Well, that didn't take long. Two months after its launch, the social video-sharing app Vine has received its first copyright takedown notices. The complaints were sent by NPG, the record label owned by Prince, whose music appeared in a few six-second videos on Vine. 

This is absurd. Uploading an entire Prince album to YouTube is one thing. But six disjointed seconds in smartphone camera quality? Something tells me four clips of that nature aren't going to eat into Prince's album sales. 

Prince, who three years ago declared the Internet to be "completely over," is known as a stalwart, sometimes overzealous defender of his intellectual property online. In fact, it was the use of a Prince song in a YouTube video that led to Lenz v. Universal, an often-cited 2008 court decision dealing with copyright and fair use.

In that case, the court ruled in favor of Stephanie Lenz, whose video of her baby dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy" was the target of a copyright infringement claim by Universal Music. Lenz argued that video constituted fair use and the court agreed that Universal didn't adequately weigh the fair use principle when issuing takedown notices, something it has a reputation for doing rather aggressively. 

Let's (Not) Go Crazy 

Whether or not six seconds of a Prince song in a user-generated video constitutes fair use is something for a court to decide. If it's not, though — if uploading a crappy, six-second video that contains someone's song turns out to be illegal — we have to ask ourselves some pretty fundamental questions about copyright and what it's for. 

Of course, that there's a need to rethink copyright in the 21st century is hardly breaking news. The original framework doesn't work that well for anybody, as has been evident for at least a decade. Last month, the U.S. Copyright Office itself called for a dramatic overhaul of copyright law, with Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante saying "it is time for a new law." 

Whatever replaces the current copyright framework will need to balance the rights and financial interests of creators with the fact that we have a completely new way of creating and sharing culture and media than we did a few decades ago. That will mean changes in how creative works are distributed and monetized, sure, but it also opens up a whole universe of new cultural possibilities, which shouldn't be squashed without a very good justification.

To say that things have changed since Prince recorded "Let's Go Crazy" in 1984 is an understatement. When you consider how dramatically (and mostly for the better) the Internet has changed how we live, work and yes, create and experience culture, the idea of waging an all-out war against tiny pieces of content like this seems, well, kind of crazy. 

The new Six Strikes anti-piracy program major ISPs rolled out last week — officially known as the Copyright Alert System — is geared toward catching those allegedly pirating copyrighted movies and games and, well, inconveniencing them until they stop. It's framed as an educational tool, but given that the participating Internet service providers are bound by no unifying or mandatory rules, there's a degree of uncertainty as to exactly what you can expect should you pop up on your ISP's anti-piracy radar.

Wonder no more. Here's a handy graphic that outlines exactly what we know about how the five major ISPs in the U.S. plan to use the system and how it will affect your Internet use. (Let us know what you think in comments.) Also, following the graphic: How Six Strikes may get you hacked.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

There's a lot of ambiguity about what happens after six strikes, and neither the ISPs nor the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) have clarified what consequences await customers who get that far. Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me that "Strike Seven" might simply amount to Big Copyright hauling alleged infringers into court.

But there are other big problems. Nazer, for instance, argues that the system's pop-ups and alerts could easily provide cover for hackers to impersonate ISPs in order to seed malware and launch phishing attacks. "Given the scale of this and the kind of ways they're looking to contact their customers with emails and browser locks, it may be a particularly attractive target for malware," Nazer told me.

The open-source development blog FunnyMonkey calls Six Strikes "the best phishing opportunity ever" and "a gift to people looking to steal credit card information and other personal information." Too bad the CCI's Web site is silent on the risk of would-be phishers impersonating or hijacking its alerts.

Lead image modified from this image via Flickr user patersor, CC 2.0

Infographic courtesy of Neo Mammalian Studios

If you went to Amazon on Thursday and tried to buy the new SimCity, the first major release of the classic urban planning PC series in 10 years, you wouldn't have been able to. Amazon wouldn't sell it to you.

Why? Because the servers of the game's publisher, Electronic Arts, were in such a disastrous state that very few people could actually access the game. And those who could were seeing server issues disrupt their save files. So Amazon decided to pull it.

Server problems wouldn't normally hamper a video game's launch, unless that game is developed by EA. In an effort to combat piracy - or something, it's not quite clear - EA deployed an online-only Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology through its Origin service for SimCity, which came out on March 5. That means in order to play the game, you need to be online at all times and connected to EA's servers, even when playing the single-player mode. When player demand starting causing the servers to fall, it also brought down nearly every player's ability to play any aspect of the game. 

EA moved fast to address the problem but not fast enough. A string of press releases addressed the issue with mounting seriousness, culminating with EA's decision late Thursday to actually begin removing key features of the game to help keep the servers online. For example, the company eliminated the mode that lets players speed up time to accelerate their city's growth. A blog post by Kip Katsarelis, SimCity's senior producer, details the company's plans to address the problems, but did not offer concrete information on when the changes would happen.

And in an email sent out on Friday to EA's marketing affiliates, the game publisher announced that it has "deactivated all SimCity text links and creative and we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being." Wow.

The Aftermath

Gaming site Polygon addressed the issue, docking SimCity 1.5 points from its original stellar score of 9.5 for the ongoing server problems. Then it updated it again, dropping the score to 4.0. Kotaku told fans, under a heading titled "Should You Buy This Game?" a big, bold "NOT YET." Even The New York Times decided to address the topic, apparently taking a philosophical approach by asking A Game That Can't Be Played: Is It Still A Game?

As of now you can at least buy the game from Amazon again, if you really want to. Both the physical and downloadable versions are back up for sale, with a special note warning, "Many customers are having issues connecting to the 'SimCity' servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed."

These issues aren't going away: Take one look at the physical version of SimCity's limited edition on Amazon and you'll get a good idea of the breadth of the backlash. The product is on its way to becoming the worst rated item in the Amazon marketplace, with an astounding 2,796 1-star reviews compared to just 70 5-star reviews, at the time of publication. If EA can't fix this fast enough, SimCity may garner as much Amazon hatred as 2008's Spore, another EA title (ironically from Maxis and Will Wright, the same team that created SimCity) plagued by the company's self-imposed DRM measures. (Ironically, Maxis is earning the sympathy of some players who prefer to blame EA.) 

Even more telling is the review marked "Most Helpful," happens to be a facetious take on the game, including satirical gems like, "Thankfully, the game never actually loads. I was looking for a program where I could zone out, and stare at my computer screen in a meditative state for hours on end with no interruptions." 

The Biggest DRM Failure

The point isn't just that SimCity is a great game plagued by a bad launch. The real question is how big an impact these kinds of DRM debacles have on game sales - and on DRM technologies.

EA's online-only DRM is not alone in the gaming industry. Blizzard, makers of the Warcraft and StarCraft series, tried similar tactics with the release of Diablo 3 last year, angering thousands upon thousands of players locked out of the overburdened severs. But as Wired's Chris Kohler noted, Blizzard fixed the issue in a matter of days, and the game went on to sell millions and lead the PC market in 2012.

If companies solve these issues fast enough, the backlash bubbles for about a week before everything goes back to normal. And nothing substantive changes. Publishers like EA get to keep pushing the limits - revising the terms of digital ownership through brute force. 

We can only hope things will be different this time. SimCity proves once and for all that online-only DRM is an utter failure. It doesn't even do much to combat piracy - making legitimate customers feel more pain than the pirates.

There's a big difference between protecting content reasonably - perhaps with activation codes or secure disc-based DRM - and asserting authoritarian control over the people who actively want to pay for your product. The first priority should be treating paying customers with respect. 

If You Don't Like The Terms, Ignore The Product

Those hosed by EA don't have much recourse. EA is not offering refunds for digital copies, and fuming in online communities doesn't seem to have much effect on the giant company. 

