The RIAA won a pair of victories last week as a judge finally awarded the labels a default judgment in a case where the defendant never showed up in court. In another case, the RIAA convinced a judge to award $23,250 in damages after the defendant admitted to downloading and sharing music over KaZaA.

read more | digg story

No fucking duh, I started downloading music in 2000 when I heard about Napster on the news, good job recording industry…I realized you could download movies when I seen…ummm, the I think it was Dateline report of these high school kids downloading movies, did a few Googles, and it led me to , decss, divx, ripping, encoding, and I think you know the rest of the story, its 2008 ~Peilo

Last week a court ruled that Israel
’s largest ISPs should block access to HttpShare, a BitTorrent and http hyperlink site. Thanks to what the owners call “IFPI advertising”, the site is now so busy they’ve had to upgrade their hardware. TorrentFreak caught up with them as they cracked open the champagne.

read more | digg story




The Michigan state agency charged with licensing private investigators has indicated that the RIAA’s investigative firm, MediaSentry, needs a PI license to operate in the state. Operating without such a license can be a felony under Michigan state law.

read more | digg story

The MPAA claims that piracy is causing dire harm to the movie business, but the combination of a record $9.63billion box office take in 2007 and overheated piracy rhetoric lead us to wonder how bad off the motion picture industry really is.

read more | digg story





The RIAA and its spinoff SoundExchange pushed through an unpopular flat fee on webcasters last year. Now, the RIAA is lobbying the government to let it pay a percentage rate instead of a flat fee for its own music.

read more | digg story

The FCC has officially launched a rule-making proceeding to determine if Comcast has violated its principles on “reasonable network management” with its “delaying” of P2P traffic.

read more | digg story

The RIAA, Big Cable and the telcos are lining up back Comcast and oppose FCC “neutrality” oversight over network management, but Sony, Vonage, and other want the FCC to make sure the playing field stays fair

read more | digg story

After suffering humiliation at the hands of a hacker in 2007, the future of anti-piracy company MediaDefender is in serious doubt. Its parent company, ARTISTdirect, has called in a team of specialists to “assist in the exploration of strategic alternatives.” That’ll be alternatives to liquidation, then.

read more | digg story

As the trial of ‘The Pirate Bay Four’ comes ever closer, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, aka ‘Anakata’, speaks out on TV news. Dubbed by the report as the brains behind The Pirate Bay, Gottfrid is said to run a site that is ‘the scourge of the film and music industries’. “It’s not stealing, morally or legally” he said.

read more | digg story

P2P Privacy: Try Peer Guardian for Anonymity, Now.

 If you use bittorrents, eDonkey, WinMX, Gnutella, Limewire, or any other P2P network, then you are likely being scanned by investigators. In an effort to trap and prosecute people for abusing copyrighted movies and music, investigators often pose as P2P downloaders. While they themselves share and download copyrighted files, these “posers” also scan and log your IP (internet protocol) address. Your computer IP address then becomes ammunition for civil lawsuits, where you may be sued for copyright infringement.

These investigator “posers” are everywhere. Their efforts will sometimes result in wholesale lawsuits, where hundreds of downloaders are charged thousands of dollars in copyright fines. Investigating posers comprise up to 3% of all P2P downloaders you may be sharing files with.

In this war over digital freedoms, there are a couple of options for concealing your identity from these prying eyes.

read more |