What Happens When the Copyright Pirate Is State Government? A documentary filmmaker says North Carolina posted his footage without permission.youtube.com North Carolina claims immunity. A quick hypothetical: A state government, say North Carolina, is running short on cash.youtube.com To cure the budget shortfall, Gov. 1 a view. If Cooper did so without Disney's permission, could he get away with pirating the movie without punishment? This specific scenario may seem ridiculous and unlikely to happen anytime soon, but nevertheless, the answer may be surprising. Last week, after the U.S. Supreme Court requested North Carolina's thoughts on a petition before the high court, the state argued that it had sovereign immunity from federal copyright claims. The position is disconcerting to some in the entertainment industry.
Rick Allen is the documentary filmmaker challenging the new status quo. In 2013, Allen accused North Carolina and its Department of Natural and Cultural Resources of copyright infringement because the state had posted a few images of the shipwreck on its website. 15,000 for the infringements, but after taking the images down, the Department then posted five short videos and one photograph from the recovery expedition. Can North Carolina insulate itself by putting any copyrighted work in the public domain? That raises a constitutional question. The Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits federal courts from entertaining citizen suits against a state. In the 1980s, a series of legal decisions took up the issue of whether the Copyright Act abrogated state sovereign immunity.
The answer turned out to be "no." It was held that copyright holders suing a state couldn't recover monetary damages for infringements. However, in Florida Prepaid v. College Savings Bank (1999), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law allowing citizens to sue states for patent infringement. What followed, of course, were attacks on the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, giving citizens the right to hold states liable for copyright infringement. Now, Allen is seeking review before the Supreme Court and is arguing that absent a review, creators of original expression will be left without a remedy when states trample on their federal copyrights. He asserts that Congress indeed has constitutional authority to abrogate state sovereign immunity for copyright infringement and that various courts have overread Florida Prepaid and similar cases.
He also points to "more nuanced instruction" from follow-up Supreme Court precedent (see Central Virginia Community College v. Katz). North Carolina at first didn't want to respond, but after the case was discussed by the justices on March 1 at a conference, a response was requested. Give us a chance to write our own laws, North Carolina basically argued. North Carolina's opposition brief. The RIAA is somewhat aghast at reasoning by lower courts.youtube.com In an amicus brief, the lobbying arm of music labels argues that state law is unlikely to provide a viable alternative remedy to infringement since for starters, federal courts generally have exclusive jurisdiction over copyright claims. Moreover, lawsuits premised on state claims (like conversion) would involve untested legal theories.
Now back to what would happen if a state decided to stream Avengers: Endgame. Disney might not be able to collect damages, but it could at least shoot for an injunction under how appellate courts have been interpreting the current state of law. Would it be good enough? Hardware that supports pirated video streaming content comes packed with malware. You get what you pay for when you pirate content. Thats the takeaway from the latest report by Digital Citizens Alliance. It found that pirating hardware, which enables free streaming copyright-protected content, comes packed with malicious malware. The devices give criminals easy access to router settings, can plant malware on shared network devices and are often leveraged to steal user credentials.
According to the Digital Citizens Alliance, 13 percent of 2,073 Americans surveyed use a hardware device for pirating content.youtube.com 100 on grey markets. Kodi is an open-source media player designed for televisions and developed by the XBMC Foundation. Its widely known for its support of a bevy of copyright-infringing apps that offer free access to premium content from Netfix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, sports networks and paid subscription music services. If apps on the box or that are later downloaded have malware, the user has helped the hacker past network security, wrote Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) in a recently released report. In a review of hardware and pirating apps, such as FreeNetflix, researchers said they found malware piggybacking on illegal apps and preloaded with content.
For example, when researchers installed a live sports streaming app called Mobdro, the app forwarded the researchers Wi-Fi network name and password to a server in Indonesia. In other instances, 1.5 terabytes of data was uploaded from a device that shared the same network of the Kodi box. And, in yet another instance, researchers uncovered a clever scheme that enabled criminals to pose as well-known streaming sites, such as Netflix, to facilitate illegal access to a legitimate subscription of an actual Netflix subscriber, according to the report. For its investigation DCA partnered with GroupSense, a security firm that specializes in chatrooms that facilitate black market sales.
It claims hackers were discussing how to leverage networks compromised by illicit media streaming services in hopes of recruiting them into DDoS botnets or to mine cryptocurrency. Given that users rarely install anti-virus tools on such devices, the opportunities for exploitation are numerous, wrote researchers. The unsavory worlds of pirated content and malware are no strangers. Researchers have long warned that patronizing such services is a shortcut to infection. Earlier this month, Kaspersky Lab released a report that found that illegal downloads of HBOs Game of Thrones accounted for 17 percent of all infected pirated content in the last year.
In Aug. 2018 researchers at ESET said they found DDoS modules had been added to a Kodi third-party add-on. ESET said it also found copyright-infringing apps that came with multi-stage crypto-mining malware that targeted Windows and Linux systems. As part of its report, DCA reached out to XBMC Foundation. XBMC quickly rebuffed any notion it tacitly supported or endorsed pirated content. The Kodi application typically runs on hardware, such as jailbroken media streamer Amazon Fire TV Stick, and is sold by independent resellers on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. DCA said it also found Kodi pre-installed on a number of devices including inexpensive China-made media streamers.
