Negotiations are currently underway in Seoul, South Korea on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and apparently the internet chapter of this copyright treaty has leaked. And what do you know: its details are enough to make any freedom-lovin’ American apoplectic with rage. Amongst the proposals are international provisions to ensure that ISPs follow “notice and takedown regimes,” that policies are put in place to “deter unauthorized storage and transmission of allegedly copyright infringing content” (according to EFF), and that ACTA signatories enable legal action to be taken against those who break technological protection measures (such as DRM).

In other words, this is about extending government control over the internet all within a global framework.

ACTA began in October 2007 and aims to introduce international standards to tackle counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works. As summarised by Boing Boing, ISPs would “have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material” and “cut off the internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability.” What’s key here is that internet access could be denied and content blocked simply because an allegation is made. No evidence has to be produced to justify the claims. Is there anything more un-American?

The Obama administration purportedly refused to disclose the text of the treaty “due to ‘national security’ concerns.” HMPH!

As we prepped you on last week (TMT News), Google announced the launch of a new search system yesterday, October 28, to assist in finding music to both purchase and stream. Now, every time you search for an artist, song, album title, or even lyric, the results will be displayed in a specific section that will include artwork and a link to stream the music through the new Google music player, powered by MySpace Music and Lala. Each song can only be played once through in full. Users can then purchase the song by clicking a “Buy” link or be directed to other music sites like Pandora, IMEEM, and Rhapsody.

While Yahoo has a similar music search partnership with Rhapsody, Google still holds 64.6% of the search market, with Yahoo coming in second at only 16%, according to Nielsen MegaView Search. Billboard spoke to several record label executives about Google’s new music search system, drawing positive feedback: “I think it’s amazing,” EMI Music senior VP of global digital marketing Syd Schwartz told Billboard. “Any situation where we can make the process of discovery and helping artist and audience find one another in better ways is something that’s going to help the business.”

U.S. readers: expect the new search results over the next few days. Everyone else? Sorry, this is a U.S.-only deal for the time being.

On October 22, an Amsterdam court ruled that, within three months, The Pirate Bay has to remove a list of torrents linking to copyrighted works (I thought the Dutch were supposed to be liberal?). According to TorrentFreak, “The list is to be provided by BREIN,” who is the “joint anti-piracy program of authors, artists and producers of music, film and interactive software” in the Netherlands. If owners of The Pirate Bay — Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm — fail to comply, they will be fined 5,000 euros ($7,500) per person, per day. Additionally, the court said the Swedish pirates “have to block Dutch users from accessing certain parts of the site (across all their domains) where users can download copyrighted files.”

The case was notable for the defendants’ claim that they “were not the owners of the site, but a Seychelles based company named Reservella.” Despite this act of bravado, the court dismissed the assertion since the Swedes did not have sufficient proof that The Pirate Bay had been acquired by this organization. However, Peter Sunde continues to argue that the site was “given away for free” in 2006 to an unknown entity, who then sold it to Reservella. Interestingly, Ars Technica says it was given anonymous information on Reservella, the name of which is “alleged to come from a Seychelles luxury hotel called ‘La Reserve.’” The company is supposedly registered with the Mayfair Trust Group Limited in the Seychelles city of Victoria.

Holy crap, this is starting to sound like a fucking James Bond film. However, the question on self-righteous TMT readers’ lips is: Should we start hating the luxury hotel industry now in addition to the major labels and anti-piracy outfits? This Pirate Bay thing is not making it easy to channel my smug indignation.

Once upon a time, creativity could be packaged, marketed, and distributed to loving music fans across the world. CDs were a new technology, and a successful source of revenue. Record Executives and musicians alike became prosperous and all was peaceful in the land. Until the fallow years came. Plucky college students began a quest to not only be music’s consumers, but to become its distributors, too. Using the immortal powers of the internet, music could now be shared between internet users and CDs quickly became all but irrelevant.

