Today, popular BitTorrent index BTjunkie shut itself down to preempt legal action of the type experienced by the Pirate Bay, Megaupload and others. The seven-year-old site may not have been squashed directly by authorities, but it is nonetheless good news for the RIAA, MPPA and other opponents of online piracy.

Separately, the Swedish Supreme Court recently upheld the sentences of three Pirate Bay cofounders who were convicted of copyright infringement in 2009.

Battling Piracy in a Post SOPA-World

Apparently by pure coincidence, the Megaupload shutdown came one day after large-scale online protests against SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy legislation. The timing of the crackdown raised a few eyebrows, as well as questions about why SOPA would have been necessary in the first place.

SOPA and PIPA may be shelved for the time being, but the war between the content industry and the parts of the Internet that they perceive to encourage copyright infringement is far from over. The next battle may be legislative, or it may rely on civil or criminal law. In some cases, the aftershocks of previous strikes will be enough to shake other perceived enemies from their positions, as happened in the cases of BTjunkie and FileSonic.

The counterstrikes in these battles have come in occasionally dramatic flavors such as the DDoS attacks from Anonymous that followed the Megaupload shutdown. More subtle - and far more powerful - is the mass migration of users from one service to another as authorities engage in what appears to be one giant game of Internet whack-a-mole.

There have been recent successes, but the very nature and structure of the Internet raises questions about the longterm effectiveness of this approach. As we saw with SOPA, any attempt to tinker with that structure will be met with fierce resistance.

Photo by Mike Baird.

Yesterday, news broke that the data could be at risk of deletion as early as this week, if Megaupload's former hosting service providers decide to do so. Well, not if the Electronic Frontier Foundation has anything to do with it.

For Megaupload Users, an Unclear Way Forward

Exactly how they will manage to resolve the issue is unclear at this early stage, as there are a number of technical and legal hurdles to overcome. A resolution could come in the form of a lawsuit against authorities, as has already been threatened by other groups. Alternatively, it could involve cooperation between the EFF, Megaupload, the hosting service providers and federal authorities, EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels told us.

"Right now the possibilities are almost endless," Samuels said. "We are open to anything." Whether legal or more diplomatic, the organization is seeking justice for the Megaupload users who were blocked from accessing their personal files despite not having broken any laws.

The Megaupload saga has put some users in a very weird position. Because the shutdown of the site happened without warning, they had no chance to retrieve any legitimate, non-infringing files they may have been storing there.

Uniquely Screwed

Of course, it also meant that people who were using the site for illegal purposes couldn't jump on and download the last season of "The Wire" real quick. Still, there's nothing stopping people from using MediaFire, RapidShare, the Pirate Bay or any number of other sources to grab copyrighted content. The users who kept personal files on Megaupload can't just tap into another service and get access to that content. They are uniquely screwed.

Normally, as Samuels explained, actions like this are taken using civil lawsuits rather than police helicopters and FBI agents. Thus, there's typically time for users to take the necessary precautions to back-up any files they couldn't afford to lose. Putting aside debates about the wisdom of keeping personal files exclusively in the cloud in the first place, the users of Megaupload never had an opportunity to salvage their stuff.

"That's what's really fundamentally troubling here," Samuels said. "People woke up, went to turn on their computer and found that they could not access their accounts."

Like the legal case of Kim Dotcom and his associates, it will be some time before this affair is resolved. For now, the EFF is hoping to open a dialogue with former users of the site and work with all of the parties involved in order to eventually come to a conclusion that works for everyone.

"It's a huge concern for creative bloggers," said Amy Anderson, who blogs on the arts and crafts site Crafter Minds. "I don't think Pinterest does anything to help protect copyright besides removing content when people ask."

Pinterest did not respond to a request for comment, but its Web site has instructions for requesting the removal of copyrighted content.

"If they were manually showcasing content and/or putting this content up themselves, they would definitely be in violation and break their protections," Get.com co-founder Steven Fruchter said in an email. "Since their users are the ones 'pinning' content, which is then downloaded and served via Pinterest's servers, they are considered a user-generated site, which only needs to take down content after they receive a take down notice by the copyright holder."

