The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. 'Alien Covenant' tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Ghost in the Shell'. 'Kong: Skull Island' completes the top three.
Google is an excellent search engine. The company does its best to present users with relevant information wherever it can. With a reel of popular torrent sites, for example, when users search for it. Or a handy overview of streaming sites such as Netflix, Hulu, Putlocker and Movie4k.to. Whether Hollywood will appreciate this service doubtful though.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft recently suggested it could go after people who use 'pirate' set-top boxes at home. Such prosecutions are potentially tricky under UK copyright law so chances of success could be slim. However, FACT is actually eyeing the Fraud Act 2006. Could that work?
Internet subscribers who are caught downloading pirated content have no constitutional right to Internet access, BMG says. The music rights group is countering a defense ISP Cox Communications submitted to the Supreme Court, arguing that the cited ruling doesn't apply here.
The Pirate Bay has slowly but steadily returned to its former glory. After more than three years, the deviant torrent site has regained a spot among the 100 most-visited sites on the Internet. While many of the site's users may cheer at the news, there's also a dark side to the recent resurgence.
Following seven years of legal problems and several court cases, the operator of a defunct warez site has been ordered to pay 13 million euros to movie studios and companies including Microsoft. He also faces a year in jail but with his whereabouts unknown, it seems unlikely that Disney and friends will get a Hollywood ending.
A federal court in Florida has granted a preliminary injunction against more than two dozen relatively small pirate sites. The order allows the media conglomerate ABS-CBN to seize the associated domain names. In addition, advertising networks including Google Adsense and MGID are instructed to freeze their funds.
The Intellectual Property Office reports that while UK infringement levels are stable, new threats are challenging progress. Around seven million people are consuming some level of copyright infringing content, but illicit streaming and stream-ripping are increasing in popularity. Interestingly, however, the number of consumers accessing exclusively free content is at an all time low.