This new law creates a high-level office in the White House (the 'Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator'), raises the limits on possible damages in copyright cases substantially, and increases the number of things that can be confiscated.

Better Than it Could Have Been

The only positive aspect of this bill as it was signed by President Bush this week is that it does not include the per-song piracy penalty of the original bill which was introduced earlier this year. Under this provision, an accused pirate could have been charged separately for each copyright infringement, including once for every song featured in a pirated movie, for example.

Remix Culture

Copyright lawyer and activist Lawrence Lessig argues that these kind of draconian laws and the obsession with prosecuting copyright violations stifles our culture and that the law should be relaxed in order to create for a thriving 'remix culture.' The ProIP act, however, takes the law into the opposite direction.

The new legislation, which was cosponsored by numerous Democratic and Republican senators, including Hilary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Gordon Smith, and Lindsey Graham, was unanimously adopted by the U.S. Senate and passed the House with a wide margin.

The 84-year-old Redstone, whose company is in the midst of a lawsuit against Google's YouTube seeking $1 billion in damages for what it terms "massive intentional copyright infringement," was coy about the video sharing site, but did make some pointed remarks about what he thinks of YouTube's current business model. "Think about it: You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube," he said. "And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish. You cannot make it as a musician, you can't make it as a filmmaker or a writer without ... effective and enforced copyright legislation."

Redstone, though, does see a future for monetization of online content via advertisements. "Advertising will pay the way," he told the crowd.

On the other hand, content producers need to be more accommodating of changing consumer viewing habits. More and more people are getting video, audio, and textual content online, or doing things like timeshifting television programming with Tivo. Big media needs to get on board and realize that consumers want to be able to view their media whenever and wherever is most convenient for them. Giving consumers a choice of where and how to consume media would be beneficial to media producers in the long run.

The problem for media companies, though, is that even with explosive growth of online advertising, it likely can't match the profits they get from other mediums. The Law & Order franchise, for example, reportedly rakes in over $1 billion in profits from rerun licensing rights, DVD sales, and overseas licensing. That's a lot of money that content producers might feel hesitant to potentially cannibalize by bringing content online.

According to Merkel, the German government wants to protect its authors. Google, according to Merkel, is "just scanning books without any regard to copyright law," and "the Internet should not be exempt from copyright laws," she also adds.

In this context, it is important to note that Germany has always been extremely protective of books as a cultural product. Book retailers, for example, have to sell all new books at a set price and can only discount older or damaged books under a limited set of circumstances. It's currently not clear if these price-fixing rules also apply to eBooks.

"eBooks Won't Replace Traditional Books"

Merkel also stressed that she doesn't believe that eBooks will ever replace traditional books  - though she does mention that 'new' technologies like audio books have changed the book market over the last few years.

Google Books and the Google Book Settlement have obviously been mired in controversy from the beginning. Just last week, Google's Sergey Brin defended the project in an op-ed piece in the New York Times. The Google Book Settlement is currently on hold, and Google has until November to present a revised version of its plan.

Book Rights Registry

According to Google, the Book Rights Registry will also help to address the 'orphan' works problem. For a lot of out-of-print books, it is virtually impossible to establish the current copyright holder. However, given that the Books Registry will also be responsible for distributing the income from licensing and advertising, Google hopes that this will be an incentive for rightsholders to claim their abandoned works.

Licenses for Libraries

Libraries, universities, and other organizations will also be able to purchase an institutional subscription, which will give users the ability to access the full text of all the titles in the Google Books index. This, depending on the pricing, could turn out to be a revolutionary development for libraries.

Google Books is already changing the way many of us are doing our research, and having access to even more books is only going to move this trend forward even faster.

It is important to note that this settlement only applies to U.S. copyright holders. Users outside of the U.S. will not see any changes to Google Books yet.

Perhaps most successful is University of Ottawa professor, Michael Geist's, outspoken stance against the introduction of the Canadian DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). A little over a year ago, Geist launched his Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook Group in the hopes of educating the public about a bill he saw as a "sell out to American pressure". Geist believed that Bill C-60 would have effectively duplicated American copyright legislation and created an unfair imbalance between copyright holders and general consumers. Thousands of Canadians agreed and the Fair Copyright Facebook group gained widespread popularity.

On the day the DMCA was to be voted upon, the Facebook group had more than 25,000 members and Federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice dissolved the legislation in favor of further analysis. While there was no admittance from the Minister that online resistance was the reason, Industry opposition Charlie Angus exclaimed, "They tabled the bill this morning, now 3 hours later he tells me they've got cold feet? Did they just discover Facebook this morning?"

Whether Canadians like it or not, Facebook has changed the landscape of Canadian politics. Geist's Fair Copyright for Canada group currently has more than 89,000 members, and he was named the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer of 2008. Meanwhile, the Conservative government has promised to reintroduce the DMCA, but no date has been set in legislature. For more on the Geist and the Facebook group, check out the coverage on CBC's The Hour.

