But that was then, this is now: the Internet is having a massively disruptive effect on the film industry, just as it is on many others. That doesn't give film producers any entitlement to handouts from the Italian state for sales they claim they might have made. And notice, too, that De Laurentiis is calling for compensation for allegedly lost sales, not lost profits, which might have been minimal.

It's sad that so many in the copyright world apply their creativity to thinking up reasons why they should be protected by governments from the massive changes underway throughout the world, rather than applying that creativity to coming up with new ways of making money. They could do worse than listen to Riccardo Tozzi, president of Italy's audiovisual association, who was the co-host with De Laurentiis of the film industry symposium where the latter made his call for legal action:

Tozzi suggested a different tact: making it easier for people to legally download films, for a fee. "We should balance the threat of illegal downloads with a legal supply of films," he said. "It can be too difficult to download films legally, so there's no good alternative" to piracy.

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Robert King is the lead figure behind StopFileLockers (SFL), an anti-piracy group dedicated to bringing file-hosting services to their knees by strangling their finances. Last year King claimed his group had a hand in disrupting the cash flow to hundreds of sites and actually shutting down dozens more. Now he has a very big scalp on his mind.

King, an Australian and adult industry player, says that StopFileLockers have just begun a “campaign to have the payment processing of all Mega resellers terminated.”

• The DEA was hastily passed at the end of the last UK Parliament's term to "combat piracy", or whichever rhetoric was used this time.
• The act initially proposed to block websites and disconnect repeat infringers of copyright in a graduated response type system, or otherwise limit internet access. Customers may also be taken to court because ISP's would be obliged to disclose personal information of their customers.
• The scope is limited to the largest ISP's in the UK, which covers about 93% of its citizens.
• The implementation of the DEA has been delayed due to heavy criticism. Some of these ISP's went to court about the hefty costs which need to be made to enforce copyrights online.
• Some provisions, such as the blocking of websites at the ISP level, have since been scrapped. This was not met with much resistance from rights holders, as they already had their Supreme Court precedent set with the blocking of the Pirate Bay.
• More specifics about this piece of legislation can be found around the internet, but as a final point it must be mentioned that -- surprise surprise -- the whole impact assessment of the act was based on highly inflated and controversial figures with bogus methodologies, provided by private stakeholders.

Let's dive into the claims of this most recent attempt to attack the technology as legacy players try to stay relevant. Of course, every time they do this, they discover that they're on the wrong side of innovation. Again. And, all too often, the goals of these groups run entirely contrary to the real wishes of those they claim to represent. Julian Heathcote Hobbins, General Council at FAST, states the following:

The DEA has the potential to be a valuable piece of legislation in the fight against illicit peer-to-peer copyright infringement and a significant development for rights holders as an educational programme. However, the DEA must remain timely. The issue is that by the time the DEA is finally implemented, technology could have moved on so far making the Act ineffective in helping to deal with those using 4G networks to share files. In its current form the DEA is not sufficiently flexible in scope to account for advances in technology.

[...] As we are now witnessing, technology does not stand still and gaps are appearing in the DEA as the use of mobile devices accelerates. Unless this situation can be remedied, it may be of less assistance, leaving rights holders with a watered down remedy.

First, the FBI believes that the APW Seal and accompanying warnings convey important messages to the public and are a significant component of its efforts to deter and to investigate federal crimes involving the piracy of intellectual property. Allowing use by copyright holders who are not members of industry associations will enhance those efforts. Second, although broader access may make unauthorized use more likely, this concern is overshadowed by the value of increasing public awareness of these prohibitions and the FBI’s role in investigating related criminal activity.

Five comments also expressed a concern that the broader accessibility of the APW Seal may have a “chilling effect” on fair use, as some copyright holders may attempt to use the APW Seal to discourage uses of their copyrighted work that would otherwise be permissible under the fair use doctrine. The FBI fully recognizes that fair use, which is authorized under Title 17, United States Code, Section 107, does not constitute infringement, much less a federal crime. The warning language does not suggest otherwise. The FBI intends to address this matter on its public website.

“What happened was a misinformation campaign,” said Moore. “People were basically misled into contacting Congressmen with claims that were extraordinary. There was some genuine concern, but as for it being a genuine home grown grassroots up-from-the-streets opposition, I beg to differ on that.”

