Piracy »
Guess what? Hollywood studios illegally pirate movies, too
You know who really hates it when people pirate their movies? Hollywood studios. You know who else downloads pirated movies through BitTorrent? What do you know, Hollywood studios. It looks the entities that are thought to be suffering the most due to piracy are no stranger to downloading torrents themselves.[...]
Read More »Chinese man caught stealing high-end software worth $100 million
When we hear about people pirating things online, the usual media or software are things like music, movies, games and some common software. A Chinese man has pleaded guilty to selling high-end commercial software meant for enterprise setups — possibly worth $100 million.
The US Department of Homeland Security caught [...]
Read More »Pirated iOS apps community Hackulous suddenly shuts down
While there are many legitimate reasons for jailbreaking your iPhone, one of the more popular things to do with a jailbroken device was install pirated apps on it. And for pirated iOS apps, there was no better place to go than Hackulous, the community and website behind the Installous app. [...]
Read More »These are the most pirated TV shows of 2012
As you’ve probably already guessed, Game of Thrones is indeed the most pirated tv of show 2012. According to TorrentFreak‘s data, it handily beat out other popular shows — it even has double the amount of downloads of The Walking Dead. Check out the full list below for more [...]
Read More »These are the most pirated movies of 2012
TorrentFreak has released their annual list of the most pirated movies of the year — most of the results are pretty much expected, but there are a few surprises in there as well.
Raise your hand if you were expecting Project X to top the list. Nobody? Thought so. I [...]
Read More »Google is now reporting false DMCA takedown requests
In an effort to improve transparency, Google began publishing reports on the DMCA takedown requests it receives. According to Google, removal requests are now up from 250,000 weekly in May, to 2.5 million requests weekly today. Unfortunately for copyright holders and their never-ending battle against piracy, not all these requests [...]
Read More »Dumb DMCA: Movie producers ask Google to take down links to their own websites, legitimate sources to purchase content, and film reviews
We have seen examples of dumb DMCA takedown requests before, such as the requests Microsoft sent to Google in July of this year. But movie studios asking Google to take down links to their own websites and/or websites that contain legitimate copies of movies and TV shows probably takes the [...]
Read More »Another man is fined $1.5 million for sharing 7 movies online
What do you think is a fair amount to fine a person for illegally sharing copyrighted content? The MSRP (retail value) of the shared copyrighted content times the number of people who downloaded it? More? Less? Legally speaking, in the United States (and I’m quoting from Wikipedia, since I’m not [...]
Read More »Piracy charges are dropped after 9-year-old girl’s father pays 300 euros
Remember that 9-year-old-turned-pirate girl in Finland who’s home was raided and laptop was confiscated? Yeah, well, that saga has come to a close. The father of the girl, who is the one held responsible by Finland’s Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIPAC) because he owns the Internet connection the girl [...]
Read More »“Six strikes” anti-piracy plan is delayed until 2013, thanks to Hurricane Sandy
The “six strikes” anti-piracy “education” program, the program where internet service providers (ISPs) in the United States take action against people accused of pirating copyrighted content, was originally planned to be up and running by the end of 2012. However, the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), the group that administers [...]
Read More »Megaupload helped FBI take down a video pirating website, then FBI used that same evidence against Megaupload
Megaupload was taken down by the FBI (and New Zealand authorities) on January 19, 2012. One of the accusations leveled against Megaupload by the Feds was (is) Megaupload ignored Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take down requests for pirated content stored on Megaupload servers. As an example, in a document [...]
Read More »Research shows Megaupload shutdown “had a negative effect on box office [movie] revenues”
Megaupload was shutdown by New Zealand and American authorities in January 2012. No one, even Kim Dotcom, denies Megaupload was used, to some degree, to store and share illegal copies of movies (among other copyrighted content). In fact, the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) felt Megaupload was significantly used [...]
Read More »“If you pirate something, it’s yours for life” [Comic]
![“If you pirate something, it’s yours for life” [Comic]](http://cdn.dottech.org/media/2012/11/piracy_comic-290x160.png)
There is a fierce and ongoing debate regarding online file sharing, popularly known as piracy. One component of the debate many people tend to ignore is the vast advantages of pirating content. As the artist of the following comic rightly points out, you will always have access to content you [...]
Read More »Police raid home of 9-year-old girl, take away her ‘Winnie the Pooh’ laptop because she used The Pirate Bay
What happens when a 9-year-old girl illegally downloads some songs off the The Pirate Bay? Her home is raided by the police and her laptop is confiscated. Yep, that is what recently happened to a family in Finland.
As the story goes, in 2011 a young 9-year-old girl wanted to [...]
Read More »Study shows people who illegally upload copyrighted content are not doing it for the money
A new study by researchers from Boston’s Northeastern University and the French Eurécom claims that uploaders of pirated content (aka copyrighted content) to cyberlockers (or file sharing sites — like MegaUpload) aren’t doing it for the money. This is in contrast to what the MPAA claimed last year, saying that [...]
