Google’s Refusal to Comply With RIAA’s Demands on MP3 App
Following a recent post on Google’s piracy liabilities, today we have the same protagonist dealing again with piracy related issues and confronting the play-by-our-rules industry’s iron arm – the almighty, RIAA. Here’s the unfolding of the story as revealed by PCMag.com.
MP3 Music Download Pro is a Google application designed for Android. The app allows users to download music onto their smartphones and, at this time, is rated as the fifth most popular app on the Android Market.
The RIAA doesn’t like that.
“We sent a takedown notice to Google in August for this particular app, which is clearly being used for illegal purposes, and Google responded that they were declining to remove it from the Android Market,” RIAA’s spokeswoman said.
We continue to have concerns with Google’s screening and takedown procedures and hope that they will be improved.”
Furthermore, Google’s promise to launch its own music store is soon to be fulfilled as they’ve started to invite media representatives to their big launch on the 16th of November. Reports around the web show that Google has managed to close deals with four major record labels. If this proves to be true, Apple’s iTunes may just have a rival from now on.
However, how will Google lure users to purchase licensed tracks from their music store is yet to be revealed.
PCMag.com’s attempts to get some feedback from Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music failed. They’ve also tried to contact Google regarding their controversial application, but they did not receive an answer.
Some sources say that Google refused to take down the MP3 Music Download Pro as they think that the application can also be used for legitimate purposes. Yu Liu is the developer of the app and has posted screenshots of the program being used to search for classical music; however, on Friday those screenshots magically vanished.
Basically supporting Google’s actions, LimeWire and likewise companies are opposing the “rogue sites” legislation, saying that “locker sites” can be used for downloading legitimate materials as well.
Back in September Google announced that it has made “considerable progress” on piracy liabilities by removing infringing content from its Autocomplete function and search results. The company’s general counsel – Kent Walker – said that Google had built in processes “to submit DMCA takedown requests for Google products (starting with Blogger and Web Search), and to reduce our average response time to 24 hours or less for submissions using these new tools.”
Walker’s homologue, Steven Marks (who’s also executive vice president for the RIAA) said that Google and the RIAA have started a dialogue; the latter asked Google to take action on infringing application that are found on the Android Market.
“Google has taken down some mobile apps that facilitate infringement,” Marks wrote.
“But the takedown times are long, and too often we see the same or substantially similar apps from the same developers re-appear a few days later. Google could also take a more proactive role by screening and evaluating apps before they are made available. Most importantly, too many apps created to harvest links to unauthorized files remain available and popular on the Android marketplace, resulting in widespread infringement of copyrighted works.”
Asked whether the industry will file suit against Google or not, RIAA’s spokeswoman declined to comment.
Hurley supports High Performance Centre in Australia
Hurley is the main investor of the Surfing Australia's High Performance Centre, the world's first facility dedicated to the development of elite surfers and coaches. The new project will be located at Casuarina Beach in Northern NSW and will ensure Australia maintains its place as a world leader in the sport.
Designed in consultation with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and the Australian Sports Commission (ASC), construction started on the Hurley Surfing Australia High Performance Centre (HPC) last month and is expected to be completed by May 2012.
Competitive surfing has become one of the most lucrative individual sports on earth and the world-first facility will have a direct focus on surf science research and training in an effort to nurture the country's up-and-coming talent for generations to come.
Hurley's involvement will see that the centre is at the forefront of surfing technology and training, helping evolve the skill-set of long-time surfers and nurturing the youth and surfing leaders of tomorrow.
About Google and Copyright Infringement Risks
Google’s tendency to embrace and promote Internet openness and transparency had led the company towards piracy liabilities in the last years, a fact that had made them the tip of the spear in the fight against anti-piracy legislation like the PROTECT IP Act (of both the Senate and House) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which may become law in 2012.
The company has recently stated that it may leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to its strong support for anti-piracy legislation. Regarding the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidts who’s been opposing the anti-piracy bill said:
“If there is a law… that’s passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President and we disagree with it, then we would still fight it.”
Google’s hostility towards anti-piracy laws draws from its goal “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. According to this ideology, the search-engine can index, save or copy any data (including private property) and then pass is onto others for free. Furthermore, Google’s business model assumes that no online information is valuable until it’s found and promoted via search-engines and then monetized via ad clicks.
Google shields itself with the 1998 DMCA law – which provides ISPs safe harbor from copyright infringement if they remove infringing material when notified – thus facilitating massive copyright infringement, as they saw in the DMCA a good opportunity to counter copyright owners’ efforts to win this battle.
Under these circumstances, Google copied 15 million books without the rights holders consent and regardless of the legal objections of authors, publishers, the Register of Copyrights, the Department of Justice and a Federal Judge.
Not only that, but they also acquired YouTube, despite its notoriety for copyright infringement at that time. A federal judge handling the Viacom vs. Google-YouTube case said:
“A jury could find that the defendants [YouTube] not only were generally aware of, but welcomed, copyright infringing material placed on their website. Such material was attractive to users, whose increased usage enhanced defendants’ income from advertisements displayed on certain pages of the website, with no discrimination between infringing and non-infringing content.”