In a terminally ill industry, music execs felt the burn of their losses. "Help us, oh Lord!!" they cried. And the Lord heard their prayers. The clouds parted and God said… "let there be streaming music services sponsored by select media outlets." Google heard the command and said "how far we have come from being but a lonely search engine! We have satellites and iPhone apps, calendars and Gchat, but let us expand once more! We will create a streaming music service!"

That’s right, kids. Google wants a piece of the streaming music pie. They’re keeping mum regarding the details of their service, which is rumored to be called either "Google Music," "Google Audio," or "OneBox," but we do know that the service has the cooperation of major labels. A simple Google Music search will supposedly give you a streaming link taken directly from LaLa or iLike. Plenty more details will leak out over the next few days, but it’s also reported that the service is launching as soon as next Wednesday.

…And God saw that it was good, etc.

Gangland warfare between copyright holders and file-sharers took a twisted bloody turn for the worse on October 16 when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) turned in on itself and fired three of its anti-piracy bosses. The MPAA’s general counsel, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, and the deputy director of internet anti-piracy were all lined up in the company’s garage and disposed of with immediate effect (the general counsel, Greg Goeckner, is being thrown out of his 25-story office at the end of the year).

Film industry sources say that the “three were thrown out because the anti-piracy operations of the MPAA were unsatisfactory, and ‘lacked aggressiveness’” or, in other words, for failing to protect the family. In a delightful euphemism, the MPAA’s anti-piracy division will be renamed as ‘content protection’ – just like the way it wants to “silence” isoHunt’s founder Gary Fung.

These latest developments are likely to result in more belligerent moves against file-sharers, with the copyright holders’ favored method of “persuading” lawmakers to take more rapacious action.

This federal court ruling goes out to all those idiots who think anyone would actually want to hear their cell phone blast the new Kid Cudi song through their shitty one-inch speaker: this week, a federal court ruled that ringtones that are played aloud in public are not an actual performance of an artist’s song, so therefore cell phone providers do not have to pay royalties on them. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote acknowledged the fact that the cell phone provider both has no control over when a ringtone is played and earns no money when it is played.

Oddly enough, what would seem like an obvious case was actually an argument brought to light by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) earlier this year when it decided to sue several U.S. cell phone providers in order to force them to pay royalties whenever a “performance,” or ringtone, was played. Its argument was that the download rights that providers were already paying weren’t enough. But the court shot down ASCAP because it failed to show infringement of providers or its customers, ruling that a ringtone is not a public performance, like how a radio on the beach blasting the new Kid Cudi song is not considered one either.

The big congressional news last week was that the Senate Finance Committee voted through a health care plan. Much less publicized (but far more important considering all the historical conflicts and tensions) was the approval of the Performance Rights Act by the Senate Judiciary Committee. A similar bill has already been approved by the House Judiciary Committee.

The legislation aims to compensate artists whose music is played on AM and FM radio stations, one that, according to the Executive Director of the musicFIRST Coalition, Jennifer Bendall, rights a wrong that has existed “over the last 80 years.” She described the Committee’s approval as bringing us “one step closer to winning the fight for fundamental justice that has been waged by countless artists and musicians.” Somebody’s been borrowing Obama’s speechwriters!

According to The Wall Street Journal, the legislation “would force radio companies to pay royalties [fees] of as much as $500 million a year to record labels and artists whose music they play.” A survey conducted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) found that, when the Act was described in this way, 75% of Americans opposed the legislation. Of course, if it was described as “Paying hardworking Americans for their vital labor that entertains millions of radio listeners every week,” then maybe we’d have a different set of results. This correspondent is not biased (bias doesn’t exist on TMT!); I’m just suggesting that NAB could’ve benefited from a semester in survey design.

Barack Obama campaigned for “network neutrality” during his Presidential campaign in 2008, and on September 21 Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (who was appointed by Obama), spoke in favor of "more aggressive action to keep online traffic moving freely, proposing two new government policies to prevent telecommunications companies from restricting websites and other services on the Internet."

