Studios say Google benefits from piracy: report
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A group of major media companies has accused Google Inc. of benefiting from the sale of pirated movies and providing business support to two Web sites suspected of offering access to illegal film downloads, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday.
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The major Hollywood studios today said they are escalating their fight against online piracy by pursuing civil and criminal legal actions against the operators of computer servers that help transmit illegally copied movie files across the Internet.
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Hollywood joined the music industry in its legal campaign against online music piracy, filing hundreds of lawsuits against people suspected of trading illegally copied movies on the Internet. -washingtonpost.com
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Hollywood film studios are to sue people who swap pirated copies of films over the internet. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said the civil suits would seek damages of up to $30,000 (Â£16,300) per film.
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The seven major studios filed their first wave of lawsuits aimed at ending Internet piracy. The lawsuits for federal copyright infringement were filed yesterday in several cities, including Denver, New York City, San Francisco and St.
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Hollywood's major movie studios said they won a &#36;23.8 million judgment against a California company and its Malaysian owner for operating a Web site that charged customers to download illegally copied movies.
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Viacom Inc, Walt Disney Co, Microsoft Corp and other media companies have agreed to a set of guidelines to protect copyrights online but Google Inc, owner of the Web's biggest video site, was notably absent from the pact.
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(InfoWorld) - Legal experts are split in their evaluation of Google's defense strategy in two copyright-infringement lawsuits, particularly regarding the company's arm-twisting attempts to extract confidential information from uninvolved competitors. Some view Google's tactics as aggressive, unusual and ultimately ineffective, while others see them as part of a fairly standard defense in copyright litigation. Google sent subpoenas to Amazon.com, Yahoo and Microsoft demanding they provide it with information about their book-scanning activities, a move that raised eyebrows because those companies are among its biggest rivals. Google plans to use this information in its defense in two lawsuits filed last year. The suits allege that Google's massive project to scan, make searchable and store digital copies of millions of copyrighted library books without permission from the copyright owner is illegal. Google is also scanning books in the public domain. Google argues that its scanning is protected under the fair use principle, which allows for limited use of copyright material, because it only displays text snippets of copyrighted books' content in response to queries in its Book Search service. That overall argument, along with the subpoena tactic, demonstrates Google is willing to mount an atypical and pugnacious defense, said Lee Bromberg, a partner at Bromberg & Sunstein LLP, a firm that specializes in intellectual property litigation. "This [subpoena action] isn't par for the course at all in this type of case," he said. With the subpoenas, Google is trying to argue that if its competitors are scanning books, it follows that Google is acting legally, according to Bromberg. "But I don't think it's evidence of that at all, and I think it's out of line for Google to do this," Bromberg said. This type of subpoena is usually used to get evidence from an uninvolved third party that may have relevant information about the litigation. For example, it would make sense for Google to subpoena information from one of its business partners, or from a partner of one of the plaintiffs, Bromberg said. "Those partners might possess documents that could be relevant to sorting out the issues between Google and the plaintiff publishers here. But that doesn't seem to be the case," Bromberg said. Wendy Seltzer, a Fellow at the Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and an expert on Internet law and intellectual property, said the subpoenas might be part of a more conventional defense, in which Google will try to prove that book-scanning isn't hurting copyright owners nor the publishing market. Google's ultimate goal will be to have the court say its activities are protected by the fair use principle, which allows for limited use of copyright material, she said. Already Yahoo and Amazon.com have refused to comply with the subpoenas and have indicated in court filings that they are determined to stand their ground against what they consider an inappropriate and overreaching request from Google. Microsoft declined to comment when asked how it has responded or plans to respond to the subpoena. What's clear is that the subpoena standoff could further complicate and lengthen an already complex case that, barring an unexpected settlement, could drag on for years. After the refusals from Yahoo and Amazon.com, the ball is in Google's court. Google has the option to file a motion with the court to compel its two rivals to comply with the subpoena request. If the court were to grant that motion to compel, Amazon.com and Yahoo would probably have a choice to escalate the matter to an appeals court. "That [the subpoena clash] in itself can become a protracted battle," said Sheldon Klein, an attorney specializing in intellectual property and a partner at Arent Fox PLLC in Washington, D.C. Google declined to answer specific questions, providing only a prepared