RIAA, IFPI, and the BPI line up to praise passage of the Digital Economy Bill, which includes Internet disconnection, website filtering, and a virtual ban on public access WI-Fi, hoping that it “creates momentum for the graduated response approach to tackling piracy internationally.” The ink has yet to dry on the recently passed Digital Economy [...]

Digital Economy Bill  sails through House of Commons after a mere two hours of debate, moves back to House of Lords, where it’s expected to rubber stamp the legislation, and will soon get royal assent to become the law of the land. Yesterday, the UK’s House of Commons passed the controversial Digital Economy Bill which [...]

CEO Ivan Seidenberg says it has to be able to deal with the 5% or 10% of customers that are “abusers…chewing up all the bandwidth,” and that “net neutrality” interferes with its ability to do so. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg gave an interesting interview at the council for Foreign Relations a few days ago that [...]

BitTorrent tracker site begins redirecting US visitors to isohunt.hk, a stripped down version that searches the Internet for content instead, after court ordered injunction covering acts of infringement that take place in the US. Last week US District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, who previously ruled that isoHunt infringed copyright and intentionally encouraged piracy, issued a [...]

Was the the first Canadian to be jailed for pirating and distributing Hollywood films under under the country’s revamped anti-piracy laws. The BitTorrent community lost a well known member to a drug overdose this past Sunday. Canadian Gérémi Adam, 28yo, better known as maVen, was responsible for producing some of the highest quality CAMs around. [...]

Had appealed earlier decision by the FCC sanctioning the ISP for singling out BitTorrent traffic as part of its network traffic management plan. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has sided with Comcast in the long-running dispute over the ISP’s ability to manage its network traffic and the FCC’s [...]

Digital Economy Bill enters House of Commons for its second, and probably final reading, today without the full debate and scrutiny as many had hoped for being that it could spell the end of public access Wi-Fi, force legitimate websites to close, and disconnect innocent Broadband users from the Internet. Today is an important day [...]

TalkTalk warns many will have to spend up to £70 ($106 USD) each for a new router, and/or £20 ($31 USD) for a new laptop Wi-Fi card to prevent others from using their connection to download copyrighted material or risk losing it altogether. UK ISP TalkTalk, which claims to be the country’s largest broadband provider [...]

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) notes that the law has yet to take effect, and that research involved a limited sampling of online users, but glosses over findings that  2/3 of former P2P users have simply switched to alternatives like illegal streaming sites and HTTP-based download services, both of which aren’t covered by [...]

Sony boss Michael Lynton complains that rampant piracy and legal commercial P2P has put the country on the verge of “no longer being a viable home entertainment market.” According to Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, piracy is so rampant in Spain that Hollywood studios are considering discontinuing the sale of DVDs there altogether. [...]

Believes govt would be better served investing time and money figuring out how New Zealanders could take advantage of the Internet’s global reach and create profitable digital distribution services. New Zealand’s Labor Party has come full circle, now stating its opposition to any plans that would disconnect file-sharers from the Internet. It was the Labor [...]

Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy says “we don’t allow people to opt out of (not being able to buy) DVDs of child porn.” As plans by Australian Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy plans to filter the Internet near introduction to the country’s Parliament for consideration, Conroy recently tried to defend his efforts on Radio National’s “Australia Talks” [...]

Survey reveals a meager increase of 5%, but research suggests many have simply turned to illegal streaming services to circumvent the controversial IPRED law, data augmented by reports that it has only targeted 3 people to date and not the 800 or more the govt anticipated. The other day I mentioned how piracy in France [...]

Orders site to filter “terms that are widely associated with copyright infringement (for example ‘warez,’ ‘Axxo,’ or ‘Jaybob’),” forcing the site to follows in the footsteps of TorrentSpy, MiniNova, and other defunct BitTorrent tracker sites targeted by copyright holders. It’s shaping up to be another day of mourning for the BitTorrent community with news that [...]

DC-based venture pursues mass lawsuit strategy, first on behalf of a few independent movies (“Steam Experiment,” “Far Cry,” “Uncross the Stars,” “Gray Man,” “Call of the Wild 3D”) with the hopes the MPAA will sign on, and plans to sue 30,000 more accused illegal file-sharers in the near future. Indie film fans beware: the US [...]

Conflicts with broader foreign policy of encouraging a free and open Internet, of which it has vowed to “take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments’ demands for censorship and surveillance.” With search-engine giant Google having made the headlines recently for its honorable decision to leave China, home of the largest online population, rather than [...]

French researchers discover copyright infringement up 3% since law’s passage with 2/3 of former P2P users having switched to illegal streaming sites and HTTP-based download services not covered by the Hadopi legislation. Proposed back in June of 2008, France’s “Creation and Internet” law was first successfully passed before being ruled unconstitutional by the country’s Constitutional [...]

Matthew Wyatt, then 17, of Stamford, Lincolnshire had been accused of illegally uploading 3 albums and a track single to the venerated BitTorrent tracker site. It was back on October 23rd, 2007 that OiNK, the BitTorrent tracker site that NIN’s Trent Reznor once referred to as the “world’s greatest music store,” was shutdown in simultaneous [...]

Vows aggressive account termination of accused illegal uploaders as well as a proposal to redirect visitors to pages formerly hosting copyrighted material to online destinations where it can be purchased legally. Swiss-based file-hosting service Rapidshare is making waves these days with the leak of conversations between its General Manager Bobby Chang and unidentified representatives of [...]

Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) said they fell by their lowest amount in five years helped, in part, by a lower average album price that has dipped below £8 ($11.90 USD) for the first time. According to the UK Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), despite the economic recession music sales fell by only 0.8% in 2009 – [...]