For our regular viewers, the headline may give you a sense of de-ja-vu. Well, it’s more than just a weird feeling because, yes, last year, Sony BMG was sued for software piracy and had a property raided by French police. At the time, many people suggested that the raid in France was karma related given that even earlier, there was the Sony Rootkit fiasco where music CDs were released by Sony that destabilized people’s computers.

If it was bad karma, apparently, the company is still in the bad books. According to a report on Daily Tech, Sony BMG had a property raided by Mexican police over an unauthorized CD release.

The story goes that a pop artist by the name of Alejandro Fernández’s had a seven album contract with Sony. The artist had recorded other songs that never made it onto those seven albums. The contract he signed ended in 2008 and the artist got a new contract with Universal. Apparently, Sony found those songs and created an eighth album. Unsurprisingly, Universal was not too happy. Sony defended the creation of the album, saying that the discs were, like, “totally authorized”. They also said that Mexican courts would confirm their rights over the music.

“What Sony did that was wrong and illegal was to assume that they could take those tracks that weren’t part of the previous albums and release them as an eighth album as if it were new material over which they had rights,” says Jose Luis Caballero, Fernández’s attorney in Mexico. “And it’s perfectly clear that the company’s contract is limited to seven albums.”

A Slashdot commenter commented on how one could look at the case and follow the precedent set in the US for music piracy. The user calculated that the damages could be $1,151,460,000 if using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent.

It’s interesting that both the cases were brought up – particularly when Sony BMG is behind the Tenenbaum lawsuit. Either way, this seems to be the second time Sony shows a hypocritical side to their business when it comes to piracy.

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Maybe it’s our imagination, but last we checked, Joel Tenenbaum is not an admin of ThePirateBay nor did he have much involvement in the creation of the mixtape outside of the court documents that listed the songs in the first place.

Still, that doesn’t stop the RIAA member from pulling out all of the stops against Tenenbaum. In court documents, plaintiffs argued, “on or about August 14, 2009, Defendant posted to the “JoelFightsBack” twitter
site—a site intended to publicize Defendant and this case—the following post: “interesting: a
“joel” torrent list of the 30 songs is now on thepirateBay/other torrent sites and is being DL
widely in protest. #JFB.”

The document continues, “The Pirate Bay’s homepage, to which Defendant directed his readers,
prominently featured a photograph of Defendant and an advertisement and link to an allegedly
RIAA approved torrent, “DJ Joel – The $675,000 Mixtape,” containing the 30 songs at issue in
this case”

The document contained a screen shot of the home page of ThePirateBay which, at the time, featured the $675,000 mixtape. The document says, “When a user clicks on the image, they are brought to a Torrent site that allows users to easily, and without authorization or cost, download the 30 sound recordings for which
Defendant was found liable.”

“Additionally, Defendant’s website regarding this case, www.joelfightsback.com, includes literally dozens of other users who have picked up the “tweet” from joelfightsback and have reposted it to their own blogs and twitter feeds, thereby encouraging countless other individuals to illegally download these 30 songs “in protest” [...] In short, despite the verdict and a clear finding of willful copyright infringement by Defendant, he continues to promote, indeed advertise, illegal online file-sharing of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings—the very sound recordings for which a jury found him liable for willful copyright infringement”

It should be noted that there were three other arguments to support the plaintiffs conclusion, but using the mixtape someone half way around the world posted on a Swedish website as reason to say that Tenenbaum is contributing to copyright infringement (we aren’t aware of any evidence in the plaintiffs court documents that Tenebaum linked to that website in the first place) is absurd at best. If someone photoshopped a picture of Bill Gates breaking in to a car, does that make Bill Gates liable for car theft if it was posted online? The only thing plaintiffs showed was that Tenebaum mentioned the mixtape. If one were to say, “Interesting that someone in America would take cocaine”, is that somehow endorsing illegal drug use?

So what is the plaintiff asking for?

