Wednesday News: Dallas Buyers Club, piracy, and copyright trolling; the Canadian book market; and hilarious Beyoncé boyfriend test
Publishing NewsAustralia / Beyoncé / book-sales / Canada / copyright / digital books / infringement / piracy / publishing12 Comments
‘Dallas Buyers Club’ wins access to pirates’ information in iiNet case – There has been a significant ruling in the ongoing Dallas Buyers Club piracy case in Australia. The DBC has been trying to acquire from iiNet customer information associated with ISPs linked to torrenting the movie. This week, the Federal Court of Australia ruled in favor of DBC; however, it also held that any letters sent to iiNet customers have to be approved by the Court and that customer privacy must be protected.
While Bradley would not speculate on Dallas Buyers Club’s next move, he said there were a number of courses of action available, including issuing legal proceedings against individuals to claim damages for copyright infringement. Without setting a figure for damages, Bradley said a court could take several factors into account when setting the figure, including economic losses, “flagrancy, volume and frequency of infringement [and] prior conduct” of the infringer. However, he said claims Dallas Buyers Club would make similar claims to those pursued overseas were merely “speculation”.
For its part, iiNet also welcomed the “positive result”, saying the legal process had shed light on the practices of some rights holders in targeting individuals with threatening letters to demand damages for piracy — a process known as “speculative invoicing”.
“By going through the process we’ve been able to ensure that our customers will be treated fairly and won’t be subjected to the bullying that we have seen happen elsewhere,” said iiNet CEO David Buckingham. –CNET
Warner Bros. And Rightscorp Argue That Copyright Trolling Is Protected By The First Amendment – So if you read the previous story about the Dallas Buyers Club pursuing alleged copyright infringers who have been identified via ISP addresses, you know that there is a problem in the piracy-pursuit industry (no kidding!), because some of these self-appointed piracy police employ less than legal/ethical methods. A class action lawsuit is currently underway in U.S. federal court against one of these so-called copyright trolls, Rightscorp, which counts Warner Brothers among its customers. In line with its general conduct, Rightscorp is claiming that its efforts should be protected under the First Amendment, and in a profoundly ironic twist, that the lawsuit should be dismissed under California’s anti-SLAPP statute.
Since November, when the lawsuit was initially filed, there’s been some back and forth in the lawsuit (and even the main named plaintiff has changed). In the first amended complaint [pdf] that was filed last month with new lead plaintiff, John Blaha, the claims about violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act have been removed, to focus mainly on violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and abuse of process. The TCPA bans autodialing telemarketers, and Pietz is trying to argue that Rightscorp’s autodialers fall under this law. The abuse of process claims focus on how Rightscorp got access to various people to shakedown, using DMCA 512(h) subpoenas. This is the process — which courts have clearly rejected — by which copyright trolls think they can issue subpoenas to ISPs about potential infringers, without first filing a lawsuit. Every few years, copyright trolls think they’ve newly discovered this loophole even though the courts have rejected it. The lawsuit has also added key Rightscorp clients, Warner Bros. and BMG, as defendants as well. –Techdirt
Are Canadians still reading? – An interesting report on Canada’s book market and the influence of digital books on the print market. Like in the U.S., digital books are making significant inroads in some genres (like Mystery and Romance), but not so much in others (non-fiction, poetry). Publishers Weekly also notes that overall book sales in Canada were down in 2014, although, again, results varied by book type and genre.