Among many Pinterest users, as well as several artists who have had work pinned on the site, a code for giving proper credit is developing. Artist Laura C. George said Pinterest has no way of knowing if links tied to images link back to the original artists' Web site, but so far Pinterest users have been better about giving credit than Tumblr.

"That being said, it's still awful that I might discover a new painter on Pinterest and not be able to find them. To not know their name or have their website," she said. "It's truly an awful situation...it seems impossible to enforce this type of rule on such a huge site with thousands of members and billions of pins. They would have to check the link to every 'original' pin and research to make sure it was the original. That's insane."

The latter part of the announcement covered the impressive expansion of iTunes U and the launch of iBooks Author, a DIY tool for publishing digital textbooks. If anything could pose a threat to the status quo in the textbook industry, it would be such an application. But wait. As it turned out, the so-called "Garage Band for e-books" wouldn't be quite as open and revolutionary as some thought.

So what's the big deal? The agreement contains a provision stating that "if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple," and then proceeds to outline further limitations on the paid distribution of one's e-books. So much for iBooks Author being a groundbreaking, industry-shaking move.

As troubling as the iBooks Author EULA looks, it's questionable whether or not the agreement can be legally enforced under current copyright law, explains Philadelphia-based lawyer Max Kennerly on his blog.

The issue, says Kennerly, comes down to the difference between exclusive and non-exclusive licenses. Apple seeks to establish an exclusive license with users, in which, by legal definition, "the copyright holder permits the licensee to use the protected material for a specific use and further promises that the same permission will not be given to others. The licensee violates the copyright by exceeding the scope of this license."

A provision in the Copyright Act requiring a written "transfer of copyright ownership" may serve as an unintended legal loophole for those seeking to go around Apple's restrictions and selling their e-books.

Explains Kennerly:

In the end, the iBooks Author EULA leaves both Apple and the author in a strange stand-off: Apple doesn't actually have the right to tell the author not to take their work somewhere else, but the author can't do that without breaching the EULA -- even though they retain full rights in their copyright.

Of course, this is just one legal expert's interpretation of the legal niceties, based in part on somewhat obscure concepts and court-established precedents. Still, on paper it would appear that the legal enforceability of the iBooks Author EULA isn't entirely clear, and this may leave the door open to authors brave and curious enough to find out.

TechCrunch reports today that the Megaupload crackdown cut the site off at the knees just before it planned to launch a disruptive and legal music player. Another popular boogeyman for copyright holders, The Pirate Bay, announced a new, legitimate direction yesterday: It's going to host physibles, downloadable models for constructing 3D objects. Are the "pirate" sites actually Big Content's worst nightmare for legitimate reasons?

A "physible" is a digital plan for an object that can either be designed on a computer or uploaded with a 3D scanner. Those plans can be downloaded and used to assemble real, tangible objects using a 3D printer. Printers are getting more affordable, but they're still limited by the kinds of materials they can use. But that just means it's the dawn of this technology, and The Pirate Bay is getting in early. "We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare [parts] for your vehicles," TPB writes on its blog. "You will download your sneakers within 20 years."

"The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We'll be able to print food for hungry people. We'll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal. We'll be able to actually copy that floppy, if we needed one."

As a renowned hub for trading files, The Pirate Bay is in a perfect position to be the go-to place for free physibles, which it can facilitate while making money from ads. "We're thinking of temporarily renaming ourselves to The Product Bay," the announcement jokes, but hopefully it's half-serious.

It's a perfectly legitimate business, and it blows the 2012 conception of intellectual property to smithereens. There's competition, too; Shapeways and Thingiverse are already on the market, and there's even a Google Warehouse for 3D models. Lobbyists for Old Media love to bang on sites like Megaupload and The Pirate Bay, but those very sites have hatched plans to usher in the future of digital media. When we can download a drum set, pirated MP3s will be the least of the copyright lobby's worries.

