying to copyright owners in Turkey?

YouTube to start paying to copyright owners in Turkey?(HD).YouTube has officially applied to the Musical Work Owners' Society of Turkey (MESAM) for a licence agreement, daily Milliyet reported. "We don't have the popularity statistics for individual songs, but YouTube is being used intensively by Turkish users. I think we will now receive a copyright payment of between $3-5 million per year from YouTube," a member of the MESAM governing board said.Read the full story here.

U.S. Six Strikes Copyright Infringement Scheme Delayed Again

U.S. Six Strikes Copyright Infringement Scheme Delayed Again.(GP).And it's one, two, six strikes you’re out at the old ball game - but the ball game has been delayed. And when I say ballgame, I mean the agreement between rights holders in the United States and Internet service providers which would institute a "six strikes" system for those naughty people that infringe on copyrights while using the Internet...
In an undetermined (at this point) number of months, the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) will begin the process of tracking down copyright infringers as part of an agreement all major U.S. Internet providers struck with the MPAA and RIAA. All of the parties involved eventually agreed to a system where copyright infringers would receive a series of warnings from their service providers telling them that that their behavior is unacceptable and would offer some form of "education" to show those individuals the error of their ways. After six warnings ISPs can decide what kind of action to take against repeat offenders including slowing down connections or temporary disconnections.
The agreement was called "Copyright Alerts" when it was revealed in July of last year and some ISPs were expected to send out the first warnings before the end of 2011. But something happened and that deadline passed by without a peep from all involved. The one thing that was revealed was that there was a new deadline: July 1, 2012, but it looks like that one will be missed too.
Web site TorrentFreak recently asked the CCI about the upcoming target date:
"The dates mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are not hard deadlines but were intended to keep us on track to have the Copyright Alert System up and running as quickly as possible and in the most consumer friendly manner possible," a spokesperson told the publication. "We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly and able to be implemented in a manner consistent with all of the goals of the MOU. We expect our implementation to begin later this year."
The CCI went on to tell the publication that the group has selected a third-party company that will be responsible for monitoring BitTorrent swarms, but did not reveal the name of that company.
"The technology partner we have identified and begun working with is an independent and impartial expert and we expect to have an announcement about the independent expert shortly," TorrentFreak was told.
This could be why the six strikes plan has been delayed, because the unnamed technology partner is being doubly scrutinized to make sure their data collection methods are accurate.Read the full story here.

"To boldly go where no other server went before".Pirate Bay to Fly 'Server Drones' to Avoid Law Enforcement.

"To boldly go where no other server went before".Pirate Bay to Fly 'Server drones to Avoid Law Enforcement.(USNews).
The world’s largest and most resilient BitTorrent site plans to redefine “cloud computing” with a plan to move at least some of its servers onto unmanned drones miles above Sweden.
In a Sunday blog post, The Pirate Bay announced new "Low Orbit Server Stations" that will house the site's servers and files on unmanned, GPS-controlled, aircraft drones.
One of the sites administrators, MrSpock, said with the advent of miniature computers such as the Raspberry Pi, a $35 micro computer the size of a thumb drive that includes a WiFi and SD card slot for storage, the site can take its servers far from any law enforcement.
“We’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air,” MrSpock wrote. “This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war.”
The Swedish site has operated since 2003 by an “anti-copyright organization” and despite numerous raids, remains one of the most popular music and movie pirating sites on the web. The site hosts thousands of “torrent” files—tiny files that allow users to connect to and download files from other users. The system is one of the most popular ways to anonymously share large files and often comes under fire from copyright holders, who argue that the service allows people to easily share copyrighted movies, music, games and software.“We can’t limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore,” MrSpock wrote. “When time comes we will host in all parts of the galaxy, being true to our slogan of being the galaxy’s most resilient system.”Hmmmm......To boldly go where no other server went before"?Read the full story here.

"The Gloves are off" - Copyright Industry Calls for Broad Search Engine Censorship.

Copyright Industry Calls for Broad Search Engine Censorship.(TF).At a behind-closed-doors meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, copyright holders have handed out a list of demands to Google, Bing and Yahoo. To curb the growing piracy problem, Hollywood and the major music labels want the search engines to de-list popular filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay, and give higher ranking to authorized sites.It’s no secret that the entertainment industries believe search engines are not delivering enough when it comes to protecting copyright works. Just last month, the RIAA and IFPI accused Google of massively profiting from piracy, while putting up barriers to make life difficult for rightsholders.
If the copyright industry had their way, Google and other search engines would no longer link to sites such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. In a detailed proposal handed out during a meeting with Google, Yahoo and Bing, various copyright holders made their demands clear.
The document, which describes a government-overlooked “Voluntary Code of Practice” for search engines, was not intended for public consumption but the Open Rights Group obtained it through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
In short, the rightsholders want the search engines to make substantial changes so that pirated content becomes harder to find, or is de-listed entirely. In addition, they want to boost the rankings of licensed content. Below are the three new measures they propose.

• Assign lower rankings to sites that repeatedly make available unlicensed content in breach of copyright
• Stop indexing websites that are subject to court orders while establishing suitable procedures to de-index substantially infringing sites
• In the document rightsholders explain that they find it inexcusable that some websites – Pirate Bay and Isohunt in particular – are still indexed by all major search engines even though courts have ruled they facilitate copyright infringementPrioritize websites that obtain certification as a licensed site under a recognised scheme.

Hmmmm.......“We would propose that prioritisation be enabled for searches that contain any of the following key search terms: “mp3″, “flac”, “wma”, “aac”, “torrent”, “download”, “rip”, “stream” or “listen”, “free”, when combined with an artist name, song or album title contained on a list to be regularly updated and provided to a search engine by a recognised and properly mandated agency representing rights holders for a particular sector, such as BPI.”Read the full story here.