Well, we knew that since being let out of jail, but with no MegaUpload empire left to run, Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz had been spending some time in Neil Finn’s studio in Auckland working on a debut album, and now a track has surfaced online, though it’s not clear whether it will appear on the final record. Possibly not, as, in fine hip hop tradition, it’s more of a diss track.

The subject of the recording is New Zealand politician John Banks, who has been in the news in his home country recently after it was revealed he received a NZ$50,000 donation to his campaign funds from the controversial MegaUpload founder.

Now that the MegaUpload enterprise and its directors face criminal charges in the US, Banks has been busy trying to distance himself from the donation, which was made towards his unsuccessful 2010 campaign to be re-elected as mayor of Auckland. The donation was seemingly made in two halves so that it was under the amount where the source of the money has to be declared.

Since Schmitz told reporters about his past financial support for Banks, the politician, now a member of the New Zealand parliament, has denied he knew that the Mega chief was behind the 50 grand donation in 2010, a claim that Schtmitz says is untrue.

The diss track, called ‘Amnesia’, includes a sound bite of Banks saying “I don’t know who gave me money, I can’t remember now”, a female vocalist singing “That politician got amnesia again”, and Schmtiz’s artistic collaborator Printz Board rapping “He’s the majority, so he’s all right, He is John Banks, he got the vote, and that’s why Key keeps him afloat, on his cabbage boat?”

The Key referred to is New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, while the last line refers to a statement made by Banks along the lines of “I did not come up the river in a cabbage boat”, which it’s thought basically means “I wasn’t born yesterday”, though most New Zealand journalists say they’ve never heard the somewhat bizarre idiom before either.

Dotcom himself does not appear in the new song, though it is thought he will rap on many of the tracks he is creating for the promised album. The US government continues to go through the motions, of course, to try and extradite Schmitz to face charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering in relation to his role in running MegaUpload. Meanwhile, you can, erm, enjoy ‘Amnesia’ here:

Virgin Media has become the first British internet service provider to block access to invariably controversial file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. As previously reported, on Monday the High Court in London passed injunctions, at the request of record label trade body the BPI, ordering five ISPs to instigate blocks against the Bay, so that when their customers try to access the web service they instead see a notice alerting them to the fact said website is blocked for copyright reasons.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk and O2 have all also been ordered to block access to the Bay in the next few weeks, and an injunction ordering BT to do the same is expected to be issued in due course (BT asked for a few more weeks to respond). The injunctions followed a court ruling earlier this year that said that The Pirate Bay is liable for the copyright infringement it enables, even though no unlicensed content actually passes through its servers; and also utilised a precedent set in the Newzbin case last year, where a judge decided that, under existing copyright law, web-block injunctions could be obtained where infringing web services were based outside the jurisdiction of the English courts.

Virgin and Sky have generally been more helpful to content owners looking to crack down on file-sharing that other net firms, mainly because with their own subscription movie services they have a vested interest in combating online piracy once it’s films being illegally downloaded. BT and TalkTalk have generally been the most resistant to taking on any obligations to police infringing customers.

Confirming it had already instigated a Pirate Bay block, a spokesman for the Virgin cable TV and net firm told reporters: “Virgin Media has received an order from the courts requiring it to prevent access to The Pirate Bay in order to help protect against copyright infringement. As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price”.

Of course, as much previously noted, all web blocks are circumventable for anyone who knows what they are doing, and since the Bay blocks were announced earlier this week various web pages have appeared telling the less tech-savvy how they can still access the Pirate Bay service once piratebay.org takes them to a ‘stop nicking our content you bastards’ holding page. Meanwhile the extra media coverage the blocks secured the rogue file-sharing site apparently resulting in a significant uplift in traffic for the service.

Lobby groups which are pro-file-sharing and/or anti-copyright-enforcement (or, anti what they perceive to be heavy-handed enforcement), will point to the ease with which web-blocks can be circumvented by those in the know as a reason why injunctions of this kind should never be allowed, adding that the cost and supposed censorship risks such blocks cause outweigh the limited returns they deliver in terms of combating file-sharing. They might also add that if the rights owners licensed more digital services, and ensured their entire catalogues were available by already licensed platforms, and addressed pricing concerns, then more casual file-sharers would probably go legit anyway.

And, of course, some of those are valid arguments, and raise issues the music and movie industries still need to address. Though more pragmatic rights owners would probably argue that, while there will always be a community of file-sharers who will continue to file-share, the aim here is to encourage mainstream web-users to only use legit services, and the way to do that is to both make sure those services are brilliant, engaging and easy to use, but also to do what you can to make the unlicensed options an arse to use. Which is really what web-blocking is about.

