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- Ireland Set To Force ISPs To Disconnect Pirates
- Warner Music Director Profited From Piracy
- Zombie Game Taken Offline Because Pirates Didn’t Use BitTorrent
| Ireland Set To Force ISPs To Disconnect Pirates Posted: 21 Jun 2011 04:31 AM PDT After reaching a negotiated settlement with ISP Eircom to deal with illicit file-sharing, the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) took ISP UPC to court after it refused to implement a similar scheme. IRMA wanted UPC to disconnect persistent pirates, UPC insisted there was no legal basis for doing so. The case went to the High Court but although Mr Justice Peter Charleton acknowledged that recording companies were being harmed by Internet piracy, he said that laws to cut off file-sharers were not enforceable in Ireland. "It is not surprising that the legislative response laid down in our country in the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, at a time when this problem was not perceived to be as threatening to the creative and retail economy as it has become in 2010, has made no proper provision for the blocking, diverting or interrupting of internet communications intent on breaching copyright," he said in his judgment. By not having this legislative mechanism in place, Justice Charleton said that Ireland is not in compliance with its obligations under European law. The only thing the courts can force an Internet host to carry out, he said, is the removal of infringing material. Now, through its ‘Consultation on Amendment to Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000′, the Irish government is taking steps to change legislation to close this apparent loophole. “It must be emphasised that this proposed amendment is not about the introduction of a statutory regulatory regime in relation to copyright infringement such as the French ‘Hadopi’ system or the ‘Three strikes’ regime set out in the Digital Economy Act in the United Kingdom,” notes the proposal. Nevertheless, while they do not implement a statutory regime, adoption of the proposals could yield a similar result, a situation welcomed by IRMA. "We have always been looking for the right to take injunctions against ISPs if they are not dealing with illegality on their networks," said IRMA chief executive Dick Doyle. The proposals published yesterday are open for public consultation with a closing date of July 1st, just over a week away. Submissions should be sent to IPU@djei.ie or posted to the Intellectual Property Unit, Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. The proposals come on the back of the news that due to an administrative computer error, in October last year Eircom wrongly sent out around 300 "first strike" warning letters to innocent subscribers. The error is now being investigated by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. |
| Warner Music Director Profited From Piracy Posted: 20 Jun 2011 01:55 PM PDT
"The CBS Defendants have been the main distributor of LimeWire software and have promoted this and other P2P systems in order to directly profit from wide-scale copyright infringement. Internet users have downloaded more then [sic] 220 million copies from Defendants' website, found at Download.com, since 2008," the complaint reads. As the case moves on some interesting arguments are appearing on the table. One of the most controversial items overlooked thus far concerns current Warner Music director and CNET co-founder Shelby Bonnie. Believe it or not, Bonnie served on the board of directors at Warner Music and was also the CEO of CNET, all at the time LimeWire was being sued. As The Music Void points out, Bonnie was invited to join the Warner Music board in November 2005, just 4 months after the landmark Grokster ruling. At that time Bonnie was still CNET’s CEO, a position he gave up during the fall of 2006. After that, he continued to serve on CNET’s board of directors until March 2007. Since it’s no secret that CNET made a healthy profit from the millions of LimeWire clients that were downloaded from its site every month, this could lead to the awkward conclusion that a prominent Warner Music director profited from piracy. While it should be noted that LimeWire hadn’t been convicted of doing anything illegal at the time, it is quite unusual that the CEO of LimeWire’s main distribution platform was simultaneously a director of one of the record labels going after LimeWire in court (and launching numerous individual file-sharers). It would definitely be interesting to hear the thoughts of the former CNET CEO on the issue, should he be called as a witness. Perhaps Bonnie opted to keep the healthy revenue stream alive until the court banned it, despite the massive losses Warner Music was claiming? Whatever the case, the above must have been the topic of some heated discussions at the Warner Music board of directors. After all, it wouldn’t really be far-fetched to compare it to a Universal Pictures director who also serves on the board of The Pirate Bay’s hosting company. Indeed, that would be quite unbelievable. |
| Zombie Game Taken Offline Because Pirates Didn’t Use BitTorrent Posted: 20 Jun 2011 05:52 AM PDT
The developers have said all along that they had no intention of spending that money on advanced DRM and would rather use it to improve the game. Piracy is inevitable, they believe, and it’s pointless trying to fight it. But sometimes a line has to be drawn, even by the most pirate-tolerant devs. After a build of Project Zomboid was leaked to 4chan by someone from the game’s tester group, it seems that this month a modified version started doing the rounds on torrent sites. The version included an additional ‘Update’ button which downloaded the latest build, not from BitTorrent, but from the developer’s servers. “We've always turned a blind eye to pirate copies, even on occasion recommending people who had problems with the legit version try a pirate version until the issues are resolved. We realise the potential viral benefits of pirate copies, and while obviously we'd prefer people to purchase our issue is not with those,” the developers say.  “However, these 'auto updating' versions of the game could screw us completely. We have a cloud based distribution model, where the files are copied all over the world and are served to players on request, which means we are charged money for people downloading the game,” they continue. So, to mitigate the threat of excessive bandwidth consumption and rising costs, over the weekend the game was switched off for a day. A dramatic move maybe, but according to the developers it was one they were forced into but it could actually have been avoided – if only pirates had used BitTorrent instead. “Whether piracy actually amounts to lost sales we're not going to get into,” say the devs. “The possibility that it raises awareness and promotes the game cannot be ignored, but the difference is offline versions on torrents, which we've been largely unconcerned about, do not cost us real money, only potential money, and even then we can't really guess at what the net effect is. “Likewise people who download the game through our website only download it when there is a new version, so once every week or so. These new pirate copies have an 'update now' button which will download the game every time it's clicked, potentially every time the game is run by everyone using it.” After Indie Stone took the game offline, they responded by releasing a free public tech demo, distributed using BitTorrent of course. Despite the problems, the devs have asked fans of the game not to be “down” on piracy, and have highlighted reasons why people might have gone down that route, such as having no access to PayPal. “We have no ill feeling toward those pirating the game or those distributing the pirated copies of the game. We're mainly glad that people feel it's worthy of pirating,” they conclude. The situation has been spotted by Notch of Minecraft fame who chimed in on Twitter a couple of hours ago to add his opinion. “Everybody stop pirating this game, please,” he wrote. “It’s very cool.” Source: Zombie Game Taken Offline Because Pirates Didn’t Use BitTorrent |
Last month CNET's Download.com and parent company CBS 
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