Piracy of iPhone applications has become quite a hot topic recently, particularly since ‘one-click’ cracking apps such as Crackulous have become available to the public. The Kali Anti-Piracy system from Ripdev believes it has the answer, putting pirates on notice that the easy ride to free software is over.
Players of the PC game Gears of War have a problem that means they are currently unable to even load their game. The reason – a hard-coded shutoff date in the DRM that prevents the game from playing. Yet again, DRM prevents an honestly purchased game from working. Will Crysis and GTA IV break next?
Sites offering downloads of BitTorrent clients and other well-known software, which then require an SMS to be sent to ‘activate’ the installer of free software, have been appearing at an increasing rate. Not only does uTorrent end up costing up to $20, but these sites are in breach of new telecoms regulations and are set to be shut down.
Over the past three years, TorrentFreak has reported on various messes generated by DRM, and how that has impacted people all over the world. Now someone has decided it needs looking into, and so the Federal Trade Commission in the US has commissioned a Town Hall meeting on the subject.
A few days we reported on a new service which claimed to offer lifetime anonymous BitTorrent for a $50.00 one-off payment. As the service ‘launched’ we had our doubts, but understandably some people decided to give it a try since it was so cheap. It turns out that the offer was indeed too good to be true.
The proposed Australian Internet filter is causing controversy before it even gets off the ground. The trial, which is to include attempted BitTorrent blocking, was due to start two days ago but generating further embarrassment for the government and surprising no-one, it failed to launch.
Previously thought to be limited to HTTP and HTTPs web traffic, the touted Australian Internet filter will also target P2P traffic. In response to a comment posted by a user on his department’s blog, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has admitted that BitTorrent filtering will be attempted during upcoming trials.
For years the RIAA has been filing lawsuits against thousands of individuals who allegedly shared copyrighted music. Following recent court setbacks, the lobby group has announced it will stop mass lawsuits. Instead, it will focus on cutting deals with ISPs to disconnect ‘IP-addresses’ that repeatedly share copyrighted music.
Earlier this year we reported that Ubisoft faced with problems with the DRM on Rainbox 6: Vegas 2, and released a fix – in the form of a no-CD crack actually created by warez group. Following on from this bad experience, Ubisoft has just released the PC version of Prince of Persia without DRM, but expect piracy to be high.
In February 2008, a Danish court ordered the ISP Tele2 to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The controversial ruling was under appeal but today, in a move which will delight the IFPI, the High Court upheld the decision to force the ISP to stop its customers from accessing the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.
The Pirate Bay isn’t new to the experience of being blocked by European ISPs. Now, according to many customers of the ISP Orange, it has been impossible to access the site for the last five days, unless they route their traffic through a proxy. Are Orange really taking the bold step of censoring the world’s largest tracker?