Going forward, the only real solution may come from the most helpful 1-star review on Amazon, from a user named Malor who earned more than 7,700 recommendations. He noted that SimCity is not a typical game with a beginning, middle and end. It's a toy, and you used to be able to buy that toy and play with it. But now, Malor wrote, "You don't even get to buy your toy. Rather, you rent a toy from EA, who lets you play with it only in very limited, circumscribed ways, only on their servers."

Malor's final recommendation offers perhaps the best approach: "You would be wiser to take three twenties out of your wallet, and light them on fire." In other words, don't waste your time or money on products with draconian DRM, no matter how intriguing they might be otherwise. Only when DRM affects sales will EA and other publishers take this situation seriously. 

Image courtesy of Electronic Arts.

UPDATE: It turns out that The Pirate Bay was indeed pulling an elaborate joke about moving its hosting to North Korea yesterday. Announced on its Facebook page this morning, the file-sharing site admitted to the hoax, which used a clever IT trick to make it appear as if it were being hosted in North Korea. The site was even kind enough to post a picture of its co-founders hanging out with North Korean leaders that definitely wasn't Photoshopped.  

Allegedly, the site was never forced to leave Sweden, and was simply dealing with a temporary legal argument while major infastructure changes would solve the issue in the following week (though it is still unclear where TPB is currently being hosted until such changes allow it to return to the Swedish Pirate Party).

"We've also learned that many of you need to be more critical. Even towards us. You can't seriously cheer the "fact" that we moved our servers to bloody North Korea," the post reads. "Always stay critical. Towards everyone!" At least the tricksters at The Pirate Bay had a point (sort of). 

ORIGINAL:

Just yesterday, former b-baller and reality TV juggernaut Dennis Rodman arrived stateside after a widely publicized hangout with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying, "I love him. The guy is awesome. He was so honest." Apparently, Kim's generosity extends to torrenting sites as well.

As of this morning, notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has been offered virtual asylum in North Korea after being kicked out of Norway, according to the site's most recent blog post.

Having lost its hosting from the Swedish Pirate Party last week, The Pirate Bay jumped to pirate parties in Norway and Catalonia. That brief relationship ended this morning, when the Norwegian Pirate Party ousted the file sharing site as well, with party leader Geir Asalid claiming that party doesn't have the economic muscle necessary to fight for the right to torrent. 

After some very brief downtime, the site popped back up, though at the same address and with no indication of the new hosting location until a traceroute for the site was tracked back to an ISP located in the Potong-gang District of Pyongyang, North Korea. Following a handful of initial reports, The Pirate Bay posted its blog post acknowledging the switchover. 

Is The Pirate Bay Messing With Us?

It's not always easy to believe what The Pirate Bay says. If this turns out to be a joke, it wouldn't be the first time The Pirate Bay has pulled such a hoax about its virtual whereabouts. In 2007, the site pulled an April Fool's Day joke revolving around this exact situation, writing at the time, "We would like to thank Kim Jong-Il for the opportunity and we would like all of our users to review their current feelings towards this great nation!"

This time around, a number of colluding circumstances make this announcement sound considerably more legitimate. Not only has The Pirate Bay switched out its homepage image (seen above), but the ISP is in fact being traced to North Korea only hours after the Norwegian Pirate Party's announcement was released. If it is a hoax, this would certainly be an elaborate one. 

Those within the torrent news network also seem to believe the situation - to a degree. "A Pirate Bay insider informs TorrentFreak that they had been working for a while to get connectivity in North Korea," reports TorrentFreak. “We’ve been in talks with them for about two weeks, since they opened access for foreigners to use 3G in the country...TPB has been invited just like Eric Schmidt and Dennis Rodman. We’ve declined up until now," the source went on to say. 

Hosting the winner of 2004's Celebrity Mole and the first ever Hulk Hogan's Championship Wrestling Tournament (aka Mr. Rodman) and wining and dining him as if he were an ambassador is one thing. But putting the actions of your country's Internet network in direct opposition to the fierce lobbying efforts of Hollywood and the United States copyright police is an entirely different kind of political taunt. It likely doesn't bode well for the increasingly precarious relationship between the U.S. and North Korea.

For those not inclined to travel to the site's blog, you can read an excerpt from The Pirate Bay below:

This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing [sic] a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.

Top image courtesy of The Pirate Bay. Second image courtesy of TorrentFreak. 

Google and the entertainment industry have long had a complex relationship. After years of taking heat from the MPPA and RIAA, the search giant is desperately trying to shed its reputation as an accomplice to copyright infringement. 

Why? Well, avoiding billion dollar lawsuits like the one Viacom filed (unsuccessfully) a few years ago would be nice. But Google also wants to be on good terms with the music and movie industries so it can strike content deals that will help products like YouTube, Google Music and Google TV to thrive. The company still gets the majority of its revenue from search ads, a reality it knows won't last forever. 

The changes started off small but are now getting more serious as content becomes a more important focus for Google's business. Still, even after some of the most significant changes, the record industry and Hollywood tend to fire back complaining that they don't go far enough. That happened again this week when the RIAA put out a report questioning the effectiveness of Google's search results tweaks. 

As our own Brian Proffitt demonstrated with some test searches, the RIAA might have a point.  But Google is trying. It has a delicate balance to strike between the interests of copyright holders and the users who generate more than a trillion search queries every year. It's eager to please the content industry, but has to roll these changes out gradually to avoid a mass user freakout. 

So how has Google altered its search engine and other products to cater to big copyright? Here are four notable recent examples: 

1. Blacklisting Terms From Autocomplete and Google Instant

In January 2011, Google started blocking certain terms from its Autocomplete and Google Instant features. Rather than undertaking the full-blown search results censorship the entertainment industry wanted, Google decided to meet them half way and at least stop recommending piracy-related search terms to people. 

Since then, the list of forbidden terms has grown. Even Megaupload is still blocked from Autocomplete, even though that site was seized by the U.S. government over a year ago. 

Overall results are mixed. If I type "hurt locker torrent" into the search bar, it doesn't show me instant search results (nor did it attempt to autocomplete the phrase). But "torrent hurt locker" is another story. That returns links to torrents for the popular movie, followed by an article about how the film's makers sued thousands of BitTorrent users. Careful!

2. Streamlining The Copyright Takedown Process (SometimesTo A Questionable Degree)

When you run a user-generated content site as massive as YouTube, you have to be capable of handing potentially millions of copyright complaints. To keep up with the never-ending flood of complaints, Google has progressively made it easier to file them. Its Content ID feature lets copyright owners supply YouTube with audio or video reference files that the system then uses to automatically identify infringing content and flag it for further action.

 As you can imagine, Content ID has resulted in some highly questionable takedown requests. So last year Google implemented an appeal process to help minimize frivolous takedowns. Of course, even with protections in place, eyebrow-raising takedown requests are still granted from time to time.  

Google also now claims to be responding to copyright takedown notices within 24 hours, a promise it made to the content industry a few years ago. 

3. Tweaking Actual Search Results To Discourage Piracy 

The content industry has long wanted Google to not just tweak search suggestions, but to actually remove and downplay results that lead to infringing content. For years, Mountain View was unwilling to tinker with the secret algorithm that bulldozes billions of dollars into the company every year. As big content companies become more valuable potential allies, Google has warmed up to the idea. 

Google is constantly bombarded with requests to removed URLs from its search results on copyright grounds. In 2012, the company pulled 50 million infringing links from its index. In the last few months, the number of requests have skyrocketed, so it's likely we'll see even more links de-indexed in 2013. 

