Eideard

The chief executive of the company behind mobile gaming phenomenon, Angry Birds, has said that piracy helps companies attract more business.

Talking at the annual Midem music conference, in Cannes today, Mikael Hed, the chief executive of Rovio, said: “Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day.”

He admitted that the games company, which is based in Finland and experienced huge success with the Angry Birds brand, learned from the music industry’s mistakes when thinking about how to deal with piracy…

“We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy…”

Hed told Midem delegates that it was futile to pursue people who copy Angry Birds’ games and concepts unless they were harmful to the brand reported The Guardian. He said that he sees any type of piracy as being helpful to the brand in attracting new fans.

Not anything that serious geeks haven’t been discussing – and agreeing with – for years. The failure of the music and movie moguls to understand the Web and digital communications started this discussion – even before piracy became significant. They get the prize for dumb greed when it comes to dealing with intellectual property, anyway. Mostly for screwing creative artists all along.

The Obama administration said over the weekend that it would not support legislation mandating changes to Internet infrastructure to fight online copyright and trademark infringement.

“Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security,” the administration said in a statement on Saturday. “Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk…”

The DNS-redirecting provisions in both bills were designed to prevent American citizens from visiting sites the attorney general maintains are dedicated to infringing activities…without having to prove a damned thing in a court of law!

The Obama administration’s announcement appears to have conceded to opposition from security experts who say the plan would sabotage U.S. government-approved efforts to secure DNS against hackers and break the Internet’s unified naming system by introducing lies into infrastructure. The government is agreeing with experts who maintain that the SOPA and PIPA and the Senate’s Protect IP Act would break the Internet’s universal character and hamper U.S. government-supported efforts to roll out DNSSEC, which is intended to prevent hackers from hijacking the net through fake DNS entries.

Victoria Espinel [L] with some other folks from work

The White House announcement was penned by Victoria Espinel…Aneesh Chopra…and Howard Schmidt…

The usual creeps – ranging from RIAA and MPAA to individual Congress-critters beholden to lobbyist bucks – made the usual excuses and ready themselves to fall back on revisions which still mean operating outside constitutional law.

The technology community has made substantial in-roads in efforts to stop SOPA and Protect IP, two bills pending in Congress that would expand the ability of federal law enforcement and rightsholders to police the Internet for violations of intellectual-property laws.

But the fight is far from won. That was the message yesterday at a contentious panel discussion at CES’s Innovation Policy Summit, featuring Congressional staffers along with industry representatives from both Hollywood and the technology community…

As further evidence of momentum against the bill, Ryan Clough described a rancorous SOPA markup session in December that featured over 70 proposed amendments from Republicans and Democrats. The coordinated revolt led House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) to abandon plans for quick passage of the bill…

Sandra Aistars, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, was the sole panelist who supported immediate passage of both bills. The Copyright Alliance…board members include the Motion Picture Association of America; the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; BMI; and three of the largest content distributors–Viacom, Time Warner and NBC Universal…

I cannot define my contempt for political action couched in innocuous names – when they’re solely funded and staffed by folks with a dollar-stake in the outcome. I cannot define it adequately without obscenity.

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Visitors to dozens of Web sites purportedly linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods were greeted by this message.

The U.S. government has launched a major crackdown on online copyright infringement, seizing dozens of sites linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods.

Torrent sites that link to illegal copies of music and movie files and sites that sell counterfeit goods were seized this week by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. Visitors to such sites as Torrent-finder.com, 2009jerseys.com, and Dvdcollects.com found that their usual sites had been replaced by a message that said, “This domain name has been seized by ICE–Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court…”

The seizures came after a Senate committee unanimously approved a controversial proposal earlier this month that would allow the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) allows a Web site’s domain to be seized if it “has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than” offering or providing access to unauthorized copies of copyrighted works.

The bill hasn’t been voted into law, however.

The proposal has garnered support from dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America lobbying groups. However, critics such as…civil liberties groups say the COICA could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger legitimate Web sites.

Slimeballs like the MPAA aren’t deserving of anymore support than their forerunners in the RIAA. But, geeks who go out of their way to break archaic laws in the name of freedom are more than likely to get busted – in this land of liberty. It’s Congress and the courts who get to define what is liberty and what isn’t.

Investigators for the Department of Justice began asking questions about Apple’s business practices involving digital music at least three weeks ago, multiple music industry sources told CNET.

DOJ investigators have interviewed numerous executives at record companies and digital music stores and according to those with knowledge of the discussions, it is clear that investigators are interested in learning whether Apple has employed anticompetitive tactics.

