Microsoft’s big launch of the new Windows 7 operating system on Friday in Beijing was much like its launches around the world: a huge, boisterous demonstration of new features such as being able to share music across multiple computers in one home.
The French National Assembly on Tuesday approved a draft “three strikes” law that would allow authorities to cut off Internet access to piracy offenders.
The measure, which France’s Senate passed in July, was narrowly approved by the parliament with a vote of 285 to 225, and is viewed as a compromise to a similar law that was rejected for being too harsh.
Hong Lei and his partners were the biggest pirates of Microsoft Corp. software in China, but since his arrest last December, the 30-year-old creator of a popular Chinese clone of Windows called Tomato Garden Window XP has become something of an Internet hero.
The phenomenon underscores the challenges faced by Microsoft and other technology companies as they battle rampant piracy in China, despite official efforts to crack down.
File-sharing, to the (very large) extent that it involves copyright infringement, has affected the music business.
It’s a well-known story by now: Europe, the US, and plenty of other countries have made it generally illegal to circumvent DRM, even when users want to do something legal with the content.
In March, an unfinished copy of 20th Century Fox’s film X-Men Origins: Wolverine was stolen from a film lab and uploaded to the Internet, more than a month before its theatrical release.
It’s the jewel in the crown of Internet piracy, but is the verdict against Pirate Bay a pyrrhic victory?
As revenues from sales of traditional media have plunged, the music business has been looking for alternate ways of making money from its products, including a variety of subscription services, ad-supported streams, and blanket licenses.
The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the Internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several.
In the past we’ve given plenty of examples of how DRM hurts paying customers instead of the people it is meant for. Still, many software companies prefer to see their customers as potential “thieves,” but what they don’t realize is that they are actually breeding pirates instead of stopping them.
Hulu caused quite a stir this week when, at the request of rights holders, it shut down Boxee’s access to its streaming video platform. While many discussed the business implications of this move, some are ready to do more than just talk about it. One reader wrote to tell us that he’s gonna stop using [...]
The final defendant in a five-year-old nationwide piracy crackdown pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement Wednesday, admitting to his role in a so-called “warez” club responsible for tens of thousands of unauthorized copies of videogames, software and digital music files.
I recently purchased a short story from Fictionwise, which was not DRM’ed, so I could easily get it into a form where I could read it on my Sony eReader. Thanks to that short story, I was introduced to an author, and a character, which I found very engaging.
In an attempt to make headway against rampant film piracy, Warner Bros. will distribute newly released films online in China. The studio struck a deal with Union Voole Technology in China to offer new movies, as well as those that have never been seen in Chinese theaters, at rental prices ranging from 60 cents to $1.
If you pay any attention to the endless debates over intellectual property policy in the United States, you’ll hear two numbers invoked over and over again, like the stuttering chorus of some Philip Glass opera: 750,000 and $200 to $250 billion.
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