Copyright group says they must pay an annual license to “use” music or risk legal action. Just when you though that copyright organizations couldn’t get any crazier, they prove you wrong with a flash of “creativity” that stuns even the most hardened skeptics. SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers that’s responsible for [...]

Wants to spread around the litigation “love” to previously untouched colleges still teeming with pesky file-sharing music pirates. Not wanting to leave anybody out, the RIAA has begun a new round of targeted piracy enforcement by sending out some 408 pre-litigation settlement letters to 23 universities nationwide who had previously not received any at all. [...]

Wants webcasters to adopt anti-stream ripping technology BEFORE it becomes a “big problem.” The Digital Freedom Campaign today responded to a statement made by RIAA Senior VP of Govt Relations, Mitch Glazier in a recently noted that stream ripping, an unrelated issue to the current Internet radio royalty rate debates, was not necessarily a problem. [...]

Tries to capitalize on recent news of the new Harry Potter book showing up on BitTorrent. It looks as though another copyright lobbying organization is trying to take advantage of recent reports of the new Harry Potter book winding up on BitTorrent tracker sites everywhere with MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman lamenting how piracy [...]

IP Chairman John Kennedy says the BitTorrent tracker site now hurting the “publishing industry” in addition to record labels, movie, studios, etc. With all the latest fallout from the new Harry Potter book being leaked on BitTorrent, it comes as no surprise that the IFPI, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, would try to [...]

BiTorrent file-sharing software allows people to share high-quality concert recordings like never before. There’s an interesting story out of Winnipeg, Canada that follows how the world of Bootlegs has grown up in the digital world. Over are the days of clunky tape-recorders and manually sharing copies that degrade over time as subsequent copies are made [...]

Advocate General says that ISPs aren’t required to reveal the identity of customers accused of illegally downloading copyrighted music. The Advocate General to the European Union’s top court, Juliane Kokott, advised the court that ISPs aren’t required to hand over the personal information of customers suspected of illegally downloading music in civil cases. She said [...]

Concerned that are “accepted without question in a number of legal discussions” when they are merely assigned to a network interface, never to a person. University of Chicago Computer Science professor Mike O’Donnel has posted a response on Recording Industry vs The People to a recent ruling that denied the RIAA’s request to force the [...]

Since the site is legal under Russian law, Visa told it must resume accepting its credit and debit card payment transactions. According to CNews, a Russian “IT-Review” site, the Moscow Arbitrary Court has ruled that Visa’s decision to terminate its contract with Alltunes, MP3sparks, and AllofMP3 was illegal under Russian law because they operate legally [...]

Lets you watch and listen to music on the go, create playlists to embed on blogs and MySpace pages, and even works great on desktop PCs for those who have yet to get an iPhone for themselves. With the iPhone era now upon us, it was only a matter of time before a streaming music [...]

Seems JK Rowlings latest and greatest, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” has been leaked onto BitTorrent. OJ’s murder tome, “If I Did It, made a splash a while back after showing up on Demonoid, and now it seems that Harry Potter is the most recent novel to be leaked by the BitTorrent community. “Harry [...]

First ISP in the world ordered to filter illegal file-sharing of music on its network has announced that it will appeal the ruling. It’s been over a week now that I first reported how the Court of First Instance of Brussels ordered the ISP Scarlet to begin preventing its customers from illegally downloading copyrighted music [...]

The venerable BitTorrent client offers full Vista support and several other updates and fixes. The famed BitTorrent client server offers a new stable release today. 1.7 stable is finally here, after months of development, and ready to be test-driven by the BitTorrent community. The biggest changes were full Vista support and the removal of the [...]

Will also now be determined by max capacity not by actual audience. Talk about killing a good time. The Phonographic Performance Company of Australia’s (PPCA) application for an increase in “…music licence fees paid to artists and record labels by dedicated nightclub venues and commercially organised dance parties” has been approved by the country’s Copyright [...]

You have to love this video from YouTube that shows just how far the Internet has come in a seemingly short period of time. Aw the early days of the internet, when dial-up was the norm and AOL was king. When they actually had a book that was updated monthly listing all the known websites [...]

The National Legal Policy Center Lays out a compelling argument about why they are, and plans to expose them for doing so. In a world filled with sites streaming copyrighted video content, it’s ironic to point out that one of the world’s most high profile and valuable companies is consistently breaking the law with seemingly [...]

Won’t matter since the site’s been moved to Canada, but Brein, a Dutch anti-piracy organization now has its hands on the owners name and bank account information. To users of Demonoid.com its been no secret about the troubles the site has faced, with BREIN, a “…joint Dutch anti-piracy program of authors, artists and producers of [...]

UK Internet Service Providers Association responds to recent Belgian court ruling that an ISP must either block or filter copyrighted material on P2P and file-sharing networks. Last week it was noted that on June 29th, the the Court of First Instance of Brussels ordered the ISP Scarlet to adopt one of eleven technical measures put [...]

With 74% of internet users saying they wouldn’t mind viewing ads in return for free content, and 83% saying they would like a company who did so even more, record labels and advertisers may just find a legit use for P2P and file-sharing networks after all. A few days back it was reported how Sprint [...]

Theater employees and PATRONS team up to help bust pirates across the country. In an odd twist of 4th of July unity, movie theater employees and patrons across the country teamed up last week to bust 4 more individuals for trying to make camcorder copies of “Transformers.” Even though the movie sucked in my opinion, [...]