piracy

U.S. says Kim DotCom swore not to recreate MegaUpload

Kim DotCom, the flamboyant founder of the now defunct MegaUpload, made news today by announcing the coming of Mega, a new cloud storage service that is similar to MegaUpload.

But with the launch of a service similar to MegaUpload, set for the first of the year, officials in the United States said that DotCom will have misled a New Zealand court and possibly violated the terms of his bail and opened himself up to new charges.

Last January, DotCom and six others linked to MegaUpload were accused in an indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney of operating MegaUpload as … Read more

MegaUpload will be reborn as Me.ga in January

Kim DotCom is once again making news and thumbing his nose at authorities.

DotCom told Reuters today that he will launch Mega, the son of MegaUpload, near the first anniversary of the police raid on his home and the shutdown of MegaUpload, a storage service accused of hosting millions of pirated movies, music and other digital media.

Police in New Zealand arrested DotCom last January at the request of the U.S. government, which has alleged in an indictment that DotCom and six associates are guilty of criminal copyright violations, conspiracy, and money laundering. DotCom and the other defendants deny … Read more

John Mellencamp: Congress must target search engines

John Mellencamp, the rock musician turned political activist who jointly launched the Farm Aid concert series, has found a new cause: attacking Internet copyright law.

Mellencamp says that U.S. copyright law should be rewritten to compel Google and other search engines to police Web pages they index -- that number in the billions -- and delete links to infringing Web sites.

The musician, once known as John Cougar Mellencamp, wrote in an op-ed yesterday that:

What's happening is your search engine leads you to an illegal downloading site where you can download -- you name the artist -- … Read more

Feds uphold jailbreaking laws on DVDs, game consoles, tablets

The U.S. Copyright Office published its new set of rules on whether people can jailbreak smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles today; it also outlined the guidelines on DVD copying.

Overwhelmingly, its conclusions were that besides smartphones, all of the above remain illegal.

Every three years the Copyright Office takes requests from digital rights proponents and opponents to re-examine the laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that dictate whether people can unlock or jailbreak their varied devices. Today, in a lengthy document (PDF), the government listed all of the changes it made.

The key developments are that people cannot … Read more

Antipiracy group wins damages against torrent site's host

Dutch antipiracy group BREIN has won a landmark case that found a torrent site's former hosting provider was culpable for damages suffered by copyright holders as a result of the site's activities.

The Court of The Hague ruled today that XS Networks, the former host of torrent site SumoTorrent, was guilty of facilitating copyright infringement and should have acted to remove the site when requested to do so. The ruling may have far-reaching implications for hosting providers' liability for the conduct of their clients.

BREIN had asked XS Networks to shut down the torrent search engine and directory … Read more

A copyright proponent's wish for the presidential debate (Q&A)

The goal of technology companies is to stuff their pockets with money, said Robert Levine.

"Venture capitalists may -- I haven't confirmed this -- also want to make money," Levine told snickering audience members, who were mostly from book publishing, during a panel discussion last March at the On Copyright conference.

What Levine wants to know is why everyone in tech gets upset when musicians and filmmakers try to earn a living. Levine has become a notable proponent of copyright and a defender of protecting the work of artists.

Since the publication last year of his book, … Read more

Bryan Cranston of 'Breaking Bad' on piracy, TV's golden age

Is this a golden age of television? Is digital piracy unethical? What would it take to push someone over the edge, into a world of horrific violence?

These are the questions that keep us up at night. Thank goodness, then, that I had the chance to get a little face time with Bryan Cranston, star of the TV masterpiece "Breaking Bad," to set the above issues straight, and also to tell us what phone he uses.

Read more of "Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston on piracy and TV's golden age" at Crave UK.

TorrentFreak pegs top pirating universities in U.S.

Restricting access to Web sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents has been a long-standing practice for universities in both the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Suffering under the strain of heavy traffic due to students streaming films and downloading gigabytes of data via torrents, academic institutions have attempted -- often in vain -- to curb the trend.

But when the next episode of "Game of Thrones" isn't out for another week and has been broadcast already in another country, the temptation is no doubt difficult to resist.

Universities are not unaware of this and have … Read more

AT&T set to start six-strike anti-piracy campaign?

Alleged documents obtained by TorrentFreak assert that Internet provider AT&T has begun internally training its personnel in a new anti-piracy campaign.

Warning notices will begin to be sent out on November 28, according to the documents. If subscribers are caught downloading content protected by intellectual copyright -- including videos, games and music -- they can expect to have access to frequently visited Web sites blocked.

So, can a subscriber expect a court summons to arrive in the mail? Perhaps not, at least, for now. Instead, you'll have to complete an "online copyright course," according to … Read more