Consumers downloading free pirated movies are no longer Hollywood’s worst nightmare, but that’s only because of a new, more dreaded menace: cheap, and equally illegal, subscription services.
Foreign, often mob-run, businesses aggregate illegally obtained movies into “cyberlockers” similar to Internet storage sites used by individual consumers to squirrel away pirated video. But the for-profit version of [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Piracy'
NEWS: Hollywood Faces New Piracy Threat
June 22nd, 2010 No Comments
Tags: cyberlockers · illegal downloads · Movie Piracy · Piracy
NEWS: Embattled LimeWire to Launch Subscription Music Service
June 22nd, 2010 No Comments
After a thorough pummeling by the music industry , peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software vendor LimeWire Inc. will launch a subscription-based music service for consumers.
The service is scheduled to go live later this year and will allow users to download and stream music to laptops, smart phones and other mobile devices for a monthly fee.
Spokeswoman Tiffany [...]
Tags: Limewire · P2P file sharing · Piracy
NEWS: New Suit Against Limewire Could Total 15 Times Music Industry’s Yearly Income
June 18th, 2010 No Comments
Last month the RIAA accused Gorton of shifting his money to avoid paying damages from the case. They have appealed to the courts to try to have his assets frozen. They also filed a motion to have Limewire’s services shut down.
Now a coalition of four major labels — EMI, Sony/ATV, Universal and Warner/Chappell — and four [...]
Tags: Limewire · Piracy · RIAA · Sony · Universal Music Group
NEWS: States Clash Over Anti-Counterfeiting Enforcement
June 11th, 2010 No Comments
Rich and developing countries clashed on Wednesday over controversial proposals to tighten up the enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights.
ACTA would allow customs officers of signatory states to make searches if they believe counterfeit or pirated goods are being brought in, leading to seizures or criminal prosecution.
India, which argued that ACTA would go far beyond [...]
Tags: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) · Intellectual Property Rights · Piracy
News: Feds hampered by incomplete MPAA piracy data
April 23rd, 2010 No Comments
Last summer, not long after the U.S. government began a review of how piracy affects consumers and the nation’s economy, the feds went to the major movie studios for help.
Representatives from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’ investigative arm, asked the studios for information about a survey the studios had commissioned (PDF) that concluded piracy [...]
Tags: Counterfeiting · Motion Picture Association of America · MPAA · Piracy
News: Google-China Flap Déjà Vu for Microsoft
April 2nd, 2010 No Comments
Hong Kong, China (CNN) — A fight between a technology titan and the world’s fastest-growing economy. Trade war tensions rising between Beijing and Washington, as U.S. legislators howl about unfair Chinese business practices and the Chinese media assail American arrogance.
No, it’s not the current battle between Google and China — but the fight between Microsoft [...]
Tags: china · Google · Intellectual Property Rights · Microsoft · Piracy
News: Nintendo scores piracy win: Australian owes $1.3M for leaking ‘Super Mario Brothers Wii’ Online
February 11th, 2010 No Comments
Piracy doesn’t always pay.
Nintendo has settled a federal lawsuit with a 24-year-old Australian who got his hands on the popular Mario game, then shared it with the world.
James Burt, who bought “Super Mario Brothers Wii” early in Australia after a local store mistakenly made it available days before its official release, promptly hacked the game [...]
Tags: Copyright Infringement · Nintendo Wii · Piracy · Video Games
News: Hollywood Studios Lose Australian Movie Piracy Suit
February 5th, 2010 No Comments
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — Hollywood’s biggest movie studios, including Walt Disney Co. and Paramount Pictures, lost a suit seeking to stop customers of Australia’s Iinet Ltd. from illegally downloading movies in a ruling that may set a precedent for the industry.
Iinet, Australia’s third-biggest Internet service provider, didn’t authorize copyright infringements and shouldn’t be held liable [...]
Tags: Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft · BitTorrent · Internet Piracy · ISPs · Paramount Pictures · Piracy · Walt Disney Co.
News: Canada: Internet Piracy Haven
December 23rd, 2009 No Comments
Internet piracy is rampant in China, right? And Russia is known to be a hotbed of infringing activities as well. It may come as a surprise to some that the current No. 1 site for BitTorrent file-sharing — often of the copyright-infringing kind — is Canada-based Isohunt. In fact, the Obama administration put Canada on [...]
Tags: BitTorrent · Canada · Copyright Infringement · illegal downloads · Illegal File-sharing · Intellectual Property Rights · Internet Piracy · ISOHunt · P2P software · Piracy
Commentary: To Be Pirated or Not To Be Pirated…That is the Question
March 25th, 2010 No Comments
We may be witnessing the most momentous time for the publishing world since the invention of the printing press in 1440. Since the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle to the market in late 2007, the industry has been quite active, with e-books and e-readers emerging, and the financial impact of digitally produced content being fully realized.
Although [...]
Tags: book publishers · digital publishing · e-books · Illegal Downloading · Piracy