Granting DMCA takedown requests is one thing. What the content industry has wanted all along was a deeper, algorithmic change to Google's search results. In August, they got their wish. 

In its most radical anti-piracy move yet, Google added copyright takedown requests to the more than 200 signals it uses to rank and index search results. That is, if a site gets a high number of "valid copyright removal notices," it may wind up taking an SEO hit as a result. Not surprisingly, the RIAA was quick to cry "not good enough!" only six months after the admittedly measured changes were made. 

4. Next Up: Defunding Piracy Sites 

To quell any remaining doubts that it's serious about piracy, Google is about to cave into another long-held entertainment industry wish. According to the Telegraph, Google is currently in talks with MasterCard, Visa and PayPal to cut off funding to sites that engage in copyright infringement. The report is short on details, but presumably such a tactic would be reserved for some of the worst offenders, especially those who dodge takedown requests or operate in other jurisdictions. This is an unconfirmed report, and one that reveals only discussions, not action. If Google does proceed with this one, it's anybody's guess what the timeline might look like. 

Of the changes that have been implemented, each one is decidedly measured. Google can't quite afford to go nuclear with its antipiracy efforts, much to the chagrin of the industry. This is going to be an evolutionary and thoroughly imperfect process. As the business incentives and industry pressures mount, expect to see Google make increasingly aggressive moves. And, like clockwork, expect the RIAA's complaints to keep coming. 

Frustrated and bitter that laws like SOPA and PIPA have yet to get pushed through Congress without those pesky constituents objecting to turning the U.S. government into muscle for entertainment industry, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is taking out its anger on Google. The music industry lobbying group is accusing the search engine giant of failing to effectively demote search results that lead people to those nasty little download sites.

In a blog post on the RIAA site yesterday, Steven M. Marks, EVP & General Counsel, RIAA made it clear that the music copyright association thinks that Google, despite making some headway, remains a day late and a dollar short.

"We recognize and appreciate that Google has undertaken some positive steps to address links to illegal music on its network," said Steven M. Marks, the RIAA's executive vice president and general counsel. "Unfortunately, our initial analysis concludes that so far Google's pledge six months ago to demote pirate sites remains unfulfilled. Searches for popular music continue to yield results that emphasize illegal sites at the expense of legitimate services, which are often relegated to later pages. And Google's auto-complete function continues to lead users to many of those same illicit sites."

(This isn't the first time: see also RIAA Slams Google's Anti-Piracy Efforts, Demands Even More Unreasonable Measures.)

Testing The Claims

I wanted to see if the RIAA might be overstating its concerns, something that they've been known to do before. So I performed a little one-man experiment, using the song "Some Nights" by Fun. as the guinea pig. Your mileage may vary, of course, but my quick-and-dirty test revealed that the RIAA may have some valid claims.

A search for "Fun. album" returned a first, second, and third page of results that were absent of any results that would seem to contain illegal downloads, with the bottom of the third page containing three DMCA takedown notices that point to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's ChillingEffects.org for more information.

But down in the "Searches related to" section of all of the results pages, "fun. some nights download" was among the listings, and a click-through pulled in the plenty of links to aggregate MP3 download sites, mixed with a few legitimate sites, like iTunes (#3), Amazon (#7) and the official video on YouTube (#8).

As for the RIAA's claim that Google's AutoComplete will suggest search terms that could lead users to sites containing unlicensed copies of songs, I found this was indeed true. By the time I typed "fun. some", Google had filled in four results:

fun. some nights
fun. some nights lyrics
fun. some nights meaning
fun. some nights mp3

On a whim, I turned on SafeSearch to see if that would make a difference. Results did differ on some search results, such as "fun. some nights download", where legitimate sites (like the Wikipedia entry for the album) were moved up slightly on the first page of results, but the sketchy download sites were still in full-glory display.

I should also note that the RIAA did not take Microsoft's Bing service to task, even thought the same experiment on Bing yielded very similar results, even in the auto-complete results. Type in "fun. some" on the Bing home page and you get these helpful suggestions:

fun. some nights lyrics
fun. some nights
fun. some nights meaning
fun. some nights torrent
fun. some nights video
fun. some nights album download
fun. some nights mp3
fun. some nights review

Search Engines As Police?

Based on these (admittedly quick) search tests, it seems like the RIAA has a point, and Google is failing to block apparent pirate sites on its search results, and its demotion policy announced in August 2012 isn't really working all that well, either.

But let's be clear: Google has said all along it wasn't going to block site results from any site unless it receives a specific copyright removal request from the rights owner.

"Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law. So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won't be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner," senior vice president of engineering Amit Singhal wrote back in August.

At the time, what Google said it would do was add a new signal to how it ranks search results.

"Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results," Singhal stated.

The RIAA is contending in its statement this week that Google has failed to live up to that promise.

One has to wonder, though, if trying to keep up with the sheer number of sites that provide access to unlicensed media content is comparable to spitting on a forest fire. If the signal for page ranking depends in some way on number of takedown attempts, perhaps the RIAA and other rights holders are not sending enough signals. Or maybe these sites know who to game other ranking signals to boost their status on Google and Bing search results.

It is very easy to point fingers at Google and Bing and accuse them of not doing enough to keep people away from pirated media. If you forget, of course, that this not their job.

Complaining about the auto-completing results would seem to be a more valid concern, until you remember that there could be legitimate results for "download X."

The RIAA wants to protect the rights of its artists and producers, a valid concern. But it is not clear at all that Google, Microsoft and the other search engines should be relied upon as key allies in the recording industry's ongoing quest to stomp piracy. Search engines' missions are to provide data, not analyze that data for legality.

Despite what they're asking for here, I suspect even the most vehement anti-piracy activists would not care for some of the implications of a world where search engines were to undertake that goal.

It's finally happening. That moment we've been hearing about for years - the one where futuristic-sounding 3D printing becomes ubiquitous - is actually upon us. President Obama even mentioned 3D printing in his State of the Union address.  As prices drop and the technology improves, consumers are awaiting this disruptive new era with bated breath.

So are intellectual property lawyers. 

Before long, many of us will be able to print physical objects as easily as we once burned DVDs. And just as the Internet made trading MP3 music files and ripped movies a breeze, downloading 3D images to print on your shiny new MakerBot printer will be as easy as torrenting "The Hurt Locker." 

3D Copyright Takedown Notices Begin

Last week, HBO sent a cease-and-desist letter to Fernando Sosa asking him to stop selling a 3D printed iPhone dock he modeled after the Iron Throne chair from the popular HBO TV series Game of Thrones.  Even though Sosa designed the dock himself in Autodesk Maya, HBO owns the rights to the show, its characters, and apparently the inanimate objects that appear onscreen. 

It has been two years since the first known Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice for a 3D printable object was sent. After 3D artist Ulrich Schwanitz created a printable version of the famous Penrose triangle optical illusion, another modeler mimicked (not copied) the 3D rendering necessary to print his own. Schwanitz sent a copyright infringement complaint, but then later rescinded it and released his design into the public domain. 

In that case, the dispute involved two individuals. Now bigger, better-funded copyright owners are getting involved. As user-generated 3D model marketplaces like Thingiverse and Shapeways grow, expect to see them flooded with creations based on trademarked and copyrighted material. And expect to hear about more takedowns, lawsuits and new legal precedents.  

Copyright and 3D Printing: It's Complicated 

Unlike music and movies, the relationship between copyright and physical objects is not always straightforward. In general, non-artistic objects - that is, items intended to be used rather than admired for their aesthetic value - do not typically fall under the scope of copyright law. Certain objects can be patented, as long as they're not overly generic. Try as you might, though, you can't patent a chair, for example, unless you've designed an entirely new type of chair. 

