In recent years the European Commission has proposed and adopted various legislative changes to help combat online piracy.

 

This includes the Copyright Directive which passed last year as well as the Digital Services Act, which was officially unveiled last December.

 

These changes have been welcomed by major copyright holders but not all of them are entirely pleased. The owners of the rights to major sports events, for example, believe that current solutions are not suited to deal with live streaming piracy.

Swift Takedowns for Live Streaming

For sports groups, timing is of the utmost importance. When pirates publish live streams, it is pointless reporting them when it takes two hours before a takedown notice is processed. By that time, the football match or UFC fight has already ended.

 

To address this problem, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament agreed on a draft resolution, proposed by rapporteur Angel Dzhambazki. This effectively proposes a system where online platforms and hosting services are required to remove pirated sports streams soon as possible.

 

Specifically, the draft calls for current legislation to be updated to “specify that the removal of the illegal content should take place immediately after reception of the notice and no later than 30 minutes after the event started.”

 

These takedown notices can be sent by the copyright holders or by ‘trusted whistleblowers’ who are certified to police online platforms.

Parliament Adopts ’30-Minute’ Takedown Proposal

After approving the draft it was referred to the European Parliament which approved it with 479 votes in favor, 171 against, and 40 abstentions. This means that it will now be sent to the EU Commission, which has to decide whether it will submit a legislative proposal on the issue, or not.

 

Rapporteur Angel Dzhambazki is hopeful that the Commission will pick up this issue, which he believes is much needed to protect sports organizers.

 

“The piracy of the content of live broadcast sporting events is a major challenge for the organizers. The problem with the existing measures is that enforcement comes too late,” Dzhambazki comments today.

 

“In the report, Parliament calls on the Commission to clarify and adapt the existing legislation, including the possibility of enacting orders to block or remove access to unauthorized live online sports broadcasts in real time,” the rapporteur adds.

Not All MEPs Are Happy With the Vote

Not all Members of Parliament are in favor of these measures. Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer actively tried to stop the plan, backed by the Greens/EFA Group. While that didn’t work, Breyer did get an amendment passed to prevent overblocking.

 

Overall, however, the Pirate Party MEP still believes that the proposed legislation will do more harm than good and he hopes the Commission agrees.

 

“The commercialized sports lobby prevailed and obtained a vote for radical measures that would be ineffective but harmful to fans and users in general. I hope these draconian measures such as take-downs without court orders will never be implemented,” Breyer tells us.

 

“The Commission should know better than to counteract its own proposal of a Digital Services Act. At least we won a tight majority for our amendment 10 stressing that illegal content never justifies the overblocking also of legal content on the same server,” he adds.

No Harm to Consumers?

In a press release on today’s vote, the European Parliament is also mindful of potential overblocking, noting that arbitrary or disproportionate blocking of legal content should be avoided.

 

At the same time, copyright holders have an obligation to ensure that legal options are widely available to consumers. These consumers should not be held liable for illegal streaming either, the Parliament clarifies.

 

“Liability for the illegal broadcast of sporting events should lie with the providers of sports streams, and not with the fans or consumers.”

 

That final comment is important. This stresses that if new measures are implemented, these are not intended to back a crackdown against streaming users. Instead, they are solely targeted at hosting platforms and online streaming providers.

 

After being released in 2003, the .MUSIC top-level domain became a hot property, with several major companies hoping to secure the rights to control what was expected to become an important tool to promote music worldwide.

 

After fighting off the likes of Google, Amazon and domain registry Donuts, in 2019 Cyprus-based DotMusic Limited announced that its application had been accepted and ICANN would award it the rights to the domain extension. The move was broadly welcomed by the music industry, with IFPI and the RIAA noting they were satisfied by DotMusic’s assurances that the TLD would not be abused for piracy purposes.

 

Ten years earlier, however, the mood was very different.

RIAA Issues Stern Warnings to ICANN

In a strongly-worded message to ICANN back in 2011, the RIAA expressed deep concern that .MUSIC would become a breeding ground for pirates, warning that it could be used to “enable wide scale copyright and trademark infringement.”

