Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Copyright and Censorship

By Terry Hart
Copyhype | Article Link

On January 19, 2011, members of New York City’s theater community and human rights supporters gathered to mark the one month anniversary of Belarus’ contested presidential election. The election was widely condemned as fraudulent, accompanied by the arrests of many peaceful protesters in Belarus with thousands more beaten.


100 Internet Users Responsible for Most Unlawful Copyright P2P File Sharing Content

By MarcJ
ISPreview | Article Link

A scientific study has estimated that just 100 internet users are ultimately responsible for publishing most (almost 67%) of all the "illegal" (unlawful) copyright content (music, tv shows, movies, games and applications) on public P2P (BitTorrent) file sharing networks. The primary motivation appears to be money and the study identifies several broadband ISPs, including one UK provider (Virgin Media), as unwittingly playing a big part.


The study, which set out to examine the behaviour of the users who are responsible for publishing over 55,000 files on the two main portals (Mininova and The Pirate Bay), was carried out by Spain's Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M). The content they posted ultimately accounted for "75 percent of [all] the downloads" (i.e. by end-users).

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Music Piracy is Rampant Even as Labels License Online Sites

By Kristen Schweizer
Bloomberg | Article Link

Hundreds of online music services licensed by record labels in recent years have done little to stem rampant illegal downloading, which is pushing down the value of recorded music.

Digital piracy is still rising along with websites and forums linking to content accessible by piracy services, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in its annual report today. Global revenue from music via the Internet and mobile phones rose 6 percent to $4.6 billion, accounting for 29 percent of record companies’ sales. The rate of growth was less than 2009’s 12 percent increase.

Record companies have been licensing online music services such as Spotify and Rdio and relying on premium ads around online videos to help make up for a drop in CD sales as more physical shops shutter and online piracy shows no signs of waning. Brazil and Spain are among countries with the highest proportion of people visiting unlicensed music sites, and the majority of content distributed on file-sharing networks infringes copyright, the IFPI said.