But what if you design a chair with a very unique ornamentation on the armrests? If you download my chair design and print yourself out a version of the chair for your very own, can I sue your brains out, RIAA-style? 

When it comes to copyright and objects, courts try to apply what's called a "severability" test. That is, can you "sever" the artistic part from the useful part? If so, the artistic part is typically protected by copyright. The strictly useful part is not. 

In a recent white paper titled "What Is The Deal With Copyright and 3D Printing?" Public Knowledge explored these issues, but came up short on clear answers. Precisely how copyright law applies to 3D printing will be established only as the technology grows and lawsuits get filed. 

In the meantime, expect the intellectual property disputes to proliferate, almost as rapidly as the technology itself. 

Lead photo by Creative Tools. 

To file-sharing guru, alleged pirate and international Internet activist Kim Dotcom, his new creation, the encrypted file-sharing service Mega, is not only a company but also a "belief," not to mention "a guardian angel of your rights, freedom, and privacy."

Grandiose Declarations

This grandiose declaration came via Twitter on Tuesday, where Dotcom announced some quick figures on his new site's growth. After one month, Mega has hit 3 million users, with 125 million files uploaded. This is certainly nothing to scoff at, and more evidence that this guy is not slowing down, despite the best efforts of the U.S. Department of Justice, which has brought charges of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering against him.

Mega, the rebirth of file-sharing service Megaupload, which was shut down by U.S. authorities in January of 2012, has been gradually working its way into headlines since its lavish January 19 launch, where Dotcom staged a fake FBI raid to blaring techno music, among other wild antics. Notably, the service hit 1 million users in the first 24 hours, and Dotcom announced through Twitter last Saturday that Mega would be accepting bitcoins as currency.

Dotcom has also announced that mobile Mega apps are on the way, which bodes well for those looking for almost completely unrestricted on-the-go file storage options for iOS and Android. In case you were wondering, Mega's international traffic rates rank France, Spain, Brazil, Germany and the U.S. as the top five, in that order.

Mega's Perks & The Cloud Storage Battle

Dotcom is also making the news for his service's massively disruptive pricing. Mega offers 50GB of cloud storage, free. A Pro Membership package, with tier-1 offerings of 500GB of storage and 1TB bandwidth rate, costs £9.99 (or roughly $13) per month. Tier-2 quadruples the storage and bandwidth amounts of the previous tier for $26 per month, while tier-3 doubles all of tier-2's offerings for $39 per month. 

Mega's free option alone beats out the storage offerings of Dropbox, iCloud and Google Drive combined. The additional perk is, of course, the privacy. Dotcom's service ensures that users' files are completely protected from peeking by way of an encrypted key. So unless you supply them with access, even Mega staff cannot access your files.

Mega: Privacy vs. Piracy?

It remains to be seen whether the service will become another source of rampant copyright infringement. Considering Dotcom's history, and the enormous amount of freedom Mega hands to users, that possibility certainly looms large. Being able to share anything and everything is great for privacy, but not so much for content owners hoping to keep file sharers from unauthorized dissemination of every new song, movie and TV episode. 

(See also Is Kim Dotcom's New Site, Mega, the Wild West of Piracy?)

In March authorities will rule on whether Dotcom will be extradited from New Zealand to the U.S. to face his numerous charges. Until then, he seems to be enjoying his new site's steady climb to the top of the file-sharing and cloud-storage leaderboard.

Tetris was the original addictive puzzle game. Developed in 1984 by a Soviet programmer, the tile-based game eventually made its way to the 8-bit Nintendo in 1989 and a new era of gaming was born. If you were playing console or PC games in the early 1990s, Tetris was everywhere. You played it, your mom played it. Your dog watched you play it. 

Tetris may have also been the original popular mobile game. It was one of the first cartridges for Nintendo’s Game Boy and sold 33 million on the handheld gaming device. If ever there was a game custom-made to popularity in the Mobile Revolution, it is Tetris. 

Tetris Wins Over Xio Interactive's "Mino"

But Tetris, like many old time games (or popular new games), has run afoul of copycats and pirates. Do a quick search of the Apple App Store or Google Play and you will find similar titles like “Angry Block 3D Tilt” or “Retris.” One such copycat, Mino by a developer called Xio Interactive, was so egregious in its copying that The Tetris Company brought it to court for copyright infringement and trade dress rights in a New Jersey court in 2009.

Yesterday, Tetris announced that it has won its court case against Xio’s Mino in a summary judgment that was made in May 2012. 

“This is great news for budding designers and developers in the video game industry. Without this protection, our industry would not exist," said Henk Rogers, friend of original Tetris developer Alexey Pajitnov, in a release. 

You may look at the announcement and shrug. Great, you may say, Tetris won its court case against a copycat. Good for them. 

There is more to it than that.

Good For Developers In Battle Against Piracy

This is one of the first instances where a mobile game publisher has sued a copycat in a United States high court and won. The precedent set will be important for many developers – independent or large publishers – looking for legal solutions to pirated apps. The Tetris judgment could be a guide for how other courts handle copyright not just of mobile games, but many other types of copyright infringement concerning computer programs.

The broad concept of Tetris’s win is simple: it sued Xio for copyright and trade dress (a legal term that generally applies to “a product's physical appearance, including its size, shape, color, design, and texture”) and won. The underlying issues are more complex. We saw many of the same types of concepts crop up in the legal battle between Google and Oracle in the spring of 2012 concerning Google’s use of Java in Android. For instance, when is computer code copyright protected and when is using concepts within that code considered fair use? 

Ideas Not Protected, Expression Is

When it comes to copyright, ideas are generally not protected. Anybody can have an idea and we have seen time and again through history that several people have come up with the same idea independently of each other. What is protected is the express or implementation of those ideas. Hence, Oracle cannot quite claim copyright on Java in Android when Java is the idea but Android is the expression of the idea. In the Tetris case, similar concepts apply in that Mino copied seven different aspects of the implementation of the Tetris idea in such a way that it was an obvious copy of the original. 

Xio’s court argument was that it had only copied the rules and function of Tetris, which are not explicitly covered in The Tetris Company’s copyright. The court found otherwise. 

One caveat for developers and publishers looking to go after pirates: copyright is very difficult to prove. Only the most egregious suits will find ways to win and many smaller developers will not have the money for protracted legal battles. To see the complexity of Tetris’s argument, read the summary judgment provided by the court.  

In an over-the-top press event at his New Zealand mansion last weekend, the notorious Kim Dotcom unveiled a new cloud storage service called Mega. From the ashes of his now-defunct Megaupload, which was shut down by U.S authorities exactly one year ago, rises a service that promises to be incredibly secure and better at handling copyright complaints.

But will users flock to it? More to the point, should you use it?

On a personal level, Mega is a big win for Kim Dotcom. With it, he shows the world that the military-style raid on his mansion one year ago (which was theatrically mimicked during the Mega launch event) did not succeed in bringing him down, even as he faces criminal charges over Megaupload's alleged involvement in copyright infringement. 

The Perks: More Storage And Better Security 

For users, the Mega message is less clear. Whether they were using Megaupload for piracy or legitimate file sharing, the site's users have had to move on to other means of transferring bits across the Internet. For some, that means services like Dropbox while others moved to Megaupload-esque solutions like Rapidshare and Mediafire, both of which have made changes to their functionality and public posture since the Megaupload raid. Where ever they went, Dotcom is hoping to lure those users back with tightened security and ample storage space. 

On the surface, Mega's offering is pretty tempting. While Dropbox and Box.net limit free users to 2GB to 5GB of storage, Mega lets you pile up 50GB worth of data before asking you to pay. The premium subscriptions start at 500GB for $10 per month and go up to 4TB for $30 a month. 

