MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support
in a brand new song. TorrentFreak
caught up with the elusive founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, who shrugged off “this rogue nonsense” and told us he wants content owners to get paid. “
It works like an ad blocker but instead of blocking ads we show ads coming from Megaclick, our ad network,” says Kim. “
This way we will generate enough ad revenue to provide free premium services and licensed content so that our users can have it for free.”
posted by finite
on Dec 9, 2011 -
73 comments
The U.S. House of Representatives has
drafted their version of Senator
Leahy's Protect IP Act,
renaming the bill the
E-Parasites Act. Among other changes discussed
previ
ously, the bill
now makes internet service providers and websites liable for activities of their users that infringe upon copyrights, effectively overturning parts of the 13-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
posted by jeffburdges
on Oct 27, 2011 -
120 comments
Senator Leahy's
Protect IP Act would require that U.S. ISPs impose an 'internet death penalty' upon domain after merely a preliminary injunction from a U.S. court that suspects the site of being 'dedicated to infringing activities', even if the domain's owner had never been notified and was not subject to U.S. jurisdiction. There is concern that the legislation would fragment the DNS system and
facilitate DNS spoofing by
obstructing DNSSEC (
pdf). There is also an
open letter opposing the bill signed by 108 Law Professors who study intellectual property law.
[more inside]
posted by jeffburdges
on Jul 24, 2011 -
29 comments
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shut down nine websites in connection with an ongoing crackdown on internet film and TV piracy. The sites seized are Movieslinks.tv, Planetmoviez.com, ZML.com, Thepiratecity.org, Filespump.com, TVShack.net, Now-Movies.com, NinjaThis.net, and NinjaVideo.net. The feds also seized related Paypal accounts and bank accounts as part of the operation. Ninjavideo was the most notorious of the group, and its admin, Phara,
went so far as to record a manifesto in praise of internet piracy.
posted by Pastabagel
on Jul 1, 2010 -
197 comments
The new DMCA: the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
posted by beth
on Apr 26, 2006 -
36 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
Europe's not-too-modest anti-piracy proposal. If accepted, it means that "not only could a teenager who downloaded a music file be sent to jail under it; so too could managers of the Internet service provider that the teenager happened to use, whether they knew what the teenager was doing or not." The proposal is being spearheaded by French parliamentarian Janelly Fourtou. Coincidentally enough, her husband is the chief executive of
Vivendi Universal.
posted by Ljubljana
on Oct 19, 2003 -
9 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
Justice Department Seizes Top Internet Site Involved In Copyright Piracy "The leading public Internet site dedicated to online copyright piracy was seized by the Justice Department today. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff and Paul J. McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia today announced the seizure of www.iSONEWS.com as part of a previous plea agreement entered into by a defendant convicted of violating the criminal copyright laws." Law enforcement seizes computers everyday for one reason or another, but leaving the site up and displaying a rather finger-wagging message is a new one!
posted by quonsar
on Feb 26, 2003 -
36 comments
European music copyrights from the '50s due to expire this year, and to grossly oversimplify things, RIAA is on the warpath, saying that imports from there would be acts of piracy. Considering that there's a gold mine's worth of material begging to be shown the light again (the Maria Callas material mentioned in the article, for example), no doubt there will be some great releases...but will EMI's actions be more the exception than the rule? (NYT link, yadayada)
posted by PeteyStock
on Jan 2, 2003 -
17 comments
What is the Darknet? Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Darknet is. Okay, actually, it's a term that some Microsoft computer scientists came up with to refer to all the different ways that internet users can swap copyrighted materials.
In a paper they authored [DOC] for a
workshop on Digital Rights Management (DRM), these engineers predict that the Darknet will grow ever stronger and more efficient while DRM technologies will make legal right holders
less able to compete with Darknet and are ultimately "doomed to failure."
posted by boltman
on Nov 24, 2002 -
38 comments
Finally, a Fair Fight with Big Music From a Business Week Online column...
"Telecom giant Verizon is battling the industry's bid to make it name a file-sharing subscriber. It's also defending your right to privacy. On July 24, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) made an unprecedented request of Verizon Communications (VZ). The music industry's trade association served the telecom with a subpoena, seeking the identity of a Verizon subscriber who had allegedly illegally traded digital songs by artists including Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and "boy band" N'Sync. The RIAA didn't specify why it wanted to know who the user was or what it would do with the information."
posted by fpatrick
on Sep 12, 2002 -
22 comments
Hosting Provider Bans RIAA - According to this press release, Information Wave Technologies will actively block all RIAA IP space because RIAA is intentionally seeking to invade customer networks / hosts to check for copyright violations. Additionally, they are going to deploy a "honeypot" system (simulates a GNUtella client sharing copyrighted material) in order to log requests for the files and correlate them with attempts to invade the host -- RIAA's stated plan to combate music piracy.
posted by Irontom
on Aug 19, 2002 -
24 comments
Taming the Wild West Net. The Washington Post takes a stab at the internet and what's been going on the last year +. Also, a roundup of
piracy and
antitrust issues. Good series of articles, except no real conclusion on how the "Wild West Net" should be tamed. Or why it has to be.
posted by Happydaz
on Jun 18, 2002 -
0 comments
When stupid laws attack:
this article points out that
the widely syndicated article about thwarting the copy protection of sony's CDs is a direct violation of the
DMCA. Will news directors at Reuters, Yahoo, and CNN be seeing fines and jail time soon? How many times does it have to be pointed out that the DMCA restricts free speech as it attempts to thwart piracy at any cost? (via
k5)
posted by mathowie
on May 24, 2002 -
10 comments
Copy protection for CDs does not have future says
Philips. Philips spokesperson Klaus Petri, speaking to Reuters, says its company counts on the fact that the refusal of consumers will convince the music industry to step back from copy-protected CD's. Petri said that Philips could sue the manufacturers of CD's with copy protection (as managers of the world-wide CD patents), because they would not correspond to the standards. "those are silver disks with music on them, but which do not resemble CD's". [via
Neowin.net]
posted by riffola
on Jan 9, 2002 -
16 comments
The RIAA wants to hack your computer (via
Fark ) The RIAA tried to attach a rider to the anti-terrorism bill currently in Congress that would have allowed them to hack anyone's computer without consequence. One more reason why the RIAA is evil.
posted by Maxor
on Oct 15, 2001 -
34 comments
Music biz wants tougher DMCA "If the RIAA gets its way, ISPs will be as guilty of copyright violation as their subscribers. "Because of the magnitude of the problem, ISPs can no longer be shielded from the wrath of the law," shrieked Rosen righteously."
posted by Mick
on Oct 8, 2001 -
23 comments
Ashcroft launches C.H.I.P. Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property units to make sure all your licensing is in order, don't have a copy of the DeCSS song, and keeping webpages de-facement free.
posted by skallas
on Jul 22, 2001 -
14 comments
The EFF gets a meeting with Adobe, but does it come quickly enough? I, for one, am not ready to easily forgive and forget the company's actions, regardless how
strong Adobe's case against him. Keep your eye on the
ball and maybe we'll see a bad law overturned and an injustice corrected.
posted by Kikkoman
on Jul 20, 2001 -
20 comments
