Tag Archives: piracy

If you're a media lobby group like the BPI, MPAA, RIAA, FACT or any of the numerous others dotted about the globe, then you get the majority of your funding from studios paying you to be their digital piracy watchdogs. However, there's another method of drumming up the Christmas bonuses …

Anti-piracy adverts have always been a bit of a laughing stock, whether it was that giant, sweating blacksmith or the comically awful links in “you wouldn't steal a car,” but sometimes they're bad for other reasons, like being totally hypocritical. That's the situation the Business Software Alliance finds itself in today, as its …

Google has been pretty active in combating piracy on Youtube for some time now and even threw a massive finger to a lot of its hardest working contributors when it introduced the completely uncaring Content ID system which allowed trolls to strip ownership and revenue from videos with a single …

Kim Dotcom made headlines again last week with the news that Popcorn Time, the real end game for online movie piracy, was taken down from his Mega file locker service. According to his own statements, he had no idea about it until after the fact and we still don't know …

Australia regularly gets the short end of the stick stuffed where it doesn't want it, when it comes to media content access. Thanks to its often hyper-inflated per-unit cost for movies, games and TV shows, many people choose to pirate content, making it the copyright infringement capital of the world, …

The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) is one of those lobby groups like the BPI and the MPAA, that makes a very big deal out of movie piracy. Instead of listening to experts on the subject, it often pushes for legal action against pirates and website owners and that tactic …

While the landscape for media pirates is a lot better today than it was a few years ago, there's still a lot of copyright lobby groups and firms that are happy to bring legal action against ISPs, individuals and site owners alike. One of those companies is Zuffa, the owner …

A new app developed between British lobby group UK Music, the Intellectual Property Office and Aaardman Animations, known as Music Inc, was released to try and show gamers the impact that music piracy has on the industry, but in reality just showcases how little it is labels actually pay their …

One of the most distasteful elements of the copyright lobbyist vs piracy conflict over the past few years, has been the former group targeting individual file sharers with enormous lawsuits that try to force them into bankruptcy by demanding huge payouts per movie uploaded/downloaded. These got even worse when companies …

Gene Simmons has once again decided to showcase his prehistoric ways of thinking with regards to music piracy, suggesting that it's killing the music industry (just like he proclaimed back in 2008) and that ultimately anyone involved in it should go to jail. He even goes so far as to …

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has called once again, for Google to do more to prevent sites that contains pirated music content from appearing in its search results. It demands several ‘voluntary' procedures, including the further demotion of piracy related websites, education of users and removal of any …

With ISPs all over the world (and especially in the UK) rolling over at the merest hint of copyright infringement, Google removing ownership from Youtube videos with just a sniff of a copyright protected song and Pirate Bay domains being taken down almost daily at this point, it's rare to …

Anyone that's been reading TorrentFreak for some time, or indeed our own news stories on the matter, will know that despite all the bluster from the media industry and its copyright lobbyists, file sharing looks like it helps media sales rather than hampering them. This idea is further backed up …

An Ex- Admin of the now defunct bittorrent site, ‘Swebits', has been fined $652,000 for uploading one pre-release movie a few years ago. Along with the crippling fine, he will have to serve 160 hours of community service and has a suspended Jail sentence hanging over his head for helping …

The US government is set to wipe a big heaping portion of egg off of its face today, after it was discovered that for several years, the military has been using pirated software, skipping out on over a quarter billion dollars worth of licensing fees. To make the problem go …

‘Quick, look like you're busy,' continues to be the unspoken rule over at media lobbyists like Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) which has continued alongside the BPI to have websites blocked in the UK, because of their links with pirated content – despite the fact that all evidence suggests that …

Pirates around the world, remove your stove hats for a minute of silence please. Isohunt, one of the world's longest running and most popular torrent search sites has finally succumbed to legal pressure from the media lobby and US government and has been forced to settle on a cease and …

Shock and horror, it turns out that the most pirated movies might be suffering from problems with availability, making the illegally downloaded version not only cheaper, but quicker, easier to access and simpler to find, according to data from a newly launched website: PiracyData.org. The site takes the list of …

The MPAA has released what it describes as a ‘debunking' of the recent London School of Economics study that suggested piracy wasn't having anywhere near the negative impact that media lobbyists have been saying for years. The LSE's response? This is all par for the course. The study was “debunked” …

While it won't come as a surprise to many, it's good to have a bit of solid evidence of the fact. A new study from the London School of Economics is accusing the media industry of making out that “losses” to piracy are far worse than they really are and …

British broadcasting watchdog, OfCom, has conducted a study of piracy and online activity without interference from the media industry or its lobby groups and has found that piracy isn't perpetrated by large numbers of people and should be of little concern to the government or content producing companies. The research …

Copyright lobby groups have changed their strategy for preventing illegal downloads of movies and music over the past decade. For a while it was all about suing the humble downloader/uploader, leveraging fines over tens if not hundreds of thousands of [insert any Western currency here] for sharing a few bits …

Who'd have though it? If we'd all been drinking the media lobbyist cool-aid for the past decade, we'd have been under the belief that the only way to tackle piracy, was to crush individual uploaders and downloaders under massive fines and scare them into never touching a PC again, when …

For a long, long time most pirates have been arguing that the reason they download movies illegally, is because there hasn't been an adequate alternative. By that they mean region free, day one downloads at a convenient price. For years, movie studios and copyright lobbyists have ignored this and branded …

The US ambassador to Australia has posted up on his Facebook, about how he's the kind of man that likes to watch Game of Thrones with his family and legally too. Those dirty Australians though, they're pirating it and he thinks that should stop, because stealing is stealing guys; come …

Brooklyn based band, Ghost Beach, has urged artists to “pick a side” in the piracy argument, with giant billboards in Times Square, displaying messages like “Piracy is Progress,” and “#ArtistsForPiracy,” right alongside “Piracy is Robbery.” The plan is to encourage people to discuss the current “problem,” of piracy via Twitter …

The blockade of a fresh batch of file sharing websites has begun, with the major ISPs in the UK blocking their customers from accessing Fenopy, Kickasstorrents and H33T. Of course this won't stop 99 per cent of visitors who already have ways around the blocks thanks to a plethora of …

Echoing something most file sharers have claimed for a long time and several studies have brought to light, new research from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, has provided further evidence that there is in-fact a positive correlation between those that download music illegally and those that purchase music from a licensed …

One of the biggest choices for modern media consumers is whether to get their content legally, or illegally. While the former is certainly becoming easier, cheaper and faster, often times the latter is just more convenient. Most companies ignore this and do idiotic things, like sue their fan base, or …

The blocks that many countries including the Netherlands, the UK, Finland, Ireland and many others brought in last year for torrent search site The Pirate Bay, were quickly shown to be ineffective at preventing access. Groups like the BPI then targeted proxy sites like the the one run by Pirate Party …