After several months of silence it was more or less accepted that Microsoft wasn’t going to do anything about the firmware hacks that allow Xbox 360s to play backups. Rather surprising, considering the ‘inventor’ of the hack confirmed in March already that the mods are easily detectable, and the reports that piracy is running rampant [...]

Technology companies took aim at the film and recording industries yesterday for their efforts to restrict how consumers use movie and music downloads. The Digital Freedom Campaign plans to teach lawmakers, policy-makers and consumers the value of new digital technologies. “The Digital Freedom Campaign is a way for all of us who are trying to [...]

A think-tank has called for outdated copyright laws to be rewritten to take account of new ways people listen to music, watch films and read books. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a “private right to copy”. It would decriminalise millions of Britons who break the law each year by copying [...]

EMI Music Chairman and Chief Executive Alain Levy Friday told an audience at the London Business School that the CD is dead, saying music companies will no longer be able to sell CDs without offering “value-added” material. “The CD as it is right now is dead,” Levy said, adding that 60% of consumers put CDs [...]

Apparently, people loves them some Firefox. Within 24 hours of the official launch on Tuesday, there were over 2 million people using Firefox 2, and we were seeing a peak rate of more than 30 downloads per second from our website. I’ve been thinking a lot about the things that make Firefox popular. It’s obviously [...]

It has been a busy couple of months in the world of music file-sharing litigation. The latest comes to us courtesy of Sony BMG, which is the lead plaintiff in the case of Sony BMG et al v. Arellanes. Sony was dealt a setback by the court yesterday, as Judge Richard Schell ruled that the [...]

I received a couple of emails from YouTube this afternoon (see below) notifying me that a third party (probably attorneys for Comedy Central) had made a DMCA request to take down Colbert Report and Daily Show clips. If you visit YouTube, all Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park clips now show “This video has [...]

Denver law-enforcement officials are alerting people who use file-sharing software, particularly LimeWire, to be on the alert for a computer security breach that could put their personal data into the wrong hands. During an identity theft investigation that led to a local apartment, Denver police found personal and financial information from about 75 individual and [...]

Giganews, Inc, the world’s leading premium Usenet service provider, announced today a major advancement in encrypted Usenet access. Giganews has developed an extremely efficient Usenet encryption service by utilizing SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption on Giganews’ own proprietary Usenet platform. Giganews’ deployment of encrypted Usenet access comes in response to customer feedback, increased encryption support [...]

When Google bought YouTube, the conventional wisdom—expressed in op-eds, newspaper articles, and scary editorial cartoons—was that they’d also bought themselves a whole heap of copyright trouble. The New York Times used the phrase “litigation-laden landmine.” Part-time copyright theorist Mark Cuban warned that YouTube would face the same copyright fate as Napster. There’s only one problem [...]

Law-abiding Japan might seem far from the frontlines of Asia’s piracy wars, but don’t tell that to Motion Picture Assn. chairman-CEO Dan Glickman. Glickman delivered the keynote address Thursday at the Tokyo Film Festival’s antipiracy seminar — and rattled off figures showing piracy losses in the market hit $742 million in 2005, some 15% of [...]

File sharing has been making big news in the US ever since the advent of Napster in June of 1999. While file sharing technology is legal, the vast majority of multimedia files being exchanged over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are copyrighted, making such exchanges illegal under intellectual property right laws. Since Napster’s heyday, album sales are [...]

You know, the kind of application the entertainment and software cartels don’t want you to have? It’s an excellent piece of software, for one thing, and for another, it’s free, and the movie, music and software monopolies have pumped a lot of time and money into trying to keep it out of your hands. But [...]

A Finnish court has ordered 22 men to pay 427,000 euros (540,000 dollars) in fines for illegal online sharing of copyrighted films, music and games, news reports said Friday. The Turku district court ruling was handed down Thursday. The case was described as the country’s largest illegal file-sharing case. The fines were based on one [...]

With all of the troubles currently confronting AllOfMp3 one has to wonder whether or not its days are numbered. Though not a user of the site myself, as I have long preferred the price(free) and selection that BitTorrent offers, millions of people around the world are, and the latest developments are yet another heavy blow [...]

Yahoo might have missed out on buying YouTube as Google sits atop the purchase successfully, but they won’t let that get them down. Yahoo is exploring the amateur video popularity but stepping in with TV-style programming. After lower than expected third-quarter earnings, a newly introduced program entitled “The 9″ has quietly raised eyebrows in the [...]

The admin for EliteTorrents, which uses the BitTorrent technology to file share, was hit with jail time. EliteTorrents.com was the largest US based BitTorrent tracker and the administrators of the site are seeing the law put to full use against them. They are expected to be sentenced in December with jail time and fines being [...]

AllofMP3 suffered yet another setback as a Danish court ruled that an ISP must block access to the Russian music site. The ruling only covers one ISP (Tele2) in one country, but the ruling will certainly set the stage for more lawsuits as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry believes it has developed another [...]

Warner Music Group has cut a deal with Internet video service Brightcove in order to be able to distribute its video content catalog on its own Web sites–and profit from it. In the partnership, announced Thursday, Warner Music Group will use Brightcove’s software to embed Web-based video players in the sites for its labels–which include [...]

Bookmarks have become the cluttered closets of Web surfers. Internet media company Yahoo Inc. is looking to give users an easier way to organize, search for and share favorite sites or Web pages, the company said on Tuesday. It is also introducing a simplified version of the Yahoo toolbar that features a one-click way to [...]