Tag: piracy

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Warner Bros: Pirates Show Us What Consumers Want

[Hey guess what, Warner Bros?][link] Pirates show you what consumers want because *they are consumers*. They just don’t consume in the way you want them to.

The most interesting thing about this article is that WB admits to selectively enforcing copyright based on how beneficial it is to them from an analytics standpoint. Which means they’re admitting, in public, that piracy can be beneficial.

[link]: http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-pirates-show-us-what-consumers-want-130624/ “Warner Bros: Pirates Show Us What Consumers Want | TorrentFreak”

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Every Time You Torrent, Feds Log Your IP in Just Three Hours

[Gizmodo:][link]

>Anyone who has downloaded pirated music, video or ebooks using a BitTorrent client has probably had their IP address logged by copyright-enforcement authorities within three hours of doing so. So say computer scientists who placed a fake pirate server online—and very quickly found monitoring systems checking out who was taking what from the servers.

A honeypot for government and entertainment industry (aren’t they basically the same now?) spies that they just couldn’t resist.

[link]: http://gizmodo.com/5940271/every-time-you-torrent-feds-log-your-ip-in-just-three-hours “Every Time You Torrent, Feds Log Your IP in Just Three Hours”

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DVDs and Blu-rays will now carry two unskippable government warnings

[Guess who doesn’t have to watch these warnings? Pirates.][link] ICE is essentially penalizing people who already pay money for DVDs and Blu-Ray by making them watch two stupid videos before they can watch their legally-obtained DVDs. Pathetic.

[link]: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/dvds-and-blu-rays-will-now-carry-two-unskippable-government-warnings/ “DVDs and Blu-rays will now carry two unskippable government warnings | Ars Technica”

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“Writing on the high seas”

[Author Tobias Buckell’s treatise on book piracy and what it means here in the now][link]:

>A certain book that usually sells about 5,000 copies, locked down and protected, seems to sell the same 5,000 copies as a book with a free giveaway and pirated. The difference, according to O’Reilly and many, will be that the second author sees a 5,000 copies sold book, and 5,000 downloads and wonders “why, I should really have had 10,000 sales!” But the truth might be more like, 5,000 people purchased each, and one of them got 5,000 additional reads.

Most of this analysis seems like it should fall under the rubric of “common sense,” but there’s obviously a pretty big lack of that in the traditional publishing channels right now. Some people will read your stuff, some people will pay you, and the best you can hope for is enough people fall into the second category that you can pay your bills.

[link]: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2011/01/27/writing-on-the-high-seas/ “Writing on the high seas at Tobias Buckell Online”

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The Case Against COICA

[The Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is bad mojo][link] that will not only limit creativity but stifle business. It will unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech, raise the cost of doing business on the internet in a time when the economy is already in the toilet, and **create an internet blacklist in America**.

[The EFF has a larger look at the bill][link], and none of it is good.

[link]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/case-against-coica “The Case Against COICA | Electronic Frontier Foundation”

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US Library of Congress: Copyright Is Destroying Historic Audio

[From the you’re-telling-us dept.][link]

>The report also highlights the problems posed by the rather complicated history of US copyright law. “All U.S. recordings, both commercially released and unpublished, created before February 15, 1972, are protected by a complex network of disparate state civil, criminal, and common laws,” the study explains. The consequence is that all sounds recordings made before 1972 will have their copyright expire in 2067 – 95 years after the placement of these recordings under federal protection in 1972. This means that the oldest sound recordings in the US dating from 1890, will only enter the public domain after 177 years.

[link]: http://www.osnews.com/story/23888/US_Library_of_Congress_Copyright_Is_Destroying_Historic_Audio “US Library of Congress: Copyright Is Destroying Historic Audio”

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You’re Stealing it Wrong: 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles

>[Historian Jason Scott walks through the many-years story of software piracy][link] and touches on the tired debates before going into a completely different direction – the interesting, informative, hilarious and occasionally obscene world of inter-pirate-group battles. A multi-media extravaganza of threats, CSI-level accusations and evidence trails, decades of insider lingo, and demonstrations of how the more things change, the more they still have to keep their ratios up.

Jason Scott’s talks are all required listening if you’re into the real history of the internet and the social aspects of computing. Link via [Andy Baio][waxy].

