(July 29, 2014) Adverts are being placed on pirate websites by the City of London Police to warn users the sites are under criminal investigation.
The initiative is part of Operation Creative, a partnership between the police and the creative and advertising industries to disrupt websites that provide unauthorised access to copyrighted content.
Read more at Advanced Television
(July 19, 2014) BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media partner with Government and creative industries on scheme.
Representatives from the UK’s creative industries, the UK Government and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are launching Creative Content UK, a partnership to boost consumer awareness of legitimate online content services.
The initiative is aimed at reducing online copyright infringement.
Read more at Screen Daily
A leading international expert in copyright law published a commentary on Hong Kong’s proposed approach to user-generated content (UGC), in which he concludes that “to guarantee safe harmony with international treaties”, the government is wise not to pursue a sweeping exception for UGC. Dr. Mihaly Ficsor is former Assistant Director (Copyright) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and his commentary can be found on his blog here.
“Netizen” advocacy groups in Hong Kong used the recent public consultation on exceptions for parody and political commentary to demand exceptions for all user-generated content, and they continue to press their case in the Legislative Council. The HK government’s legislative proposal rejected a sweeping exception and proposed more targeted exceptions to make sure there is no obstacle to parody and political commentary. Dr. Ficsor says this is the right approach: genuine parody is “a typical form of UGC creation” which deserves support through “fine-tuned exceptions”, but “the concept of UGC is too broad and vague” and a broad exception will likely conflict with WIPO’s own treaties and their “three-step test” for copyright exceptions.
While netizens groups propose simple-sounding safeguards, they are frequently unworkable. Dr. Ficsor observes that, for example, just stating that UGC should be excepted as long as it has no commercial purpose doesn’t cut the ice, as “even if the (user-generated) adaptation does not generate profit for its creator, the websites on which UGC adaptations are included are themselves usually profit-oriented (based, in general, on advertisement money).”
Noting that the European Union (among other governments) recently also rejected proposals for a broad UGC exception, Dr. Ficsor says “there does not seem to be any real need to legislate on UGC.” The situation is hardly different in Hong Kong from the EU, he says, where a just-published White Paper notes: “There is a lack of evidence that the current legal framework for copyright puts a brake on or inhibits UGC (absence of ‘chilling effect’)”. On the other side, a broad exception for secondary adaptations risks damaging primary creation: “Possible exceptions aimed at facilitating secondary productions must not endanger the sustainable creation and production of the primary works,” says Dr. Ficsor.
For those following the political dialectic in the Hong Kong legislature, the commentary is worth reading in its entirety.
(July 16, 2014) A new theory to explain why Rupert Murdoch has been so quiet on Twitter of late: He’s been pursuing the deal of a lifetime—again.
Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox made an $80 billion offer in recent weeks to take over Time Warner, according to a report in the The New York Times. Time Warner rejected the offer. Bloomberg News cited people familiar with the deal in a report that suggested 21st Century Fox would be willing to pay more than $85 per share in the merger—an offer that would exceed $75 billion
Read more at Bloomberg
Additional link at The New York Times
(July 8, 2014) Singapore today enacted an amendment to its Copyright Act that will make it possible for copyright holders to obtain blocking orders against pirate websites without first issuing takedown notices. The legislation was implemented at least in part to address the prevalence online piracy in Singapore. We have written previously about a study by Sycamore Research suggests that 70% of young people aged 16-24 in Singapore habitually access pirated content, one of the worst rates in the Asia-Pacific region.
Read more at Creativity Tech
(July 3, 2014) The European Commission has launched an action plan to deal with infringement of intellectual property rights within the EU and a strategy for protecting IP outside of the region.
The EU said that it will adopt a ‘follow the money’ approach, which involves attempting to prevent commercial-scale IP infringement rather than penalising individuals.
Europe’s commercial broadcasters immediately welcomed the action plan. Their industry group, the Association of Commercial Television, noted that its members face a major challenge in securing their content online with streaming and downloading taking place within and outside the EU.
Read more at TBI Vision
Korea rethinks multichannel biz, lifts caps and limits.
Korean authorities are attempting to boost the quality of local multichannel content in sweeping deregulation that includes lifting the monthly subscription TV price cap as well as the limit on mid-show ad breaks and product placement. The deregulation, designed to support smaller producers and operators, will roll out over the next three years, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said this week. Hopes are that the additional revenues, including potential global syndication revenue, will be invested in local content creation. Korea’s monthly subs are currently about US$25. Korea’s Joongang Daily says the pay-TV production and channel operation market in Korea was worth about US$5.9 billion in 2013, and that 11 companies dominate with 56.2% market share. Sales are driven by home shopping. The report also said that about 150 producers/operators, including CJ E&M, accounted for 36.5% share.
Read more at Korea Joongang Daily
(June 29, 2014) Four persons were arrested today for allegedly running a racket of illegally tapping satellite signals of TV channels and carrying out signal piracy of cable TV service providers here, police said.
A team of Cyber Crime police raided a building in Secunderabad and nabbed four persons, who were converting video signals of several TV channels into internet signals and telecasting it to customers across the world through internet set-up Box of one Jadoo TV, M Mahender Reddy, Hyderabad Police Commissioner said.
Read more at Business Standard
(June 19, 2014) Customs will seek help from mainland authorities to track down the ringleader of a syndicate selling illegal television boxes which receive local pay-TV broadcasts, including live World Cup matches.
The hunt for the mainland man began after customs officers arrested nine people and seized 41 boxes in a series of raids on Tuesday.
Customs kicked off its investigation of the syndicate after receiving a complaint from local station Now TV in April.
The five men and four women, who have been released on bail, are suspected to be members of the syndicate.
“The boxes could receive more than 300 pay-TV and movie channels in Hong Kong and from overseas,” the head of the department’s intellectual property investigation bureau, Lee Hon-wah, said.
Read more at SCMP
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(June 3, 2014) Box office and digital revenue will climb steadily over the next five years, but rentals and sales of DVDs and other discs will fall sharply, according to a report released Wednesday by PwC.
In a sign that the future will be streamed and downloaded, the study projects that electronic home video revenue will exceed that of physical home video in 2016. Meanwhile DVDs are looking increasingly imperiled, with PwC estimating that physical home entertainment revenue will fall more than 28% from $12.2 billion last year to $8.7 billion in 2018.
Read more at Variety
Additional link:
Internet Ads Poised to Top Television Within Seven Years: Study
Video – Where will consumers & advertisers spend their money in entertainment & media?
PwC’s Global entertainment and media outlook 2014-2018 – Now available
