File Sharing

As expected, the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to approve a bill that targets Internet pirates based overseas.

The Protect IP Act looks to hand the U.S. Department of Justice the ability to seek a court order against allegedly infringing Web sites. The order could be served on search engines, certain Domain Name System providers, and Internet advertising firms--which would in turn be required to "expeditiously" make the target Web sites vanish from the Internet.

The bill was backed by leaders of both major political parties and is supported by a wide range of … Read more

Smart, strategic, and frequently inscrutable, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's comments must often be closely analyzed. Sometimes they're discounted as regrettable, off-the-cuff remarks. Other times, his statements are a window into what is really going on inside his company.

On Wednesday, Schmidt shocked big media conglomerates, federal lawmakers, and apparently even executives within his own company when he told reporters in London that Google would defy U.S. government attempts to remove sites from the Web that are accused of trafficking in pirated goods. Schmidt, who was at Google's helm during an unprecedented decade-long run of online-advertising success, … Read more

Google has signaled that the company is prepared to oppose the major film and music companies as well as Congress and the president of the United States on a controversial bill designed to thwart online piracy.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said today in London that the company is prepared to go on fighting the bill should it become law, according to published reports. U.K. publication the Guardian is reporting that in a discussion with reporters during a London business conference, Schmidt said: "If there is a law that requires DNS [domain name systems, the protocol that allows users … Read more

BitTorrent 8, released last week in beta, contains a sharp new feature that makes it easier than ever to create torrents of your personal files and share them with a personal group of friends or colleagues. The feature implementation isn't expected to change by the time that BitTorrent 8 graduates to its final version, so this How To ought to be viable for some time.

Once you've installed BitTorrent 8 beta (download), take a quick tour of some of the public content channels that come with the program. This part isn't essential, however, it's worth seeing … Read more

Fate smiled on Mark Gorton this week.

The founder of file-sharing company Lime Wire agreed on Thursday to pay $105 million to the Recording Industry Association of America to settle a 5-year-old copyright case. Sure, that's a lot, but consider that the settlement figure is equal to only 7 percent of the $1.4 billion the RIAA sought.

This is likely the final chapter for LimeWire, after 10 years in operation. The two sides agreed to settle a year to the day after U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood ruled that Gorton was liable for willful copyright infringement. Later, Wood ordered that the LimeWire peer-to-peer network be shut down. The financial agreement between Gorton and the labels came amid a jury trial to determine how much Gorton would have to pay in damages.

For fans of cheap, easy-to-obtain music, a few modest reasons for hope sprung up during the two-week-long damages trial.

Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music Group, one of the four largest record companies, said under oath that he supported the unbundling of music. You might be saying to yourself: "So what?" People have had access to unbundled music for a decade now, thanks to services like iTunes and, yes, LimeWire. All I can tell you is that there are plenty of decision makers at the labels who believe the industry won't recover until consumers are buying albums again. … Read more

BitTorrent launched its next-generation torrent client in a public beta today, offering people a unique system for not just sharing content via torrents but also for socializing the experience and turning the tool into one with deep content discovery hooks. BitTorrent 8 beta (download) contains one enormous change from the alpha that launched in March: personal content channels, which streamline the torrent creation and sharing process to allow you to share high-quality versions of your homemade videos, audio, and photos with friends.

As announced at CES 2011, the implementation is unique to BitTorrent, and an integral part of its push … Read more

Lime Wire, the company that helped people obtain perhaps billions of songs illegally, is close to forking over a "significant" amount of money to settle a copyright suit filed against it by the Recording Industry Association of America, sources close to the discussions told CNET.

The two sides were still negotiating this morning, but a deal could be finalized as soon as today, the sources said. They didn't specify the exact settlement figure and cautioned that the talks could still break down.

Should a deal be finalized, it would put an end to a 5-year-old copyright case and close the book on Lime Wire, the company behind the peer-to-peer system of the same name that the big four record companies alleged cost them billions of dollars and thousands of employees their jobs.

After a U.S. District Judge found Lime Wire and founder Mark Gorton personally liable for copyright infringement and ordered the company to cease operations, the case then moved to assessing damages. Over the past two weeks, a jury in Manhattan was hearing evidence in the case as they determined what amount Lime Wire and Gorton would have to pay. If they found he deserved to pay the maximum under the law, Gorton could be required to pay as much as $1.4 billion.

Ethan Smith at The Wall Street Journal reported that the sides have held three settlement meetings without securing a deal. The talks began in earnest yesterday, said the sources who spoke with CNET.

Gorton was in a precarious legal position.The jury tasked with assessing damages was often reminded by Glenn Pomerantz, the RIAA's lead attorney, that Gorton had already been found liable of willful copyright infringement by U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood. … Read more

NEW YORK--Edgar Bronfman Jr., CEO of Warner Music Group and heir to a huge beverage fortune, received more than $17 million in total compensation for the year 2008, even as he and his managers were laying off hundreds of employees and claiming that online piracy was to blame for much of the music industry's financial woes.

This was one of the facts that a jury was shown in federal court here today, as lawyers for Mark Gorton, the man behind the LimeWire file-sharing system, attempted to show that the file-sharing service he founded was not solely to blame for declining music sales and the industry's shrinking number of jobs. Joseph Baio, Gorton's lawyer, tried to influence the jury by painting a picture of record labels led by fat cat executives who in some cases paid themselves huge sums and were too slow to react to major technological shifts in their industry. Some of the trouble, Baio suggested, was caused by the record companies' own poor stewardship.

As a result of a lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2006, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood found Gorton and Lime Wire, the company behind the popular file-sharing service of the same name, liable last year for willful copyright infringement. A jury is now deciding how much Gorton will pay in damages. The amount could be as high as $1.4 billion.

In an attempt to convince the jury that Gorton deserves to pay a huge financial penalty, RIAA lawyers have tried to prove that Gorton and his service--which was used to obtain songs without paying for them--cost the music industry billions in revenues as well as thousands of jobs. … Read more

NEW YORK--Lawyers representing the four largest music labels tried to convey a message in court here today: Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton was so determined to help people pirate songs that he disregarded copyright law, artists' rights, and even the Supreme Court.

And eventually, Gorton conceded.

The best that he could offer for an excuse was that he misread the law. "I was wrong," Gorton told the court. "I didn't think our behavior was inducing [copyright infringement]. I understand that a court has found otherwise."

In numerous exchanges with Glenn Pomerantz, the labels' lead attorney, … Read more