file sharing

Jammie Thomas asks Supreme Court to take file-sharing case

Acting on her promise, Jammie Thomas-Rasset has finally fought her music uploading case all the way to the Supreme Court. Her lawyers announced today that they have filed an official petition asking the Supreme Court to review her long-running case, which has moved up through the courts over the past five years.

In 2007, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) accused Thomas-Rasset of copyright infringement for sharing 1,700 copyrighted songs -- the equivalent of 150 CDs. But the RIAA whittled down the number to 24. A jury heard the evidence against her and rendered a $222,000 verdict.… Read more

MegaUpload's DotCom gets a peek at government spy records

In what looks like another blow in the U.S. case against MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom, New Zealand's spy agency is forced to turn over records of its illegal surveillance and raid of DotCom's home.

According to Reuters, New Zealand's high court ordered the agency to reveal the records to DotCom, which could possibly aid him in his battle to fight U.S. extradition. The court also ruled that DotCom and his company managers could seek damages from the government because of the agency's unlawful actions.

DotCom's saga has played out over the past year … Read more

Tackle OS X file sharing not allowing additional users

The default file-sharing protocol for OS X is Apple's "Apple Filing Protocol" (AFP) service, which is the primary service enabled when you select File Sharing in the system preferences. Enabling this will allow Macs on the same network to discover and connect to shared folders on the system, but there may be times when an error will occur that prevents users from logging on. When this happens, the client systems attempting to connect will get an message that states "this file server will not allow any additional users to log on."

This error happens because … Read more

'Six-strike' anti-piracy campaign postponed until 2013

The "six strikes" copyright enforcement plan that aims to curb illegal downloads and peer-to-peer file-sharing has been postponed until 2013.

The executive director of the Center for Copyright Information, which is in charge of the copyright warning system, announced today that because of damage from Hurricane Sandy the organization's alert system will not begin until next year.

"Due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy which have seriously affected our final testing schedules, CCI anticipates that the participating ISPs will begin sending alerts under the Copyright Alert System in the early part of 2013, rather … Read more

Cubby out of beta, offers free 5GB accounts to all

Remember Cubby? It's the new file-syncing and -sharing service from LogMeIn (makers of my longtime favorite remote-access tool).

Cubby's been running a closed, invitation-only beta for some time, but I've got good news: now it's an open, no-invitation-required beta. That means anyone can sign up for a free Cubby account, which includes, among other things, 5GB of cloud storage.

But hold on a sec -- this isn't just another Dropbox wanna-be. For starters, the latter gives you only 2GB of free storage; Cubby gives you 5GB. And for each friend you refer who signs up, … Read more

RIAA condemns research that shines positive light on pirates

Researchers recently presented a paper that suggested U.S. pirates buy roughly 30 percent more music than those who do not file share. The Recording Industry Association of America wasn't best pleased and has responded by stating the research is "misleading."

Originally reported last month by TorrentFreak, the research came from the American Assembly, a public affairs group affiliated with Columbia University.

Joshua Friedlander, RIAA's vice president of research and strategic analysis, decided to refute the study in a blog post on Monday:

Some commentary has misleadingly reported that people who use P2P services like BitTorrent … Read more

Illegal file-sharer gets slapped with $1.5 million in damages

The damages award against illegal file-sharer Kywan Fisher will most likely send him to the poor house. Illinois federal court Judge John Lee ordered Fisher to fork out $1.5 million to adult entertainment company Flava Works this week, according to TorrentFreak.

Flava Works sued Fisher for sharing 10 movies he'd previously paid for via BitTorrent. The damages award amount was reached by fining Fisher $150,000 per movie. This is the largest damages award ever ordered in a BitTorrent case.

Flava Works caught Fisher sharing its movies by tracing the illegal copies he was accused of sharing back … Read more

Is Spotify unfair to musicians?

Is $10, or the price of a few Starbucks lattes, really too much to pay for an album? Is $10 really too much to support musicians well enough they'll want to record more music? I still play LPs I bought when I was a teenager, and I can't think of anything else I still use from that part of my life. Those records are, if anything, more valuable to me now then they were then. I'm old enough to remember when record companies were freaking out about kids making cassette copies of albums, but producer and engineer … Read more

Synch files across multiple machines easily and concurrently

Dropbox for Mac is a Web-based storage location that syncs with specified files or folders on your Mac, allowing you to access them from anywhere. If you have two or more machines using the same Dropbox, changes to a Dropbox-tagged file will be synced on the other devices. Working across Mac, Linux, and Windows, Dropbox for Mac lets you access files even when miles away from your main machine (and even when its off).

To use Dropbox for Mac you need an account, although setting one up is easy. A free account is available that lets you sync 2GB. The … Read more