Dappy and three other men have been charged with affray in relation to a fight that seemingly took place at a petrol station in Guildford in February.

The former N-Dubz star was arrested last month, at which time a Surrey Police spokeswoman explained the incident to reporters, saying: “Two girls and three men were outside the garage at 3.30am. They were interrupted by two suspects who had turned up in a car and asked the girls to go with them. The invitation was refused and one of the suspects then spat at one of the girls. As a result an altercation ensued involving the first two suspects and a further group of up to six black and white men who arrived in two further vehicles. The trio of men were assaulted and received serious facial injuries in the attack”.

Dappy, who denies the charges, and his fellow defendants have been bailed pending a hearing at Guildford Magistrates Court on 24 May. If found guilty the rapper faces a fine of up to £5000 and up to six months in jail.

In an interesting side show to the ongoing digital royalties battle in the US record industry, Apple Inc is trying to block various bits of evidence it provided to an earlier trial, including a deposition by the late Steve Jobs, from being made public, or even shared with plaintiffs in newer similar cases.

As much previously reported, various heritage artists with pre-iTunes record contracts with major labels are suing for a bigger cut of the monies record companies receive from download stores. The record companies claim that downloads should be treated as record sales, but some artists say download revenues should actually be treated as licensing income. The distinction is key because most artists are due a much higher cut of licensing revenue than they are record sale money.

The highest profile case based on this dispute so far was between Eminem collaborators FBT Productions and Universal’s Interscope, relating to the producers’ cut of Slim Shady download sales. FBT won, and a court hearing is pending to decide how much more digital money the production outfit should be receiving.

While Universal insists the FBT case does not set a precedent, a stack of artists with similar contracts are now suing for a bigger cut of digital money, and all four majors are facing such lawsuits. The main litigation now being pursued against Universal on the digital royalties issue is being led by Rob Zombie and the Rick James estate, and their lawyers have demanded to see various bits of evidence presented in the FBT Productions case to help them prepare their arguments.

Amongst the key evidence they want to see is submissions made by Apple Inc, including the deposition from the firm’s founder Jobs. But the IT giant has hit out at the suggestion that evidence it provided for one case should be shared with lawyers involved in another, insisting that the information it submitted to the FBT court hearing included “highly confidential and proprietary trade secrets”, and that the company provided such information on the condition it would only be shared with a small number of key people involved in FBT v Interscope.

Indeed it turns out that when that information was shared with the court during the FBT hearings, the judge insisted that nearly everyone present leave the courtroom, including a bunch of Universal Music staffers, so that only the jury and some key legal types and court officials got to hear what Jobs had to say. Which makes you wonder what exactly the late Apple chief had to share.

Apple Inc is now using the fact the judge treated its submissions with such sensitivity in the FBT hearings as justification for not sharing any of that information with lawyers involved in new digital royalty cases now. It adds that attorneys for the Zombie/James team have not demonstrated that the Apple evidence is essential for their lawsuit, adding that the new litigation is too broadly worded for the IT firm’s previous submissions to be of use.

It remains to be seen if lawyers for Zombie et al continue to push for access to the Apple testimonies and, if so, whether anything within them will every actually be made public.

The High Court in London yesterday issued orders requiring five internet service providers to block their customers from accessing the always controversial file-sharing search service The Pirate Bay. The court orders were possible thanks to the precedent set in last year’s Newzbin case, and followed a court ruling earlier this year that confirmed that, under English copyright law, The Pirate Bay is itself liable for the copyright infringement it enables its users to actually commit.

As previously reported, while web-blocking injunctions have been issued on copyright grounds before in various places around the world, it wasn’t until last year such court orders were granted in the UK. When lobbying hard for new anti-piracy measures in the 2010 Digital Economy Act, the record industry proposed a system that would enable such injunctions but, while an outline of how such a system might work was included in the bill, the introduction of a three-strikes system to send warning letters to actual file-sharers was prioritised.

But the movie industry suspected that web-block injunctions, which force ISPs to block access to copyright infringing websites that are based outside the jurisdiction of the UK courts, were possible under existing copyright rules (if requiring a slightly more time consuming process), and proved that last year when they forced BT to block access to file-sharing site Newzbin. The BPI quickly followed by targeting The Pirate Bay. Ironically, of course, the three-strikes system that was prioritised by the DEA is yet to go live, and now looks unlikely to do so until 2014.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media will now have to stop their customers from accessing The Pirate Bay in the next few weeks. BT was included in the BPI’s injunction application, though it has asked for a little more time to consider its response, so that particular net firm won’t be forced to act on the Bay for a little while longer.