While Mystery/Detective and Thriller continue to sell well in both formats, Romance saw a notable decline in print sales, with ebooks representing 9% of consumer purchases (compared to 7% print). It is important to remember that bestsellers can drastically impact an entire category; for example, in 2012 Romance had a dramatic peak due to the infamous book that everyone loves to hate, Fifty Shades of Grey—and it’s titles like this that may explain the notable shift in format preference among Romance book buyers. While discussing the new “hybrid reader” at Tech Forum 2015, Mary Alice Elcock, VP Marketing and Publisher Relations at BitLit, confessed: “I often find myself using my e-reader when I’m not keen on other people knowing that I’m reading… 50 Shades of Grey…Twilight.” Perhaps cover-shy, many romance readers gravitated to the ebook format and “by 2010, romance novels were the fastest growing part of the ebook market.” Ebooks alone may be responsible for the decline in mass-market sales, which once characterized the genre and often featured a distressed woman clinging to Fabio Lanzoni on the cover. –Booknet Canada
This Woman Made Her Boyfriend Take A Beyoncé Exam In Order To Stay With Her – Just go check out the quiz, which includes Beyoncé fan Allie Davis’s mark-up and grading (spoiler: her boyfriend of two years got an 80% – yay!). –Buzzfeed
I hope iinet appeal. I’m really not sure the judiciary understand the breaches of civil liberties this kind of decision would allow. I don’t support piracy but these decisions have far reaching consequences. There is also a raging debate here at the moment about metadata and the government’s right to information – our Attorney-General doesn’t even know what the laws he’s proposing would actually cover.
I’m also really curious about the DBC lawyer’s assertion that an infringer’s prior conduct could inflate damages in a civil action. I always understood that a damages claim was based on the actual damage suffered by the plaintiff. If a defendant did the same thing to another entity, how does that make the plaintiff’s damages higher? What am I missing?
@kaetrin I would be very surprised if they did not appeal. iiNet are well known as a staunch defender of their customers rights, you might remember the internet filter the government was testing and wanted to pass a few years ago, they were firmly againstthat.
I have no idea how the metadata law manged to pass, my understanding was they got crossbench support on the basis of promised changes that Labour didnt even read before they signed on the dotted line.we had protections in place already. My biggest concern with metadata is who is going to pay for it, I would assume we the Australiantax payer and whereis the dta to be stored. To keep costs down they would be stupid not to outsourceghe storage overseas. I dont know about you but I personally do not want my metata stored in offshore like some of the ISPs suggested.
I know very little about Australian privacy law, but it sounds as if your new law is similar to the EU law on data retention (which is itself controversial). The problem with defining metadata with respect to URLs and web surfing is that it falls into that grey area between metadata and content. Often you can infer a lot about the content of the search by the URLs, so privacy advocates argue that web browsing should be treated as content. But technically the URL meets the definition of envelope (metadata) not content. So the ambiguity in the law reflects a debate within the political and legal realms.
The thing that feels hinky about this case is that the Dallas Buyers Club got the IPs by posing as users within the site and harvesting the IPs of their file-sharing peers. They were then able to go and ask iinet for the IPs of these users arguing that there was a probability of piracy specific to those addresses, and that data request has a lower threshold with respect to privacy protections.
While I can’t speak or the whole country, *chuckle* there are A Lot of readers where I work.
As a Canuck, I’d find it interesting to see how our buying habits vary from those in other countries, and how titles per genre by language factors in.
If the sales data go to the monthly level, I also would be interested to know whether romance in Canada (possibly even elsewhere?) marked its dip when Harlequin changed hands and started getting promo- and geo-restricted. I know I’m buying a lot fewer Harlequin titles than in previous years simply because the retailers are less convenient for me (no ARe now – boo!) and they’re no longer incentivized.
As a Canuck who worked for the biggest store in the (only) national bookstore chain, I’m not really surprised by the findings. The bookstores have moved to selling lifestyle and home and toys to keep the lights on, although they’re doing all right in most areas. Fiction sales are 60% of book sales, Romance a huge part of those, but the company is incredibly dismissive of the genre and its physical space keeps getting smaller and shoved into more and more back corners. When the “new release” romance paperback display was tucked in a corner, sales fell (because people couldn’t FIND them, and very few staff members were knowledgeable or pleasant about romance), which led them to remove the table entirely because of poor sales… ugh. I could have sold dozens of HCs Heart of Obsidian that year, but was told to take them off the shelf because we’d just put another stack of 50 Shades there and return the HCs to the publisher. We’d never have books in stock by big-name authors (who doesn’t get in the latest La Nora?!), no displays, valentines themes were all about cosmetics and weight loss instead of like, love stories.
Added to that is that used book stores in the area don’t have romance sections period, and it’s just physical-unfriendly in general.
On the digital side, Amazon Canada’s offerings are usually very expensive if you can get them at all — savvy Canadians have long since figured out to buy off .com as you can still use your Canadian CC and address. So those digital sales may be misreported as US sales.
