E-Commerce News: Piracy

Tea Parties, Pirate Ships and a Kayak: A Summer at Sea

Thursday - July 2, 2009

For seven months, a New York Times reporter named David Rohde was held prisoner by Taliban kidnappers. However, you wouldn't learn that from reading The New York Times -- or even Wikipedia, for that matter. In addition to other news organizations, the Times reportedly asked Wikipedia not to publish information on the abduction. For Wikipedia, that meant monitoring Rohde's entry and quickly deleting information regarding the kidnapping as soon as anyone put it up. Everyone involved seemed to have good intentions. [More...]

Pirate Bay Decides to Join the Navy

Tuesday - June 30, 2009

He may still have an eye patch, a peg leg and a funny hat, but is a pirate still a pirate if he writes you a check before plundering your ship? How long would Robin Hood keep his band of merry men intact if they took from the rich -- and charged the poor a redistribution fee for access to those riches? [More...]

Jammie Thomas, RIAA Go At It Again

Tuesday - June 16, 2009

The recording industry began its second attempt at proving that a Minnesota woman engaged in illegal sharing of copyrighted music on the Internet and should be held accountable. Attorney Tim Reynolds told a jury Monday that the record companies would prove that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, of Brainerd, illegally shared songs on the Kazaa network. [More...]

China Scrambles to Repair Crumbling Green Dam

Monday - June 15, 2009

For years, China's government has kept the country's Internet surfers on a very short leash. Censors attempt to block any content considered immoral, which could be anything from pornography to politically charged blog posts. Its latest plan is to order the installation of filtering software directly into all personal computers. [More...]

Spain's Music Piracy Battle: Is Building the Ship as Bad as Plundering the Booty?

Saturday - June 13, 2009

Pablo Soto's story may be every computer whiz kid's dream -- or nightmare. After leaving school at 16 to support his family, he managed to eke out a living doing what he loves most: designing computer programs. Then in 2001, the Madrid native launched Blubster, one of the world's most popular peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing programs of recent years. [More...]

Scribd Gains Legitimacy With Simon & Schuster on Board

Friday - June 12, 2009

The publisher of Stephen King and Chelsea Handler will be selling books through Scribd, the online document-sharing service that the industry has criticized for enabling the downloading of pirated texts. Scribd announced Thursday that digital versions of books by King, Handler and thousands of others published by Simon & Schuster can be purchased through Scribd's online store. [More...]

French Antipiracy Law Faces Sea of Critics, Skeptics and Naysayers

Saturday - May 23, 2009

A thousand French Internet users a day could be taken offline following approval of President Nicolas Sarkozy's pet project -- an unprecedented law to cut the Internet connections of people who repeatedly pirate music and movies. As the friend to some of France's most powerful media figures, Sarkozy has long basked in his cozy ties with the entertainment industry. [More...]

Microsoft Inks Deal to Create Model Tech City in China

Friday - May 15, 2009

Microsoft announced a partnership aimed at helping make the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou a model for innovation and protection of intellectual property, in the company's latest attempt to combat rampant software piracy. A three-year agreement signed Friday calls for setting up two new centers in Hangzhou to focus on developing the local technology industry. [More...]

France, EU Out of Step on Net Piracy Laws

Wednesday - May 13, 2009

France's Senate has given final approval to a law that would punish people who download music and films illegally by cutting off their Internet connections. The law creates what could be the world's first government agency to punish online pirates. The 189-14 vote Wednesday followed approval Tuesday by the lower chamber, where it passed 296 to 233. [More...]

BSA's $53B Global Piracy Tab Grossly Inflated, Argue Skeptics

Tuesday - May 12, 2009

Software piracy dropped or remained steady in scores of countries across the globe in 2008, but the worldwide rate still rose, thanks to rising piracy in emerging markets, according to a report for the Business Software Alliance released Monday. As usual, the report contained an ever-controversial estimate of what the BSA terms "losses" from software piracy: $53 billion. [More...]

Hollywood vs. RealDVD: It's On

Saturday - April 25, 2009

Hollywood calls it "rent, rip and return" and contends it's one of the biggest technological threats to the movie industry's annual $20 billion DVD market -- software that allows you to copy a film without paying for it. On Friday, industry lawyers urged a federal judge to bar RealNetworks from selling software that allows consumers to copy their DVDs to computer hard drives. [More...]

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