Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit LANVA has reported the IP-addresses of 106 users of the country’s largest BitTorrent site to the police, on allegations of sharing a copy of Windows 7. The site’s owner has said he will do everything he can to help the users if legal action is taken, and in turn has reported the anti-piracy outfit to the police.
With support from the three largest BitTorrent sites and many other well known file-sharing partners, the VODO project offers a novel distribution platform for indie filmmakers. Today VODO presents its second release, the world premiere of In Guantanamo, a critical film about the U.S. detainment facility in Cuba.
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.
Along with the lingering uncertainty surrounding the future of The Pirate Bay comes an increasingly urgent demand for alternative public BitTorrent trackers. PublicBitTorrent, operated by the people behind some of today’s most prominent torrent sites, is one of these much needed alternatives.
In Spain, a judge has dismissed a case against a man who downloaded and shared 3322 copyrighted movies on the Internet. Despite efforts from local anti-piracy outfits, the legal system in Spain continues to stand firmly behind those who share music and movies without financial gain.
Today the BBC published the first episode of R&DTV, a Creative Commons licensed show that users are allowed to remix, redistribute and share. The first episode of the monthly technology show features Digg’s Kevin Rose, among others. The BBC hopes to use BitTorrent for the distribution of future episodes.
Two economists from Washington University have looked at current copyright and patent laws and concluded that they’re not good. The pair see current Intellectual property laws as similar to ‘medieval trade monopolies’ which were bad for the economy as a whole, and are calling for the system to be reformed.
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.
Canadian users again face an increase in the cost of blank CDs, as the Copyright Board has increased levies on them by 38%. The raise was authorized in response to rises in music compression and increases in songwriter royalties. With this rise, the Copyright Board is simply ignoring all technological advances since 1999, while the music industry enriches itself.
Overreaching corporate claims are nothing new, certainly when it comes to copyright. Toyota vastly over-reached recently, requesting all images containing their products be removed from a wallpaper site, citing copyright issues. Finally, Toyota responds.
Motoring giant Toyota is normally ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. The company is known for innovations like the Synergy Drive in the Prius, as well as long term reliability. However, if you take pride in your Toyota, and have it as a wallpaper on your system, Toyota doesn’t want you sharing.
