Month: October 2015

Aurous Offers to Shut Down But RIAA Isn’t Interested

It’s been an eventful month for music discovery tool Aurous. Within days of its October 10 launch, Aurous Group and developer Andrew Sampson were being sued by the RIAA.

“This service is a flagrant example of a business model powered by copyright theft on a massive scale,” the RIAA said.

Shortly after the labels demanded a temporary restraining order. The request, filed by plaintiffs Atlantic Records, Warner Bros, UMG, Sony and Capital Records, was quickly granted by a Florida district court.

Judge Jose E. Martinez declared that Sampson and everyone else associated with the Aurous project were forbidden from “infringing, or causing, enabling, facilitating, encouraging, promoting and inducing or participating in the infringement of, any of Plaintiffs’ copyrights protected by the Copyright Act, whether now in existence or hereafter created.”

Those restrictions including any further making available of the Aurous software in any form but there are now claims that Sampson has already breached the order.

According to a motion filed yesterday by the labels, on October 23 following a request from defendants’ counsel, it was agreed that the defendants would be given more time (until November 13) to respond to the original complaint. In the meantime the temporary restraining order (TRO) would remain in force.

However, the RIAA says that less than two days after the extension was agreed, the defendants “flagrantly violated [the TRO], in the most damaging way possible.”

“Shortly after 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, Defendants announced that they had publicly released the core ‘back-end’ source code for Aurous, which contains the instructions for exactly how the Aurous software finds, retrieves, and downloads (copies) unauthorized copies of recorded music,” the labels write.

aurous-opensource

“At 1:07 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, Defendants sent a tweet from the official Aurous Twitter account announcing that Aurous was now an ‘open source project available on Github’ and providing a link to the Aurous source code repository on the website GitHub.com.”

The tweet and Github posting have both since been removed. However, in their court filing the labels says that they managed to secure copies while characterizing the deletions as an attempt to destroy evidence.

aurous-core-git

Describing the ‘core’ as the “critical ‘back-end’ source code” powering Aurous, the labels say that by posting the code Sampson breached the terms of the TRO. Furthermore, the labels claim that the release proves that Sampson continued working on Aurous after the TRO was issued in an effort to improve its ability to retrieve and download infringing content.

“There can be no doubt that Defendants did so with the intent of releasing an improved version of the software to the public, notwithstanding this Court’s explicit and unambiguous prohibition against doing so,” they write.

Following the Github release the labels contacted Aurous demanding an end to the violation of the TRO. They also advised the music service that their consent to a delay for the preliminary injunction hearing should now be considered withdrawn.

Counsel for Aurous responded by noting that the breach of the TRO had been accidental and even offered to throw in the towel completely on behalf of his clients.

“Our clients are willing to transfer control of the Aurous domain and anything else you may require including closing the site and all operations (which may have been done already) provide access to their github and social media accounts as early as tomorrow if this proposed settlement can be kept forthwith,” Aurous counsel wrote in an email.

“Our clients have acted in good faith to uphold the proposed settlement agreement and not violate the TRO. Again this is only a misunderstanding that should be bridged in order to serve the best interests of all parties.”

In response the labels dismissed the offer, insisting that the breach had been both intentional and damaging.

“During the five hours or more that Defendants willfully made the core Aurous source code available to the public, while brazenly urging their Twitter followers and other members of the public to visit the repository where it was housed, an unknown number of third parties accessed and copied the source code,” the labels explain.

In the background of this current dispute is Aurous’ response to the RIAA’s allegations that it offers an illegal service.

“The allegations that the purpose of this website is to pirate music is false
and unfounded. Aurous exists for the purposes of bringing together multiple sites all with DMCA takedown capabilities and anti-piracy bylaws,” Aurous’ counsel informed the court.

“Aurous in no way encourages, the downloading or playing of copyrighted music.
Additionally, Defendant maintains a DMCA takedown email. To date, Plaintiff has not submitted any DMCA takedown requests, and simply initiated a lawsuit within days of the website’s publication.”

Aurous says that if the RIAA removed the illegal content from the third-party sites, the Aurous software would not be able to play it. It also claims that the source code released on Github was an old and obsolete version of the software. Nevertheless, the RIAA seems entirely disinterested and is currently overwhelming Aurous with its legal might.

