The Hight Court in England has just delivered a ruling in the case of 20th Century Fox & Anor v Newzbin Ltd. Newzbin is a usenet binary file-sharing service that allows users to search and share material using the bulletin-board-like protocol. Wikipedia points out that “Usenet is distributed among a Read more
The International Chamber of Commerce has released a report entitled “Building a Digital Economy” (full report here). The report is getting a lot of press because it makes some spectacular claims about the creative industries in Europe. According to the study, by 2015 digital piracy will have cost the industry Read more
[Note: I know the title is not legally accurate, I hope my fellow lawyers will cut me some slack for reporting purposes ] (Via El Mundo) A judge in Barcelona has just delivered an astounding sentence with regards to sites that link to P2P content. The case was brought by Read more
Apologies for the sensationalist title, but that is precisely what came to mind when I read an article about how the book industry has lost billions of dollars because of book downloading. Attributor is a company that produces anti-piracy solutions, and they have conducted a study that claims illegal downloading Read more
Just on the coattails of Roadshow Films v iiNet, we are about to get another landmark ruling on ISP liability. If there was any doubt that we are witnessing a legal struggle between intermediaries and content owners, we can lay those doubts to rest. Sabam v Tiscali has been a Read more
Anyone who has been paying attention to the War on Piracy will have noticed that the emphasis has shifted from the user to the internet service provider. As content owners discovered that attempts to enforce their rights against users backfired and/or had no noticeable effect, they began returning to the Read more
As usual, xkcd makes an excellent point: With sizes of up to 64GB contained in a tiny card the size of a coin, I wonder why the content industries are not concentrating more on such storage devices, and continue to insist that the war on piracy is an online endeavour. Read more
It was supposed to be the British equivalent of high-profile cases such as PirateBay and the Jamie Thomas trial. It was supposed to act as a clear deterrent to a new generation of file-sharers against widespread copyright infringement. Instead, Alan Ellis, the founder of torrent tracking site OiNK has been Read more
As anticipated, Her Majesty the Queen has announced the implementation of measures against file-sharers, including notices and disconnection. The measures will be part of the Digital Economy Bill, which also proposes tougher classification for video games, and new powers to Ofcom regarding local news services. While the Bill’s text is Read more
The air of inevitability surrounding three strikes legislation in the UK came to its fruition yesterday with the announcement by Lord Mandelson that the government will seek to pass legislation that will force intermediaries to disconnect users involved in file-sharing. I hate to say “I told you so”, but I Read more