A recent study suggests that the music industry has done such a good job pushing people toward legal services (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify, etc.) that online music piracy has all but disappeared. While it’s probably true that the proliferation of legal alternatives has made illegal methods less attractive—why run the risk of contracting malware trying to download the new Sei A album from a shady source when you can just as easily download it from iTunes?—the idea that music piracy has “disappeared” is probably a bit overenthusiastic. → Read More
The efforts of media companies to quash online piracy are a bit like someone trying to put out a forest fire with a wet noodle. The latest pathetic flail comes in the form of coercing Google into censoring its results for some search terms. A number of words will no longer be autocompleted or trigger an instant search, among them the interesting and perfectly legal “bittorrent.” → Read More
Although the headline oversimplifies Nintendo UK’s James Honeywell’s comments on piracy (what are headlines for?), it’s more or less what he said, and Nintendo seems to actually think that its steps to curb piracy are going to be effective. To be fair, Honeywell also described crowing about piracy countermeasures as being “like a red rag to a bull,” which mirrors my own thoughts. → Read More
Wow. Remember a few months ago when thousands of e-mails had leaked from ACS: Law’s computers, ACS: Law being the anti-piracy firm that was tasked with going after illegal file-sharers? Of course you do. Well now it seems that one lawyer from ACS: Law, Andrew Crossley, has given up the fight against said illegal file-sharers, but not for any altruistic reasons: “I have ceased my work…I have been subject to criminal attack. My e-mails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threat,” he said. Nice. → Read More
UFC has continued its fight against copyright infringement by filing a lawsuit against Justin.tv, the video streaming Web site where, UFC alleges, people can watch its events for free. UFC takes issue with “Justin.tv’s repeated and ongoing failure to meaningfully address the rampant and illegal uploading of video of live Pay-Per-View UFC events by members and users of the Justin.tv website.” UFC had previously subpoenaed Justin.tv (and Ustream) for the names of people who had streamed events illegally. → Read More
Video game piracy cost some £1.45 billion ($2.31 billion) in lost sales last year, as well as around 1,000 lost jobs. So says the Association of UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), which cautioned that even those impressive numbers are on the conservative side. That’s console piracy, mind you, which yet again throws a wrench in publishers’ arguments that piracy is only a problem on the PC, so draconian DRM regimes are a necessary evil. And you wonder why Sony has freaked out over the PS3 Jailbreak. → Read More
It’s only fair that after giving the music industry in general a hard time, I should acknowledge when they do something right. Universal Music Group has just donated a huge collection of recordings from the 1930s and 40s to the Library of Congress, where they will be available to be listened to for free. The collection includes iconic, rare, and never-digitized tracks from the jazz and pre-rock period. → Read More
Oh, recording industry. You are impervious to reason. This year saw increases in digital sales over in the UK — extreme increases, really — and the bulk of this BPI report is still focused on the threat of piracy. I guess if they admit they’re doing all right, they have to stop suing people. And we all know how much fun they’re having doing that. → Read More
Trusting in TorrentFreak’s numbers, Call of Duty: Black Ops was the most downloaded (read: pirated) game of 2010. You probably could have predicted that, but there’s something far more interesting in the Xbox 360 numbers, and it’s that Black Ops was only the fifth most pirated game of the year. The number one Xbox 360 game on this ignominious list is Dante’s Inferno. That’s an odd one. → Read More
Man, they’re still fighting, aren’t they? ChillingEffects’ stats, by way of TorrentFreak, reveal that the “international music industry,” in the form of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, has sent the most DMCA takedowns notices in 2010, with some 1,272 notices sent in the year. In third place is some Brazilian hardware site, Clube do Hardware. In third place we have Twentieth Century Fox, the movie studio that brought us hits like Knight and Day, Predators, Machete, and Wall Street: The Kid From Even Stevens Edition. Oh, and Avatar. → Read More