Given History, Is It Worth It?

Sure, Mega is also much more secure than its predecessor, using super-tight asymmetric encryption to keep data secure and out of view from curious governments and other third parties. But no matter how good it is, do you really want to store your valuable data on a service tied to Kim Dotcom? When you sign up for Mega, it's hard not to think about what happened to the founder's last filesharing product. You can't help but picture the armed raid and simultaneous seizure of Megaupload's servers. 

It's also hard not to think about Kyle Goodwin. He's the Ohio-based high school sports broadcaster who was using Megaupload to transfer video files between himself and the video editors he had hired to help produce his broadcasts. After one of his external hard drives was damaged, Goodwin tried logging into his Megaupload account to retrieve his old files. By then, the FBI had already seized the servers, locking Goodwin and plenty of other users out of their data. He has since been involved in a class action lawsuit demanding that authorities give non-infringing users access to their Megaupload data.  

How likely is a shutdown of Mega? Thanks to the way the service was built and the lessons learned from the demise of Megaupload, probably pretty remote. But for some users, it's going to be tough to swallow the idea of trusting a service that is so intrinsically linked with the subject of a major, ongoing criminal prosecution. 

Other than the color scheme, the Mega interface isn't all that different from that of Megaupload. Even the logo's typography is the same: It looks like they just lobbed off the "upload" and changed the color. It just feels a lot like a site with which many people are familiar, but which has been replaced with an FBI anti-piracy warning message. 

Potential Security Holes

Plus, as big of an improvement as Mega may be when it comes to privacy and security, it's not perfect. In a detailed analysis of Mega's security, Ars Technica pointed out that the JavaScript-based method of randomly generating numbers for the encryption keys isn't the most rock-solid option available. 

"The end result of this is that it is easier (not easy, but easier) to reverse-engineer a Mega user's private RSA key than it should be," writes Lee Hutchinson. "That means it's easier to spoof the identity of a Mega user when sending messages or files."

The site has other limitations as well. For one, it's very insistent that people use Chrome to access Mega, due to its advanced implementation of HTML5 features. Not even the latest versions of Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer or Safari will suffice. Despite this strict adherence to the latest in Web standards, Mega still relies on Flash for some tasks, like downloading files. That means it won't work on iOS devices until Mega submits official apps, which Apple may or may not approve. 

What does that all add up to? For users like Kyle Goodwin, who have a day-to-day need to rely heavily on cloud-based file storage for critical data, Mega remains a bit of a gamble. But for sharing miscellaneous, backed-up files here and there, there's little reason to not give it a try.

NOTE: This story has been updated from its original version to clarify some points about the "Birdsong" takedown in the second item.

No matter where you stand on copyright issues, it's hard to argue that the current system is working. In few places are the flaws of modern copyright law more apparent than when it comes to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests. 

Sure, plenty of legitimate DMCA are received and honored by sites like YouTube, Rapidshare and Grooveshark all the time. But every now and then we hear about a takedown notice that leaves us scratching our heads: Is that really a copyright violation? If not, why was the content removed? Is the system that easily gamed? Oh, it was a violation? How weird. 

Even the legitimate takedowns tend to lead a cat-and-mouse game and may not have a meaningful impact on the piracy they're intended to thwart, research suggests. But either way, some of the headline-grabbing copyright-related content takedowns we've seen raise major questions about the state of copyright law, the DMCA and digital piracy. 

Five prominent examples are listed below, but there are undoubtedly others. If you've heard of an outrageous Web content takedown request, let us know in the comments section.  

1. Buffy vs. Edward vs. Bogus Takedown Notices

In 2009, Jonathan McIntosh posted a video to YouTube that seemed ripe to go viral. "Buffy vs. Edward: Twightlight Remixed" riffed on two popular vampire-related entertainment franchises by cleverly mashing up scenes from both into one cohesive, six-minute video. Sound like a copyright violation? It's not. In fact, the U.S. Copyright Office cited the remix video as a shining example of fair use. 

In October 2012, McIntosh received an email from YouTube explaining that his video had been pulled due to a copyright complaint from Lionsgate Entertainment, which owns the rights to the Twilight movies. McIntosh challenged the takedown on fair use grounds and a frustrating back-and-forth between YouTube, Lionsgate and McIntosh ensued. At one point, McIntosh was even locked out of his YouTube account and forced to take lessons in copyright infringement from Google. 

As of today, Buffy vs. Edward is back online. For now. 

2. Rumblefish And Birdsong

This one was just an honest mistake and didn't actually lead to a takedown, but it still shows how things can go wrong with the current system. Somehow YouTube's Content ID system got confused and thought that the sound of a bird singing in the background of a video about a man making salad was the same thing as a song called "Birdsong" that was recorded by an artist whose songs are licensed by Rumblefish, a music licensing company, and send a "music claim" to the confused salad man. Content ID is a system that automates the process of spotting copyrighted work that's been used without permission. If your video gets flagged for copyright violation, you can dispute that, which is what the salad-maker did. Rumblefish reviewed the dispute but "mistakenly reinstated the claim," its CEO later explained. Still, the video was never actually taken down. Nevertheless, salad man made a stink in the press, and the story went viral. Two days later Rumblefish realized the mistake it had made in reinstating the claim, and released the claim. The whole thing was a misunderstanding. But to be clear: Salad man never had to take down his video; it remained up through all of this, and still is up; and no takedown notice was ever issued.

A spokesperson for Rumblefish says there were two mistakes. First, Content ID screwed up. Second, Rumblefish "did a poor job of reviewing the video manually." The issue, she says, is that there are more than 5 million videos online that use Rumblefish songs, and keeping up with so much material is a huge challenge. Bottom line: Rumblefish's CEO owned up to the error and the video remains online, but the affair raises some questions about the manageability of the copyright enforcement system. [This item has been updated from its original version.]

3. Universal Targets Pro-Megaupload Video Just Because

A few weeks before the now infamous raid that took down Megaupload and its top brass, Kim Dotcom was involved in yet another copyright-related dispute. Shortly after the music video for "Megaupload Song" was uploaded to YouTube, it was taken down due to a copyright complaint from Universal Music Group.  This was despite the fact that the song and video were original, non-infringing content. UMG apparently didn't like the fact that a video promoting Megaupload featured on-camera cameos by major label mega-stars like Kanye West, Mary J Blige, P Diddy and Will.i.am. 

4. Universal Goes Crazy Over A Prince Song

When Stepahnie Lenz uploaded a short clip of her kids dancing to "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince, the last thing she expected was a copyright takedown notice. Apparently, 26 seconds of low-quality audio was too much for Universal Music Group, which owns the copyright to Prince's catalog. The resulting legal case, Lenz v. Universal, established a precedent stating that copyright owners would need to take the parameters of fair use into consideration before issuing DMCA takedown notices. 

5. Minecraft + Gangnam Style = Copyright Violation?

Taking two things beloved by the Internet and mashing them up is often a surefire recipe for a viral video. It's also apparently an open invitation for accusations of copyright infringement. YouTube user CaptainSparklez learned this the hard way after he uploaded "Minecraft Style," a video that parodies the world's most viewed YouTube Video by merging it with the ever-popular Minecraft video game. 

After being yanked from YouTube, "Minecraft Style" returned in mid-December, only to be pulled again. The jury is still out on whether this video falls under the fair use exception to copyright law. Either way, it's hard to imagine a clever mash-up parody video eating into the massive success wrought by PSY since his bizarrely catchy song went viral. 

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

It's almost here. The "6 strikes" anti-piracy scheme crafted by Hollywood and U.S. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) is due to be implemented in the next few weeks. As the program's long-delayed arrival nears, we're starting to get a glimpse at how it's actually going to work. And it's not pretty.