Check out The Pirate Bay's physibles category, but it's not our fault if you click on porny spam links.

Some companies that are perceived, correctly or not, of having a similar model to MegaUpload's are now scrambling to prevent their own demise now that that the legitimacy of that model has been very publicly - and dramatically - challenged.

Popular sites like FileSonic and FileServe are preventing users from downloading files uploaded by anybody other than themselves. Uploaded.to, another service used for hosting and sharing files, has stopped accepting users from U.S.-based IP addresses all together. In total, Evolver.fm's Eliot Van Buskirk counted nine different file-hosting services that have made some kind of substantial change to their functionality since the MegaUpload shutdown.

Where's the Line?

MediaFire and RapidShare, both of which are often used to host and download copyrighted content, have gone on the offensive, giving statements to the press that attempt to draw the line between their models and what MegaUpload was doing.

"We don't have a business built on copyright infringement," MediaFire CEO Derek Labian told VentureBeat, adding that his company is more akin to services like DropBox and Box.net than it is to MegaUpload. There's little reason to doubt him, as much of what has surfaced about MegaUpload's operations has turned out to be rather shady. MediaFire, by contrast, claims to have solid relationships with many of the relevant federal agencies.

Similarly, RapidShare has been quick to distance itself from MegaUpload and paint a stark contrast between the two services. The company, which recently released a native app for iOS, put out a statement explaining that they "differ from services such as MegaUpload in many crucial points," most notably that they've always been transparent about their company's location and the identities of the people running it.

Each of these services is different in terms of its functionality and legal compliance, and it would appear that those with the least confidence in the integrity of their own model are taking measures to scale things back a bit.

If the charges are to be believed, what MegaUpload was up to was particularly egregious. Still, the whole affair raises questions about where the line is. People can use any number of mechanisms for sharing files with each other, including copyrighted material. If the FBI can raid MegaUpload and shut it down, what's stopping the authorities from going after other services?

While the site's owners long argued that they were legally protected by the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), federal authorities in the United States evidently saw things differently and have arrested four people connected to Megaupload and charged them with online piracy. Three other people are still at large.

The Justice Department's indictment against Megaupload, which it refers to as a "a worldwide criminal organization," accuses the company of money-laundering and costing the content industry over $500 million by enabling large-scale piracy.

The timing of the shutdown, while authorities say it's coincidental, is nonetheless interesting. The debate about online piracy and how best to deal with it culminated in a massive, primarily Web-based protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which would force ISPs, ad networks and search providers to block access to sites like Megaupload. Many (okay, everybody) in the technology industry fear that the proposed laws' more broad provisions could lead to legitimate sites being taken down and result in Internet censorship. In essence, SOPA would make it much easier to take down sites like Megaupload, without having to involve the FBI.

This comes just a month after Megaupload found itself in an unusual squabble with Universal Music, which had successfully lobbied YouTube to remove a pro-Megaupload music video, despite the fact that it did not violate anyone's copyright. The video, which was commissioned and produced by Megaupload, featured prominent American music stars praising the service for its convenience and ease of use.

As controversial as the site is, Megaupload has proven popular among some musicians who view it as an effective way to distribute and promote their work. Major players in the film and music industries have long seen things quite differently.

For those artists and consumers who liked and used Megaupload, the party appears to be over. As of today, the megaupload.com domain returns nothing but a blank page, as it is one of 18 domains seized by authorities, according to the New York Times.

The U.S. Justice Department has published a press release detailing the charges and arrests. This is said to be "among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," and one that spanned continents with arrests being made in New Zealand and search warrants being executed in nine different countries.

The Sustainable Economy Law, which contains the anti-piracy provisions, was enacted in part to help encourage investment by U.S.-based media and technology companies. Today it was revealed that American interest in the law being enacted may have been more than casual. Spain was actually threatened by the US with being put on a trade blacklist if the law wasn't passed, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

The revelations confirm what many had suspected about the extent of U.S. involvement in encouraging the legislation. It also says a thing or two about the influence of the media industry and its lobbyists, which apparently goes well beyond domestic initiatives like SOPA itself.

