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Posts Tagged “
Piracy
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zune
justice
Single Mother Gets RIAA Suit Dismissed, Sues Them Right Back
Now here's something we love to see: Tanya Andersen, a 45-year-old single mother, is taking on the RIAA for their sleazy tactics and appears to be winning. After being sued for piracy and having the case dismissed, she decided to go ahead and sue the RIAA for conspiracy. She argues that the way the RIAA snoops around looking for people to sue is in violation of the law, as is the way they try to extort settlements out of people without going to trial. BusinessWeek has a whole profile of Andersen and her battle against the RIAA, and it's well worth the read. Go check it out; it's not like you've got other stuff to do. [BusinessWeek via CrunchGear]
itunes
NBC Wants iTunes to Block Pirated Content from iPods
NBC Universal Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff: "We'd love to be on iTunes. It has a great customer experience. We'd love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes." Obviously NBC did, until they walked out. In order for them to come back, they want more money per show (still) to "reflect the full value of the product." And for iTunes to block you from loading pirated content onto your iPod. Sounds insane right? More »
comeuppance
The Pirate Bay to Turn Tables, Sue International Music Industry
Oh, Pirate Bay. You know just what to do to get people's attention, you rabble rousers. In February, The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI; essentially, the international RIAA) went to court and got Danish ISP Tele2 to block access to the famous BitTorrent tracker. It now appears that the courts are going to side with The Pirate Bay on this one, and if so, guess what? The Pirate Bay is going to sue the music industry for damages. Gotta love it. More »
survey
95% of Kids Aged 18-24 Are Pirating Music
According to a University of Hertfordshire survey of 1,158 kids aged 18-24 in the UK, 95% of them have "pirated" music before. The other 5%? According or our estimates, they're either technologically illiterate or they don't like music. [Guardian]
riaa
Judge Rules Making Files 'Available' Doesn't Constitute Copyright Violation
A Boston judge has just followed up on the previous NY judge ruling that just making files available isn't enough to constitute copyright infringement. According to the EFF, it's the most "extensive analysis yet of the recording industry's 'making available' argument", but doesn't actually make things better for people who are being sued by the RIAA. The same judge ruled that even though the "offer to distribute" won't be enough to decide a case, it is enough to permit a lawsuit to move forward. On the other hand, another NY judge has ruled in the opposite manner, that making an "offer to distribute" could violate copyright, even if nobody downloaded whatever you put up. [EFF via Boing Boing]
riaa
The RIAA was handed some bad news by a federal judge in New York: they can't sue people over songs that are merely "made available," which is the basis for nearly all of their lawsuits. Instead, they need to prove that songs were actually transmitted, something that is a hell of a lot harder to do. Is this the end of the RIAA's lawsuit onslaught?
More »
Judge Rules That "Making Available" Isn't Enough for RIAA Lawsuits
The RIAA was handed some bad news by a federal judge in New York: they can't sue people over songs that are merely "made available," which is the basis for nearly all of their lawsuits. Instead, they need to prove that songs were actually transmitted, something that is a hell of a lot harder to do. Is this the end of the RIAA's lawsuit onslaught?
More »
gaming
PlayStation 3 Homebrew is Coming Soon, PlayStation 3 Piracy Slightly Delayed
It's taken an unusually long time for the PlayStation 3 to be hacked, but dragula96 seems to have gotten to the first stage: Hello World. He hasn't specified how he's done the hack, but he does confirm that it's working on the 40 and 60GB models and that his next step is putting Pong on there. On the other hand, dragula96 thinks that it's very unlikely that his hack will lead to an "iso loader," meaning you'll have to wait for another hack to play pirated copies of retail games. Well, another hack plus some actual games to play. I keeed! [DCEmu]
net neutrality
Net Neutrality Shouldn't Extend to Illegal Acts, Says FCC Comissioner
One of the FCC's five commissioners, Jonathan Adelstein, said during a recent symposium on FCC Internet Video Policy that the FCC's rules shouldn't permit "illegal acts." Sure, illegal downloading is a serious problem, especially if you're a copyright-holding movie studio. But does that mean the FCC is actually against net neutrality, in general? More »
question of the day
With CD sales dwindling fast, DRM dead, and major artists starting to give their music away—it is clear that record labels need to do something drastic to lure pirates away from illegal downloading. As Wired and ArsTechnica point out, one of the ideas on the table is to generate a file sharing surcharge that would be collected by ISPs—something like $5 a month for unlimited downloads with the proceeds being doled out to artists based on the number of times their music was traded during the month. Seems a little too good to be true, but it does raise the question: would $5 unlimited P2P be enough to convert you from a life of piracy?
