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• RIAA Hard Drive Searches Clarified

  The Truth 11:34 am on May 7, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Court (46), File sharing, NewYorkCountryLawyer, Ray Beckerman, Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA (4), Sony BMG (3), SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum

  

  Image via CrunchBase

  NewYorkCountryLawyer writes “In a Boston RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Court has issued a detailed protective order establishing strict protocols for the RIAA’s requested inspection of the defendant’s hard drive, in order to protect the defendant’s privacy. The order (PDF) provides that the hard drive will be turned over to a computer forensics expert of the RIAA’s choosing, for mirror imaging, but that only the forensics expert — and not the plaintiffs or their attorneys — will be able to examine the mirror image. The forensics expert will then issue a report which will describe (a) any music files found on the drive, (b) any file-sharing information associated with each file, and any other records of file-sharing activity, and (c) any evidence that the hard-drive has been ‘wiped’ or erased since the initiation of the litigation. The expert will be precluded from examining ‘any non-relevant files or data, including … emails, word-processing documents, PDF documents, spreadsheet documents, image files, video files, or stored web-pages.’”

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• The Pirate Bay Trial Begins, Pirates 1, Prosecution 0

  The Truth 12:30 pm on February 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: 20th Century Fox, BitTorrent (4), Copyright infringement, File sharing, Pirate Bay (2), Sony BMG (3), TorrentFreak, Warner Bros

  

  Image via Wikipedia

  The most important day in file sharing history has taken place. Remember the first time you downloaded an Mp3? How about the first time you used Napster or Limewire?

  In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10 years, you’ll have heard the stories of silicon swashbucklers and rampaging record companies. Perhaps the largest contributor to the pirate software scene is The Pirate Bay. Hosted in Sweden, this website tracks and indexes BitTorrent files (.torrent) for almost every flavor of data. You can find movies, games, albums, programs, and pretty much anything else of digital value all for free. Most of the sites content is uploaded by its 3.4 million user base.

  Of course, this cant last forever.

  The Swedish Government has been after TPB for years. After a raid in 2006 and 3 days of downtime, officials pushed to bring TPB to court for their blatant disregard for copyright law. The trial began Feb 16th, 2009.

  Prosecutor Håkan Roswall read out the charges that can be best summarized as “commercial copyright infringement”. The plaintiffs are Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal. Lundström’s lawyer pointed out that the prosecutor may have drawn up some charges incorrectly. Interestingly, Lundström is the only one of the defendants with two lawyers, one of which is a copyright expert. - TorrentFreak

  It was apparent that the prosecution had made an error in judgment when choosing their  ‘Computer Expert’. A live audio broadcast revealed the frantic clicking of their witness fumbling to get his PowerPoint presentation to display. He was later asked to “stick to the papers”. Unable to define the difference between Megabits and Megabytes, an EPIC FAIL sticker was quickly slapped on the prosecution’s case.

  After the Second day, it had become apparent that the prosecution had clearly not done their research. According to TorrentFreak, at least half of the charges were dropped, sighting that the TPB did not host any copywritten materials, but only the .torrent files tracking them. It seems as if the court has realized that this site is a Torrent search engine, and not a distributor of pirated software. It is anticipated that the prosecution will fall flat on its face.

  You can read more about the trial at http://trial.thepiratebay.org/ and http://torrentfreak.com/

  Information is free.

  LONG LIVE THE PIRATE BAY.

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  • Pirate Bay Trial Watch Day 2: Half of the Charges Have Been Dropped [BitTorrent] (i.gizmodo.com)
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• Web TV Doubles, Cable left behind

  The Truth 5:31 am on September 5, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: File sharing, hulu (7), Internet television, Limewire (4), Tech (91), Television (91), Website (52), YouTube (183)

  Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

  Online TV viewership has doubled since 2006, according to a Thursday study from market research firms the Conference Board and TNS.

  In a survey of 10,000 households during the third quarter of 2008, approximately one-fifth of respondents with Internet access reported watching TV online, more than double the number reported two years ago.

  Content is most frequently accessed on the network Web site of the TV show or on YouTube, the survey said. Respondents also said they access shows via iTunes, Hulu, file-sharing Web sites like Limewire, and social networking sites.

  Very few of those surveyed said they’d be willing to enroll in pay-per-download or subscription services.

  Internet TV is an attractive option because viewers can watch shows at their leisure, in most cases skip commercials and watch on-the-go, according to the report.

  “Most consumers are pressed for time and require flexibility in their daily schedules and TV viewing habits,” Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a statement. “Being able to watch broadcasts on their own time and at their convenience are clearly reasons why we are seeing a greater number turning to the Internet. And, it is the reason why we would expect to see this trend continue.”

  Nearly 72 percent of online households log on for entertainment purposes on a daily basis, and one in ten cites entertainment as the most important internet activity, the survey found.

  More at PCGAMER

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• The Threat is Real Internet Freedom

  The Truth 11:11 am on July 16, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BitTorrent (4), Comcast (5), Cox Communications, File sharing, freedom (47), Gnutella, Internet (170), Internet service provider, Time Warner, Verizon (9), WTF? (26)

  How does this threat to Internet freedom affect you?

  Such corporate control of the Web would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we’ve come to expect online. It would throw the digital revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already discriminating against Web sites and services they don’t like:

  • In May 2008, the Max Planck Institute released a comprehensive study that found both Comcast and Cox Communications to be deceptively blocking access to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
  • In October 2007, the Associated Press busted Comcast for blocking its users’ access to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and Gnutella. This fraudulent practice is a glaring violation of Net Neutrality.
  • In September 2007, Verizon was caught banning pro-choice text messages. After a New York Times expose, the phone company reversed its policy, claiming it was a glitch.
  • In August 2007, AT&T censored a live webcast of a Pearl Jam concert just as lead singer Eddie Vedder criticized President Bush.
  • In 2006, Time Warner’s AOL blocked all emails that mentioned http://www.dearaol.com — an advocacy campaign opposing the company’s pay-to-send e-mail scheme.
  • In 2005, Canada’s telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.
  • In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
  • Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service company, intentionally downgrades the “quality and reliability” of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose — driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.

  This is just the beginning. Cable and telco giants want to eliminate the Internet’s open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling new ideas and innovation.
  What they’ve got planned - SAVE THE INTERNET
  

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