piracy

This was the year of Internet activism with a sharp political point to it: Protests drove a stake through the heart of a Hollywood-backed digital copyright bill, helped derail a United Nations summit, and contributed to the demise of a proposed data-sharing law.

In 2012, when Internet users and companies flexed their political muscles, they realized they were stronger than they had thought. It amounted to a show of force not seen since the political wrangling over implanting copy-protection technology in PCs a decade ago, or perhaps since those blue ribbons that appeared on Web sites in the mid-1990s in … Read more

The U.S. and Russia have agreed on an "action plan" to fight the theft of intellectual property, including online piracy of copyrighted materials.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative announced the agreement yesterday, saying that the plan's priorities include, quote:

"Combating copyright piracy over the Internet, including actions such as takedowns of infringing content, action against persons responsible for IPR [Intellectual Property Rights] crimes, coordination with rights holders, cooperation and information exchange between IPR enforcement officials, and devotion of resources and personnel to law enforcement agencies to combat piracy over the Internet.

Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is being released from solitary confinement and moved to a different prison in Sweden to finish his sentence tied to his role in illegal file-sharing.

According to torrent site TorrentFreak, Warg is due in May to finish a sentence for his role in running The Pirate Bay, a resource for finding torrent files that can be used to download both legal and illegal content.

His detainment in solitary confinement apparently wasn't tied to the Pirate Bay case specifically. When he was deported from Cambodia to Sweden this summer, Warg was accused of hacking … Read more

A United Nations summit has adopted confidential recommendations proposed by China that will help network providers target BitTorrent uploaders, detect trading of copyrighted MP3 files, and, critics say, accelerate Internet censorship in repressive nations.

Approval by the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union came despite objections from Germany, which warned the organization must "not standardize any technical means that would increase the exercise of control over telecommunications content, could be used to empower any censorship of content, or could impede the free flow of information and ideas."

The ITU adopted the confidential Y.2770 standard for deep packet … Read more

Apple's iTunes platform could make its debut in Russia tomorrow.

An Apple PR person in Russia has sent out an event invite to a small number of people in the country for a music event the company plans to host tomorrow night, TechCrunch, which obtained a copy of the invite, is reporting. The invite did not say that iTunes will be launching, but did acknowledge that the iTunes team will be holding the event.

Russia is one of the more difficult digital-music markets to crack. The country has several legitimate download services, including one from search firm Yandex, but … Read more

WASHINGTON D.C.--The technology sector is supposed to be one of the new power players in national politics. But you might be wondering what happened to its newfound political capital after watching its hapless attempts to lobby Congress to pass the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA), a bill that would reduce the music royalties paid by Web radio services.

At a hearing yesterday before a House subcommittee studying IRFA, the tech world seemed to be the same amateurs in navigating Washington as they were before January's triumph over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Pandora and the other … Read more

The outgoing chairman of a House of Representatives panel responsible for U.S. copyright law conceived the memorable Stop Online Piracy Act. Its next chairman happens to be even more enthusiastic about expanding digital copyright law.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte was elected head of the House Judiciary committee today, much to the dismay of advocacy groups that had doggedly worked to defeat SOPA and Protect IP a year ago.

The Virginia Republican has long been a steadfast ally of Hollywood and other large copyright holders, saying as recently as two months ago that "I remain committed to enacting strong copyright … Read more

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

From the start, the MegaUpload case promised to be one of those long-running courtroom fights -- and that's exactly what it is turning into.

Anne Toohey, a lawyer working for the commissioner of police in New Zealand, said in court today that there is a "high likelihood" that the extradition hearing to determine whether MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom and several other company managers can be extradited to the United States will be delayed until July, according to a report by MSN in New Zealand.

If postponed, it will mark the second time the case has been pushed … Read more