Friday’s Endnotes – 12/11/15

Protecting artists from streaming piracy benefits creativity and technology — Although a viewer’s experience is essentially the same whether they download or stream a copyrighted work from a site, the potential criminal penalties for an infringing service vary widely based on this distinction. Here, CPIP’s Devlin Hartline and Matt Barblan argue that the distinction no longer makes sense, and Congress should harmonize copyright’s criminal penalties to better address wide-scale, online commercial infringement.

Streaming Now Consumes 70 Percent of Internet Bandwidth — Underscoring the above point, a new study shows that streaming has overtaken downloading—and, indeed, all other uses—in terms of consumption of internet bandwidth. Paul Resnikoff also observes that Netflix alone has grabbed an impressive 37.1% of bandwidth in North America using a paid-only model, which”raises some serious questions about Spotify’s ‘freemium’ approach.”

U.S. Copyright Office Deserves 21st Century Upgrade — “The Copyright Office’s administration of the law helps to support an industry that adds over $1 trillion to the U.S. economy every year. But it is currently subservient to the Library’s discretion, not just on IT, but budget, human resources, and every essential aspect of its operation. The result is that the systems of the Copyright Office are woefully outdated; stakeholders and policymakers unanimously agree that the Copyright Office must modernize. Congress has a perfect opportunity to give the Copyright Office the autonomy it needs to modernize according to its vision and the demands of its customers to better serve the American people and industry. That opportunity should not be missed.”

Facebook Stole My Work and All I Got Was This Hangover — A new cohort of creators have found success taking advantage of the opportunities provided by internet native platforms like YouTube to reach new audiences. But, unfortunately, they have not been immune to the harm of piracy that established media like film and television have long faced. Here, Ruth Vitale discusses the emerging problem of “freebooting”, where videos are ripped from one site, like YouTube, and reposted on another site, like Facebook, without permission or credit.

Downloading free stuff online comes with a cost – Malware — Ellen Seidler reports on a new study by Digital Citizens Alliance which shows that infringing sites pose an increased risk to consumers of being exposed to malware. As the study points out, many sites, in fact, make money primarily through the distribution of all forms of malware and use stolen content merely as bait to lure unwitting users to the site.