Hello. Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix here.
Do you love the indulgence of watching episode after episode of your favorite shows on Netflix?
Have you ever wished you could do the same with new shows when they premiere on TV?
Well, starting today, you can enjoy as many episodes as you please of the brand new Netflix Original Series “Lilyhammer,” starring Steven Van Zandt.
There may be times when you don’t have an Internet connection on your Android device, but you still want access to a file you’ve saved in Google Docs. Now you can select any file in Google Docs to make it available offline. So regardless of whether you’re connected to the internet, you’re always connected to those files.
Even better, Google Docs automatically updates your offline files when you’re on Wi-Fi. You can also manually update files anytime you have a data connection by opening the file or tapping ‘Update’ from the Offline section of the app.
From Wired:
Ireland is soon to have a law similar to Sopa passed that would give music and movie companies the power to force Irish ISPs to block access to sites suspected of having copyright infringing material on them.
Irish citizens won’t have a chance to lobby their democratic representatives because there won’t be a vote on the law — snappily named “S.I. No. of 2011 European Communities (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2011″ – in the Irish Parliament. Instead the law is being enacted by ministerial order because it is being prepared in the form of a Statutory Instrument.
The law could mean that judges can order Irish ISPs — such as Eircom and UPC — as well as mobile networks to block access to social networking sites where an individual user has shared infringing material.
The legislation was prepared in response to a court decision that ruled that although the rights of EMI were being breached by internet providers letting its copyrighted works be shared for free, the law didn’t have any way of addressing the situation — something that European law requires. It was hoped that the legislation might appease rights holders, but that hasn’t stopped therecord label from filing a lawsuit against the Irish government for failing to clamp down on music piracy.
Representatives of 21 of the EU’s member states, including the UK, have signed off on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) – the European version of the US SOPA and PIPA rolled into one and cranked up to 11.
Only Cyprus, Germany, Estonia, Slovakia, and the Netherlands have held off on signing the treaty, which will give authorities even more power to enforce copyright than was contained in aforementioned online-piracy legislation currently on hold in the US.
In a signing ceremony in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, His Excellency Mr. Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, head of the EU delegation, said in a statement that ACTA “aims to improve enforcement mechanisms to help its members combat IPR infringement more effectively.”
It seems he’s quite isolated in this opinion, however. Thousands of protestors took to the streets in Poland to protest the signing of the treaty, which was developed behind closed doors by media industry lobbyists and politicians, and hackers have been busy registering their protests online.
In an unprecedented move, the French European Parliament member assigned to monitor the treaty proceedings, Kader Arif, resigned in protest at the signings, and issued a strongly worded rebuke, saying that the EU was trying to have as little public debate on ACTA as possible, and that right-wing groups were trying to ram it into law with no oversight.
From Boingboing:
Michael Geist sez,
Recent revelations that the content industries are demanding that Canada implement SOPA-style provisions into its copyright law have raised concerns the law could be used to target legitimate sites. Industry lawyers say there is no reason for worry, yet an analysis of the proposed law set against the claims made by Viacom against Youtube show that there is a very real possibility that new law could be used to target the Internet’s most popular video site.
That would create a huge chill in the investment and technology community in Canada. Online video sites, cloud computing sites, and other online services may look at the Bill C-11 and fear that even a lawsuit could create massive costs, scare away investors, and stifle new innovation. Indeed, a recent study by Booz & Company found this to be a very real problem, with a large majority of the angel investors and venture capitalists saying they will not put their money in digital content intermediaries if governments pass tough new rules allowing websites to be sued or fined for infringing digital content posted by users. The U.S. has dropped for SOPA, but now incredibly Canada may consider the very provisions that causes investors to become skittish.
Would a SOPA Version of the Canadian Copyright Bill Target Youtube?
