In May 2011 the Ministry of Culture announced that it had put forward proposals for amendments to the Copyright Act which would “..give licensees the tools they need to follow-up on copyright infringement on the Internet, while protecting privacy.”

The key proposals included making it easier for rightsholders to identify infringers from their IP addresses and amendments to the law to allow ISP-level blocking of sites deemed to be infringing copyright.

Jill Lesser, Executive Director of the Center for Copyright Information, told the Daily Dot that the repeated delays were because the coalition wanted an independent review from the American Arbitration Association.

She hinted that disagreement between the ISPs or the lobbying groups might have held up the process. Responding to a question about the delay, she wrote “members are all very involved in internal planning and review of the alert system, which has been and will continue to be a collaborative process.”

“I think that the increase is a result of all the media attention for the lawsuit and the blockade. Perhaps people who until then had never downloaded thought ‘I hear so much about downloading music and movies, let me try it!’.”

This has cleared the way for the UK communications regulator Ofcom to spell out how the 3-strikes system would work by publishing

a draft code for consultation that would require large internet service providers (ISPs) to inform customers of allegations that their internet connection has been used to infringe copyright.

However, an IP address on its own doesn't identify the person responsible for the alleged infringement -- the use of an open wifi network is an obvious reason why not. This touches on one of only four grounds allowed for appeal (in the original draft, other reasons were permitted, but Ofcom has now narrowed this down "following a direction from the [UK] Government"):

the act constituting the apparent infringement to which a copyright infringement report relates was not done by the subscriber and the subscriber took reasonable steps to prevent other persons infringing copyright by means of the internet access service;

Although far from complete, the current code already imposes an unnecessary burden on ISPs that are merely providing the digital plumbing. Worse, it starts from the assumption that those accused of infringement are guilty, and must prove their innocence in an appeals process – but how on earth do you prove a negative: that you didn't download a file?

What makes this even more deplorable is that the copyright industries still haven't provided any credible, independent evidence that unauthorized file sharing is damaging them. In fact, as Techdirt has shown in its report The Sky is Rising, they are all flourishing. This means that fundamental rights are being harmed, and costs incurred, without justification and probably for no ultimate benefit, since determined downloaders will simply switch to using VPNs or other means. The longer the great Digital Economy Act farce drags on, the more absurd it becomes from every viewpoint.

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Of course, if any of those participants in this never-ending cycle stood back and looked at what was happening, they would see that the very fact the copyright companies keep coming back for more and harsher copyright laws offers clear proof the current approach just isn't working. Instead, they seem to believe that even though it has failed to work every time in the past, if the penalties could just be made sufficiently cruel and painful, suddenly everything would be OK.

Unfortunately, it looks like it's Japan's turn to undertake this exercise in futility:

Japan’s legislature has approved a bill revising the nation’s Copyright Law to add criminal penalties for downloading copyrighted material or backing up content from a DVD. The penalties will come into effect in October.

The Upper House of the Japanese Diet approved the bill by a vote of 221-12, less than a week after the measure cleared the lower house with almost no opposition. Violators risk up to two years in prison or fines up to two million yen (about $25,000).

Perhaps dimly aware that tough sanctions won't work – or maybe just greedy – some music groups want Japanese ISPs to install a system that they claim can spot unauthorized uploads even before they reach the Internet. As TorrentFreak explains:

Once a match is found, rightholders want ISPs to automatically block the allegedly infringing content. But according to one report, there may even be requests to send out warning letters to uploaders. If implemented this would amount to the most invasive "3 strikes" style regime anywhere in the world.

This latest call for total surveillance on top of probably the harshest laws passed yet against unauthorized downloads raises an important question: when the current measures fail -- as they surely will -- what will the copyright industries demand next in a further forlorn attempt to deter file sharing? Life imprisonment? Amputation of the mousing fingers?

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The show went on to press the one-download-one-lost-sale mantra, suggested that a “3 strikes” regime should be considered to deal with infringement, and criticized local ISPs for providing high-speed connections used for pirating.

BTV also claimed to have contacted the operators of Zamunda so that their side of the story could be heard, but a source close to the site told TorrentFreak that after initially making contact and getting Zamunda’s attention (just 3 days before the show was aired), the show failed to respond to further contact from the site.

The end result, critics say, was an ‘investigative’ report biased towards rightsholders at a time when bTV is not only promoting its just-launched Voyo PPV service, but simultaneously running an anti-torrent site campaign of its own.

