In a blow to manufacturers that use digital rights management (DRM) protections to prevent consumers from tinkering with their own property, the Library of Congress has adopted new rules allowing anyone to hack the software of their devices for the purpose of performing repairs. The changes officially go into effect…
The Senate cleared a bill late on Tuesday, the Music Modernization Act, that will dramatically restructure the way royalties are handed out to artists and others involved in the creation process—although it did so under heavy opposition from satellite and digital broadcasting services, namely Sirius XM and Music…
Kim Dotcom, the former founder of defunct file hosting service Megaupload and its successor Mega, just lost another court battle to avoid extradition to the US on charges of copyright infringement and fraud.
Last month, members of European Parliament voted to move forward with a sweeping overhaul of the European Union’s copyright laws that critics say will impede the spread of news, kill memes, bolster tech giants, and stifle innovation. Ahead of the final vote this week, Wikipedia Italy has joined protests across the…
The US Postal Service will have to pay a sculptor who recreated the Statue of Liberty for a New York-themed Las Vegas hotel over $3.5 million after it used his version instead of its much more famous predecessor on Lady Liberty-themed stamps.
We regret to inform you that the internet is on red alert once again. On Wednesday, the EU’s Legislative Committee voted to adopt sweeping measures that will upend the web in every way that we know it. Memes, news, Wikipedia, art, privacy, and the creative side of fandom are all at risk of being destroyed or…
Once again European lawmakers are set to vote on a bill that promises to change the internet as we know it. Experts say a misguided update to copyright laws poses a serious danger to how we share news, upload fair use content, make memes, and build startups. Now, some of the pioneers of the web are asking the EU to…
It was a Friday evening in 1975, and Woody Wise was driving from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, with his two kids in the car. He had picked them up from school in a rush, but they weren’t going on vacation. They were hiding out from the FBI.
Spotify has faced a number of accusations regarding violations of copyright in recent years and this week saw one of those looming lawsuits put to bed. On Tuesday, a federal judge approved a $112 million settlement in a class action suit that accused Spotify of failing to adequately pay artists for the use of their…
California man Eric Lundgren, an electronic waste entrepreneur who produced tens of thousands of Windows restore disks intended to extend the lifespan of aging computers, lost a federal appeals court case in Miami after it ruled “he had infringed Microsoft’s products to the tune of $700,000,” the Washington Post reported
Eventbrite is one of the largest event hosting platforms on the planet. It’s been used to plan millions of events in more than 180 countries. As it turns out, unbeknownst to the thousands of event creators and millions of attendees, the company has maintained the right to show up at any event, film it, and own the…
Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe the Frog, is continuing his copyright war against the alt-right by targeting Alex Jones’ Infowars in his latest lawsuit. The purveyors of conspiracy theories have been selling a poster that incorporates the cartoon frog into a collage of with notable cartoon figures from the Infowars…
A Danish man has been handed down a six-month conditional sentence for merely sharing information about Popcorn Time, the once-popular torrent-based streaming client that was targeted for extermination by copyright lawsuits .
Sebastian Tomczak is a music technologist and professor who likes to upload random experiments to YouTube. One of his clips is just 10-hours of white noise that he generated with open source software. Five copyright complaints later, and some vultures are now making money off of his work.
Videos games are a relatively new medium, so most people don’t think about what happens to them post-release, years after the shine has worn off and their player base has migrated to something newer. Often, especially when it comes to online-only MMOs like City of Heroes and The Matrix Online, these games are…
As public and political sentiment shifts against the titans of Silicon Valley, the tech world’s tactics in Washington are getting dirty. Google has been facing increased scrutiny lately, and Oracle has been doing its best to fuel the fire. In a new report about its latest attack, Oracle’s political fixer in…
Not only is Redbox still around, it kicked off a big expansion this year. And on Thursday, The Walt Disney Company filed a lawsuit against the kiosk DVD rental company for its practice of reselling digital download codes that come with Disney DVDs. If the house of the mouse succeeds in court, Redbox is in a lot of…
Thanks to the wonders of the web, you can get your content up and in front of an audience of millions in seconds—but that doesn’t necessarily mean you still own that photo of your dog once it is live. Signing the terms and conditions on your favorite social networks could mean signing away the rights to that video of…
The European Commission paid €360,000 (about $428,000) for a study on how piracy impacts the sales of copyrighted music, books, video games, and movies. But the EU never shared the report—possibly because it determined that there is no evidence that piracy is a major problem.
A fight over the future of video streaming has been brewing for years—and it finally came to a head today, with a major electronic privacy organization bowing out of the consortium that sets standards for the web.
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