As a result the labels are now asking for Aurous Group and Sampson to be held in contempt of court and punished via monetary sanctions. Perhaps of concern for those who downloaded it, the labels also ask the court to force the defendants to provide a “precise description of when, where, and to whom they disseminated the Aurous application and source code” after the TRO was granted October 15.

While the case is not over yet, the Aurous dream seems well and truly dead. All that remains is to discover how painful it will for those behind the project.

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EU Adopts ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules, Keeps Loopholes Open

throttleThe European Parliament has debated the issue of net neutrality for several years.

The results of these negotiations were included in the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) regulation, which went to a vote this afternoon in Strasbourg.

With support of a majority the rules were passed, as expected. This means that the new rules will become law, replacing existing network neutrality laws in member states of the EU.

However, four proposed amendments that would close various loopholes all failed, much to the disappointment of net neutrality experts and activists.

As a result Europe’s ‘net neutrality’ rules are rather week, allowing prioritized paid services (so-called fast lanes), and slowing down of torrent and VPN traffic, among other things.

This is especially disappointing for member states that have strong net neutrality rules in place, such as the Netherlands and Slovenia, as they may have to implement watered down versions now.

“The European Parliament has avoided making decisions on all crucial points,” Joe McNamee, Executive Director of European Digital Rights, comments on the decision.

“Now, national regulators will have to decide – on abuses imposed through ‘zero rating’, on rules on congestion management, on specialized services and so on,” he adds.

Julia Reda, MEP for the Pirate Party, is disappointed with the vote and hopes that Europeans will hold their elected representatives responsible.

redanetneut

Over the past several weeks many activist groups and digital rights experts supported the SaveTheInternet campaign which encouraged European citizens to share their concerns while asking their representatives to vote in favor of the amendments.

The efforts received widespread support, but not enough to have the majority of parliament members vote for the proposed changes.

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Orwell Estate Sends Copyright Takedown Over the Number “1984”

orwell1984George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic book that describes a rather dystopian future with surveillance and control as central themes.

The author himself passed away in 1950 and currently his rights are controlled and protected by the Orwell estate.

Ironically, the estate itself has gained a reputation for exerting tight control of copyrights and trademarks, surveilling the Internet for possible offenses.

This is something Internet radio host Josh Hadley has now experienced first hand. Hadley runs 1201 Beyond where he gathers and distributes his shows and writings, among other things.

Before he had his own site and store Hadley used CafePress to sell T-shirts. Although he never sold any, the old store didn’t go unnoticed by the Orwell estate.

Last week he received a worrying email from CafePress informing him that one of his designs had been taken offline due to an alleged copyright violation. The design in question, as seen below, mentions the number sequence “1984.”

1984shirt

According to the complaint the T-shirt design uses “George Orwell quotes,” but the only reference to the author are the numbers that make up the book’s title.

This appears to be a rather broad request, not least since copyright law does not protect book titles.

The Orwell Estate complaintcefepressta1984

Hadley is offended by the request which he believes to be illegitimate and something George Orwell himself would not support.

“First off is the irony of the estate of George Orwell being all Orwellian but second is that you can’t copyright a number,” he tells TF.

“The US Copyright office has long since established this and second they are claiming I am using ‘quotes’ from the book. Look at the image in question and tell me what ‘quotes’ I used.”

CafePress has pulled the designs offline and they are now listed as “pending” in Hadley’s dashboard. In theory, he could appeal the takedown but he has no plans to do so.

1984pending

The Orwell estate maintains that the use of the image violates their rights, according to its literary executor Bill Hamilton who we showed the contested design.

“The estate has never licensed merchandising, nor have the licensees of the relevant film rights, under which merchandising usually comes. Some of the merchandising I asked to be taken down was in clear breach of copyright,” Hamilton tells TF.

Appreciating the irony of the whole situation, Hadley says he will reissue the T-shirt in his new store and won’t take any further abuse from the Orwell heirs.

“This is blatant abuse of the copyright system and more off it’s a ridiculous attempt to control something that needs no control.”

“I am in the process of having this image retouched and added to the store on my current site as I will not allow this kind of abuse of authority to stand.”

Hadley is warned though, Big Brother is watching…

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