[link]: http://vimeo.com/15400820 “You’re Stealing it Wrong: 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles on Vimeo”
[waxy]: http://waxy.org “Waxy dot org”

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Developer of Minecraft on How Piracy Works

[A whole lot of truth packed into a short post:][link]

>I won’t bother analyzing why people copy games and other digital media, as that’s really a moot point. We’ve got an amazingly effective way of distributing culture that is extremely beneficial for humanity, but it clashes with our current economical models. Piracy will win in the long run. It has to. The alternative is too scary.

[link]: http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1121596044/how-piracy-works “How piracy works. : The Word of Notch”

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Ars Technia on Indie Filmmakers’ P2P Lawsuits

[It’s not just for the MPAA anymore.][link] Lots of these films probably made more from the lawsuits than they did in the theater.

[link]: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/the-riaa-amateurs-heres-how-you-sue-p2p-users.ars “The RIAA? Amateurs. Heres how you sue 14,000+ P2P users”

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Warner Bros. Sued for Pirating Anti-Piracy Technology

[From the Do-As-I-Say Department][link]:

>Warner Bros. has been sued by a German technology firm which claims the movie and television production company pirated its anti-piracy technology.

I can only assume that anyone at Warner Bros HQ will be no longer allowed to connect to the internet for any purpose, right? That’s what they want to do to alleged pirates, so it’s only fair.

[link]: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100937-Warner-Bros-Sued-for-Pirating-Anti-Piracy-Technology “The Escapist : News : Warner Bros. Sued for Pirating Anti-Piracy Technology”

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European Parliament Demands Transparency For ACTA

>The European Parliament today voted on a resolution that demands transparency in the ACTA negotiations, and that the Commission puts all papers on the table.
>
>The resolution was carried by 633 votes in favour, 13 against, and 16 abstentions.

[Way to go, EU][link]. See also: [Christian Engström’s talk on ACTA][talk] from the European Parliament floor.

[link]: http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/epic-win-for-transparency-on-acta/ “Epic win for transparency on ACTA « Christian Engström, Pirate MEP”
[talk]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trarJtxixM8 “Christian Engström’s talk”

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Mininova Goes Legit, Removes All (Possibly) Copyright-infringing Torrents

As a result of the [recent court case against the site][case], they’ve [removed all torrents not registered on the site by the copyright holder][link].

[link]: http://blog.mininova.org/articles/2009/11/26/mininova-limits-its-activities-to-content-distribution-service/ “Mininova limits its activities to Content Distribution service at Mininova blog”
[case]: http://blog.mininova.org/articles/2009/08/26/mininova-considers-appealing-in-brein-case/ “ruling of the Court of Utrecht”

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TechCrunch Reports last.fm DID Give User Data to the RIAA

[More exactly, CBS (Last.fm’s parent company) got this user data by not telling Last.fm they were going to turn it over][link]. Last.fm responded to TechCrunch’s initial allegation with a blog post titled “[TechCrunch are full of shit][shit].”

I wonder how Last.fm feel about the acquisition right now.

[link]: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/22/deny-this-lastfm/ “Deny This, Last.fm”
[shit]: http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrunch-are-full-of-shit “Last.fm blog: TechCrunch are full of shit”

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MPAA shows how to Video Record a TV set

[This is, apparently, not a joke][link]. What it is, is 4 minutes of some poor hired goon trying to pretend like this isn’t the biggest pain in the ass of thing to attempt. The video summary says:

>At the DMCA 1201 hearings at the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, representatives from the MPAA showed a video demonstrating how users can videorecord a TV set. They argue this is an acceptable analog alternative to breaking copy protection on a DVD.

The mind reels.

[link]: http://www.vimeo.com/4520463 “MPAA shows how to videorecord a TV set on Vimeo”

via [@siracusa][siracusa]

[siracusa]: http://twitter.com/siracusa/statuses/1728534353 “Source of this link on Twitter”

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Court Jails Pirate Bay Founders

[I’m sure the appeals process will be long][link]:

>Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
>
>They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

[link]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8003799.stm “BBC NEWS | Technology | Court jails Pirate Bay founders”

I feel that their *attitude* didn’t help them with the judge. Google still indexes millions more torrent files than TPB ever could. Why no attack against them? See also: [Wired’s coverage][wired].

[wired]: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/pirateverdict.html “The Pirate Bay Guilty; Jail for File-Sharing Foursome”