Displaying items by tag: Copyright

A few days ago the Chinese government issued new regulations that further restrict the freedom of their Internet users. Users in China will now have to give their real names to ISPs and ISPs are obliged to delete forbidden posts and submit their own reports on such activities. In other words, the term "great Chinese firewall" just got even bigger.

Among the various charts that are published at the end of each year, the piracy scene also has its own. Among other things, in the domain of the TV series the most pirated one was Game of Thrones. The most used torrent sharing site is, as expected, The Pirate Bay followed by Torrentz and Kick Ass Torrents.

One of the most controversial games of the year, War Z will apparently be forced to change its name. Specifically, the US Patent and Trademark Office feels that the name of the game is too similar to Paramount's blockbuster movie World War Z with Brad Pitt in the lead role. Using the name War Z is currently suspended and it seems that the problematic game will eventually be forced to change its name. The deadline for filing an appeal is 90 days.

Every once in a while a producer of pornographic content starts trying to take legal action against pirates. They typically focus on users of BitTorrent and similar protocols. Practically any person who has downloaded any content through BitTorrent could automatically be considered a pirate [Although this is far from reality as there are many legitimate uses for BitTorrent – Ed]. However, due to procedural and other errors they are somehow unsuccessful in their intentions.

The new site from Kim Dotcom made for file sharing will be called Mega and I will be located at the web address me.ga. The service should start around January 19th of the following year and Dotcom has tried to completely separate it from anything that has to do with the U.S. This means that the hosting company, domain, and partners will not be from the U.S. making it impossible, or at least the extremely hard, to shut down the service if someone tried...

Last week we ran an article about the way that Apple chose to comply with an order from a UK judge to set the record straight about their continuous claims that Samsung copied Apple with their Tab line of products. Although many read this as an order to apologize for slandering Samsung Apple did not see it that way and chose instead to only acknowledge the fact that the UK High Court had ruled that Samsung was not guilty of infringement and then followed that up with more claims that Samsung’s Tab Copied the iPad including a misleading statement that Samsung was found guilty in the US for this.

Listener Approved is a new company with the goal of promoting the private music industry. Artists of all ages, genres, creeds, and backgrounds can use this platform to publish their music, allow others to listen to it, and receive feedback on it. The Listener Approved application is linkable with all major social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, etc. I would dare say that Listener Approved is on the way to becoming “the” social music application.

After the Swiss Federal Railways accused Apple of stealing their iconic clock design last month, the two companies have decided to establish a licensing agreement so Apple can use it in their new iOS. Shortly after the accusations were made by the SFR the two companies decided to arrange a meeting to settle this issue. Obviously Apple was aware that there is no way they could win if the Swiss company decided to sue them so they picked the gentleman’s way of sorting this out. The SFR even stated that they are proud their design is used so that was a huge sigh of relief for Apple.

There is something interesting happening in the US; ok several something’s actually and we are not sure if they are good or bad at this point. The first is that there appear to be more judges actually looking into the claims that the copyright lobby are trying to claim when they go after individuals and even corporations for copyright infringement. We have watched as precedent has been set in the form of very unusual verdicts such as one handed down recently that states Web Sites are not responsible for links posted by their members which might violate copyright. This nice ruling means that the MPAA and RIAA must prove that the links were placed on a site by the owner or that they encouraged the posting of these links. Of course we have seen that the MPAA, RIAA and other copyright holders rarely stand on ceremony and will claim a site is encouraging piracy right out of the gate (we don’t need no stinking proof).  So while the ruling was rather monumental it did not stop the unsubstantiated take down requests and certainly is not going to help Megaupload or any other site in reality.

There is an old (very old saying); “don’t poke the bear”. It is one of those saying that people toss out to remind us that there are some things that you should just not do. It is a saying that the gang over at the MPAA, RIAA, BSA and even members of the US Government should listen to (maybe we should tell them). Unfortunately for them they have not only poked the bear, but have kicked it too. This group of people is so out of touch with the way the world works that they actually think they can control technological progress. We are talking about the constant attempts to control the internet, communications and anything that travels over it; all in the name of maintaining a broken and outdated business model.