Piracy

For Hollywood and the music industry, there's no greater foe than online pirate sites, places where users flock together to share copyrighted movies and songs. Now, a cadre of American senators are making an effort to essentially block these illicit ... websites by forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) into doing the work for them. The proposed law is simple: if the United States Justice Department finds a domain to be engaged in the distribution of pirated intellectual property, it would file civil action against the site. The ISP of any offending domain found to be based in the U.S. would ... (view more)

In what some experts are calling a huge setback for the recording industry, a Boston-area judge has cut a local man's fine for file-sharing offenses by 90 per cent. Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum will now pay $67,500 rather than ... the original $675,000. In her courtroom on Friday, U.S. District court Judge Nancy Gertner found that the $675,000 fine was "unconstitutionally excessive" in considering Tenenbaum's offense: illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them with others over the Internet. Fine Could Receive Further Reduction Furthermore, Gertner determined that the new ... (view more)

Those who have downloaded the Oscar-winning movie "The Hurt Locker" via BitTorrent may soon find themselves in a world of hurt, as the film's producer has now filed a lawsuit against 5,000 BitTorrent users. The Hurt Locker emerged from obscurity ... this past March when it won several commendations at the 82nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow. The film, which is based on the travails of a fictional American bomb squad stationed in Iraq, beat out favorite and top-grossing movie of all time, Avatar. Low Turnout Attributed to Piracy By contrast ... (view more)

It's been a long time since anyone really used LimeWire for their pirated music needs, but on Wednesday a federal judge ruled that the service did infringe on music copyrights. Better late than never, it seems. Judge Kimba M. Wood of Manhattan's ... U.S. District court ruled that LimeWire and its creator Mark Gorton were guilty of copyright infringement and were engaged in unfair competition that caused others to also commit copyright infringement. (Source: nytimes.com ) LimeWire Napster's Successor LimeWire was, for all intents and purposes, the heir to the copyright-smashing crown first worn by ... (view more)

A year-long study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that claims by Hollywood and the music recording industry about the devastating effect of piracy have been overblown. The GAO, the audit and investigative arm of Congress, ... was asked by lawmakers to conduct the study in 2008 because they were trying to find ways to strengthen efforts to protect intellectual property. The GAO studied digital music, movies, and software. (Source: cnet.com ) The GAO spent a year studying how piracy and illegal counterfeiting affects the United States, but still can't make any positive ... (view more)

Warner Bros. (WB) Entertainment, Inc. is offering British students the opportunity to spend a year helping with a new anti-piracy campaign. The job will involve finding pirated content online and even going undercover. While the role is advertised ... as an "Anti-Piracy Internship", it actually pays an equivalent to $26,000 US dollars. It's only open to students on a computer-related course and is designed to be filled by somebody on a "sandwich" course, which involves a year-long industrial work placement. Given that the post is based in London, that's about the going rate for such a placement ... (view more)

Imagine being fined almost $2 million dollars for illegally downloading two albums' worth of music. Minnesota single mom Jammie Thomas-Rasset couldn't believe such a decision, and neither could a U.S. District court judge, who recently cut the fine ... down to $54,000. Original Fine $200K, Upped to $1.92M Thomas-Rasset's case is a long and prolific one, dating back almost four years. It was in 2006 that a case was brought against her on behalf of the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), for the illegal downloading of 24 songs. At the conclusion of that trial, Thomas-Rasset, who is a ... (view more)

Last summer unlucky defendant Joel Tenenbaum was just the second individual defendant sued by the RIAA, or Record Industry Association of America, for illegal file sharing practices. His case led to an astounding $675,000 verdict in favor of the ... RIAA, and now a U.S. District judge has affirmed the original result. Tenenbaum, a 25-year-old Boston University student, was in July 2009 found guilty of illegally sharing just 30 files. The result marked only the second time an individual had been sued by the RIAA, who in an equally unpopular earlier legal crusade went after single mother Jammie ... (view more)

Hackers have managed to bypass one of the key antipiracy protections built into Windows 7, the latest operating system (OS) from Microsoft. Normally, users of Windows 7 have 30 days to activate their OS, but a recently outlined method allows a user ... to turn off the normal notifications and use the OS indefinitely. Using the method to bypass the authorization doesn't actually confirm the OS as legitimate, but it does allow users to keep using it without activation. (Source: cnet.com ) New Crack Bypasses Activation Requirements Microsoft has confirmed that it is aware of the technique and is ... (view more)

Software designed by Microsoft to help law enforcement individuals access encrypted data has been leaked onto the web and available to the public via file-sharing services. The software, which is illegal for unauthorized people to use or download, ... brings together a number of common digital forensics capabilities into an easy-to-use automated tool. The software is known as the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (or COFEE ) and allows police to easily capture important "live" computer evidence at the scene in cybercrime investigations, without special forensics expertise. (Source: ... (view more)