 

“We strongly urge you to take these concerns seriously,” the RIAA continued. “We prefer a practical solution to these issues, and hope to avoid the need to escalate the issue further.”

 

A decade on and after a substantial amount of background work, those fears are a distant memory. In fact, it now appears that .MUSIC will be an incredibly hostile place for pirates – even if they are able to find a way to obtain a .MUSIC domain in the first instance.

.MUSIC Sign Registry Agreement With ICANN

In an announcement from DotMusic CEO Constantine Roussos, the company reveals that it has now signed a formal agreement with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to operate the .MUSIC domain.

 

“This has been a long, challenging and unpredictable process for the entire .MUSIC team and the global music community, which has supported the .MUSIC initiative to launch a safe, trusted and secure .MUSIC domain extension and identity,” Roussos says.

 

“Finally, after nearly a decade-long effort since applying for .MUSIC, we are excited to have signed the registry agreement with ICANN. We are now one step closer in providing the international music community with a verified music web address and identity that signals trust, authenticity and a safe haven for music consumption on a global level.”

 

With a clear emphasis on safety and security, it seems that preventing piracy is now one of the domain’s top priorities. And via some of the most stringent and piracy-specific policies ever seen in the domain world, .MUSIC and its industry partners appear to have most if not all angles covered.

Enhanced Safeguarding & Copyright Protection

To begin, .MUSIC says it will ensure that its domains will only be available to “legitimate members” of the global music community. The domain is governed and controlled by that community, with seats on its Policy Advisory Board occupied by entities such as IFPI, the RIAA, National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and The American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), to name just four.

 

Anyone signing up for a .MUSIC domain will have to be validated through a mandatory two-step phone and email authentication process and to protect the names of famous brands and artists, these will be given priority during the launch phase. Those thinking of obtaining a .MUSIC domain as a mirror or replacement for their existing piracy-focused domain will also be disappointed.

 

“Absent a 2/3 vote from the Policy Advisory Board (PAB) to permit the site to remain live or credible evidence that the site has been authorized by most of the applicable rights holders to use the content in question, DotMusic shall ensure that all strings for sites on other gTLDs for which Trusted Senders (e.g. IFPI or RIAA or BPI etc.) have sent notices of over 10,000 infringements on such site, will be on the block domain list,” .MUSIC’s copyright provisions read.

 

“Any strings on the block domain list will not be made available on .music. For example this means if notices of over 10,000 infringements on abc.xyz site have been sent, then DotMusic will ensure that abc.music is blocked, and will not be sold or resolve. The block domain list shall be continuously updated.”

Registrants Must Deploy Strict Anti-Piracy Policies

Those operating a .MUSIC domain will be required to implement policies that effectively tackle copyright infringement, ones that go beyond a simple notice-and-takedown process. Indeed, .MUSIC insists that when a takedown notice is received, domains must not only remove the content on the specific URL listed, but also ensure that the same content is removed site-wide.

 

In addition, .MUSIC registrants must also implement strict repeat infringer policies that terminate users if they are targeted by “several” copyright infringement notices. Any domain registrant that does not meet these standards, including by not having an active policy, will be suspended. Repeat offenders will be denied access to .MUSIC domains, period.

 

Furthermore, any site that makes music available (directly or indirectly) that is owned by a third party will be required to publish the full name of its operator, plus a phone number and physical/email addresses on the site itself. Failure to adhere to these terms will result in an immediate suspension.

 

Finally, DotMusic says that if it receives a complaint from any of its Trusted Senders (which include IFPI and the RIAA), it will immediately suspend the platform until the dispute is resolved.

.MUSIC Sets the Gold Standard For The Music Industry

It’s clear from the above that the music industry has allayed most if not all of its initial fears that .MUSIC would develop into a playground for pirates.

 

With oversight and veto powers over anything that may be deemed even remotely infringing by the major labels, .MUSIC seems unlikely to prove attractive to anyone seeking to create any kind of disruptive business model. Or at least those that seek to do so but don’t mind their entire operation being shut down, even in advance of any dispute being settled.

