The most extreme positions in the copyright debate tend to be expressed from anonymous or pseudonymous entities. Whether it is the group officially calling themselves Anonymous, or the astroturf Balanced Copyright group, they will attack the property rights and/or copyright of others without the honesty of doing so under their real names as citizens.

There are exceptions, and it is far easier to have legitimate policy debates with engaged citizens. On the other side of the debate from where I stand are people like Barry Sookman and James Gannon from the law firm McCarthy Tétrault, John Degen as an individual author (Previously with PSAC), or Jason J Kee who is currently Director of Policy and Legal Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC).

Of these the individual who expresses opinions furthest from my own is likely Jason J Kee.

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Today is the due date for Dr. Cockburn's third attempt at a damages report on behalf of Oracle, and just to make sure Oracle knows what needs to be submitted, Judge Alsup has issue a reminder order. (709 [PDF; Text]) The judge wants to see not only the report but also all of the related reports and studies that support it.

To recap what this third report is to address if Oracle wants to argue these points on damages:

Copied from a post to the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.

Good Afternoon Samuel:

Thank you for your recent correspondence on the Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act. I appreciate your comments and concerns and welcome the opportunity to respond.

Bill C-11, The Copyright Modernization Act, is an effort to modernize Canada's copyright laws and align them with international standards on the use and sharing of creative material. Once implemented, the Bill will promote innovation and creativity in Canada's arts community. It is an attempt to ensure Canada can compete in the digital economy.

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A familiar looking form letter copied from a post to the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.

Good afternoon,

Minister Fletcher has asked me to respond to your email and thank you for taking the time to contact our office.

Recognizing the critical role a modern copyright regime plays in Canada’s digital economy, the Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to introduce and seek swift passage of copyright legislation that balances the needs of creators and users.

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A familiar looking form letter copied from a post to the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.

Hi [Constituent name]

Thank you for contacting our office regarding Bill C-11. Please accept my apologies for the delay in response.

Recognizing the critical role a modern copyright regime plays in Canada’s digital economy, the Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to introduce and seek swift passage of copyright legislation that balances the needs of creators and users.

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Copied from a post to the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.

Thank you for taking the time to write regarding Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. We appreciate having the benefit of your comments and the opportunity to let you know more about our work on a number of these legislative concerns.

New Democrats want updated copyright laws to balance the rights of artists, consumers and rights-holders. We believe that Canada needs effective legislation to ensure artists’ royalties are protected; long-distance education opportunities aren’t hindered; and that young people aren’t subject to unfair, expensive fines.

That’s why we will not be supporting Bill C-11 unless the government is willing to amend the digital lock provisions and restore royalty provisions for artists.

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EFF Formally Requests Retention of Materials Stored on Megaupload’s Services

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today formally requested the preservation of the data seized when the U.S. government shut down Megaupload.com and related sites, notifying the court and attorneys involved in the case that Megaupload's innocent users deserve a fair process to control and retrieve their lawful material.

"The government knows that Megaupload had many customers who followed the law. Yet it gave those users no notice that their data was at risk and no information about how they might be able to eventually get that data back," said EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels. "Our client, and the many other innocent Megaupload users, are entitled to a clear process for obtaining access to their own property, and the first step is to make sure that property is not deleted or damaged until the court can sort this out."

Instead of assisting the innocents caught up in the seizure, the U.S government summarily announced this week that it had finished its examination of Megaupload's servers and announced that the companies that owned those servers – Carpathia and Cogent – were free to delete the contents. The government even stated that deletions could start as soon as February 2, leaving innocent users with very little time to protect themselves. Thankfully, both hosting services have agreed not to destroy users' data for the time being, and it appears that Megaupload is trying in good faith to help users get access. But there is still no clear path for customers to get their content back.

"Megaupload's innocent users are entitled to access their property," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "We hope that everyone involved can work together to comply with the law and ensure basic fairness to the millions of people who have done nothing wrong."

This week, Carpathia Hosting and EFF announced that Carpathia created a website at www.megaretrieval.com so that Megaupload’s lawful customers could contact EFF and provide information about the scope of the issue and the material made unavailable by the seizure.  If you are one of these users, are based in the United States, and are looking for legal help retrieving your data, please email your contact information to megauploadmissing@eff.org.

