News Categories Legal, Consumer Rights, DRM

RapidShare has managed, in only a year, to get themselves removed from the RIAA/MPAA's "notorious markets" piracy list, and their attorney explains how this was done

Most gamers may love Steam, but wait until your account gets banned, then that love may soon turns to hate

Ubisoft's controversial DRM strikes again - games including Assassin's Creed won't be playable at all during a planned transition of web services infrastructure next week

Neil Young refuses to cast web piracy as the biggest problem facing the music industry, instead, compares it to the promotional potential of radio

New report shows that the entertainment industry has had an amazing decade of growth, despite the constant complaints about web piracy

The CEO of Rovio, the company behind the mega-hit Angry Birds, says that piracy may help to generate revenue, and described the music industry's way of handling web piracy as a good example of "what not to do"

EMI's VP breaks ranks with the rest of the music industry by saying that SOPA isn't the way forward, and echoing the thoughts of Valve's Gabe Newell, says that piracy is a service issue more so than a pricing one

Megaupload's intentions to launch a new service that would see artists sell directly to fans, and cutting out the major music labels, might have given the music industry extra reason to be happy to see Megaupload shut down by the FBI

White House's petition website used again, this time to call for an investigation into MPAA's Chris Dodd for bribery claims, after the former senator threatened to stop writing checks for politicians that did not come out to support SOPA/PIPA

Ubisoft caught in new DRM controversy, as change of graphics card for the game Anno 2070 will mean using up one of only three reactivations

Despite a possible 46% drop in the number of music pirates compared to a year ago thanks to the shut down of LimeWire, the music industry still recorded a 3% decline in revenue

Users who used Megaupload's services legitimately are shocked and angered by the closure of the website on Thursday

A victory for opponents of SOPA/PIPA, with votes scheduled for January 24 now delayed indefinitely

Popular file hosting website Megaupload is shut down, with its founder, and others, arrested in a multi-national operation

Thousands of websites take part in a planned day of action, protesting the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, as politicians start to distance themselves from the bill

Rupert Murdoch has controversially attacked President Obama and Google on Twitter, for their stance on the equally controversial Stop Online Piracy Act

DNS filtering will no longer be part of SOPA/PIPA, after the sponsors of the bills back down due to public pressure

When Sega was asked where it stands on SOPA, the response that was given was unorthodox, to say the least

The sponsor of the SOPA bill may have committed a copyright violation by improperly using an image on his website

MPAA attacks article showing that it misleads on piracy loss figures, and labels tech blog Ars Technica as being pro piracy

Research firm Envisional, previously hired by NBC Universal to conduct research on web piracy, says that content owners should blame themselves for web piracy, and has revealed that the firm tried to convince content owners that SOPA/PIPA "is not the way to go"

Righthaven's domain name is sold for $3,300 to an unknown bidder, while more of its assets could be auctioned off to pay the company's substantial debts

The MPAA may be double, or even triple, counting losses attributed to piracy, in order to scare the US government into implementing draconian copyright laws

Movie ticket sales are down in North America for 2011, but film veteran Roger Ebert says the blame is not with web piracy

Reports suggest that major gaming companies Sony, Nintendo and EA, have all removed themselves from the list of SOPA supporting firms

Reddit users have switched from targeting GoDaddy to targeting politicians that support SOPA, with the latest target being Rep. Paul Ryan, despite the Congressman's assertions that he hasn't made up his mind on SOPA yet

By not coming out fully against the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, GoDaddy is still facing a massive Internet backed protest that could see it lose thousands of customers on the 29th of December

What does a conservative think-tank, a domain name registrar and a Hollywood actor have in common?

A new Firefox add-on makes it a seamless process to access future SOPA-blocked websites

Righthaven inches closer to being totally dismantled, as its own domain name has been seized and could be put up for auction

Three separate protests of SOPA, two in music form, as the Internet public starts to realize the real dangers of the controversial legislation

RIAA denies one of its employees pirated the dozens of songs, movies and software linked to their IP address, instead, goes with the excuse that "someone else did it"

Reddit's General Manager says the popular discussion forum may have to close if the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act is passed in its current form

MPAA's Chris Dodd says Spain, Egypt and Sweden industries wiped out by piracy, but this does not appear to reflect the reality of these country's film industries

Louis CK bypasses the traditional media distribution method, and uses the Internet to sell his videos directly, DRM-Free, and for only $5, with great results

A new website exposes the list of downloads made by BitTorrent downloaders, but also helps to expose infringing activities at movie studios and copyright agencies

