3 Count: Chilling Charter

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1: MPAA and RIAA Outline Chilling Copyright Charter

First off today the MPAA and the RIAA have released a joint strategic plan for dealing with online piracy. The plan calls for a variety of measures including the installation of anti-piracy software on personal computers, though supposedly voluntarily, the use of throttling and filtering by ISPs and even involvement from customs do “educate” those coming into the country. This has led many to refer to this as a copyright “police state” and has drawn the ire of the EFF and other public interest groups.

2: Documents Unsealed in Viacom’s Lawsuit Claim Google Believed YouTube Relied on Pirated Content

Next up today, more documents have been unsealed in the Viacom/YouTube case, which has Viacom suing YouTube and its parent Google over alleged infringements of Viacom’s video content. According to these memos, Google, during the process of buying YouTube, acknowledged that YouTube was built largely on pirated content and even went as far as to say that it was a “‘rogue enabler’ of content theft.” This could severely hurt the case of Google and YouTube, as they are trying to claim that they were unaware of infringement and are thus protected by the DMCA safe harbor rules.

3: Secretive Counterfeiting Treaty Talks Open up

Finally today, the controversial and secret Anti-Counterfieting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that is being negotiated by dozens of countries across the world may become a matter for public discourse as the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, which is party to the negotiations, has agreed to make the treaty proposal but will not reveal the various negotiating positions. This will be the first time, other than various leaks, that the treaty will be available for public review and debate, marking a major shift in the treaty’s negotiation.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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