TorrentFreak

More and more regularly, TorrentFreak has been turning over its Sunday front page to people who have an opinion on copyright, file-sharing and other related issues. From Rick Falkvinge to a member of the European Parliament, from lawyers to a filmmaker, we’re happy to share our platform. Today we have our very first musical contribution from talented UK artist Dan Bull, who is distinctly unimpressed with the BPI.

Following the High Court ruling ordering UK ISP BT to block Usenet indexing site Newzbin2, it was only a matter of time before that momentum was capitalized upon by the movie and music industries. Today a coalition of companies led by the BPI demanded that BT also block The Pirate Bay, either voluntarily or by consenting to a court order.

The Open Rights Group have called on the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), MPA(A) and other rights groups to make their UK website blocking proposals public. “Website blocking is a matter of significant public interest. We’re concerned that proposals for this censorship scheme are developing in the shadows,” writes peter Bradwell on ORG. “So together with [...]

Last week the BPI released their overview of 2010 sales volumes in the UK. As always, their press release was filled with claims that piracy is ruining their industry and most mainstream media was quick to republish this propaganda. However, we can use the very same data to show that more music is being sold than ever before, and argue that piracy is likely to have had very little impact.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK’s main recording industry trade body, came out with guns blazing against Google today. BPI says that search engines like Google are as popular as P2P applications as a source for illegal downloads. The music industry is pressing Google and others to censor their search results in favor of ‘legal’ music services.

A recent copyright takedown notice from the UK’s BPI revealed that the music group has been demanding that Google take down links not just to precise URLs where music is hosted on cyberlockers, but rather more generally referencing the entire site. Now it appears that IFPI, the BPI’s big brother, is trying a similar strategy, this time with The Pirate Bay.

The BPI has warned that it may be forced into suing UK file-sharers, despite the recent passing of the Digital Economy Act. In an interview yesterday, Chief Executive Geoff Taylor said although the industry would prefer for file-sharing to be dealt with via ‘technical measures’, they might still have to sue some people.