Last week the local Pirate Party also received a letter from BREIN, demanding the shutdown of their Pirate Bay proxy site hosted at tpb.piratenpartij.nl. However, unlike the site owners that were previously contacted by the group, the Pirate Party is not caving in. They would rather fight the case in court.

Today the Party informed BREIN that the proxy site will stay online. To show that The Pirate Bay can be a useful communication tool the Pirate Party sent the letter through a torrent file, hosted on the BitTorrent site at the center of the dispute.

“The demands are ridiculous,” Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak.

“A private lobbying organization should not be allowed to be the censor of the Dutch internet. We were also amazed to find an ex-parte decision attached, threatening Dutch minors with €1000 per day fines for operating their proxy. If we would have yielded, their trick would immediately be played out against numerous other private citizens.”

1. 1982: Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act: Increased criminal penalties for infringing records, tapes and films from $25k & 2 years in jail to $250,000 and 5 years in jail. Also... made it so that first-time offenders could get the maximum.
2. 1984: Record Rental Amendment of 1984: Outlawed music rentals (have you ever wondered why there were no Blockbusters or Netflixes for music?)
3. 1990: Copyright Remedy Clarification Act: Allowed copyright holders to sue states for copyright infringement (before that, states could claim sovereign immunity)
4. 1990: Computer Software Rental Amendments Act: Outlawed software rentals
5. 1992: Audio Home Recording Act: Mandated DRM on certain digital audio devices (mainly DAT), added a royalty on such devices.
6. 1994: Uruguay Round Agreements Act: Not only did it seize works out of the public domain and put them under copyright (this was what was challenged in the recent Golan case), but it made it a criminal offense to bootleg concerts (audio or video).
7. 1995: The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act: Created a new "performance" right for copyright holders concerning digital "performances."
8. 1996: Anticounterfeiting Consumer Protection Act of 1996: Expanded racketeering laws to include criminal copyright infringement, as well as "trafficking" in computer software, documentation or packaging, as well as trafficking in movies or audiovisual works. Also let the government seize property associated with these activities (precursor to domain seizures...).
9. 1997: No Electronic Theft (NET) Act: Decreased the threshold for what counts as criminal infringement (such as taking out the monetary profit requirement).
10. 1998: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act: You should know this one. Expanded copyright terms by 20 years.
11. 1998: Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): Again, you may have heard of it. Created anti-circumvention rules and the notice-and-takedown system for online infringement, among many other things.
12. 1999: Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999: Massively increased statutory damages for infringement
13. 2004: Intellectual Property Protection and Courts Amendments Act: Set up penalties (civil and criminal) for counterfeit labels, documentation and packaging in association with copyrighted goods (yes, separate from the content itself). Also lowered the bar to show willful infringement.
14. 2005: Family Entertainment and Copyright Act: Criminalizes recording of movies in theaters and also lets theaters detain people merely suspected of recording in theaters. Criminalizes releasing a work online before it's been officially released (if it's "being prepared" for commercial distribution).
15. 2008: Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act: Increased civil penalties for infringement. Increased government seizure & forfeiture powers (which is how the government currently justifies its questionable domain seizures) and created a job in the White House to focus on greater enforcement.

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In order for the deal to work out the composer had to assign the track in question to the music publishing catalogue of the Gerrits, who owns High Fashion Music. In addition to this, the music boss demanded 33% of all the money set to be recouped as a result of his efforts.

The conversation between Gerrits and the composer’s financial advisor was recorded by Pownews, and during the conversation the financial advisor confronts Gerrits with his unconventional proposal.

“Why do you have to earn money?” he asks, as usually all of the money goes directly to the artists.

“It could be because a lot of people in the industry know that they are in trouble when I get involved,” Gerrits responds, adding that he can bring up the topic immediately in a board meeting next week.

Once again trying to find confirmation for the proposal, the composer’s advisor later asks if the music boss indeed wants one-third of the money.

“Yes, that’s the case, but then [the composer] would make 660,000 euros and now he has nothing,” Gerrits responds calmly.

Piracy of intellectual property that’s protected by copyright law is a serious crime. Not only does it rob the makers of recordings, videos, movies, games, and other creative works of the money they are entitled to, but it costs tens of thousands of people their jobs each year. It also deprives governments at all levels of tax revenue. Piracy itself is a crime, and it causes an increase in other types of crime. Gangs and organized crime groups have both been linked to the piracy of creative work.

