TorrentFreak

MPAA Vice President Greg Frazier has made some interesting comments on copyright and widespread Internet piracy during a lobbying visit to Brazil. Among other things, Frazier told a local newspaper that democratizing culture is not in the interests of the MPAA. As it turns out, the MPAA’s definition of creativity and culture is a rather narrow one that is quite different from that of the general public.

After an earlier decision failed to reach its objective, this week a Brazilian court made an unprecedented ruling against file-sharing clients. Following legal action by anti-piracy groups against a website offering a file-sharing client for download, the court decided that software which allows users to share music via P2P is illegal.

Since 2005, a Brazilian senator has been championing new cybercrime legislation which would include tough measures against file-sharing. Yesterday, at the International Free Software Forum, the Brazilian President openly criticized the bill, and then posed for pictures with The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde.

Since 2005, a Brazilian senator has been pushing for tough new ‘cybercrime’ legislation which would include measures against file-sharing. However, before thinking of unleashing new laws on the public, the government should look closer to home, since the senate’s intranet is loaded with an impressive amount of warez.

After their beloved subtitle site was taken down by an anti-piracy outfit working on behalf of US media companies, hackers responded rapidly – they defaced the anti-piracy site and inserted links to torrents hosted on Mininova. The subtitle site is already back in business – the anti-piracy site is not.

According to an ever increasing wave of emails to TorrentFreak, it appears that residents of at least two countries can no longer access Demonoid. Not only are users from the Netherlands complaining they cannot access the site but now it’s the turn of Brazilian BitTorrent fans to wonder why they’ve been cut off.

The IFPI, the international arm of the RIAA reportedly barred a handful of university professors from entering their press conference. The professors are from the Centre for Technology and Society, a part of the prestigious Brazilian think-tank Fundação Getulio Vargas. The reason for barring those professors entry could be that the organisation they are a [...]