Of course web-blocks are always circumventable if you know what you are doing, and in the Netherlands, where an anti-piracy group secured web-block injunctions against two ISPs in relation to The Pirate Bay, said group then had to get another injunction to stop The Pirate Party from telling people how to dodge the blockade. But many rights owners reckon that more casual file-sharers won’t go to the effort of trying to access blocked sites, and that will be enough to have an impact in the fight against online piracy.

Welcoming yesterday’s web-block orders, the boss of record label trade body the BPI, Geoff Taylor, told CMU: “The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them. This is wrong – musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else”.

He continued: “Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists. We urge anyone using The Pirate Bay to explore the many digital music services operating ethically and legally in the UK – especially those carrying the Music Matters trustmark”.

Web-blocking on copyright grounds is not without its critics, of course, and indeed such measures were at the heart of the SOPA and PIPA proposals that caused so much outrage in the US at the start of the year. Criticising the British Pirate Bay blocks yesterday, Jim Killock for the Open Rights Group told reporters: “Blocking The Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism. Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes”.

Meanwhile Loz Kaye from The Pirate Party added: “Site blocking isn’t the solution to anything – it’s just censorship, and ineffective censorship at that. It’s laughably easy to circumvent; we’ve been running a Pirate Bay proxy for ages and there are many others out there. In the meantime, the public interest suffers, the big ISPs suffer because they have to censor the internet while their smaller rivals don’t, and artists suffer because they’ve lost a new and innovative platform”.

Back to the Digital Economy Act, and BPI boss Taylor has also been hitting out at the slow progress being made by the government in introducing the aforementioned three-strikes system. As previously reported, a rep for the Department Of Culture Media & Sport last week admitted at a Creative Coalition conference that the first round of warning letters are unlikely to be sent to suspected file-sharers until 2014, four years after the legislation that enabled such action was passed by parliament.

According to Music Week, speaking at the same conference last week, Taylor said: “It’s been two years now since the Digital Economy Act was passed and we’ve still not had a code published. We’re [now] waiting for the Communications Act green paper. What we need in there is measures that will require search engines, payment providers and all the other players in the internet ecosystem to play a responsible role in trying to make sure that people go to legal sites and not pirate sites”.

Good news for fans of complicated court-based copyright law debates, MP3 resale service ReDigi insists it is well resourced to fight the lawsuit being pursued against it by EMI.

As previously reported, ReDigi has been sued by the major label for providing a service that enables users to sell on their MP3s to third parties. ReDigi says that under US copyright law consumers should be able to resell MP3s in the same way they can resell CDs. EMI argues that the principle which applies to CDs does not apply to digital music. The judge who heard initial arguments on the case reckons it’s complicated, but should make for a “fascinating” court hearing.

So, expect lots of debating about the intricacies of US copyright law, some of which could impact on the wider cloud storage sector – assuming the case gets to court.

There has been speculation that start-up ReDigi, which is believed to have raised about half a million in finance, might not be able to afford to fight such a complicated legal battle. Some have noted that it wouldn’t be the first time a big company unhappy with a start-up’s business model had successfully put that start-up out of business by landing it in the middle of messy and expensive litigation – Universal’s legal fight against Veoh being an interesting case to study.

We reported yesterday that one of the lawyers working on the ReDigi case had told the courts he was stepping back from it, and Digital Music News noted that in his submission Ray Beckerman said he had a ‘retaining lien’ with his former client, which basically means the company owes him money. Some wondered whether this meant the predictions ReDigi might run out of cash before getting to court were coming true.

But the tech firm insists that is not the case, pointing out that it has hired the services of a new law firm as it prepares for its big court battle with EMI’s Capitol division. Assuming the courts approve the switch in legal representation, Meister Seelig & Fein LLP will fight ReDigi’s side in court. MSF, the tech firm says, has “resources, experience and expertise in copyright and music industry matters [that] make it especially well suited for its representation of ReDigi in this high-profile case”.

Confirming the appointment of new legal reps, ReDigi founder and CEO John Ossenmacher told CMU: “ReDigi has made a decision to bring in additional expertise in its litigation with Capitol. We are very pleased to have Meister Seelig & Fein in place to take the lead in this very important matter for ReDigi and the future of consumers’ digital rights. Meister Seelig brings the substantial resources of the firm’s entertainment, IP and litigation practices to bear as the case gears up for the hearing to take place later this year”.

