Piracy

The company that publishes "For Dummies" books is taking to court the people it accuses of pirating its titles and releasing the content via BitTorrent. This could be the first time an American jury has considered a case involving BitTorrent users. ... BitTorrent is a technology for sharing large files, legally and illegally. It involves breaking down a file into hundreds of small pieces and downloading the pieces from many different sources, all at once. The method allows a computer to obtain different pieces of the same file in any convenient sequence, making the transfer process much quicker ... (view more)

A new report suggests that Microsoft may be blocking users of its Windows Live Messenger service from sharing links to the controversial torrent downloading site: The Pirate Bay. The report is supplied by TorrentFreak, which covers the lively ... copyright debate surrounding the use of torrent sites. For those not familiar with torrents, they are a type of file and a specialized file transfer system that allow users to rapidly upload and download extremely large files, such as those containing copyrighted movies, music, and TV shows. Pirate Bay and All Torrents Occupy Legal Grey Area On the ... (view more)

Files on Megaupload, the controversial file-sharing site now under US government control , could be deleted this Thursday (February 2nd). That's caused concern amongst both former owners and for people who used the site for legitimate purposes. The ... proposed deletions won't come though a court order, but rather as an indirect result of the legal crackdown. Megaupload's financial assets have been frozen, meaning the companies it hired to physically host the files are no longer being paid. As a result, they've threatened to begin deleting the files so that they can use the space for other ... (view more)

The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has shut down a leading "direct download" file-sharing site: Megaupload. In addition, employees have been charged with copyright-related offenses. Megaupload is designed to share files, regardless of ... legality. The site also allowed users to post links to the copyrighted files so anyone could obtain them. Overall, critics suggest Megaupload was much easier to use than other file-sharing sites, such as torrents or newsgroups. The site was also free of charge for most users. Anyone prepared to pay for premium membership got priority service, higher ... (view more)

Several major websites, including Wikipedia.org, will shut down all day today (Wednesday, January 18th) to raise awareness about new legislation for a proposed anti-piracy bill. Wikipedia on its website says that the new bill, if passed, will ... "fatally damage the free and open Internet." (Source: wikipedia.org ) Anti-Piracy Bill Could Block Internet Connections The anti-piracy bill is now expected to face considerable delay or a serious makeover. The change comes after a flood of negative criticism from a huge array of websites, most notably saying there is no penalty for falsely ... (view more)

The Swedish government has formally recognized a church based on the belief that people have the right to copy digital data. The Church of Kopimism claims that information is holy, with an inherent value, and the act of copying information, known as ... "kopyacting" is a religious activity that increases the value of information by passing it to more people. The group even claims keystrokes CTRL + C and CTRL + V as religious symbols, the common key combination used for copying and pasting data using a computer keyboard. Cynical observers, however, suggest the Church of Kopimism exists not to ... (view more)

Security officials in one African country are helping to solve an ongoing problem for Microsoft: piracy and the sale of counterfeit software. Police in Ghana have recently announced a successful raid on the premises of Skynet Computers and ... Accessories, discovering and seizing more than three dozen allegedly counterfeit copies of Microsoft software the company had stored at that location. All the illegal copies found during the raid were confiscated and removed from the Skynet facility (a total of 39 units of suspect pirated material), but local authorities believe the original source of the ... (view more)

The United States government has shut down a total of 82 websites accused of selling pirated goods, including music and movies. But these aren't just torrents: amongst the targeted pages are those that sell clothing, sunglasses, and even handbags. ... The seizure orders came from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") agencies and apply to eight states in addition to Washington, D.C. A selection of the sites includes Torrent-finder.com, DVDscollection.com, Sunglasses-mall.com, and NFLjerseysupply.com. ( ... (view more)

Two weeks ago it looked like the file-sharing peer-to-peer (p2p) favorite LimeWire had been quashed for good . Not surprisingly, however, a new "Pirate Edition" of the software has arisen from the ashes and released to the public, and it's likely to ... once again arouse the attention of the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). RIAA Fights Multi-Year, Multi-Million Court Battle Back in late October it appeared that the RIAA, a copyright protection agency, had been successful in closing down LimeWire for the near and distant future. After a four-year, multi-million dollar legal ... (view more)

The one-time king of file-sharing services, LimeWire, is officially kaput. The service, which offered thousands of music downloads for free, was at the heart of a bitter and intense four-year-long debate over copyright infringement with the Record ... Industry Association of America (RIAA). Single Mom Sued for $2 Million for Illegal File-Sharing The RIAA is a copyright-protection body well-known for its many attempts to shut down file-sharing sites and file sharers, the most famous case being that of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the single mom who was at one time fined $2 million for illegally ... (view more)