Japan's government has decided to not to proceed with its controversial anti-piracy law. The proposals would have rendered the downloading of all copyrighted content illegal while criminalizing offenders with jail sentences of up to two years. The reforms will now go back to the drawing board.
Cutting off the money supply to copyright-infringing sites is commonly seen as a prime tactic to deal with the piracy problem. Anti-piracy company DMCAForce has a different strategy though. On behalf of a client, it's reaching out to file-sharing sites with an advertising deal, in exchange for a cut of the money.
The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland has rejected an application to have one of the country's largest ISPs block pirate sites. The Court recognized that the overseas 'pirate' platforms were breaking the law but said that Swisscom, one of the country's largest ISPs, was not involved in that infringement.
More than 80 academics, researchers, lawyers, and other experts have issued an 'emergency statement' urging the government to reconsider the scope of new proposals that would criminalize downloading of any 'pirate' content from the Internet, screenshots included.
For the first time, data about the UK Government-backed "Get it Right" campaign has been shared in public. Over the past two years, UK ISPs sent roughly a million email notifications to subscribers whose connections were allegedly used to pirate content. These "alerts" educate copyright infringers about legal alternatives and according to the early data, they may indeed help to decrease piracy.
Unlike countries in Europe where legislation has already been tested, there is no legal basis in Japan to block 'pirate' websites and the country's constitution forbids censorship. Now, however, the Japanese government has presented a draft report which indicates that blocking websites on copyright grounds should be considered as a policy option.
Le fondateur de Megaupload.com avait saisi la cour d’appel pour contester deux jugements de première instance, qui autorisaient son extradition.
Popular torrent site ExtraTorrent is no more, but several torrent distribution groups carrying its name are still very much alive. ETTV and ETHD torrents are shared by millions of people every week, and they recently launched a new brand, ETMovies. Today, we ask the team how it all got started and where things go from here.
Plusieurs confrères ont remarqué l’apparition d’un clone légal de Zone-Telechargement.ws. Le site est goinfré de liens vers des plateformes officielles pour téléchargement, contre paiement, d'œuvres audiovisuelles.