Meanwhile the MSF lawyer who will lead the defence, Gary Adelman, added: “Our firm is excited to represent ReDigi in the Capitol Records litigation. ReDigi is a company that stands for the legal dissemination of music and they offer a proactive solution to piracy, which benefits the consumer, the artist and the record companies”.

MegaUpload founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz has won back in the region of $750,000 worth of his fortune after a court hearing in New Zealand.

The boss of the controversial file-transfer business is currently facing extradition from New Zealand to the US, of course, where he faces charges of money laundering, racketeering and copyright infringement in relation to the Mega enterprise. His multi-million dollar fortune was seized by the New Zealand authorities at the request of the Americans when he and several other Mega execs were arrested back in January.

It subsequently emerged that the New Zealand police had secured the wrong kind of warrant before raiding Schmitz’s home which, the tech man’s lawyers argued, made the whole operation illegal, and meant their client should get all his stuff back.

In a court hearing about Schmitz’s belongings last week, the New Zealand High Court said that a bank account containing just over $300,000 should be unfrozen, and a $250,000 Mercedes should be returned. The defendant’s wife will also get money to fund her living expenses out of Schmitz’s fortune, and the use of a Toyota Vellfire.

However, the majority of Schmitz’s assets will remain out of bounds while the criminal case against the Mega chief goes through the motions. And a bulk of the money made available to Schmitz last week will likely go on legal fees, with criminal proceedings to prepare for in both New Zealand and the US, not to mention the prospect of various civil claims by copyright owners, mainly in the States.

Though, as also previously reported, legal reps for Schmitz and the other Mega execs, none of whom are currently in the US, are confident that they can successfully fight off America’s extradition attempts, mainly because the core copyright charges against their clients do not command a high enough jail term in America to justify extradition. Criminal charges linked to the Mega company itself are hard to formally press, because the firm didn’t have a corporate base within the USA.

It was thought the extradition hearing for Schmitz et al would take place in August, though some local media in New Zealand are now pointing towards a September court date.

Speculation that controversial MP3 resale service ReDigi wouldn’t be able to afford to fight its legal battle with EMI is starting to ring true, after lawyers working for the digital start-up filed a motion to withdraw from the case last week.

As previously reported, ReDigi is a website that enables music fans to sell unwanted MP3s on to third parties. The founders of the company say reselling MP3s is no different than reselling CDs, a practice protected under American copyright law by the so called ‘first sale doctrine’. The tech firm adds that its technology verifies the source of the digital file being sold and ensures the original is deleted from the seller’s computer after sale.

But even if you buy the idea that the ReDigi system is really capable of ensuring an MP3 put up for sale came from a legitimate source, and that the seller deletes their copy after sale (which seems unlikely, but whatever), the American record industry argues that the ‘first sale doctrine’ does not apply, because when a CD is exchanged no actual copying takes place, whereas a digital exchange requires new mechanical copies to be made without a licence.

While both sides think their arguments are strong, when EMI – the record company actually suing over this – pushed for a summary judgement in February, the judge hearing the case ruled that the debate was too complicated for a judgement to be made without a full trial. He added that the dispute at the heart of this case was a “fascinating issue” that “raises a lot of technological and statutory” points.

So, well done ReDigi for proving the law wasn’t as clear on this issue as EMI originally claimed, though, as we noted in February, a court hearing that will cover “lots of issues”, as Judge Richard Sullivan predicts it will, sounds expensive for a start-up that has only raised, to our knowledge, half a million in capital, and which will struggle to find new investment while this lawsuit hangs over it.

According to Digital Music News, last week ReDigi attorney Ray Beckerman filed a motion to exit the case and hand things over to another firm. There are, of course, various reasons why the lawyer might choose to do that, but most commentators noted that Beckerman’s filings stated that the lawyer had a ‘retaining lien’ with his former client, which basically means he is owed money and can exercise the right to keep hold of paperwork relating to the case until bills are settled.

That, in turn, has led to speculation that ReDigi is running out of money, which is no fun at all when you have a big complicated court case upcoming, and a fledgling business to develop at the same time. Although neither Beckerman nor ReDigi have commented, some now wonder if this case will ever go to court.

If it doesn’t, that will piss off some in the tech community – partly because no one likes it when big companies put start-ups out of business simply by landing them with a bit of litigation they can’t afford to defend, and partly because, while the MP3 resale thing may be a non-starter, it’s thought the ReDigi case, if it gets to court, might also test some copyright principles relating to the wider cloud-storage and file-transfer marketplace.

