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On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that would give the Attorney General the right to shut down websites with a court order if copyright infringement is deemed “central to the activity” of the site — regardless if the website has actually committed a crime. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is among the most draconian laws ever considered to combat digital piracy, and contains what some have called the “nuclear option,” which would essentially allow the Attorney General to turn suspected websites “off.” COICA is the latest effort by Hollywood, the recording industry and...

The MPAA, which is the Hollywood studios' lobbying organization, just made this announcement about the FCC's very bad decision. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: once again, Big Media shows that it doesn't want to share its profits with anyone else. Today's action allows the major movie studios to undercut the entire process of theatrical release. It would put the struggling cinema chains virtually out of business.

Measuring the exact cost of intellectual property theft is difficult, even for the government entities assigned to measure such activities.   There are a few facts though: China dominates the counterfeit world; digital reproduction technology is making counterfeit movies and music recordings commonplace and the counterfeit industry hurts the overall US economy. Those are but a few of the results of a look by the US Government Accountability Office at what the theft of intellectual property means to the US.  Critics have long said the US needs to do something to put a crimp in the over $200 billion counterfeit and...

The RIAA and MPAA have submitted a plan to the Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement. It's basically a plan that they want the government to enact, and it's terrifying. Here are some of the lovely things that they're calling for: * spyware on your computer that detects and deletes infringing materials; * mandatory censorware on all Internet connections to interdict transfers of infringing material; * border searches of personal media players, laptops and thumb-drives; * international bullying to force other countries to implement the same policies; * and free copyright enforcement provided by Fed cops and agencies (including the Department...

Of all the songs Whitney Harper of San Antonio downloaded from online file-sharing networks, the one that could best sum up the college student's situation now is Hanson's “Save Me.” A federal appeals court that covers Texas has ruled the 22-year-old must pay a total of $27,750 to five music companies for 37 copyrighted songs she accessed through Kazaa and similar sites when she was a teenager. Last week's opinion by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower ruling that awarded the five recording companies $200 for each of the songs. The appeals...

Never let it be said that the folks in Hollywood aren't good at coming up with a totally fictional horror story. I just have a problem when they use it not to entertain, but to create a moral panic to push the government to pass laws in their favor. In discussing the recent 60 Minutes piece that was really nothing more than an MPAA scare tactic, some suggested that it was really just a first step in the process of getting the government to make sure net neutrality rules had a special Hollywood exception. So, it's interesting to note that...

These days, Fung is still in Richmond and still fascinated by peer-to-peer technology. The record industry is still in a panic. But other things are different. The movie and television industries, for instance, have joined the music business in fear of wanton file sharing. And Fung is no longer watching from the sidelines. He's jumped into the fray and in the eyes of the entertainment industry has become one of its biggest problems -- a threat to be crushed..... Created by a Seattle programmer named Bram Cohen in 2002, BitTorrent was an ingenious piece of peer-to-peer software. Where its predecessors...

The MPAA apparently said that the “enemies of copyright have really done a good job at creating the false premise that the interest of copyright holders and the interest of society as a whole are antagonistic” during the World Copyright Summit. The worry is that their pro-copyright advocacy perspective is fading away in the public conscious. In an interesting report from IP-Watch where there were a few choice words levelled against those that disagreed with the view-points of the copyright industry. Apparently, Fritz Attaway suggested that it's false to assume that the rights of the industry and the interest of...

So the Copyright Office is currently in the middle reviewing proposed exceptions to the DMCA, and one of the proposals on the table would allow teachers and students to rip DVDs and edit them for use in the classroom. Open and shut, right? Not if you're the MPAA and gearing up to litigate the legality of ripping -- it's trying to convince the rulemaking committee that videotaping a flatscreen is an acceptable alternative. Seriously. It's hard to say if we've ever seen an organization make a more tone-deaf, flailing argument than this. Take a good look, kids. This is what...

Hollywood's major film and television studios on Tuesday began a new push to educate U.S. lawmakers about the entertainment industry by touting job creation in the recession and media's global trade surplus. The lobbying effort by the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the key film and TV studios in governmental affairs, comes after the U.S. Senate in February stripped $246 million in tax breaks for entertainment companies from President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package. In a study released on Tuesday, the MPAA said the entertainment industry employs 2.5 million U.S. workers and production is increasingly moving to...

