Posted 11/01/09 at 09:56:45 PM by Justin Kerr

Measuring the impact of illegal downloading on the music industry is a nearly impossible task that only seems to make the lawyers rich, but a new UK based study has concluded that illegal downloader's not only don't hurt music sales, they help. According to the survey which looked at the buying habits of about 1,000 16 to 50 year-old computer users, those that regularly downloaded music illegally also spent nearly 43% more per year through official channels than their legitimate counterparts. According to the UK Secretary of State for Business Peter Mandelson, this proves the shortsightedness of the new "Digital Economy Bill" set to become law next April which aims to boot any user off the Internet accused of downloading copyrighted material three times or more.

Peter Bradwell, from the think-tank Demos who commissioned the Ipsos Mori study agrees and claims, "The latest approach from the Government will not help prop up an ailing music industry. Politicians and music companies need to recognize that the nature of music consumption has changed, and consumers are demanding lower prices and easier access." The UK music industry however remains unconvinced, and insisted that the figures cited in the study show a skewed picture. It turns out in fact, that nearly 61% of all illegal downloader's surveyed claim they would stop downloading illegitimate tracks if they were threatened with losing internet service for a month.

So will illegal downloader’s spend even more money on digital tracks if they get cut off from Bit Torrent's? Or does it help to create fans who would have otherwise spent less on music using traditional discovery methods. It’s an interesting debate, where do you fall on the issue?

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Posted 10/26/09 at 11:00:56 AM by Paul Lilly

File sharers in France who get caught downloading pirated content could lose internet service for up to a year, and that's okay with the European Parliament, which dropped an amendment to its forthcoming telecoms legislation that would have protected citizens in such scenarios.

"Any such measures liable to restrict those fundamental rights or freedoms may only be taken in exceptional circumstances...and shall be subject to adequate procedural safeguards in conformity with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, including effective judicial protection and due process," the dropped amendment reads.

Going forward, individual countries have the green light to ask ISPs to disconnect users believed to be software pirates, and do so without any kind of court order.

This has been a hot topic in Europe, and at the core of the issue is whether or not Internet access can be considered a fundamental right. UK prime minister Gordon Brown put Internet access on the same plane as gas, water, and electricity in terms of entitlement, but there's been recent pressure to push through anti-piracy legislation. According to research firm Forrester, 14 percent of European Internet users are involved in illegal file-sharing. However, Forrester doesn't think the solution lies in tougher legislation.

"Piracy will not be solved by legislation alone. Without compelling services, piracy will not be beaten," said Mark Mulligan, an analyst for Forrester.

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Posted 10/08/09 at 11:00:00 AM by Norman Chan

Your PC’s hard drive is probably packed to the platter’s edge with hundreds of ripped DVD videos, gigabytes of digital photos from your camera, and tens of thousands of songs. And that’s not even counting the high-definition digital video from your last family vacation that you’re still planning to unload. But with terabytes of media just gathering dust on your desktop PC, you risk losing years of aggregated files when your hard drive inevitably gives out (don’t even think about backing it all up to the cloud). Our solution: Keep all your data backed up on a Windows Home Sever. More than just a generic NAS box, Windows Home Server maintains backups, streams media files, and works as a file share across your home network. And the best part is that you can build one yourself—we’ll show you how!

Continue reading after the jump!

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Posted 08/17/09 at 09:12:52 AM by Paul Lilly

Jammie Thomas is running out of options. Found guilty in 2007 of copyright infringement and ordered to pay $220,000 for willfully making available 24 songs via peer-to-peer, she now owes a whopping $1.92 million following a retrial earlier this year. Surely the Department of Justice would step in and find the nearly $2 million fine unconstitutional, right?

Wrong. According to ArsTechnica, the huge of amount of damages (Thomas ended up owing $80,000 per song) were not intended just to apply to big corporations, but also to "deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights." The only time the DOJ would have a problem with a fine is if it become "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportional to the offense and obviously unreasonable," something for which a $1.92 million fine for sharing 24 songs doesn't qualify.

"We are pleased the Administration has filed a brief supporting our position," an RIAA spokesperson told ArsTechnica. "Its views are consistent with the views of every previous Administration that has weighed in on this issue."

So where does Thomas go from here? Probably bankruptcy court.