You see, we knew that Selena Gomez would eventually appear in the CMU Daily in her own right, and not just as the other half of the always innovating Justin Bieber (by my maths he’s had five different hair cuts in the last twelve months alone), and as it turned out, she just needed to get sued to make that happen (actually, come to think of it, it’s possible she achieved this feat once before, that time by painting some horses pink, which is probably less costly).

Anyway, Gomez has been sued over the chorus in the title track to her 2010 album ‘A Year Without Rain’, which a little known Californian band called Luce reckon was stolen from their 2005 single ‘Buy A Dog’. The rock outfit’s million dollar lawsuit claims that Gomez’s chorus was “virtually identical” to theirs.

Of course Gomez didn’t actually write ‘A Year Without Rain’, so the lawsuit is really targeting songwriters Lindy Robbins and Toby Gad, though the teen star has been named as a co-defendant too because, well, why not? I mean, had they not, Gomez would probably have had to paint a giraffe blue to ensure another appearance in CMU sans her slightly tedious boyfriend, and that sounds like a whole load of hassle to me.

Google is facing a copyright infringement lawsuit over a photo backdrop it used at the launch of its lacklustre Google Music service last year.

The estate of the late and legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall (not to be confused with the amp maker of the same name) is suing pop artist Thierry ‘Mr Brainwash’ Guetta over his use of photographs taken and owned by Marshall in one of his artworks. Guetta often utilises other people’s photography in his art, usually without permission, and this isn’t the first time he’s been sued for copyright infringement as a result.

But this case is particularly interesting because Google seemingly used the Mr Brainwash artwork, featuring Marshall photos of John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix, at its big music launch last year, presumably making a copy of a piece which made a copy of the late photographer’s pictures. As a result the web firm is also being sued.

Google is yet to comment on the litigation.

A US judge has granted Britney Spears’ fiancé Jason Trawick the right to become her legal guardian. He will share the handling of her personal affairs with her father Jamie Spears.

Spears senior have been his daughter’s ‘conservator’ since 2008, after a much publicised period of mental distress for the singer which resulted in a stay in a psychiatric hospital. She got engaged to Trawick, her former agent, last December, but they are unable to marry without court approval. It’s thought that his application to become her joint guardian was part of plans to set a wedding date.

Following the ruling at the LA Superior Court a spokesman for Jamie Spears said that he was “thrilled” to have joint conservatorship of his daughter with Trawick.

Singer Jennifer Hudson appeared in court on Monday as the first witness to testify in the trial of the man accused of murdering her mother, brother and nephew in 2008.

As previously reported, the bodies of Hudson’s mother, Darnell Donerson, and brother, Jason Hudson, were found at the family’s Chicago home in October 2008. The singer’s seven year old nephew, Julian King, was then discovered to be missing and a reward was offered for his safe return. Sadly, his body was found three days later.

In December the same year police arrested William Balfour, the estranged husband of Hudson’s sister Julia, and charged him with the murders.

It is claimed that Balfour, who at the time was on parole having already served seven years in prison for attempted murder and carjacking, had flown into a jealous rage after seeing balloons outside the Hudson family home, believing them to be from Julia’s new boyfriend. Prosecutors say he then went into the house and, using a gun he had stolen from Jason Hudson several months earlier, shot Donerson, went upstairs and shot Jason twice in the head, then drove away in Jason’s car with the seven year old Julian King, who he also shot before abandoning the vehicle.

Prosecutors claim that after the couple had become estranged in early 2008, Balfour had made a number of threats towards the Hudson family, telling Julia the day before the murders “I’m going to kill you, but I’m going to kill your family first”.

In court, Hudson said that her family had been unhappy with her sister’s decision to marry Balfour, which they had done in secret. She said: “None of us wanted her to marry him. We didn’t like how he treated her and I did not like how he treated my nephew”.

The case continues.

Lawyers working for Courtney Love on a legal dispute with, erm, her former lawyers, have requested to be removed from the case because of a dispute over unpaid fees.

As previously reported, Love was sued by lawyer Rhonda Holmes and her firm Gordon & Holmes over allegations the Hole frontwoman made on Twitter. Holmes had been working with Love on allegations that money had been stolen from her late husband Kurt Cobain’s estate, but the two parted company, and the singer later claimed on Twitter that the lawyer had been “fired” because she had been “bought off” by the people she was meant to be investigating.

Holmes sued for defamation – the second such lawsuit Love faced in relation to comments made on the micro-blogging platform. The singer hired a new law firm, Pryor Cashman, to defend the legal action, but now it is in dispute with her too, claiming that Love has failed to pay associates of the company who have worked on the case, and that she has failed to make a “satisfactory proposal” to settle the debt.

