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Another cyber-battle for copyright holders

The battle between copyright owners and Net users started many, many years ago and it still seems as if they're playing (and losing) a game of whackamole.

Back in the era of dial-up, usenet used to be "the" source of copyrighted material online. Amongst the seemingly endless list of newsgroups were quite a number that were almost solely for the purpose of sharing copyrighted material. There were of course, no movies available for download back then because less efficient codecs and very constrained bandwidth made that impractical -- however, just about any album or music track could be found as an MP3 file attached to a posting.

Of course way back then, the Net was only used by a very small percentage of the population and most of them were geeks so the recording industry wasn't overly concerned. Well it's more like they were simply too stupid to realise what the Net was or how their property was being shared so freely in violation of their commercial rights under copyright law.

Eventually bandwidth became much cheaper and sites such as Napster popped up where the MP3 files of "top 40" tracks became freely available to a much wider range of "regular folk", most of who (like the music industry) had never heard of usenet.

It was at this stage that the copyright owners started getting serious about this "blatant piracy" and the whackamole game began!

Napster was fairly easy to dispose of -- its copyright infringements being undeniable and easily proven in court. Victory: copyright owners!

Unfortunately for the RIAA, annoying a bunch of technically literate geeks with time on their hands and a penchant for free music was not going to end well -- and thus we saw the appearance of a whole swarm of Napster replacements, many relying on much harder to track P2P networks.

Suddenly the RIAA was left trying to nail jelly to a tree. Their valuable copyrighted material was no longer being stored on a single server -- it was diced, sliced, julienned and scattered to the four corners of cyberspace so that it became a much more difficult task to prove to a judge that any one person was infringing. Victory: internet!

Of course the judiciary (doubtless helped by the extreme lobbying power of a very wealthy recording industry) eventually began dealing to those who would make copyrighted material available or download same through these P2P networks. Victory: copyright owners!

By this time, advances in technology and broadband technologies meant that movies were also being pirated with gay abandon by every man and his dog and although there were a few individuals being whacked by the law, the rest continued their "free" downloads, seemingly with impunity: Victory: internet!

Again, lobbied by the power and money of the RIAA and MPAA, governments around the world began blocking access to sites such as The Pirate Bay (TPB), making it much harder for the technically naive to find the movies and music they wanted to download: Victory: copyright owners!

Within days, "backups" of TPB hit the web and it was "game on" again. Victory: internet!

And now, another huge problem has appeared for copyright owners who have the rights to broadcast or stream live events...

The live-streaming service Periscope is posing a *huge* problem!

Such broadcasters are finding that people are using Periscope to stream their content in realtime to anyone else that wants to watch. Victory: internet.

The problem is that right now, there is no effective legal mechanism available to the rights-holders that they can use to stop this live streaming.

Traditionally, copyright owners issue a "takedown notice" against anyone found to be hosting or distributing their material -- but it takes time to create such a notice and time must be given for compliance. In the case of a one hour TV programme or a live sporting event, the time taken to issue and allow for compliance with such a notice means that the whole thing is over and done long before the paperwork is even half-finished.

What's more, because we're talking "live streams" here, there is nothing stored on a server anywhere and the infringement is incredibly transient, almost ethereal in nature.

By the time a takedown notice is issued and served -- the stream has long-finished and there is no action to be taken.

It is also not Periscope who are legally liable -- they are simply a carrier and are no more culpable than the ISP or telco who provides the internet connection.

So far, the most notable examples of Periscope being used to "pirate" live streams involve the new series of Game of Thrones and a boxing match streamed live in the USA.

There can be no doubt that the broadcasters and content creators will buy some new laws that will enable them to deal with the challenge that a service such as Periscope poses to their ability to enforce copyright -- but, as I think you've already worked out, that pesky little pirate mole will simply re-appear somewhere else.

Eventually the copyright owners will work out that Whackamole is a game you can't win so perhaps it's much better to figure out a way to make friends with the mole and see if you can't come up with a new way to get along so that *everyone* wins.

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