The RedTube copyright infringement affair in Germany: shame on who?

Recently, tens of thousands of German Internet users were confronted with copyright infringement claims for allegedly watching porn clips on the streaming platform RedTube.com. The alleged copyright infringers received ‘Abmahnung’ cease and desist letters that gave them an opportunity to settle copyright infringements out of court by paying rights-holders €250 in compensation. While in cases relating to peer-to-peer file-sharing, the IP address of a peer can easily be identified,¹1. In order to identify the subscriber of a certain IP address at a given time, the rights-holders will file a disclosure request with a court. For details see below, Section 2.3.View all notes the RedTube case raises the question how consumers of a stream could be identified. In addition, it raises the question of whether the consumption of a stream is illegal under German law. Assuming that this is not the case, this analysis of the RedTube case highlights that the system of Abmahnungen is prone to abuse in an Internet context. Several weaknesses of the current system are identified, which show that disclosure requests are not thoroughly assessed by courts and that lawyers are far too willing to send out cease and desist letters although an infringement is not obvious. This environment allowed the emergence of anti-piracy business models that succeed in turning infringements into profit and that do not hesitate to make unfounded claims.     

Addressing the Victim–Offender Overlap: Advancing Evidence-Based Research to Better Service Criminally Involved People with Victimization Histories

ABSTRACT

We studied a representative sample of male and female inmates (N = 266) in two prisons (remand and sentenced) in Western Canada. Our research asks: what are the self-reported victimization histories of currently incarcerated men and women prior to first charge (i.e., before becoming known offenders) and during their life-course? As a second objective, we discuss how we sought to mobilize our findings to change relevant policy and police practice. We found that the overwhelming majority of our female participants had experienced violent, sexual, or property victimization throughout their life course; the majority had experienced victimization prior to first charge. Based on our findings, the local police service introduced victim services for the incarcerated population as well as made changes to their recruit training program to make new police officers aware of the victim–offender overlap and its effects. If replicated, the introduction of victim services for inmates in other jurisdictions and the education of police officers on the victim–offender overlap would emphasize the humanitarian recognition of supporting victims who need help, while also having a series of subsidiary benefits with respect to re-offending, resiliency, and police legitimacy.     

Sisters,not demons: the influence of british suffragists on the American suffrage movement

British suffragettes were an important, if controversial, influence on the American suffrage movement, for the successful achievement of the franchise in 1920 was helped by the adoption of the suffragettes' militant tactics in the final stage of the campaign. When Harriot Stanton Blatch returned to the USA in 1902 after living for twenty years in England, she found that the suffrage movement her mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had helped to found was stagnant. Blatch energized the movement in New York City by recruiting working-class women and organizing colorful parades and other dramatic events, strategies she had learned from Emmeline Pankhurst. Blatch arranged a successful tour of the USA for Pankhurst in 1909.