BayTSP, a Los Gatos, CA-based company, is best known for putting the cease-and-desist smackdown on peer-to-peer copyright violators. The site serves infringement information forms to offending parties on behalf of the copyright holders. Think of them as the online debt collectors of the BitTorrent universe, with all the information security risk that implies.

If the information were secure, this might be fine. However, in some monumental lapse of judgement, the entire site was left open to search spiders and accordingly indexed by Google, allowing anyone with hackerish leanings ample opportunity to create all kinds of mischief.

A Google search for "'infringement information' site:baytsp.com" yields distressing results. Some of the pages have been removed, but you can still have a look at the cached versions:

Whoops!

Not only have the forms been online for Google and the waiting world to view; the forms could also be completed and submitted online by just about anyone.

More technically savvy tricksters could send infringement notices of their own. "And, on top of that," the TechDirt blogger writes, "some have discovered that BayTSP's site has some scripting vulnerabilities such that you could create a fake complaint and get people to, say, download malware or enter credit card data."

Although this recent debacle is simply one more PR disaster for the media industries themselves, my first thoughts were echoed by TechDirt commenter Mechwarrior: "Once this hits 4chan, it's over."

German vs. U.S. Law

In the U.S., Google has been involved in similar cases, including the infamous Perfect 10 v. Google case, where Perfect 10 claimed that Google's image previews were violating Perfect 10's copyright. While the U.S. courts first granted Perfect 10's requests to remove the images, Google won its appeal because the court argued that Google's use of the thumbnails was to be considered fair use.

Robots.txt Anybody?

We would think that photographers and cartoonists would be happy to have their images featured and promoted in Google's image search. Also, a quick edit of a website's robot.txt file would have prevented Google from indexing the images in the first place.

It seems the WTO ruled with Antigua after a long series of battles over the fact that US restrictions on online gambling were found to violate free trade agreements. Despite the decision, no new forms of offshore online betting were allowed in the US. In retaliation, Antigua received permission from the WTO to suspend US copyright obligations up to a value of $21 million dollars annually.

Zookz founder Hugh Marshall launched the site in the belief that the Antigua-based company is not subject to US copyright law until those within the space reach a profit of $21 million dollars. Nevertheless, it's unlikely that this is the case as it would mean that the WTO would allow Antigua-based websites to simply give away files or sell them at rock bottom prices in order to stay below the limit. While the actual terms of the WTO's sanction is blurry, John Healey of the LA Times suggests that the annual value limit is likely to represent the loss to US industries rather than the profit yielded. As well, the fact that the site is accessible by global audiences outside of Antigua makes this a particularly suspicious venture.

While the site's 1,500 movies and 50,000 songs represent a relatively small catalogue, it appears that for now, for the price of a Netflix monthly account, Zookz users can access unlimited downloads. Obviously this is tempting. Dubious legality aside, and regardless of how you perceive the RIAA and MPAA, please remember that in this case neither starving musicians nor billionaire record labels receive payment for the downloaded works. If you're still curious about the service, you can register at Zookz.com.

It's one of those cases in which it's hard not to think both "I can't believe this happened" and "I can't believe it took so long" in the same mental breath. Crazed, uncontrolled linking has long been one of the biggest points of contention between people who use the internet and people who have no idea how it works.

Kieron Sharp, the Director of FACT, the British legal department that carried out the raid (who could argue with them?) said the following about TV Links. "Sites such as TV-Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites." Sharp says this is only the beginning and many more sites will go down in the near future.

If Mr. Sharp will forgive me for linking to it, I will point out that the Internet Archive has preserved copies of the wretched TV Links site through the past 12 months. I want to emphasize that I'm only linking to a site that's cached a site that's linking to other sites that may include content that could have been uploaded without the copyright holder's consent. I hope that's ok; if it's not I'm going to take the rest of the day off of the internet.

Derek Slater now runs public policy for Google, but before that he worked with the Berkman Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

• Google's philosophy that copyright is supposed to benefit the public.
• Support for rights holders and ways to get them high Google rankings.
• Google's history, starting in a garage and how their innovation thrived.
• Copyright issues and Comcast.

An Interivew with Google Policy Analyst Derek Slater from alex williams on Vimeo.

While this is perhaps one of the first major news organizations to codify and automate the tracking of copyright violations on the web, several large organizations employ automated tracking to protect their content from misappropriation. In particular, photo organizations such as Getty and Corbis have worked with PicScout's Image Tracker for a number of years to seek out and confront copyright infringers. However, where Getty and Corbis can make clear claims to their licensed stock photography, the AP's claims to news-related content is blurry. Still, the blogosphere will have to tread lightly when it comes to using AP-related sources.

The populist legal organization made a post to its blog today arguing that copyright holders became overzealous with their use of YouTube's ContentID tool in January and flagged for deletion many videos that the EFF believes constitute Fair Use. The post puts out a call for people who've lost their content and want to take legal action.