This court should permanently enjoining defendant from committing, or acting in concert with others in committing, future infringement of plaintiffs’ copyrights

This court should enter the monetary judgement awarded by the jury on July 31, 2009

It’s an extremely bizarre argument to make that suggests that others actions are somehow your fault even though you took no part in the creation or actions that started to, in this case, create the actual mixtape in the first place. It’s a growing theme that the copyright industry wants to double-dip – you are sued for your action and the action of your friend. Then that friend is sued for their action as well as yours. Essentially, it’s like your being sued twice for the same action.

We wonder how such an argument could be taken seriously, but then again, there are reasons why some believe the American court system has been bought and paid for by corporate America.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The crew behind the BitTorrent client Vuze read with disbelief last week that Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton said he couldn’t see “anything good having come from the Internet.”

“Period,” in fact.

Vuze says that part of the problem Lynton may have with the Internet is that although there is finally the technology to effectively deliver content online, “the industry has only begun to solve the business model side of how we productively monetize this distribution.”

It says that what Sony and other Hollywood execs need to do is adopt the “burning platform paradigm,” that is “experiment like your business is at stake.” Having already watched the music industry run itself into the ground for refusing to evolve and embrace digital content distribution, the movie industry ought to take heed and recognize that “consumers are changing.”

“Let’s change with them, and identify business models that embrace this change,” it adds.

To this end Vuze commissioned a survey that concludes that BitTorrent users, specifically Vuze, are “Hollywood’s best customers.”

According to the data, Vuze users were 34% more likely than average Internet users to have gone to the movies or rented a DVD, and 24% more likely to have purchased one.

“We’ve been making the case for years now that Vuze users are avid entertainment fans,” it observes, and it may just be right.

For TV producers the news is a bit grim, for 40% of Vuze users report watching less live TV and as a whole.

The report sampled 693 Vuze users and 606 “general” Internet users, so its conclusions are arguably a bit light.

However, the report does square nicely with other done previous that have come to the same conclusion: file-sharers consume more entertainment products.

“Consumer Culture in Times of Crisis,” conducted by the BI Norwegian School of Management, the largest business school in Norway, and the second largest in all of Europe, concluded that file-sharers actually buy 10 times as much music as they download for free.

“The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study For Industry Canada,” a study commissioned by Industry Canada, a ministry of the Canadian federal government, found that for every album downloaded illegally legal CD purchases increased by 0.44, or by about half an album.

Admittedly both cover music and not movies, but that’s only because the issue hasn’t been as of great importance to Hollywood as it has been the music industry until recently as households acquire faster and faster Internet connection speeds.

Either way, the message to Hollywood should be the same, and that is that it needs to stay ahead of the game and listen to what consumers want. Right now it’s apparently ignoring its “best customers” at its own peril. Consumers, especially Vuze, or BitTorrent users in general for that matter, don’t mind paying for digital content so long as its fairly priced and easily accessible.

jared@zeropaid.com

So what is the standard image that comes to mind when it comes to the average major music record label CEO? Grey hair? Overweight? Disgustingly rich? A passion to hate the internet or technology in general? Well, judging by a picture, at least two of those stereotypes were reinforced recently:

According to a quick report by WWDMedia, the CEO of Sony, Michael Lyton, had a few choice words about the internet recently:

The panel was about the future of filmmaking, but that didn’t mean anyone had to like what they saw. “I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet,” said Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton. “Period.”

At a breakfast cohosted by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and The New Yorker Thursday, Lynton wasn’t just trying for a laugh: He complained the Internet has “created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”

Apparently, he seems to think the internet is for taking stuff for free or ’stealing’. It’s unclear whether or not he’s had the chance to see someone else’s rendition of what the internet is for, but there was a few other comments that were being made as well:

Lynton tried out another simile. Referring to the Obama administration’s goal to spread broadband access without, he said, regulating piracy, Lynton compared it with building highway systems without speed limits or driver’s licenses. “We do need rules of the road,” he said.

