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Woman fined $1.9 million for illegal downloads
(CNN) — A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each — a total of $1.9 million — for 24 songs. The Thomas-Rasset’s case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said. Attorney Joe Sibley said that his client was shocked at fine, noting that the price tag on the songs she downloaded was 99 cents. She plans to appeal, he said.
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Jury awards $675K in Boston music downloading case
By DENISE LAVOIE, Associated Press Writer – Sun Aug 2, 5:09 am ET
BOSTON – A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing musiconline to pay $675,000 to four record labels.
Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels. Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum's case was $4.5 million.
Jurors ordered Tenenbaum to pay $22,500 for each incident ofcopyright infringement, effectively finding that his actions were willful. The attorney for the 25-year-old student had asked the jury earlier Friday to "send a message" to the music industry by awarding only minimal damages. Tenenbaum said he was thankful that the case wasn't in the millions and contrasted the significance of his fine with the maximum. "That to me sends a message of 'We considered your side with some legitimacy,'" he said. "$4.5 million would have been, 'We don't buy it at all.'" He added he will file for bankruptcy if the verdict stands.
Tenenbaum's lawyer, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, said the jury's verdict was not fair. He said he plans to appeal the decision because he was not allowed to argue a case based on fair use.
The Recording Industry Association of America issued a statement thanking the jury for recognizing the impact illegal downloading has on the music community. "We appreciate that Mr. Tenenbaum finally acknowledged that artists and music companies deserve to be paid for their work," the statement said. "From the beginning, that's what this case has been all about. We only wish he had done so sooner rather than lie about his illegal behavior."
Tenenbaum would not say if he regretted downloading music, saying it was a loaded question. "I don't regret drinking underage in college, even though I got busted a few times," he said. The case is only the nation's second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial. Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, must pay $1.92 million, or $80,000 on each of 24 songs, after concluding she willfully violated the copyrights on those tunes. The jury began deliberating the case Friday afternoon.
After Tenenbaum admitted Thursday he is liable for damages for 30 songs at issue in the case, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the jury must consider only whether his copyright infringement was willful and how much in damages to award four recording labels that sued him over the illegal file-sharing.
In his closing statement Friday, Nesson repeatedly referred to Tenenbaum as a "kid" and asked the jury to award only a small amount to the recording companies. At one point, Nesson suggested the damages should be as little as 99 cents per song, roughly the same amount Tenenbaum would have to pay if he legally purchased the music online.
But Tim Reynolds, a lawyer for the recording labels, recounted Tenenbaum's history of file-sharing from 1999 to 2007, describing him as "a hardcore, habitual, long-term infringer who knew what he was doing was wrong." Tenenbaum admitted on the witness stand that he had downloaded and shared more than 800 songs. Tenenbaum said he downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by Nirvana, Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins and other artists. The recording industry focused on only 30 songs in the case.
The music industry has typically offered to settle such cases for about $5,000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders. Cases already filed, however, are proceeding to trial.
Tenenbaum testified that he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said his two sisters, friends and others may have been responsible for downloading the songs to his computer.
Under questioning from his own lawyer, Tenenbaum said he now takes responsibility for the illegal swapping. "I used the computer. I uploaded, I downloaded music ... I did it," Tenenbaum said.
---Associated Press writer Jeannie Nuss contributed reporting from Boston.
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In digital age, can movie piracy be stopped?
(CNN) -- May 4, 2009. When the highly anticipated movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" opened Friday in theaters, many fans had already seen it.
The pirating and distribution of "Wolverine," starring Hugh Jackman, is being investigated by the FBI.
The online leak of a pirated, unfinished version of the 20th Century Fox film a month ago sent federal authorities springing into action and stoked a heated conversation within the entertainment industry about digital piracy.
Piracy of upcoming films is not new, but the theft of "Wolverine" is especially troubling for an industry concerned with a stalled economy and the financial bottom line.
It's rare for high-quality copies of a big-budget blockbuster to appear on the Internet more than a month before the film's release, experts say.
Within a week of "Wolverine's" March 31 leak, more than a million people had downloaded the movie, according to TorrentFreak, a blog devoted to the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. 
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"Unfortunately, the recent leak of the Fox film 'Wolverine' provided a stark backdrop to the impact that digital piracy has on the large investments that producers make in creating state-of-the-art films," said Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who oversaw a congressional hearing on piracy after the leak.
"During our hearing in Los Angeles, director Steven Soderbergh said that in 2007, the entertainment industry generated a trade surplus of $13.6 billion," Berman added. "Imagine what those numbers would be if we could rein in piracy."
Bootleg, or illegally copied, movies have long been a thorn to the film industry.
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In 2003, a version of Universal's "The Hulk" appeared on the Internet two weeks before the film opened. A New Jersey man pleaded guilty to the theft. And in 2005, a pirated print of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" was uploaded to the Web within hours of the movie's release.
But where Hollywood's biggest headache used to be murky, muffled copies of films taken by someone who snuck a camcorder into a theater, today's pirates are getting more sophisticated and gaining access to better-quality goods.
