Once the UK recording industry realized that UK courts would order ISPs to block websites it didn't like, it appears that the industry, led by BPI and PPL began putting together a list of over two dozen sites that they're asking to have blocked by all UK ISPs, even though many of the sites on the list have never been tried in a court of law or convicted of copyright infringement. Included on the list, for example, is Grooveshark, who has been sued, but has not yet been found to violate copyright laws. It may very well be true that there is infringement on many, if not all of those sites. But, generally speaking, there's this thing called due process that allows a site to defend itself before being censored from an entire country. Just because a site has some infringing content does not mean that the entire site should be blocked -- or you'd have absolutely no user generated content sites online, because the liability would be too high. The UK courts started down this slippery slope by allowing sites to be blocked, and now the record labels are just going to keep piling the list higher and higher.

Having already kicked down the internet censorship door by ordering that ISPs block access to The Pirate Bay, the UK's High Court has expanded the list of sites to block based on complaints from BPI about which sites it believes are responsible for piracy. And, so, just like that, those in the UK will find Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy blocked. I don't know anything about these three sites. So, for all I know, they could be horrible, horrible actors in all of this, but even so, having a court order them completely blocked from access based on statements from BPI -- a commercial party who clearly would have a bias against upstart, disruptive competitors -- seems crazy. Again, take a look at the history of the entertainment industry attacking every single new type of distribution technology. And now the UK High Court is allowing them to do this to the level of flat out censoring sites.

We've written more than a few times about how multiple studies have shown time and time again that those who file share tend to spend more on buying music than those who don't. We've also talked about how the RIAA absolutely hates this fact and tries to dance around it at all costs. The latest move comes from RIAA sister organization, BPI (basically the UK RIAA), which has released a report (pdf) that they claim shows the opposite:

Appearing to debunk the common belief that filesharers spend more on music than other consumers, Kantar Worldpanel found that the average spend over a 12-month period for professed filesharers was lower than the spend of consumers who only use legal services. Kantar Worldpanel’s respondents diarise their music purchases on an ongoing basis – there are no estimates made of past purchasing, just an accurate recording of spending patterns over time. The panel data demonstrated that filesharers spent an average of £26.64, compared with £33.43 by legal-only consumers, refuting the popular argument that filesharers are the heaviest spenders on music.

Of course, when you're talking about averages, it's not difficult to fudge the numbers a bit, and as TorrentFreak explains, that's exactly what BPI did. If you break out the specific numbers, you can tell a very different story:

- Legal only digital music buyers spend an average of £33.43 a year.
- File-sharers, in total, spend an average of £26.64 a year.
- File-sharers, the 44.8% who are not buying, spend an average of £0 a year.
- File-sharers, the 55.2% who are buying, spend an average of £48.26 a year.

TorrentFreak confronted BPI on this, and they shot back that TorrentFreak's analysis was unfair:

"You cannot just wave away the 44.8% of file sharers who are not spending anything on music, despite being music 'consumers', and pretend they don’t exist or are not relevant. What happens if only 5% of file sharers are spending on music? Do we disregard everyone else who is freeloading?," a BPI spokesman said.

"It's not credible to discount the people who consume music, for free, illegally."

Fair enough... except that BPI's own numbers "wave away" all of the people who consume music legally for free, but don't spend anything on music. That is, there is a very large percentage of people who don't pay for music, but who also do not infringe. These people may listen to music on the radio or while walking around in stores, but neither purchase any music, nor file share infringing works. And if the BPI was being intellectually honest they would have to average all of those £0s into the average for "legal only" if they want to require all the £0s to be added into the infringing side as well. Basically, BPI is picking and choosing who it includes and excludes to make their argument look better. When it hand waves away all the zeroes on its side of the argument, while including all the ones on the other side of the argument, of course it'll make the numbers look better for its argument. However, if you're going to do an apples-to-apples comparison, you have only two choices. Either you include all the people who don't buy on both sides or on neither. BPI didn't do that. They only chose the ones who don't buy on the file sharing side.

It's important to note that an analysis of the UK market by economist Will Page, back when he was with PRS for Music, noted that only 40% of the UK adult population actually bought any music at all. So you've got 60% non-buyers, some of whom are file sharing and some of whom are not. The BPI report chose to only include those who file shared, and ignore those who didn't. That's a clear methodological problem with their data. If they're going to include the non-buyers on the file sharing side, they need to include the non-buyers on the "legal" side, or they're simply lying with statistics.