Even if you've never downloaded copyrighted content in your life, the policy may put a damper on your Web surfing at the local cafe. 

Verizon hasn't formally announced its "six strikes" plans yet, but TorrentFreak got its hands on leaked documents that lay everything out in plain English. 

First off, for those who aren't familiar with "six strikes", the major ISPs in the U.S. have agreed to start issuing warnings to customers who use their services to pirate content over peer-to-peer networks. Details have been sparse, but a newly formed organization called the Center For Copyright Information (CCI) will send emails, voicemails and Web-based messages to alleged pirates. After six warnings, their ISP will take still-undefined punitive actions, which could include a slowing of network speeds (but never a total loss of service). 

How Verizon Will Warn Pirates

Verizon's alert system will start with an email and automated voicemail. After continued infringement, it will redirect your browser to a Web page containing another alert and an educational video about piracy. If that doesn't stop you from downloading Game of Thrones episodes and Skrillex albums, you'll get another warning and Verizon will temporarily slow down your Internet connection. If you do it again, it will actually leave you alone. The goal is apparently to spook enough people to put some kind of a noticeable dent in overall copyright infringement. With all the major ISPs on board, they'll probably succeed in doing so. 

One detail about Verizon's policy that should raise eyebrows is the fact that it will apply to business customers. If people pirate content using the free Wi-Fi at the cafe down the street, the owner may wind up getting copyright alerts and then see its network speed reduced. Even if some guy walks into the cafe with BitTorrent running in the background on his laptop and continues downloading files he queued up from home, the business and its other patrons could wind up getting penalized for it. 

Collective Punishment?

Even if it's only temporary, that could wind up hurting the business in what would effectively amount to a type of collective punishment for copyright infringement. For some remote workers, the interruption in service could be enough to change their cafe preference. For other types of public Wi-Fi, the whole thing could just lead to a generally crappier experience for people. 

It remains to be seen how Time Warner, Comcast and other big Internet providers will approach this, but the ISPs will presumably try to keep their policies largely similar since otherwise customers could jump from one provider to another in search of a piracy-friendly experience. 

For now, the "six strikes" scheme appears to be effectively toothless - in the long run. It doesn't affect the Internet in a deep and fundamental way, as SOPA threatened to do.

But it could still cause unforeseen problems by screwing with public Wi-Fi networks. 

Lead photo by mviramontes.

Are major brands funding online piracy? The answer is yes, even if they're not fully aware of what they're doing.

That's the clear conclusion of a recent report out of USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab, which says the top ad networks finance 86% of sites that feature illegally distributed content. 

The results, which named Google and Yahoo among the top offenders, used Google's own Transparency Report to name the 10 ad networks with most takedown requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for copyright infringement on pirated sites. 

This dirty secret is hardly unknown within the industry: Most advertisers, big and small, engage in it. But the general public has been relatively in the dark. The USC report is intended to let the public know what's really going on, on a planned monthly publishing basis.

"A lot of major brands are advertising on these pirate sites," says Jonathan Taplin, the director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, and the man behind the project. The irony is most aren't even aware of it, he says. Still, he thinks this trend can be changed.

Taplin says that when he notified Levi's, a partner of the Innovation Lab, the jeans giant "called their [ad] agency and said: 'Take our stuff off these pirate sites.' And within two weeks, we could see a change completely. So I know it's possible."

Fighting Piracy 

Taplin, who previously spent time as a film producer and music manager, was drawn to this research after watching the late Levon Helm, a close friend and drummer for The Band, lose much-needed royalty income due to peer-to-peer sharing sites like LimeWire. Saddled with heavy medical bills and a mortgage, Helm "had to go back on the road with Stage Three throat cancer," Taplin remembers somberly. "Some nights he could maybe sing one song... When he died last year, a bunch of musicians got together, threw a benefit for him at Madison Square Garden in order to pay off the mortgage on his house so his wife wouldn't get thrown out on the street."  

Taplin didn't believe legislation like SOPA and PIPA would solve these copyright problems, and decided to investigate the online ad world. He found a fragmented, poorly understood business full of middle men and companies in the dark about where their ads were actually being placed, and what he considers parasites on the creative community raking in the loot.

"The ad networks are a pretty Wild West kind of world," he says. "I don't think that the brands know where their ads are going. There's no real accounting or auditing how this works."

The main problem is that most brands pay third-party ad networks to make ad buys and get them eyeballs. Most aren't aware where those viewers come from. As long as the targeted number is hit, that seems to be all that matters.  

"What happens is a brand comes to an ad agency and says we want 5 million impressions on the Internet with a demographic profile of males 18-26, because we're selling auto insurance," Taplin says. "So the agency then farms it out to an ad network. The ad network goes out and gets those impressions, but it could be that the easy way is to get a lot of impressions on the cheap inventory on pirate sites, where, needless to say, there are probably a lot of males 18-26 hanging out."

Taplin characterizes the industry as see-no-evil, hear-no-evil. "In some ways it may be that the brands or the agencies don't really want to know where this stuff is ending up," he says. "Google can assure someone that your ad is not going to end up on a porn site, so there's probably no reason it couldn't assure you that your ad is not going to end up on one of the top 800 sites that are on the Google Transparency Report."

See No Evil

Cameron Yuill, the founder & chief executive of AdGent Digital, says there are two very different kinds of advertising: branded content, and direct response, and he blames the direct response advertisers. "A lot of the direct response guys don't care where their ad appears... they just want to get a response."

Is that an ethics problem? "I would say absolutely," Yuill says. "It's been part of the industry since day one, right? Trying to get people to click on an ad." 

The online ecosystem's easy self-service culture has resulted in many companies not knowing who they're doing business with, says Jules Polonetsky, director and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum, and the former chief privacy officer and special counsel at DoubleClick (before it was acquired by Google).

"The next thing you know a Fortune 500 advertiser is in business with some unknown blogger or some pirate site," Polonetsky explains. "Clearly there are steps that companies can take in an automated way, but it's a challenge. Most certainly have policies against it, the question is how good can your automated systems be to prevent it, or are you intentionally casting a blind eye?"

Going Forward

Taplin's goal is to publish these reports monthly to raise awareness in the industry.

Right now his report details the top 10 ad networks with the most DMCA takedown requests. "Eventually we'll have the top 20 ad networks, and maybe the top 10 of brands on these sites," he says. "My hope is that it would begin to lead the industry to a code of best practices so they're not going to do this anymore. I think the brands that want to be associated with music and film understand that they can't on one hand sponsor a tour for rock and roll band, and the other hand be putting a lot of money into pirate sites...or a torrent site that has all of those movies for free."

Photo courtesy if Shutterstock.

After more than a decade of hand-wringing over the music industry's tumultuous decline, there's a glimmer of hope. Last week, more people paid for digital music than during any week-long period in history, according to Nielsen SoundScan. 

In the week ending December 30, 55.74 million digital songs were purchased. The week following Christmas is typically a prosperous time for digital media and mobile platforms, as gadgets and gift cards are exchanged during the holidays. This year's spike was the biggest since the same week in 2008, when consumers bought 47.73 million songs.

These new numbers show that, when given a way to easily and conveniently do so, many, many people will pay for digital music. In this case, the growth appears to have been fueled by the exchange of holiday gift cards to services like iTunes and Amazon.

Digital Music Challenges Remain

Things started looking up in 2011. That's when IFPI reported that the industry saw its first year-over-year growth in music sales since it started tracking the business in 2004. That growth was only a measly 1.4%, but it sure beat the 13% decline seen in 2010. As 2012 unfolded, the outlook for digital music sales continued to brighten. 

