Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of “The Alchemist”, is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren’t too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.
Last week, seven Swedish MPs wrote to a prominent Swedish tabloid newspaper ‘Expressen’ to express their dissatisfaction with proposals for dealing with copyright infringers. Now, that number has increased to 13, and the issue seems to keep growing.
Last week we reported on the release of Steal This Film 2, a documentary about the past, present and future of filesharing. The film is free to download, but people are encouraged to donate some money if they want to support future projects. Surprisingly, the pirates who decided to donate were quite generous.
Things seem to be going from bad to worse, for Minnesota’s Jammie Thomas. After incurring a hefty judgment in the October trial vs the RIAA, she is now having to look for new representation.
Whilst America is often considered by many to be the home of overreaching and overprotective copyright laws, the Swiss government has decided that it can do better, and so quietly passed a bill in an attempt to catch the US. However, the Swiss won’t accept such a law without a fight.
The private BitTorrent tracker Moviex has been setup and configured to leech from public BitTorrent users. Through some clever modifications, their tracker allows non-members to seed to the private tracker, while downloading is forbidden.
Steal This Film 2 is a yet to be released documentary about filesharing, and how this affects our society. Ironically, a cammed version of the documentary already leaked on BitTorrent a couple of days before its official launch.
Students on campuses around the US are having increasing success in dealing with groups such as the RIAA and MPAA, and the frivolous, and often perjurous lawsuits that they send. It is very disturbing then, for a graduate student at the University of Northern Colorado (UNCO) to be targeted by his own university.
The popular hosting company HostGator effectively bans its customers from storing .torrent files on their servers. They want you to store podcasts or other media files on their server instead of saving bandwidth and resources by offering it as a .torrent download.
Franz Ferdinand have talked about downloading and piracy in the past. They have admitted to illegally copying music and expressed their support for file-sharing. Now they appear to have gone one step further by encouraging fans to pirate their latest track – a cover-version of a David Bowie song.
DRM is doomed to fail. Unfortunately, the majority of the movie companies and record labels still think it’s the best way to “protect” their media. By wearing these shirts you can show them it’s not and that it only hinders honest customers.
