piracy

Report: Microsoft aided $900 million piracy bust

In an apparent effort to scare off would-be pirates, Microsoft is trumpeting its role in bringing down an international operation that amassed an estimated $900 million through pirated and counterfeit copies of its software.

Now that the last criminal sentences have been handed down in Taiwan, Redmond is going public about sleuthing by members of its 80-person worldwide antipiracy team, which it says helped to fuel investigations in 22 countries, the Associated Press reports.

It's hardly a secret that over the years, Microsoft has been quite proactive in its antipiracy efforts, filing scores of lawsuits against resellers accused of … Read more

House approves MPAA-backed college antipiracy rules

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a higher-education funding bill that includes controversial new antipiracy obligations for universities.

The 354-58 vote to approve the College Opportunity and Affordability Act leaves intact an entertainment industry-backed provision, which makes up just a tiny part of a bill that has ballooned to more than 800 pages.

It says higher-education institutions participating in federal financial aid programs "shall" devise plans for "alternative" offerings to unlawful downloading--such as subscription-based services--or "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."

Leading university groups, such as the Association of … Read more

MPAA-opposed college piracy amendment vanishes

As the House of Representatives presses ahead with a sweeping higher-education bill that includes new antipiracy obligations for most universities, it now appears it won't be considering an amendment designed to clarify that schools can't lose federal financial aid for failing to fulfill those requirements.

By way of background, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, which is scheduled to be debated by the House starting as soon as Thursday, dictates that universities participating in federal financial-aid programs "shall" devise plans for "alternative" offerings to unlawful downloading--such as subscription-based services--or "technology-based deterrents to prevent … Read more

Controversial college antipiracy bill nears House vote

The U.S. House of Representatives is preparing to vote as soon as Thursday on a mammoth higher-education funding bill that contains new antipiracy obligations for most universities.

Only this time around, it appears that an attempt may be made to water down the thorny new requirements included in the College Opportunity and Affordability Act (PDF). It's not clear, however, that such changes, if adopted, would be enough to appease university officials concerned about the measure.

Here's the deal: right now, a small section of the bill, which sailed through the House Education and Labor Committee last fall, … Read more

RIAA: No need to force ISPs by law to monitor piracy

WASHINGTON--It's no secret that Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman despises piracy, and he's a vocal fan of proposed laws that would beef up penalties for copyright infringers.

But here's one area where he says the government need not intervene at this point: forcing Internet service providers to be more proactive in curbing pirated content on their networks.

"I don't think anyone here is trying to relegislate this issue," Sherman, said at an Internet policy conference here on Wednesday. "We're much more interested in finding a marketplace way of going … Read more

Why did colleges stay mum on MPAA stats?

Correction: This blog initially mischaracterized the statistics that Heidemann commented on. He was referring to claims made about overall P2P use and not specifically about the MPAA's allegations.

John Heidemann was skeptical about what the movie industry was saying about campus piracy.

A researcher in the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, Heidemann had heard the film studios' claim that college students downloading movies on campus were responsible for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses to piracy.

That added up to about $572 million. So, working with a team of researchers last summer--the famous … Read more

Piracy killed the radio star, insists the BSA

It turns out that all of the world's problems could be resolved by stamping out piracy, or so goes the story from the Business Software Alliance. The BSA--"Be prepared (to intimidate people into slobbering submission)"--never met an alleged software pirate that it didn't hate, and believes that piracy has a huge negative impact on the global economy, including the U.S. economy, as Ars Technica reports. In fact, it paid (commissioned) IDC to come up with the following numbers:

If the amount of software piracy in the U.S. were to be reduced by 10 percentage points over the next four years, IDC believes the end result would be $41 billion in economic growth, $7 billion in additional tax revenues, and the creation of over 32,000 new jobs. In countries with higher rates of piracy, the impact would be even greater.

Maybe, maybe not. The real question for the BSA is this: since the software industry apparently can't solve the piracy problem by kicking in the doors of small and medium-size businesses based on tips from disgruntled ex-employees, perhaps it would do better to encourage its members to go open source, obviating the incentive (and ability) to pirate software.… Read more

HBO joining the online distribution party this week

The New York Times is reporting that HBO is launching its own online distribution service for a portion of its content both past and present. Starting this week, lucky residents of Green Bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be the first to get dibs on the new software application that can be set up to download and stack episodes old and new that can be watched on their PCs. Cable provider Time Warner (the same folks working on the lovely bandwidth metering down in Texas) is sending out the application on an CD to current HBO subscribers "soon."

Already … Read more

And you thought music piracy was bad....

We spend a lot of time wringing our hands about music, movie, and software piracy. Out on the high seas, however, the human stakes are much higher. According to the International Maritime Bureau, piracy attacks on the high seas were up 10% in 2007.

You can see where the attacks occurred at right. Not many in the San Francisco Bay.

Who is to blame for the increase? Somalia and Nigeria, it would seem, who have gotten serious about their piracy:… Read more