riaa

Court affirms $675,000 penalty in music-downloading case

A federal court in Massachusetts today upheld a $675,000 damages award against Joel Tenenbaum, who was accused of illegally downloading 31 songs from a file-sharing Web site and distributing them and was sued by the main recording companies in the U.S.

U.S. District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel rejected Tenenbaum's request for a new jury trial, saying jurors had appropriately considered the evidence of Tenenbaum's actions -- downloading and distributing files for two years despite warnings -- and the harm to the plaintiffs. The penalty is at the low end of the range for willful … Read more

RapidShare: We'll help Hollywood, but 'not at all costs' (Q&A)

ASPEN, Colo. -- It hasn't been an especially felicitous year for the founder of file-sharing site MegaUpload: his domain name has been seized, his assets have been impounded, and Kim Dotcom faces potential extradition to the U.S. on criminal charges of copyright infringement.

That's a fate that RapidShare is determined to avoid. The Swiss company says it wants to be a legitimate hosting service that not only responds promptly to removal requests from copyright holders, but that goes far beyond what the law requires.

RapidShare's "responsible practices" policy may have pleased Hollywood when it … Read more

Pirate Bay cordially accepts RIAA's quest for censorship

The Recording Industry Association of America's CEO, Cary Sherman, testified before Congress today on "The Future of Audio." Although the minutes of the hearing aren't yet available, Sherman did publish a statement of his speech, according to TorrentFreak, which first reported this news.

In Sherman's statement, he stresses that online piracy must be stopped and one of the ways to do this is by having search engines, like Google and Bing, censor any results that could lead users to sites with illegally obtained copyrighted material.

"Major advertisers and ad agencies announced a series of … Read more

RIAA: Google takedown numbers misleading

The Recording Industry Association of America has claimed that Google's transparency report detailing takedown requests of copyright material is misleading, because the search giant limits the number of notices a company can make.

Google's statistics, since July 2011, show that Microsoft made the largest total number of takedown requests of any company, asking for a total of 2,544,209 URLs to be removed from Google's search results, which contained files or links to BitTorrent files that the company believed to be infringing on its copyrights.

The RIAA fell to third on the list, with 439,546 … Read more

Unpacking the MegaUpload mega-conspiracy theories

What recent international cyber-bust involves Alicia Keys and the RIAA, elite anti-terror police, missing evidence and a bad warrant, a multi-billion dollar IPO, the world's biggest file-sharing website, and a very large man who owns 14 Mercedes-Benz cars with license plates that say things like "MAFIA" and "HACKER"?

Nope, it's not Lex Luthor's latest caper. I'm talking about the MegaUpload bust. And the increasingly interesting question of whose interests were actually served as a result.

In January, the U.S. Department of Justice, Homeland Security's ICE and members of New Zealand … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1587: Buzz Out Loud is Dangerously Delicious (Podcast)

Comedian Aziz Ansari joins us to talk about putting his stand up show Dangerously Delicious online. The House shoots down legislation that would prevent employers from asking for our Facebook passwords, and you too can make $30,000 a day from Pinterest!

Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (640x360)

RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS (640x360)… Read more

RIAA posts (not) funny tweet about Wikipedia

The SOPA opera is enjoying a defining episode today.

Many important sites like Google are registering their protest. Some, like Wikipedia, have gone entirely dark.

So what do members of the RIAA--which, some tell me, stands for the Record Industry Archaic Association--think of all this? It seems they think it's funny.

For behold a witty tweet from Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's senior vice president of communications: "After Wikipedia blackrout (sic), somewhere, a student today is doing original research and getting his/her facts straight. Perish the thought."

I know there will be … Read more

New 'Firewall' song protests SOPA copyright bill (Q&A)

The songwriter behind the 2007 Internet hit "I Got a Crush on Obama" is now taking aim at the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Leah Kauffman, a Philadelphia-based singer and songwriter, has released "Firewall" to protest the Hollywood-backed copyright bill, which a House of Representatives committee had been scheduled to debate tomorrow. Earlier today, the committee debate was postponed until 2012.

In addition, Dan Bull, a U.K. singer, has released "SOPA Cabana," a none-too-flattering rap taking aim against SOPA. (SOPA can "ban" you--get it?)

Opposition from the two musicians is notable because … Read more

BitTorrent downloads linked to RIAA, DHS IP addresses

The TorrentFreak blog has outed the RIAA and U.S. Department of Homeland Security as harboring downloaders of pirated songs by hip hop artists and crime-based TV shows, but the RIAA denies it.

TorrentFreak said it used the YouHaveDownloaded.com site to find instances of IP addresses within the RIAA and the DHS linked to downloads of copyrighted content from BitTorrent.

Six RIAA IP addresses were linked to downloads of music by Jay-Z ("American Gangster") and Kanye West ("My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"), as well as the first five seasons of "Dexter," a "… Read more