Displaying items by tag: File Sharing

Despite a valiant attempt to label P2P transfers and BitTorrent as the devil Microsoft and others are looking to move this direction for updates and other services. In the latest build of Windows 10 the new P2P updating mechanism was found hiding out as an option in the code. Fortunately Microsoft does give you a few options when it comes to this new feature.

For years we have heard about the high cost of internet piracy, but other than some seriously twisted math we have never actually seen where this “cost” was coming from. At least not until very recently. No we are not talking about any real financial impact on the copyright holders. While it is true that there is a small impact to them in terms of box office revenue the overall percentage is around 1-3%. Where things really get expensive for them is in maintaining the massive anti-piracy campaign.

We have talked about how the MPAA, RIAA and others use fantasy math to come up with the figures about how much Piracy hurts them. Usually they use these fantasy number when asking lawmakers for harsher punishments and also to show how malignant file sharers are. These numbers allege that every single download is a lost sale which leads to more revenue lost in concessions and many other non-related areas.

Hotfile, one of the most popular services for sharing files has ceased their operations. In a recent court settlement Hotfile has agreed to pay a fine of $80 million for copyright infringement to several movie studios. It is the result of a lawsuit for copyright infringement started in March 2012. submitted by Disney, Fox, Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner against Hotfile CEO, Anthony Tito.

The MPAA can score another victory in their ongoing (and lopsided) battle against file sharing on the internet as the popular Torrent search site ISOHunt has announced it is closing down. For the last few years site owner Gary Fung has fought the MPAA over allegations of copyright infringement. The case resembles the one that was thrown at The Pirate Bay several years ago in that ISOHunt did not actually store files on the site. The lawsuit brings many questions to mind about search engines in general and if systems designed to index the internet can be policed.

After having their ideas shot down by popular displeasure the Copyright lobbyists are now trying to make aggressive tactics ok. They have put together a report on the state of American Intellectual property theft and have managed to build up some of the old boogeymen like they always do. This time, they are starting to make more open suggestions about fighting fire with fire. In the past these reports have always centered on the commercial market and the state of individual piracy, product copying and other more economic concepts. These were enough to get higher mandatory fines, to criminalize certain fair use tactics and more. Now by subtly changing the report to show highlight the national security aspect the industry hopes to be given considerably more power to act.

A documentary film about the founders of the popular site for file sharing, The Pirate Bay, should be premiered on February 8th, and will be available through the Internet for free downloading. Fredik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, the founders of The Pirate Bay, are the main stars of a documentary called "TPB AFK" or "The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard." The premiere of a documentary film directed by Simon Klose will be shown at the 63rd International Film Festival in Berlin.

The new site from Kim Dotcom made for file sharing will be called Mega and I will be located at the web address me.ga. The service should start around January 19th of the following year and Dotcom has tried to completely separate it from anything that has to do with the U.S. This means that the hosting company, domain, and partners will not be from the U.S. making it impossible, or at least the extremely hard, to shut down the service if someone tried...

After their past server hosting provider PRQ got raided by the feds, The Pirate Bay decided to make a move towards protecting themselves. They announced this move in a very theatrical blog post “So, first we ditched the trackers. Then we got rid of the torrents. Now? Now we've gotten rid of the servers. Slowly and steadily we are getting rid of our earthly form and ascending into the next stage, the cloud.” Even though the whole movement only caused a small 5 minute outage, it was quite a big job to do it.

There is something interesting happening in the US; ok several something’s actually and we are not sure if they are good or bad at this point. The first is that there appear to be more judges actually looking into the claims that the copyright lobby are trying to claim when they go after individuals and even corporations for copyright infringement. We have watched as precedent has been set in the form of very unusual verdicts such as one handed down recently that states Web Sites are not responsible for links posted by their members which might violate copyright. This nice ruling means that the MPAA and RIAA must prove that the links were placed on a site by the owner or that they encouraged the posting of these links. Of course we have seen that the MPAA, RIAA and other copyright holders rarely stand on ceremony and will claim a site is encouraging piracy right out of the gate (we don’t need no stinking proof).  So while the ruling was rather monumental it did not stop the unsubstantiated take down requests and certainly is not going to help Megaupload or any other site in reality.