Last month, as the administration of Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was on its way out of office, the U.S. Ambassador evidently ramped up pressure on the government to enact the anti-piracy law, which was crafted with help from the U.S. government. The Zapatero government declined to cave in to the pressure, but Spain's newly sworn-in administration made it a top priority and officially made it law last Friday.

Explains TorrentFreak:

In the letter, which was also sent to Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde after whom the law is named, Solomont noted that Spain is already on the Special 301, the annual report prepared by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) detailing 'trade barriers' based on intellectual property issues. Solomont's threat was that should Spain not pass the Sinde Law (described by some as the Spanish SOPA) then the country would be degraded further and placed on the Priority Watch List. This serious step would mean that Spain was in breach of trade agreements and could be subjected to a range of "retaliatory actions".

The state of online music sales for independent artists may not be as abysmal at it feels though, according to some data recently shared by Bandcamp. The artist promotion and e-commerce site found that some of their paid music downloads were being initiated by users who had searched explicitly for pirated content.

Bandcamp didn't offer hard, aggregate data about how often this is happening, so it's largely anecdotal evidence. Still, it appears to bolster the argument that if digital content is made easily available, many of those who want it most will pay for it. It's a notion recently tested by comedian Louis C.K., and so far the results look very positive for artists and content creators.

C.K., just like independent artists on Bandcamp, did not thwart piracy all together. That's not the point. Illegal downloads still take place all day long, and probably always will as long as the Internet is intact. But what's emerging lately are signs that many will in fact pay for content online, if it's easy and convenient to do so. An increase in that tendency, combined with new and innovative ways of monetizing one's work, may well represent the future of some creative industries, or could at least infuse them with a host of new self-sustained talent.

Bandcamp is a relatively new, if quickly emerging, force in the music industry, and it's one that's geared toward independent musicians. So you may want to take its story with a grain of salt. It's entirely possible that people are no less inclined to illegally download blockbuster albums from major label acts. It may just be harder for some to feel guilty about it.

Even so, the digital future of music is still very much emerging and these early signs of economic viability should serve as some encouragement for those looking to be a part of it.

Once a complaint is made, a judge can order ISPs to block access to sites that host copyrighted material or have them shut down entirely. The law, which was officially passed early last year but never implemented, was approved by Spain's new, more conservative government last week and will now be enacted as planned, much to the delight of the film and music industries, as well as other media companies.

Under the new law, copyright complaints will be heard by a panel called the Intellectual Property Committee who will decide how to rectify the issue and are endowed with the power to go after site owners.

In the U.S., the anti-piracy legislation currently being debating in Congress would be limited to websites hosted outside the country's borders and wouldn't be quite as far-reaching as Spain's new law. Still, to many the passage of SOPA's Spanish counterpart feels like a taste of things to come should big media companies in the U.S. succeed in getting some version of SOPA or the Protect IP Act passed by the U.S. Congress.

Paving the Way For U.S. Investments

Pressure from Spanish copyright holders and media companies wasn't the only factor in ensuring this law was passed. The country stands to see major investments in online streaming services there now that the law is enacted. U.S. media and technology companies, among others, have been waiting to make such investments until more serious steps were taken against file-sharing and online piracy in Spain. The passage of this law is exactly what they were waiting for. The country is already awaiting the launch of Nextflix within its borders early this year, and presumably more services will follow.

The law may lead to more legitimate online streaming services and delight the media industry, but that doesn't assuage the concerns of digital rights groups, who take issue with SEL along lines similar to those of opponents to SOPA and PIPA in the United States. In short, they argue that granting media companies and judges the ability to shut down websites sets a very bad precedent and could easily be used to censor legitimate sites.

Instead, the RIAA is lashing out at Google, whose search engine is the gateway to the Web for hundreds of millions of people. Over the last year or so, Google has been making it a bigger priority to discourage copyright infringement among people who use its various Web services. Those measures, the RIAA has argued, are not enough.

