I was on a debate panel in Edinburgh, UK this week; a panel about the copyright monopoly conflict. I have had this feeling in my gut for some time, but it became clear on this panel: we’re going to be debating the same topics with the same arguments for another 40 years.

Do you remember when Napster came around twelve years ago, and everybody said the digital copyright wars would be replaced by a new equilibrium?

Today we can easily observe that this hasn’t happened. We’re in exactly the same positions today as we were a decade ago.

As I was talking on this debate panel, representatives of the (obsolete) middlemen repeated two themes over and over: “we have rights, we have rights, we have rights” and “we need more time to adjust, we need more time”.

The latter was quite easily defused by asking “So… you demand that the world must wait for you to catch up with it?”, whereas the former will probably be heard for another forty years.

People who think they have the moral right to control what other people discuss, transmit, use, and copy simply are not going to abandon that point of view. They will assert that right as superior to any civil liberty, forever.

Anybody who is able to adapt by reading the dead-obvious writing on the wall has already done so. Those who religiously keep repeating the same mantra today as they did a decade ago will keep doing so.

In other words, we’re pretty much stuck with the copyright monopoly pundits and maximalists we have today for the rest of their natural lives.

Of course, this doesn’t include the masses of people who merely have a casual interest in the copyright monopoly. But it does include those who were schooled in the wonders of monopolies twenty or thirty years ago, and have been working in a bubble protected from outside influences ever since then. Almost all the world’s new creators are already working in the new paradigm; creating despite the copyright monopoly, rather than because of it.

So what I said to the “we have rights, we have rights” panelist was that they should be careful asserting rights given by law, for those laws can and will change as the 250 million Europeans who share culture come into power. 250 million people is not an adolescence problem; it is a power base of 250 million voters. As these people start writing laws, they can and will kill those monopolies at the stroke of a pen.

So, sadly, it seems that a universal truth comes into play here: Viewpoints of society don’t change because people in society change. Viewpoints of society change because people defending the obsolete viewpoint die out.

Source  : TorrentFreak          Actual post

A lawyer who threatened countless individuals in copyright troll-style lawsuits has been slammed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The highly colorful Evan Stone sent subpoenas to ISPs without permission of the court in order to extract payments from alleged BitTorrent users, but will now take a huge hit to his reputation. On top of a fine and paying costs to the EFF and Public Citizen, he will have to inform all clients and judges he currently has cases with about this ruling against him

In 2010, lawyer Evan Stone filed a suit on behalf of Mick Haig Productions against 670 as-yet unknown individuals the company believed had been unlawfully sharing their film “Der Gute Onkel” using BitTorrent.

However, events took a turn for the strange.

Soon both EFF and Public Citizen, who had been appointed by a judge to act in the Does’ interests, learned that at least one ISP had already been handing their subscribers’ identities over to Stone. It transpired that Stone had been issuing subpoenas to ISPs without the court’s permission.

“To summarize the staggering chutzpah involved in this case: Stone asked the Court to authorize sending subpoenas to the ISPs. The Court said ‘not yet.’ Stone sent the subpoenas anyway,” Judge Godbey wrote.

“The Court appointed the Ad Litems [EFF and Public Citizen] to argue whether Stone could send the subpoenas. Stone argued that the Court should allow him to – even though he had already done so – and eventually dismissed the case ostensibly because the Court was taking too long to make a decision.”

All along Stone had been receiving information from ISPs and had even contacted some of the 670 Does with letters seeking cash settlement for their alleged infringements.

“Because Stone obtained information that he had no right to receive, the subpoenas falsity transformed the access of the Does’ information from a bona fide state-sanctioned inspection into private snooping. The Court rarely has encountered a more textbook example of conduct deserving of sanctions,” he added.

But true to form Stone would not be giving in, informing Ars Technica: “After three rewrites, I finally decided I’m just going to have to let Justin Bieber do my quoting for me: ‘Whenever you knock me down I will not stay on the ground.’”

Inevitably Stone appealed, and yesterday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its ruling. For everyone involved, Stone excepted, it was worth the wait.

On appeal Stone presented a number of arguments but the court noted that “none of these arguments, thus, was preserved for purposes of appeal, nor does Stone contend they were. Accordingly, all the issues Stone raises on appeal have been waived.”

And in a clear indication that the courts are becoming wise to the tactics of Stone and others like him, came the following statement.

“Stone committed those violations as an attempt to repeat his strategy of suing anonymous internet users for allegedly downloading pornography illegally, using the powers of the court to find their identity, then shaming or intimidating them into settling for thousands of dollars, a tactic that he has employed all across the state and that has been replicated by others across the country,” the Judges wrote in their ruling.