Wikipedia founder suggests blanking pages for a short time to protest against the controversial Stop Piracy Online Act, in the hope of spurring a "public uprising" on the issue

Two GOP Congressional staffers that worked on SOPA/PIPA, now gets high paying jobs with lobby groups still actively promoting both controversial bills

Universal Music abuses copyright law to censor artists' free speech rights, when today's biggest stars come out to support "rogue" file hosting website Megaupload

MPAA's boss wants the US and web companies to learn from China when it comes to censoring the Internet, and also compared movie downloads to bank robbery (saying Google is the getaway driver, in this twisted analogy)

Seized domain name returned to rightful owners by the Department of Homeland Securities a full year after it was wrongfully seized

The RIAA is coming to the aid of Righthaven, or at the very least, making sure that fair use rights are not strengthened by court rulings in the case

The CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents all major electronic manufacturers in the US, launches scathing attack on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act

DVD ripping and game console hacking could be made legal, much like how smart phone jailbreaking was made legal last year, if the US Copyright Office rules in favor of new petitions by Public Knowledge and the EFF

Kaspersky will withdraw from the Business Software Alliance to protest the lobby group's support of the controversial Stop Piracy Online Act

Swiss government keeps piracy for personal use legal, as government report shows that web piracy has little financial impact, if any

Sony is using a new proprietary memory format for the PS Vita, abandoning its own MemoryStick format and the widely used SD format, due to performance and, more importantly, security concerns

A series of events reveals the underbelly of the copyright industry, as anti-piracy video uses authorised music, and the composer's ordeal to get paid for this work embroils him in a corruption scandal

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) accuses anti-SOPA protesting of spreading lies, says Google is a "self-serving" promoter of counterfeit drugs, and that online piracy is just like child pornography

Search engine result filtering may only do so much, aswebsites on the MPAA's "notorious piracy" list derive most of their traffic from other sources

The MAFIAAFire Team launches preemptive strike against SOPA/PIPA filtering by launching a new Firefox add-on that gets around the potential problem

Mozilla asks Internet users to oppose the Senate's PROTECT IP Act by calling senators next Tuesday

Ubisoft "cancels" two PC ports over piracy concerns, saying "95% of (their) consumers" are pirates, while game retailers disagree with Ubisoft's stance

Google adds new keywords to their "blacklist" of terms that don't appear in the Google suggest/auto-complete search feature

Senator Wyden of Oregon promises to filibuster SOPA's uglier, older brother, the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate by reading out the names of people who oppose the bill

Australian's version of mass copyright lawsuit may be over before it even starts, as Movie Rights Group's website is taken down, and VP leaves the company

Danish blogger has home searched because he believes he wrote articles criticizing Danish anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen, as well as guides on how to stay anonymous online and access The (banned in Denmark) Pirate Bay

Righthaven loses another court case, this time on fair use grounds against progressive website Democratic Underground

Facing angry users frustrated at Warner Bros' implementation of UltraViolet, iTunes vouchers are being handed out to users so they can actually have a working digital copy

Lawsuit alleging Download.com, and its parent CBS, actively encouraged copyright infringement by distributing LimeWire is back on, after FilmOn founder Alki David re-files lawsuit with more plaintiffs

While politicians hear from the MPAA and other pro-copyright groups on their thoughts about the controversial SOPA copyright bill, Internet users stage a day of protest resulting in over a million protest emails being sent to Congress

A who's who of Internet companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, have penned an open letter urging Congress to reconsider the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, which they say could kill off innovation and put the country at risk from cyberthreats

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that clauses in SOPA could kill of software development, and make many current essential industry tools and services illegal, under the new "reckless" legislation

Good Old Games's managing director says that DRM does more harm than good, and warned publishers to stop using it, while also revealing the full dominance of Steam in the digital game distribution market

Notorious Dutch anti-piracy agency BREIN is in court again trying to dismiss freedom of expression as relevant when it comes to the right of rights holders to protect their works

Warner Bros. admit to wrongly removing files from Hotfile that it did not hold copyright to, and to removing an open source software also hosted by the file hosting website

RIAA comes out firing, saying the DMCA gives far too much protection to websites and service providers, while the RIAA's chief defends the controversial SOPA legislation that will give power to rights holders to cut off funding to websites without the need to provide court tested evidence of wrongdoings

The BPI asks BT to block The Pirate Bay without the need for a court order, saying TPB destroys UK jobs, exposes users to viruses, and subtly hinted at charges the Torrent indexer links to child pornography

