halfEvilTech writes "Two months ago, the Obama administration asked Congress to make illicit online streaming of copyrighted movies and TV shows a felony. Such a bill has now been introduced by two senators. 'Online streamers can now face up to five ...

An anonymous reader writes with a PC World article, according to which "The Pirate Bay is unavailable for customers of Comcast, even as the torrent site remains online for other users. Problems began early Thursday morning, when several Comcast users ...

Glyn Moody writes "The annual BSA report on software piracy is out, with even bigger numbers: "The commercial value of software piracy grew 14 percent globally last year to a record total of $58.8 billion." Yes, they're using the old ...

suraj.sun writes with this quote from Ars Technica: "Alki David, the wealthy film producer and entrepreneur behind sites like FilmOn, has sued CNET and its owner, CBS, for providing hundreds of millions of downloads of LimeWire P2P software over the last ...

In the US, laws and court cases provide Americans with the freedom to "format shift" their music from CDs to a computer to an ...

Stealing is wrong—or is it? The Internet adds nuances to that question that were once unthinkable. And, according to a newly published study in ...

An anonymous reader writes "Boston College has a funny idea of what constitutes copyright infringement. It has a list of what might be called 'you might be a copyright infringer if...' with the sort of things you might expect, such ...

On February 15, the film industry, the movie business, video game publishers, and business software developers submitted a massive report to the US government, ...

A major new report from a consortium of academic researchers concludes that media piracy can't be stopped through “three strikes” Internet disconnections, Web censorship, ...

Chaonici writes "When a Swedish citizen identified as Ryan heard about US movie studio Liberty Media's plan to get copyright infringers to confess and voluntarily pay up, he couldn't stop himself from sending them a satirical email promising that he will ...

langelgjm writes "The Social Science Research Council, an independent, non-profit organization, today released a major report on music, film and software piracy in developing economies. It's a product of three years of work, and the authors conclude that piracy is ...

tekgoblin writes "Sony has stepped up its stance on anyone circumventing protection of any kind on the PlayStation 3 and released a statement addressing it. Most recently Sony had barred George Hotz (Geohot) from releasing any more information about the ...

arcticstoat writes "As you may remember, a recent study claimed that just 100 users were responsible for downloading 75% of BitTorrent content, and were doing it for money, raising a lot of questions about the study. How do you profit ...

As hackers push to crack Apple's iOS security checks, Apple appears to be pushing back. One user recently discovered that, after applying the latest ...

alphadogg writes "In 2010, the Software and Information Industry Association received 157 reports of alleged corporate end user software piracy. Of the 157 reports, 42 (or 27%) were judged sufficiently reliable to pursue. Of these, 16 qualified for rewards totaling ...

nk497 writes "Controversial legal firm ACS Law and its sole file-sharing client Media CAT have shut down their businesses, days before a ruling is due in a case they brought to the UK Patent Court. ACS Law is infamous for ...

Shady developers stealing assets from other developers and selling them on the iOS App Store isn't a new phenomenon. But ...

iDuck writes "When Wolfire Games released their animal martial arts games, 'Lugaru HD', on the Mac App store, shortly after they could be forgiven for thinking they were seeing double. A counterfeit version of the software is currently available on ...

At least 51 torrent sites have been taken down this month thanks to joint efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and ...

Weren't sure where to find the best illegal files online and thought you'd turn to Google for help? It just ...

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers say that about 100 people (called pirates in the article) are responsible for 75 percent of all downloading on BitTorrent (and the same group does 66 percent of all uploading), and says that the way to ...

The music industry's latest annual report on the digital world has one main "ask" in it: would governments around the world please, please, pretty ...

Stoobalou writes "Rumor has it that Sony is looking to the PC games market to help solve its growing piracy problem on the PlayStation 3 — with the introduction of serial keys to its games. According to 'a very reliable ...

Two of the music industry's biggest labels, Universal and Sony, have committed to fighting piracy by making new singles available for sale the first ...

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that RapidShare, named as a contributor to digital piracy by a MarkMonitor report, has threatened to sue for defamation. 'This defamation of RapidShare as a digital piracy site is absurd and we reserve the ...

Another day, another antipiracy study (or "study") from a self-interested party. What's new? This time, one of the named targets is fighting back, alleging ...

An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Ubisoft's controversial DRM scheme launched last year that required players to have a permanent connection to the Internet has been patched to no longer stop the game when connectivity drops, though an Internet ...

A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Though Marketplace ...

Torrentfreak reports that after calculating download frequency for pirated copies of popular video games, Call of Duty: Black Ops has won the dubious honor of being the most pirated game of 2010. The PC version of the game was torrented ...

A group of researchers have developed a way to identify pirated movies by reducing the original to a signature genetic code. The system can ...

Dangerous_Minds writes "Yesterday, there were reports that the RIAA and MPAA were working with Mastercard to cut off payments to so-called 'rogue-websites' like MegaUpload. Today, a spokesperson from MegaUpload issued a response to the RIAA on ZeroPaid. Bonnie Lam of ...

File-sharing sites like Megaupload and RapidShare could find themselves cut off from MasterCard payments due to their users' propensity to use them for file-sharing. ...

An anonymous reader writes "Two weeks ago, MasterCard felt the wrath of Anonymous Operation Payback-style DDoS attacks after refusing to process payments that were intended to fund WikiLeaks, the website which began leaking confidential US diplomatic cables last month. Now, ...

The illegal downloading of copyrighted songs in the UK has reached record levels in 2010, on track to hit 1.2 billion before the year ...

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has decided to mimic the efforts of its music industry counterpart and put pressure on universities to ...