A new study, Digital Music Nation 2010, published by the British Phonographic Industry (the BPI, essentially their version of the RIAA) says that Britons download four times as many songs illegally as they do legally. That would seem to fly in the face of recent studies we’ve seen that say that as people are exposed to legal digital music alternatives (iTunes, Spotify, etc.) they tend to turn away from illegal music downloads. Again: the only way to truly eliminate music piracy is to ban music altogether. Problem solved, and we can all move on with our lives. → Read More
Pirates may have had a hard time finding illegal streams of UFC on Saturday night, and that’s because UFC has decided to strike at the heart of the beat: Google. Zuffa, the parent company of UFC, sent Google a notice of copyright infringement (under the DMCA) the other day, asking Google to remove links to sites hosting illegal UFC streams. That way, once 10pm rolls around, it’s not as easy as typing into Google something like “free ufc stream” and watching the fights for free. → Read More
You know, if people once again turn to piracy it’ll be their own damn fault. Google TV has begun to trickle out, and it’s… OK. Not great, but not outright trash. It’s easier to put up with if you’re an earlier adopter, techie type, but if you’re Joe Public? You’re not going to sit on your couch with a clunky keyboard and fiddle around with resolution settings when all you want to do is watch Glee. But what if you can’t even watch Glee? More and more networks and content providers have decided to play hardball with Google TV, banning their online streams from being accessed by Google TV. Have television executives learned nothing from the music business’ woes? Napster and all that nonsense was ten years ago! → Read More
You may have seen the settlement yesterday, likely being appealed, in which a woman was ordered to pay $1.5 million for illegally downloading and sharing 24 songs. That’s $62,600 per song, far above the (equally arbitrary, but considerably more realistic) $2250 per song ruled as the absolute maximum in another court, during an earlier trial. Higher figures, particularly those requested by the recording industry, were called “monstrous and shocking,” and with luck, the new settlement will be similarly reduced (or successfully appealed).
Meanwhile, last week, a kid who was found to have shared two songs a few years ago was fined a grand total of €30 in a monstrously, shockingly reasonable decision by a court in Germany. → Read More
Ouch. Ministry of Sound, the British record label that’s perhaps most famous for its annual compilation, conveniently titled The Annual, says it cannot move forward with planed lawsuits against alleged file-sharers. And why cannot it move forward? Because the primary ISP targeted, BT, has deleted 80 percent of the data that would have been necessary for the lawsuits to commence. Hence, ouch. → Read More
Porn studios have now started suing filthy pirates. Your days of being able to download Hot Chicks Doing Stuff 4 with impunity are over~! → Read More
The move to all-digital distribution is already well under way, and it poses a problem for businesses that have based themselves around the sale of shiny plastic discs. That, combined with the rampant piracy of these discs when they’re released has particularly hurt independent pro-wrestling organizations (to pick something out of thin air). Gabe Sapolsky, vice-president of Dragon Gate USA, owner of Evolve, and former head booker of Ring of Honor, was recently interviewed on Figure Four Daily, a podcast dedicated to pro-wrestling and MMA news, and said that the only way these companies will survive is if a new technology, Internet Pay-Per-View, becomes viable. → Read More
UFC‘s war against piracy continues, with word that Zuffa, the promotion’s parent company, has filed a lawsuit against an English fellow who is alleged to have provided an illegal stream (~!) of UFC 119. No, it’s not the first time UFC has gone after pirates, and it sure as heck (gotta keep in PG) won’t be the last time. → Read More
Big news coming out of Ireland today regarding the war on piracy, the most hilarious war of them all. The gist is that the High Court has said that laws that would cut pirates off the Internet are simply unenforceable, effectively putting an end to the practice. The BBC says the court decision will likely have a “knock-on effect” in other countries around Europe. → Read More
Do you subscribe to Sky Broadband in the UK? Have you ever torrented pr0n? Terrible news! The names of many thousands of you—5,000 at last count—have been leaked onto the Internet. It’s pretty much the most egregious leak of this sort that I can ever remember, because now the whole world will know you downloaded Hot Chicks Doing Stuff Vols. 1-9! → Read More