The new rules would enshrine net neutrality into the agency’s policy and relate to all forms of internet access, including wireless connections on mobile devices and over fibre-optic lines.

Genachowski said in a speech to the Brookings Institution that “The rise of serious challenges to the free and open Internet puts us at a crossroads. We could see the Internet’s doors shut to entrepreneurs, the spirit of innovation stifled, a full and free flow of information compromised. Or we could take steps to preserve Internet openness, helping ensure a future of opportunity, innovation and a vibrant marketplace.”

Telecommunications companies, however, oppose net neutrality because they believe it will impact on their ability to keep networks “running smoothly.”

In a world of nonexistent CD sales and unstoppable music pirating, the question on everyone’s mind is "how do we make money off of music again?" Big record labels scrambled to think (all the while hiring lawyers to sue the pants off of citizens who accidentally downloaded six tracks from Kazaa in 2000), but entrepreneurial innovators took the opportunity to get innovative.

Thus arose a new trend in the media sphere. You can have music — all of the music you could ever want — streaming on the internet for a minuscule price per month. Spotify does it (but sadly, Americans can’t get it), Pandora does it, Last.FM and Rhapsody do it, and now MOG does it. What is MOG you ask?

MOG (a shorter, snappier nickname for "Music Blog") is a music blog aggregate service (of which TMT is a part), filtering music blog content from the web and placing it on their main page. Not only that, but MOG has since formed an alliance with the "Big Four" music labels (EMI, Warner, Sony, and Universal) to create an "All Access" service where music fans can listen to an endless supply of streaming music for $5 a month on the web and $12-$15 via mobile device. Fans can even customize their own playlists on MOG, where, like Pandora, users can create playlists of "similar artists" and share them with fellow MOG users.

"Rhapsody costs too much and Pandora doesn’t let you play any song you want at any time. We’ve taken the best parts of all of the existing services and left behind what didn’t work," says Andy Phillips, MOG’s Editor-in-Chief, when asked why users would prefer MOG to other web-based streaming services.

According to MOG CEO David Hyman, his service is a "revolutionary listening experience that will forever change how you discover music and truly redefines what radio is, and killer tools for discovery through other users of the service. And you get it all monthly for the price of a beer. We’re setting the music listening bar." Beer, eh? The man has a point.

MOG’s music service is currently in beta-testing, but will be available for mass-usage come Thanksgiving 2009.

There’s nothing quite like a bit of monopoly-bashing! Hot on the heels of the U.K.’s Competition Commission making a preliminary ruling against the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, it is now likely that U.S. regulators will coordinate with the British authorities to impose conditions on the deal. This could mean “Ticketmaster and Live Nation will be forced to sell off assets, or forced to sell some concert tickets through a competitor.”

Regulators (and especially Bruce Springsteen) are concerned that the merger of Ticketmaster (the largest seller of tickets to entertainment venues in the U.S.) and Live Nation (the world’s largest concert promoter) would create a behemoth that “could control every part of a live concert, from artist management and promotion to venue management, merchandise sales, and ticket sales and resales,” in the words of Ken Solky, President of the National Association of Ticket Brokers. The two companies, however, maintain that the deal is necessary to “strengthen a flagging music industry.”

Lawyers, sensing an excellent opportunity to make millions of dollars, suggest that both Ticketmaster and Live Nation went into this agreement knowing they would have to make some compromises. Mark Ostrau, an antitrust lawyer with Mountain View-based Fenwick & West LLP, said “I think the writing is on the wall that the deal is not going to happen without some fix," while Kevin Arquit, another antitrust lawyer, argued “The fact that the U.K. regulators acted puts the U.S. more on the spot.” The deal has also provoked consternation in Congress with 50 House members wanting Justice officials to take some kind of action.

“Live Nation shares fell nearly 6 percent Thursday, while Ticketmaster shares fell more than 4 percent,” (waaaaghhh!).