While this is mere speculation, it’s almost as if he was alluding to France’s recently passed three strikes law or a similar and related issue. Still, one wonders that if that was the case, where did such a comment come from? Did the Obama administration reject calls for the US to implement a three strikes law of their own? The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which is still being currently held as a national secret, had leaked documents last year that did address the concept of disconnecting people from the internet – while not directly addressing three strikes, still alluding to ideas such as the three strikes law.

We already know that the MPAA, to which Sony Pictures is a member of, certainly wanted Canada to adopt something like the Three Strikes law in December of last year. So it’s quite probable that the MPAA wanted the US to adopt the three strikes law at the very least, at some point in time.

Still, it doesn’t help very many arguments when you are seen suggesting that the internet is just some no good piece of technology. Then again, how many are surprised by this revelation at all?

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convinced and we’re convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP,” Dille explained how he believed the piracy issue needs to be tackled by the industry as a whole stating, “It’s been a problem that the industry has to address together; it’s one that I think the industry takes very seriously, but we need to do something to address this because it’s criminal what’s going on, quite frankly.”

In the interview Dille singled out Torrent based piracy as one source of Sony’s problems describing the situation as “sickening”. He went on to point out Resistance: Retribution as an example stating, “from the day Resistance: Retribution goes on sale and see how many copies are being downloaded illegally, and it’s frankly sickening. We are spending a lot of time talking about how we can deal with that problem.” When piracy is concerned companies often like to describe every illegally downloaded copy as a lost sale. In the past Jack Tretton of Sony stated “We’ve been able to track that hundreds of thousands of sales, in the case of God of War, are walking out the door on day one.”

In the Gamasutra article it is pointed out that even if Sony wanted to implement a hardware based solution to combat the piracy it was too late due to the 50 million units already on the market. Dille stated, “There’s a lot of hardware out there; toothpaste is out of the tube. We’re not going to get that hardware back into the toothpaste container.” Dille described how Sony planned to tackle the issue from multiple angles including legal avenues and customer education.

There’s an interesting report on Wired’s Threat Level which details Sony getting sued by the FTC for $1 million. While a previous lawsuit against the company proved to be hilarious over the hypocrisy of being sued for software piracy, this lawsuit may be of interest to many web developers who have a website that has any form of profiles.

According to court papers, over 1,000 Sony music sites asked whether an end user was under the age of 13 (section 16 on page 6). Those who said they were under the age of 13 would be restricted from participation. In spite of this warning, users below the age of 13 were able to interact with people of all ages. The sticky part was the fact that users were able to create public profiles which included photos of themselves, their age, gender, and city or country they come from (section 17, page 6) As a result, Sony didn’t, as required by law, obtain verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian before the information was collected and disclosed (section 20 and 21, page 7) publicly.

As a result, the FTC was able to win the court case with the following:

25. In numerous instances, including the acts and practises describes above, Sony Music collected, used, and/or disclosed personal information from children in violation of the Rule, including:

a. Failing to provide sufficient notice on the Sony Music websites of what information the defendant collects online from children, how it uses such information, its disclosure practises, and all other required content, in violation of Section 312.4(b) of the Rule, 16 C.F.R. [section] 312.4(b);

b. Failing to provide direct notice to parents of what information the defendant collects online from children, how it uses such information, its disclosure practises, and all other required content, in violation of Section 312.4(c) of the Rule, 16 C.F.R. [sec] 312.4(c);

c. Failing to obtain verifiable parental consent before any collection, use, and/or disclosure of personal information from children, in violation of Section 312.5 of the Rule, 16 C.F.R. [sec] 312.5(a)(1); and,

d. Failing to provide a reasonable means for parents to review the personal information collected from their children and to refuse to permit its further use or maintenance, in violation of Section 312.6 of the Rule, 16 C.F.R. [sec] 312.6.