The RIAA isn't satisfied. In a rather scathing "report card" on Google's anti-piracy efforts, the music industry group gave the company an overall grade of "incomplete" and went on to harshly criticize their efforts as being inadequate.

For one thing, the RIAA thinks Google could be investing more time and energy into stopping piracy. The search giant spent $60 million on these efforts, which the RIAA points out is a very tiny percentage of their total revenue. The group argues that other Internet players, such as payment processors and ISPs have done more to combat piracy and that Google has a "special responsibility" to do more.

Tightening the Reins on Android Apps and Users' Takedown Appeals

The organization takes issue with Google's slow removal times for taking down copyright-infringing Android apps. The Android Marketplace, which is less tightly regulated than Apple's mobile app store, leaves more leeway for thing like malware and apps that violate copyright. The RIAA spends a paragraph lashing Google for not being more timely about app takedown requests, but does briefly concede "that Google has improved its takedown speeds for links to infringing files in search results and on hosted blogs to less than 24 hours."

Still, the organization complains that Google makes it too easy for uploaders to appeal takedown notices. If the recent YouTube spat between Universal Music Group and Megaupload is any indication, it would appear that major labels still have the upper hand in that process.

RIAA: Please Censor This, Even Though It's Not Illegal

The RIAA acknowledges where Google has made progress in the last year, but in each case, argues that it could be doing a lot more. For every piracy-related term that has been filtered out of autocomplete, there are a half a dozen that the RIAA thinks should also be tossed out.

For example, their report takes issue with the fact that typing "lady gaga mp3" leads to the autocomplete result "lady gaga mp3 download", which can lead users to sources of illegal downloads. This may be the case, but downloading MP3 files is not an inherently illegal act, so we can understand why Google wouldn't want to censor those terms.

This part of the report is particularly unconvincing. The Lady Gaga example they provide is flimsy and no additional evidence is offered that Google has done a shoddy job of blocking piracy-related terms from autocomplete. We have to imagine this is an ongoing process within Google and one that must carefully balance the interests of rights holders with the sensitivities of Google's users, many of whom will balk at any sign of perceived censorship.

The Devil in the Details: SOPA

Many of the RIAA's demands are not unreasonable. Blatant piracy should be harder to conduct in the Android Marketplace. There are a few of its own policies that Google could do a better job of enforcing.

Still, the report underplays the progress Google has made and has a certain angry, zealous ring to it. When you reach the end of the document, you get a better sense of where some of the frustration is coming from.

"While professing to agree that copyright infringement is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, Google raises alarmist, self-serving criticism to any legislative proposal to deter or thwart rampant copyright infringement."

This is an obvious reference to the Stop Online Piracy Act and legislation like it, which is indeed opposed by Google and most major Web companies, not to mention a growing contingent of the Web's most active and passionate users.

Of course, the opposition to SOPA has little to do with simply not wanting to "stop online privacy" but rather focuses on the broad freedom it gives authorities to shut down websites and the threat it poses to the kind of innovation and creativity that has built the Web we know and love today.

His experiment, as he called it, was to see if he could self-release one of his stand-up comedy specials on the Internet without paying for others to produce, edit and distribute the material, all of which drive up the cost paid by fans. It was a somewhat bold gamble, even if the model had been tested successfully by a few big name bands and musicians. Would it work for stand-up comedy?

This was no YouTube amateur hour, either. Between producing the video and building out the PayPal-powered e-commerce site needed to sell it, expenses for the project were just over $200,000, some of which was offset by ticket sales. To help keep costs down, C.K. directed and edited the video himself. Much of the promotion of the project happened online too, including a Q&A with fans on Reddit.

As C.K. notes, he could have had a third party company produce and sell the material to fans. They would do most of the heavy lifting, but would also pass significant costs onto consumers and come with restrictions on viewing the content.

"This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai," wrote C.K. "I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again."