Righthaven may face the wrath of the US Marshals service if they do not pay cost in a lost lawsuit, costs which have nearly doubled due to Righthaven's refusal to pay up

The creative industries tout their important to the U.S. economy, but also expose just how well they're doing and how piracy doesn't really affect them at all

Piracy may not hurt sales, and may in fact help sales, a Spanish judge rules in a piracy case

If you want your voice heard, then sign up to a new petition that calls for the White House to take action against the Stop Online Piracy Act, also dubbed the E-Parasites Act, which aims to allow the US government to censor websites the copyright lobby deems "inappropriate"

Customers of the Rhapsody music service who still have DRM'd files must takes the painful steps of converting their music to audio CD and then ripping it again, or lose the ability to play the files after November 7, when the DRM system goes offline

UK Court says that ISP BT must block access to Newzbin2 within 14 days, as another UK Usenet indexer goes down at the same time

Justin Bieber is now firmly at the center of a new copyright controversial, as he says the Senator supporting the stronger copyright laws should be "locked up" herself, while Bieber's lawyers fight those that seems to be on Bieber's side

Zediva will have to cease operations immediately and pay the MPAA $1.8m in damages, as a judge rules against their business model

A new proposed bi-partisan bill was been put forward to the US House of Representatives, which gives the government the power to seize websites allegedly engaged in copyright infringement

Righthaven's loss in another lawsuit means they now have to pay $120,000 in legal costs, a judge rules

Movie studios claim $1.25 billion in damages against Russian couple who ran the Interfilm BitTorrent tracker

Gabe Newell explains why providing better service to gamers is better than using DRM to fight piracy, while promotes the idea that "free-to-play" games can make money

A new jailbreak device for the PS3 promises to allow pirates to play new games that are released after firmware 3.60

Steve Jobs once vowed to go "thermonuclear" in a bid to destroy Google's Android, as he believed it was nothing but a "stolen product", a new authorised biography reveals

Google bans the popular file sharing app FrostWire from Android Market, but doesn't tell the developers why

Digital Digest receives take-down notice from anti-piracy firm AiPlex, asking us to remove an article from last year that talked about the brief cyber-war between Anonymous and AiPlex, over claims that the anti-piracy firm had used illegal tactics in their war against piracy websites

Freedom of Information request reveals emails that show the friendly relationship between the Obama administration and the lobbying arms of the music and movie industries, the RIAA and MPAA

The Australian government wants to make it easier for rights holders and mass lawsuit firms to obtain information of suspected copyright infringers under new proposed changes to the copyright law

UltraViolet is now available via WB's 'Horrible Bosses' and 'Green Lantern', but the cloud based digital copy system will do more once studios makes it easier to consumer to access their UltraViolet movie collection

A new anti-piracy firm has leaked and distributed copies of Dues Ex Human Revolution, modified it so that it directed gamers to an online questionnaire after the first few levels, asked them what they would pay for the game, and then offered them the game at the average price gamers were willing to pay - and many did

A new research paper by professors from Rice University and Duke University says that DRM may actually be increasing music piracy rates, and that lower piracy rates sometimes corresponds with lower revenue

The European Greens have released a new position paper on copyright reform which calls for a ban to DRM, legalizing not-for-profit file sharing of copyrighted works, and a reduction in the copyright protect period from 70 years to 20 years

Miramax's CEO and Netflix chief content officer warn the movie industry that they need to embrace innovation and competition, or the industry will face the same fate as the music industry

Mass copyright lawsuit sees mass dismissal, as The Hurt Locker producers complain that ISPs aren't helping them to identify users quickly enough

Mass copyright lawsuits comes to Australia, with Exetel boss revealing approaches by firm Movie Rights Group to seek the details of up to 9,000 Australians

Canada is set to reform its copyright laws, to bring in US style anti-circumvention rules which would take away existing consumer rights when it comes to copying and backing up copy protected content they've legally purchased

While the music industry is still concentrating on legal and technical ways to stop piracy, legal streaming services like Spotify seems to have had the most success against piracy by competing directly with pirates

New anti-piracy firm only asks $10 to settle copyright disputes, but that may be $10 too much given what the firm can actually do if you don't pay up

Early beta version of Diablo III shows the worst aspects of the "always-on" DRM Blizzard decided to use for the upcoming game, with no ability to pause the game, and the high probability of losing unsaved progress due to Blizzard's own flaky servers