For the full letter sent to the court:
https://www.eff.org/document/letter-court

For more on this case:
https://www.eff.org/cases/megaupload-data-seizure

Contacts:

Julie Samuels
   Staff Attorney
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   julie@eff.org

Cindy Cohn
   Legal Director
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   cindy@eff.org

Just because the Oracle v. Google case has not been set for trial (and won't be until at least the time at which Oracle provides its third attempt at a damages report) does not mean the court can't move the case along, and that is what Judge Alsup has done with his latest order. In an attempt to narrow the issues to be argued at trial, Judge Alsup's latest order (708 [PDF; Text]) focuses on the copyright issues and directs the parties to provide opening briefs in which they identify each remaining claim of copyright liability and the affirmative defenses to each such claim. In addition, the parties are to identify those issues that should be resolved by the court and those underlying facts that first need to be decided by the jury.

This order adds to a somewhat lengthy litany of filings due from each party under various orders in effect at this time. The timeline for those responses is:

I'm seeing a couple of articles about an initial determination by the ITC against Barnes & Noble on its patent misuse defense, and there's quite a lot of spin on the ball, thanks to the usual suspects. They are reading a lot into a title of a sealed document. I see many misstatements.

So I'll explain a little about the process, so you can understand it. For one thing, the title of the sealed ITC initial determination is called an *initial* determination for a reason. It means it isn't final. The final one comes later. Initial determinations can be reviewed by the full ITC if the defendant petitions for review and even one Commissioner says yes.

Litigation isn't like football. It is rarely suddenly over.

Most importantly, the materials and depositions Barnes & Noble is seeking in discovery from Nokia and MOSAID have not yet arrived, although the ITC did grant Barnes & Noble's motion to ask Finland and Canada to provide them, and that's still ongoing, so there is likely more to go, even at the ITC. So with those materials not yet in hand, Microsoft's statement today that this means the defense is meritless is... well... to put it kindly premature. I mean, if a determination is made without the complete record being available, what does it mean?

Copied from a post to the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.

Dear Ms. Gwynne,

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding your concerns with The Copyright Modernization Act. I am always happy to respond to the questions and concerns of my constituents.

Recognizing the critical role a modern copyright regime plays in Canada’s digital economy, the Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to introduce and seek swift passage of copyright legislation that balances the needs of creators and users.

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Copied from a post to the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group. Letter was to Jordan Landry.

Thank you for taking the time to email me with your concerns regarding Bill C-11 The Copyright Modernization Act.

Like many pieces of legislation currently tabled in the House of Commons there are parts of the bill that we support and parts that we oppose.

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Judge Alsup has considered the joint submission by the parties on the subject of patent marking as well as their supplemental filings (706 [PDF; Text]), and he has come out firing at Google. In a strongly worded order (707 [PDF; Text]) the court has strongly criticized Google for failing to live up to its obligations under the joint stipulation entered by the parties with respect to evidence of patent marking, declaring it:

[I]t is manifestly clear that Google failed to comply with its own stipulated procedure. Fortunately for Google, they will get another opportunity to comply.

There was a Forbes article published today, authored by Ed Black, President and CEO of The Computer & Communications Industry Association. It discussed the lack of credible evidence of serious harm to the entertainment industry from online infringement, as well as the considerable collateral damage to other businesses and the economy as a whole from policies like PIPA and SOPA.

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Defendants Told They Must Reveal Their Identities Before Fighting to Protect Anonymity

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to protect the identities of individuals sued in a mass copyright lawsuit involving pornographic materials.

In this case, adult film company Hard Drive Productions sued 1495 unnamed Internet users, claiming they illegally downloaded copyrighted pornographic material. Some of these defendants moved to quash subpoenas aimed at revealing their identity. Many filed those motions under seal, to protect their anonymity until the motions are decided.

Last month, a judge issued a "Catch-22" order, requiring these individuals to reveal their identities before their motions – which were made to protect their identities – could proceed. In a friend of the court brief filed Monday, EFF argues that this requirement could induce defendants to settle their lawsuits in order to avoid the embarrassment, humiliation, or expense, instead of getting to the merits of the case.

"These subpoenas need to be considered in the context in which this case was brought," said EFF Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz. "The plaintiffs here hope to take advantage of the stigma associated with pornography – as well as the threat of an expensive court battle – to induce people to settle no matter what their defenses might be. If defendants can't fight the exposure of their identities without exposing their identities, then the plaintiffs have already won."