With the BPI (the UK equivalent of the RIAA) successfully getting access to The Pirate Bay blocked via many UK ISPs, it's apparently turned its quixotic sights to the UK Pirate Party for daring to set up a proxy -- as if there aren't hundreds, if not thousands, of other existing proxies out there, and plenty of ways for people to get to the site if they really want to. And, rather than just threaten legal action against the Pirate Party UK (PPUK), the BPI has lovingly sent threat letters to six members of the PPUK National Executive, suggesting that it is ready to sue each of them personally. The BPI is claiming that it has to do this, since it can't sue the party directly, and apparently takes offense at some claims that this is an attempt to bankrupt the leaders of the PPUK. Of course, that's hogwash. Being threatened with a personal lawsuit -- especially by an organization that represents a group of multinational, multibillion dollar companies -- is, without question, a threat of being bankrupted. The BPI does have another choice: give up this silly game of whac-a-mole, stop trying to censor the internet, and teach its member companies how to adapt with new and smarter business models. But, apparently, it's easier to bankrupt your critics.

Techdirt has written before about the self-destructive vindictiveness of the copyright industries, which would rather die in a futile attempt to stamp out piracy than embrace new ways of making money that will help to reduce piracy anyway. Here's another example of this blinkered approach from the UK, pointed out to us by Techdirt user Zakida:

The body which represents the UK's biggest record labels says it "doesn't make sense" for Google not to tackle piracy when it's launching a new, legal music service.

Google says it wants its new music service, Google Play Music, to wipe out piracy on Android devices.

But the BPI claims the firm is not keeping its promise to make it harder to find illegal download sites.

We know that when music streaming services became available in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, illegal downloads were halved. The BPI's obsession with punishing illegal download sites blinds it to the fact that Google plans to launch a far better way of dealing with them: not through extrajudicial censorship in the form of doctored search results, but simply by offering something that people are happy to pay for. The UK recording industry should be embracing new ventures like Google Play Music wholeheartedly, not using them as bargaining chips in its pointless fight over search results.

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We keep seeing various DMCA takedown failures, and the folks over at TorrentFreak have discovered another common error while going through Google's Copyright Transparency Report and found that big copyright holders are still filing DMCA takedown notices on content hosted on sites like Megaupload and BTJunkie, despite the former being shut down in January and the latter shutting itself down in February.

If you look, you can see a bunch of takedown requests for Megaupload links in the past month. Some of these are by smaller players, whom you might expect to be confused, but there are some big guys as well. In the screenshot above you can see both BPI and the IFPI (on behalf of Sony Music). There are also DMCA requests from Universal Music, EMI, the Publishers Association and others. All for content that clearly doesn't exist and hasn't existed in months. Kinda makes you wonder if they even check this stuff. Considering that all of these copyright holders seem to think that Google and others can just magically "know" when there's infringing content around, it's pretty telling that even they don't seem to know how to tell if content exists, let alone if it's infringing.

We keep talking about how the DMCA takedown process, all too frequently, is used to stifle speech, and defenders of the system claim that it's ridiculous to bring up the First Amendment in a discussion on copyright. But here's yet another (in a very long list) of examples. Henry Adaso wrote a short, but marginally negative review of Drake's album Take Care. The review was posted to About.com last November. The entire review reads:

Drake - 'Take Care'

A briefly entertaining, occasionally ponderous, sometimes lazy, sometimes brilliant, slow-rolling, rap-singy, bulls-eye missing, kitten-friendly, runway-ready, mega corny, lip-smacking, self-conscious, self-correcting, self-indulging, finely tuned, Houston infatuated, crowd pleasing, delightfully weird, emotionally raw, limp, wet, innocuous, cute, plush, brooding, musical, whimsical, exotic, pensive, V-necked, quasi-American, strutting, doting, cloying, safe alternative to sleeping pills.

Best Song: "Lord Knows"

Release Date: November 15, 2011

Not particularly positive, but not particularly scathing either. He also posted another post on About.com that merely pointed to that review, but included no additional content other than that he wrote a 50-word review.