Greg Sandoval, who covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News, said that in the digital age, thieves can gain access to near-perfect advance copies of films on DVD that have greater potential to undermine a movie's box-office prospects.
And even studios' attempts at safeguarding their products against piracy, such as by encoding DVDs with digital watermarks that allow authorities to trace individual copies, aren't enough, Sandoval said.
He said tech-savvy thieves have figured out how to strip such watermarks from DVDs.
"When you're talking about digital content ... it's impossible to lock it down completely" from theft, Sandoval said. "These hackers are very creative. Sometimes, they're one step ahead of the security experts."
20th Century Fox issued a statement vowing to prosecute the "Wolverine" thief "to the fullest extent of the law." The FBI is investigating, but as of Thursday, no arrests had been made.
Darcy Antonellis, president of technical operations for Warner Bros. (which is owned by the parent company of CNN), said the growth of technology has aided the pirates.
"Digital piracy has continued to increase with greater access to [files] and improved broadband services," said Antonellis, who helps oversee Warner Bros.' anti-piracy efforts.
"As broadband services increase their capacity to support legitimate services, they also enable increased illegal file-sharing. Technologies have evolved to encumber such distribution but must compete with the strength of viral or super distribution of content."
The bad guys aren't the only ones keeping up with the technology.
Keith Bolcar, special agent in charge of the FBI's cyber division in Los Angeles, said agents and their partners as "doing everything we can to keep up with the learning curve of technology, hopefully just as fast as our criminal subjects."
The FBI meets routinely with studio representatives to share intelligence, to discuss strategy and to detect and fix vulnerabilities in security measures, he said.
"While I can't discuss investigative techniques, we employ a myriad of sophisticated methods to solve these crimes," said Bolcar, whose office is investigating the "Wolverine" leak. "Our investigators receive extensive training and are technologically savvy."
Hollywood also faces the challenge of protecting digital files that pass through so many hands while in production and post-production. Antonellis said Warner Bros. works diligently to safeguard its properties.
"Each project, for us, is unique, with its own unique set of challenges," she said. "Whether there are 50 or 500 people involved in the process, we try to focus on ownership/responsibility of our assets throughout the entire production through to distribution process."
John Malcolm, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America, said digital piracy can take many forms, including peer-to-peer file sharing and streaming.
Malcolm said the association is conducting a lot of outreach to universities and Internet service providers to help them address piracy that occurs over their systems.
The issue is global, Malcolm said, as evidenced by pending litigation in France that would shut down Internet accounts of illegal downloaders.
The association is in litigation against an Australian service provider, iiNet, to try to establish the legal parameters of its responsibility in policing its system, Malcolm said.
"In some cases, we are making great progress with ISP, and in some cases, it's a little bit tougher going," Malcolm said. "After all, it's their broadband that's being eaten up, and it slows down their systems."
Berman, D-California, said advances in technologies that enable filtering and other anti-theft tools will help curb piracy. So will creating more sites where viewers can legitimately access movies, shows and music, such as Hulu and the recently announced Vevo, a partnership between Universal Music and YouTube.
"Given how pirated materials often damage computers with viruses, spyware and other problems, consumers will continue to embrace the innovative, legitimate sites that are becoming more and more available," Berman said.
Malcolm agrees. He said there are more than 350 sites that legitimately distribute digital content.
If a person is a true movie lover, they will want to respect the art, the artists and the countless people behind the scenes who make the magic happen, Malcolm said.
"I hear periodically, 'Well, Tom Cruise has enough money' or 'Tom Hanks has enough money,' " Malcolm said. "I would say to movie lovers, stick around and watch all of the credits. When you see hundreds of names scrolling across the screen, those are the people whose talents contributed to making that movie, and they need to make a living."
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Publishers see rise in e-book piracy
2:00 a.m. May 12, 2009
The Kindle (Amazon) is making it easier to read books in digital form (click to enlarge)
For a while now, determined readers have been able to sniff out errant digital copies of book titles as varied as the “Harry Potter” series and best-sellers by Stephen King and John Grisham. But now, some publishers say, the problem has ballooned as an expanding appetite for e-books has spawned a crop of pirated editions on Web sites such as Scribd and Wattpad, and on file-sharing services such as RapidShare and MediaFire.
“It's exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.” John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher that also issues the “Dummies” series, employs three full-time staff members to trawl for unauthorized copies. General counsel Gary Rinck said that in the past month, the company had sent notices on more than 5,000 titles, asking various sites to take down digital versions of Wiley's books, a number that is five times higher than a year ago. “It's a game of Whac-a-Mole,” said Russell Davis, an author and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a trade association that helps authors pursue digital pirates. “You knock one down and five more spring up.”
Several publishers declined to comment on the issue, fearing the attention might inspire more theft. For now, electronic piracy of books does not seem as widespread as what hit the music world, when file-sharing services such as Napster threatened to take down the whole industry. Publishers and authors say they can learn from their peers in music, who alienated fans by using the courts to aggressively go after college students and Napster before it converted to a legitimate online store.
