Remember when your computer just worked? Did you click 'OK' to that recommended update on programs like iTunes, Adobe Reader, or Yahoo Messenger, only to realize that the older version ran faster or had better features? Then Version Download may be your solution. Includes back-level versions of browsers, audio and video, security and anti-virus, FTP, file-sharing and communications software.
posted by netbros on Oct 10, 2009 - 59 comments

British pop star Lily Allen recently posted a Myspace blog entry explaining her view that file sharing is a disaster as it is making it harder and harder for new acts to emerge. [more inside]
posted by motty on Sep 22, 2009 - 362 comments

JetBytes is a free, no-signup, one-off file-sharing service.
posted by swift on Mar 24, 2009 - 25 comments

Today was Day 1 of The Pirate Bay trial.
posted by tybeet on Feb 16, 2009 - 181 comments

"If you already know his name, chances are you've been doing something illegal." The Independent on aXXo, the movie pirate king.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jan 2, 2009 - 107 comments

Music industry to abandon Mass Lawsuits. After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy. [more inside]
posted by Afroblanco on Dec 19, 2008 - 60 comments

FileSharingFilter: With the possible exception of Sweden, Canada is today's frontier upon which the war of file-sharing legality is waged, with the greatest number of file-sharers per capita, and a steady increase in the number of persons who partake (according to the OECD). Historically, the CRIA's own piracy campaign (2004) was given birth only one year after the RIAA began suing individuals (2003) for participating in peer-to-peer file distribution. Unlike the RIAA, the CRIA was shot down by the courts, establishing a sort of precedent in favour of the end-user which has been upheld ever since, and indeed even reinforced. However, we may be seeing the beginning of the end as QuebecTorrent now fights the good fight to prevent a legal precedent outlawing Canadian BitTorrent trackers.
posted by tybeet on May 7, 2008 - 21 comments

Shareminer is a clownsuit engine that searches for files upped to Rapidshare, Megaupload, SendSpace, ZShare, and other similar one click hosts. A great tool for locating full, rare, and out of print albums. [more inside]
posted by Item on Mar 21, 2008 - 47 comments

British internet users face ban for illegal downloads. A draft copy of a Green Paper produced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was leaked to The Times newspaper which detailed how the government was considering introducing legislation that would require ISPs to take action against users who access pirated material. [more inside]
posted by electricinca on Feb 12, 2008 - 37 comments

Steal this album. "In the dying days of the music business as we once knew it, record labels are waging war on leaks—only to discover that many of the saboteurs come from within the industry itself." It's easy to arrest a geek or lay draconian fines on a single mom; what happens when their witchhunt leads to their own offices? Animal Collective won't always be around to get the culprits off the hook.
posted by Coherence Panda on Jan 2, 2008 - 62 comments

Anti-Piracy agents MediaDefender have 700MiB of juicy internal emails leaked on BitTorrent; are in trouble.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Sep 16, 2007 - 83 comments

Good Copy Bad Copy is "a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture," featuring Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig, Dan Glickman of the MPAA and others. The film's creators are releasing it free of charge, via Bittorrent.
posted by jbickers on Aug 3, 2007 - 30 comments

While Courtney pulled an Albini, Jeff handed out the bread. Are the peasants acting like emperors, or do they still want something shiny, aluminum, plastic, and digital? Debacle or cage, something's got to give (pdf). Alternatively, you can just roll your own.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Feb 4, 2007 - 32 comments

I know you're all lining up to buy Sealand, but The Pirate Bay wants to beat you to the punch.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jan 12, 2007 - 33 comments

What are The Residents up to these days? The avant garde band (if you can legitimately call them avant garde or a band) made an odd choice with their last/ongoing release, The River of Crime. If you like physical objects, you can purchase a package with cover art, a blank cd-r and codes to a website where you can download them; if you don't, you can purchase the episodes, which are styled after old radio noirs, as podcasts or as a double album through itunes. Concurrently, they have been putting out a series of short films via youtube. The Timmy series, based on a character created for the 1995 cd-ROM "A Day at The Midway", uses a mix of found footage, animation, music and voiceover to tell a series of short unrelated stories. As much as the band has done to keep up with technology over the last thirty-five years, they vehemently ">oppose file sharing of their work, including the sharing of mp3s that they have put out for free on their own website. With that in mind, I wonder how the band feels about the amazing collection of concerts, videos, interviews and assorted other weirdness you get when you type their name into YouTube. [more inside]
posted by elr on Dec 29, 2006 - 16 comments

Locate open mp3s with Google! From I-Hacked, where the author describes this as "p2p file sharing, but Google is one of those people." At this point, the interface allows you to specify an artist or song name and it returns a google search of files with that name and an mp3 suffix. The peer to peer weblog says that the trick relies on a default behavior of the Apache webserver.

