Entertainment Industry's Coordinated Effort To Blame Third Parties Taking Shape
from the they're-everywhere dept
We’ve noted that the entertainment industry lobbyists (driven mainly by the MPAA and the RIAA) are pretty good at having a fairly global strategy when it comes to implementing the next bad idea. Whenever they support something, you quickly see something similar pop up around the globe — sometimes with slight variations, which often allow them to test the waters to see how far they can go, in order to later use any such successes to convince other countries to go even further. It’s why you saw copyright extension show up around the globe, it’s why three strikes showed up around the globe… and now it’s why blaming third parties and making them liable for copyright infringement is showing up around the globe. In the US, it’s the PROTECT IP Act, which puts an astounding burden on third party tech companies — namely “information location tools,” payment processors and ad firms — in an effort to make them cut off those accused (not found guilty) of copyright infringement. And, we just noted that efforts are underway for something similar in the UK.
However, over in the Netherlands, they’re trying something slightly different. The anti-piracy group BREIN, which apparently gets plenty of funding from the MPAA, is simply going to start suing such third parties. BREIN has announced that it will sue third party payment processors if they don’t cancel accounts associated with those accused of copyright infringement. Notice that in this case, they’re not talking about a new law, but using existing laws to put liability on such third parties. It’s an impressive strategy effort by old Hollywood, but it suffers the same fatal flaw as its other plans. Nothing in this will make anyone want to buy. And, at the same time, the risk of getting a false positive is pretty high. But that’s apparently a small price to pay for thinking you’re stopping infringement.
Filed Under: entertainment industry, netherlands, payment processors, third party liability
