Ubisoft hates it when pirates plunder the company’s gaming wares online. They’ve been at the forefront of the DRM battle, and by that, we mean they’ve been forcing DRM-ridden content down PC gamers’ throats left and right. It gets worse: Ubisoft won't even be publishing its upcoming “I Am Alive” on the PC due to piracy concerns. Disappointed PC players have been vocal in their displeasure, but all the “bitching” doesn't change the facts, creative director Stanislas Mettra says.
BT, the UK’s leading telecom was recently ordered by the High Court to block access to the Usenet site Newzbin2, and it appears that copyright holders are trying to capitalize on that victory. BT was recently approached by a group consisting of music labels and movie studios and asked to voluntarily block The Pirate Bay, the torrent site that just won't die. Should they refuse, BT was promised a court battle not unlike the one they just wnet through.
The most used BitTorrent client in the world is uTorrent, and its developers have just rolled an impressive new feature out in the most recent alpha. This version of the program has integration with Android, iOS, XBox, and PS3 devices. Users will be able to easily sync downloaded content to their devices with this update.
By now, US torrent users are used to the nagging worry that a copyright holder could seek damages against them. Now these mass lawsuits appear to be making the journey to Canada, where Voltage pictures is seeking the identities of users they claim have pirated the film Hurt Locker. Major ISPs have been subpoenaed, but the number of defendants is not yet available. 
When you think of BitTorrent, you probably think of movies, music, and games being shared illicitly. Well, one man by the name of Greg Maxwell is turning all of that on its head by uploading a cache of 18,592 scientific papers to the torrent site The Pirate Bay. This is, according to Maxwell, a protest against the prosecution of programmer Aaron Swartz for theft of data.
No, this isn't a rehashing of news from last year. Voltage Pictures, the maker of the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker, has filed a new lawsuit targeting 20,000 more alleged BitTorrent users. The anonymous defendants are accused of pirating the film over the p2p protocol. This brings the total number of users sued by Voltage Pictures to 24,583.
We usually think of the relationship between torrent sites and ISPS as an adversarial one. In fact, Comcast was caught filtering torrent traffic a few years back. But when the Pirate Bay began having connectivity issues today, Comcast reached out to help them.
Despite losing a court case, and nearly selling to a shady gaming company, The Pirate Bay is still rattling cadges in the entertainment industry. A February meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a proposal that, among other things, recommended a European firewall that would block 'inappropriate' sites.
We know that Netflix has been killing it in new subscriber counts quarter after quarter, but that might be having some unexpected consequences. According to TorrentFreak, the increasing prevalence of Netflix is having a negative effect on US-based BitTorrent piracy. Apparently, if you give people a good deal on content, a lot of them will stop pirating movies.
Content owners tend to speak frequently about the huge problem that p2p donwloads have caused for their businesses. A recent recording industry report said the music business would "struggle to survive unless we address the fundamental problem of piracy." A new report from NPD group, however, lets us all know how big of a problem piracy really is. As it turns out, only 9% of American internet users are pirates.
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