But although the bleeding appears to have stopped, the music industry remains a long way from recapturing its former prosperity. From 1999 to 2009, music industry revenues imploded by 56%. Even with the more recent promising trends, nobody expects the music business to return to its heyday any time soon. 

Contrary to popular perception, though, compared to other traditional media industries disrupted by the Internet, music has fared relatively well in the digital age. According to the IFPI (which, somewhat ironically, stands for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) 32% of music industry revenue came from digital in 2011 (a number most expect to have increased in 2012). For newspapers, that number is closer to 5%. The digital transition for book publishers is similarly slow and precarious. 

Why Digital Music Is Growing

So why is music growing? Services like iTunes have been aggressive about expanding globally. The biggest digital music services more than doubled their global reach in 2011, with iTunes alone launching in 16 Latin American countries.

The proliferation of connected music devices have also helped drive music revenues. As consumers snatch up millions of smartphones and tablets, many are heading straight for the digital storefronts of Google, Apple and Amazon to load them up with their favorite songs. Meanwhile, streaming music services like Spotify, Rdio and Deezer (which is aiming for a U.S. launch in 2013) are also exploding, with mobile access being the key selling point for their premium subscriptions. While it's perfectly feasible to pirate the latest albums and load them onto your tablet or phone, it's finally becoming easier to just type in a credit card number. 

The global fight against piracy also appears to have had an effect. Draconian anti-piracy laws like SOPA and PIPA may have failed in the U.S. Congress, but other initiatives have succeeded in driving down piracy. For one, Google has grown more accommodating to copyright owners, nixing piracy-related terms from auto-suggested search terms and making DMCA takedown requests easier (some would say too easy). 

There's also early evidence that the availability of legitimate music services can help reduce the rate of piracy. Sweden saw a 25% drop in illegal filesharing after the public launch of Spotify, according to one study. There are now 500 legitimate music services available worldwide, according to the IFPI. As streaming services and MP3 marketplaces expand across the globe, it shouldn't be surprising that people feel less inclined to download music without paying for it.

A Smaller Industry, But A More Level Playing Field

The music industry may never return to what it looked like 15 years ago. But maybe that's okay. Today's playing field is far more level and the tools to create and distribute music are cheaper and easier to use than ever before. Artists still face major challenges, but the Internet has loosened the grip of the record labels and opened up new possibilities in terms of financing the creation of music projects - including crowdfunding and selling music directly to fans via platforms like Bandcamp or via digital distribution platforms like TuneCore and CDBaby.

Maybe the Internet isn't killing the music industry after all. Sure, the Net upended the old business model and irreversibly changed how music gets distributed to consumers. But clearly all is not lost. 

Lead image courtesy of Don O'Brien.

The bane of anybody that creates content for a living are pirates. These new-aged privateers love nothing more than to crack open your hard work, put it online and distribute it for free. Pirates are especially painful for app developers, many of which are independent individuals or small startups looking to make a living from their creative efforts to help people perform an activity like playing a game, listening to music, be more productive or find their way around. 

App pirates cost developers money. On Android, that sometimes means that just breaking even on your efforts can be near impossible. The problem has not been quite as bad on Apple’s iOS, but the company has long fought the “jailbreak” culture that allows users to bypass the App Store and download paid apps for free. 

Installous Is Dead

Apple and its devoted developers are probably singing songs of hosanna today. The rescue from the pirates has finally come, though it appears to be more of an implosion of the app cracker community than a concerted effort of legion forces coming to succor the developer community. 

The heart of the iOS pirate community, Hackulous, has shut down. That means that its Installous service that helped people pirate iOS apps through faux App Store Apptrackr has also been borked. 

Hackulous posted this message on its website over the weekend.

How Worried Should Devs Be About Piracy?

Piracy is a matter of scale. Those small and indie devs should probably be less worried about pirates than large developers who are reaching the heights of popularity and need to be worried about big percentages getting trimmed off their bottom line. In fact, some smaller developers might benefit from their apps being pirated as the viral quotient has the potential to rise when many users are spreading an app among themselves. 

Some developers think that piracy is a problem for the operating system manufacturers and not the app publishers themselves. Making sure your app is hard to crack can be a difficult task, especially if you do not have the resources or expertise to pull it off. Many app developers are proficient at certain tasks, such as HTML/CSS development or native codes like C/C++. Security in its varying forms sometimes falls by the wayside. 

“Piracy is a Ferrari problem for most app companies,” said Ryan Luedecke, online marketing manager at Mojo Helpdesk. “It's not something to spend time worrying about until you've reached a critical mass of downloads - and even then it's probably not worth the effort. App developers should be thrilled when consumers like their app enough to try and steal it or if rogue developers respect it enough to try and copy it. Let Apple and Google work on the piracy issue because they have the resources to do so - they also have more at stake. The last thing we want to do as app developers is spend time becoming sort of Lars Ulrich-like crusaders against piracy.”

Piracy can also be regionally specific. Two developers dealing with piracy in 2012 noted that iOS and Android piracy in China was near 100%. Game developer Madfinger noted that its original Shadowgun app was almost entirely downloaded illegally in China. Other app developers see piracy rates of between 10% and 15% on both iOS and Android. 

From a developer standpoint, piracy can be a matter of some subjection. For instance, was the person downloading the app ever likely to buy the app? The case is probably no. Hence, that is not a lost sale. What about pirated apps costing money in terms of server costs, lost ad impressions and labor hours to combat the lost revenue? Yes, that can be a significant problem. 

Technical Solutions Hard To Come By

Installous and Apptrackr were cogs in the system. If you think that someone will not come around and recreate them within a week (and take off in popularity, given the Hackulous void), then you are kidding yourself. 

From a developer standpoint, it is very difficult to build an app that cannot be “cracked.” Really, if your app is good and the pirates are motivated, they are going to crack it. The best you can do is make it harder for them by employing some decryption techniques but that will only deter the laziest of hackers. 

Many developers, especially game publishers, have taken to the freemium model to beat piracy. Logic and anecdotal evidence tells us that the higher a game is priced in the App Store or Google Play, the more likely it is to be cracked and pirated. The freemium model relies on in-app purchases and advertising for revenue while giving the actual download of the game out for free. The more stringent adherents to freemium might give away a nominal amount of content in their apps while making it next to impossible to do anything without making a purchase. Others may get you hooked with a fair amount of app features before blocking you before you go any further. In-app strategy or other creative revenue streams are the biggest and best weapons developers have against the pirates. 

The fact of the matter is, no matter how hard Apple or Google (or the FBI) try, nobody is getting rid of piracy in its entirety. Ask the film industry. Ask the music industry. The pirates are always, always, always going to figure out how to get what they want. The best deterrent is to make the barrier for entry into piracy sufficiently high so that only the most motivated will follow through. With Apptrackr and Installous combined with many developers' loose security practices, the piracy barrier was very low, which is what has led to the proliferation of piracy, especially on iOS. 

In the end, the death of Hackulous will be really no different than demise of AOL Message Boards or Usenet. Just because the forum has disappeared does not mean that the people on it are gone. We will likely see a drop in iOS app piracy in the short term. But that will not last forever. The current set of tools are gone but does not mean that people are not still motivated to get something for free. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

If you walk into your local Barnes & Noble looking for a copy of Timothy Ferriss's new book, good luck. Even though he's a New York Times best selling author, the giant book retailer refuses to sell The 4-Hour Chef, the latest in his series of self-help books. 

Ferriss isn't worried. He's banking on the power of digital distribution to make up for any losses in print sales. Ironically, one of his most effective tools may end up being something most content creators have grown to fear, if not outright despise: BitTorrent.