In the United States and much of Europe, the idea that certain content should not appear online is not alien but in Russia, the situation is policed directly by government.

 

So-called “prohibited content” covers a broad spectrum of material, from pirated movies and TV shows to broadly defined terrorist material, the promotion of illicit drugs, and the abuse of minors. And according to Russian telecoms watchdog Roskomndazor, all of these things and more are made available by users of Twitter.

After Being Punished By Throttling, Twitter Faced Total Blocking

For some time, Roskomndazor has been calling on Twitter to remove “prohibited” content, to ensure that the social media platform complies with Russian law. The telecoms watchdog claimed that it had reported thousands of tweets to Twitter but after the platform failed to remove them, Russia adopted its own punitive measures to bring the company into line.

 

As a first step back in March, Russia reportedly used Deep Packet Inspection in order to identify and then throttle local Twitter traffic down to just 128kbps. That wasn’t without collateral damage but Russia doubled down by warning that Twitter could find itself blocked completely via court order, if it failed to respond to demands.

 

Given the mantra that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it, some vowed to turn to VPNs, as they had done in the past when pirate sites and Telegram were blocked. But Russia warned that this wouldn’t help, informing the public that “much had changed” since the country attempted to block Telegram in 2018.

Twitter is Now Cooperating With Russia

In an announcement yesterday, Roskomndazor noted the May 15 deadline it had given Twitter to fall into compliance had come and gone. However, it appears some progress has been made.

 

On March 10, the day Russia began throttling Twitter, Roskomndazor already had demands on the table for the social platform to remove 4,100 “prohibited” items dating back to 2017. After that date, a further 1,800 new items were posted to the site. By last Saturday, however, Twitter had removed 91% of the contentious content and had signaled willingness to combat the problem moving forward.

 

“The management of Twitter sent a letter to Roskomnadzor, in which it confirmed that it fully shares the agency’s actions to combat socially dangerous content and will take all necessary measures to remove it,” the regulator says.

 

“The management of the social network expressed its readiness and interest in building a constructive dialogue with Roskomnadzor. The Twitter administration asked us not to take action to block Twitter, as well as to remove the current restrictions on its work.”

More Work Must Be Done Before Throttling is Completely Removed

After expressing appreciation for Twitter’s cooperation, Roskomnadzor appears to be loosening its grip on Twitter, but that comes with some caveats. In return for Twitter’s efforts, Russia says it will not seek to block Twitter entirely and will remove access restrictions on fixed Internet connections. However, throttling will remain on mobile networks until Twitter complies with all demands.

 

“(i)n order to completely remove the imposed restrictions on Twitter, it is necessary [for Twitter] to remove all identified prohibited materials, as well as bring the response time to the agency’s requirements into line with Russian standards (no later than 24 hours from the receipt of the request),” Roskomnadzor writes.

 

But as one problem appears to be nearing its conclusion, others are raising their heads.

Russia Warns YouTube & Facebook Of Similar Action

After apparently bringing Twitter much closer to full compliance, Russia appears keen to expand its reach to other media platforms presenting it with similar problems. According to Roskomndazor, “prohibited” content is also making an appearance on Facebook, YouTube and other “Internet sites” and if they don’t take action, they will face similar measures.

 

“It should be noted that at present, cases have been identified of posting illegal materials on other Internet sites, including Facebook and YouTube. In the event that these platforms do not take appropriate measures, similar sanctions may be applied to them,” Roskomndazor warns.

 

While no platform wants to be slowed down, the nature of Twitter means that throttling presents less of a problem than it would to Facebook and YouTube, the latter in particular. Whether Russia would apply the same bandwidth restrictions to these platforms is currently unknown but if that was indeed the case, both could be rendered almost entirely unusable.

 

At the time of writing there’s no renewed mention of VPN blocking in respect of either of these platforms. However, given that VPN use has the ability to undermine the leverage that Russia holds in ‘negotiations’ with user-generated content sites, it seems likely that the same threats will apply. And according to earlier analysis, it’s at least possible that Russia has the necessary tools to carry them out.