Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

The Pirate Bay.org is a source for downloading music, videos, and such online. It has in a large way been at the nexus of contention betwixt copyright holders and copyright infringers. One of the newer developments has been the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED). This agreement has member countries enact laws that let copyright holders get a court order that can compel internet service providers to reveal the IP addresses and information about suspected copyright infringers. The law became effective in Sweden, where Pirate Bay is headquartered, on the 1^st of April.

To combat this emerging situation with IPRED The Pirate Bay has created what it has named IPREDATOR. It is a service that, for a monthly fee, will allow users to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for more anonymity while surfing the internet. While still in Beta, the theory seems to be that IPREDATOR would shield people from having their identities discovered for prosecution.

An intersting argument had been put forth in the case of Veoh vs Universal Music Group. Universal alledges that Veoh could not invoke the protections afforded to hosts under “Safe Harbor” because the video providor encoded the files from the original format to a web-friendly FLV format, thus enabling the infringer. As Xbiz reports, XBiz: U.S. Judge Rules for Veoh in Infringement Case, the judge ruled that this did not eliminate safe harbor provisions:

Veoh claimed in its response that UMG had failed to provide “any information about the alleged infringement that would allow Veoh to adequately assess UMG’s threats,” but UMG countered the argument, claiming that Veoh did not qualify for safe harbor provisions on the grounds that some functions of Veoh’s software, including those that create copies and deliver videos to users, were ineligible for protection.

U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz rejected this argument and ruled in Veoh’s favor because “Veoh, he found, had no ability to prescreen content, and there was no evidence that Veoh fostered infringement for profit,” according to DRM Watch, a website that publishes analyses of all things DRM.

The Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association, or IPRHA, opened its official blog today. The blog will be covering issues related to:

• Copyright Law
• Piracy
• Trademarks
• Patents
• Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights
• Court and Case News
• Legal Opinions

The goal of the blog is to concentrate and organize information about the changing legal standards related to intellectual property.