Hollywood Battles Swedish Pirates
The founders of The Pirate Bay, one of the biggest names in file sharing, face up to two years in a hard-core Swedish prison if they can't convince a judge that their unfortunately named Web site isn't legally responsible for 115 million kronor worth of media piracy.
The founders of The Pirate Bay, one of the biggest names in file sharing, face up to two years in a hard-core Swedish prison if they can’t convince a judge that their unfortunately named Web site isn’t legally responsible for 115 million kronor worth of media piracy.
The advent of Bit Torrent software, when paired with file sharing sites like The Pirate Bay, has made downloading movies, music, TV shows and software super easy and fast for those in the know. Naturally, that has infuriated and alarmed the entertainment industry, which has so far handled the situation about as badly as possible (like suing a single mother for millions of dollars because her teenager may have downloaded — then deleted — a few pop songs).
Eight years after the death of Napster, Hollywood is still fighting this war in courtrooms, and not on store shelves and online shopping carts. After all, $40 for High School Musical 3 is enough to make anyone think illegal thoughts.
Your support matters…BBC:
“File-sharing services can be used both legally and illegally,” defence lawyer Per Samuelsson said.
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Carl Lundstorm have portrayed themselves as digital libertarians and say that they cannot be prosecuted for copyright theft because none of the content is hosted on their computer servers.
The men are accused of “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws”, according to charges filed by senior public prosecutor Haakan Roswall.
Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
Technology
A newly released research paper outlines a tool artists can use to make their work act like “poison” if it is ingested by an AI image generator.
"[I]magine a world where everyone could make as many copies as they liked of Windows, Microsoft's Office Suite and any other software at no cost," writes economist Dean Baker.
A Los Angeles jury on Tuesday determined that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke had copied several elements from Marvin Gaye's 1977 song "Got to Give It Up" in making their 2013 hit "Blurred Lines."
A year after Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz's suicide at the age of 26, a film about this remarkable young man has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
A feministy commercial for a toy line that encourages young girls to play like engineers, and not princesses, may have to come down.
Beginning this week, the five major Internet service providers--AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon--will be able to take recourse against you if you download--or are suspected of downloading--anything illegally.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.