Read More »ISPs to start enforcing “six strikes” program, an attempt to “educate” consumers on piracy by slowing internet connections or blocking websites
SOPA and PIPA are dead. But anti-piracy measures by the entertainment industry are not. In collaboration with big entertainment, internet service providers (ISPs) in the United States will soon be implementing significant anti-piracy measures across their entire subscriber base. Two of the largest ISPs in the US, Time Warner and [...]
Read More »Government shuts down Me.ga before it even opens, so Kim Dotcom launches Mega.co.nz
What was Kim Dotcom’s response to the United States government disrupting this budding Megaupload enterprise? Give the feds the middle finger and open a new and improved service, Mega.
As part of his plan to circumvent anti-piracy enforcement by the American government, Kim Dotcom decided to use http://me.ga as the [...]
Read More »“I’m not going to pirate music anymore” [Comic]
![“I’m not going to pirate music anymore” [Comic]](http://cdn.dottech.org/media/2012/11/i_wont_pirate_music_anymore-236x160.png)
Okay, be honest: how many of you pirate stuff (aka take part in file sharing aka peer-to-peer activity aka torrenting aka call it whatever the hell you want), whatever that stuff maybe? On second thought, don’t be honest — the NSA might be listening. Then again, public admission isn’t necessary [...]
Read More »Man gets $1.5 million fine for sharing porn via torrents
So you like your daily (hourly?) dose of porn. Cool, have fun. Just remember to not share it via peer-to-peer channels… otherwise you may end up with a multi-million dollar fine, not to mention public embarrassment.
Flava Works, a company that produces pornography, likes to go after people who share [...]
Read More »Mega, the successor to MegaUpload, will open on January 20, 2013
Ever since MegaUpload was taken down by the authorities in a raid (which has actually now been declared illegal by New Zealand’s courts) on Kim Dotcom’s mansion in New Zealand, Dotcom has been talking about how he is going to bring back MegaUpload but bigger and better. Well now we [...]
Read More »Microsoft asked Google to censor “infringing” links belonging to BBC, CNN, Wikipedia, US government, and more
We have seen dumb takedown notices and requests (via DMCA) in the past, such as when a researcher was kicked off MediaFire. However, we have not yet seen something as ridiculous as the following.
As I mentioned before in my criticism of LeakID, companies are allowed to issue DMCA takedown [...]
Read More »People who pirate buy 30% more music than people who don’t pirate, according to study
While downloading one song may not feel that serious of a crime, the accumulative impact of millions of songs downloaded illegally – and without any compensation to all the people who helped to create that song and bring it to fans – is devastating.
The above quote is from the [...]
Read More »MPAA chief wants everyone to know four-strikes-you-are-out anti-piracy scheme lives on, even if SOPA and PIPA are dead
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) are two acts that were proposed in the United States Congress as an attempt to fight online piracy. Because of their ruthless nature, the acts met with a lot of backlash from now only Web 2.0 companies but also many [...]
Read More »Did you know it is legal to download copyrighted content (aka file sharing) for personal use in some countries?
As the noose tightens around file sharing in many countries, do you know there are some countries in which you can legally download movies, TV shows, music, programs, video games, etc. as long as it is for personal use? No, no not “third-world” developing nations. Despite lax laws, most developing [...]
Read More »Google censors The Pirate Bay in Google Search’s ‘Instant’ and ‘Autocomplete’ features
Google has a list of words it likes to censor from Google Search’s ‘Instant’ (i.e. how search results are shown as you type search queries) and ‘Autocomplete’ (i.e. how Google recommends search queries based on what you have typed so far). While there is no official, publicly available list of [...]
Big business gets security researcher booted off MediaFire for violating copyrights, something she denies doing
In today’s day and age, online piracy is done in one of two ways, torrents or file lockers. Either content is illegally shared via torrents or it is stored in an online file locker (aka cloud storage service) and downloaded. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is an American law that [...]
Read More »Megaupload CEO: Leaked industry report ‘vindicates’ Megaupload, shows it didn’t encourage piracy
IFPI, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, is a music industry group that represents 1,400 publishers worldwide. Recently a IFPI study, conducted by their Head of Internet Anti-piracy Operations, was leaked on their website which provided insights such as piracy activity on the Internet, techniques used by pirates [...]
Read More »French court orders Google to censor illegal file sharing words
The entertainment industry always seems to be in limelight for attempts to curb Internet piracy. In this particular situation the battlefield is France with SNEP (a French music industry group) going after Google for ‘facilitating’ file sharing.
The SNEP brought a lawsuit against Google in France looking to force Google [...]
Read More »What are Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act, and how they will affect you [dotTech Explains]
If you follow technology news regularly you will have, without a doubt, read about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP Act – Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act). With SOPA and PIPA being thrown around on every bloody website in [...]
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