More »
$5 a Month For Legal P2P: Would It Lure Pirates From the Dark Side?
With CD sales dwindling fast, DRM dead, and major artists starting to give their music away—it is clear that record labels need to do something drastic to lure pirates away from illegal downloading. As Wired and ArsTechnica point out, one of the ideas on the table is to generate a file sharing surcharge that would be collected by ISPs—something like $5 a month for unlimited downloads with the proceeds being doled out to artists based on the number of times their music was traded during the month. Seems a little too good to be true, but it does raise the question: would $5 unlimited P2P be enough to convert you from a life of piracy?
More »
piracy
Japanese internet service providers plan on disconnecting evil filesharing pirates in some of the most severe anti-p2p tactics worldwide. Due to pressure from music, video game and movie companies, the ISPs would warn the offender via email before cutting the cord if the bootlegger in question didn't cease and desist. Though such a punishment may not seem as bad as the multimillion-dollar fines levied by the RIAA here in the US, we think a life without internet may be worse than one without money. [AFP]
Japanese ISPs Plan To Cut Off P2P Pirates
Japanese internet service providers plan on disconnecting evil filesharing pirates in some of the most severe anti-p2p tactics worldwide. Due to pressure from music, video game and movie companies, the ISPs would warn the offender via email before cutting the cord if the bootlegger in question didn't cease and desist. Though such a punishment may not seem as bad as the multimillion-dollar fines levied by the RIAA here in the US, we think a life without internet may be worse than one without money. [AFP]
peer to peer
We had to read this twice to be certain, but Verizon is teaming up with researchers at Yale and a P4P Working group in order to speed up peer to peer file sharing. How is this beneficial to Verizon, who has the burden of carrying P2P traffic, which measures at about 1/3 of the internet's throughput already? Because when you're sharing files with others, only about 6.3% of the traffic comes from users in the same city as you, which is cheap traffic for Verizon to deliver. In a new optimized scheme, up to 58% of the traffic can come from nearby users, which speeds up your downloads and makes it much more cost effective for the ISP.
More »
Verizon Actually Helping Speed Up P2P File Sharing? Wha?
We had to read this twice to be certain, but Verizon is teaming up with researchers at Yale and a P4P Working group in order to speed up peer to peer file sharing. How is this beneficial to Verizon, who has the burden of carrying P2P traffic, which measures at about 1/3 of the internet's throughput already? Because when you're sharing files with others, only about 6.3% of the traffic comes from users in the same city as you, which is cheap traffic for Verizon to deliver. In a new optimized scheme, up to 58% of the traffic can come from nearby users, which speeds up your downloads and makes it much more cost effective for the ISP.
More »
riaa
Leaked RIAA Training Video: Find Pirates, Find Crack-Dealing Terrorist Murderers Too!
This is a leaked official RIAA training video produced with the National District Attorneys Association telling U.S. prosecutors why they should bust music pirates: Because it'll lead them to "everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana," not to mention terrorists and murderers! More »
riaa
Content filter version one: A massive, network-wide dragnet. Not really feeling that Big Bro deal, even though RIAA chief Cary Sherman says it "doesn't give rise...to any privacy concerns because it can operate automatically and anonymously"? It's cool, there's a better approach: A locally installed filter on your computer. More »
RIAA Wants Your Anti-Virus Software to Screen Your Downloads for Pirated Content
Content filter version one: A massive, network-wide dragnet. Not really feeling that Big Bro deal, even though RIAA chief Cary Sherman says it "doesn't give rise...to any privacy concerns because it can operate automatically and anonymously"? It's cool, there's a better approach: A locally installed filter on your computer. More »
microsoft
Vista SP1 Leaked to BitTorrent
Time to fire up uTorrent, Vista
evil
RIAA Wants to Increase Filesharing Damages to $1.5 Million an Album, Just for Laughs
The amount that the RIAA gets in statutory damages in filesharing lawsuits is already completely bananas, but they still aren't happy. The problem? Compilation CDs. A rascally pirate could rip 10 tracks from 10 CDs, say they came from a compilation and then only be culpable for one album. That's not right! The RIAA would then be cheated out of money they could use to polish the rubies on the ends of their walking sticks! More »
mistakes
MPAA: Did We Say 44% of Piracy Was Done By Students? We Meant 15%, Our Bad!
So the MPAA used to shout about a study they performed that showed that 44% of illegal movie downloading was done by college students, a figure they used as evidence that our government needed to enact some laws to keep our feckless youth population under control. The only problem? The study was complete BS, with the real figure hovering a bit closer to the 15% mark. Oops! More »
wii hacked