Pryor Cashman needs court approval to withdraw from the case. It remains to be seen if the company then goes legal to get their unpaid fees. If so, Love would be fighting litigation by her lawyers who were helping her fight litigation by her lawyers. Which would be fun.

An LA judge has told the mother and children of Michael Jackson that they still need to provide more information relating to their legal claim against AEG Live, which they are suing for hiring Conrad Murray as the late king of pop’s personal physician. Murray, of course, was found guilty of causing the singer’s death in 2009 through negligence.

Lawyers for the live music giant said that the Jacksons had not provided credible evidence to back up their claim that AEG employed Murray and was therefore liable for his negligence, and that a lot of the information that had been provided arrived late.

Reps for the Jackson family countered that it had taken some time to get the live firm the information it requested, not least because some of the questions asked of the late king of pop’s children were harrowing to answer, and that they had now provided extensive responses, including statements from two AEG execs saying Murray had been given the job as Jackson’s medic.

The live company, which was behind the ‘This Is It’ O2 shows abandoned after Jackson’s premature death, argues that while it may have paid for Murray, he was selected and hired by the singer himself, and the company had no control over the medic’s actions.

After both sides presented their arguments to the court, the Jacksons’ reps were asked to provide the information AEG claimed was still lacking, and to see that Katherine Jackson’s deposition on the case – which has only been half done so far – was completed.

At the same hearing, Katherine Jackson’s lawyer said he might request a “discovery referee” be appointed on the case, who would go through evidence provided by both sides and advise the judge on its competence. One of AEG’s attorney’s, Jessica Stebbins, said she didn’t think such a referee was required, but that her client probably wouldn’t object to that move if both sides could agree on who should perform the task.

The case continues.

The Australian movie industry’s long running bid to force internet service providers in the country to act against file-sharing has failed, after a second appeal hearing ruled against it.

As previously reported, Aussie film and TV industry group AFACT began legal proceedings against ISP iiNet in 2008, arguing that the net firm knew some of its customers were accessing illegal sources of content via its servers, but did nothing to stop it, and that, under Australian copyright law, that amounted to so called authorising infringement.

Had AFACT won the legal fight, the ruling would have forced iiNet to routinely monitor the activity of its customers, and to put blocks in place to limit the accessing and sharing of unlicensed files. Quite how that would work isn’t clear, but that isn’t relevant anyway because at all stages the courts ruled against the movie industry body. Judges found in favour of iiNet at first instance in 2010, on appeal in 2011, and last week at Australia’s High Court, the last route of appeal for the anti-piracy organisation.

Authorising infringement is a similar concept to contributory infringement, that wider concept having been used to hold various file-sharing technology providers around the world liable for the infringement their services enable, even though they themselves do not get involved in distributing unlicensed content.

However, ISPs have generally been immune to authorising/contributory infringement claims, partly because in the US the Digital Millennium Copyright Act specifically protects them, while in Europe they can claim protection from certain bits of European Union law. But in Australia no such explicit protection exists, hence this being a test case.

Though with the precedent set in all three stages of this lawsuit, it’s now pretty clear that Australian ISPs do not have obligations in this domain – and at the final appeal hearing in the Australian High Court last week, all five judges ruled in the net firm’s favour. Distinguishing that opinion from the Kazaa case (the one P2P legal action that was successfully pursued under Australian law) the judgement said that, unlike the providers of P2P services, iiNet had “no direct technical power to prevent its customers from using the BitTorrent system” to infringe copyright.

Needless to say, iiNet welcomed the ruling, with its CEO Michael Malone telling reporters: “iiNet has never supported or encouraged unauthorised sharing or file downloading. [But] increasing the availability of licensed digital content is the best, most practical approach to meet consumer demand and protect copyright. We have consistently said we are eager to work with the studios to make their very desirable material legitimately available to a waiting customer base – and that offer remains the same today”.

Although a movie industry case, the final ruling in the AFACT lawsuit will further motivate both the film and music industries in Australia to push for some sort of three-strike system to be introduced in the country, as in France and neighbouring New Zealand (and technically in the UK, though the system is yet to go live), so that while ISPs may not be forced to monitor their users’ activities, they will be forced to send out warning letters to those customers rights owners suspect of accessing illegal content.

With that in mind, AFACT MD Neil Gane told reporters: “Now that we have taken this issue to the highest court in the land, it is time for government to act. We are confident the government would not want copyright infringement to go on unabated across Australian networks especially with the rollout of the NBN [National Broadband Network]“.