Pirated materials are everywhere. All you have to do is walk down a city street to see all the CDs and DVDs for sale by street vendors.

Making unauthorized copies of these creative works is against the law, and breaking it may subject the person who does it to civil and criminal liability—especially if they distribute the stolen product to others. The penalties for first-time offenders include jail time of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000.

Once a tune or movie is posted on the Internet, it lives forever—and the artist behind the product is forever deprived of income.

When you buy a tune on the Internet and download it, make sure you don’t send a copy to a friend or someone who might sell it to others

If you get a tune from someone, don’t re-send it to others.

Don’t instant message a tune.

Don’t burn CDs or DVDs.

If shopping online, beware of sites that aren’t familiar to you—and that are selling expensive products at prices that are way too good.

One anomaly to the damage caused by piracy recently took place in China, where the small Danish company that makes the "Angry Birds" game actually found a benefit in the widespread, illegal copying of the game, which has been downloaded 50 million times in that country. The company turned the widespread knowledge of its brand in China that resulted from the piracy into a marketing advantage for its other products in the country. Moreover, since consumers couldn’t tell the difference between the fake and genuine products, and sales of the game skyrocketed. In the United States, however, piracy of creative products can damage the brand of the original manufacturer when consumers can’t tell the difference between a counterfeited product, which may be shoddy, and the genuine article. Cheapening of the brand can be a serious problem, especially as reputations are hard to recover when lost.

This has reference to the below article on your webpage, we kindly request you to deactivate the link as the article is defaming the company’s image & its prospects. It was mis-interpreted by the news agency which was blown out of proportion by some of the pirates across the globe. And subsequently we have to face damages/threats from the pirates & undergo immense losses due to their attack on our servers/websites etc.

Although, we did declare that we are not involved in any of those activities as published in the article, we still have to face the consequences for reasons unknown.

Below is the link for your reference:

http://www.phphosts.org/blog/2010/09/bizarre-indian-anti-piracy-group-says-it-does-dos-attacks-on-file-sharing-operations/

We kindly request you to deactivate at the earliest possible please.

Appreciate your help on this matter.

Jagadish
Support Operations
Aiplex Software Pvt. Ltd.

"He was adamant that we needed to boost our statistics to make the media sit up and take notice and that the large numbers would make it easier to get the local Police interested. This was especially difficult to do as local police had no jurisdiction over copyright infringing product and the AFP were desperately short on manpower. We were encouraged to find links to drugs and stolen goods wherever possible."

"We discussed the formula for extrapolating the potential street value earnings of 'laboratories' and we were instructed to count all blank discs in our seizure figures as they were potential product. Mr Gane also explained that the increased loss approximation figures were derived from all forms of impacts on decreasing cinema patronage right through to the farmer who grows the corn for popping."

[....]

"Funded solely by MPAA, AFACT lobbies hard for changes to Australian law and enhance the sexiness of their case by making vague references to links to terrorism. Sometimes not so vague. I was instructed to tell police officers that the profit margins were greater than dealing heroin. It was bizarre. A twisted logic that AFACT spewed out with monotonous regularity," Warren says.

One of the examples Warren gives is that they assumed that all burners and DVD replicators would run 24/7, making these operations appear very lucrative.

"Each burner cranking out ten discs an hour, multiplied by ten dollars per disc is potentially a hundred dollars an hour, multiplied by number of burners by hours in a year gives a yearly potential…. Very pumped up statistics."

According to Rakshitha, the producer of a new movie called Jogaiah, her company has hired an anti-piracy outfit called Shree Technologies to protect the movie’s soundtrack due to be released later this month.

“The software that we’ve used will help us track each person down, so that we can take action against them. It is much-needed in the film industry,” Rakshitha said this week.

Then, and without explaining exactly how the anti-piracy system will achieve its most extraordinary feat, Prem – the director of the film – drops the bombshell.

“All it requires is for someone to search for the keywords ‘Jogaiah music download’ and it automatically tracks them down,” he said. “If they have a webcam on their system and it’s switched on, it will also capture the photo of the offender.”