After publishing two wildly successful books via traditional means, Ferriss decided to try something different. In August, he signed on with Amazon's new publishing arm to release the follow-up to his 2010 health and fitness guide, The 4-Hour Body. That ruffled the feathers of not just traditional publishers, but also brick-and-mortar retailers like Barnes and Noble, who object to the e-bookstore exclusivity Amazon requires of its authors. That's why you won't find Ferriss's latest opus down the street at Barnes & Noble. 

As fast as e-books are growing, the lack of a presence in the nation's largest physical book retailer is a still serious handicap. To combat it, Ferriss struck a deal with BitTorrent earlier this month to distribute an exclusive bundle of content and, he hopes, sell a few extra books. 

"We were both eager to do something to demonstrate that the same type of tools that disrupted music and film can be harnessed to benefit the content creators in publishing," says Ferriss. 

How BitTorrent Is Moving Beyond Piracy

But wait. BitTorrent? Aren't they the bad guys?

To be sure, forging a partnership with the company behind the same-peer-to-peer filesharing technology that fuels rampant piracy would be unthinkable for most major publishers. In fact, they're sometimes known to sue BitTorrent users for downloading e-books. But the San Francisco-based company is working hard to rebrand itself as a legitimate partner for content creators, and there's no better way to do that than by partnering with established creators like Ferriss.

For Ferriss, BitTorrent is just an incredibly efficient way to distribute content to a large number of users. And BitTorrent has plenty of them. When asked why he wanted to enter into this partnership, the first words out of Ferriss's mouth were "one hundred and sixty million users." It's hard to argue with that. 

Here's how it works: To coincide with the launch of his book, Ferriss put together a folder of additional, exclusive content: a 62-page PDF previewing the book, behind-the-scenes photos, videos and early, hand-marked notes. It's pretty meaty, but doesn't come anywhere close to spoiling the 672-page book he's trying to sell. 

It's not just that this content bundle is available for free to Bit Torrent users. It's that Ferriss's face - along with a link to download the bundle torrent and buy the book - is on Bit Torrent's homepage, from which hundreds of thousands of users download the file-sharing client every day. 

BitTorrent has been experimenting with this type of featured content for about two years. The list of artists it has partnered with includes increasingly higher profile names like The Counting Crows, DJ Shadow and Pretty Lights, an American DJ and producer. BitTorrent has also worked directly with the Internet Archive to make more than one petabyte of public-domain content available via the P2P network. 

It's all part of the company's effort not to just to distance itself from piracy, but to figure out how it can be a bigger part of the legitimate future of digital distribution. 

"If you look at what BitTorrent really is, it's quite simply the best way to move ones and zeros across the Internet," says Matt Mason, the company's Executive Director of Marketing. That makes it a valuable tool for creators, but also helps the company figure out its own strategy moving forward. 

"The reason we're doing all of this is to try and figure out what to build next," says Mason. That is, if these experiments work, the company can develop tools to help publishers and artists launch their own promotional campagns and take even better advantage of the platform. 

Is This Experiment Working?

So does partnering with BitTorrent work? The early numbers look promising, even if they're not all the kind of hard dollar figures media executives want to see. The payoff is less direct that that, but it can still be huge. Pretty Lights, for example, may or may not have sold more records as a result of publishing his BitTorrent bundle of free music and video of a live performance. But after his bundle soared to the top of Pirate Bay's download chart, the DJ saw a 700% increase in traffic to his website, collected 100,000 email addresses and, probably not entirely by coincidence, sold out two concerts at the Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado. 

For Ferriss, it's still too early to tell. But the initial numbers aren't bad. In the first week of the campaign, his bundle has been downloaded 211,000 times, BitTorrent told ReadWrite. More than 85,000 people have clicked through to the book's listing on Amazon (no word on how many ordered it), while 27,000 people viewed the book's trailer on YouTube. 

Even if the book only sold 100 extra copies, Ferris says, the promotion would have been worth it to him, because the amount of setup time required was so minimal. He expects to sell far more copies than that, but the real value comes in experimenting with new distribution channels. He is "not overly concerned" about the prospect of his e-book itself being shared on BitTorrent, which he views as a valuable promotional tool. 

"One of many reasons to embrace new technologies or new applications of existing technologies is the benefit that you get of being first," says Ferriss. If nothing else, such a paradoxical-seeming partnership has a way of garnering more media coverage than a typical book launch. 

"It's a wide open field for people to play in," Ferriss says. "Very few people have taken advantage of this so I would absolutely recommend it."

It's not everyday an Internet company watches its traffic numbers plummet - and rejoices. But that is precisely the scenario that cloud storage service RapidShare finds itself in as it seeks to draw a clear distinction between its business model and that of the now-defunct Megaupload. 

Since the raid that saw Megaupload shut down and its founder arrested last last year, RadidShare and similar services have been taking measures to reduce piracy on their networks, in many cases limiting their functionality and potentially sacrificing the overall user experience. If it means avoiding the fate of Megaupload, even drastic changes are worth it to these companies.

On November 27, RapidShare will start putting a tight cap on outbound downloads for its free users. Paid members will still have 30 gigabytes in outbound downloads per day, but everybody else will be capped at one gigabyte. This will apply to public downloads, whereas direct Dropbox-style sharing between users won't be affected. The change is expected to further deter pirates from using RapidShare to distribute copyright material on a large scale.

An Ongoing, Newly Urgent Battle

The download caps are just the latest in a list of anti-piracy moves the company has made, as Chief Legal Officer Daniel Raimer outlined in a presentation at the Future of Music Summit in Washington, D.C. earlier this week. Those earlier efforts include a three-strike policy for repeat infringers and Web-crawling technology that helps RapidShare find links to illegal content so it can take corrective measures with those accounts. 

"That's really helpful to delete a lot of accounts in a short amount of time and to get rid of a lot of piracy that happens on a large scale," Raimer told ReadWrite in an interview after his talk. "It's kind of hard to identify guys who do piracy on a very low level, like some Norwegian kid who has a music blog with very low traffic. Sooner or later that guy is going to be detected."

Earlier this year, RapidShare published a document titled "Responsible Practices For Cloud Storage Services" (see below), which outlines an anti-piracy framework for cyberlockers like to use in dealing with DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown requests to remove allegedly pirated content and policing activity on their services.

RapidShare Handicaps Itself To Save Its Own Life

In the case of RapidShare, the association with piracy is difficult to shake. For years, links to RapidShare pages containing movies and albums have littered the Web. According to Google Trends, the second most closely related search term to "RapidShare" is "Megaupload." Included on the list of top-ten related search terms are "rapidshare movies" and "rapidshare crack." It's this close association with piracy that RapidShare is hoping to change with its download caps, three-strike policy and Web-crawling technology. 

The company has already seen a substantial drop-off in traffic as a result of the company's existing anti-piracy measures, Raimer said. Their goal is to make using RapidShare as unpalatable as possible for copyright infringers, and the initial response to its anti-infringement measures suggest that the strategy is working. The pirates are not happy. 

RapidShare isn't the only company taking these kinds of precautions. In the aftermath of the Megaupload shutdown, FileSonic and FileServe stopped allowing users to download files uploaded by other users, and MediaFire went on a PR offensive in an attempt to draw a line between itself and Megaupload. 

This is an odd and risky position for a business to be in, deliberately handicapping its own product in a bid to shoo away some users while hoping to cling to enough members to avoid a detrimental drop in revenue.  

RapidShare is trying to strike a very delicate balance. How effectively it's able to do that depends, in part, on how much of the content on RapidShare infringes on copyrights, and how much does not. That's a difficult thing to measure, but no doubt the company's crawlers and other anti-piracy technology is starting to illuminate. Come November 27, the picture will start to get even clearer. 

SF #5383794 v2 Responsible Practices