Is it legal? Since the files in question were "left open in a public place" and since the application isn't necessarily limited to copyrighted materials, at least one blogger thinks it could pass the key legal test of having "substantial non-infringing uses." What do you think?
posted by jasper411 on Sep 6, 2006 - 49 comments

WinMX is back (kind of). It was such an unbelievably awesome file sharing program that its makers had to pull their peer caches after being served a cease and desist order in September 2005. Now it has been reincarnated as MXpie. Even better . . . it's not spyware or adware.
posted by augustweed on Jul 25, 2006 - 46 comments

Files are not for sharing
An illustrated primer for everyone still unclear on the rights and wrongs of intellectual property by Matthew Baldwin and Goopymart at The Morning News
posted by soplerfo on Jun 23, 2006 - 32 comments

Canadian musicians protest file-sharing lawsuits. The Barenaked Ladies, Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, and many other Canadian artists have formed a coalition to protest the hard line taken by the recording industry against file-sharers, and call for copyright reform. Is there a better way to protect intellectual property rights than suing file-sharers?
posted by Johnny Assay on May 5, 2006 - 35 comments

Remember Napster? Well, it's returned to its roots and is once again offering free music via a revamped ad based web-site. But according to their FAQ, you can only listen to any given song up to 5 times before you'll be asked to pay for it. Even though this equates to roughly 10 million free plays, in an age where BitTorrent is king, will this pay off for the company? Some say no, as the catches that come with this new system are just too many. But (for the moment at least) the share market is saying yes.
posted by Effigy2000 on May 1, 2006 - 38 comments

Give us your pot smokers, your marriage-seeking gays, your wretched ... file sharers? "A major Canadian record company has taken the unusual step of hiring a defense lawyer for a man accused by the U.S. record industry of downloading hundreds of songs illegally. ... 'Suing music fans is not the solution; it's the problem,' Terry McBride, chief executive of Nettwork, said in a statement this week."
posted by maudlin on Jan 27, 2006 - 30 comments

Hong Kong court jails man for creating and posting torrents.
posted by plenty on Nov 7, 2005 - 20 comments

Welcome to the scene is an interesting low budget soap opera that tells the story of a movie piracy group's workings via IMs and simultaneous video. If you're interested in the logistics of movie piracy (how do these groups work? what's their motivation? where do they get the movies? how do they avoid getting caught?) then this is for you. The story gets more engrossing as you go through the episodes, and the latest gives some insight into how script kiddies do their business. I'd never heard of tools like Metasploit and fragroute till I saw it. There are those who think the whole thing's a setup... I personally doubt it, but one thing this series demonstrates is that for pirates, paranoia is key to survival.
posted by jcruelty on Nov 3, 2005 - 13 comments

Jon Stewart in Wired
posted by Mephistopheles on Aug 23, 2005 - 60 comments

Bob Mould has got folks talking sanely about music piracy and artists' livelihoods, again. After discovering his unreleased album was already available for illegal download, Bob and his fans exchange thoughts on the temptation of filesharing. Try to do the right thing, whatever that is these days. (legal free tune)
posted by If I Had An Anus on May 24, 2005 - 76 comments

Illicit downloading is now tantamount to domestic terrorism. I wonder if "CleanPlay" will still censor my illegally downloaded DVDs.
posted by thanatogenous on May 3, 2005 - 47 comments

Recording a movie in a theater is now likely to get you more time in jail than if you are found guilty of involuntary mansaughter.
posted by Mr_Zero on Apr 21, 2005 - 47 comments

