Archive for the ‘Piracy’ Category

New Piracy Defense: You Didn’t Stop Me

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Ok, this guy got the shit end of the stick when the courts ordered him to pay $675k for violating copyrights. Kudos to the courts, though, for treating music piracy like the real violation it is.

Well, in a new twist, grad student Joel Tenenbaum – in hopes for getting a new trial – is putting the blame on the record labels for selling “DRM-free CD’s [that make] the proliferation of their recordings on the peer-to-peer networks trivially easy.”

Doesn’t this guy wish he settled for $5k like he was offered to begin with?

New Piracy Defense: You Didn’t Stop Me

ISOHunt Guilty of Copyright Violations

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Wendy Davis at Mediapost reports this morning that IsoHunt, the popular torrent search engine, has been cited for copyright infringement and intentionally encouraging piracy.

In a similar case last year, torrent search engine TorrentSpy was ordered to pay $110 million in damages to the MPAA.

It appears to this Hobo that the “search engine defense” is no longer going to hold up when all you index is copyrighted material. The judge decided that the “safe harbor” statutes, in this case, did not apply, as they require, “passive good faith conduct aimed at operating a legitimate internet business,” which he did not see.

ISOHunt Guilty of Copyright Violations

Danger Mouse’s New Album

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

From MikeHudack.com:
EMI has told Danger Mouse that his latest CD won’t see the light of day due to “legal issues,” so he’s responding by releasing the disc as a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R.

Danger Mouse’s New Album

NYTimes on Pirate Bay

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Good article.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/13/pirate-bay-heroes-or-criminals/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

NYTimes on Pirate Bay

Fox Reviewer Canned For Wolverine Write Up

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

So ridiculous. Maybe it showed bad judgment, but in this day and age of “scoop or be scooped,” I’m baffled at the firing of Fox News columnist Roger Friedman.

The friggin’ movie is available online. Sure its incomplete and lacking some special effects, but it seems that the punishment doesn’t quite fit the crime here. Glad that its OK for bloggers (for now) to point out what is floating around in cyberspace, even if the mainstream media can’t. Apparently you can only write about the fact that the movie has been stolen and is actively being distributed, but you can’t comment on whether the movie is any good.

Hell, I wrote about how many bad versions of Star Wars had been leaked. Took me at least 5-6 tries before I found a copy without a timecode, with proper Dolby Digital 5.1 and accurate color balance. Too bad the movie still sucked.

Congrats, Roger. You’ll have a job at a real media outlet soon enough. Like this one. And at least the movie was good.

Fox Reviewer Canned For Wolverine Write Up

Telnor Stands Up For Pirate Bay

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Telnor issued a statement regarding file-sharing haven The Pirate Bay today.

Telenor rejects the demand from the IFPI to block access to the Swedish website, The Pirate Bay, and finds there to be no legal basis for the demand for ISPs to control and/or assess the content users download. At the same time, Telenor does not condone pirating of material and illegal file sharing.

“Asking an ISP to control and assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should and should not be delivered.”

“This is by no means a new issue, and it applies to the entire Western knowledge-based economy. Telenor sympathises with Intellectual property rights holders whose content has been illegally
distributed, but in our opinion, it is wrong to claim an ISP is liable for any illegal activity by its users on the Internet,”

Telnor Stands Up For Pirate Bay

RIAA & ISPs Partner for Piracy

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

So the RIAA didn’t exactly give up its efforts to crack down on piracy, or leave it entirely in the hands of ISPs either.

Shelly Palmer reports:

RIAA & ISPs Partner for Piracy

RIAA Abandons Pursuit of Pirates

Friday, December 19th, 2008

In an early Christmas gift to music “collectors” around the country, the RIAA announced that it will abandon its much maligned effort to sue individual music pirates and instead work with ISPs to curb the practice. ISPs will be sending warnings to alleged pirates.

“We think this is going to be a different form of stick, but we absolutely think this will be a meaningful alternative approach that will have a significant impact,” said Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA.

Different stick? More like a wet noodle. Stop, or we’ll say stop again. Translation: its mp3 season.

RIAA Abandons Pursuit of Pirates

Shmuck of the Week

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

When are people going to learn to turn off the “Allow Sharing” function in Kazaa? Isn’t this how most of the RIAA’s tarets have been caught?

New shmuck of the week goes to Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum, for getting caught and earning himself a $1 million lawsuit from the RIAA.

Why does Mr. Tenenbaum deserve such notoriaty? Certainly not because he’s just another busted music pirate. No, of course not. It’s because of his mom.

His mom, you say? Yes. According to the article in Boston University’s Daily Free Press, Mr. Tenenbaum’s mother is a lawyer who specializes in copyright and Internet law.

Now he’s being helped by cross-river rival Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson.

Shmuck of the Week

Hole in Adobe Security Opens Amazon Floodgates

Friday, September 26th, 2008

A security hole in Adobe Systems Inc software has enabled users free access to record and copy from Amazon.com Inc’s video streaming service.

According to Reuters, the Replay Media Catcher from Applian Technologies, recorded movies from Amazon and other sites that use Adobe’s encryption technology.

If you’re so inclined, instructions can be found at tvadfree.com

Hole in Adobe Security Opens Amazon Floodgates