France made waves in the P2P industry by implementing a controversial graduated response program in 2010 that was designed to reduce the amount of illegal downloads by establishing progressively-harsher penalties on file sharers. The results were strong, as shown in Hadopi’s report, with file-sharing activities traffic slashed by two-thirds in 2011. However, the goal of increasing revenues in the French music and movie industries did not materialize and revenues fell in both industries. The French music market fell 3.9% in 2011 while the video market fell 2.7%. As Ernesto of TorrentFreak…

Dependent entirely on how you feel about piracy, it will either tickle you previously undefined shades of pink or break your heart to learn that BitTorrent has reported that its tools BitTorrent, Mainline and µTorrent now have an active userbase of 100 million per month. It seems like only yesterday we were forced a peek at Bram Cohen’s attractive* face as he panhandled for donations every time we closed the original BT client. Flash forward and 20 million are logging on per day from 220 nations to share files. Legally, of course. What makes these figures ever-more impressive is that they don’t…

ISPs in the United Kingdom are making money from the process of anti-piracy groups taking legal action against copyright infringing customers. When a copyright holder wishes to pursue those infringing their copyright, they must request customer information from their ISP. ISPs are giving up the information, and charging for the privilege. An executive at FAST, the Federation of Against Software Theft, spoke out about the practice. “In 2006, we ran Operation Tracker in which we identified about 130 users who were sharing copies of a security program over the web”. The end result? 100 names…

Porn is really easy to get, isn’t it? Porn has always been the internet’s biggest business, but most of us would-be consumers are generally asking ‘what business’? Porn is perfectly easy to get for free. That’s just what porn producers are worried about, and they’re rallying to change it. Studio Pink Visual has rallied adult content providers the world over to Arizona for a ‘Content Protection Retreat’ in October, to figure out a plan. “People were willing back then [at the advent of filesharing services] to pay top dollar for porn,” says PV’s president Allison Vivas. “Now it looks like the majority…

The Pirate Bay is down this morning after reports of raids across Europe. According to thinq.co.uk, police in up to 14 countries raided locations suspected of housing file sharing servers or equipment. The seemingly invulnerable site has survived a number of attacks from copyright holders through the courts, and has become a beacon for file sharers and those who disagree with the position of content creators about the internet. Predictably, most of the raids occurred in Sweden, although raids are said to have taken place in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Britain, the Czech Republic…

Nobody likes the companies the RIAA and MPAA are using to chase Peer-To-Peer file sharers, but I was particularly tickled to see this pop up in my RSS feed. The US Copyright Group has filed more than 14,000 lawsuits against P2P users, but apparently they’re not above a little copyright infringement themselves. Their own website is shown to be a rip off of a competitor’s website, Copyright Settlements. TorrentFreak details the story, no doubt rubbing their hands together with glee at the same time. So what does all this mean? Well, obviously the organizations suing consumers on behalf of the RIAA…

The entertainment industry has embarked in an all-out war against piracy around the globe, with the hopes of scaring would-be pirates from illegally obtaining digital media. But if the likes of the MPAA and RIAA plans on sinking the ship that millions sail throughout the Internet, they should think again. The primary target for the entertainment industry, as it would seem, has been The Pirate Bay. It is far more than a website that enables users to acquire digital content of both legal and illegal variety. It is a symbol. It is a powerful message that the entertainment industry hates but many people,…

The Spanish government is quite unique as far as copyright laws are considered: it is completely legal to upload and download copyrighted material as long as it is for “personal use.” This means that every single Spaniard can download the latest Timbaland track, rip the latest Avatar movie, and acquire an unlimited amount of content through file sharing, for free. They got it good, don’t they? However, there is pressure on the government to change. Most countries that participates in international trade would like it if Spain would conform to copyright infringement laws. To the MPAA, RIAA,…