Aggressive new anti-piracy legislation that allows for sites to be rapidly blocked by ISPs upon allegations of copyright infringement passed through its final two readings in Russia's State Duma today. Lawmakers fast-tracked the controversial legislation despite intense opposition from Google and Yandex, Russia's biggest search engine. Following upper house and…
One of the largest insurance companies in Guatemala has sued Microsoft over an unwarranted and extortion-like anti-piracy raid. With the help of local law enforcement Microsoft allegedly demanded an on the spot payment of $70,000 for the use of pirated software or the alternative of confiscating all of the company's…
U.S. Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel released her strategic plan on intellectual property enforcement today. In her report Espinel applauds voluntary anti-piracy agreements in the private sector and cites the six-strikes copyright alert system as a prime example. At the same time, the Copyright Czar also highlights several threats that warrant…
Following a trial spanning two weeks, the Stockholm District Court has just handed down its sentence in the Gottfrid Svartholm hacking case. The 28-year-old was found guilty of hacking into Logica, a company carrying out work for local tax authorities, and sentenced to two years in jail. Another man, said…
Leading ISPs in the UK have confirmed they are being pressured by rightsholders to add two major file-sharing sites to their blocklists. EZTV is the leading public TV show-focused website online and YIFY-Torrents is a rapidly growing site and home of hundreds of popular YIFY video releases. The ISPs say…
The KAT.ph domain name is back in the hands of the KickassTorrents team after a temporary injunction ran its course. Meanwhile, the legal action initiated by the music industry continues and it's doubtful whether the second largest torrent site on the Internet will return to its old domain. The dotPH…
The hip-hop legends of Public Enemy just released a BitTorrent bundle. The group shares the new single “Get Up Stand Up” for free and more music can be “unlocked” by sharing an email address. While these BitTorrent bundles are nothing new, the Public Enemy is more creative than most of…
Megaupload's former hosting provider Leaseweb has deleted all Megaupload user data from 690 servers without warning. Petabytes of data and backups, mostly from European users, are now lost forever. Kim Dotcom is outraged by the scandal and says this is what the U.S. Government was hoping would happen all along.…