" piracy

U.S. court denies MegaUpload request for dismissal

MegaUpload has been on a winning streak in court, but last week a U.S. district judge denied the company's request to dismiss a criminal indictment against it.

The U.S. Attorney's office has accused MegaUpload and its leaders of operating the cloud-storage service as a criminal enterprise. U.S. officials allege that founder Kim DotCom and six other associates encouraged users to upload pirated movies, music, and other media to MegaUpload's lockers so managers could get rich on advertising revenue and premium subscription fees.

MegaUpload's lawyers asked the court to throw out the indictment against … Read more

MegaUpload users will get their day in court

U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady will hold another hearing to help him determine what to do with the digital files owned by MegaUpload users.

O'Grady is responding to a motion filed by Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio-based sports videographer. Goodwin has sought the return of the video files, mostly of high school sports action, that he stored at MegaUpload, the Internet storage locker that was taken offline by the U.S. government.

In January, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia accused MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom and six other company managers of criminal copyright violations, … Read more

Swedish ISP confirms police raid targeted illegal file-sharing

Swedish police raided Web host PRQ earlier this week but it wasn't clear what they were after. Now, the ISP's owner is saying that the authorities seized servers for Web sites that allegedly dealt in illegal file-sharing.

According to TorrentFreak, police took three servers -- one belonged to one of Sweden's popular torrent sites called Tankafetast, another to an alleged Android app piracy site called Appbucket. It's unclear what was on the third server.

On Monday, the authorities targeted PRQ, which is known for hosting some of the most popular outlaw sites on the Internet. Former … Read more

Researchers say Gainesville, Fla., is America's 'pirate capital'

No metro area in America pirates more music than Gainesville, Fla., on a per capita basis, according to data-tracking firm Musicmetric.

Musicmetric also reported that of the 97 million BitTorrent files downloaded across the United States in the first half of 2012, about 78 percent were albums and 22 percent were individual songs. The company says that if most albums have 10 songs on them, the number of tunes pirated tops 759 million.

Gainesville, located in north Florida, is home to about 124,000 people. The city is also home to the University of Florida, which has nearly 50,000 … Read more

Canada's stimulus plan advertised on The Pirate Bay

The Canadian government wishes to inform its citizens that despite appearances, encouraging the downloading of pirated movies and music is not, actually, part of the country's Economic Action Plan.

The government's Department of Finance has temporarily pulled Web ads for the plan after the banners appeared on the notorious Pirate Bay site, the Ottawa Citizen reported this week.

It's not clear how the banners, bearing the tagline "Find out what's in it for you," wound up on The Pirate Bay alongside low-rent ads for gambling businesses, dating sites, "Find a Chinese bride" … Read more

The 404 1,135: Where we turn the piracy up (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Where are we? Apple Maps makes a mess.

- Apple can replace broken iPhone 5 screens in the store, says report.

- iPhone 5 gets the teardown treatment.

- Apple accused of ripping off famous Swiss clock design.

- Apple about to make owner of Earpods.com very rich.

- ATTN New Yorkers: Register your gadgets with the NYPD.

- Neil Young says piracy is the new radio and the best way to get your music heard.

Bathroom break video: 1989 Radio Shack Cell Phone Commercial… Read more

Microsoft reportedly asks China to stop state-run software pirates

Microsoft wants China to curtail the use of pirated software at four of the country's state-run companies, according to a story out today from Bloomberg.

Microsoft has reportedly already issued complaints against China National Petroleum (CNPC), China Post Group, China Railway Construction, and TravelSky Technology, all of which are run by the Chinese government.

Redmond believes that more than 40 percent of Office and Windows Server client software used by CNPC is pirated, Bloomberg reported, citing information from "three people familiar with the situation."

A spokesman for CNPC declined to comment to Bloomberg on the allegation. A … Read more

France sees first conviction under new antipiracy law

France has assessed its first fine under the antipiracy law known as Hadopi.

Alain Prevost must pay the equivalent of $194 after being found liable for failing to secure his Internet connection and for ignoring warnings that the connection was being used to illegally download copyrighted content, according to a report in Ars Technica.

Prevost is the first person convicted under the "law promoting the distribution and protection of creative works on the internet." But he may not be the last. There are 13 other cases scheduled waiting to be tried. This is the French version of the … Read more

Appeals court sides with RIAA, Jammie Thomas owes $222,000

The top four record labels have won a significant decision in their long-running suit against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman found by a court to have "lied" about illegally uploading music to the Web.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found unanimously in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group for Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Music:

We conclude that the recording companies are entitled to the remedies that they seek on appeal. The judgment of the district court is vacated, and the … Read more