Piracy Collapses As Legal Alternatives Do Their Job. Entertainment industry groups in Norway have spent years lobbying for tougher anti-piracy laws, finally getting their way earlier this month.
But with fines and site blocking now on the agenda, an interesting trend has been developing. Quietly behind the scenes music piracy has collapsed to less than a fifth of the level it reached five years ago while movie and TV show downloading has been cut in half. At the start of July a brand new law aimed at reducing online piracy went live in Norway. The product of years of effort, the legislation will allow registered anti-piracy groups to pursue individuals sharing copyrighted content. The law also allows infringing sites to be blocked at the ISP level. Industry lobbying for these changes has taken place over many years, with the Ministry of Culture finally getting down to business a little over two years ago.
According to a new report published by Ipsos, between 2008 and 2012 piracy of music, movies and TV shows collapsed in Norway. Study: Piracy actually helps small films make money. "Harry Potter" and other big-budget blockbusters benefited from the shutdown of Megaupload more than small- and medium-size films.
(AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures) How Removing Copy Protection Increased Record Companies' Music Sales. Piracy Isn’t Killing The Entertainment Industry, Scholars Show. The London School of Economics and Political Science has released a new policy brief urging the UK Government to look beyond the lobbying efforts of the entertainment industry when it comes to future copyright policy.
According to the report there is ample evidence that file-sharing is helping, rather than hurting the creative industries. The scholars call on the Government to look at more objective data when deciding on future copyright enforcement policies. KimDotcom: How to stop piracy: 1 Create... Can iTunes India kill piracy? We've been clamouring for a local iTunes music store for years, but of course Apple never comments on unannounced products and we consoled ourselves for years with the standard arguments that piracy is too easy and that licensing local content would be too much of a nightmare for them to bother.
To our surprise, however, Apple launched an Indian iTunes music and movie store this morning. Without so much as a formal announcement, the iTunes store is now live and accessible through any PC or Mac running iTunes, as well as any iPod touch, iPad and iPhone. We've spent the past few hours combing through the offerings and so far, we're highly impressed. The music section is phenomenal. Few People Are Pirating 'Arrested Development' Because Netflix Is Affordable Enough Already. People love "Arrested Development" so much they're actually willing to pay for it. Around 100,000 people illegally downloaded the show's season 4 in the first 14 hours that it appeared on Netflix.
Believe it or not, that number is nothing compared to the season premieres of other TV shows, and that likely has to do with the fact that "Arrested Development" was easily and inexpensively available online through the popular streaming-video service. "I think the piracy numbers for Arrested Development do not really stand out," TorrentFreak editor Ernesto ( it's a pseudonym ) told The Huffington Post. "They are far below cable shows such as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and Dexter. " "Game Of Thrones," HBO's beloved fantasy drama, broke BitTorrent's record with over 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours after the third season began airing in March. Many of the most-pirated movies aren’t available for legitimate online purchase.
Online movie availability on October 15, 2013, as provided by CanIStreamIt.
(Piracydata.org) Why does movie piracy persist after years of efforts to stamp it out? A new website called PiracyData.org suggests a simple explanation: people pirate movies because they don't have the option of paying for a legitimate copy online. Every week, the file-sharing news site TorrentFreak publishes a list of the 10 most pirated movies. A history of pirates: Eye on the main chance. Three Strikes May Decrease File Sharing, But If Sales Keep Dropping, Who Cares? World without copyright? Prepare for mind blowing.
Without copyright protection, the world may never have known Jar Jar.
House Republicans in the United States last week released a report on copyright that was amazing in its understanding of the topic, but also mind-blowing. White House announces new US open access policy. In a long-awaited leap forward for open access, the US government said today that publications from taxpayer-funded research should be made free to read after a year’s delay — expanding a policy that has, until now, applied only to biomedical science.
In a memo, John Holdren, the director of the White House office of science and technology policy (OSTP), told federal agencies to prepare plans to make their research results free to read within 12 months after publication. How 4 Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM. Can digital rights management technology stop the unauthorized spread of copyrighted content?
Ten years ago this month, four engineers argued that it can't, forever changing how the world thinks about piracy. Their paper, "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution" (available as a .doc here) was presented at a security conference in Washington, DC, on November 18, 2002. America's dysfunctional patent system is stifling innovation. Excellent analysis of US copyright law, suppressed within 24 hrs of publication - Communications. New Zealand just abolished software patents. Here’s why we should, too. What's wrong with the patent system?
Most people cite problems with patent trolls or low patent quality. But a recent study by the Government Accountability Office makes it clear that the real problem is more specific: Patents on software don't work. Of course, the GAO doesn't quite come out and say that. The study, released last week, has the bland title "Assessing Factors That Affect Patent Infringement Litigation Could Help Improve Patent Quality. " But the study is chock-full of evidence that most of the patent system's problems are really problems with software patents. The number of software patents has soared in the past two decades. The rise in patent litigation is a more recent phenomenon.