The criminal case against MegaUpload might never get a hearing in court, because the company itself has never been served with criminal papers in the US, very possibly because it can’t be. This issue was discussed in an American court last week, with the judge overseeing the hearing (which was actually about what to do with all that offline Mega data) remarking that “I frankly don’t know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter”.

According to the New Zealand Herald, Judge Liam O’Grady asked why the FBI hadn’t served the Mega company with any criminal papers during a discussion on what to do with the legitimate (ie non-copyright infringing) data stored on the former Mega servers, which were rented from an American company, and which were taken offline by US authorities back in January.

It was because the bulk of the content made available via the various Mega websites was stored on servers housed in the US that the American authorities were able to swoop in such a dramatic fashion, taking the Mega enterprise offline without warning.

But the Mega company had no official base in America, making it hard to actually hand a representative of the business any formal criminal proceedings. And the failure to hand over any such papers to an official representative could, O’Grady said last week, prevent any criminal case against the company from going ahead.

So why doesn’t the FBI just find a Mega office somewhere else in the world – company is incorporated in Hong Kong – fly out there and hand over the required paperwork? Well, according to Mega’s attorney, Ira Rothken, that wouldn’t work either, because the US authorities can’t pursue corporate criminal proceedings outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Civil proceedings could be filed anywhere in the world, and individuals can be charged in any country where extradition agreements allow, but a company cannot be charged under the American criminal law abroad.

Or so reckons Rothken. There does seem to be some confusion as to exactly how things should work here, but Mega’s attorney seems to think this is a big enough technicality to de-rail the American authorities’ entire case. Which would, O’Grady noted, make the whole debate over the Mega data irrelevant, because the feds might be forced to had back the server keys (as it were) to the rogue file-transfer firm.

Of course the seven Mega executives can still be charged individually for their part in running the allegedly criminal enterprise, though Rothken has another technicality to throw into the mix there too. He says that without the criminal case against the company, the only charges the US can fire at the Mega directors individually is copyright infringement, which has a maximum four year jail term in the States. And under the US’s extradition agreement with New Zealand only people accused of crimes that carry a five year jail term or more can be extradited.

American authorities are expected to say the Mega bosses, including founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz, should be extradited as a member of an organised criminal group, a crime which carries the all important five year jail term. But it remains to be seen if that washes.

The legal wrangling continues.

In an interesting development in a long running dispute between Google and the German collecting society GEMA, the web giant might have to step up the way it filters content uploaded to its YouTube video-sharing website in Germany following something of a landmark ruling in the German courts.

YouTube and GEMA have been in dispute for some time over both the rates the Google-owned service offered the collecting society to licence the songs it represents for play on the video site, and the fact YouTube relies on rights owners to proactively remove their content from its platform if and when it’s uploaded by private users, rather than blocking all content until a rights owner has given express permission for it to appear.

YouTube basically operates a system worldwide based on US copyright law. Under America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a technology firm is not liable for infringing content posted by its users providing it has a system in place via which rights owners can demand content they own be removed, if uploaded by others without permission. That this principle applied to services like YouTube under US law was confirmed in the Viacom v YouTube case (and even though elements of that case are heading for an appeal hearing, that basic point is not part of the appeal).

But outside the US, the principle that protects YouTube from infringement claims at home frequently doesn’t exist under other copyright systems – though in most territories collecting societies and big rights owners have generally chosen to licence YouTube anyway, and to tolerate to an extent those unlicensed services that would enjoy protection under American law.

But not GEMA. And when its long running battle with Google reached the Hamburg State Court on Friday, the judge mainly sided with the collecting society, ruling that YouTube had an obligation to install filters that would stop its users from uploading recordings of songs owned by GEMA members.

Of course YouTube already has some pretty sophisticated filters in place for stopping the upload of content already logged on its system as ‘not cleared by owner’, and that filtering goes someway beyond the requirements of the DMCA regarding takedown systems.

Though in theory, under last week’s ruling, rather than each GEMA member logging the songs they don’t want to see uploaded to YouTube, Google would have to automatically block all GEMA represented songs unless told otherwise. And that’s a significant, if subtle, difference, especially if a precedent is set and then expanded to any other content not covered by an existing YouTube content licence.

Of course if that rule is set, it would be much easier for YouTube to just agree licensing terms with GEMA, so nothing needed to be blocked or filtered, which would certainly strengthen the collecting society’s hand at the negotiating table (it’s always pushed for more in royalties from YouTube than other societies). Which, some might say, was the main aim of this entire legal squabble anyway.

