News Categories Music

French "three-strikes" appears to have dealt a major blow to web piracy in the country, but music and movie industry revenue continues to decline

Google files "friend of the court" brief to support Hotfile's, and potentially Megaupload's, argument that their business model should be protected under the DMCA, while RapidShare may face a court ruling that forces it to spy on all user uploads

The music industry's copyright losses calculations now mean that your typical iPod Classic can now store $8 billion worth of pirated music, says the founder of Rhapsody in a TED speech that questions the notion of "Copyright Maths"

From Germans having to rely on the Chinese to get more Internet freedom, to Game of Thrones episode hunting on the Internet, access, or the lack of it to legal content, remains a key web piracy driver on the Internet

Licensing firm Rumblefish claims copyright on a YouTube video that only features the ambient sound of birds singing

A music industry challenge, and a UK High Court ruling paves the way for The Pirate Bay to be blocked by ISPs

The Pirate Bay switched from a US based domain to a Swedish one recently, but this move has come under attack by the RIAA

The UK government has seized music blog RnBXclusive, and has put up a message on the website threatening to put music downloaders in prison for 10 years

iTunes match is creating money for rightsholders "out of thin air", and now allows them to "get something" when they were previously "getting zero", says CEO of rights handling firm TuneCore

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amazon launches Kindle Fire, an Android based tablet that could threaten the iPad 2's status as king of the tablets.

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

In Italy, MPs seek to introduce a law that will blacklist users and prevent them from going online based on a single allegation of copyright infringement, while just a single allegation is putting the Swedish Film Institute in big trouble, as their IP address has been caught pirating films

Joel Tenenbaum has to pay the RIAA $675,000 as the RIAA wins their appeal of an earlier ruling which saw the penalty reduced to $67,500

Lobbying efforts have intensified in the last quarter as the RIAA, MPAA, and even RapidShare, spend millions to get politicians to support their agendas

Music copyright in the EU is extended by a further 20 years, to 70 years, as musician Cliff Richard, and big music, win their argument for more copyright protection

The MPAA says that every pirate that stops downloading would otherwise spend $1,000 per year buying legal stuff, and that 13% of all American adults are movie/TV pirates

Wikileaks provides details of law enforcement tactics in taking down piracy topsites, including getting content holders to provide re-release content to gain trust of topsite operators

YouTube falls prey to false copyright claims, as authorised Bieber and Gaga videos taken down by an apparent 13 year-old Pakistani kid

Everyone has done it. Downloading YouTube videos seems to be no different to time-shifting on TiVo or DVRs, but it seems the major music labels are not happy people are doing it, and have sued downloader website TubeFire

Cloud music hosting service MP3tunes wins a victory in the courts against EMI, that may yet turn out to be a hollow one, as the threat of financial damages being rewarded against the company looms large

The CEO of one of New Zealand's largest ISPs say that the government should stop propping up the dying business model of the entertainment industry via copyright laws, and should concentrate more on encouraging innovation to fight online piracy

Walmart will stop selling MP3s at the end of this month. Those that purchased DRM protected MP3s from them will now have to rely on the shopping giant to keep the DRM servers up and running

A new study seems to show that, in contract to conventional wisdom, piracy actually leads to better quality content, and that tougher copyright law enforcement may not help with reducing piracy

A new proposal by a British royalty collection organisation will see websites offering pirated content marked with a "red tick"

Jammie Thomas-Rasset receives the lowest yet figure for total damages the single mother needs to pay the RIAA for downloading 24 songs

Over 18 million incidents of piracy has been recorded under the French "three-strikes" monitoring program, but only 10 are facing sanctions after reaching their third strike

Spotify is set to launch in the US, and you can already sign up to request an invite. Is this the end of music piracy as we know it?

The economic argument for tougher copyright laws may have been dismissed by a new report showing the huge contributions of copyright fair use to the US economy. The PROTECT IP act could actually cost jobs.

Law professors from the most prestigious law schools around the United States have come out fighting against the proposed PROTECT IP copyright act, which will give the government the power to seize and block "bad" websites

It's not three-strikes, it's five-strikes, and all the major ISPs in the US have signed up to help the MPAA and RIAA police the Internet

FilmOn founder Alki David's lawsuit against CNET has been voluntarily dismissed, but maybe only because David may plan to add more plaintiffs to the lawsuit that claims CNET and CBS helped to facilitate piracy by offering LimeWire for download

Prince is fighting online piracy, changes in the music industry, and even digital music, by promising to not release any new albums until these problems get solved

Want to turn your pirated music collection into a legal iTunes library? Apple's new iTunes Match service promises to do just that

Probable cause and warrants are not needed, says the RIAA and MPAA when it comes to disc piracy

Google's chairman says that the company will fight proposed copyright laws that will give the government increased powers to seize domain names, tamper with DNS, and force removal of search results

LimeWire has been forced to pay $105 million in damages to the RIAA, as the service and its founder are both found guilty of copyright infringement

Google announces its music in the clouds services, YouTube rentals and Android movie rentals

Mozilla refuses to honor ICE request to remove add-on that redirects seized domain names to alternate mirrors

Leaked Wikileaks cables show US heavily involved in influencing the copyright regime of New Zealand

Wikileaks cables show intense pressure on the Canadian government by the US government to adopt tougher copyright laws, and Canadian officials leaking sensitive information to help the cause

Congress launch a concerted attack on search engine giant Google for failing to do more to stop online piracy

A bi-partisan bill aims to give the MPAA and RIAA power to have the DOJ do their bidding in shutting down websites and blacklisting others

A new agency backed by both the RIAA and MPAA is born to tackle the tricky problem of online piracy

Amazon has come under attack by the record industry for allowing their customers to store the legally purchased music online, in the cloud, for playback on their mobile devices

NPD says the number of people download pirated music, as well as the number of tracks downloaded, have dropped significantly in Q4 2010 compared to Q4 2007, possibly due to LimeWire shutdown

U.S. Judge calls record companies' damages claim "absurd", as total amount of damages may exceed total global GDP

Following the White House's proposal to make streaming a felony, music industry expert Moses Avalon hopes the new laws will be used to curb all speech on P2P

A prominent piracy expert feels the best way for the entertainment industry to respond to BitTorrent file sharing is to compete

Ubisoft may have included a pirated version of the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood soundtrack the Digital Deluxe version of the game

The production of Zune music players may be halted due to lack of demand, as well as Microsoft's shifting focus towards the Windows Phone

LimeWire has settled with music publishers, but it is still being sued for $1b by music copyright owners

Apple is allegedly in negotiations with major music labels to add a long time missing feature to the iTunes music store - the ability to re-download your purchases

Sony has launched a new music-in-the-cloud service that offers unlimited, streamed, music for $10 per month

isoHunt is in legal trouble again after being sued by the major music labels, who are demanding the closure of the website as well as $4m in damages

No seriously, musician will.i.am is now a director of creative innovations at Intel

The Pirate Bay may be launching a new music sharing service that it promises will scare the living daylights out of the music industry

The British government wants ISPs to contribute to the cost of anti-piracy activities, and optimistically estimates the benefit of such a scheme

Songs will now be made available to purchase faster than before in a bid to combat online piracy

The BPI says piracy is responsible for a yearly revenue decline, however music sales are actually up significantly

50,000 hacked iTunes accounts are put up for sale on a Chinese auction website

The infamous ZapTunes, which offered the unbelievable deal 8 million DRM-free song downloads for only $25 per month, has just cancelled the accounts of all of those who signed up