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Internal drama at Fox: longtime Hollywood columnist Roger Friedman fired - or not? - for posting a review on FoxNews.com of 20th Century Fox's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which leaked onto the internets April 1. He apparently liked it. But Fox is freaking out about the leak, more than a month before the theatre premiere, and the FBI has conducted raids. Speculation about what happened here.
posted by CunningLinguist on Apr 5, 2009 - 45 comments

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act has added a whole other dimension to the term "copyright infringement." Sponsored by the US entertainment industry, it allows seizure of assets before the accused is found guilty and the creation of a new executive branch led by an "Intellectual Property Czar" who would report directly to the President on IP crimes--similar to the Drug Czar of the War on Drugs. Financial penalties for copyright crimes have increased dramatically. More information here, and a summary of critiques here. Is this a useful addition to the War On Copyright Infringement or just more bureaucratic red tape?
posted by schroedinger on Oct 14, 2008 - 45 comments

Author Paulo Coelho talks about how creating The Pirate Coelho, a site with links to torrents of his own books, leads to a massive increase in sales.
posted by dobbs on Jan 25, 2008 - 9 comments

"Don't Download This Song." A free, and rather hilarious, download from "Weird Al" Yankovic done in the 'charity gospel' "We are the World" style, including a few gems in the lyrics like "even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong." Direct MP3 link. Music video evidently coming shortly.
posted by WCityMike on Aug 22, 2006 - 35 comments

Holy illegal downloads, Bibleman! Christian music fans are pirating songs, too! What would Jesus download?
posted by wfrgms on May 4, 2004 - 25 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

Hi! You have the right to remain silent! (wanna cyber?)

The RIAA, bastions of goodness and justice, are sending IMs to nasty file-sharers, telling them that what they're doing is naughty. And that they might just end up in court.
A private company they're hiring plans to send a million messages per week, telling the thieving pirates that the RIAA knows where they live.

Looks like "Hilary Rosen" is one person I'll be putting on my ignore list.
posted by Blue Stone on Apr 29, 2003 - 27 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