File Sharing

A decade after the rise of Napster and a year after promising a new antipiracy strategy, the Recording Industry Association of America appears to be floundering on the piracy front.

The plan adopted last year by the RIAA, the trade group for the four largest recording companies, in place of its controversial litigation campaign seems to have gone nowhere. The RIAA said at the time that it had struck partnerships with major Internet service providers, the Web's true gatekeepers, and that they would help choke off online piracy.

It was all supposed to be a done deal. The Wall … Read more

The FBI has accused the man who allegedly was first, or among the first, to upload a pirated copy of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" that circulated online in April. What authorities have apparently yet to do is identify the original source of the leak.

On Wednesday, after Gilberto Sanchez was charged in New York with violating federal copyright laws by posting "Wolverine" to a file-sharing site a month before the film's theatrical release, he told reporters from The New York Daily News: "It's just ridiculous. I bought it from a Korean guy on the … Read more

Update 7:50 a.m. PST: To include new information from FBI that suspect may not be source of the leak.

The FBI has accused a man of copyright infringement for allegedly uploading to the Web the feature film "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" last spring.

Gilberto Sanchez, 47, was arrested in the Bronx, N.Y., early Wednesday morning by FBI agents without incident, law enforcement sources told CNET. A spokeswoman from the FBI's Los Angeles field office, which led the investigation, confirmed the arrest.

If convicted, Sanchez faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 … Read more

During a visit to Hollywood last week, I wanted to talk to people who knew a thing or two about the film industry's burgeoning meltdown. One of the people I sought out was Eric Garland, CEO and co-founder of Big Champagne.

Beverly Hills, Calif.,-based Big Champagne has collected data on file sharing and sold it to media companies for almost 10 years. Garland's company has survived all that time, even while making the same sad pitch. He tells the music labels and film studios they are going to be chopped down at the knees by the Internet … Read more

The PortableApps Suite is a storehouse and management system for "portable" versions of some of the most popular freeware around. That collection used to be limited only to open-source programs. But on Wednesday it started making portable versions of closed-source freeware to users. The first batch of portable freeware includes Web browser Google Chrome, VoIP client Skype, BitTorrent client uTorrent, antispyware tool SpyDLLRemover, and three others at the time of writing. The new portable versions of these programs work both independently and in tandem with the PortableApps suite.

In a statement published on its Web site, PortableApps.com … Read more

To: Charlize Theron, Hugh Jackman, Seth Rogen, Tina Fey, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, every actor, actress, screenwriter, costumer, best boy, cameraman, set designer, makeup artist, and agent--plus anyone else who makes their living in the film industry. From: Greg Sandoval, CNET media reporter and film fan. Re: Your livelihood

Cut your spending. Save your money. Many of the revenue streams that have gushed into your industry for decades, some for nearly a century, are about to dry up. This will likely mean a period of belt tightening like you've never seen before.

The end is coming for DVDs, traditional … Read more

Update: 4:30 p.m. PT To include statement from BREIN

Dutch antipiracy group BREIN says it has found documents tying one of The Pirate Bay founders to the company listed as the owner of the Thepiratebay.org, Reservella.

According to a blog post by Peter Sunde Kolmissoppi, one of the founders of the BitTorrent search engine, BREIN has filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay founders, who include Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm. The Pirate Bay has been outlawed in the Netherlands.

During that hearing, BREIN produced documents, including a credit report, showing that Neij is listed as CEO … Read more

Comcast's Web-based broadband meter, which was rumored to be released back in January, is still not available to consumers. According to a Comcast representative whom I spoke with earlier Tuesday, it's still not ready for prime time, and is undergoing further employee trials before being released to the public.

Once released, the meter will let customers of Comcast's high-speed Internet service monitor how much of their 250GB monthly bandwidth quota has been used. This will help keep them from going over that limit--something that results in a termination of their service upon the second offense.

Comcast imposed … Read more

Opera's newest feature turns your browser into an app-extendable Web server. That's right: Opera Unite, the latest out of Norway for Windows, Mac, and Linux, runs counter to the cloud-based direction that most other programs are heading toward.

But is client-based serving a recipe for the future, or a return to the past? And is Unite truly client-based? See what the latest Opera 10 beta build can do in this First Look video.