When it comes to the list of Google’s piracy liabilities, Google Books and YouTube are the prime subjects in this matter. In August the company signed a criminal Non-Prosecution Agreement with the Department of Justice in order to settle criminal charges that the company had willingly and repeatedly violated Federal criminal laws prohibiting the “unsafe and unlawful” importation of prescription drugs into the US for several years; to dodge this bullet, Google paid no less than 0 million.
“Larry Page knew what was going on,” said Peter Neronha (the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney) about Google’s CEO.
Furthermore, Google’s stance on anti-piracy is only natural since the search engine is considered to be the core of the Internet black market as it controls online access to information and the business of monetizing that online information.
Google’s dominion over the Internet goes as far as 80% of US search advertising revenues per eMarketer, and has almost half of all US online advertising revenues per IAB; not to mention their incomes from outside the US and UK are twice as fast as in the aforementioned countries. Furthermore, according to Alexa.com’s traffic ranking, Google’s affiliated properties represent 15 of the top 50 most visited websites in the world, including Google as number one, YouTube as number three and Blogger.com placed on the seventh position.
In addition, Google’s immense traffic has pushed portals like MediaFire.com (position 66), Megaupload.com (position 70) and 4shared.com (position 81) way down in the list, portals that are known for encouraging copyright infringement.
Way to go, Google!
Spotify Adopts Peer-To-Peer Technology
A problem for many music streaming services is speed; and since the demand is exponentially growing, Spotify offers a solution as they’ve found a way to stream faster by using the “stigmatized” technology of peer-to-peer.
John Pavley, who’s VP of engineering for Spotify, said:
“We’re set up so that we can deliver the music with a meantime average of 285 milliseconds. Which is, like, super-fast.”
“The human perception of instant — if you hit a button that’s tangible in the world — is something like 250 milliseconds. By bringing the time to play on our service down to about 285 milliseconds, the perception is that you already have the file on your computer — that it’s instant,” added Charlie Hellman, director of product development for Spotify.
The service is present in Europe for over three years and was allowed to run in the US this August.
The difference between Spotify and other music streaming services is highlighted by Eliot Van Buskirk – a connoisseur of the music technology who writes for Wired.
“To an extent, Spotify is basically like other services we’ve had.”
“But the difference is, it has, I think, reduced the friction for people trying this stuff out. And that was one of the first things I noticed: it’s just impossibly fast,” he added.
With such recommendations Spotify aims to gather an impressive user-database and then to offer them monthly paid services for phones and mobile devices. Its main target is the p2p community around the world, who’s already downloading music for free using BitTorrent networks; an interesting and bold objective which may help the music industry.
“The problem with the environment when Spotify launched the service over three years ago is that the illegal alternatives were better, simply better than the legal ones,” says Ken Parks, head of Spotify’s New York office.
Mr. Parks underlines the fact that Spotify is now running a service that complies with both creators’ and users’ needs.
“With a streaming service like Spotify that gives you access to everything in the world instantaneously, those distinctions between ownership and access tend to disappear,” he added.
So why did Spotify choose to embed peer-to-peer into his core application? The answer is quite simple; rather than downloading a single song file from its own server to the user, Spotify instead searches for copies of the song in any place it can be found, including the personal computers of other Spotify users, thus increasing the speed.
“Behind the scenes while the music is playing, we’re grabbing it from wherever we can,” says Pavley.
“You can’t interact with the P2P network, it’s just a little facility that we use to move things along very quickly.”
We should mention that Pavley was VP of engineering for LimeWire before working for Spotify; on the same note, Spotify also signed licensing deals with major record labels and is planning (in September) to shake hands with Facebook.
“It gets closer and closer to that original Napster feeling,” Van Buskirk said.
“‘What do my friends have? Can I have that?’ And now it’s like, ‘Yes, you can.’ And there’s a whole mechanism for finding out what they have that you’re already using anyway.”
Having a user-base of over 2 million people worldwide Spotify has to significantly increase that number if it wants to make a profit out of those deals (which didn’t come cheap) with the labels, said Van Buskirk.
BREIN Wins Legal Battle against Usenet Service
Representing the movie and music industries, the Dutch anti-piracy BREIN has won a 2 years battle against News Service, whose main activity was to resell Usenet services to numerous providers.
Despite the efforts and appeals to continue their operations, News Services was forced by court order to shut down its activity and remove all infringed content from their website.
A statement released by News Service reads:
“Unfortunately, News-Service.com sees no way of complying with the Court’s verdict. As a consequence, on 28 October, we started interlocutory proceedings and asked the summary Judge to order Brein to cease the execution of the verdict. We have learned today that the summary Judge has denied our claims. This means that we are forced to cease our operations with immediate effect.”
However, the portal’s administration also said that they will continue to appeal the court’s decision, although, at this point, their struggle may be futile.
