Group items tagged

I believe Apple will not be very happy about this.

A group of independent film producers have initiated court actions against over 20,000 Bit Torrent users, through an organisation of their own design, a group of lawyers known as the U.S Copyright Group. This group are demanding users to either defend themselves in court or alternatively, to settle outside of court for downloading particular movie titles. Most accused will settle to avoid the costs of litigation. Actions such as this are worrying as may give rise to a standard in which large numbers of corporates, not only in film but in all types of media, may start bringing forth unrelenting actions against individual users- holding them personally accountable. This is problematic (amongst a variety of reasons) that in the identification process through IP addresses is not 100% accurate, leaving room to wrongly accuse some users.

Censorhip originally meant protecting the property owners from infringement. But it has been changed to deny free speech to wealthy organisations or governements they deem facist. it happens everywhere and

If you are going to look at copyright on the internet, you really can't go past this settlement. This is Google's next step at world domination: control of our intellectual property. No one likes it, but everyone is going ahead with it because Google has them over a barrel ... The basic deal is that Google wants to digitise every book ever written and make them all searchable online by google customer. On the surface this is all shiny; it seems commonsense that all material should be digitised - we have to keep up with technology. The problem arises when you get to the sticky situation of copyright - generally with books, owners get royalties every time someone buys a copy. With the digitisation, Google wasn't too keen on the idea of pay-per-view. Ideally, they would have loved to present all that information free and just reap the benefit ... well, however Google reaps benefits. There was litigation all round - publishers were against it, yahoo and other internet giants were against it (because it wasn't their idea) and it went to the doors of the US Supreme Court, but not quite to trial. Google's rivals were not too sure that they wanted to go to trial, because the outcome was a little on the uncertain side. So the Google book settlement was drawn up, objected to, fought, signed up to, taken to the US Supreme Court for approval, rejected, modified, fought over a bit more, and sent back to the judge. The last move was in Feb 2010; we're still waiting for Critics argue that the deal gives Google too much power over digital books and will not benefit customers in terms of cost, possible censorship issues, privacy. Copyright owners will also lose out, as Google's royalty policy cuts them out of the system and reduces their royalty - and they are automatically included in the agreement unless they 'opt out' (even if they have not 'opted in'). Really, Google is the only party that seems to benefit, and yet for all of the fighting, the settlement seems

Head programmer of Wolfire games, David, also talking about the methods of measurement for analysing economic losses through piracy that do not truly reflect losses terms of real world consumer spending

Report released in the United States which says that it is almost impossible to quantify the economic wide impacts of piracy, figures which have been given in the past are likely to have grossly overestimate the actual losses made in reality, It discusses how much of infringing copyright should be counted as a lost sale. i.e. Counting one illegal download as one lost sale is unrealistic in terms of real world economics.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association disclosed a report revealing the value of industries dependent on copyright limitations. The report claims that it accounts for US$4.7 trillion and 23% of the US' real economic growth from 2002-2007.

How YouTube has created porn sites made in it's image e.g. YouPorn, Porntube and its impact on the industry.

Apple is one of several companies being sued for an alleged iTunes patent breach of an idea which is an online store for music downloads, some of Apple's other applications are also being sued for other patent breaches. Apple's operating Systems & Safari are also being sued by a Monkeymedia for breaching patents which dictate ways of displaying varying amounts of data through user control.

Verizon has imposed a version of the controversial graduated response policy which was recently uncovered in the US- in which ISP's basically disconnect repeat copyright infringement offenders from the internet. Verizon is terminating internet service to an undisclosed number of repeat offenders.

Voltage pictures, production company of the oscar winning movie, The Hurt Locker has joined with the US copyright group filed thousands of lawsuits against people who have downloaded the movie through torrent sites. Magnitude of this is much larger than any prior legal action taken before for illegally downloaded movies.

German Criminal Court rules that Wi-Fi internet account owners who do not have password protection will be fined 100 euros for 3rd parties which perform acts of piracy on their account, further broadening the spectrum of responsibility of copyright infringement.

Nintendo VS NXPGAME. Filing lawsuit to repeat offender who was asked by Nintendo to desist in selling illegal video game copiers which allowed users to download, play and distribute NintendoDS and DSi games. Piracy in the video game market is a widespread problem to which video game companies are also taking an agressive stance.