In this day and age, online copyright infringement is nothing new, no thanks (or should I say "many thanks") to the good number of available Internet intermediaries. We have all read of news, or perhaps even heard through the grapevine, of huge and widely-known companies suing those that provide the means and avenues to facilitate the infringement. Does the infamous Napster case ring a bell?
An interesting twist, however, may well be on its way. Recent news revealed the claim of a file hosting site against a prominent movie studio alleging that anti-piracy tools were used by the film-making company to remove content they do not even own. Hotfile, the Internet intermediary, filed a pleading and alleged therein that Warner Brothers used an anti-piracy software to remove its copyrighted materials, but at the same time taking down some that the studio did not own.
Several countries have long enacted laws to address the issue of the liabilities of Internet intermediaries for copyright infringement. The Filipino lawmakers in the House have passed on 3rd Reading its (long overdue) Philippine counterpart, while those in Senate have yet to tackle its consolidated bill.
Will amendments be made in existing foreign laws and in the bills thus drafted in the Philippines to afford intermediaries a little more leeway (in addition to safe harbor provisions etc) and safeguards from the possible and now seemingly more evident abuses committed against it by copyright owners and even by its infringing users?
Sources: http://techland.time.com/2011/07/27/is-warner-bros-removing-other-peoples-content-from-the-internet/
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-hotfile-fights-backsays-movie-studio-abused-its-anti-piracy-tool/
Entry # 7 by Diana Margaret C. Lauron
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