We’ve had a lot of discussion about SOPA and PIPA recently, the bills that want to cripple the internet, but there are still plenty of people who aren’t clear on the issues. And although the bills have been shelved for now, similar threats (e.g., ACTA) loom and it’s wise to stay informed of the issues at stake. This infographic lays SOPA’s and PIPA’s legal and technical technical details out pretty clearly. More »
After last week’s all-day protest of SOPA and PIPA, both bills have been shelved for further consideration by the US government and will not be voted on as scheduled. Rep. Lamar Smith, the sponsor of SOPA, said he’s still committed to fighting piracy, but that this legislation isn’t the way to do it. More »
Over at our sibling games site Kotaku, Mark has written an excellent analysis of why SOPA (and similar legislation) is pointless and how movie companies should concentrate on making it easier to buy their products online. Definitely worth a read. [Kotaku]
If you’re a copyright owner and you believe someone is illegally distributing your material, what should you do? It’s not a question that lends itself to an easy answer, but choosing to sue the alleged offender somewhere they don’t live doesn’t look too good. More »
One of the key reasons that torrented entertainment content is popular is because it gives us immediate access to shows or movies or music that might not see an official release in Australia for months or years, if ever. Staggering the release of new productions feels archaic in the internet age, but there are occasionally some good reasons it happens other than “we’ve always done it this way”. Here are five you might not have thought of. More »
We’ve spent a lot of time this week looking at proposals for how ISPs should deal with allegations of piracy via torrents and how those would work in practice. There’s broad agreement that the proposals aren’t perfect and that a dedicated downloader could easily work around them, but there’s also clearly some widely-held misunderstandings about the nature of the proposals and the alternative business models which might drive entertainment in the future. Let’s bust through a few of them. More »
A coalition of ISPs has proposed new rules for dealing with Australians thought to have downloaded copyrighted material. It has already generated a lot of controversy and discussion, but just how will the process work? More »
Five major Australian internet service providers (ISPs) — iiNet, Internode, Primus, Optus and Telstra — have released a proposal for dealing with online piracy. It’s an education-based scheme that doesn’t force ISPs to cut off customers accused of piracy by movie studios, but there’s a way to go before it becomes reality. More »
Chances are you’ve used Google’s automatic suggestions when you start typing a search term, but there’s a big area where those features don’t work: many terms relating to torrents and torrent-serving sites. TorrentFreak reports that if you type the names of well-known content-sharing sites, such as The Pirate Bay, you now won’t see any suggestions at all. More »
It’s still not clear if there’ll be a further appeal in the iiNet vs studios piracy case, but the ISP isn’t staying quiet on the issue while it waits to find out. In a new paper it argues that there should be an independent body which assesses and assigns penalties for copyright infringements, drawing on the points model we’re familiar with from driving licences. More »
