Items tagged with Piracy
Companies that monitor BitTorrent traffic are a dime a dozen, but AT&T marks the first time that an ISP itself is going to be getting in on the action. The company has just been awarded a patent that will allow it to deeply monitor BitTorrent traffic, though its ultimate use seems to be up-in-the-air. The company could simply want to monitor...
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On any given day in the United States you will find a number of really, really terrible ideas being floated as smart decisions. Flying to Hawaii to give birth in the ocean surrounded by dolphins. A drunk man repeatedly directing traffic in midtown Manhattan. And, today, from the USA Intellectual Property Theft...
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Whether it's software, games, movies or even books, piracy is rampant. There's no denying that, and there's no one that understands the harmful effects of it better than the content creators themselves. Over the years, we've seen some humorous attempts at trying to sway the pirate towards becoming a paying customer...
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Pirates flocked to BitTorrent in record numbers to download the season premiere of HBO's Game of Thrones. Within an hour of the first torrent being uploaded, there were 163,088 people sharing the single file, breaking the record for the largest BitTorrent swarm ever. That's according to TorrentFreak, which notes that...
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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has long sought to demonize file sharers who download, trade, and share songs illegally, noting that the cumulative impact of their deeds -- obtaining millions of songs illegally -- is nothing short of devastating. But is it really? A new study throws a...
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While the country's biggest music labels all seek out a passing of a "six strikes" scheme - one that would result in your Internet being cut off after your sixth offense - BMG has found another way to both increase its revenue and instill fear in music downloaders. Typically, if a copyright holder detects an infringement on your IP address,...
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Game designer Richard Browne has come out swinging in favor of the rumored antipiracy features in the next-gen PlayStation Orbis and Xbox Durango. "The real cost of used games is the damage that is being wrought on the creativity and variety of games available to the consumer," Browne writes. "The real cost of used games is the death of single...
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The impact of piracy on the music business has been studied in detail, but the relationship between illegal downloads and film revenue hasn't been explored to nearly the same degree. A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan and Wellesely College has examined the impact of BitTorrent on domestic and...
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As long as it's for fair use, people living in Switzerland have what amounts to a green light to download copyrighted music and movies without any repercussions. And as far as the Swiss government is concerned, copyright holders might as well go pound sand if they're not willing to adapt to the changing landscape. Piracy is, and will remain...
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Game publishers are in love with DRM, even the Draconian kind that every once in awhile causes an uproar in the gaming community. Remember Spore? It initially shipped with a three-activation limit, and like baseball, three strikes and you're out. This limit was later relaxed by Electronic Arts, who upped it to five activations and made it...
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Well, this is some news that is sure to frustrate gamers: Ubisoft has decided that it will continue implementing its special constant-connection anti-piracy measures because, to nobody's surprise, it works. The company's restrictive digital rights management (DRM) system, which was recently announced to be included in upcoming release Driver:...
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You may not think that a company like Warner Bros. doing business in China is a big deal, but consider the circumstances. China, along with other parts of Asia, are notorious for piracy. It's more of a way of life there, and less of a crime. For whatever reason, it's rampant. Due to this, many content companies have strayed from actually selling...
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It's been several months since news of the PS3's core vulnerabilities hit the news, but the case remains stuck in judicial limbo. Sony wants to move the case to California on the grounds that Hotz accessed the PlayStation Network (PSN), which is physically located in that state. Hotz's lawyers have counter-claimed that since Hotz is not a
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It's been nearly a decade since the music industry declared war against file sharers via its controversial policy of suing individuals supposedly identified via their IP addresses. After all this time one would expect the various companies to present a consistent, united front. As a recent court filing against...
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The Pirate Bay, despite its legal ups and downs, remains one of the most infamous BitTorrent sites around. Those involved in TPB may be on the cusp on introducing something new, something they say the music industry should fear. For years, The Pirate Bay has sat on a domain name, http://themusicbay.org. It's done nothing with it, although...
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Sony may use serial keys to verify legal PS3 games in the wake of the complete PS3 hacks publicized earlier this month, but the efficacy of such a plan is dubious at best. The Dutch website PS3-Sense reports that a very reliable source close to Sony has informed them that Sony will begin issuing unique serial keys for...
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The British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) released figures for music sales in 2010, sparking a debate over whether or not piracy is playing a role, or at least a significant one. According to BPI, combined 2010 digital and physical album sales declined 7 percent overall in volume to 119.9 million. This, the organization says, is due to illegal...
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Sony's attempts to prevent piracy on both the PS3 and PSP have taken a number of blows in recent weeks. Today, the company announced that it intends to sue the PS3 hacker GeoHot, who's been an increasingly large thorn in the company's side over the past 18 months. When Sony released the 3.21 firmware update that broke Other OS functionality,...
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Tech savvy students living in the UK have an opportunity to pull in a pretty respectable part-time income and move up from dining on Ramen Noodles to fast food joints. All they have to do is snitch on their fellow classmates as part of Warner Bros.'s anti-piracy efforts.It's actually a little more involved in that and the qualifying candidate...
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In the United States, discussions of copyright protection and infringement inevitably revolve around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. Since it passed twelve years ago, the DMCA has become the weapon of choice for US companies seeking to fairly protect their property as well as institutions attempting to unfairly silence criticism...
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You know what we haven't heard much about lately? Piracy. It used to be all the rage, but after iTunes (and pretty much every other online music store) went DRM-free, it seems those stormy waters have calmed. Or, on second thought, maybe no one was talking about it. New research from the University of Hertfordshire over in the UK has found...
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It only took a month after the fiasco that prevented the HADOPI legislation from passing for the French Assembly and Senate to regroup, and on Wednesday HADOPI, the "three strikes" anti-piracy legislation passed the French Senate. It had passed the French National Assembly on Tuesday.The fiasco we reference above occurred when overconfidence...
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