The question is, how does a web administrator actually obtain “verifiable consent” in the first place since something like that could easily be faked via e-mail. This ruling may be of particular concern considering that any website that has a forum (whether it be PHPBB or VBulletine, etc) does merely have the ‘over 13 years old’ check box, but users can type in their location, gender, etc. in their profiles. It’s not exactly clear how many websites in the United States are now legally liable.

David Kravets of Threat Level notes the positive side of the ruling: “Businesses often use information they collect from web users for marketing purposes.”

Such a ruling might prove to be a good deterrent for major corporations who want to collect private and personal information for marketing purposes. One might wonder, though, at what cost?

It is no secret that the copyright industry likes to talk about morals when it comes to unauthorized downloading. Unfortunately for members of the MPAA, morals might be playing against them now. The New York Times has learned that Ryan Kavanaugh, the chief executive of Relativity Media was arrested recently.

The article says that the charges include drunk driving, speeding and driving with a suspended license.

Relativity Media is no small fish in the movie industry, financing virtually every movie studio, the biggest being NBC Universal with the recent $3 Billion deal, the previous deal funding the movie “Changling”.

The MPAA has already been having difficulties with cash – a seemingly direct result of the financial crises hitting the United States hard. We investigated how hard a little over two months ago and the outlook wasn’t looking good. Obviously, with such a big player in the financial department being detained isn’t going to help much.

Perhaps the MPAA also thought it was finally in the clear with moral conflict when they were accused of pirating “This Film is Not Yet Rated” two years ago – maybe not anymore.

Coincidently enough, the company made a $550 million dollar deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment, a company already under a lot of bad PR.

A French arm of Sony had a nightmarish story earlier this year. We broke the story that Sony was sued for software piracy and had their assets seized in France. The story brought back memories in the file-sharing community of a previous scandal known as the Sony Rootkit Scandal. Some suggested that it was a form of karma coming back to haunt the company. Sony had to settle class action lawsuits in several countries including Canada.

This latest blunder may not be of the same magnitude of Sony getting sued for software piracy, but it could continue a long list of memorable blunders the copyright industry has been involved with.

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console.

Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach.

Sickening images of the party have appeared in the company’s official PlayStation magazine – but after being contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Sony issued an apology for the gruesome stunt and promised to recall the entire print run.

Sensing an opportunity in the bustling world of online video distribution, Sony is scheduled to it try out its new “YouTube killer” tomorrow that will also allow users to upload and distribute their own videos.

“This is part of Sony’s quiet software revolution,” CEO Howard Stringer said at a news conference.

Sony plans to establish itself as an attractive destination for companies looking to release and publish content

Sony plans to eventually make a profit on the service through the sale of advertising and media company partnerships, both of which will be particularly attractive to companies because Sony plans to closely monitor the service for any copyright violations committed by users.

Google’s deep pockets have made YouTube an attractive target for companies like Viacom alleging rampant copyright violations, a selling point that Sony emphasizes won’t be a concern with eyeVio. Rather than companies having to monitor and report any copyright violations to Sony, Sony will be instead be pro-active and continuously monitor the site for any infractions on its own.

“We believe there’s a need for a clean and safe place where companies can place their advertisements,” Honma said.

Users will also be able to select who can view their content, and for how long.

I don’t know how Sony expects to sell this new service to users, I mean the whole allure of YouTube lies in the plethora (love that word) of content that is available. With the market for video streaming sites getting increasingly crowded, i.e. Joost and the expected NBC and News Corp. site, content could be a big issue for Sony.

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The inventor of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation video game consoles, Ken Kutaragi, will retire as chief executive of the Japanese company’s game division on June 19, the company said Thursday.

Kutaragi, 56, known as the “Father of PlayStation,” steps down at a time when the Sony’s new PlayStation 3 has made a weaker-than-expected showing against Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s Wii console.

He will become honorary chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and act as a senior technology adviser to parent Sony Corp.

Kaz Hirai, the unit’s current president and chief operating officer, has been promoted to president and group chief executive in charge of the PlayStation business.