Saturday's Mayweather-McGregor boxing match was one of the most pirated events, with such streams reaching almost 3 million viewers, and sporting events are increasingly a piracy target, anti-piracy tech firm Red Points blogged Monday. Facebook has tightened its copyright protection, using a filter like YouTube's Copyright ID system, but Twitter Periscope employs no such protection, Red Points said, saying availability "is clearly driving piracy." Red Points said indications are large numbers of people planned to watch the fight illegally in the U.K. -- where watching would otherwise require a Sky subscription. It said MVPDs could consider more customized subscriptions, pay-per-view or one-off payment structures.

Despite the blockchain hype, the technology is young and the question of whether it's exacerbating online content piracy is tough to judge, Irdeto Senior Director-Cyber Services and Investigations Mark Mulready blogged Tuesday. The blockchain attraction for pirates is both the pseudonymity and the distributed ledger that alleviates some possibilities of pirate peer-to-peer sites being shut down or blocked, Irdeto said. Play on Zeronet is probably the best-known distributed torrent site using blockchain, and PureVidz -- which used decentralized streaming -- is seemingly offline now but undoubtedly the concept will reappear, Irdeto said.

Digital Media Licensing Association joined the Copyright Alliance, the alliance announced Wednesday. Established in 1951, DMLA supports copyright protections 100-plus members who own, manage and license visual content.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer should ensure IP rights of Americans are "afforded, protected and enforced at the highest levels" when renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, said House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga., and Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., in a Tuesday letter to him. They urged Lighthizer to promote strong copyright protection standards similar to those in the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, keep the U.S.'s long-standing stance on copyright exceptions language without open-ended balance provisions, and advance "responsible" internet partnership between platforms without outdated safe harbor provisions. They said Canada adopted "sweeping" copyright exceptions with a weak safe harbor system, and Mexico has high piracy rates and enforcement problems. Foreign countries have enacted laws "that harm the market for American works. NAFTA should not exacerbate this problem, but, rather, be the first step in correcting it," they wrote. The letter said copyright-intensive industries contributed $1.2 trillion and supplied 5.6 million jobs in 2015 to the U.S. economy.

The Copyright Royalty Board is seeking comment by Sept. 14 on whether stakeholders object to a requested partial distribution of the 2015 Digital Audio Recording Technology Sound Recordings Fund royalties to the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) and to claimants that reached settlement with the alliance, said a CRB notice in Tuesday's Federal Register. The board said AARC requested a partial distribution of 98 percent from both the Copyright Owners and Feature Recording Artists subfunds. AARC said it reached settlement with all but a few.

The American Association of Law Libraries joined the two-year-old trade group Re:Create, which advocates for "balanced" copyright rules, said an AALL Thursday news release. Other members include the American Library Association, Center for Democracy & Technology, Computer and Communications Industry Association, CTA, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge and the R Street Institute.

The Copyright Office is proposing to simplify deposit requirements for certain types of "literary monographs" defined, in part, as a one-volume work or a finite number of volumes and musical compositions published in the U.S. as "copies" rather than solely as phonorecords, said a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. The office said the proposed rule would require copyright owners to submit one copy of the best edition rather than two copies. The CO said it would boost registration efficiency. Comments are due by Oct. 2.

Civil liberties groups, computer scientists and library and tech associations asked the Copyright Office to renew exemptions for jailbreaking, security research, e-books and other device software to circumvent technological protection measures (TPMs), in the latest triennial rulemaking process under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Petitions for renewal are in docket #COLC-2017-0007, comments due Sept. 13. That's when petitions for new exemptions are also due. CTA and others jointly sought renewal of an exemption for vehicle software. CTA said members invested in vehicle aftermarket communications and other products and don't want "artificial constraints on entry and competition." The Competitive Carriers Association, which includes Dish Network, Nokia, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular, supported an exemption for Classes 11-15 to ensure "dominant providers cannot facially restrict consumer device choice, and cannot monopolize particular wireless devices ... by limiting them to just one network." The unlocking capability allows consumers to switch providers and not buy a new device, CCA said. It said the exemption has been granted in previous rulemakings with "no significant opposition in 2015." Consumers Union commented such an exemption would allow consumers to unlock their mobile devices to use "as they see fit." The Center for Democracy & Technology said security researchers need the exemption to find and fix software vulnerabilities on consumer devices. Section 1201's prohibition on TPM circumvention is "often a legal impediment or source of uncertainty and risk" for researchers, who also could face liability under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the group said. Former Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer Ed Felten and others filed a similar request. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said exemptions are needed to circumvent access controls to videogames and consoles to restore functionality after a publisher terminates support and for jailbreaking mobile devices. The American Library Association and others representing the visually impaired sought an exemption to distribute e-books, "so uncontroversial and well-established that it has become the archetypical example of an exemption that should be uncontroversially renewed."

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and BMI are combining their repertoires into a database of copyright owners to provide clearer and more accurate information to those who want to license musical works. The performing rights organizations said they began working on the project about a year ago and expect to launch the combined "secure, user-friendly and searchable" database in phases beginning at the end of 2018. A BMI spokeswoman said it will contain more than 20 million works, or about 90 percent of the music licensed in the U.S. It may become customizable and eventually include other databases, Wednesday's release said. Last week, Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., introduced a bill that would direct the register of copyrights to create and maintain a searchable database of sound recordings, permitting businesses that want live music performed there to identify and pay copyright holders (see 1707200012). House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga., called the announcement a "substantive step forward" that will help stakeholders achieve a "free-market solution."

Credentials sharing is a problem for over-the-top services but won't necessarily stymie growth, and focusing on credentials sharing can be a wasteful diversion from the bigger problem of service abuse, Irdeto Product Director Rodrigo Fernandes blogged Tuesday. He said Netflix and Amazon are growing despite credentials sharing, and that smart rules can help mitigate service abuse. He said OTT services, in crafting those rules, need to define in their business models what reasonable use is. He said OTT operators often employ rules that cap the number of concurrent streams -- useful for differentiating price tiers and for controlling content distribution network costs per subscriber -- and employ geo blocking and device management.