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.
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Jan 2, 2008 - View this thread

Anti-Piracy agents MediaDefender have 700MiB of juicy internal emails leaked on BitTorrent; are in trouble.
posted on Sep 16, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Aug 3, 2007 - View this thread

I know you're all lining up to buy Sealand, but The Pirate Bay wants to beat you to the punch.
posted on Jan 12, 2007 - View this thread

Hong Kong court jails man for creating and posting torrents.
posted on Nov 7, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Nov 3, 2005 - View this thread

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 on May 24, 2005 - View this thread

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

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 on Mar 31, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Mar 15, 2004 - View this thread

"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 on Aug 3, 2003 - View this thread

MJ pro-tech, anti-jail: "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans -- mostly teenagers -- in jail for downloading music," he said in a statement from his Neverland Ranch in the western state of California. "It is wrong to illegally download, but the answer cannot be jail. Here in America we create new opportunities out of adversity, not punitive laws, and we should look to new technologies ... for solutions. This way, innovation continues to be the hallmark of America. It is the fans that drive the success of the music."
posted on Jul 22, 2003 - View this thread

Piracy is Progressive Taxation says Tim O'Reilly. Of the 7 lessons in this article, "Free is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service" is probably the best model of how things will progress.
posted on Dec 12, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Sep 12, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Aug 19, 2002 - View this thread

Subversive Music Pirates Subverted by Fakes from Subversive Label. Are the fake MP3s popping up on file-sharing networks part of the recording industry's war on piracy, or just the latest in music marketing? Also our host Matt gets some ink on page 2 for comments on Evolution Controlled Creations 's spoofing and for his running of this web discourse 'hotbed'.
posted on Jun 9, 2002 - View this thread

Kazaa and related filesharing companies are breathing their last breath [nytimes link, reg required] as legal fees overwhelm the "start up" companies. the riaa again seems to be succeeding in shutting down file sharing companies by simply tying them up in court for so long that their funds dry up. but, as the 2nd generation of filesharing goes the way of napster hope rises in the rumors that the technology behind kazaa and others has been sold.
posted on May 23, 2002 - View this thread

First it was the music industry complaining about the file sharers, now it's the file sharers complaining about people stripping the adware out of their software. More proof that 'piracy will find a way'.
posted on Apr 25, 2002 - View this thread

How to win friends and influence people! Metallica goes after Seattle ISP for copyright infringement. I got this link from a pal-has anyone else heard about it?
posted on Apr 30, 2001 - View this thread

If you are downloading from Napster or some other service, the RIAA is tracking you. Here's a screenshot of the Recording Industry's secret weapon.
posted on Mar 23, 2001 - View this thread

Disney's Michael Eisner on what to do about all those kids who use Napster: Arrest and prosecute the little SOBs. I know I'd sleep better at night knowing that those devious conspiratorial 11-year-olds were behind bars. [second item]
posted on Mar 16, 2001 - View this thread

The ninth circuit court will be releasing their verdict on the linked page by 10am PST (noon CST). Is this the end for poor old Napster, or will other options be made available?
posted on Feb 12, 2001 - View this thread

DivX + filenavigator = headaches for MPAA. Of course the SPA and RIAA can't be too pleased about filenavigator either. I've checked and the DivX of Castaway is on the net already.
posted on Jan 17, 2001 - View this thread

If you haven't already read "The Heavenly Jukebox", you should really check it out. The Atlantic Monthly recently posted this great article subtitled "Rampant music piracy may hurt musicians less than they fear. The real threat -- to listeners and, conceivably, democracy itself -- is the music industry's reaction to it". While somewhat long, it's a very interesting read, going into the original copyright lawsuits in England over a hundred years ago to today's ordeal pitting the RIAA against the millions of people downloading Metallica mp3s off of Napster. Well worth reading.
posted on Aug 18, 2000 - View this thread

Perhaps Lance was right. No maybe Peter was right. Regardless, the wheels of progress continue to turn, this time it's a p-to-p app that allows the swapping of console video games napster/gnutella-style, with the 17 year-old creator saying this about the possibility of getting shut down: "Sure, it is a concern that they may try to shut us down, despite the fact that we don't permit piracy, but I am confident in the law and believe we will prevail." Riiiiiight.
posted on Aug 2, 2000 - View this thread

Shut it down! Napster ordered to shut down immediately. Backlash anyone?
posted on Jul 26, 2000 - View this thread

"Hatch Warns Labels, Don't Make Me Come Over There and Spank You" Oooh! This is gonna be good. [ From Inside via Dan Lyke's excellent Flutterby. ]
posted on Jul 13, 2000 - View this thread

Napster's screwed: Internal NapsterCo email and documents show that they intended to be a copyright-infringing pirate haven from the very beginning. Should have used PGP, kids!
posted on Jun 13, 2000 - View this thread

Dr. Dre follows in Metallica's footseps and hands over a list of 239,612 user ID's to Napster to for possible termination of these accounts.
posted on May 17, 2000 - View this thread

Download an Mp3... ...and goto jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Of course, you can always DoS attack the Motion Pictures Association of America's website, (which was down as I was writing this.) but that would most likely only land you in even deeper water than downloading the Mp3.
posted on Apr 17, 2000 - View this thread

The warez, mp3-traders, hacker and terrorist industry just got a just got a boost in the arm. the goverment and all the music companies are going to see that the internet is not to be regulated. You cannot stop individuals from sharing files between themselves and everytime you start to ban one program another one more innovative than the last pops up. I am going to stop my little rant here because I don't want to seem like i am anti goverment ...viva la revolution.
posted on Apr 10, 2000 - View this thread