If you’re one of the 5,000 “John or Jane Does” accused of illegally downloading copies of The Hurt Locker, and your ISP is Time Warner Cable, you may be safely airlifted out of the battle zone. According to the law firm representing Hurt Locker producer Voltage Pictures, TWC is “a good ISP for copyright infringers” because it won’t hand over the names of its customers as quickly as the lawyers would like. [More]
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Hurt Locker Producer Sues "Moron" Downloaders
By 6.1.10
Nicolas Chartier, the movie producer who was banned from the Oscars for sending nastygrams about Avatar, and more recently, told a critic, “you’re a moron who believes stealing is right. I hope your family and your kids end up in jail,” is nothing if not consistent. Chartier has made good on his earlier threat to sue people who downloaded copies of The Hurt Locker, by filing a suit against 5,000 anonymous downloaders in Washington, D.C. [More]
The Pirate Bay Bought For $7.7 Million, Plans To Evolve Into Legitimate P2P Service
By 6.30.09
The Swedish gaming company Global Gaming Factory X AB has purchased The Pirate Bay for $7.7 million, and plans to transform the embattled file sharing site into a legitimate peer-to-peer service. “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” the buyers said in an ambiguous statement. The Pirate Bay’s current administrators did offer up one undeniable truth to comfort the site’s fans…
The Methods That Target DMCA Violators Are Flawed
By 6.17.08
When we read stories like Tanya Andersen’s and consider the countless others who have been wrongfully targeted by trade groups like the RIAA, it becomes evident that the system by which DMCA takedown notices are issued is very far from perfect. For the uninitiated, DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices are official statements which assert that an artist’s or company’s intellectual rights have been violated (i.e. copyright infringement) and often threaten legal action against an individual. In a study conducted by the University of Washington, researchers proved that this system is seriously flawed, according to the New York Times. In one experiment, the team received takedown notices from the MPAA which accused 3 laserjet printers of downloading the latest Indiana Jones movie and Iron Man. More, inside…
Comcast Ceases Throttling Traffic After Negative AP Story?
By 10.24.07
Last week, Comcast got positively busted by the AP for disrupting users who use a popular file-sharing method called BitTorrent. Now Reader Brandon in the DC area says:
I’ve found that Comcast isn’t throttling traffic now that they’ve been exposed. I’d been throttled for the few days prior to the story, then two days after bam, I was downloading. I downloaded 2 gigs of music.
Comcast is probably just going into hiding so other outlets can’t issue confirmation reports of the AP story, then after the news forgets about it, they’ll go right back to it. But not the internet. The internet never forgets. Especially when you’re trying to stop the internet from internetting.
