piracy

The recording industry's victory Thursday in a trial involving a Minnesota woman accused of illegal file-sharing is already turning at least a few heads on Capitol Hill.

We caught up by phone on Friday afternoon with Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat well known for his strongly held views on fair use and the need to defang stringent anti-copying laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (He's one of the Recording Industry Association of America's most ardent foes on copyright legislation.)

We wanted to know Boucher's answer to the obvious question: Will Congress lessen penalties for … Read more

WASHINGTON--An AT&T executive on Wednesday sought to defuse fears that forthcoming tools aimed at identifying pirates on its network will harm the average Net surfer's online experience.

The planned tactic is "not about heavy-handed tactics that go after the vast majority of our customers that want to consume content legally," AT&T assistant vice president of regulatory policy Brent Olson said at an antipiracy summit here hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It's about making more content available to more people in more ways going forward."

In June, AT&T announced that it was collaborating … Read more

WASHINGTON--The controversial U.S. law that generally bars people from tampering with copy-protection features drew accolades on Wednesday from the video game industry's chief executive.

Mike Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, applauded the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act as "vitally important" for video game and console makers seeking to stomp out unauthorized copies of their wares.

Thanks to digital-rights management mechanisms, Gallagher claimed unauthorized copies of popular video games like Halo 3 that users download from file-sharing networks won't play on XBox 360, ensuring "the full value of the product is received throughout … Read more

WASHINGTON--Copyright holders are "losing the battle" against piracy, at the expense of economic security and public health, and will never prevail unless a wide swath of governments and industries gets proactive, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said Wednesday.

The media conglomerate's chief shared a lengthy attack plan in a speech at an antipiracy summit here hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

He wants alleged intellectual property violations to take center stage at all levels of government, from the White House to U.S. embassies around the world. He wants Congress to create dedicated IP enforcement … Read more

WASHINGTON--Tired of their antipiracy messages being ignored by the teen- and college-age set, the entertainment industry is attempting to indoctrinate far younger disciples.

Representatives from the Entertainment Software Association, the video game industry's trade group, and the Canadian Recording Industry Association shed some light on their strategies at an antipiracy summit hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce here.

"In the 15- to 24-year-old (range), reaching that demographic with morality-based messages is an impossible proposition...which is why we have really focused our efforts on elementary school children," said Ric Hirsch, the ESA's senior vice … Read more

WASHINGTON--Content creators and their digital distributors must unite against piracy by installing more "safeguards," Viacom's CEO said Tuesday.

Through more widespread adoption of copy-protection features and filtering tools like watermarking, "we will usher in an unprecedented period of creative output across the globe," Philippe Dauman told a few hundred attendees at the first day of an antipiracy summit hosted here by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-business lobbying group.

Dauman lamented that "all manner of intellectual property" can now be reproduced more easily than ever "at the click of the … Read more

Jeff Zucker, the outspoken chief of NBC Universal and Philippe Dauman, Viacom's CEO, are scheduled to speak out against piracy and counterfeiting next week in Washington D.C.

Starting Tuesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is holding its annual two-day summit on piracy and among the subjects expected to be discussed is the government's plan to defend intellectual property overseas, according to a statement.

Media companies have for a long time lobbied Washington to do more to combat online file sharing and other copyright violations. Most experts agree that despite the government's efforts thus far, piracy … Read more

The names of some of the top antipiracy companies--MediaDefender, Web Sheriff and MediaSentry--evoke the images of muscle-bound, caped crusaders who swoop in to rescue copyright content from masked Internet bandits.

It appears now that the kryptonite for some of these companies is hackers. Just more than a week ago, someone swiped 6,000 of MediaDefender's e-mails and published them on the Web.

In what has turned out to be an embarrassing revelation for the company, the correspondence shows that the firm employs controversial methods to fight piracy, such as honeypots, decoys and denial-of-service attacks.

But John Giacobbi, president of … Read more

WASHINGTON--If the movie industry gets its way, then your Internet service provider may one day start playing a greater role in keeping pirated content off its networks.

Motion Picture Association of America Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said Tuesday that his industry has been attempting to "deepen our relationship" with telephone, cable and Internet companies "because we're all in this together."

"Their revenue bases depend on legitimate operations of their networks and more and more they're finding their networks crowded with infringed material, bandwidth space being crowded out," Glickman told an audience … Read more