piracy

Privacy v. Piracy

Back in April of last year, you probably read in Wired or some other publication about how AT&T had a secret room in its San Francisco office where the NSA was "listening" to every communication going over the telecom's lines. Well it seems that it might be happening again. This time the AT&T partnership with Big Brother isn't to scoop up the terrorists; no, this round is all about pirates and their intellectual booty.

In a June 14th article for AP, Gary Gentile writes, "Although details remain sketchy, the effort worries privacy advocates, who fear the San Antonio-based company could become a beat cop, monitoring which Web sites customers visit and what computer files they share." Like other invasive maneuvers the initiative is apparently focused on those overseas, but who's to say that your own computer wouldn't be flagged for watching the wrong video on You Tube or downloading the latest mix-tape from your favorite hip-hop DJ?

Pirates nab Michael Moore's yet-to-be released doc

From all that we've heard about Michael Moore's soon-to-be released documentary indictment of the U.S. health care system, he clearly supports universal health care.

But does he support universal Web access to his film two weeks before its official release? Probably not, or at least his studio doesn't.

Advertising Age reported Friday that Moore's new film, Sicko, has been pirated and is widely available for free download on the Web at BitTorrent and peer-to-peer sites. Advertising Age reporter Claude Brodesser-Akner wrote that he easily downloaded a copy and watched it late Thursday night.

The breach … Read more

NBC to feds: Urge ISPs to police piracy

Friday marked the deadline for filing comments with federal regulators scrutinizing "broadband industry practices," and for the most part, they're familiar pleas for why or why not to impose strict Net neutrality requirements.

Not so for media conglomerate NBC Universal. Its general counsel, Richard Cotton, urged the Federal Communications Commission not to get bogged down in the question of whether it's wise to prohibit network operators from prioritizing content through making special deals. What's missing from the debate, he wrote, is acknowledgment of "a huge and rapidly growing proportion of Internet traffic consists of … Read more

Lies we tell ourselves about IP infringement

Glyn Moody has a disturbing post on the latest attempt to stave off the IP hemorrhaging the industry apparently suffers. Quoting from Glyn's post:

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton said. "If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year."...

This is clearly total poppycock: the figures for the supposed losses … Read more

AT&T on the lookout for Web piracy

Hollywood studios have enlisted one of the nation's largest Internet Service Providers to help fight illegal file sharing, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

AT&T and the film industry will develop anti-piracy technology that identifies those who download unauthorized copies of films and TV shows, the paper reported Thursday.

Privacy groups worry that the behemoth phone company could emerge as a powerful Internet gatekeeper.

"AT&T is going to act like the copyright police, and that is going to make customers angry," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital … Read more

Arrgh...Movie pirates nabbed with night-vision goggles

You'd think catching movie pirates would be as easy as preventing anyone with a camcorder from entering a movie theater. Or throwing a net over Johnny Depp's house.

Instead, Malaysian theater workers are employing a high-tech strategy. According to a Reuters report, the Motion Picture Association is training Malaysian theater workers to strap on night-vision goggles to catch pirates in the act of filming.

And it's working. In the past two months, 17 illegal movie-tapers have been caught by begoggled Malaysian ushers.

Could New York City be the next test bed for the night-vision goggle probe? According … Read more