HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

Over the last year, we’ve been following the recent trends in Europe regarding “three strikes” legislation, where end-users may be subject to sanction by their ISPs for repeated acts of copyright infringement.  Following passage of the first such law in France last fall, the United Kingdom followed suit in early 2010 with passage of the Digital Economy Act.  While it is too early to say with certainty whether the laws will achieve their stated goal of deterring and ultimately reducing infringement, the debate surrounding these laws and early experience under their enforcement schemes provides insight into whether or not “deputizing” ISPs to police piracy will become more prevalent or whether yet another approach will need to be devised to protect content owners. Continue Reading »

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• While we haven’t quite figured out if there is a direct link, as the economic news got worse at the end of 2008, online video activity increased.  According to comScore, online viewing reached a record high with U.S. Internet users watching 14.3 billion videos in December.  This was a 13% increase from November.  comScore found that 150 million U.S. users watched an average of 96 videos each and spent more than five hours watching online video during the month.  Read here about how the big video sites split the market.
• While there is little public information available about the negotiations over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the proposed multi-national treaty to assist in the enforcement of global IP rights, some leaked language is causing concern.  More information here.  
• The GOP appears to be following in the White House’s footsteps by overhauling its website to be more open and accessible to its Internet-using citizens.  The new site makes it easy to get the latest news, contact representatives through e-mail and even has an API in which developers can create applications that pull data from the site and format it in a number of ways.  Read more here.
• The watchdog group Privacy International has raised concerns about Google’s new phone tracking system, Latitude, which was unveiled this week.  The system allows users to track other people via smartphone.  And while it does have some built-in privacy protections, there are some potential gaps, including the possibility that the phone’s tracking settings could be changed without its owner’s knowledge.  More here.
• In a closely-watched case, defunct BitTorrent search site TorrentSpy has asked a federal appellate court to reverse a judge’s decision ordering the site to pay movie studios $111 million for copyright infringement in which they were trying to protect users’ privacy by purging the records of visitors’ IP addresses.  Read here for more on the ruling and TorrentSpy’s appeal.

On Monday, President Bush signed what some are calling a controversial law entitled The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 or “Pro-IP Act”.  The Pro-IP Act is designed to increase protection of intellectual property by imposing harsher criminal penalties for intellectual property piracy and counterfeiting, including expanding the ability of the government to permanently seize goods and creating an Intellectual Property enforcement officer or “czar”, a new cabinet position whose sole job is to increase intellectual property enforcement. 

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