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Posted 07/30/09 at 08:34:24 PM by Paul Lilly

Last month, Global Gaming Factory announced plans to purchase The Pirate Bay and steer the online ship towards legal waters. To that end, Wayne Rosso, former CEO of Grokster, was hired to help relaunch the site and close deals with record labels, but Rosso has instead decided to walk away from the project.

"We decided that we're not going to risk our reputation further," Rosso told TorrentFreak.com. "The more time we spent with Mr. Pandeya, the less confident we were. I don't think there's going to be any money raised with GGF's current (lack of) plans."

Rosso claims that he and his partners never received the payments promised to them by Hans Pandeya, CEO of GGF. Rosso also claims Pandeya broke several other promises made to him, but did not elaborate on what they were.

Still, The Pirate Bay's legitimate future might not be completely dead in the water, but it's definitely sinking. According to TorrentFreak.com, a Pirate Bay insider indicated the site has given GGF a week to get insurance from investors before pulling the deal off the table.

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Posted 07/20/09 at 04:00:00 AM by Paul Lilly

Get ready for a whole new kind of Pirate Bay, one that embraces the RIAA rather than try to fight it. That is, if investors okay the $7.8 million deal that would have Global Gaming Factory acquire the popular torrent sharing site. Already getting a head start, the Swedish software company has hired Wayne Rosso, the former president of Grokster and founder of Massboxx, to help hammer out licensing deals with content owners.

"I've gotten friendly with a lot of these guys," Rosso said of Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA's CEO and other music industry execs. "These are good guys. They've been wonderful to me. Other people in the business have been nice to me but they've had to hold thier nose."

Rosso's comments are in stark contrast to an opinion he held during his days with the now defunct Grokster. Back then, Rosso compared RIAA execs to Stalin. But, as Rosso notes, "The Pirate Bay has turned over a legitimate new leaf, so it has to be above board from the first day."

That means a new business model, one which will likely include unlimited music downloads for a monthly fee. Rosso says that eventually users will be able to pay nothing to download music, so long as the tunes stay tied to the user's computer.

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Posted 07/01/09 at 09:30:01 AM by Paul Lilly

We all know what really goes down over at The Pirate Bay, and apparently so does the Swedish District court, which found TPB's defiantly outspoken founders guilty of assisting copyright infringement and ordered them to serve a year in prison and pay a combined $3.6 million in fines. And if the latest rumor turns out to be true, they'll be the ones laughing all the way to bank, even if ultimately paying the fine, which would leave them with $4.2 million.

That's the amount that would be left over after Global Gaming Factory X, a gaming company, acquires the torrent sharing site for $7.8 million. GGF says it plans to complete the acquisition by August and then launch new business models that would pay copyright owners.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Hans Pandeya, CEO of GGF. "The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world."

Of course, illegal access to copyrighted content might play a small huge role in why TPB is so popular, but GGF believes it can build on the torrent site's success while going completely legit.

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Posted 03/07/09 at 03:31:52 PM by Justin Kerr

People around the world have been monitoring the Pirate Bay trial with an acute fascination. Bit Torrent has defiantly emerged as the dominate peer-to-peer file sharing method, and its packet based infrastructure has made it very difficult for copyright holders to police. The Pirate Bay represents but one of many Torrent trackers on the net, however a guilty verdict could throw the entire Torrent community to the wolves and ultimately lead to the downfall of its current state. In addition to this, the founders face upwards of two years in prison, as well as a $140,000 USD fine each.

In the final day of the trial, founder Fredrik Neij and his lawyer Jonas Nilsson argued that the underlying technology behind The Pirate Bay is completely legal, and that founders had no intention of violating copyrights. Nilsson also argues that it the prosecution has not proven that the bulk of the material on The Pirate Bay is even copyrighted. “Every site in the world could link to copyright material” Nilsson argues, “this is not a Pirate Bay problem, this is a worldwide internet problem”. In fact, according to evidence presented by Peter Sunde of the Pirate Bay, 80 per cent of the indexed material is in fact non-copyrighted.

The entire Pirate Bay defense rests on the idea that contributors to the site (not the administrators) are responsible for the content, and thus they cannot be held accountable. Additionally, the lawyers argue that the prosecution has failed to show evidence of any proven link between material being downloaded via the internet, and lost sales. The court is now deliberating over the evidence, and a verdict is expected on April 17th.

Do you think the Pirate Bay will survive this one?  And if not, what will happen to Bit Torrent?

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