Either way, both of those links are gone from Google's search. Why? Because just as someone filed a bogus DMCA to take down one of our key SOPA posts, Universal Music, via the BPI (British RIAA) filed a DMCA notice with Google claiming that both of those pages were infringing. That's clearly a false takedown, and pretty clearly designed to stifle a negative review. Adaso discusses all of this in his own blog post, in which he suggests that perhaps Universal and BMI are purposely trying to take down negative reviews, though it's equally likely that they're just incredibly incompetent. Still, whether incompetence or malice, it's clear that the DMCA is being used to censor and stifle speech, and in this case it just so happens to be speech in the form of a negative review of a Universal Music Artist (a Universal Music artist who has also expressed displeasure with how Universal has used copyright law against his own best interests).

But, no, there's no free speech concerns around the DMCA, right?

As part of Google's ongoing Transparency Report efforts, today the company has released a whole new section on copyright takedowns, containing a huge amount of information on the many takedown requests Google receives. It focuses specifically on the takedowns for search links, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them add other areas later. As you may recall, we were among those who were victimized by a bogus takedown, and a key post about SOPA that we had written was missing from Google search for about a month.

The new transparency platform lets you dig in and see quite a few details about exactly who is issuing takedowns and what they're removing from search. It's using data since last July (when Google set up an organized web-form, so the data is consistent). It may be a bit surprising, but at the top of the list? Microsoft, who has apparently taken down over 2.5 million URLs from Google's search results. Most of the the others in the top 10 aren't too surprising. There's NBC Universal at number two. The RIAA at number three (representing all its member companies). BPI at number five. Universal Music at number seven. Sony Music at number eight. Warner Music doesn't clock in until number 12.

There's also data on which sites are most frequently targeted, which (not surprisingly) lists out a bunch of torrent search sites and file lockers and such. Don't be surprised to see some try to claim that this is an accurate list of "rogue sites" that Google should block entirely. However, if you look carefully at the data, Google also highlights the percentage of pages on those sites for which they've received takedowns, and the vast majority of them are well below 1%. In other words, no one has complained about well over 99% of the pages on these sites. It seems pretty drastic to suggest that these sites are obviously nothing but evil, when so many of their pages don't seem to receive any complaints at all.

Perhaps more important, however, is that Google is also revealing the incredible deluge of takedown requests it receives in search, each of which it tries to check to make sure they're legitimate. As it stands now, Google is processing over 250,000 such requests per week -- which is more than they got in the entire year of 2009. For all of 2011, Google receive 3.3 million copyright takedowns for search... and here we are in just May of 2012, and they're already processing over 1.2 million per month. And while we've heard reports from the usual Google haters that Google is slow to respond to takedowns, it says that its average turnaround time last week was 11 hours. Think about that for a second. It's reviewing each one of these takedowns, getting 250,000 per week... and can still process them in less than 12 hours. That's pretty impressive.

It's also interesting to hear that these reviews catch some pretty flagrant bogus takedown requests:

At the same time, we try to catch erroneous or abusive removal requests. For example, we recently rejected two requests from an organization representing a major entertainment company, asking us to remove a search result that linked to a major newspaper’s review of a TV show. The requests mistakenly claimed copyright violations of the show, even though there was no infringing content. We’ve also seen baseless copyright removal requests being used for anticompetitive purposes, or to remove content unfavorable to a particular person or company from our search results.

It's good to see Google catch these, as plenty of other sites would automatically take such content down, just to avoid any question of liability. Of course, it doesn't catch them all. Some get through -- as we ourselves discovered a few months ago. That led us to wonder if this tool could drill down and find the details about takedowns targeting Techdirt, but unfortunately at the moment there doesn't seem to be any way to actually search the list. Hopefully that will change soon. Update: The search function is not currently advertised anywhere, but you can access it by using a URL: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/yourdomain.com/

Of course, this is also a good reminder -- as they note in the Google blog post -- that if you run a website, you should absolutely sign up to use Google's Webmaster tools, which will quickly inform you when one of your URLs are targeted by such a takedown, allowing you to easily file a counternotice.

Either way, this is really fascinating data and an interesting platform, shedding some significant light on just how often copyright holders are trying to take links out of Google, who's doing it and who they're targeting.

UK ISPs BT and Talktalk challenged the Digital Economy Act soon after it was passed, complaining about how the law was approved, about the implementation details and how it would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Unfortunately, the final appeal in that lawsuit has been rejected, and the ISPs may now be forced to start cutting off users and playing the role of copyright cops for the entertainment industry. The court's basically said that there's nothing against European law in the Digital Economy Act. Even worse, it found nothing wrong with putting a significant chunk of the costs (about 25%) on the ISPs themselves. In what world is it reasonably to force an industry to pay to protect another industry from innovation? The only point where the ISPs won was on not having to pay 25% of regulator Ofcom's costs in setting up an appeals body.

