One of the key clauses in the UK’s Digital Economy Bill is the suggestion that alleged persistent copyright infringers could be disconnected from the Internet. In a response to an online petition opposing the measure, the UK government has stated it will not terminate the accounts of infringers. But it has a wording trick up its sleeve.
A massive Russian BitTorrent site has seen its domain name suspended by order of the authorities. Torrents.ru, the largest torrent site in the country indexing just about every type of media one can think of, has set up a temporary domain in order to keep serving its 4 million users.
More than two years have passed since a coalition of anti-piracy organizations forced Torrent.is, the largest BitTorrent site in Iceland, to go offline. In the years that followed, the BitTorrent tracker won in court more than once, but at the end of the road there was a negative verdict for the site’s owner.
Twitter is calling in the help of BitTorrent to deploy files across its many servers in a more efficient way. The project dubbed ‘Murder’ is based on the Open Source BitTornado BitTorrent client. Aside from assisting Twitter it is available to other developers at no cost.
Alan Ellis, the ex-admin of the OiNK BitTorrent tracker, was cleared of Conspiracy to Defraud by jury of his peers last week. But now it seems that as one battle ends, another begins. IFPI says it is considering civil action, and is committed to reclaiming the money donated to the site in order to give it back to the artists.
Hadopi, the French agency charged with handling file-sharers’ copyright digressions, has just made a huge infringement faux pas of its own. Last week the group unveiled the logo which is set to represent this bastion of copyright righteousness, but embarrassingly it was designed with unlicensed fonts.
During the last two decades, the Swedish band Rednex have sold more than 10 million records, with number one hits in eight countries including Germany and the UK. Today the band, known by most people for the single “Cotton Eye Joe,” released their first single in 18 months. They chose to share it via The Pirate Bay.
Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston student hit with $650,000 in damages back in July 2009, has finally filed the next round in his case. In papers filed with the court, the amount of damages awarded are brought into question, as are the actions of the court. A new trial is requested.
As 2009 is slowly moving toward its end, we follow up our most pirated movies chart by taking a look at the most pirated games of the year. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the absolute winner on the PC and Xbox 360, while New Super Mario Bros. scoops the title of most pirated Wii game of 2009.
The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity.
Comcast has decided to settle one of the lawsuits brought about over their use of the Sandvine BitTorrent throttling hardware to ‘manage’ their network. For those who were affected, there is the possibility of receiving a payment from a $16 million fund set up by the Internet service provider.