The anti-piracy group has years of experience in hunting BitTorrent trackers but this is the first major win against a Usenet provider in their portfolio. Their victory could also set a precedent, thus leading them to shut down other important newsgroups. Astraweb and Giganews (two major newsgroups) should be cautious as BREIN’s focus may just shift on them.
Winning Eleven: The Kelly Slater Years
"Why not just go for it right now?". These were Kelly Slater's words when he felt he could do it. The Floridian won his first world title in 1992. Here, he celebrates a victory in the Rip Curl Pro Landes, in Hossegor, France.
In 1994, Slater took several surf contests. The Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach was the most important title of this year.
New Social Music Network Solution For iPhone Enthusiasts: SoundShare
Music is part of our everyday life, as Steve Jobs once said. This is the main reason he launched the iPod for the first time, thus pushing the boundaries of how we listen to music forward.
SoundShare continues his legacy by providing a new Social Music Network for iPhones.
“SoundShare app allows you to share your music experience with your friends just by listening to your songs,” the developer said.
“With a built-in Player, you can listen and share every song while using Safari or any other app. SoundShare also has its own Social Network, so you don’t have to worry about posting on Facebook/Twitter every song you listen, though, if you want, you’re just one tap away.”
The application’s features are similar to Twitter’s – in the sense that you’re provided with newsfeeds of people you want to follow. If you find yourself stuck on listening the same playlist over and over again all you have to do is to “spy” on other people’s preferences and pick your favorite tunes.
Just like any respectable social network, SoundShare allows you to post comments, rate songs and even show your favorite tunes on other social networking portals.
The app has a built-in music player which you can run in the background while using other applications. To download it, just install the latest version of iTunes and look-up SoundShare.
Enjoy!
Tenenbaum Hopes for Rehearing of $675,000 Infringement Fine
It seems like the Tenenbaum case will go on forever. According to TorrentFreak, attorneys for the defendant Joel Tenenbaum filed a petition for a rehearing in the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
In September the Court of Appeals reversed a judge’s ruling to cut back the jury’s fine of 5,000 by 90 percent. We wrote then in a post:
“After his trial ended, being the 2nd such file-sharing suit in the country, Joel was found guilty and fined no less than 5,000. This figure, however, was lowered by Judge Nancy Gertner to ,500, following suit of the first judge that heard the case, but with one difference: instead of relying on “remittitur” (meaning that a judge can lower the monetary amount of a jury award), Gertner said that the number was so big it violated the US Constitution.”
The petition asks for rehearing en banc, meaning that the case would be heard by all members of the appellate court rather than by a usual panel made of three judges.
“It is unconstitutional to instruct a jury that it can return an unconstitutionally excessive award. To instruct the jury that it may ascribe an award in a range of up to ,500,000 against a noncommercial copyright infringer is punitive, excessive, not authorized by statute, and a denial of due process,” the petition says about the reasons behind the pursuit for another hearing.
Furthermore, the petition emphasizes the non-commercial aspect of Tenenbaum’s infringing act: “For consumer copiers, any copying or distribution is only incidental to their purpose of expanding their personal music collection.”
TorrentFreak quotes Tenenbaum who suggested his copyright infringement can’t be, in fact, parted from the actual purchases, therefore the benefits he brought to the record labels that sued him. “I often have bought music as a result of the free exploration I’ve done. In that respect, I’m much like the average downloader, who actually spends more money on music than people who don’t download at all.”
The inflatable SUP board that fits in a bag
It had to be invented. Naish has unveiled Mana Airs, the first inflatable and super rigid Stand Up Paddleboards that can fit into a portable bag. Yes, it's true, as you can confirm right here.
Naish Mana Airs are designed with extra thickness and width for unmatched firmness and stability. They are incredibly stable, durable and compactable for traveling paddlers riding in whitewater, rocky bottom flatwater or surf conditions.
Olympic skier, Resi Stiegler, tested the freedom of being able to carry her Naish Mana Air inflatable SUP board around on her bike at home in Jackson, WY - finding lakes and rivers to cruise on before race season starts in full force.
Pressure upon Virgin Media and TalkTalk to Block File-Sharing Site
After internet service provider BT was forced to block the file-sharing website Newzbin2, two other ISPs, Virgin Media and TalkTalk are pushed into doing the same by the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
Earlier this week the movie industry watchdog sent both ISPs letters stating that it would obtain the court orders to impose the block and asked such an order would be opposed in some way, ZDNet reports.
While both Virgin Media and TalkTalk (the latter which fought against the introduction of the Digital Economy Act that imposes drastic anti-piracy rules) said they will comply to the blocking order if the law asks them to, Virgin Media also added that they believe “such deterrents need to be accompanied by compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, which give consumers access to content at the right price”.
This also comes after the BPI (the British Phonographic Industry) urged BT to prevent internet users from accessing The Pirate Bay, citing the Newzbin2 ruling as a precedent.
One error leading to another…