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‘copywrong’ Archives
Federal judge says you can break DRM if you’re not doing so to infringe copyright
Here's some remarkable news: a judge in a New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Appeals Court has ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ban on breaking DRM only applies if you break DRM in order to violate copyright law. This is a complete reversal of earlier rulings across the country (and completely opposite to the approach that the US [...]
“Yes Men” documentary goes online via Bittorrent to evade censorship
Prankster activists The Yes Men are sick of having the videos depicting their shenanigans taken down through copyright complaints, so they've put the latest video, a full-length doc called The Yes Men Fix the World up as a torrent file through VODO, resistant to censorship and easy to get. VODO's sixth release is the special Peer-To-Peer [...]
Official “This website seized by feds” graphic
Check out the new US Government official takedown graphic-- the thing you'll see when a filesharing site (or some similar site which has run afoul of the law) is yanked. The example here can also be seen on tvshack.net, one of nine websites recently seized by the feds over pirated movies. The warrants for those takedowns were issued in [...]
The Pirate Party: We will host The Pirate Bay inside the Swedish parliament
I wonder if this will last? The Swedish Pirate Party: We want to make use of parliamentary immunity from prosecution to protect The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Party recently started to deliver Internet bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, a bittorrent search engine. It is a website that helps people to share digital content, regardless of form. Since The [...]
“The Hurt Locker” producers about to sue an army of pirates
Voltage Pictures, the production company behind The Hurt Locker, is gearing up to sue thousands—no, tens of thousands—of individuals who pirated the film online. Get ready for a huge escalation in the war on P2P. The suit could hit as early as tomorrow, according to The Hollywood Reporter, as Voltage teams up with the US Copyright Group to [...]
U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy
The film industry can block outputs on home television equipment so studios can offer first-run movies while preventing viewers from making illicit copies, U.S. regulators said. Temporarily disabling the outputs will "enable a new business model" that wouldn’t develop in the absence of such anti-piracy protection, the Federal Communications [...]
anadian Prime Minister promises to enact a Canadian DMCA in six weeks
Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister's Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill. The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to [...]
Hitler’s back… and pissed off about fair use
Hitler's back and he's pissed to discover that parodies of the bunker scene from Downfall have been removed without regard to the fair use provisions of US copyright law.
Copying is not theft
Big Media has been producing (mis)educational videos since it's early non-hit, "Don't Copy That Floppy." Most of us have seen those "Piracy: It's a Crime" clips that incorrectly equate downloading with stealing. The Copyright Alliance offers a whole series of propaganda videos for school children. It's no surprise that Big Media is ahead of ahead [...]
Paramount Pictures sells DRM-tastic hard drives pre-loaded with movies, crippleware
Paramount Pictures will sell 500-gig Seagate drives loaded with the 2009 movie "Star Trek" (and the option to load 20 other films) for $100. According to reports, that promotional pricing will only be available for a month, then prices jump. Ah, but there's a catch! Windows, and a DRM system that presumably prevents you from doing stuff like [...]
Machine that puts together a book from a .PDF in minutes
I compulsively horde ebooks for the day when someone invents epaper, hopefully this machine will become affordable first.
Tell the copyright czar how US enforcement should work
You've got nine days left to file comments for Victoria Espinel, the Obama administration's new copyright enforcement czar, and her department's inquiry on how the US should best enforce copyrights. Given that the president himself has spoken out in favor of the secret and sinister Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (a.k.a. ACTA -- a punishing [...]
Olympic bullying drives goggle manufacturer to verse
UVEX, the ski goggle manufacturer, got a nastygram from an Olympics Committee IP lawyer, forbidding them from using any images, or even mentioning, that gold medal winner Lindsey Vonn uses their equipment. So UVEX turned to verse: Blonde Who Uses Our Stuff Wins Downhill (Last Name Rhymes With "Bonn") There once was a lawyer from the [...]
Critical Commons vs. Hitler: resource for free/open media and fair use
Critical Commons has created its own entry in the great Hitler in the bunker remix meme. Steve Anderson sez, "The video is also promoting the fair use advocacy site Critical Commons, which is a fair use advocacy and media sharing site, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. This is currently the most radical media-sharing site on the open internet. [...]
Netflix Is Losing New Release Rentals
Bad news, Netflix customers: Warner Bros. and Netflix have just made an agreement to delay all new release rentals by 28 days so people will keep buying DVDs. Or, as is more likely, turn to piracy. The upside of the deal is that Warner is offering up more movies for streaming on Netflix to make up for the lack of new releases. But don't expect [...]
Chinese pirates launch Ubuntu that looks exactly like Windows XP
From the Chinese pirate masters of the non-sea-faring variety comes... Ylmf OS! Not happy with pirating Windows XP itself, these creative Chinese have gone one step further and hacked Ubuntu to look exactly like Windows XP. Why have they moved to Ubuntu? Because their previous release, a pirate version of Windows XP itself, is being cracked down [...]
Microsoft loses appeal of XML patent
Microsoft has lost an appeal in a patent case that will force it to alter Microsoft Word to avoid an injunction on sales of the product. Microsoft lost a patent case involving a company called I4i in May, after a jury ruled that Microsoft infringed one of i4i's patents with a custom XML feature found in Word. In August an injunction was placed [...]
Heavy illegal downloaders buy more music
A new British independent poll conducted by Ipsos Mori concluded that the people who do the most illegal downloading also buy the most music. This is in line with many other studies elsewhere and is easy to understand: people who are music superfans do more of everything to do with music: they see more live shows, listen to more radio, buy more [...]
EFF launches Hall of Shame for copyright abusers
Today, EFF is launching our new 'Takedown Hall of Shame' project, which collects the worst and most shameful examples of bogus DMCA takedowns. We've got everything from the recent Ralph Lauren takedown to Michael Savage's attempts to silence critics to a video NPR tried to remove just last week! "Free speech in the 21st century often depends on [...]
HOWTO: Host your very own Windows 7 torrenting party
Celebrate the launch of Windows 7 by illegally downloading your very own copy!
