Consumer Focus also says that 85% can only name two, iTunes and Amazon, but UK music industry, in typical fashion, emphasizes that more than 35 exist and touts own study that found 96% awareness of iTunes and Amazon. Consumer Focus, the UK govt-backed consumer advocacy group, has long tried to illustrate the deficiency of the country’s copyright laws and the dramatic learning gap consumers have of them. In fact, just last month it found that almost 3/4 of the population doesn’t know what they’re legally allowed to copy or record, and that’s practically impossible to not infringe copyright laws as part of their daily lives unless they don’t use digital technology. Part of the problem has always been the music industry’s reluctance to offer consumers viable, legal alternatives as a means to fight online copyright infringement, but as it’s slowly begun to roll them out over the years new research from Consumer Focus shows how the music industry is failing to properly promote them.
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UseNeXT is a brand operated by Munich and London-based company, Aviteo Ltd. UseNeXT is one of the most popular Usenet services around today and has traditionally advertised extensively within the BitTorrent community and on many torrent sites. On 19 December 2006, performing rights group GEMA, which handles the copyrights of more than 1 million rightsholders worldwide, filed for an injunction against UseNeXT. GEMA had earlier leveled accusations at UseNeXT’s advertising in which it said, among other things, the company claimed to offer 1 million MP3s through its service. “[UseNeXT] advertised its fee-based access with unambiguous references to illegal exchange platforms
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September last year saw the passing of France’s controversial three-strikes ‘Hadopi’ law which allows the music industry to track down repeated copyright infringers with the ultimate goal of decreasing the country’s piracy rate. Under the new law alleged copyright infringers will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings. The judge will then review the case and hand down any one of a range of penalties, from fines through to severing the Internet connection of the infringer. Proponents of the new law claimed that the law would convince millions of people to stop downloading copyrighted content through file-sharing networks. Most critics, however, doubted the effectiveness of the system and pointed out that there are many ways to circumvent the law . A new study published by the University of Rennes shows that the critics are indeed right.
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Consumer Focus also says that 85% can only name two, iTunes and Amazon, but UK music industry, in typical fashion, emphasizes that more than 35 exist and touts own study that found 96% awareness of iTunes and Amazon. Consumer Focus, the UK govt-backed consumer advocacy group, has long tried to illustrate the deficiency of the country’s copyright laws and the dramatic learning gap consumers have of them. In fact, just last month it found that almost 3/4 of the population doesn’t know what they’re legally allowed to copy or record, and that’s practically impossible to not infringe copyright laws as part of their daily lives unless they don’t use digital technology. Part of the problem has always been the music industry’s reluctance to offer consumers viable, legal alternatives as a means to fight online copyright infringement, but as it’s slowly begun to roll them out over the years new research from Consumer Focus shows how the music industry is failing to properly promote them. Their research found that a staggering 20% are unable to name a single legal online music service at all, and that 85% could name only two – iTunes and Amazon
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Use BitTorrent to download all of the MP3 files publicly available on the SXSW website as of March 6, 2010. It’s that time of year again with the 2010 SXSW music festival fast approaching. The annual event held in Austin, TX has always been a showcase for some of the latest and greatest music artists around, and this year is no exception. As part of the event MP3 files are sporadically made available on the site to showcase some of the artists that are scheduled to appear during the 5 day extravaganza.
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2009 was a breakthrough year for the Pirate Party movement. With more than 7 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party secured two seats in the European Parliament. A few weeks later, the Pirates in Germany entered the local Parliament after a member of another party switched sides. In 2010 the Pirate Parties hope to continue this hot streak, especially during the Swedish national elections later this year. However, Sweden is not the only country where a Pirate Party will end up at the ballot. In the UK the local Pirate Party hopes to compete as well and the Dutch party has now decided to do the same
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Around seven years ago when pressure was first starting to form against the then-fledgling BitTorrent scene, attitudes were pretty much as they are now. “They’ll never stop it, we’ll always find a way,” cried the masses grabbing music, movies and software for free, and few disagreed. Of course, there will always be a way to acquire media free of charge, the last few decades have shown us that. But the media industries are now having to find new ways to defend their corner.
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) takes the fight over terrestrial radio’s refusal to pay performer royalty fees to the next level. It seems the debate over terrestrial radio performance royalty fees is heating up these days with news that House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) recently said that the lack thereof makes slaves out of artists. “In 1865, slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment
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Judge sides with MPAA in case against Real Network’s RealDVD software that would allow consumers to make backup copies of purchased DVDs for personal use. Chalk up another win for the MPAA and another loss for consumers. For US District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel has issued a permanent injunction against Real Networks DVD-backup software RealDVD. The Judge declared that RealDVD, in order to make backup copies, would likely violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Content Scramble System (CSS) license
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Tonight, Hollywoods biggest stars will walk the red carpet into the Kodak Theater for the Academy Awards ceremony. In anticipation of the glamorous Oscar night, we enter the dark side of the movie business to find out which of the 10 nominees in the Best Picture category gets the vote from BitTorrent users. NewTeeVee asked us to rank the nominees by number of downloads and the results are finally in. If every download on BitTorrent counted as a vote, District 9 would be crowned the winner, closely followed by Avatar.
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