Creative archive licence group at The Beeb. Today sees the launch of the Creative Archive Licence Group, a joint venture between the BBC, the Open University, Channel 4 and the BFI to provide legal content to the (initially UK only) public under a series of licences that are quite similar to those by Creative Commons. Although at present only a trial, the project timetable looks as though some good material will be made available.
posted by TheDonF on Apr 13, 2005 - 6 comments

Help Save P2P! The United States Supreme Court is currently considering the legality of peer-to-peer file sharing programs in a case called MGM v. Grokster. Rumor has it that the Justices have set up a computer, in the court, with Grokster on it. If you have legal P2P files to share, blogger Death in the Afternoon suggests that you move them to Grokster immediately, as this might help convince the Justices that P2P is good for more than just illegal filesharing. (If you doubt that, think Diebold). If you don't have any legal files, you can get some here. (More inside).
posted by gd779 on Apr 4, 2005 - 42 comments

With all of the talk and posts about itunes, the RIAA, P2P, etc. I thought that I would take this opportunity to point out that there are hundreds of great, free music files online that are legal to download. Sites like Soundloads which posts links to new music every day, Garageband which features up and coming bands, and CNet's music site that lets anyone and everyone upload their files to share with the masses, all feature some great music. And the creators of the music are asking you to download the files for free and add them to your playlists.

I've also downloaded some good music from epitonic.com, purevolume.com, audiostreet, even blogs can be a good source of new, free, legal music downloads. While you're not gonna find the latest big media pop diva or boy band, you can find good music if you take the time to look a little.
posted by copacetix on Jan 16, 2005 - 17 comments

Three major record labels have inked deals with Peer Impact, a (still-in-beta) "legal p2p service"...this news on the heels of Shawn Fanning's "Snocap plan which involves identifying music files being traded through file-swapping networks and then attaching a price tag to them..." [+]
posted by tpl1212 on Dec 2, 2004 - 7 comments

Blog Torrent is out, it's been under development for a while now by the good people at Downhill Battle. It's a really simplified way of uploading files for the bittorrent network with an integrated client/server solution. Right now the client side is windows only, but the core functionality works with any client of course. Pretty neat.
posted by rhyax on Nov 24, 2004 - 15 comments

Grouper, a different form of P2P.
"The Grouper program does not allow file sharing of music, only streaming. However, you may share other types of files as a download. On the plus side for the persons sharing, Grouper allows the formation of mini networks with email verification. The advantage of this is no script kiddies or annoying fake files from the RIAA." You are sharing privately between friends.
Welcome to the world of legal online music ambiguity. Say hello to Grouper.
posted by dash_slot- on Sep 23, 2004 - 21 comments

Orrin Hatch thinks of the children. As a convenient lever for shutting down P2P networks.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Jun 23, 2004 - 13 comments

CleverCactus Share Combine the social networking aspect of Orkut and Friendster with the filesharing aspect of programs like Kazaa and WinMX, and you get clevercactus share. Get the RIAA off your back by only sharing file folders with people you actually know. Throw in encrypted transfers and platform-independency as a bonus. General Public release is scheduled for tomorrow, but you can sign up and start today.
posted by quasistoic on Jun 15, 2004 - 74 comments

The Mashin of The Christ "Earlier this month a hacker broke through Negativland's UMN mainframe firewall and stole the final version of Negativland's top-sacred for-internal-use-only "Mashin' of the Christ" video project. Negativland prayed that their in-house project would not make it into the hands of the unsuspecting public, but we all know how hard it can be to stop those "peer to peer" criminals from illegally sharing the property of others."
posted by bob sarabia on May 5, 2004 - 37 comments

In response to Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruling that file sharing was legal in Canada (previously discussed here), Federal Heritage Minister Helene Scherrer has stated that "As minister of Canadian Heritage, I will, as quickly as possible, make changes to our copyright law".

The problem is that Canadian copyright law has been going through a slow and thoughtful reformation process. Since the unveiling of A Framework for Copyright Reform in 2001, a lot of progress has been made in updating the laws to reflect the needs and concerns of content producers, and the public domain. Now, however, it seems that all of this work may be bulldozed by Helene Scherrer, who declared her intentions at the Juno Awards last night.
posted by Jairus on Apr 3, 2004 - 11 comments

So, when did Canada become the globe's official Progressive Society Laboratory? They've got the health care, they've got the gay marriage, and now, they've got 100% legal file-sharing -- a judge has ruled that not only is downloading copyrighted material legal, but sharing it is as well. Um, whoa? How long can this stand on appeal? Is anyone here a Canadian legal expert who can tell us about how Canadian copyright law differs from our own? (Tall order, I know...)
posted by logovisual on Mar 31, 2004 - 28 comments

The file-sharing fight continues.
Recording industry associations in Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada have filed lawsuits or taken other legal action, aiming mainly at heavy users accused of offering a large number of songs online.