The software can also be found on legitimate devices, that were sold pre-sideloaded with Kodi software. DCA did its own independent testing over the course of 500 hours of lab testing. It estimates there are 12 million active users of the illicit devices in North American homes. Those users present a tempting target because they offer hackers a new avenue to exploit consumers and a path to reach other devices on a home network. The findings should serve as a wake-up call for consumers, the technology community, and policymakers to take the threat seriously, it said. Audiences have splintered into a million personalized subsets.
Streaming services are sprouting like mushrooms. Attention spans are now measured in seconds. For those reasons and others a decade of stagnant attendance, studios that [https://beebs.io/blog/bbc-access/bbc-iplayer-only-works-in-the-uk/ BBC iPlayer only works in the UK] seem to make sequels of sequels (of sequels) movie theaters are seen as a dying business. Why trudge to a theater when Netflix is available in your pocket anytime you want? Yet almost every multiplex on the planet was gridlocked over the weekend. 1.2 billion worldwide, arriving as the No. 1 movie in at least 54 countries. 270 million in todays dollars. It shows the power of theaters the ability, even in a hyper-fragmented culture, to deliver that wildly big communal experience, Megan Colligan, president of Imax Filmed Entertainment, said in an interview. Read our review of Avengers: Endgame. | Catch up on all the M.C.U.
It also shows that Hollywood is increasingly reliant on spectacle to jolt people away from Facebook, Fortnite, Hulu and Netflix and into movie theaters. All kinds of movies used to break through at the box office. In 1998, the top 10 grossing movies of the year included an Oscar-nominated war epic (Saving Private Ryan), three comedies, a couple of science-fiction extravaganzas (Armageddon), the comedic drama Patch Adams and a smattering of family films (Dr. Last year, there were no comedies and only one drama: Bohemian Rhapsody, which doubled as a musical. Big-budget fantasies and animated movies took up eight slots.
When the industrys new strategy works, it works big. Young moviegoers will remember where they were when they saw Endgame, who they saw it with and what it felt like, John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, wrote in an email. And there could be more to come. Disneys The Lion King, a retelling of the animated musical using photo-realistic visual effects, arrives in July and is generating runaway advance interest. In December, Disney will release Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the final chapter in a nine-part saga. Also coming this year are giants like Toy Story 4 (Disney), The Secret Life of Pets 2 (Universal), Spider-Man: Far From Home (Sony) and It: Chapter 2 (Warner Bros.).
Even so, concerns about the health of theatrical business are unlikely to abate, at least behind closed doors in Hollywood. In some ways, Avengers: Endgame could add to them. People like Steven Spielberg worry that the film business is headed toward a bifurcated future where megamovies play in cinemas and everything else gets squeezed onto streaming-service screens. To that end, there is heated debate in Hollywood over what constitutes a movie. Should the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences try to protect the big-screen experience by blocking films like Netflixs award-winning Roma that are primarily distributed on the internet from competing for Oscars?
Last week, members of the academy board debated what to do, ultimately deciding to keep weighing the options. Media analysts have also sounded alarms. 150 million to market worldwide, played in 4,662 theaters in North America over the weekend. 8 million at 2,435 theaters in its eighth week, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data. 7.5 million from 3,372 theaters. Hollywood has long expected Avengers: Endgame to be a sensation. When tickets became available for presale on April 2, the demand crashed AMC servers.youtube.com 200 million. Ziploc started selling Avengers-themed sandwich bags; McDonalds, teaming with Marvel for the first time, introduced 24 Avengers toys. We wanted it to feel like an epic, important, seminal, cant-miss event, said Asad Ayaz, president of marketing at Walt Disney Studios.
Mr. Ayaz and his lieutenants devised a strategy in which Disney spent massively on television ads around a few important moments (the day tickets went on presale, for instance) and then went completely dark for a week or more. The idea was to stun and surprise people with new creative messaging and then leave them wanting more, Mr. Ayaz said. About 44 percent of the global total came from 3-D screenings, according to the technology company RealD. Disney said on Sunday morning that the movie set a record for the largest opening weekend in 44 overseas markets, with Imax theaters contributing an outsized portion of ticket sales, particularly in China. Ticket sales for Avengers: Endgame were assuredly helped by improvements that multiplex chains have introduced in recent years.
For instance, after the subscription-based ticketing service MoviePass proved to be popular with millennials, AMC and other theater operators created their own subscription programs. Apps like Atom Tickets and Fandango have made buying tickets in advance more popular, which helps to create buzz and reduce the need to wait in line at box-office windows. But the movie, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, arrived as a cultural and commercial thunderclap because of the way in which Kevin Feige, Marvels president, built the Avengers series to a storytelling climax. In the last installment, Avengers: Infinity War, a lantern-jawed villain named Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers and turned half the creatures in the universe to dust, including a vast number of superheroes.
