ISPs No Longer Have to Block The Pirate Bay, Dutch Court Rules

Millions of people in the Netherlands will soon be able to regain access to The Pirate Bay after two local Internet providers won their appeal against the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group BREIN. The Court of The Hague ruled today that the blockade is disproportionate, ineffective, and hinders the Internet providers' entrepreneurial…

New VPN Technology Claims to Thwart Great Firewall of China

The Great Firewall of China, which restricts Chinese citizens' access to a free Internet, is a mechanism that many try to tunnel through in order to access sites like YouTube and Facebook. While VPNs work some of the time, the Chinese government has developed technology to not only discover but…

Hollywood Writers Warn Against Draconian Anti-Piracy Measures

The Writers Guild of America is warning that current initiatives to protect copyright holders from online piracy go too far. The labor union, which represents many Hollywood writers, says that free speech and the open Internet should be balanced against copyright protection. Among other things they see high statutory damages,…

Prince Targets Facebook Users in $22m Live Concert Piracy Lawsuit

International superstar Prince is back on the copyright warpath, yet again targeting individuals who are quite possibly some of his biggest fans. In a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California, Prince is chasing down fans who found links to his live concerts and posted them on Facebook and…

Why The Copyright Industry Is Doomed, In One Single Sentence

In my last column about public libraries and the many parallels with online sharing of knowledge and culture, an unexpected gem surfaced in the comments. The most fundamental reason the copyright monopoly is harmful keeps being forgotten in details and irrelevancies about business models, so we must keep reminding ourselves…

Mystery as HarperCollins Hits Apple With Agatha Christie Piracy Claims

Harper Collins is one of the largest publishers in the world selling millions of books every year, but when it comes to one of their most famous authors their anti-piracy strategy is somewhat of a mystery. This week the publisher sent a wave of copyright infringement notices to Google asking…

MPAA: Google Glass is No Threat, but Mobile Phones Are

Earlier this week a man was detained by Homeland Security for wearing Google Glass in an AMC movie theater. The MPAA, who referred the man to the feds, tried to fix their mistake by stating that Google Glass is not yet a significant movie piracy threat. However, a quick look…