US Copyright Term Will be Restored Back to 28 Years

Under the US copyright law, the term for your right over your work is indefinite as long as you are alive. Meanwhile, an online petition is going to change that.

The petition in question is already available on White House’s official site, and aims to gather 25.000 signatures in order to restore the term of copyright back to 28 years. Thus far, the petition managed to gather over 2.000 signatures in just 24 hours.

The petition says that an initial copyright duration was initially established as 28 years, but then was repeatedly extended to up to 120 years. This was done to favor such corporations as Disney and Sony along with authors’ descendants at the expense of the public. However, such durations ignore the Constitution’s requirement saying that copyrights should be for limited times and encourage progress in science and arts. In reality, they are doing the opposite thing, inhibiting scientific progress by restricting the free flow of data and preventing global digital libraries. In other words, the durations are withholding data that future generations need to freely exchange and build upon. At the same time, the original copyright duration would provide ample incentive for the entities and authors to create, so the creators of the petition asked the President to urge Congress to pass a bill which would restore copyrights to 28 years.

Lawrence Lessing, an American academic and political activist, has written a book on this issue, providing a comprehensive analysis on how creativity relies on the past. He explains that the creations of the past should be used as “bricks” for future projects. By the way, many supported his point of view: indeed, past’s influence in the artistic sector is undeniable.

Nevertheless, the American copyright legislation isn’t at all encouraging creativity, but instead considers everything as being original. Industry experts agree that it is time copyright laws actually reflected the modern era. The only entities to have such long copyright terms (in the United States, for instance, it is life + 70 years) are large multi-national corporations. However, it clearly doesn’t benefit society, choking off whatever little creativity is left in the world. Everyone who shares this point of view is free to sign the petition online.

Adult Movie Lawyer Lost the Appeal

An attorney working on behalf of a porn studio, which was using the legal system to squeeze cash out of BitTorrent file-sharers, has finally lost the appeal against sanctions. Mick Haig Productions believed that it was onto a nice little earner when filing 670 John Doe complaints against uses of P2P networks.

The adult movie company had a cunning plan of suing anonymous file-sharers for allegedly downloading adult content illegally in order to use the powers of the court to disclose their identity. After this the company was going to shame or intimidate the users into settling for thousands of dollars.

Despite the fact that this tactic had been used in other legal cases, it seems to be fast running out of steam, especially in the cases where adult movies are involved. The lower courts felt that the legal process wasn’t serving the interests of justice. The matter is that even if the defendants were innocent they were more likely to pay the amount the adult moviemaker asked for instead of facing the embarrassment of going to court.

After the lower court sanctioned Mick Haig’s attorney for such behavior, he appealed, but today these sanctions received affirmation of 5th Circuit.

The Recording Industry versus the People claimed that the appeals court deplored the movie studio’s strategy of suing anonymous file-sharers for allegedly downloading adult content illegally through the powers of the court to reveal their identity. As it was said above, the plaintiffs then prefer to shame or intimidate file-sharers into settling for bunch of cash.

Now it looks like the porn industry will have to come up with another plan to target illegal file-sharers.

Porn Studios Accused of Fraud

Several porn producers were recently accused of fraud, defamation and racketeering in their copyright cases against P2P users. In fact, their strategy was quite simple and effective. Once they receive the IP addresses related to the illegal download of copyrighted content, the studios sue with the hope that the judge will force the Internet service provider to disclose a name and address of the IP owners, and sometimes it works.

That’s where the shakedown starts. Nevertheless, the real problem is that the studios don’t really seek litigation, but rather aim for settlements of $1000 to $5000. Often the defendants prefer to pay this money to avoid the embarrassment of being accused of downloading porno, let alone their fear of the Copyright Act provision saying that the infringers are eligible to pay up to $150.000 in damages for a single case of violation.

Last week a federal judge decided that a BitTorrent lawsuit launched by Malibu Media is “an extortion scheme”. As a result, the wheel turned and now there’s another lawsuit – this time against the porn studio. The new lawsuit, which can represent 200,000 people, says that the adult studios realize that this amount of cash is less than the cost of defense would be if the lawsuit were filed. In addition, they understand that people like the plaintiff in this matter will be embarrassed to have their names associated with porn, and are susceptible to being shaken down.

Actually, if people could be proven to have downloaded the adult content unlawfully from the web, the porn purveyors could collect civil statutory damages of $150,000 for a willful violation such as they allege, yet they settle for $1,000-$5,000. The lawyers defending hundreds of people accused of downloading porn movies confirm that there’s a slime element associated with the adult movie cases, making it much more apparent than the music cases.

The lawsuit against adult studios was filed on behalf of a Kentucky woman Jennifer Barker. The latter was allegedly contacted by a representative of Intellectual Property Protection, an employee of the adult movie companies involved in the lawsuit, and asked to settle for supposedly downloading the content Malibu Media owns copyright to. The woman claims innocence. The movie studio demanded that Ms. Barker pay to settle or she would be identified publicly as having downloaded porn and become subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars as a penalty for copyright infringement.