News May 2012 News Archive

RIAA accuses Google of limiting the number of DMCA notices it can file, an accusation Google denies, while the music industry trade body wants Google to be more proactive in identifying and removing links ... Read more ...

MegaUpload's lawyers submit motion to have the US government's case against the file hosting provider thrown out due to lack of jurisdiction ... Read more ...

Check out the US Blu-ray sales stats for the week ending 19th May 2012 ... Read more ...

Check out the US Blu-ray sales stats for the week ending 12th May 2012 ... Read more ...

The Pirate Bay is engaging in a new game with those keen on blocking the torrent website, by releasing new IP addresses that also requires a new court order in order to block - wasting the resources of anti-piracy agencies in the process ... Read more ...

Weekly News Roundup for the week ending 27 May 2012 ... Read more ...

Google reveals detailed stats about its DMCA take-down regime, including the fact that half of the removed links are related to Microsoft intellectual property, and that only 1,300 copyright owners were responsible for more than 1.2 million take-down requests in the last month ... Read more ...

The Polish arm of CERT has noticed a ramp up of BitTorrent based poisoning attacks in recent months, which could be the work of anti-piracy firms, and legality issues have been raised in relation to these "attacks" ... Read more ...

The DRM-free version of The Witcher 2 was pirated less than the SecurROM DRM version, according to the developer of the game ... Read more ...

Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum fails in his attempt to get the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the $675,000 he has been ordered to pay the music industry for sharing 30 songs ... Read more ...

With the MPAA no longer labeling downloaders as "thieves", this week's P(s)otW looks back down memory lane at some of the most memorable anti-piracy ad campaigns ... Read more ...

Hollywood wants to distance itself from its own anti-piracy efforts, by no longer referring to downloaders as thieves ... Read more ...

Weekly News Roundup for the week ending 20 May 2012 ... Read more ...

A new research paper suggests that pre-release piracy on BitTorrent networks does not affect music album sales, and in fact, it may even help ... Read more ...

Diablo III, somewhat expectedly, suffers launch day "always-on" DRM blues as too many users flood the authentication servers, leaving gamers unable to play ... Read more ...

Check out the US Blu-ray sales stats for the week ending 5th May 2012 ... Read more ...

Russian company says they have the solution to the BitTorrent piracy problem, through a tool called Pirate Pay, and development of it is being funded by software giant Microsoft ... Read more ...

The MPAA posts in a controversial blog gloating about recent court successes against The Pirate Bay, saying that censorship is good for consumers and encourage innovation ... Read more ...

Former MS boss says Sony screwed up the transition from the PS2 to the PS3, which helped the Xbox 360 gain hugely in market share ... Read more ...

Lib-Ray will not take on Blu-ray, but the DRM-free, open standard, SD media based video format may yet find its niche ... Read more ...

This week's PotW is a preview of something you'll learn to hate in the following years - a new copyright warning message on DVDs and Blu-rays ... Read more ...

Weekly News Roundup for the week ending 13 May 2012 ... Read more ...

The fight against piracy means that theatrical runs for movies need to be shortened, something the theater operators won't be happy about, while DVD and Blu-ray prices also need to drop, says Time Warner CEO ... Read more ...

Comedian Louis CK releases more of his shows, in DRM-free format, hoping to prove yet again that DRM really is quite useless ... Read more ...

UK ISP Virgin Media comes under attack by a faction of Anonymous, but The Pirate Bay leaps to their defence, saying DDoS attacks are a form of censorship too ... Read more ...

Updated anti-piracy warnings coming soon to a DVD and Blu-ray disc near you features not one, but two potentially unskippable warning screens ... Read more ...

The latest edition of our annual feature taking a look at Blu-ray sales performance over the last 52 weeks ... Read more ...

Check out the US Blu-ray sales stats for the week ending 28th April 2012 ... Read more ...

The mainstream version of Windows 8 won't include DVD playback nor Media Center support, and Microsoft cites waning interest in PC based use of physical movie discs as the reason ... Read more ...

Weekly News Roundup for the week ending 6 May 2012 ... Read more ...

The news of the UK's blocking of The Pirate Bay has had the unintended effect of driving more traffic to the BitTorrent indexer, as the website uses the media exposure to educate people on how to easily bypass any filtering of the website ... Read more ...

A New York district court judge clearly spells out the case against using IP addresses to identify pirates, and urges other judges to throw out mass copyright lawsuits that are a "waste of judicial resources" ... Read more ...

UK ISPs forced by court order to shut down access to The Pirate Bay in the coming weeks, as critics slam the decision as both "pointless" and "dangerous" ... Read more ...

Check out the US Blu-ray sales stats for the week ending 21st April 2012 ... Read more ...

Germany's Pirates Party looks set for a stunning victory in upcoming elections, polling at 9% in several regions, and this week's PotW was taken at their two-day conference in Neumuenster, northern Germany ... Read more ...