piracy

One-third of the people reading this are thieves

At least, that's what a recent study from Digital Music News and BigChampagne suggests. Why? Because 36.4% of the 1.66 million computers survey had LimeWire, a popular peer-to-peer (P2P) program installed. Guilty by association?

I have LimeWire installed on my Mac. This doesn't make me a thief. In fact, I've bought a wide range of music through iTunes over the past year. I think I've downloaded one or two songs and a few goal compilations using LimeWire in the past year when I couldn't find them on iTunes. The songs in question - by Led Zeppelin - I ended up buying (again, as I'd already bought them once or twice on CD and cassette tape) when they became available on iTunes.

So, 99.999% of the music I've listened to in the past year was happily bought through legitimate means. .001% was not. At least, not originally. Am I a thief? I suppose so. But not by any devious plan. I imagine that I'm not alone in how I consume music.

But maybe as a 30-something geezer, I'm atypical. Maybe everyone does want to steal music, as the music industry seems to believe. If this is the case, as Ars Technica writes, charging more per song does not sound like a winning resolution to the problem:… Read more

Yahoo China slammed again for piracy

Yahoo China lost another round in a legal battle as a court in Beijing upheld a ruling that the company is infringing on copyright laws by allowing pirated music to be downloaded, according to the industry group suing Yahoo China.

"The ruling against Yahoo China is extremely significant in clarifying copyright rules for Internet music services in China," John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, or IFPI, said in a statement Thursday. "By confirming that Yahoo China's service violates copyright under new Chinese laws, the Beijing court has effectively set the … Read more

Scribd to block uploading of copyrighted material to its site

Sick of getting your content ripped off online? A start-up called Scribd can automatically block the uploading of copyrighted content to its site, which people use for publishing e-books, documents, and other stuff.

Basically, if text matches content that has been supplied by copyright holders working with Scribd's Qualified Publisher Program, then the upload of the item will automatically be blocked.

That's good news for content creators who typically have to go through the lengthy process of sending Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices to sites to get their copyrighted material removed.

In its effort to stop video … Read more

TorrentSpy loses Calif. copyright lawsuit

Updated at 1:30 p.m. PST with more comments and background.

TorrentSpy may be its own worst enemy.

A federal judge has ruled against the BitTorrent indexing service TorrentSpy.com saying that its hiding and destruction of evidence made a fair trial impossible.

A Los Angeles court agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America's attorneys that the extraordinarily harsh sanction of terminating the case was necessary because TorrentSpy operators' actions impacted the ability for the movie studios to prove its case.

"The court finds that plaintiffs have suffered prejudice, to the extent that a rightful decision … Read more

Piracy as a leading indicator of sales

One great way to determine whether your digital product is destined for greatness is how many people want to steal it. As the television industry is starting to realize, there's a great deal of positive information that can be gleaned from illegal torrents of the shows. If no one wants to watch it, no one is going to steal it.

The open-source analog, of course, is the download. If you aren't getting free downloads, then it's probably futile to try selling a product. Downloads, in other words, tell us a lot about future purchases, assuming there's a compelling business and revenue model behind the download. According to an article on Last100.com:

Tech-savvy consumers have been boldly declaring that piracy can help and not hinder industry for years (especially when it comes to music downloads), but I was shocked the first time I heard the same claim from some very knowledgeable marketing types one day over a year ago in a boardroom. One of them simply asked, "Is the show on BitTorrent? How many people are downloading it??" The rest of the group looked genuinely interested in the answer from a demand point of view, not from an outraged one. I've since heard the same thing again several times, from different companies.… Read more

Who would Microsoft sue? Pirates. Arrrr....!

Microsoft has gone on the offensive against software piracy, launching 52 lawsuits against alleged pirates in China, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US, among other places. This is provable, apparently real piracy, not the patent FUD the company has tossed around in the last year or so.

It also might be a coordinated syndicate behind the piracy, as CNET reports:

Microsoft noted that in 15 of the 52 cases, the software involved could allegedly be traced to a massive commercial counterfeit syndicate that Chinese authorities and the FBI broke up this summer. Most of the alleged illicit sales were … Read more

Microsoft ramps up antipiracy efforts with 52 lawsuits

Microsoft has filed 52 lawsuits against alleged software pirates.

The software giant, which has led an active campaign against counterfeit copies of its software over the years, announced Tuesday that it filed cases against resellers in countries that ranged from China to the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and United States.

Counterfeit copies of their digital goods … Read more

Microsoft: Vista piracy rate is half that of XP

Microsoft said Monday that it's seeing piracy rates for Windows Vista that are half those of Windows XP.

Now cynical me wanted to write this up as "even pirates prefer XP two to one over Vista," but that wouldn't be fair. In reality, the decline in piracy rates is largely due to the fact that Vista is much tougher to counterfeit than XP.

"Piracy rates are lower because it's harder," Microsoft Vice President Mike Sievert said in an interview Monday.

There are a variety of reasons for that, including the fact that businesses … Read more

Antipiracy effort targets little guy

The Business Software Alliance is best known for tracking piracy rates and announcing high-profile settlements over improperly licensed programs. But a new study finds that most of its money is not coming from big corporations, but from small businesses.

Associated Press writer Brian Bergstein said his analysis showed that 90 percent of settlement revenue comes from small businesses. Last year the agency, which monitors compliance for companies such as Microsoft and Adobe Systems, took in $13 million in settlement proceeds, according to the AP.

Among the other interesting tidbits is a chart showing where the organization's income originates (81 … Read more

The Business Software Alliance focuses on the 90% that can't afford an attorney

As Network World and The Associated Press report, the Business Software Alliance gets most of its money by targeting small businesses who can ill-afford to defend themselves, rather than go after the bigger companies that likely have more piracy in-house.

Why not sue the big companies? Well, because they can defend themselves, for one. But secondly, because these potential pirates are also the software industry's biggest customers. It's Robin Hood done in the reverse: take from the poor and leave the rich alone.

An analysis by The Associated Press reveals that targeting small businesses is a lucrative strategy for the Business Software Alliance, the main global copyright-enforcement watchdog for such companies as Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp.… Read more