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P2P companies may face new scrutiny
A new bill is being introduced to congress aims to keep children from getting pornography from P2P networks. The bill works by having the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) require P2P companies to require parental permission for children to use their P2P networks. The bill, introduced on Thursday, was drafted by Reps. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., and Chris John, D-La., and is to be called the Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography, or P4 act.
"Our legislation gives parents the tools they need to protect their children from pornography and threats to privacy posed by peer-to-peer file-trading networks," Pitts said in a statement. "By working together to protect children, we are building a broad and bipartisan coalition."
According to the article:
'The proliferation of porn on peer-to-peer networks has been on the government's radar screen for some time. In the spring, the General Accounting Office and the House Government Reform Committee released separate reports that document the issues that surround porn on peer-to-peer networks in anticipation of a Government Reform Committee hearing entitled "Stumbling Onto Smut." The committee's report found that file-blocking software didn't do enough to filter out porn files. The General Accounting Office report found that typing in words such as "underage" or "pre-teen" yielded numerous images of child porn.'
(Read More)
Movielink, Disney ink film download pact
A deal has been struck between Disney and the online Movie service Movielink, which will bring movies from six of the seven major Hollywood studios to the selection of movies from Movielink. The only studio left is 20th Century Fox. Movielink offers Hollywood motion pictures for download for a price. The introduction of such services hopes to steer people away from illegally downloading movies and towards legal services such as Movielink.
According to the article:
'Disney will supply new releases and some older films from its Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone, Dimension and Miramax Films groups. Movies include recent Oscar winner "Chicago" as well as family films such as "Jungle Book 2."'
'Jim Ramo, chief executive of Movielink, said the deal gives the company a more complete offering of titles. The only major studio now without a licensing agreement or affiliation with Movielink is 20th Century Fox, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. In April last year, Disney and Fox disbanded their own movie download service called Movies.com.'
(Read More)
P2P hide-and-seek
The new and increasingly popular Peer-2-Per software BitTorrent has come under fire recently. Many websites which host Torrents are being threatened with legal action or have been hit with Denial of Service attacks amidst various other reasons. BitTorrent was not originally intended for trading copyrighted material and it is very easy to track what's being traded and who is trading it.
"Distributing stuff that is clearly illegal with BitTorrent is a really dumb idea," said Cohen, who advocates using the software to distribute large uncopyrighted files such as open-source programs. "BitTorrent doesn't have any anonymity features. There are things about it that make it very incompatible with anonymity."
According to the articles:
'The phenomenon may prove a stumbling block to a technology that many in the online world have quickly adopted as the super-efficient answer to the kinds of slowdowns and download queues that are common with more popular services such as Kazaa or Morpheus. But the issues come as no surprise to the technology's creator, independent San Francisco programmer Bram Cohen, who says his work is badly designed for anyone who wants to trade copyrighted works without being identified.'
(Read More)
Schools stay mum on file traders' names
In the recent hunt of P2P file traders by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), some of the users have turned up to be using university networks. This raises a problem as the subpoenas demand immediate release of the names of the students but, under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act schools are required to notify students before action is taken. The schools are not trying contest the RIAA's right to identify P2P users, but rather want to abide by all laws.
"MIT of course has a policy of complying with lawfully issued subpoenas," said professor James Bruce, vice president for information systems at MIT, in a statement. "In this case we have been advised by counsel that the subpoena was not in compliance with the court rules that apply to these subpoenas, and did not allow MIT time to send any notice as the law requires."
According to the articles:
'The RIAA has already won a key court decision upholding its right to use the subpoenas, which take advantage of a controversial fast-track provision that allows copyright holders to obtain information about alleged infringers without first filing a lawsuit. That decision, which forced Verizon Communications to turn over the name of a broadband subscriber accused of swapping copyrighted works on Kazaa, vastly simplified the RIAA's investigations and effectively opened the subpoena floodgates.'
'MIT reported it filed a motion in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts asking how it should proceed in light of the subpoenas and requirements of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. The school was careful to indicate in its statement that the refusal does not represent MIT taking any position in the war between the RIAA and users of peer-to-peer file-sharing sites such as Kazaa.'
(Read More)
MPAA warnings hit the big screen
In an effort to educate the public about the legal issues of download and/or distributing copyrighted material over P2P networks the MPAA has decided to start running advertisements on TV as well as movie trailers informing people about why file trading is illegal. In addition they are opening a website where people can go to read more about file trading and copyrights at RespectCopyrights.com. This campaign is another effort to cut down on illegal trading of copyrighted motion pictures which the MPAA claims is causing a huge drop in revenue in the movie industry.
According to the article:
'The MPAA's move follows similar efforts by the Recording Industry Association of America, which last fall launched a campaign featuring major recording artists who compared swapping music files online with shoplifting. Since then, the RIAA has sued some students who operated Napster-like services over their school networks. And last month, the RIAA began to gather evidence to prepare lawsuits against people who trade music files online. So far, the group has sent hundreds of subpoenas to Internet service providers, seeking to identify people it suspects of trading songs. The group's efforts have come under fire from some civil liberties groups as being overly harsh and potentially ensnaring innocent people without putting a dent in file swapping.'
(Read More)
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