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Judge OKs private domain seizures, orders search engine filtering
- Chanel, a luxury goods company, has gone after roughly 700 websites thought to be selling counterfeit, Chanel-branded goods. As a result, a federal judge in Nevada has given the company authority to seize domains and has ordered search engines and…
Largest domain seizure yet affects counterfeiters, pirates
- Keeping with recent tradition, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Justice have initiated a sweeping crackdown on websites accused of selling counterfeit goods and pirated software. ICE had performed a similar operation last year, as…
EU Court: ISPs cannot be forced to filter users' internet traffic
- It has been a little under a month since British Telecom's ISP division was ordered by UK Courts to block all access to usenet-aggregating site Newzbin2. In a fresh counterblow to media piracy mongrels, an European court has ruled quite…
SOPA loses backing of tech giants amid policy concerns
- After initially backing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which counts the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Intel, Dell, Symantec and 23 other tech companies among its members, has withdrawn their support saying that valid and…
Weekend Open Forum: Has DRM spoiled your fun?
- It seems like every week the Internet is up in arms over some DRM-related injustice. The consensus tends to be that most DRM schemes cause grief for paying customers while completely failing to thwart piracy. I can't speak for any…
USCG drops "The Expendables" suit, plotting new strategy
- Nu Image has withdrawn its case against the remaining defendants accused of downloading "The Expendables." Represented by the US Copyright Group (aka the law firm of Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver), the studio received subpoenas to shakedown 23,322 alleged pirates earlier…
RIAA appeals Jammie Thomas-Rasset's damage reduction
- Last November, a jury ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay the RIAA $1.5 million for downloading 24 songs -- $62,500 per track. The dispute reached a short-lived conclusion a month ago after judge Michael Davis slashed the award to $54,000, calling…
Judge: Over 99% of 'Expendables' pirates are untouchable
- US District Court Judge Robert Wilkins has all but dismissed the massive piracy case brought against some more than 23,000 alleged infringers. In early May, the now infamous US Copyright Group (front name for the law firm Dunlap, Grubb &…
High Court orders major ISP to block usenet site due to piracy
- On Thusrday, the British High Court ruled that British Telecommunications, one of the largest ISPs in the world, must block public access to Newzbin2, a popular source for downloading illegitimate copies of television shows and other media. The ruling is…
Industry veteran: LimeWire pirates were iTunes’ best customers
- Internet pirates are always portrayed as parasitic freeloaders responsible for countless instances of DRM, the "death" of PC gaming, ISP bandwidth caps and more, but according to one industry veteran, that's entirely unfair. During a keynote speech at CA Expo…
Judge slashes Thomas-Rasset's $1.5m punishment to $54,000
- The infamous saga between Jammie Thomas-Rasset and the RIAA continued today following an update in pair's third trial. Having already been found guilty of willful copyright infringement in 2007 and again during the conclusion of 2009's retrial, the third case…
Major ISPs, recording industry unveil six-strike anti-piracy system
- As accurately reported by CNET two weeks ago, several major US Web providers have effectively agreed to become the recording industry's personal Internet Stasi. Top ISPs, including Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon will voluntarily collaborate with copyright groups…
Near-final Gears of War 3 game leaked onto torrent sites
- An unfinished but near full-featured version of Gears of War 3 has leaked onto the Internet over the weekend. According to a poster on the website NeoGAF, the leaked build of Gears of War 3 includes the full single-player campaign…
Major US ISPs joining RIAA, MPAA to punish pirates
- Several top US Internet service providers are collaborating with the entertainment industry to clamp down on piracy, according to a CNET report. After years of being hounded by groups such as the MPAA and RIAA, Internet gatekeepers including AT&T, Comcast…
Police take down Kino.to in massive anti-piracy operation
- In the ongoing fight against piracy, European police this week carried out coordinated raids in Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. The raids on offices, apartments, and data centers were in connection with a probe into an Internet film provider…
Liberty Land is no more: administrators face jail time, €500,000 fine
- Liberty Land, stylized "LiBerTy-LanD - La Liberté Sans Limite !" (translation: liberty without limits), was one of France's most popular file-sharing forums. We say this in the past tense because the website was taken down over the weekend, according to…
Record 24,583 people targeted for pirating The Hurt Locker
- The US Copyright Group has been incredibly busy this month. Only two weeks ago, the law firm received federal subpoenas forcing internet service providers to unmask the accountholders of 23,322 IP addresses caught downloading and distributing the 2010 action film…
Lionhead: second-hand console games more costly than PC piracy
- Game developer Lionhead has declared that second-hand sales of video games for the Xbox 360 are a bigger problem for the company than pirated video games on the PC. In other words, the resale or pre-owned games cost the company…
LimeWire settles court case with RIAA for $105 million
- Ending a five-year battle over music piracy, LimeWire founder Mark Gorton and his file-sharing company have agreed to compensate the four largest U.S. record labels for damages in an out-of-court settlement of $105 million.
Mozilla stands up to U.S. government takedown request
- Last month the Department of Homeland Security asked Mozilla to remove a Firefox extension called MAFIAAFire that helps web surfers access websites whose domain names have been seized by the government for alleged copyright infringement. Because the government seizes only…
Music, movie, and software piracy is a market failure, not a legal failure
- The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) launched a new global study on piracy in 2006, titled "Media Piracy in Emerging Economies," and has now declared it disagrees with trademark and copyright holders who frequently characterize piracy as a legal failure.…
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