The Motion Picture Association has sent one of its big shot lobbyists to New Zealand to advocate tougher anti-piracy legislation, and to promote a propagandistic comic book set be handed out to thousands of local kids. Interestingly, the comic doesn’t touch the subject of copyright. Instead it uses false threats to scare children and parents about the dangers of file-sharing.
The Canadian government is conducting ongoing public consultations on copyright reform. In a guest post for TorrentFreak Prof. Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa explains why Canadian Internet users should speak out on copyright today.
No matter where you go it’s Pirate Bay this, Global Gaming Factory that and to be honest, it’s all wearing a little bit thin. While you’re probably sick of reading about it, spare a thought for us – we don’t have much choice, we can’t pretend nothing is happening. So why has the BitTorrent community lost all interest in The Pirate Bay sale?
There has been a lot of court cases in the last week or two involving P2P, but there is something to be pondered, “Is a fair trial even possible?” Given the disparity between the sides in these sorts of cases, the resources, and the history, is the result a foregone conclusion before it’s even started?
Stephen Fry, a highly respected actor, comedian, writer, presenter and author yesterday admitted to downloading TV shows for free using BitTorrent. Speaking at the iTunes Festival in London last night, Fry told the audience that he’s grabbed episodes of 24 and the series finale of House, starring his former comedy partner Hugh Laurie.
Responses have been overwhelmingly negative to the news that The Pirate Bay will soon be sold to Global Gaming Factory. But what if there is a method to the apparent Pirate Bay madness — one that, as Peter Sunde has hinted, could actually be good for the P2P community?
After Global Gaming Factory X announced that it intends to buy The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million, the CEO of the company bombarded the press with his revolutionary plans for the site. By paying both the copyright holders and file-sharers the company aims to reshape the digital media landscape. We have our doubts.
Piracy watchdog Nexicon has found the ultimate way to turn piracy into profit for the fresh copyright holders added to their clientele. They offer alleged file-sharers the chance to settle for $10 per downloaded song or an equal amount for a pirated movie. If you decide not to settle, they promise to bankrupt you in court.
Three judges are currently reviewing the judge that handled the Pirate Bay trial to discover if he was biased or not. No decision has yet been made but the New York Times and several other publications report inaccuracies and plain wrongs that claim otherwise. Time to get the facts straight.
For reasons unknown, TorrentFreak is filtered by many organizations, schools and WiFi hotspots spread across various countries. We assume that those who maintain the web filtering databases have grown wary of anything related to BitTorrent, but in some cases it’s even worse than that.
In February TechCrunch rumored that Last.fm had ratted out its users to the RIAA. Now they have another source claiming data was shared with the music industry group, including IP addresses. Without going into the validity of these allegations, we’d like to point out that this data is completely useless to the RIAA, from a legal point of view.