“The stay of sanctions is therefore VACATED, and any sanctions imposed
by the district court are AFFIRMED.”

Stone was hit with a $10,000 fine and ordered to pay the costs of the EFF and Public Citizen. Other sanctions compel him to inform all clients and judges he currently has cases with about this ruling against him. Reputation-wise, this kind of hit will be hard to recover from.

Finally, since Stone struggled with his quotes before, feel free to help him out by adding any appropriate Justin Bieber lyrics in the comments below

In a strange developing story the FunnyJunk image site is threatening to sue popular humor site The Oatmeal. The war between the pair dates back a year when The Oatmeal accused FunnyJunk of profiting from its copyrighted images, but now FunnyJunk is demanding $20,000 to end a defamation lawsuit. The Oatmeal say they won’t pay and have instead gathered huge support from fans, who in less than 24 hours have donated more than $90,000 to charity. Is there an interesting lesson in here for copyright holders?

Last year Matthew Inman, creator of humor site The Oatmeal, published a blog post where he offered his description of the business model operated by image index site, FunnyJunk.

1. Gather funny pictures from around the internet
2. Host them on FunnyJunk.com
3. Slather them in advertising
4. If someone claims copyright infringement, throw your hands up in the air and exclaim “It was our users who uploaded your photos! We had nothing to do with it! We’re innocent!”
5. Cash six figure advertising checks from other artist’s stolen material

Inman said that he’d previously approached FunnyJunk to remove content, which it partially did, but that countless images still remained. The owner of FunnyJunk responded by telling his users that The Oatmeal wanted to shut down their site, which Inman said he did not.

Considering the whole thing too much effort to continue with, Inman decided to let things be. However, now – a year later – it’s become clear that the owner of FunnyJunk has a much longer memory.

In a letter dated June 2 to The Oatmeal, lawyer Charles Carreon (the guy behind the sex.com lawsuit) expresses the displeasure of his client, FunnyJunk, and demands the immediate removal of the statements listed above.

Carreon says that the statements amount to a false accusation of willful copyright infringement when in fact FunnyJunk is a fully DMCA-compliant image host that not only removes infringing content on request, but also terminates the accounts of repeat infringers.

“By maliciously accusing FunnyJunk of criminal conduct to injure its business reputation you exposed yourself to a lawsuit for defamation per se, in which damages are presumed,” Carreron adds.

The complaint continues but the conclusion is familiar. If Inman gives FunnyJunk $20,000 the whole thing can be made to go away.

To prove his point that FunnyJunk aren’t playing fair, yesterday Inman posted a long list of URLs on FunnyJunk that still hosted The Oatmeal’s content, but hours later they had all been removed. He’s not amused and says he will not pay.

“You want ME to pay YOU $20,000 for hosting MY unlicensed comics on YOUR shitty website for the past 3 years?” Inman rants. “NO, i’ve got a better idea.”

“1. I’m going to try and raise $20,000 in donations. 2. I’m going to take a photo of the raised money. 3. I’m going to mail you that photo, along with this picture of your mom seducing a Kodiak bear. 4. I’m going to take that money and donate half of it to the National Wildlife Federation and half of it to the American Cancer Society.”

“I don’t want to spend the next year tied up in legal bullshit with you. I just want to make comics. Consider this my philanthropic, kind-spirited way of saying FUCK OFF.”

And then the fund-raiser began, just as Inman promised. The result is absolutely astonishing. At the time of writing more than 6,100 people have donated nearly $92,000. Of course the money is going to charity, and that’s a wonderful thing, but let’s just rewind here for a moment.

For the purposes of argument, let’s say that Inman’s comics were in fact the RIAA’s music and they hadn’t been posted on FunnyJunk, but had been posted on The Pirate Bay instead. No doubt about it, none of them would have been removed – ever.

Now, if the RIAA then accused Pirate Bay of being criminals (as FunnyJunk’s lawyer claimed that The Oatmeal did) and in turn Pirate Bay responded by suing the RIAA for defamation, the Internet masses would collectively cheer TPB on.

But when you look at the $92,000 donated in less than a day and the overwhelming support for Inman and The Oatmeal versus the bad publicity for FunnyJunk, it’s clear that at the flick of a switch an entire situation can be turned on its head.

There’s probably a number of messages in here for copyright holders, but perhaps one sticks out more than the others. In order to get support for your cause and get fans onside, people have to like you. If they do, magical things can happen.