A Win For the Web, Despite Piracy Risks

By making the video freely available, C.K. runs the obvious risk of having it uploaded to Bit Torrent and otherwise shared freely among people online. And there's no doubt many will do that. Yet his experiment shows that with an established enough brand, artists can produce and distribute their work by themselves, without the need for middlemen and extraneous costs.

It doesn't hurt that Louis C.K. is already a famous comedian who has had plenty of material produced and sold via the traditional approach, from stand-up specials to his ongoing television series. The DIY method may not work for up-and-coming artists at this point, but with developments like these, the Web is proving itself to be increasingly powerful for distributing and promoting one's work. Despite the conventional wisdom, as C.K.'s experiment has demonstrated, it's even possible to get paid.

As vilified as file-sharing has historically been, the practice has been gaining favor in somewhat unexpected places lately. The Songwriter's Association of Canada recently threw its support behind the idea of legalizing file-sharing and finding ways to monetize the practice, rather than cracking down on it through legal means.

"Music file-sharing is a vibrant, open, global distribution system for music of all kinds, and presents a tremendous opportunity to both creators and rights-holders," the organization stated in a proposal. "Additionally, once a fair and reasonable monetization system is in place, all stakeholders including consumers and Internet service providers will benefit substantially."

The news comes shortly after the Swiss government released a report saying that illegal file-sharing isn't a big enough problem to justify cracking down on it as harshly as is being proposed in other European countries.

Canadian songwriters are not advocating a stance quite as hands-off as that, but they do think that file-sharing ought be viewed as an opportunity for artists rather than a threat.

Still, there remains the issue of how the Internet is going to ensure that artists are properly compensated. That is still very much being ironed out. It may well be that in the long run, artists don't profit as much as they once did from selling recorded music and instead have to focus their efforts on bringing in revenue through other means. Even through legal and record label-approved means like Spotify, artists have yet to see a significant financial gain from participating.

Google is still not exactly adored by many media companies and rights holders, but they've gone to great lengths to appease those that have traditionally created and sold content to the masses. In late August, Eric Schmidt spoke to a gathering of UK television executives and laid out a list of accomplishments Google has made in the fight against online piracy.

Of course, none of these words are actually blocked from search results, but by removing them from Autocomplete, Google is implicitly discouraging people from searching for them and effectively decreasing the volume of searches performed for each one.

These changes are not by themselves momentous, but they're part of an ongoing evolution in Google's approach to digital piracy and media consumption. It's an issue through which the company has to tread carefully so as not to alienate its users, but at the same time Google is increasingly looking toward traditional content companies to help bolster some of its products.

Most recently, the company announced that they would be offering rentals of Disney movies on YouTube, as part of its ongoing effort to beef up its content offerings. This not only makes YouTube a more competitive service, but paves the way for Google TV to become a more desirable product in the eyes of consumers, who thus far have not flocked to use the platform.

Last week, Google publicly launched Google Music, leaving the cloud locker portion of the product free (up to 20,000 songs), but layering a robust MP3 store on top of it, complete with all kinds of competitive perks. It's that music storefront that gives Google its only hope of monetizing this new initiative, something that wouldn't have been possible without deals from three of the four major music labels.

These "old media" relationships are going to be increasingly critical to Google's success as it extends its business beyond search and goes up against other tech giants like Apple and Amazon.

How extensive is the alleged book piracy? Demonoid.me users are said to have swapped copies of Photoshop CS5 All-In-One For Dummies more than 74,000 times, according to the lawsuit.

This is a first for the publishing industry, who are following in the footsteps of Hollywood. Most famously, tens of thousands of users who used BitTorrent to download the widely-acclaimed and award-winning film The Hurt Locker were sued by the film's producers. Many of those defendants settled out of court, as is common in cases like these.

Despite the popularity of legitimate e-book marketplaces like Amazon's Kindle Store and Apple's iBooks, digital book piracy has grown in recent years, with some best-sellers being illegally downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

It remains to be seen how this case unfolds, or if other book publishers follow Wiley in the practice of suing BitTorrent users for copyright infringement.