Avengers: Endgame finds battered survivors like Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) joining together in one final attempt to restore order. It is likely to be the last film with the original and beloved Avengers cast, Mr. Creutz said. If so, plenty of people made sure they were there to see it. And they appear to have been satisfied: In CinemaScore exit polls, ticket buyers gave the film an A-plus. Thousands of hours of Marion Stokess personal recordings will now be digitized, one tape at a time. About 71,000 VHS and Betamax cassettes are sitting in boxes, stacked 50-to-a-pallet in the Internet Archives physical storage facility in Richmond, California, waiting to be digitized.
The tapes are not in chronological order, or really any order at all. They got a little jumbled as they were transferred. First recorded in Marion Stokess home in the Barclay Condominiums in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, the tapes had been distributed among nine additional apartments she purchased solely for storage purposes during her life. Later, they passed on to her children, into storage, and finally to the California-based archive. Although no one knew it at the time, the recordings Stokes made from 1975 until her death in 2012 are the only comprehensive collection preserving this period in television media history.
In 1975, Stokes got a Betamax magnetic videotape recorder and began recording bits of sitcoms, science documentaries, and political news coverage. She was interested in access to information, documenting media, making sure people had the information they needed to make good decisions, says the films director, Matt Wolf. The year 1980 brought the launch of CNN, and the 24-hour news cycle. Soon, three, four, five, and sometimes as many as eight tapes were spinning away at once in Stokess apartment, recording news broadcasts, commercials, and everything in between on multiple networks. While many people assumed that television networks held on to everything they aired, that wasnt the case. Studios were constantly erasing and recycling broadcast tapes in order to save money and free up storage space.
Stokes was no stranger to television and its role in molding public opinion. An activist archivist, she had been a librarian with the Free Library of Philadelphia for nearly 20 years before being fired in the early 1960s, likely for her work as a Communist party organizer.youtube.com From 1968 to 1971, she had co-produced Input, a Sunday-morning talk show airing on the local Philadelphia CBS affiliate, with John S. Stokes Jr., who would later become her husband. Input brought together academics, community and religious leaders, activists, scientists, and artists to openly discuss social justice issues and other topics of the day. Our vision is really aligned with Marions, says Roger Macdonald, director of the television archives at the Internet Archive.
Its really bold and ambitious: universal access to all knowledge. Marions son had contacted the Internet Archive when he was trying to find a home for her tapes in 2013. Macdonald immediately seized the opportunity.youtube.com Within 20 minutes, the two were on the phone. Macdonald recalls asking Metelits, How could you physically manage taping all this stuff? In addition to her son Michael and her husband, Stokess nurse, secretary, driver, and step-children were enlisted to assist in her around-the-clock task of capturing every moment on television. She would also involve them in active conversations, asking those around her what they thought about how the issues of the day were being handled on broadcast television.
Having been surveilled by the government for her early political activismshe and her first husband, Melvin Metelits, had attempted to defect to Cuba together before splitting upStokes was exceedingly cautious about her recordings while she was alive. She eschewed Tivo, and although she was an early and evangelical investor in Apple Inc., she never sent an email in her life.youtube.com She even managed to convince the rest of the already-wealthy Stokes clan to buy Apple stock, which paid off in spades. She funneled these funds into her recording project and the massive storage space she required as the sole force behind it. Shes already excluded from power and established institutions, so it makes sense that shed want to pursue her lifes work privately, says Wolf.
Now, Stokess work will be made publicly available on the Internet Archives, bit by bit, offering everyone the opportunity to examine historyand perhaps to set the record straight. The latest addition to Samsungs TV range is the Sero, a 43-inch TV that was designed with the millennial generation in mind and therefore pivots between horizontal and vertical orientations. Its a much smarter idea than the phrase vertical TV would lead you to believe. Acknowledging that most mobile content is vertical, Samsung says the Sero is designed to encourage young people to project more of their smartphone stuff onto the TV by allowing it to go vertical. Throwing in 4.1-channel, 60W speakers along with an integrated navy stand and a minimalist rear design, Samsung seems to hope this TV will function as both a music streaming hub and a handsome piece of furniture.
When its not used as a conventional TV or a phone enlarger, the Sero can also serve as a huge digital photo frame or a music visualizer, and Samsungs Bixby voice assistant will be on hand, too. 1,600) in its home market of South Korea at the end of May. The Sero occupies a weird middle ground between a concept and a real product. Opening a pop-up store in Seoul today and showing off the Sero alongside its existing Serif and Frame TV lines, Samsung is adding to its so-called lifestyle TV lineup. It is putting a price and release date on the Sero.
But the company also calls this new TV a concept, and its efforts will surely include close monitoring of consumer feedback to the entire premise. Will millennials warm to the expanded flexibility, or will they feel subtly attacked for the Sero exposing the intensity of their (okay, our) smartphone addiction? Those fast network speeds would come in handy for downloading high-res content. Huawei is reportedly working on the first 5G 8K television and could unveil it as early as this year, according to Nikkei Asian Review. The Chinese tech giant, which makes its own 5G chips, would be a newcomer in the television space.