In other news, A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.
posted by ashbury on Mar 31, 2004 - 9 comments

Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales.
posted by zedzebedia on Mar 30, 2004 - 20 comments

Vans Stevenson, senior lobbyist for MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America), was the last to revise a letter California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer is to distribute to other attorney generals. Lockyer is the president of the National Association of Attorneys General. - is your government owned? Lockyer receives thousands in campaign contributions from MPAA, RIAA, and '[via: The Register]..corporate and private donations from the major studios, including The Paramount Pictures Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Warner Bros PAC, AOL Time Warner. Senior executives, such as Alan Horn and Howard Welinsky, respectively CEO and senior VP at Warner Brothers..." Adam Eisgrau of P2P United said that "the draft attributed to the attorney general's office contains many significant factual errors, eyebrow-raising metadata, and articulates a very broad expansion in several important respects of product liability and consumer protection law that would have enormous effects..' It's in The NY Times. Slyck has the original document.
posted by giantkicks on Mar 15, 2004 - 3 comments

RIAA sues... (again): The RIAA has just issued a new lawsuit against 532 more "illegal filesharers" only this time, they're also using the "john doe" approach meaning that they dont have to have ascertain your name by strongarming ISPs, but by suing your IP address, they let the judicial system take care of that little detail.
posted by sixtwenty3dc on Jan 21, 2004 - 39 comments

The DC Appeals court has overturned the previous decision that allowed the RIAA to subpoena user's names from internet providers. Could this mark the end of the recording industry's lawsuit assault?
posted by BigPicnic on Dec 19, 2003 - 18 comments

Downloading MP3s via P2P now legal in Canada thanks to an MP3 player tax. Just don't upload anything. In related news, the Supreme Court of Canada began hearing arguments over whether Internet Service Providers (ISPs), both here and abroad, should start paying tariffs for Canadian music downloaded by the public. [macrumors]
posted by dobbs on Dec 15, 2003 - 32 comments

It's official: Napster sucks. The RIAA's newest sticky fingers wants you to download.
posted by the fire you left me on Oct 29, 2003 - 30 comments

SharingTheGroove.org Trade concerts at this site where BitTorrent tech is combined with DAT concert taping audiophiles. You can read the boards to find music or you can just check their bitTorrent tracker. If you want to go low tech they also have Blanks & Postage or Tree/Vine forums.
posted by srboisvert on Oct 12, 2003 - 17 comments

Don't kill p2p because of a few bad eggs Peer-to-peer networks can be used for legal or illegal purposes. So can the telephone, a newspaper or a church's bulletin board. People are responsible for their own actions and there are laws designed to prosecute people for illegal actions.
The legal uses of P2P are rarely heard, because they are not 'sexy' or political. P2P allows artists and listeners to connect directly. The proliferation of unique works created and distributed on the Internet is staggering.(not the best letter to the editor, but the best I could find)

Why the RIAA's lawsuits aren't worth moose droppings. Tech Central Station columnist Jay Currie explains how Canada's copyright law, which instills the right to copy music in exchange for levies on blank media, renders the RIAA's legal precedent against file-sharers useless up north.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Sep 13, 2003 - 14 comments

"Movies: They're worth it!" In a move to educate those darn thieving kids and their evil P2P file-sharing networks which are used to trade ripped movies, the MPAA has launched a public service campaign to explain, in layman's terms, why violating their copyrights is wrong. …Yes, these are the same people who have just brought us an entire summer of bloated sequels, shameless celebrity vehicles and uninspired hack-work. Respect!
posted by Down10 on Aug 3, 2003 - 81 comments

The RIAA hit list. Are you sued or not? I would have thought defaultuser@kazaa would get targeted.
posted by srboisvert on Jul 23, 2003 - 44 comments