Plaintiffs should not be allowed to profit from unfair litigation tactics whereby they use the offices of the Court as an inexpensive means to gain Doe defendants’ personal information and coerce “settlements” from them. It is evident in these cases – and the multitude of cases filed by plaintiffs and other pornographers represented by their counsel – that plaintiffs have no interest in actually litigating their claims against the Doe defendants, but simply seek to use the Court and its subpoena powers to obtain sufficient information to shake down the Doe defendants. The Federal Rules require the Court to deny discovery “to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1). This case requires such relief.

Since this was only released a few hours ago, people are still trawling through it to find out what delights it holds, but an eagle-eyed David Meyer has already spotted something rather extraordinary: the UK government seems to be proposing to log not just every IP packet, but every physical packet -- and letter, and postcard -- too.

That's thanks to Section 25 of the Draft, which states:

Part 1 [the main requirements to log communications data] applies to public postal operators and public postal services as it applies to telecommunications operators and telecommunications services.

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There is a recommendation for new laws adding substantial secondary liability for copyright and trademark infringement, and laws encouraging the creation of private mechanisms of cooperation between rightsholders and service providers. The stated goals of these recommendations are clear in their SOPA-esque desire that rightsholders be able to quickly and quietly shut down anything they don't like online, preferably without having to go through the courts at all:

SOPA may be dead in the U.S., but the IP lobby is anxious to revive it in Canada. SOPA targeted ISPs with website blocking as well as measures focused on payment intermediaries and online advertising networks. In addition to the quote above that even targets resolving search queries, the report states:

The existence of remedies that include blocking orders, domain seizure and contributory liability are useful tools to encourage the cooperation of intermediaries who do not wish to be involved in the illicit activity.

It adds that:

positive relationships between rights holders and these intermediaries, including online payment processors, search engines, Internet service providers, online advertisers, online retailers, web auction sites, web hosting providers, domain name system (DNS) registries and social media platforms, can provide the basis for cooperation in the prevention of counterfeit distribution. This relationship requires the support of government.

The report also asks for the criminalization of all sorts of things involving counterfeiting, but as Geist points out, what this represents is an attempt to shift all the costs of what is traditionally a private action onto the public. They want the government to enforce their IP rights for them:

The report has several recommendations that would require the government to spend millions of dollars enforcing private rights. The criminalization of intellectual property discussed above is designed to increase public enforcement of private rights. Unlike the current system, which typically requires rights holders to assert their rights through civil litigation (an approach that has recently yielded million dollar awards), the move toward criminal provisions would require government prosecutors to act on behalf on rights holders. This represents a huge enforcement subsidy. Moreover, the report recommends:

1. The government must encourage enforcement officials to seek strong remedies in the case of IPR infringements and ensure prosecutors exploit the full range of remedies available to them, including the proceeds of crime regime.

2. Develop a team of properly funded and dedicated enforcement professionals in order to effectively face the challenges presented by counterfeiting in the digital age. In the absence of such a team, it will be impossible to respond to the challenges of small shipments of counterfeit product delivered online, and Canada will not be effectively positioned to partner with our international counterparts in tackling multinational operations.

3. Create an interagency intellectual property council consisting of senior officials from various government departments, including the Department of Justice and the RCMP, with the mandate to develop public education programs, initiatives for law enforcement and policy.

4. Establish a specialized IP crime task force to guide and lead anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy enforcement efforts in Canada.

The creation of new agencies, task forces, enforcement teams, and education programs are all part of a systemic effort to shift costs to the public.

The document also leans heavily on ACTA, often misrepresenting its recommendations as requirements, and ignoring the fact that ACTA is facing significant backlash in the EU. In America, the SOPA protests and the growing internet movement have succeeded in getting a lot of intellectual property groups to back off from their most draconian requests for things like website blocking—but such is apparently not the case in Canada, if the IP Council isn't even the least bit bashful about pushing such an extreme position.

AFACT and other rights holder bodies don’t care much for consumers. As you may have read, Neil Gane of AFACT thinks consumers are “unreasonable” to tell their suppliers of entertainment what they want. Actually, AFACT don’t have any customers in Australia, they are all in California, which unfortunately means that consumer pressure is unlikely to have much impact on their strategies.

iiNet have suggested that they focus on what the market is demanding, but it’s a waste of breath. Their masters have set the agenda and rights holders will only do their bidding.

Gane has made repeated calls for legislative change over time and that’s where AFACT’s future efforts will focus on, not taking into account consumer demands. The attorney general’s departmental forum is not designed to contribute to such legislative change and so I’m not expecting the process to generate any satisfaction for consumers or distributors.