The case is one of a growing number of mass copyright lawsuits that do not appear to be filed with any intention of litigating them. Instead, once identities of suspected infringers are obtained from ISPs, the plaintiffs send settlement letters offering to make the lawsuit go away for a few thousand dollars. A ruling on whether a film company may obtain identities of anonymous Internet users may be the last chance for defendants to be heard by the court.

EFF's brief explains both the speech implications of the ruling and the importance of the court rules that protect defendants, given the numerous ways these mass lawsuits violate due process.

"All that the plaintiffs need here to pursue their settlement shake-down scheme is the identity of the anonymous defendants," said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. "These defendants have a First Amendment right to argue for their anonymity without the court forcing them to moot that argument from the start. We're asking for these motions to quash to go forward without requiring them to be unsealed, and we're also asking the court to throw this case out given the basic due process flaws."

For the full amicus brief:
https://www.eff.org/document/amicus-brief-hard-drive-productions-v-does-1-1495

For more on copyright trolls:
https://www.eff.org/issues/copyright-trolls

Contacts:

Corynne McSherry
   Intellectual Property Director
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   corynne@eff.org

Mitch Stoltz
   Staff Attorney
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   mitch@eff.org

"Reprinted with permission from The Hill Times, Jan. 30, 2012."

Re: “Digital piracy is theft, Canadian jobs stolen,” (The Hill Times, Jan. 23, p. 11).

People who wish their rights to be respected should not advocate infringing other peoples rights as a solution.

Copyright infringement is not theft. Copyright is a temporary government granted monopoly. While it is true this monopoly can be bought and sold, making it a type of property, infringement doesn’t change possession of what was owned. The closest analogy between copyright infringement and laws relating to tangible property is trespass.

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Oracle and Google have now filed their joint statement on patent marking (706 [PDF; Text]) as required by the court's supplemental order of December 6 (641 [PDF; Text]) Although reading the joint statement may give one the impression that the parties' positions are far apart (and they are), that doesn't mean that the joint statement hasn't closed the gap on the marking issue. In fact, it appears to have closed the gap significantly and in Google's favor.

You will recall that after the Judge Alsup issued his December 6 supplemental order the parties filed a joint stipulation on what they were to do. That stipulation provided:

FORUM LOCATION: Wednesday, Feb. 8 Amphitheatre - St. Paul University 223 Main Street, Ottawa, ON 6-10 pm

More information via unlawfulacces.ca.

B&N and Microsoft have come to an agreement about Steve Ballmer's participation in the Microsoft v. Barnes & Noble action at the ITC. They were arguing about it, and they've now agreed that Ballmer will not have to testify live at the ITC hearing, currently scheduled for February. Instead, B&N will present designated portions of his deposition, and Microsoft's lawyers have sent a letter [PDF] to the ITC stating officially that it withdraws its motion for a protective order, attaching to the letter a proposed schedule on the parties' next steps in figuring out exactly what each side wants in the way of details. This means there will be no further motion practice on the live testimony issue. But it does mean that Microsoft's effort to have Ballmer avoid being deposed ended with him being deposed.

Meanwhile, I took some time to try to understand why Barnes & Noble is fighting with such vigor, when a patent misuse defense is so hard to win. What do they know that I didn't? I will share with you what I've learned.

Maira Sutton and Parker Higgins have an excellent article on ACTA, the deceptively labeled Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

It ends with the following:

It is now up to the collective will of the public to decide what to do next, and for individuals to ask themselves what they want their government to look like. Do you believe in democracy? Do you believe that laws should be made to reflect our collective best interests, formulated through an open transparent process? One that allows everyone, from experts to civil society members, to analyze, question and probe an agreement that will lead to laws that will impact potentially billions of lives? If we don’t do anything now, this agreement is going to crawl itself into power. With the future at stake like this, it’s never too late to fight.

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The protests in the USA over SOPA seem to have got the attention of the US politicians. While I don't think the war against these harmful job-killing legislative proposals are over, it is good to see a few won battles. Canadians federal MPs are returning to the House of Commons on January 30'th, and it is expected that Bill C-11 will go to committee soon. We need to ensure that Canadian MPs don't remain oblivious to the harm contained in these proposals, including the harm to Canadian creators.

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