Piracy

For most music fans that download their tunes from illegal sources, once than mp3 hits the iPod or laptop all is deemed 'free' and clear. That comfy feeling might be pretty 'flighty' in the near future; the world's most powerful governments are ... exploring the idea of scanning music devices, cell phones, and computers for non-copyrighted material in airports. The measure is just one of many considered by G8 government officials last week. Each form part of a broader international agreement between them all on putting the kibosh on piracy. The G8 way of thinking matches that of the European ... (view more)

A company that produces legitimate and original Internet-only television shows has fallen victim to a particularly aggressive group of anti-piracy protestors. Revision3 Corporation produces shows such as Diggnation (a talk show discussing the top ... stories from Digg.com) and PixelPerfect (which gives advice for users of Adobe's imaging software). It distributes its shows through a variety of methods, including its own website as well as iTunes, torrents, and YouTube. Over Memorial Day weekend, the Revision3 site went down, along with its email systems. It turns out it had suffered a 'Denial Of ... (view more)

The latest study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) shows that software pirates caused the software industry sales losses of nearly $48 billion last year. The fifth annual report says that from 2006 to 2007, overall losses grew by ... $8 billion and worldwide piracy rates increased by 3 percentage points to 38 percent. While overall losses grew, piracy rates dipped in 67 of 108 countries included in the report. The BSA said about half of the increased dollars are attributable to the declining value of the dollar. In an interview conducted by CNET News , BSA President Robert ... (view more)

The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) aren't the only bloodhounds sniffing out piracy on the continent. A major Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raid recently led to the ... confiscation of thousands of DVDs, plus the arrest of eight Montreal residents. According to reports from CTV, police in the Quebec city were able to seize thousands of DVDs and about 200 'burners' in a pair of raids now being referred to collectively as "Operation Copyright". Although the piracy ring's headquarters were firmly entrenched in jazz and ... (view more)

Last week, Maxtor external hard drives in Taiwan were discovered to be preloaded with Trojan horse malware. Approximately 1800 units were contaminated, but only 300 were believed to be sold. Based in two files, autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the program ... was designed to automatically upload any saved data to two web sites based in China: www.nice8.org and www.we168.org . (Source: taipeitimes.com ) When the Taipei Times broke the story on Sunday, investigators made claims of a Chinese plot to spy on its tiny island neighbor. Since China has been known to run Internet- and technology-based spying in ... (view more)

Miss Kazaa? Don't trust Torrents? You and everyone else not interested in paying thousands of dollars for an expensive CD collection might finally have found something worth looking into: a free music download website that makes its profit from ... someone other than you. The idea of SpiralFrog.com is fairly simple: blast the consumer with advertisements, soak up advertisers for the necessary resources to run the site, and in turn offer the music itself for no charge. Record labels actually receive about half of all advertising dollars reaped from the site. This sounds too good to be true... The ... (view more)

To those interested in the defense of copyrights, Torrents may be the next target on a judicial hit list. With most file-sharing protocols already tucked away nicely under the "legal" category, sites like Torrentz.com and BT-Mon could come under ... heavier scrutiny in the coming months. That may be especially true for one Torrent site, which was recently busted for linking visitors to illicit pictures of minors. The link remained operational not for a few hours, or a few days, but two full weeks. In a country seeking to rub out illegal file-sharing by making ISPs partially accountable, Swedish ... (view more)

Just when it seemed like the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) goons had weeded out most avenues for the illegal downloading of music, a recent British survey has revealed that it's still fairly easy for a user to acquire black market ... tunes. The report, compiled by London, England based Entertainment Media Research (EMR), is a stinging slam against the current format of most legal downloading sites. EMR finds that, for a number of critical reasons, the CD platform is not being effectively eclipsed by legal digital music distribution. (Source: iafrica.com ) The main problem? Legal ... (view more)

It was about this time last year that Microsoft began a shock-and-awe campaign against piracy. Its most coveted weapon? WGA, or the Windows Genuine Advantage, which checks the legitimacy of their software and reports back to Microsoft headquarters. ... An anti-piracy program based on a spyware-like strategy? Only Microsoft could do it! The backlash against the company was strong, and may have even kept a few users away from the much-hyped Windows Vista. However, there's still no stopping the Redmond-based firm's war on piracy. It's now going after some 23 California and Florida companies for ... (view more)

Although many music fans -- especially those of the eye-patch-wearing pirate variety -- long ago dismissed Napster, the company is beginning to build momentum as a legal download site. Since it was hammered by the RIAA a few years ago, Napster has ... shifted from its illegal peer-to-peer roots to a more iTunes-like interface. It appears to be stumping critics and paying off, with the company reporting a quarterly revenue of $28 million. For those who might be confused about Napster's current state, realize that there have been two versions of the protocol. That older, piracy-based program was ... (view more)