Items tagged with Copyright
As long as it's for fair use, people living in Switzerland have what amounts to a green light to download copyrighted music and movies without any repercussions. And as far as the Swiss government is concerned, copyright holders might as well go pound sand if they're not willing to adapt to...
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Game publishers are in love with DRM, even the Draconian kind that every once in awhile causes an uproar in the gaming community. Remember Spore? It initially shipped with a three-activation limit, and like baseball, three strikes and you're out. This limit was later relaxed by Electronic...
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Take a look at your coworker sitting in the cubicle next to you. Is he a software pirate? Would you classify him as a nincompoop? If neither of those apply, then statistically speaking, it's you that fits into one or both of those...
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Britain's business secretary, Vince Cable, announced today that the government plans to pass legislation allowing citizens to make legal copies of CDs and DVDs they own. The new law will also allow UK citizens to engage in "form shifting;" the term refers to the right to burn legally...
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Copyright troll firm Righthaven is bidding fair to replace TV reruns as a source of summer entertainment. Since the company's case against Digital Underground was tossed in mid-June, the firm's lawyers have turned to increasingly amusing court filings in an attempt to justify their own legal...
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The fight against illegal file sharing sites took a trip to France to this week as the alleged men in charge of one of France's most popular file sharing links forums have all been arrested. The three men accused of copyright shenanigans...
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In early 2010, a brand-new company named Righthaven began cutting deals with newspapers by promising to safeguard their content online. Said protection consists of suing anyone and everything for so-called copyright infringement, even in situations where no sane judge would rule infringement...
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Here's a silly one to get you smiling on a Saturday. YouTube and parent company Google has been toughening up their copyright laws lately, and if you violate them, you'll now be required to attend "copyright school" and pass a test...
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The British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) released figures for music sales in 2010, sparking a debate over whether or not piracy is playing a role, or at least a significant one. According to BPI, combined 2010 digital and physical album sales declined 7 percent overall in volume to 119.9...
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Limewire users are going to have to find another way to pirate music and movies download and share legal copies of software, such as Linux distributions and game demos, as well as freely available indie music, because the peer-to-peer service is going belly up by the end of the year. "As a...
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Windows Phone 7 handsets have been out for a few weeks here in the U.S. and now, Fengtao Software wants you to know its DVDFab software supports Windows Phone 7 compatible formats. This means you'll be able to use the company's DVD and Blu-ray ripping tools, DVD Ripper and Blu-ray Ripper, to remove known DVD and Blu-ray protections and rip...
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In the United States, discussions of copyright protection and infringement inevitably revolve around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. Since it passed twelve years ago, the DMCA has become the weapon of choice for US companies seeking to fairly protect their property as well as...
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Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ruled Tuesday that Microsoft can no longer sell Microsoft Word in the United States due to patent infringement. One can imagine Bill Gates having to pick himself off the floor after reading that ruling. Indeed...
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We’re sure many of you have suggestions for how we could change the copyright laws, patent system, and privacy rules in this country. However, we’re guessing not many of you have acted upon it. The Pirate Party in Sweden is doing just that, and they’re gaining some serious support in the...
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A story in the New York Times had the blogosphere up in arms, but Microsoft indicates we shouldn't believe it. The Times said that Microsoft is working to implement an anti-piracy filter into its Zune media players, which would prevent playback of unauthorized videos.In fact, J. B. Perrette...
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Heck, if you're going to write malware, you might as well protect yourself against piracy, and copyright it, right?Professional virus writers are now selling a suite of software on the Internet with an unusual attachment: a detailed licensing agreement that promises penalties for redistributing the malicious code without permission."I just...
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Everyone keeps telling me how smart Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook is, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. Fresh on the heels of his disastrous foray into datamining with Facebook's Beacon service, he seems to be unclear on the concept of copyright infringement. Hasbro and Mattel...
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Federal financial aid is always an arm-twisting manuever used against colleges, and this is no different. Colleges must, according to Congress, make more of an effort to police their students, or face the "music" (pun intended).New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives"...
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Microsoft and Google have been locked together in a corporate struggle of titanic proportions for the past few years, one from which a clear victor has yet to emerge. The battle sprawls from search engines, to office suites, and now the video services are becoming the new focal point of the...
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Google has recently announced plans to employ advanced copyright protection technology to thwart unauthorized video posts on YouTube. The company expects to have the filtering software up and running by September. Beck assures us that Google’s new defensive software is as advanced as FBI fingerprinting technology. “The software will enable...
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Google has finally started detailing the specific details of their plan to filter copyrighted material from their video service, YouTube. Hopefully this will appease media giants such as Viacom, who have filed suit against Google.The plan will take effect in September, and will use digital video fingerprinting to help ID copyrighted material....
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