You don’t pay for porn. That’s a problem for pornographers, but aces for porno copyright trolls like John Steele, attorney at law. Buzzfeed took a deep look into how they squeeze money out of porn torrenting cases, whether you downloaded anything or not. More »
Grooveshark is no stranger to controversy, but after it was sued by major music labels, Google decided it’d had enough and pulled the app last year. But the streaming service said it’s never allowed free downloading, claiming other apps using its name without permission were permitting the piracy instead. The faux-Grooveshark offenders were booted with Google’s help, and the app has subsequently been re-stocked on Play’s virtual shelves. Meanwhile, the company has paid its debt to EMI, and could even be the target of an acquisition, according to CNET. So, if you want to share the news with your pals (along with some tunes), hit the source below.
Filed under: Internet
Grooveshark back in Google Play after piracy hullabaloo originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 04:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Yesterday marked the end of Joel Tenenbaum’s court battle with the RIAA over 31 songs he illegally distributed on Kazaa. A federal judge denied his latest appeal, and now he’s on the hook for $675,000. That’s nearly $22,000 per song, plus some wholesale character assassination that has now been sealed with judge’s rubber stamp. More »
Piracy on PC is a big deal for publishers, but Ubisoft always seems to be in the spotlight when there’s a new story on piracy or DRM. It’s hardly a secret that Ubisoft has major issues with piracy, but before it’s never really gotten down to hard numbers. Today, that changed in an interview with GamesIndustry International, in which Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that Ubisoft experiences a piracy rate of 93-95% on its PC games.
That’s why the publisher will now be focusing on free-to-play, because Guillemot says that will guarantee income for the company. According to him, free-to-play will allow Ubisoft to get payments from countries where its games are pirated the most, and he continued by saying that such a transition is a way to make sure that the company gets long-term income:
It’s a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it’s only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It’s around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content.
Ubisoft has come under fire many times in the past for implementing DRM that forces consumers to have a constant Internet connection while playing. It’s also caught some flak for habitually releasing the PC versions of its games after the launch of the console versions, which is a trend it will be continuing with the upcoming Assassin’s Creed III. There has been no lack of negative comments directed at Ubisoft for these practices, so maybe this increased focus on free-to-play titles will mean less always-on DRM.
That 93-95% piracy rate quoted by Guillemot seems to be incredibly high, but if it’s legitimate, then it’s kind of hard to blame Ubisoft for implementing that DRM gamers hate so much. Nevermind the fact that Ubisoft would be missing out a lot of money that way, but shareholders would be on Guillemot’s case all the time, trying to get him to come up with a solution to the problem. We’ll see if this free-to-play shift ends up working out soon, as the company announced a number of new free-to-play titles at Gamescom. Stay tuned.
Ubisoft claims 93-95% piracy rate on its PC games is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The federal government has continued its crack down on piracy, with the Department of Justice announcing that three different sites which market pirated Android apps have been shut down. The websites in question – applanet.net, appbucket.net and snappzmarket.com – are now all under the government’s control, and all three display the same copyright notice that has graced Megaupload for the better part of the year. The DoJ says that this is the first time any websites relating to pirated mobile apps have been shut down.
Officially, these three websites that were seized are “suspected of distributing copies of apps without permission from the software developers who would otherwise sell copies of the apps on legitimate online markets for a fee.” During its investigation, the FBI downloaded thousands of apps from these websites, which charged users for the pirated apps. When it came time to execute the search warrants, the DoJ and the FBI teamed up with Dutch and French law enforcement officials to bring the servers down, since the servers were hosted in other countries.
In a DoJ statement, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer said that mobile apps have become a priority in the government’s anti-piracy efforts. “Cracking down on piracy of copyrighted works – including popular apps – is a top priority of the Criminal Division,” Breuer said, adding that the Justice Department’s Criminal Division is committed to working with law enforcement to protect those who develop apps for mobile devices. U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates expanded on that by saying the government will continue to seize websites involved with marketing pirated apps.
Interestingly, blapkmarket.com is down at the time of this writing, but it doesn’t appear to have been seized, showing a “service temporarily down” message instead of the copyright banner that currently graces the three sites mentioned above. By far the most high-profile shut down has been that of Megaupload, which was seized by the government back in January and remains down today. The owners of Megaupload are facing some hefty fines and significant jail time, so it wouldn’t surprise us if these latest seizures have other sites shutting down as a preemptive measure. Stay tuned for more information, because it sounds like the Department of Justice and the FBI are just getting warmed up.
Department of Justice, FBI seize three Android pirate sites is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Android’s free-wheeling, open ecosystem has a major app piracy problem, and the US government just got involved in a big way. Yesterday, the DoJ announced that it had seized the domains of three popular destinations for illegal Android downloads. Applanet, Appbucket, and Snappzmarket are now dead. More »
Do you know why people hate movie studios? Why, increasingly, they’re driven to download content illegally, even though they’re perfectly willing to pay for it? Because of crap like this: More »
When we saw the subtitles of a bootleg copy of The Avengers, we couldn’t believe how outrageous they were. The subtitles butchered the English language to the point that it felt like a whole different movie. Turns out, a lot of bootleg movies have subtitles that bad. Just check these out. More »
After facing criticism that its new policy of penalizing pirate sites might unfairly favor Google-owned YouTube, Google has come out to say that most popular sites are unlikely to be penalized. It hasn’t clarified exactly why or how, though. More »
Yesterday, Google announced that it will begin using copyright takedown notices to influence where sites show up in search results. The general idea behind it is that if a site has a lot of takedown notices (made under DMCA), it risks being demoted in search rankings. Obviously, this new decision has won the hearts of copyright advocates like the MPAA and the RIAA, but it’s making those who would keep the Internet free and open a little uneasy.
Both the MPAA and the RIAA have praised Google for its newfound intolerance of copyright infringement. It wasn’t too long ago that Google was at odds with the MPAA and RIAA, as the search giant stood against SOPA, a bill which the MPAA and RIAA both loved. Now, however, Google is understandably caught between a rock and a hard place. PCWorld reports that Google needs partners in Hollywood, and one of the best ways to do that is to crack down on copyright infringement. Indeed, Google may have just earned those partners in Hollywood, as the MPAA and the RIAA both seem pleased as punch by the implementation of this new policy.
No one is going to argue that copyright infringement is a good thing, but groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are worried that some sites may unjustly get caught in the crossfire. “In particular, we worry about the false positives problem,” the EFF wrote on its website. “For example, we’ve seen the government wrongly target sites that actually have a right to post the allegedly infringing material in question or otherwise legally display content.” The EFF continues by saying that since this new policy is so vague, it worries that Google will end up doing the same thing – punishing law-abiding websites, “without recourse” for those who have been wrongly demoted.
There’s also the matter of false take down notices. It isn’t exactly a secret that some business like to file fake take down requests against their competitors as of way of gaining an edge, so Google will have to be watching out for that as well. Google will definitely have its work cut out for it when it rolls out this new policy next week, so it’s easy to understand why it’s making some Internet advocates a little worried. Stay tuned more details as this whole thing develops.
Google’s new search policy leaves free Internet advocates worried is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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