The set of groups that rip, encode, and disseminate pirated materials on the internet, known as The Scene, recently revised their encoding standards of SD television to switch from the video codec Xvid AVI to x264 MP4. A few recipients of pirated material had a few carefully worded comments about this new decision. Most of the aggression stems from the fact that some consumer DVD players included XviD compatibility and cannot be upgraded to play x264 files.
posted by wcfields on Mar 5, 2012 - 180 comments

Is Google willing to censor? After a December announcement, Google has quietly begun filtering piracy- and torrent-related terms from its Autocomplete and Instant services. While much of the content is arguably illegal, and results will still appear in Google's traditional search, one of the affected search terms is "ubuntu torrent."
posted by Tubalcain on Jan 28, 2011 - 69 comments

Swedish webhost PRQ, home of The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks, has been raided by police. [more inside]
posted by Pastabagel on Sep 7, 2010 - 44 comments

On the ethics of illegally downloading e-books; a Teleread essay full of interesting links about these modern e-reading times. Inspired in part by this New York Times Ethicist column, and brought to my attention by this ask.metafilter question.
posted by Greg Nog on Apr 7, 2010 - 159 comments

Take my movie—please. Nasty Old People is a Swedish movie about just that. However, it's been released freely on the web by its creator, Hanna Sköld, under a Creative Commons License, being the first Swedish film to do so. [more inside]
posted by Askiba on Oct 23, 2009 - 36 comments

Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party (Previously)
posted by Artw on Oct 22, 2009 - 110 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

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