“If iTunes started three years earlier, I'm not sure how big Napster and the subsequent piratical environments would have been,” said Richard Sarnoff, a chairman of Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, the world's largest publisher of consumer titles. “Because people would have been in the habit of legitimately purchasing at pricing that wasn't considered pernicious.”
Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive for readers to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What's more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version. Now, with publishers producing more digital editions, it is potentially easier for hackers to copy files. The growing popularity of electronic reading devices like the Kindle from Amazon or the Reader from Sony make it easier to read in digital form. Many of the unauthorized editions are uploaded as PDFs, which can be easily e-mailed to a Kindle or the Sony device.
Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, which invite users to upload documents like college theses and self-published novels, have been the target of industry grumbling in recent weeks, as illegal reproductions of popular titles have turned up on them. Trip Adler, chief executive of Scribd, said it was his “gut feeling” that unauthorized editions represented only a small fraction of the site's content.
An example of copyrighted material on Scribd recently included a digital version of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” a collection of fairy tales by J.K. Rowling. One commenter, posting as vicious-9690, wrote “thx for posting it up ur like the robinhood of ebooks.” Scribd and Wattpad say they immediately remove illegally posted books once notified of them. The companies also have installed filters to identify copyrighted work when it is uploaded. “We are working very hard to keep unauthorized content off the site,” Adler said.
For some writers, tracking down illegal e-books is not worth it. “The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” King wrote in an e-mail message. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.”
Book sales are down significantly, and publishers say it is difficult to determine whether electronic piracy is denting sales. Some of the most frequently uploaded books are also best-sellers. Some authors say they just want to protect the principle of compensating writers. “I don't ask to get rich off this stuff,” said Harlan Ellison, an author and screenwriter. “I just ask to be paid.”
Nine years ago, Ellison sued Internet service providers for failing to stop a user from posting four of his stories to an online news group. Since settling that suit, he has pursued more than 240 people who have posted his work to the Internet without permission. “If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back 6 inches of bloody stump,” he said. Others view digital piracy as a way for readers to discover writers. Cory Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel “Little Brother” spent seven weeks on The New York Times children's chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. Doctorow believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers. “I really feel like my problem isn't piracy,” Doctorow said. “It's obscurity.”
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Pirate Bay's “fileshare four” get year's jail
The Stockholm district court said in a statement the four were found guilty of breaching copyright laws and each sentenced to a year in prison.
Guilty verdict could help music and film companies recoup millions of dollars By Veronica Ek
updated 11:34 a.m. ET, Fri., April 17, 2009
STOCKHOLM - Four men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world's biggest free file-sharing Web sites, were each sentenced to a year in jail on Friday for breaching copyright, and ordered to pay $3.6 million in compensation.
Analysts said the guilty verdict in the closely-watched test case could help music and film companies recoup millions of dollars in lost revenues, though they doubted it would stem the tide of illegal downloading.
In a broadcast on The Pirate Bay's Web site one of the four defendants, Peter Sunde, taunted the court, holding up a mock IOU note for 31 million Swedish crowns ($3.6 million) followed by the initials "JK" — Internet lingo for "just kidding.
"That's the closest they're going to get to getting money from me," Sunde said.International trade body IFPI, which represents some 1,400 record companies across the world, reported earlier this year that about 95 percent of music downloaded in 2008 was illegal.
On its Web site, The Pirate Bay scorned the ruling, calling it a "crazy verdict.""It was lol (laugh out loud) to read and hear," the message read. "But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing Hollywood has ever taught us."
IFPI Chairman John Kennedy welcomed the court sentence which he said in a statement provided a "a strong deterrent" against copyright infringement.
"This is good news for everyone, in Sweden and internationally, who is making a living or a business from creative activity and who needs to know their rights will protected by law," he said.
The men linked to The Pirate Bay — Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom — were charged early last year by a Swedish prosecutor with conspiracy to break copyright law and related offences. They denied the charges.Companies including Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI also sought damages of more than $12 million to cover lost revenues.
Appeal
Lundstrom's attorney, Per Samuelson, told journalists he was shocked by the verdict and the severity of the sentence.
"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he said. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."
The lawyers defending Sunde and Neij told Reuters their clients would also appeal the verdict.
The group that controls The Pirate Bay, launched in 2003, says that no copyrighted material is stored on its servers and no exchange of files actually takes place there so it cannot be held responsible for what material is being exchanged.
The prosecution said that by financing, programming and administering the site, the four men promoted the infringement of property rights by the site's users.
Industry experts were not convinced the verdict would have a lasting effect."Every time you get rid of one, another bigger one pops up. Napster went, and then up came a whole host of others ... The problem of file-sharing just keeps growing year on year, and it's increasingly difficult for the industry to do anything about it," said music analyst Mark Mulligan of research firm Forrester.
Dan Cryan, senior analyst at media research firm Screen Digest, said the lack of international copyright law meant Web sites dedicated to illegal downloads could simply move on to a new country if legislation tightened where they operated.
"Pirate Bay was brilliant at self-publicity, but the reality is there are lots of other torrent-tracker sites," he said. "The closing of the one that shouts the loudest won't make any difference."
Copyright 2009 Reuters.