Post Tagged with: "P2P"

Copyright Board Gives Go Ahead to iPod Levy

The Copyright Board of Canada has released its decision on a series of motions contesting the latest attempt by the Canadian Private Copyright Collective to apply the private copying levy to iPods and removable memory storage cards. The proposed levy was challenged by the Canadian Storage Media Alliance and the Retail Council of Canada, who argued that the Federal Court had already struck down a previous levy on iPods (or more accurately digital audio recorders) as outside the Copyright Act. The CSMA and RCC argued that the Board had no jurisdiction to consider or approve the levy or alternatively that the CPCC should be prevented from proposing it.

The Board conducted hearings on the motions last month and has responded quickly with an emphatic rejection of the CSMA and RCC. Siding consistently with the CPCC, the Board has left little doubt that it believes that the earlier decision has not foreclosed the possibility of a levy on devices such as the iPod. In fact, the Board provides the clearest statement yet that it believes that the levy could be applied to any device, including cellphones and computers. At paragraph 70, the decision states:

July 19, 2007 — 43 comments — News

Court Denies RIAA Discovery Request

The excellent Recording Industry vs. The People blog reports a court has denied the RIAA's motion to compel the University of New Mexico to disclose the identities of its students.

June 20, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — News

NY Times on Monetizing P2P

The New York Times looks at firms trying to develop ad-based P2P models, with news that Nettwerk is seeding songs with ads in P2P networks.

April 23, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — News

The Unintended Consequences of Rogers’ Packet Shaping

A day after the government confirmed its telephone deregulation plan over the objection of a Parliamentary committee and moved forward on plans to create a new, independent telecommunications consumer agency, it is worth pointing to a necessary complaint once that agency is operational (and to the CRTC in the meantime). For the past 18 months, it has been open secret that Rogers engages in packet shaping, conduct that limits the amount of available bandwidth for certain services such as peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Rogers denied the practice at first, but effectively acknowledged it in late 2005. Net neutrality advocates regularly point to traffic shaping as a concern since they fear that Rogers could limit bandwidth to competing content or services. In response to the packet shaping approach, many file sharing applications now employ encryption to make it difficult to detect the contents of data packets. This has led to a technical "cat and mouse" game, with Rogers now one of the only ISPs in the world to simply degrade encrypted traffic.

This raises many issues but I would like to focus on just two in this posting. First, not only is BitTorrent legal in Canada, but a growing percentage of the file swapping on BitTorrent clients is authorized. This includes a substantial amount of open source software development, independent films, and other large files. By reducing the bandwidth available for this application, Rogers is impairing the ability for Canadian artists to distribute their work and hampering the development of open source software in Canada. Moreover, this could lead to a situation where Rogers' own content is unfairly advantaged over competing content.

If that was not bad enough, there is now speculation at my own university that the packet shaping is making it very difficult for University of Ottawa users to use email applications from home.

April 5, 2007 — 132 comments — News

Old P2P Headline, New P2P Approach

Earlier this week the National Post ran a story titled Video Theft May Rise in Canada. The story is interesting as it demonstrates that the headlines on peer-to-peer may not be changing, but the underlying story certainly is. The article is not what you might think – rather than yet another story alleging Canadian movie piracy or weak copyright laws, it is actually focused on how Canadians may not immediately benefit from the push to online video in the U.S. since many U.S. broadcasters will block out Canadian users.

What does that have to do with "video theft"? Other than the unnecessary use of a sensational headline based on the mistaken premise that this is a piracy issue, there is a brief reference in the article that notes that more Canadians will download television shows through peer-to-peer networks if they are blocked out of U.S. streams. Of course, the same shows are freely available on television, so this form of "piracy" is merely device shifting freely available content from one screen to another.

Leaving aside questions about whether this is actually a concern, I think it is noteworthy that the article flips around the conventional approach to business and peer-to-peer.

March 29, 2007 — 1 comment — News