Universal Music Takes Down Band’s YouTube Videos “By Accident”

Universal Music Group (UMG) does it again.

After taking down the Megaupload Song, they’re now deleting music of band’s without owning any rights to the tracks.

Several clips of the band In-Flight Safety have been taken down from YouTube this week.

The band’s lead singer John Mullane is furious.

“I just called Los Angeles, screaming at various people who were just trying to get rid of me, saying it’s not our problem, it’s YouTube’s problem,” Mullane told CBC.

“I just stayed on point and said no, it’s your name on the copyright claim, and I really want to talk with someone who can fix this.”

Rightly so, because YouTube’s not doing anything about the thousands of videos that get claimed by strangers.

UMG eventually admitted that it was all a mistake and promised to restore access to the clips.

Source: Universal Music Takes Down Band’s YouTube Videos “By Accident”

Sky Broadband Blocks The Pirate Bay

Sky Broadband has become the latest UK ISP to respond to a court-ordered blockade of The Pirate Bay. According to a staff member on Sky’s user forums, the ban was put in place at 3pm UK time today.

Sky follows in the footsteps of Virgin and Everything Everywhere’s Orange who both blocked the site earlier this month.

“We have invested billions of pounds in high-quality entertainment for our customers because we know how much our customers value it,” a statement from Sky reads.

“It’s therefore important that companies like ours do what they can, alongside the Government and the rest of the media and technology industries, to help protect their copyright.

“Such protection makes sure that consumers continue to benefit from TV programmes, movies and music both now and in the future. This means taking effective action against online piracy and copyright infringement,” Sky concludes.

The blocking order, which was obtained from the High Court by a group of record labels late last month, also orders TalkTalk and O2 to censor The Pirate Bay.

According to the BBC, O2 has until 13th June to act.

Once fully implemented it’s estimated that 94% of all UK citizens will no longer be able to access the site, at least by normal means. Proxies, of course, are being set up by the dozen, including one operated by the UK Pirate Party.

This week The Pirate Bay said it would be digging in long term to help users circumvent the bans in both the UK and the Netherlands.

Source: Sky Broadband Blocks The Pirate Bay

Charity Must Pay To Link To Newspaper Articles Featuring Them

It’s a real shame that we don’t have a ‘WTF’ tag for posts here in the ‘Bits’ section of TorrentFreak since this story desperately needs one.

Women’s Aid is an Irish charity supporting victims of domestic violence. As part of its quest to raise both funding and awareness, the charity sometimes gets featured in newspaper articles. The exposure is obviously highly valued.

However, when the charity wrote about these press mentions on its website and linked to the stories so that its readers could find them more easily, it had a nasty surprise.

According to their solicitor, Women’s Aid received correspondence from Newspaper Licensing Ireland Limited which advised the charity to obtain licensing in order to obtain “permission to scan clippings for 16 national titles and 90 regional newspapers plus some foreign newspapers.”

Failure to obtain the license, the charity was warned, would expose them “to expensive litigation,” adding, “Reproducing copyright content without permission is theft.”

Now, Women’s Aid were not scanning or reproducing clippings, so maybe there was some sort of mistake? Apparently not. In subsequent correspondence the charity was warned:

“A licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly onto your own website.”

McGarr Solicitors, who are acting for the charity, are as surprised as anyone at the demands and have urgently asked Newspaper Licensing Ireland to clarify their position.

A spokesperson for NLI declined to comment, which is just as well since it would only serve to make them look even more idiotic.

Here’s a suggestion NLI – get all your clients to remove their work from the web, then people won’t be suckered into generating a hyperlink in order to generate traffic for their websites.

And stay strong Women’s Aid – no one should get away with bullying, ever.

Source: Charity Must Pay To Link To Newspaper Articles Featuring Them

0 French Films Were Pirated Between May and December 2011

It’s no secret that copyright lobbyists do whatever it takes to justify stronger anti-piracy measures, but sometimes they take things too far.

Comments made by the Nicolas Seydoux, President of the French film company Gaumont and the local anti-piracy outfit ALPA, are a good example.

In a recent article he praises actions that were taken in France to stop piracy. The HADOPI three-stikes law in particular has been rather effective according to Seydoux.

In fact, the anti-piracy efforts achieved what no one thought would be possible. It completely killed online movie piracy.

“Between 15 May and 15 December 2011, no French film has been downloaded from the Internet,” Seydoux claims.

Now that’s what we call effective….

Source: 0 French Films Were Pirated Between May and December 2011