Tag Archives: piracy

The next old-action-star pay-cheque-generator, Expendables 3, isn't set for release until 15th August in America, with the première here in the UK on the 4th. However many people have seen it already, as the film was leaked in its entirety at DVD quality on torrent sites just a few days ago. …

The most oft-cited reason for movie and music lobby groups to go after torrent sites, is that they take money away from artists, by “stealing,” content. However what those same lobby groups don't talk about, is how copyright law can do the same thing and that in those situations, piracy …

One of the main reasons that rates of piracy are so high in Australia, is because the legal ways of getting access to media are either non-existent, or monopolised and criminally expensive and yet News Corp, one of the company's that ‘suffers' the most from people pirating its shows, is …

Clearly suing downloaders and pirates doesn't work. That's obvious at this point, so some creative types have come up with a new idea: educate children about copyright while still in school. According to a bunch of authors that took to parliament yesterday to put forward some new ideas on combating …

I'm not breaking any ground when I saw that a lot of people download media illegally. You've told us for one, but it's a widespread thing that continually shows up in the headlines when a new movie is released as the producers complain, or when Game of Thrones is on …

The rest of Europe, including the UK, has been gunning for pirate websites as usual over the past 12 months, though they have used different tactics: blocking the whole site instead of charging downloaders with piracy in a court room. However one country that's seen very little anti-pirate activity is …

Shortly after the release of Google Glass in the UK, The Cinema Exhibitors Association has banned the smart glasses from UK cinemas. The CEA represents most big chain cinemas in the country and is worried that bootleggers will use the device to illegally distribute movies, despite its 30 minutes to 45 …

Following on from yesterday's news that Dutch ISPs Ziggo and XS4All were entering their third year of fighting lobby groups in courts, comes the news that British ISPs have blocked a bunch of extra torrent site proxies which have sprung up in the wake of their initial blocks. This happens …

Yesterday we reported on GOG.com's thoughts on DRM and how the industry needs to move away from it. Today in the aftermath of that discussion, Ubisoft has admitted that DRM doesn't actually prevent piracy and thinks that more companies should focus on making games that people want to pay for …

Ignoring the new trend among lobby groups and movie studios to go after ISPs and hosting companies to take down websites, the producers behind the Dallas Buyers Club are following in the footsteps of Hurt Locker producers and have begun sending out threatening letters to individuals they believe downloaded the …

The biggest argument people have against movie piracy, is that people just don't want to pay for things. That's a fair point, as no doubt there is a number of file sharers that do it for that reason, but others must have an alterior motive, as a bunch of torrent …

Game of Thrones seems to set a new piracy record every season, so it should come as no surprise that the season 4 finale was downloaded 1.5 million times just 12 hours after the show aired. At its current rate, downloads of the episode are set to topple 7.5 million …

The debate over how much damage piracy has done to differing media industries has been raging since the original creation of digital products, be they music, movies, games or software. That debate has only intensified in the last decade with the growth of P2P sharing and the answer from lobby …

Earlier today we looked at a press releases from PIPCU, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), which jointly announced that they'd been responsible for shutting down thousands of pirated sites, blocking others and even bringing criminal charges to bear against some of those …

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), set up late last year to help the authorities in the UK tackle online piracy and file sharing, has hailed its efforts over the past nine months as impactful, stating that with the help of media lobby group FACT (the British arm of …

The Recording Industry Association of America draws its funding from membership fees, paid to the the copyright lobby group to help it police the music industry. Unfortunately for those involved with it however, it seems that the group is continuing to lose members left and right as once again its …

Britain's relatively newly formed Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has been making modest waves since it first appeared on the scene, stating that one of the fresh tactics it was going to bring to the war on piracy, was to try and eliminate advertising from torrent sites. In its …

The number of people illegally sharing media like songs, music and games in Sweden, the home of The Pirate Party and original host country for The Pirate Bay, have plummeted in recent years according to a new survey by the Cybernorms research group of Lund University. In a bold move, …

Despite the claims that media lobby groups and studios around the world continue to make out that pirates will never pay and should be taken a stick to rather than a carrot, Spotify feels very different, having helped drop piracy rates around the world and it now believes that with …

The MPAA and other media lobby groups have seemingly tried everything when it comes to getting file sharing sites shut down. They've tried shutting down the servers, they've tried blocking the domains and they've tried bringing legal action against the owners and the users, but now they're taking a new …

The Pirate Bay is one of those dogs that not matter how many times you kick it, it just won't stay down. Despite its owners being in jail, its servers raided at times and massive studio funded lobby groups the world over gunning to take it down, it's still alive …

As is often the case in this world – especially when it comes to piracy – rule makers and enforcers like to employ a “do as I say, not as I do,” kind of attitude. That's no less obvious in the case of Richard Humphrey, who was sentenced to two …

UK ISP's are now on board with the entertainment industry as a new deal has been struck to help combat piracy in the UK. The Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme has been debated for around four years now according to the BBC, but it is finally coming to life soon. Rights holders …

With copyright and intellectual property law in the messy state that it currently finds itself in the US and other western nations, a lot of time legislating behind the bench is the most common way for changes in the climate to be made and that looks to be the case …

Megashare, one of the world's most prominent movie and TV streaming websites, has announced an end to its services in the near future, due to what is simply described as “problems with video hosting  company.” The site currently uses third party services like Google, Putlocker and Sockshare to achieve its …

Last year the British government created a new organisation designed with tackling online piracy, called the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) and since then it's gone after file lockers and torrent sites, in an attempt to make it much harder to view copyright protected content without permission. While initially …

Piracy is often cited as the main detractor for album sales around the world, but a new study from the University of Colorado and Fairfield University has found evidence to suggest that even legitimate Youtube videos could cause a drop in album sales. The study is called Online Music, Sales …

Game of Thrones is a wildly popular show and as with any such programme, it attracts impressive numbers of pirated downloads. However, the latest season has broken all previous records, with over a million illegitimate downloads in the half a day after release and over 300,000 people sharing the episode …

If you're working at Microsoft at the moment, it's questionable whether you'll be able to read this story at all, just because it mentions piracy. At least that's what's happening with TorrentFreak, which has been informed by a secretive Microsoft employee, that visiting its torrent news site shows up a …

British authorities are hoping to go after pirate websites' sources of revenue, in a continued bid to make them less profitable and less popular. The initiative will see the creation of a list of classified “illegal” websites, known as the Infringing Website List, which will then be distributed to companies …