piracy

The Motion Picture Association of America is looking to make a deal with the Federal Communications Commission to get the latest Hollywood movies on TV much sooner after their original release. But there's a catch.

In exchange for the faster release, the MPAA wants the FCC to change its rules to allow the industry to prevent these movies from being recorded on DVRs and viewed on some high-definition TVs.

The MPAA filed its petition last week. The FCC is currently asking for comments on the proposal, and it could make a decision on the petition later this summer.

Even … Read more

A company that legitimately distributes its video programming via peer-to-peer is shut down for three days last weekend after being pummeled with traffic. The likely culprit: a company paid by the major movie studios and record labels to fight piracy. What's wrong with this picture?

It was Memorial Day weekend and Revision3 was scrambling to get its Web TV network back up. Its servers were being bombarded with so much traffic, they were shut down in what is known as a denial-of-service outage. That meant no Diggnation or Tekzilla--popular Web shows for a generation of tech-savvy consumers who get … Read more

MediaDefender is rightly taking its lumps in the court of public opinion after being fingered as the culprit behind the Memorial Day weekend denial-of-service outage at Revision3. But this is just a sideshow in the bigger battle waged by big copyright holders against illegal digital file sharing.

And as we're learning, things are getting out of hand.

Revision3 happened to use a BitTorrent tracker for perfectly legitimate content distribution. But BitTorrent has also figured in unauthorized sharing of copyrighted movies, TV shows, and music. So MediaDefender went on a fishing expedition. (Read Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback's full description here.) … Read more

Updated 3:20 p.m. PDT with comment from MediaDefender and to clarify that individual movie and recording studios, and not RIAA and MPAA, are clients of MediaDefender, and that Dmitri Villard is CEO of MediaDefender parent ArtistDirect and not MediaDefender.

Revision3 has investigated the denial of service attack that kept it offline over the Memorial Day weekend and has concluded that antipiracy group MediaDefender is to blame.

In a blog post on Thursday morning, Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback writes that much of the traffic that bombarded the Web TV network was traced back to MediaDefender. The group has … Read more

Pirates caused the software industry to lose nearly $48 billion in sales last year, even as most countries experienced declines in their piracy rates, according to the latest annual study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance.

The fifth annual report, released on Wednesday, determined that from 2006 to 2007, overall losses grew by $8 billion and worldwide piracy rates increased by 3 percentage points to 38 percent. At the same time, piracy rates dipped in 67 of 108 countries included in the report. (About half of the increased dollar losses are attributable to the declining value of the dollar, BSA … Read more

In the ongoing war between file sharing and opposing organizations, we're constantly reminded by just how ridiculous some of the battles really are. Case in point: the "three strikes and you're out" regulation that has been flying around lawmaking bodies in Europe and now, possibly Canada.

According to the experts, lawmakers are desperately trying to find ways to stop file sharing and with the help of organizations that can't stand the thought of songs or movies being downloaded "illegally", they're doing everything they can to go after the wrong people. Simply put, the "Three strikes and you're out" policy stipulates that if an Internet user is caught file sharing three times, ISPs will be forced to terminate that subscriber.

"The policy - occasionally referred to as "graduated response" - received support last fall from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who pressured the private sector to negotiate an agreement to implement the three strikes system," Michael Geist wrote in an article describing the rule. "The policy soon attracted global attention as the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia all announced that they were contemplating a similar approach."

As this policy spreads across the world, what can we expect from it? My guess: nothing.… Read more

The entertainment industry's controversial efforts to get universities to be more proactive about policing peer-to-peer piracy have begun to spread from Capitol Hill to the states.

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a Hollywood-backed proposal buried in a higher education reauthorization bill that would require universities receiving federal financial aid funding to devise plans for "alternative" offerings to unlawful downloading--such as subscription-based services--or "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."

That otherwise wide-ranging bill won't become law until House and Senate politicians agree upon a compromise version. Meanwhile, the debate … Read more

Some new intellectual property (IP) enforcement legislation passed the U.S. House yesterday by a wide margin. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been against the proposal since its inception, put out a release highlighting the silliness of creating a new presidential appointee (complete with official seal) specifically to oversee IP policy. But reading through the coverage of the bill, and wading through most of the bill itself, there's another part that seemed more alarming to me.

I've never studied law, but it looks like the bill allows the government to seize any computer used in the process … Read more

A bipartisan proposal to create an intellectual-property czar and impose new penalties on pirates sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.

By a 410-10 vote, the House approved the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property, or Pro-IP, Act, which is backed by the entertainment industry and other major copyright holders. The proposal is chiefly sponsored by Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill would rewrite U.S. law to allow federal officials to seize property--including computers or other equipment used to commit intellectual-property crimes or obtained … Read more