In a move that sent shock waves around the internet, Culture secretary Andy Burnham announced that he supports extending the UK copyright term from 50 to 70 years. It’s been a multi-year battle between the recording industry and Britain, but today, consumer rights advocates was dealt with a major blow. The report comes from Music [...]

Is it really legal to sell your DRM-free music files? Here’s the scenario: you have a hard drive full of MP3s you don’t really listen to anymore. The standard response would be to just delete the files. What about the value locked up in those particular digital bits? What about the idea of just selling [...]

It could negatively affect web developers this time. There’s an interesting report on Wired’s Threat Level which details Sony getting sued by the FTC for $1 million. While a previous lawsuit against the company proved to be hilarious over the hypocrisy of being sued for software piracy, this lawsuit may be of interest to many [...]

Releases new version of the once popular P2P program that allows users to selectively share files with family and friends. Limewire has just released an alpha version of LimeWire 5 and it delivers on its promise to bring "social sharing to the forefront" of the P2P world. Both the blessing and curse of P2P has [...]

Says that the current telecoms package would violate basic civil rights in Europe. A little over a week ago, we reported on the French Prime Minister overruling democracy and vetoing provisions in the telecoms package that would stop any form of a “three strike provision” in the European Parliament. Recently, French digital rights advocates from [...]

Which? files formal complaint with Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) about letters sent by law firm Davenport Lyons to alleged file-sharers on behalf of copyright owners. Which?, the largest consumer body in the UK with over 650,000 members, has today complained to the solicitors’ watchdog about a London law firm that sent ‘bullying’ letters to hundreds [...]

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy now says scheduled "live" trials will be "a closed network test and will not involve actual customers," making the results worthless since they won’t indicate a real-world impact. With Australians scheduled to hold massive rallies throughout their country this Saturday, December 13th, to protest govt plans for mandatory Internet filters, it’s [...]

Oh the things that sound good on paper… There’s a new lobbying paper posted on Change.gov that shows that the MPAA isn’t slowing down on dreaming big while lobbying the US government. The document (PDF) shows what appears to be a wish list from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) – just in time [...]

Says companies are allowed to put Digital Rights Management on their CDs, even if it doesn’t work on some devices. It may be a small setback to advocates who want to broaden their rights when they copy a CD. According to 01net (Google Translated), a French court has ruled that if a company puts Digital [...]

Royalty fees included in fees would mean students could legally share music, but would also penalize those who don’t share music or live in on-campus housing. Warner Music Group’s digital music strategist, Jim Griffin, is proposing a “‘voluntary blanket licensing’ for online access to music” scheme whereby students are taxed for the privilege of legalized [...]

Combine forces to help route file-sharing traffic to local peers and help avoid network congestion. BitTorrent Inc. and Oversi, an Israel-based pioneer of over-the-top (OTT) caching and delivery solutions, today announced their collaboration to deliver an integrated solution that optimizes P2P traffic across the Internet Service Provider (ISP) network. The joint solution brings clear benefits [...]

Formally presents legislation allowing copyright holders to use courts to force ISPs to divulge names associated with IP addresses linked to illegal downloading. The Swedish government says it is drafting a new anti-P2P law that will allow copyright holders to pursue those sharing music and movies illegally. The proposal, based on the European Union’s Intellectual [...]

Suffering from unprofitability, quietly closes paid content store and turns to searching the web for torrent trackers to download content, both legally and illegally. BitTorrent Inc. had launched their ambitious BitTorrent Entertainment Network(BEN) last year. The store enabled the BitTorrent users to purchase and download movies and television shows legally. However, the store was not [...]

DavenPort Lyons appears to be at it again. It may be considered unthinkable that one could get sued for downloading porn, but from the BBC recently suggests otherwise now. The report says that hundreds of British citizens are being served up with legal threat letters demanding £500 in settlement money or else be taken to [...]

It may get a little harder for the MPAA to play the moral card – not to mention getting funding for movie production for it’s members. It is no secret that the copyright industry likes to talk about morals when it comes to unauthorized downloading. Unfortunately for members of the MPAA, morals might be playing [...]

Charlie Nesson, William F Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and whom has taken up the case of accused file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum, gives his thoughts on the case against him. Yesterday the Berkman Center for Internet and Society published an interview between David Weinberger, Charlie Nesson and Joel Tennenbaum about the upcoming lawsuit [...]

Rallies scheduled to take place throughout the country to protest govt plan for mandatory Internet filtering of “offensive and illegal material”by ISPs. It all started as a voluntary effort to “protect children,” but quickly spiraled into an all out attempt by the Australian govt to make it mandatory for ISPs to filter the Internet of [...]

Greasemonkey script from "Pirates of the Amzaon" embeds links from BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay alongside legal purchase links. "Pirates of the Amazon," a site that has now gone offline after receiving considerable exposure, has developed a Greasemonkey script for Mozilla’s Firefox that embeds either a "Download 4 free," "Not Downloadable," or "Not Available" [...]

Ignores the fact that mother makes a mere $8 bucks/hr, and both are already overwhelmed with medical debts. The RIAA has managed to outdo itself once again and target an even more economically disadvantaged individual than ever before. This time it’s 19yo teen transplant candidate Ciara Sauro who’s been diagnosed with pancreatitis and awaiting a [...]

Decision comes a month after bad publicity following law firms incredulous targeting of a non-gaming elderly couple. It was a little over 3 months ago that five of the world’s top game developers, Atari, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemaster, decided to hire UK-based law firm Davenport Lyons to begin suing file-sharers illegally distributing [...]