What's somewhat ridiculous, however, is to then watch the entertainment industry practically gloat about this result. Geoff Taylor from the BPI responded by claiming that:

"The ISPs' failed legal challenge has meant yet another year of harm to British musicians and creators from illegal filesharing."

That's ridiculous on multiple levels. First of all, prove the harm. We'll wait. And wait. Because BPI can't do it. But, second, that assumes that kicking people off the internet will actually solve "the problem." It won't. The problem is with the fact that the companies represented by BPI refuse to adapt in a significant way, and thus users move towards more convenient, more efficient and better priced offerings.

PACT -- a UK trade group representing "independent creative content producers," the kind of folks who rely on an open internet and who should be terrified about the impact of something like the DEA, again, was extremely condescending to the legitimate concerns of ISPs:

John McVay, CEO of Pact, said: "Rather than needlessly spending more time and money on further legal challenges, BT and TalkTalk now need to focus on working with rights holders and the Government in implementing the Digital Economy Act with immediate effect."

Immediate effect to raise costs and decrease access -- none of which will do a damn thing to get people to pay more for content. Others were equally condescending and obnoxious. There was Equity general secretary Christine Payne:

“Once again a judge has made it extremely clear that the Digital Economy Act is a fair, focused, proportionate and efficient system for consumers and the creative industry,” she added. “Rather than individuals being hauled into court, the DEA makes it possible to conduct a mass consumer education programme. BT and TalkTalk need to stop fighting and start obeying the law.”

Hint to Christine: no "education programme" involves legislation requiring one industry to police users to stop them from doing what they want because a different industry is too lazy or clueless to adapt.

The Film Distributors’ Association president Lord Puttnam CBE hoped the court decision would put an end to “a long chapter of uncertainty, and the DEA can now help in implementing a mass consumer education programme so that people, especially young people, can come to appreciate the damage piracy inflicts on the whole of the creative community”.

Kicking people offline and making ISPs copyright cops is not an education program, and the "problem" the industry faces is not an education problem. People know that copyright infringement is illegal. It's not because of ignorance that they're doing what they do. It's because the industry refuses to offer what they want in a convenient manner at a reasonable price.

The British Video Association’s director general Lavinia Carey added: “Several other countries are adopting this measure and it would be bad for Britain’s creative industries to be left behind more forward thinking nations who are supporting their creative economies at this difficult time of transition towards increased digital consumption during this period of recession.”

Not that many countries, actually, and there's widespread opposition where it's happening, as well as significant concerns about the collateral damage. Over in France, of course, there are efforts under way by opposition parties to dump Hadopi as soon as possible. Pretending that this is some sort of widespread, agreed upon strategy that other countries are adopting widely is simply false.

But, in the end, this reaction shows how the industry continues to have its collective head in the sand on this particular issue. They think that users just need "education." That's wrong. It's the industry that needs education. It needs innovation on how to adapt, on how to meet consumers needs and on how to actually embrace what the technology allows. Until it does that, no "education program" is going to help... and the collateral damage of the DEA's program is only going to make things worse, and make sure that another generation of young people have no respect at all for the entertainment industry.

With Newzbin2 getting censored in the UK, BPI -- basically, the UK wing of the RIAA -- has been looking to have courts order many more sites blocked, with The Pirate Bay being target number one. Dan Bull, the UK-based musician who we've written about many times for his consistently awesome songs about the music industry, file sharing, copyright laws and the like has now put together another wonderful song, called Bye Bye BPI. You can watch it here: Like his SOPA Cabana song, Dan had a bunch of his Facebook followers participate in the video by taking pictures of themselves with the various lyrics. This time, since the song is about why musicians don't need (and don't want) the BPI, he sought out musicians to take part in the video, so everyone you see is a musician who doesn't need BPI. Yes, they're mostly amateur musicians, but the point of the video is that it's misleading to suggest that BPI supports musicians. It supports a tiny percentage of musicians. The rest get along just fine without, and wish that it wouldn't muck around with the technology everyone else uses.

Oh yeah. It's also worth noting that Dan's got a new album coming out, which (of course) you can download for free. You can also buy it to show that you support the artists you like.

* Bonus points if you can spot our own Leigh Beadon in the video somewhere.