China’s Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office has booked a huge victory by preventing the country’s youth from accessing more than 4 million copies of pirated teaching materials. According to the vice director of the office, such materials “harm the healthy development of the country’s youth.”
After buyers of the X-Plane flight simulator complained about its DRM, the makers came up with a convenient alternative. Instead of having to insert the DVD each time they want to play, they can now buy a $29 USB drive instead. When confronted with this pricey ‘improved’ DRM, the developer fails to understand that he’s only screwing legitimate customers.
Apple is known for the stringent guidelines it applies when deciding which software it allows in their App Store – BitTorrent is one of the things on their ban list. Apple argues that BitTorrent is often used to infringe copyrights and that such applications are a no go for the App Store, forcing developers to go underground.
For years the RIAA has defended the use of DRM, much to the dislike of millions of honest customers who actually paid for their music. Now, in a shocking turnaround, the outfit seems to have come to the realization that DRM does more harm than good and has officially declared its death.
During the last few days a virus scam targeting torrent site users has reappeared. Internet users receive an email informing them they have been monitored by anti-piracy company MediaDefender on various torrent sites. Although a log file is included to ‘prove’ infringements, it contains what is being described as a “banking trojan”.
Soulseek is one the greatest music sharing networks that most people have never heard of, with a particular specialty in electronic music. Unfortunately, for nearly a year those using versions of the official client have been exposed to a highly critical vulnerability which can leave them open to remote takeover.
The movie industry leaves no stone unturned in its quest to eliminate movie piracy, particularly illegal camcording in theaters. Unfortunately, it’s the public that has to deal with the negative consequences. In some parts of the world, it means that you’ll have to wait a few extra weeks or months before a movie premieres.
There are claims today that the Australian government’s top-secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked onto the Internet. There are a number of strange entries on the list that leaked to Wikileaks, including a couple of torrent sites. However, Australian Minister Stephen Conroy claims the list is not the country’s official blacklist.
A few hours ago, certain sections of The Pirate Bay were flagged by Google as containing malware and were subsequently blocked. Similar warnings are being shown by Firefox, which states that the world’s largest tracker is an “attack site”. The Pirate Bay team are working on the problem now.
Uploading fakes to BitTorrent is a growing phenomenon, as unscrupulous individuals try to abuse the networks for their own ends. Just lately, some people have even been offering users money to post suspect torrents and this morning, a flood of hundreds of fake aXXo torrents were uploaded to Mininova.
In the past we’ve given plenty of examples of how DRM hurts paying customers instead of the people it is meant for. Still, many software companies prefer to see their customers as potential ‘thieves’ but what they don’t realize, however, is that they are actually breeding pirates instead of stopping them.