While this itself would seem threatening enough, Shree Technologie's as-of-yet unnamed anti-piracy software has many more features:

ADDITIONAL SERVICES/PROGRAMS USED

• In addition (if their webcam is switched on), the user will be logged on to Chatroulette (Penises Only Rotation*). Their full name, phone number and estimated penis length/openness to random sexual encounters will be displayed below their face.
  
  * Syncs with Hotmail account (if applicable) to turn every third word of outgoing mail to "penis."

• If the user has MS Paint open, their photo will then be pasted onto the body of a stick figure who will be drawn violating random farm animals.* The resulting graphic will then be uploaded to the 4chan /b/ board for further mockery and captions.
  
  * Stick figures and farm animal drawings will be outsourced to Mechanical Turk.

• If the user has MS Word or WordPad open, an angry and threatening letter will be drafted and emailed to the editorial section of the nearest paper of record* via Outlook.** Users of OpenOffice will receive an emailed warning that the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has shown that the use of open source software is surprisingly expensive, along with a rebate certificate good towards the purchase of a more hackable product.
  
  *If the nearest paper of record is the Denver Post, all personal information will be turned over immediately to Righthaven and the user's name inserted into the byline of the nearest violating article.
  
  **If the user has Outlook fully functional, everyone will be duly surprised and the information will be passed on to the nearest Microsoft marketing team for further study.

• Those with Windows Media Player installed will be blasted with a repeated 8-bar loop of whatever shrill Indian pop song is currently sitting at number one on the pop charts, followed by an equally shrill voice loudly informing them that they should purchase a licensed version to avoid "further embarassment" and a stay at the "Police guest house."

• Those using other free media players (WinAmp, SongBird, etc.) will be hounded into installing some sort of extraneous toolbar. I mean, more so than usual.

• If the user is a member of "The Facebook," his/her status will be immediately set to "I STEAL FROM FILMMAKERS AND MUSICIANS WITHOUT REGARD TO OTHERS AND AM EMBARASSED. If you agree with this, post this as your status, only using my name instead of "I" and report me to your local authorities. ("Me" meaning the original poster and not yourself, the re-poster.)"

• If the user is a member of MySpace, Friendster, etc., the same posting will be made, but nobody will see it. Shree Technologies considers this to be punishment enough.

• If the user has so far refused to join Failbook, Failspace or Failster at this point, he/she shall continue to feel pointlessly superior to the people around them, most of whom have forgotten he/she exists.

ADDITIONAL SEARCH TERMS:

• "Jogiah iTunes download" - User will be berated by various musicians* as accomplices to Apple's industry killing mechanism.
  *Basically just Jon Bon Jovi and Garth Brooks, who have sold a combined eleventy billion albums.

• "Jogiah musick download" - Will redirect to a variety of sketchy Soundcloud pages for the witch house community, swamping the user in montone dirges and abused Unicode.

• "Jogiah megaupload rapidshare mediafire" - Will redirect to "Did you mean: I want to go to jail".

• "Shrill Indian pop music" - Will redirect to this page.

• "Shrill American pop music" - User will be assaulted by the latest shrill pop chart topper from America, followed by a guest rap from Snoop Dogg.

• "Shree Technologies" - Will give you the Indian phone book, metaphorically speaking, but none of the answers you're looking for.

• "ChatRoulette -penis" - Will redirect to:
  
  Your search - ChatRoulette -penis - did not match any documents.
  
  Suggestions:
  
  Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
  Try different keywords.
  Try +penis.

But the review of these cases indicates that the security services often seize computers whether or not they contain illegal software. The police immediately filed reports saying they had discovered such programs, before even examining the computers in detail. The police claims have in numerous instances been successfully discredited by defendants when the cases go before judges.

Given the suspicions that these investigations are politically motivated, the police and prosecutors have turned to Microsoft to lend weight to their cases. In southwestern Russia, the Interior Ministry declared in an official document that its investigation of a human rights advocate for software piracy was begun "based on an application" from a lawyer for Microsoft.

"In such cases, we flood the website with requests, which results in database error, causing denial of service as each server has a fixed bandwidth capacity," Kumar reveals. And it doesn't stop there.

"At times, we have to go an extra mile and attack the site and destroy the data to stop the movie from circulating further," he adds.

"Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium [Johan Schluter] declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites".

"One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand."