Digital Digest – October 21, 2013

File-sharing site isoHunt forced to shut down

BitTorrent file-sharing website isoHunt has been forced to shut down, after losing a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Columbia Film Industries, and film trade association MPAA. Founder Gary Fung has agreed to pay the plaintiff $110 million in damages, although the actual website doesn’t house any files that infringe copyright. In a petition posted to the Supreme Court, Fung likened his search engine to numerous others that routinely return results for copyrighted material. He writes:

“Our case with the MPAA is currently at a critical stage for the US Supreme Court, on the issue of causation. To what extent should a Web search engine be held to ’cause’ infringement that occur[s] off the Web, on BitTorrent swarms and clients, within a large ecosystem with many websites and many search engines, including generic search engines such as Google and Yahoo? I’m not playing lip service here, we’ve done a statistical study that 95% of torrent files searchable on isoHunt are identically searchable on Google or Yahoo. This is an issue with huge implications for both Internet technology businesses, search engines and UGC sites, and users/consumers alike.”

MPAA head Chris Dodd stated this case “sends a strong message that those who build businesses around encouraging, enabling, and helping others to commit copyright infringement are themselves infringers, and will be held accountable for their illegal actions.”

As Fung points out, the outcome of this case may set a precedent that sees Google, Yahoo and other major search engines found liable for the search results of its users. While MPAA head Dodd is correct in suggesting sites such as isoHunt are geared towards enabling copyright infringement, the fact that Google already takes down eight ‘pirate’ links each second, points to a larger problem.

TorrentFreak reports that users aren’t going to take the ruling lying down, with ArchiveTeam (who describe themselves as a “loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage”) currently working to archive the 286 million files that isoHunt currently links to, via close to 14 million torrents.

“This project isn’t about politics or copyright issues. This is about preserving culture and historical metadata. All data is essential”, a spokesperson from the group told TorrentFreak.

Ten million non-infringing files scrapped by Department of Justice

While isoHunt prepares for shutdown, a study into the 250 million files that the United States Department of Justice removed from cloud storage site Megaupload in 2011 reveals that only 31% of the files removed by the shutdown were clearly infringing copyright, with 65% of unclear status, and 4% proven not to infringe copyright at all. This means that around 10 million personal files were scrapped by the Department of Justice, despite not breaching copyright, with up to 162.5 million additional files possibly falling onto the same side of the law. The implications of this are scary, especially with cloud storage services touting their ability to store files ‘forever’. Who knows how many vital files – such as audio recordings, documents and photographs – were lost forever in the shutdown?

The study, which was undertaken by Northeastern University, can be found here.

Artists speak out on piracy

BBC’s Newsbeat asked a handful of musicians their thoughts regarding piracy, as the BPI estimates that illegal downloading costs the UK music industry £200m per year. Not surprisingly, the opinions differed greatly. Jamaican dancehall Sean Paul touted the benefits: “I get promotion out of it, which is a good thing for me, because people like my song and put on a stage show”, while UK soul singer John Newman, whose album debuted at #7 this week on the ARIA charts, was more vocal, saying: “I think it’s disgusting. Get some respect for the artist. It’s not fair at all. Honestly we work so hard and a lot of people do. They’re ruining the music industry, they really are and it’s really not fair.”

While streaming services are seen as a legal alternative to piracy, many musicians view them as being a large part of the overall devaluing of music. David Byrne recently followed artists such as Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich in speaking out against Spotify, writing an alarmist piece in the The Guardian – titled The internet will suck all creative content out of the world:  “For many music listeners, the choice is obvious – why would you ever buy a CD or pay for a download when you can stream your favourite albums and artists either for free, or for a nominal monthly charge? […] The amounts these services pay per stream is minuscule – their idea being that if enough people use the service those tiny grains of sand will pile up. Domination and ubiquity are therefore to be encouraged. We should readjust our values because in the web-based world we are told that monopoly is good for us. The major record labels usually siphon off most of this income, and then they dribble about 15-20% of what’s left down to their artists.”

YouTube signs deal with Swedish rights organisation

YouTube has signed a licensing agreement with Swedish rights organisation STIM, which will allow musicians, composers and authors to earn royalties from  the video streaming site.

CEO of STIM Kenth Muldin called the deal “a milestone that creates new opportunities for our rights-holders”, while Gudrun Schweppe, Head of Music Publishing at YouTube in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, stated: “This will foster the creation of Swedish content and enables music artists, composers and authors to receive payments for videos on YouTube.”

The deal follows similar ones struck by YouTube EMEA with UK’s Performing Rights Society, Italy’s SIAE, French organisation SACEM, as well as rights societies in The Netherlands and Spain.