me*dia*or

For years the entertainment industry has been lobbying for tougher measures against online piracy. In France this has resulted in the implementation of a ‘three strikes and you’re offline’ regime and many other countries are considering similar measures.

Thus far the United States Government has kept relatively quiet on this issue, but that doesn’t mean that such plans are not being discussed behind close doors.

According to Ari Emanuel, a famous Hollywood talent agent and the model for the character Ari Gold in the hit series Entourage, Hollywood lobbyists are working hard to convince President Obama and others to ram through similar legislation in the United States.

“We are in the midst of talking to the president and some attorney generals and [we are] trying to implement a three strikes and you’re out rule,” Emanuel said, while adding that this issue would most likely result in a “fight with ISPs”.

At this point it is impossible to assess the exact nature of these talks, but since Ari Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, there is no doubt that these talks are taken seriously. President Obama, who vouched to decrease the power of lobbyists in Washington, is not turning a deaf ear to this one for now.

Before even considering the implementation of a three-strikes model, United States lawmakers might want to take a good look at what’s happening in France. Unlike earlier projections that up to 95% of the file-sharers could stop downloading copyrighted content, the piracy rate has actually increased in the face of the new law.

The entertainment industry, nevertheless, continues to push legislation as the solution to online piracy, while ignoring their own role in the creation of the problem.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Users of Blogger can give their pages major makeovers starting Thursday morning thanks to a new tool called Template Designer.

After a few quiet years, Google's pioneering blog platform plans to add features with "momentum," said Blogger product manager Siobhan Quinn on the phone Wednesday.

The new design tool lets individual publishers choose from among hundreds of background images, tweak color schemes, drag and drop elements, resize the width of columns and easily manipulate practically everything on the page. Bloggers can access the beta product through Blogger Draft, and it will roll out to everyone within weeks.

Template Designer surpasses the limited options offered by most popular alternatives. WordPress has a smattering of attractive designs ripe for the picking, but they're difficult to tweak. Like a design but wish it had two columns instead of three? Tough.

This addition rivals the simple yet powerful layout tools from paid services like Squarespace and Moonfruit.

"We want you to be able to control everything," Quinn said. "The templates that have been offered have been very rigid.... They would soon become recognizable because of the huge number of people who are using Blogger."

Google doesn't say how huge that number is, but the network has more than 300 million readers, according to a company spokesman.

We snickered last month when, after Blogger remained mostly unchanged for months, the company added the ability to create pages. Sweet. WordPress has had that for years, and even relative newcomer Tumblr can do it. Then, a month later, Blogger comes back with a significant improvement to the design engine.

"You'll see our momentum is only going to grow from here," Quinn said.

Blogger spent much of last year "jumping on the whole social bandwagon," as Quinn called it. It added half-baked follower features and integration with Google Friend Connect, the redheaded stepchild of Facebook Connect.

Before that, Blogger was struggling with growth -- spam and infrastructure issues -- as well as adding tie-ins with Google AdWords' publisher monetization. Arguably essential but not the most glamorous features.

The Blogger team has since grown significantly -- now more than 25 -- and plans to "conquer a lot," Quinn said. "Blogger is really important to Google because Blogger feeds the content that Google can index."

Some improvements to Template Designer are already in the pipeline, including letting users upload their own background pictures. In addition, Blogger is working on overhauling its dated commenting system.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Image credit: Google

Join consumer advocates, MPs, prominent academics, and others in an open letter to the House of Lords criticizing recent proposal to amend the Digital Economy Bill in order force ISPs to proactively block websites suspected of copyright infringement.

A number of UK ISPs have joined forces with consumer advocacy groups, prominent academics, filmmakers, actors, and even websites eBay, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google to forge an open letter to the House of Lords criticizing the recent proposal to amend the Digital Economy Bill.

Amendment 120a, as written, would use the threat of “injunctions” against those ISPs that have “actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright,” but has failed to “prevent copyright infringement content being accessed at or via that online location or taken reasonable steps to remove copyright infringing content from that online location (or both).”

What it doesn’t spell out is exactly how ISPs are supposed to verify claims of copyright infringement (a new ISP detective bureau?) or the means of appeal. Some site operators may be falsely accused of copyright infringement and subsequently erroneously sanctioned by their ISP.

It’s already been observed that it would cause a “chilling effect” on the Internet, but these signatories add that it would “have unintended consequences that far outweigh any benefits it could bring.”

“Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended,” they add.

In fact, they argue that the amendment threatens the “reputation of the UK as a place to do online business and conflict(s) with the broader objectives of Digital Britain.”

The signatories include:

• Tom Alexander,Chief Executive, Orange
• Richard Allan,Director of Policy EU, Facebook
• Neil Berkett,Chief Executive, Virgin Media
• Matt Brittin,Managing Director, Google UK and Ireland
• Charles Dunstone,Chairman, Talk Talk Group
• Stephen Fry
• Jessica Hendrie-Liaño,Chair, Internet Services Providers Association
• Jill Johnstone,International Director, Consumer Focus
• Jim Killock,Executive Director, Open Rights Group
• Mark Lewis,Managing Director, eBay UK
• Ian Livingston,Chief Executive, BT Group
• Sarah Oates,University of Glasgow
• Jenny Pickerill,University of Leicester
• Mark Rabe,Managing Director, Yahoo! UK and Ireland
• Paul Reilly,University of Leicester
• Jess Search,Founder, Shooting People independent film makers
• Ian Walden,Queen Mary, University of London
• Tom Watson MP

The real problem with the amendment is that it could shutter websites with merely the threat of action since there’s no mechanism to make a case or even appeal the findings. All one has to do is be accused of copyright infringement to run afoul of the law.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

An amendment to the UK’s Digital Economy Bill that could force ISPs to block access to copyright-infringing websites has been slammed by the heads of the four largest UK ISPs, along with Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo.

The joint letter to the Financial Times claims that “the amendment seeks to address the legitimate concerns of rights-holders but would have unintended consequences that far outweigh any benefits it could bring”. The letter doesn’t pull its punches:

“Blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended. To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor lawmaking.”

This is the very real issue with the Digital Economy Bill. Despite a long and frankly tortuous consultation process, since the bill got to its latest House of Lords reading, it’s been the subject of a barrage of amendments from all angles – some of which have never been discussed as part of the consultation.

Standing outside the ongoing needling between rightsowners and ISPs / tech firms, it’s hard not to wonder whether this is any way to put together such an important piece of legislation, which is supposed to be tackling online piracy while also fostering innovative new business models for digital media.

And that’s without even mentioning the fact that the whole thing is having to be hurried through before the UK’s General Election – currently expected to take place in May.