Apple boasts that more than one billion songs have been purchased from its iTunes music service. That sounds like a great number—until you consider that an estimated ten million users of Internet-based peer-to-peer (p2p) networks are logged on at any one time to swap music. How does Apple, which sells music titles for 99 cents [...]

BT never targetted P2P this badly before. We never had any issues at all until April, and upon googling and searching forums like utorrent.com’s we found many others in the same boat. There were many furious posts from people who know a good deal more about this than myself, and the net result was that [...]

The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK. Full-length programmes, as well as scripts and notes, will be available for download from the BBC’s website. The pilot is part of the BBC’s plans to eventually offer more than [...]

According to a calculation done by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLA), users of Microsoft Windows are paying as much as $21.50 more for each copy of the operating system they buy, thanks to the so-called “patent tax” that Microsoft is forced to pay to various companies that hold software patents. Related Stories The calculation [...]

Louisiana must pay legal fees back to the ESA stemming from a defunct gaming bill. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has announced that the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana is forcing the state of Louisiana to pay $91,000 for legal fees that the game industry trade group incurred while attempting to [...]

A panel of judges at the Copyright Royalty Board has denied a request from the NPR and a number of other webcasters to reconsider a March ruling that would force Internet radio services to pay crippling royalties. The panel’s ruling reaffirmed the original CRB decision in every respect, with the exception of how the royalties [...]

Cites illegal tactics and arbitrary settlement demands as some of the flaws in the RIAA’s lawsuit strategy. Pam Gerace, the director of Student Legal Services at North Carolina State University, is helping students take on the RIAA and fight back in a struggle with which they would otherwise have few resources at their disposal. Unlike [...]

The infamous Star Wars III bootleg continues to haunt the BitTorrent community as the US Justice Dept announces another guilty plea as part of Operation D-Elite. A fifth defendant has pleaded guilty in connection with Operation D-Elite, the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on a BitTorrent tracker site. Today Assistant Attorney [...]

Some on-campus Ohio University students recently have been targeted by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally downloading music, but the RIAA’s initiative doesn’t end at the edges of campus. The initiative, launched in February, targets the more than half of college students who download music illegally, the RIAA reports. Students who live in [...]

Owners of a shiny new AppleTV who are also fans of obscure foreign TV shows like Life on Mars or Doctor Who Series 3 might be interested in VisualHub. VisualHub is a $23 video converter that transforms popular BitTorrent formats (DivX, XviD, AVI, all forms of MPEG) to MP4 format — which play nice on [...]

Malaysia crime bosses sigh in relief, step up porn production to offset losses, while Philippino movie pirates try to stash their goods before the canine cops can sniff it out. The MPAA’s Lucky and Flo, the polycarbonate sniffing canine wonder duo, have apparently finished up their Malaysian crime-fighting adventures and have shown up in another [...]

The band actually admires the enthusiasm of file-sharers. In an interview with Australia’s X-Press Online, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche makes some interesting comments about his thoughts on file-sharing and how he feel about his albums getting downloaded for free. We’ve heard tons of comments from music artists that lament about how file-sharers have literally stolen [...]

Recording Industry vs the People have posted some great tips for those college students that have been targeted by the RIAA in their campus file-sharing crackdown. Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman of Recording Industry vs the People are New York City-based lawyers who through the Electronic Frontier Foundation have undertaken to represent people in their [...]

With news of Sony’s decision to discontinue the 20GB PS3 and a lively debate about the pricing of the console on this week’s Showdown, many people seem to think that the system is just too expensive for the mass market. If you live in the UK you can find systems on sale with some nice [...]

At the dawn of the broadband era, peer-to-peer technology became closely associated with music file sharing, thanks to programs like Napster and Kazaa. Later, the emergence of protocols such as BitTorrent linked P2P to movie and television downloads. P2P became a red flag for MPAA, RIAA and other content-rights owner groups worldwide. Over the years, [...]

An international consortium of nine automakers and two parts suppliers is asking researchers for proposals to develop “virtual humans” — computer programs that will help them design safer cars and trucks. The Global Human Body Models Consortium LLC says the computer models will provide better simulations of crash injuries than current crash dummies. In an [...]

Apple Inc said on Thursday it was delaying the release of its new computer operating system, sending its shares down 3 percent. The company said its eagerly anticipated iPhone was on schedule to ship in late June as planned after passing several of its required certification tests. But it said delivering the phone on time [...]

An Australian teenager had hundreds of clips removed from Internet video-sharing site YouTube by pretending to be an employee of the state broadcasting network, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The 15-year-old sent a signed letter to YouTube saying he represented ABC, the owner of the copyright to a popular local comedy series, and asked the site [...]

Speaking with Guardian Unlimited primarily regarding piracy counter-measures, Peter Anaman, a senior internet investigator for legal firm Covington and Burling has admitted that his organisation has infiltrated unnamed private BitTorrent tracker sites and shares their method of gaining access; “Many groups didn’t start off as private. They became private because they felt threatened, so we [...]

Just as Viacom employee Jon Stewart appears to believe his bosses are making a mistake in taking Viacom content off of YouTube, it looks like NBC employee and Saturday Night Live creator and producer, Lorne Michaels can’t understand NBC’s position on YouTube (found via GoogleWatch). The interview of Michaels is especially interesting, because it was [...]