Mygazines.com = Piratre Bay For Magazines

Here is a site that is in the news a lot this morning... Mygazines.com launched in late July and encourages users, of which it has more than 16,000 at the moment, to "upload. share. archive." high quality digital scans of magazines that they've purchased. Of course you have to think copyright infringement the moment you open the site, but the problem for North American magazine publishers is Mygazines is registered in the Caribbean and hosted in Sweden, by the Stockholm-based PRQ which is owned by the founders of Pirate Bay. Tracking down those responsible or even putting preasure on the domain registrar or site host is nearly impossible.

With a quick search of the site I turned up the August edition of Wired that I just paid $5.99 plus tax for... but then again if I didn't buy it I wouldn't be able to build upon my Wired Art Collection, and besides, if we frequent Mygazines.com or other such sites we put the publishers at risk and threaten the very content that we enjoy.

Facebook Asked to Remove Scrabulous

From the "I can't believe it's taken them this long" department comes the news that Hasbro and Mattel have reportedly asked Facebook to remove Scrabulous, an obvious rip-off of the popular boardgame, from its application directory. Scrabulous has a large following and, in true Facebook fashion, "Save Scrabulous"Facebook groups have been established in a effort to save the game. The largest having more than 30,000 members! According to Cnet, both sides of the debate are being tight lipped, so you can be sure that the lawyers are being kept busy. Why don't Hasbro / Mattel just buy out the company and take the half million users? I suppose that might set an ugly precedent...

RCMP make arrests under new copyright laws

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are claiming victory in the fight against movie piracy. With new legislation to back them, the RCMP have arrested a 25 year old Montreal man who is "facing two counts under the Copyright Act of knowingly distributing copyrighted material - pirated Hollywood films - on the Internet." according to the Globe and Mail. The police admit they have no way of knowing how many movies were pirated and sold but say they were tipped off by the FBI and the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association. The Canadian Government took action against piracy in June "when the government passed Bill C-59, amending the Criminal Code to make recording a movie without permission a crime punishable by two years in jail. Taping a film for future sale or rental carries a maximum five-year jail term." In this case the defendant is alleged to have used a camcorder to tape movies inside of a theatre and then distributed the pirated tapes via the Internet and on the street.

YouTube creates filters to identify copy righted video

YouTube has created new tools to help clamp down on the posting of copyrighted materials without permission on the site. Dubbed "Video Identification", the tools "also give copyright owners the chance to leave their video on the service and to sell advertising around the content" according to this BBC article. Until now YouTube had no automated means of determining what is copyrighted and what is not, and relied on copyright owners to identify their works which would then be removed from the site. The new tools still rely on buy in from the owners, as they are required to provide copies of their works to be used for comparison by Video Identification, but at least it is a more proactive stance. YouTube is currently being sued by Viacom for allowing that companies copyrighted content to be viewed on the site.

Flickr users see images popping up elsewhere without permission

In one of my very first posts, flickr = fame and fortune?, I wrote about being contacted by a photo editor at McGraw-Hill requesting permission to use a photo I had posted to my Flickr account in an upcoming book. I was thrilled and the experience has been very positive. Having taken courses in Multimedia design and working on projects that have incorporated stock photography and canned music, I am somewhat familiar with the requirements associated with copyrighted materials, and McGraw-Hill has been great.

According to this CBC report not all companies are treating Flickr images with the same degree of respect, in fact there appears to be a serious lack of understanding for copyright even amongst very large corporations such as Virgin Mobile and Manitoba Telecom Services. In my case the image is being published in an upcoming math text and we were happy to give permission without expectation of compensation, other than giving credit in the book and a copy as a memento. In the Virgin Mobile case, a family from Dallas Texas had their daughters image plastered on billboards and used in web advertising! They are taking the company to court, and I'd probably do the same! Manitoba Telecom Services apparently believed that that everything on Flickr was in the public domain and has since removed the images. I can understand that the average web surfer does not grasp the fact that even though it can be easily obtained does not grant you the right to do so, I would expect however that advertising executives would be fully aware of copyright law!

Allofmp3.com owner cleared by Russian court

CNN is reporting that a Russian court has acquitted allofmp3.com owner, Denis Kvasov, of charges of copyright infringement. The judge in the case saying "The prosecution did not succeed in presenting persuasive evidence of his involvement in infringing copyright law". Allofmp3 came under fire from increasing pressure of the music industry giants as Russia was making a bid for inclusion in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the case was seen as a test of Russia's commitment to fighting copyright pirates. Soon after the lawsuit was brought against Kvasov's company another site which looks suspiciously similar and allows users to use the same accounts, mp3sparks.com, opened.