The sources said that the department’s inquiry is just in a fact-finding stage and that there is nothing to indicate investigators have found any wrongdoing or would file a complaint against Apple…

Apple has a history of throwing its weight around the music sector. Apple’s iTunes accounts for 70 percent of all digital song sales and wields huge power. Apple has often used that clout to dictate terms to suppliers — that is, the major labels.

Here are just a few examples: The major labels wanted variable pricing on songs and albums and for years Apple resisted. In 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the top recording companies were “getting greedy”after music execs considered a music price hike. Last year, Apple finally gave the labels some additional control over song pricing.

The big record companies wanted the ability to sell albums that were unbundled, meaning they wanted Apple to sell hot LPs as a full package and refrain from selling individual songs from these works. Again, on this issue Apple hasn’t given much ground.

To iTunes’ fans, Apple was a freedom fighter. The perception was that Apple was standing up for consumers.

Apple’s refusal to force customers to buy full albums saved them from having to shell out money for songs they didn’t want. To them, Apple’s reluctance to raise the 99 cent song price was another way the company kept music costs down. And the government never made a peep about these practices.

Regardless of papier mache whines like this, the DOJ isn’t about to investigate the MPAA or RIAA. They aren’t even prepared to come down on the side of consumers and protect Fair Use – which has been eroded every year by greedy entertainment giants, pliable bureaucrats and judges.

Young movie addict

Smoking in youth-rated movies has not declined despite a pledge two years ago by Hollywood studios to encourage producers to show less “gratuitous smoking,” according to an anti-smoking group.

The American Medical Association Alliance has been trying to get movie studios to make smoking-free films.

The American Medical Association Alliance, pointing to research that big-screen smoking leads teens to pick up the tobacco habit, called for an R rating for any movie with smoking scenes….

“Research has shown that one-third to one-half of all young smokers in the United States can be attributed to smoking these youth see in movies,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, head of the Los Angeles County Public Health Department.

Fielding cited another study that he said “found that adolescents whose favorite movie stars smoked on screen are significantly more likely to be smokers themselves and to have a more accepting attitude toward smoking”….

Joan Graves, who chairs the Motion Picture Association’s movie rating committee, offered her own statistics, based on all of the 900 films rated each year, not just the top movies included in Fielding’s numbers.

The association has given no G ratings in the past two years to a movie with smoking, Graves said….

“Any movie with smoking should be rated R,” [Fielding] said. “And if they worry about an R rating hurting their profits, then they should work with studios to remove smoking from films that hurt youth.”

I have a feeling that I could go to lunch with members of the AMA Alliance and the Motion Picture Association and walk away not liking any of them.

Can’t we find some clerical jobs for these guys or something?

Each April, the US releases the Special 301 Report, which examines the intellectual property laws of its main trading partners.

The release generated international headlines last week as countries such as Canada and Israel found themselves on the “Priority Watch List” of countries that the US claims are the world’s worst piracy offenders.

In all, the US targeted 46 countries. In addition to the usual suspects such as China and Russia, Europe came in for heavy criticism with Finland, Norway, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland all on the Watch list.

The Report yielded predictable lobbyist support from groups such as the International Intellectual Property Alliance and the Motion Picture Association of America, who used the opportunity to chastise the countries on the list for failing to address their concerns.

Yet the lobby group victory may ultimately prove illusory. By wildly overstating its claims on many countries, the US has undermined its credibility and confirmed criticisms that the report lacks reliability or objective analysis.

Rather than increasing the pressure for reforms, it seems more likely to be characterised as little more than a lobbyist document that is best ignored.

Aside from official “ignoring” of the U.S. role as flunky for the MPAA and their peers, the real world is composed of individuals who will further ignore issuance of the report – if they even notice it.

American media barons have panicked over every change in content in distribution since Gutenberg. I wouldn’t expect anything different. What might be a change would be a government that helped out at developing new means and methods of protecting creators of content within the context of new media.

Four men connected to The Pirate Bay, the world’s most notorious file sharing site, were convicted by a Swedish court Friday of contributory copyright infringement, and each sentenced to a year in prison.

Pirate Bay administrators Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were found guilty in the case, along with Carl Lundström, who was accused of funding the 5-year-old operation.

In addition to jail time, the defendants were ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to a handful of entertainment companies, including Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Bros, EMI and Columbia Pictures, for the infringement of 33 specific movie and music properties tracked by industry investigators…

The verdicts are a significant symbolic victory for Hollywood, the record labels and the rest of the content industry that claims online piracy costs them billions of dollars in lost sales.

“The Pirate Bay has claimed all the time that their activities are legal,” Henrik Pontén, a lawyer who represented the film and computer game companies in the trial, told the Swedish media. “Now that it has been proven illegal we presume that they will stop.”

Henrik Pontén, the MPAA lawyer, must live in Cloud Cuckoo-land.