YouTube is yet to respond to the ruling or comment on whether it plans to appeal, but GEMA Chairman Harald Heker told reporters: “We reached our primary goal one hundred percent, to have the court confirm that YouTube is fundamentally responsible for videos posted by users. YouTube must implement appropriate measures to protect our repertoire and cannot simply pass on this obligation to the copyright holders. This is an important victory for us”.

Legendary producer Phil Spector, currently in jail for causing the death of one time actress Lana Clarkson at his Beverly Hills home in 2003, is suing the City Of Alhambra, California, for allegedly damaging the property where Clarkson died.

According to TMZ, Spector says that the city has commissioned a construction project on the hill where his home stands, and that work has caused damaged to his house. He is suing for unspecified damages and compensation for loss of property value.

Given 72 year old Spector is serving nineteen years for the murder of Clarkson, and he saw his appeal to the US Supreme Court turned down in February, you might wonder why he is so concerned about his former home. But then, to be fair, his wife Rachelle does still live there, so if there really is serious damage, the action does make sense.

Leonard Cohen’s former manager was jailed for eighteen months yesterday after being found guilty last week of various harassment charges.

As previously reported, Cohen fired Kelley Lynch in 2004 amidst allegations she had stolen all of his money, leaving him on the brink of bankruptcy, and forcing him to begin touring again prolifically to raise new funds. Lynch has seemingly been harassing Cohen via regular emails and voicemails, some very lengthy, others threatening, ever since. The legal implications of that harassment became more serious once she began flouting various restraining orders.

Lynch will serve eighteen months in prison as part of a five year sentence, during which time she will have to take part in various alcohol and anger management programmes. At the end of eighteen months she will undergo mental evaluation, and the authorities will then decide next steps.

Cohen issued a statement in which he thanked Lynch for insisted on a jury trial for this case, believing that gave him a more public platform to prove the problems the defendant caused him both before and after her firing. No criminal charges were ever pressed over the allegations Lynch stole from Cohen, so that previous dispute was only ever heard in the civil courts.

Cohen said in his statement: “I want to thank the defendant, Ms Kelley Lynch, for insisting on a jury trial, thus exposing to the light of day her massive depletion of my retirement savings and yearly earnings, and allowing the court to observe her profoundly unwholesome, obscene and relentless strategies to escape the consequences of her wrongdoing”.

He continued: “The eight year ordeal of harassment of my family, my friends, my associates, and myself was designed specifically to avoid or postpone the inevitable day of reckoning with the IRS, the day when she will be bound to account for the taxes she has neglected to pay on the stolen monies that she received and failed to report”.

“It gives me no pleasure to see my one-time friend shackled to a chair in a court of law, her considerable gifts bent to the service of darkness, deceit and revenge. I fear that her obsessive commitment to these activities as soon as Ms Lynch is released, therefore I will be grateful for whatever respite the court will allow my children, my grandchildren, my friends and associates, and myself”.

During the trial, Lynch’s defence lawyer argued that, while he conceded his client had been a nuisance, he felt the scale of harassment had been xaggerated, and that this should not really be a matter for the criminal justice system. He also said it was relevant that Cohen had, only late in the day, admitted his relationship with Lynch had, for a time, been romantic as well as professional.

One Direction – the UK band off of ‘X-Factor’ – won’t be changing their name any time soon. That’s what they say, anyway. It might not be quite so easy, since One Direction – the US band who no one had heard of until last week but who had the name first – are still pursuing legal action against the boyband’s record label, Syco.

As previously reported, One Direction USA say they formed in 2009, before Simon Cowell first put together his One Direction group on the UK version of ‘X-Factor’ in 2010. Certainly they started selling their album ‘The Light’ on iTunes in February 2011 which, while after the UK group had been created, preceded the release of their debut album ‘Up All Night’.

The American band say they were also first to file an application for ownership of the name with the US trademark authorities, and that Syco knew this, because the label was told so by the US Trademark Office when it tried to register the mark for itself (the matter is currently with the trademark appeals panel). As their name lawsuit became global news last week, the American band insisted they wouldn’t be intimidated by the mighty Syco machine. Though, of course, they didn’t specifically rule out being bought off.

Anyway, 1DUK’s Zayn Malik told Australia’s Herald Sun newspaper this week: “We don’t have any idea [what's going to happen] but we’re not changing our name”.

He’s probably right, but that situation won’t be likely to arise without handing over a stack of cash to their lawyers and the US band first. Everyone’s a winner.