If you were online and couldn't access some websites today, we might know the reason why. The FBI raided a Dallas building that houses servers for several different websites. CBS 11 News has learned that the raid is part of a general criminal investigation. Because of the confiscation of computers at Core IP Networks, a number of legitimate businesses have been affected. From the downtown office building in the 2300 block of Bryan Street, FBI agents seized what one source described as millions of dollars in computer equipment. Matthew Simpson, the owner of Core IP Networks, said in a letter...

Under pressure from the big record labels, several countries around the world are cracking down hard on illegal file-sharers with a "three strikes, you're out" policy — and the United States may be next. The basics are simple: Get caught three times sharing files illegally, and your Internet access gets cut off. But in a day and age when Internet access is almost as essential as a cell phone or electricity, should the music industry or Internet service providers [ISPs] have the power to determine who can and can't get online, particularly without criminal charges being filed? And what if...

A court case in British Columbia has the potential to drastically change the Canadian Internet landscape by making search engines such as Google and Yahoo illegal. A case brought against the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) by a small search engine for BitTorrent files, called ISOHunt Web Technologies Inc., is raising questions about whether search engines are liable for the sharing of copyright-protected content online. The question before the British Columbia Supreme Court is, if a site like ISOHunt allows people to find a pirated copy of Watchmen or The Dark Knight, is it breaching Canadian copyright law? “It’s a...

3 strikes, Canada crackdown The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has supplied its political wish list to the Obama transition team, and thanks to new transition team policies, that means the MPAA has shared its agenda with everyone on the Internet. "Graduated response" rules are praised, anti-camcording rules are paramount, and Canada and Spain are two of the countries that need to be singled out for "priority trade policy attention." The Obama transition team is publicizing its meetings with interest groups and putting any materials provided to the team up on the change.gov web site. The MPAA document is...

In October of this year, Newzbin reported that it was anticipating legal action against its Usenet indexing service by a yet unnamed entity. Over a month later, Newzbin reports that it has been sued by the MPA (Motion Picture Association). The MPA is the international version of its US-based counterpart, the Motion Picture Association of America. According to Newzbin, the indexing service has been suspending some reports due to complaints - something that community members have noticed over the last several months. "You may have noticed that recently we suspended a number of existing reports. This was done after receiving...

Over the last few years, attorney Ray Beckerman has been defending broadband users accused of copyright infringement by the RIAA, and frequently blogs about it. His blog frequently highlights instances where the RIAA has sued individuals in error, often highlighting the tenuous legal ground many RIAA cases rest on. The RIAA is now targeting Beckerman, claiming he's a "vexatious" litigator, and demanding unspecified monetary sanctions to punish him for blogging about his cases.

ASPEN, Colo.--Recording industry and motion picture lobbyists are renewing their push to convince broadband providers to monitor customers and detect copyright infringements, claiming the concept is working abroad and should be adopted in the United States. A representative of the recording industry said on Monday that her companies would prefer to enter into voluntary "partnerships" with Internet service providers, but pointedly noted that some governments are mandating such surveillance "if you don't work something out." "Despite our best efforts, we can't do this alone," said Shira Perlmutter, a vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the...

WASHINGTON - A federal jury in Big Stone Gap, Va., convicted Daniel Dove, 26, formerly of Clintwood, Va., on one count each of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich announced today. Dove was an administrator for EliteTorrents.org, an Internet piracy site that, until May 25, 2005, was a source of infringing copyrighted works, specifically pre-release movies. Elite Torrents used BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to distribute pirated works to thousands of members around the world. The jury was presented with evidence that Dove was an administrator of a small group of Elite Torrents members known as...

MPAA Defeats TorrentSpy May 7, 2008 Thomas Mennecke A Los Angeles Federal court has rendered a $110 million judgment against Valence Media, the company which operates the now defunct TorrentSpy. This judgment represents the culmination of a lengthy decline for TorrentSpy, which was slowly strangled to death by the movie industry. “This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites,” said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate...

It goes without saying that climate realists around the world believe Nobel Laureate Al Gore used false information throughout his schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in order to generate global warming hysteria. On Friday, it was revealed by ABC News that one of the famous shots of supposed Antarctic ice shelves in the film was actually a computer-generated image from the 2004 science fiction blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow."