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

Gizmodo:

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.

“Writing on the high seas”

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

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.

US Library of Congress: Copyright Is Destroying Historic Audio

From the you’re-telling-us dept.

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 “All U.S. recordings, both commercially released and unpublished, created before February 15, 1972, are protected by a complex network of disparate state civil, criminal, and common laws,” the study explains.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.

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

Historian Jason Scott walks through the many-years story of software piracy 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.

MPAA shows how to Video Record a TV set

This is, apparently, not a joke. 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.

via @siracusa

Court Jails Pirate Bay Founders

I’m sure the appeals process will be long:

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.

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.