Tag: FILESHARING

Swedish philosophy student Isaac Gerson thinks that file sharing is sacred. The 19-year-old leader of the Missionary Church of Kopimism believes that stealing and sharing are signs of appreciation, and has compared closed-source software to slavery. Last year, Sweden rejected the church's application to be recognized as a religion, but Gerson isn't giving up so easily. He'll be reapplying after ...

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell issued a ruling that would make it easier for copyright holders to obtain personal information on anyone suspected of illegally downloading copyrighted files. The verdict was met with complaints from ISPs and consumer rights groups, with many arguing that it would allow copyright holders to pursue frivolous lawsuits in the hopes of striking ...

Add 'BitTorrent' and 'RapidShare' to the long list of terms for which Google won't help you search. In an apparent attempt to curry favor with the MPAA and RIAA, the company has begun blocking all "piracy related" terms from its Autocomplete feature. (TorrentFreak reports that Instant search results have also been blocked, but searches still instantly appear for us, once we complete the term. It ...

Andrew Crossley, the manager of the law firm ACS:Law, made a concerted effort last year to individually punish purported file-sharers. The dismissive Crossley learned a painful and public lesson in hubris, though, when agitated Web vigilantes launched 'Operation Payback is a B****' and specifically targeted the law firm. After having suffered site attacks, network hacks, leaked confidential ...

File-sharing and online gaming expose kids to a variety of harmful elements. The fact that most parents are unfamiliar with these services (relative to other online endeavors like social networking) only compounds the inherent dangers and issues. File-sharing services, also known as peer-to-peer networks (P2P), close as frequently as new ones spring up, which makes it difficult for parents or ...

Back in the summer, the deadline passed for colleges and universities to comply with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA), which required schools to develop a plan for dealing with illegal movie and music downloads on campus. Now, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has sent letters to presidents at schools across the country, reminding them that Title IV federal aid ...

A single license for security software has been illegally shared more than 750,000 times. And Avast, the company that developed the software, isn't worried about it at all. The license, which was originally sold to a 14-person company in Arizona, popped up on file-sharing websites a year and a half ago. Since then, it has been shared 774,651 times, and is currently being used on PCs in over 200 ...

Jammie Thomas-Rasset has endured a long legal battle with the recording industry ever since she was accused of illegally downloading files in 2006. Her case took another turn for the worse yesterday, after a Minneapolis jury decided -- in her third trial -- that she was liable for $1.5 million in copyright infringement damages to Capitol Records. The Minnesota woman was ordered to pay the ...

Cash-strapped record labels are undoubtedly rejoicing today, now that LimeWire has officially shut down its peer-to-peer filesharing client. As All Things Digital explains, the move comes in response to a federal court injunction that requires the company to shut down "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of its core ...

One would think that the first place the Pirate Party would go to avoid the authorities would be international waters, but the copyright-flouting movement is thinking of ditching the sea for the clouds. According to Forbes's Andy Greenberg, the Pirate Party has announced its intention to launch a server via weather balloon in order to escape any legislation threatening its operation on the Earth's ...

There are very few things this writer loves about France, but here are two: government-subsidized healthcare, and, now, government-subsidized music. That's right, the country of Debussy and Gainsbourg will now (partially) pay for its young citizens' digital music. As the BBC reports, the new program is aimed at encouraging French youth to get in the habit of actually paying for music. From now ...

Share E-mail and IM suffice for small file transfers like Office documents or photos, but for anything more substantial (e.g., high def videos of your cat jumping into boxes) you're going to need to look somewhere else. Even our beloved Gmail chokes on anything over 25 MB, and refuses to transfer certain files like executables (.exe). Geekier types might set up an FTP server or create a torrent, ...

The London law firm ACS:Law has made a concerted effort to fight online piracy and punish illegal file-sharers. Andrew Crossley, the U.K. firm's manager, learned an agonizing lesson in humility this week, though, after agitating the Web's most infamous and dangerous group of pirate guerrillas. After his company's website endured an attack by 4chan renegades, a dismissive Crossley reportedly ...

First it was Prince, and now John Mellencamp is picking a bone with the Internet. According to Reuters, during a recent speech at the Grammy Museum, Mellencamp said, "the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb."John Cougar went on to say that it had destroyed the music business, and has the movie business in its sights. While this sentiment would be called relevant ...

The mobile version of Dropbox, the popular app that lets users sync files across disparate computers and gadgets, has always been restricted to the iPhone and Android-powered phones. Now, though, BlackBerry users can get in on the action as well, thanks to a newly released beta version of the app. As with the iPhone and Android versions, Dropbox for BlackBerry enables users to open files, stream ...