Considering there are huge national pushes (CBC does book reviews every morning, Canada Reads, and the various awards — GGs, Man Booker, etc — are incredibly popular) for reading, including transit ads that are remarkably effective, yeah. Canadians are reading. But when we only have one major chain as many towns’ source for books, we’re also very much at the whims of that chain.
Also books in Canada are effing expensive, $11 for a MM paperback, $18 for trade, HCs can be over $40 easily, and these are fiction! Right on the cover it shows the US prices too and that is a constant source of snarliness.
As a Canadian who’s definitely buying fewer books than I used to, I blame the publishers. The INSTANT I bought my ereader in 2009, all of my favourite authors were suddenly unavailable digitally due to agency pricing and geo restrictions. I’ve found new favourite authors, but I’m also spending more time net-surfing that I used to spend reading.
And Lindsay’s right. The only bookstore in my town has reduced their romance shelves from 6 to 2. I can buy Nora Roberts, JR Ward, and a couple dozen others (if I still bought paper books). If I want anything else, I have to go to the grocery store, or buy online.
@Sunita: The problem is that we don’t have a lot of confidence that the people who made the law, understand the law. Here is a link to the classic interview of our Attorney General tripping over his own feet repeatedly as he attempts to explain what the government wanted (and now can) access and what it doesn’t. http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/showbiz/tv/2015/03/23/metadata-grilling-gains-logie-nomination.html
As for the DBC, the whole thing seems odd to me. Hubs and I were talking about this the other night. He used to work for a large supermarket chain. They have a budget for theft. They don’t actively encourage it of course and they have risk mitigation in place (and the offenders who are caught are prosecuted by police, but not in the civil courts – I recognise the analogy isn’t perfect) but they know it’s a cost of doing business. There’ s no way to make the risk of theft zero. Same with piracy. The answer to piracy is make the content easily available for a reasonable price and most people will be happy to pay for it. I’m not supporting piracy and I don’t do it but I think it’s just a cost of doing business and going after individuals who download a copy seems like spitting in the wind to me. (Although I do understand that in this action, they were going after “seeders” – those who uploaded the movie for others to download – but even then, the cost involved in trying to recover damages versus the damages actually received and the deterrent factor – well, it doesn’t seem like good economics to me. I know maths isn’t my strong suit but if they put that money into distribution channels which were fast, safe and not overpriced, it seems to me that would give them a better bang for their buck.)
@Variel: I wouldn’t trust any of the clowns in parliament to get this right even a little bit.
@Kaetrin: I am pretty sure that your lack of confidence is shared over here by people who are watching the legislators who are making our laws. The SOPA fight was such a welcome reversal of the usual fortunes, but we’re basically playing whack-a-mole when it comes to data and surveillance legislation.
I totally agree on the theft issue, and it really does seem as if this is a way to get money from people when “speculative invoicing” becomes suspect (great term, BTW, I’m totally stealing it).
The saddest thing, in my opinion, is that I looked at your law, looked at the EU law, and thought, well, poor Australia is finally catching up to the data retention regimes. I’m too ingrained in seeing the increasingly worldwide status quo. Good luck to you in fighting that.
@Kaetrin: Getting Abbott was a sad sad mistake. Voted the other day for NSW elections and the candidates were not much better, ended up writing in each individual box to the tune of over 400 candidates and a cramped hand besides. I have my fingers crossed but we have another 18 moths or so before we can change the top dogs. I actually miss the minority goverment.
@Sunita: I loved that we managed to get SOPA stopped, I think they tried putting in some of that legislation under a new agreement the name of which escapes me now. Currently its a matter of guilty until proven innocent at least in terms of storing the data and I really don’t want to be around when someone inevitably hacks it or perverts the reason for it being stored.
For those interested, iiNet will not appeal the decision. It sounds like they expected to lose, and they went to court only to ensure that DBC doesn’t have blanket permission to use customer info willy-nilly.
On metadata laws, it’s seems preposterous on one hand for the government to pass this bill, and then for Malcolm Turnbull (Minister for Communications) to urge people to use VPNs to obfuscate their metadata. I cannot even.