Using YouTube's new automated copright detection technology, Warner Brothers detected last month that 15 year old Juliet Weybret had posted a video of herself playing the piano and singing the 1934 song Winter Wonderland. This unrepentant little criminal might have thought that such a widely covered tune had entered the public domain, 75 years after it was recorded, but Juliet was clearly unfamiliar with legislation like the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act, which extended copyright protection to 95 years or more after publication date.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is not happy with the situation. About YouTube's Copyright ID technology, the EFF wrote today:

These systems are still primitive and unable to distinguish a transformative remix from copyright infringement. So unless they leave lots of breathing room for remixed content, these filters end up sideswiping lots of fair uses. And that's exactly what has happened these past few weeks. And while today it's Warner Music, as more copyright owners start using the Content ID tool, it'll only get worse. Soon it may be off limits to remix anything with snippets of our shared mass media culture -- music, TV, movies, jingles, commercials. That would be a sad irony -- copyright being used to stifle an exciting new wellspring of creativity, rather than encourage it.

It's clear from the Warner Music experience that YouTube's Content ID tool fails to separate the infringements from the arguable fair uses. And while YouTube offers users the option to dispute a removal (if it's an automated Content ID removal) or send a formal DMCA counter-notice (if it's an official DMCA takedown), many YouTube users, lacking legal help, are afraid to wave a red flag in front of Warner Music's lawyers. That's a toxic combination for amateur video creators on YouTube.

What does the EFF intend to do about it? The organization has put out a call to people who have had videos taken off of YouTube at the behest of Warner and whose videos were both noncommercial and substantially original. The EFF says it will help serve a counter notice and offer legal protection to as many people as it can. "We can't promise to take every case," they say, "but neither will we stand by and watch semi-automated takedowns trample fair use."

Can the EFF change the game on YouTube? Given the organization's healthy list of previous legal victories, we think it will be a good fight at the very least.

The addition of Google Books as a partner is a significant one as the search giant's involvement promises to increase the public's ability to find works to share and remix. For now, CC licensed books are distinguishable by a Creative Commons logo to the left of the preview pane. In the future, licensing is likely to become an advanced search feature within the site. When that happens, remixing material will be so much easier to find.

For example, Google already prints full versions of out-of-copyright books for its Library Project. Once these books are tagged with the public domain license, thousands of out-of-copyright and sometimes out-of-print books will become easily searchable. We may see a renewed interest in our favorite classics, or see them altered in new and unusual ways. By showcasing CC licensed material, Google Books may prompt other companies like Flickr to further prioritize commons-friendly search.

If you'd like to place your Google Book under a CC license, you can do so in your account settings. To sign up to add a CC licensed work, visit the Google Books partner page

The blackout is part of a week of action against S92, declares a press release by the Creative Freedom Foundation, a non-profit group in NZ that has similar copyright concerns to those made famous internationally by Lawrence Lessig. The Creative Freedom Foundation will also announce a S92 song remix challenge this week, and "various other initiatives including video commercials and radio broadcasts will follow."

Creative Freedom Foundation Director Bronwyn Holloway-Smith said in the press release that "if the [New Zealand] government choses to keep this law, they will be going against international trends, treating NZ as an international lab-rat for this kind of legislation". Similar legislation has already been rejected in other countries, such as Germany and the UK. Juha Saarinen on The Techsploder calls S92 "arguably the world's harshest copyright enforcement law". He argues that the new law is "there for the large entertainment organisations to terrorise Internet users" and that it "isn't going to help artists and others rights holders."

It is important to note that the law only applies to telcos and ISPs, but that copyright holders (e.g. the entertainment industry) can demand that ISPs disconnect internet access for those people they accuse of copyright infringement. P2P users and website owners who allegedly have copyrighted material on their websites are most likely to be the target. While some of those people may actually be copyright offenders, what has upset the Creative Freedom Foundation is that disconnection can occur simply by accusation - the phrase 'innocent until proven guilty' becomes meaningless.

If you think the protest is worth supporting, you can sign an online petition here - and of course black out your social network profile!

UPDATE: Here's a video about the issue, made by Chelfyn Baxter from theg33kshow.com and voiced by Oliveroo.

It can't - YouTube has chosen to follow the letter of the DMCA law only; today's announcement will not come close to satisfying angry rights holders. It may or may not be enough to protect them in court.

It's opt-in copyright protection by blocking repeat upload of the same exact media file. That's nowhere near what the big rights holders want. What they really want may be to kick the legs out from under the media record-breaker that is GooTube.

The new service will only block content if blocking the content is what rights holders want, of course. YouTube says it can't assume it knows. Some may want to promote that content once it's discovered, or to monetize it with revenue sharing of ad money. That seems possible, in theory, though the real impetus behind this whole system is to pull content.

If this is the kind of thing you're interested in, the video identification page is an interesting read. A year ago it looked like YouTube was going to license a third party filtering service, like Audible Magic, but all the options there may have proven technically imperfect. Perhaps unable to nail the problem technically, it appears that Google has chosen to take a legalistic approach to the problem.