statement via e-mail that characterized the subpoena and objection process as "a common part of ongoing litigation." It intends to speak with Yahoo and Amazon.com over their concerns, Google said. Amazon.com declined to comment on whether it is holding talks with Google, but Yahoo doesn't foresee much chance of arriving at some middle ground. "Google will quickly learn we're not interested in some lesser compromise position. Our position is that we're not going to produce documents in response to the subpoena," said Reggie Davis, who is associate general counsel at Yahoo and manages litigation for the company. Like Bromberg, Davis finds Google's subpoena action surprising and aggressive, in large part because Yahoo doesn't even have its own book-scanning project. Its activities in this area are limited to its participation in a collective effort known as the Open Content Alliance, which doesn't scan copyrighted books without permission from the copyright owner. "It seems to us that their approach is completely different from ours, so we're surprised they'd want to get information from us about our approach, which is to get permission before copying. And it seems to us to be completely irrelevant and not particularly helpful to Google's argument or justification for their approach," Davis said. The plaintiffs in the Book Search cases -- the Association of American Publishers (AAP), acting on behalf of five of its members, and the Authors Guild Inc. and three authors -- aren't the only ones questioning the copyright legality of a Google search service. Others are suing Google in the U.S. and abroad for similar reasons over its news, image and video search engines.
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SUN VALLEY, Idaho  - Google Inc.  took a  swipe at media conglomerate Viacom Inc. , which is  suing the Internet search leader and its video sharing site  YouTube for $1 billion over "massive copyright infringement."
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SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Google is set to start filtering videos and other content on YouTube for copyrighted materials, taking a key step in helping the online video-sharing site comply with one of the biggest complaints it faces _ rampant piracy.
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Hollywood film studios are to sue individuals who swap pirated copies of films over the internet.
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Google Inc.  is working with  Dow Jones & Co. Inc. , Conde Nast, Sony BMG (6758.T)  Music Entertainment and other large content companies to  syndicate their video content on other Web sites, the New York  Times reported on Monday.
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Blog: One of Google's units removes bootleg versions of documentary but copy remains at Google Video
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(InfoWorld) - Google Inc. has reached an agreement with two groups representing authors and photographers in Belgium that had objected to the way the company indexes and displays their content on its Google News Web site. The agreements with Sofam, which says it represents 3,700 photographers, and Scam, which represents 20,000 writers, mark the first steps by Google in resolving a copyright lawsuit that forced it to remove French- and German-language Belgian newspaper content from its Web site. On Friday, a judge in Brussels heard arguments in that case, filed by a group of newspaper publishers, Copiepresse. Sofam (SociÃ©tÃ© MultimÃ©dia des Auteurs des Arts Visuels) and Scam (SociÃ©tÃ© Civile des Auteurs Multimedia) were among several smaller groups that had joined Copiepresse in its legal action. "We reached an agreement with Sofam and Scam that allows us to make extensive use of their content," Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said on Monday. The agreement allows Google to use content from the groups in "new ways" that "go beyond what copyright law allows," she said. She declined to say if Google is paying the groups or to provide further details. Google has signed a deal to use content from the Associated Press newswire that it described in similar language. Copiepresse has complained that Google violates its members' copyrights by indexing their content and displaying it on Google News without asking permission. Google says the use is legitimate because it shows only a snippet of news stories, and because it directs users to the publications' Web sites to read the full story. On Friday, the judge in Brussels said she would give her verdict in the case early next year. Google News has also run into trouble in Scandinavia, where it launched two weeks ago. The company delayed the introduction of the news service in Denmark after publishers there objected to having to "opt out" if they didn't want their content displayed on Google's Web site. And a publishing group in Norway has protested the use of its members' news photographs, which it says is not permitted under Norwegian copyright law. Google has declined to comment on talks with any particular publishing groups, but says it is open to discussions to resolve disputes. Â
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LOS ANGELES A source says Hollywood studios are preparing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against people they say are illegally sharing movies online.
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The Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it will sue people who download movies from online file-sharing services. Reporter David McGuire discusses the likely impact of the lawsuits with Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.
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LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) - Taking a cue from the recording industry, Hollywood film studios said Thursday they would start suing those who pirate their movies online.