The group has an active role in influencing copyright policy in Australia, and this role sees it advocate strongly for the rights of the creative industries. For example, in a submission to the Federal Government’s Convergence Review earlier this year, the Copyright Council argued that under proposed changes to Australia’s Safe Harbour scheme, it was an important element that Australian Internet service providers should “adopt and reasonably implement policies to avoid liability for authorisation” of copyright infringement, “including termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the accounts of repeat infringers”.

Fraser also has an extensive background in copyright protection in general in Australia. He has been a director of the Australian Copyright Council since 2001, and was also a founder and CEO of the Copyright Agency Limited for 21 years. CAL is an organisation which seeks to collect copyright fees and royalties for copyright holders in Australia, including journalists (disclosure: Delimiter publisher Renai LeMay has received fees from CAL for re-prints of articles he wrote when employed by the Australian Financial Review).

It’s hard to see what bigger conflict of interest there could be in these talks, than for the chair of the consumer group attending the talks to also be representing the creative industries, and I feel very strongly that Michael Fraser must recuse himself immediately from attending the talks held by the Attorney-General’s Department.

Fraser’s defence in this case would no doubt be that he is attending the talks in his role as director of UTS’ Communications Law Centre. However, it is my strong personal opinion that that it is impossible to separate Fraser’s role at UTS from his other roles chairing both the Australian Copyright Council and ACCAN. This is the same person, after all.

As the author of the article quoted above, Mark Goodge, points out:

It also gives the lie to two other common claims made by pro-compulsion campaigners: that ISPs are irresponsible and parents don’t care, and the only solution to both of those is legislation. In reality, a lot of parents do care about what their children are accessing on the Internet, and will choose to use a system which does screen out the worst of it if that option is available. And ISPs are responsive to consumer demand, so they’re choosing to offer that to their customers.

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“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak today.

“We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.

...

“Another thing that’s good with the traffic surge is that we now have time to teach even more people how to circumvent Internet censorship,” the insider added.

Of course, there will still almost certainly be a drop in UK traffic once all the ISPs have blocks in place, but in the long run it probably won't do anything to stop piracy or even to stop the Pirate Bay specifically. As EFF founder John Gilmore famously said in 1993, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"—and nearly twenty years later, not only does that still hold, it has become true of the people on the net as well.

But what, exactly, is a megabyte?

If a sampling of pedestrians on the streets of Brooklyn is any guide, most people have only a vague idea. One said a megabyte was “the amount of something we have to use the Internet,” adding, “We should have three or four.”

Miranda Popkey, 24, was closer: “It’s a measure of how much information you store. If there are too many of them, I can’t send my e-mail attachment.”

A megabyte is, in this context, 1,000 kilobytes — or about the size of a photo taken with a decent digital camera, or roughly one minute of a song, or a decent stack of e-mail.

Therein lies the problem: Counting things like minutes and text messages is fairly easy, but there is no intuitive or natural way to gauge data use.

1. How much room do I have before I hit the cap?
2. How much data will this content actually take up?
3. What if I'm wrong?
4. How much does it cost if I go over?
5. Wait, what if this is taking up a lot more data then I thought?
6. How much more data will I need this month?
7. No, seriously, what if I confused things and watching this video uses up my entire allotment?

Anthony Chai, a naturalized US citizen who emigrated from Thailand, runs a computer store in California.  Using the store's computers, Chai and his customers posted anonymous comments critical of the king of Thailand on a Thai-language pro-democracy website, Manusaya.com.  Thailand forbids criticism of the king – the legal principle of lese majeste – and when the Canadian Internet hosting firm Netfirms (which is incorporated in Delaware and maintains a US office) received a complaint from the Thai government, it not only shut down the web site but provided Chai’s IP address and two e-mail addresses associated with the posts.  Thailand has long shown its insistence on applying the principle even to criticism voiced in other countries, when the speakers expose themselves to its authority by, for example, visiting the country. 

When Chai was home visiting family in Thailand, he was detained at the airport and subjected to extensive questioning and to threats of violence against his family both in the United States and in Thailand.  He was also repeatedly questioned in the United States, with prosecutors using the threat of prosecution, and dangling and threatened with prosecution.  The prosecutor also demanded expensive gifts.  Chai has been officially charged in the Thai courts with lèse majesté, and consequently he can no longer return to his native land to visit his family.  Ironically, most of Chai's posts were directed at the injustice of the lese majeste laws, rather than at the Thai king himself.

After the election we will resume highlighting the substantial dangers inherent in the proposals and that the hoped for benefits in legitimate sales will not materialise as filesharers will simply switch to other undetectable methods to get content for free.

In the meantime we stand by our pledges to our customers:

• Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer's details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it.
• If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we'll see them in court.