P2PNet - eBay, grannies and copyright
InfoWorld - Embroidering On a Copyright Shakedown Theme
InfoWorld - Embroidery Piracy and EBay/PayPal Privacy
Looksl ike the ESPC is following the RIAA’s example, but making it worse! “The ESPC says they are just following what the music industry has been doing to those who download copyrighted music,”. The example-warping may be from downloaders being sued by the RIAA because of the mandatory sharing of the incomplete and incoming folders in Emule and BitTorrent. It is quite a lucrative legal-loophole legalized racketeering thing! Grannys who unknowningly buy pirated embroidary design CDs off of ebay are getting legal letters to pay up $300 or else…
I like this reader comment — “Granny had better make sure that those cookies are based on a recipe from a legally purchased cookbook; or, have her attorney do a patent/copyright search to make sure that her original family recipe doesn’t infringe someome else’s. And, if the recipe is from a cookbook, she’d better check to see if her “license” allows distribution of the cookies outside her immediate household.” This one is cool too - “And my initials would be F & Y.
And I would enclose $300 in monopoly money.” ‘Monopoly Money’ is the fake money in the monopoly boardgame. Color photocopies of the fake monopoly money might be cooler
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Ars Technica - Prof told to pull podcasts
The Chronical of Higher Education - N.C. Professor Stops Selling Lecture Recordings Online After a Dean Raises Questions
I think its that the university doesn’t want the professor collecting revenue outside of the institutionalized system of the school and that some of the target audiance is chronic class ditchers. They may also be concerned with people who havn’t paid thousands of dollars to North Carolina State University’s bursar’s office getting free or low-cost lectures. I think, being a state school, that the primary fear is insurance rules & premiums and civil liability / litigation / lawsuits. Definitly citing a partial target audiance of chronic ditchers raises a liability concern - sueing the school after he fails using the reason that ‘I recieved a license to ditch’. I wouldn’t be concerned that the .mp3 lectures would be a license to ditch class in itself. I’d fear piracy only modestly. But it only takes one or two big lawsuits, and you’re out of business. The lectures may be back up after a big ol’ liability waiver and intellectual property license agreement is drafted by the legal agreement, and it will probably be for current students only (maybe not neccessairly enrolled in his class), and free (possibly with Schrag recieving a small grant or bonus from the institution). If it is locked to be internall access only, hopefully the students and put them up on Emule. Emule doesn’t have that many university lectures outside of special lectures from very famous figures. I would love to be able to pirate college for free. Web classes at MCC aren’t that much better than feeding off of pirated lecture MP3s and pirated textbook .pdfs.
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P2PNet - No iTunes movies for Asia
Forbes - Apple rules out iTunes movie service for Asia ex-Japan
Hmm, Chines, Thai, Indonesian user connect over to Itunes USA via a proxy server (b/c of IP2Country usage), lie about their address (if needed - I never signed up on Itunes), and buy them that way, if they can even afford it. One could get them from the filesharing networks, but it is more lagged and filesharing does hurt counterfeit sales (mostly China - SE asia doesn’t have the connectivity yet), so these organized counterfeiters and their bootlegger sellers need more current sources. So if Apple doesn’t sell to Asia, 100% of the content will be pirated, instead of 80-90%, as the internet is GLOBAL.
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P2PNet - RealNetworks, SanDisk deal
P2PNet - RealNetwork’s new DRM
Boston.com - RealNetworks, SanDisk teaming up
Another single-vendor DRM music player hits the vendor! Won’t play Itunes or Microsoft DRM music (no Napster or Rhapsody either). Why no fussing? Well theres Emule (LimeWire\n, BearShare, Kazaa, BitTorrent too) and CD Ripping. No problemo. Buy the CD and rip it, or buy the DRM-ed song and then download it. Ripping a purchased CD is more legal. The RIAA would love to get rid of unprotected CDs (Sony-BMG rootkits) if they could…
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P2PNet - Online indies vs major labels
The download industry is still to much for the big labels to care. But te fact that Emusic is exceeding napster is promsing. But Itunes is the target. Most of the law-abiding techno-dumb without significant techy friends use Itunes. The rest of the law-abiding either rip CDs or have their friend do it for them. The real test, is when, and if, unprotected CDs become extinct… And they havn’t yet. CD-ripping and Itunes are both major obsticals for a no-DRM download shop’s prosperity. The techno-dumb grow content over the DRM while the others find it easier to CD-rip or to buy from Itunes or buy a CD and then download from P2P.
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P2PNet - EMI goes after The Beachles
BoingBoing - EMI wants millions and your IP address in revenge for Beachles
The beachles are obviously violating copyright it a profiting manner. The RIAA is definitly abusing copyright, also. If copyright law was meant to enhance creativity by preserving the ability to make relativitly prosperous living off of intellectual or artistic creations, then the RIAA is warping it so they can become the sole provider of artistic creations with dictatorial like dominion over their customers and crushing fledgling competitors who do one thing even slightly wrong, and thus is actually supressing creativity rather than promoting it.
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P2PNet - UMG threatens YouTube
ZDNet - YouTube, MySpace at risk: UMG seeks millions of dollars from ‘copyright infringers’
New York Post - TARGET: YOUTUBE
I love browser-cache ripping YouTube movies
. And just like on Emule, I could care less if they are patented, copyrighted, or commercial / state secrets. I don’t rip as much as I should though. I’m too glued to Emule. Emule won’t go away even if YouTube (or even MySpace) is sued into oblivion!
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P2PNet - Ritek fish-and-chips spyware
Ars Technica - New chip to thwart DVD piracy is a long way off and faces considerable challenges
ITNews (Australia) - DVD chips ‘to kill illegal copying’
I doubt it. It may hurt the for-profit counterfeiters, but for the Emule user, it don’t matter. The AACS is a bigger obstacle against ripping. The RFID won’t hold any encryption keys or anything, otherwise it may be used to assist in cracking AACS for ripping.
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P2PNet - RIAA targets XM Satellite Radio
Radio World Online - Songwriters Support RIAA in Suit Against XM
PC Pro - US songwriters pitch in to help RIAA sue XM Satellite Radio
I think the RIAA’s lawsuit is supid. Subscription dependant saving, can’t move off of device at all. I won’t buy an XM for that. Definitly looks like it fits ‘audio home recording’ law to me, unless that law explicitly limits to cassette tapes. Only problem, is that XM is providing the recording devices, which is probably not covered by that law. Its like 98KUPD providing free or just selling tape recorders (especially if they are rebranded with 98KUPD rather than Sony or something) with the intent for users to use it mainly for cassete-recording its broadcasted music. Don’t know if thats legal or not, and XM don’t have an explicit license for it. If it was third-party recording devices rather than XM’s own, XM would snake right through. Its just an ugly, cruel, evil world. I think I should be able to non-DRM MP3-record from anything streamed, period. Wi-Fi enabled IPods do have that exploit now, and the Ipod owner don’t have a broadcasting license. I wonder if the RIAA will start sueing Wi-Fi broadcasting IPod owners?
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P2PNet - Germany’s Pirate Party
TorrentFreak - Yet Another Pirate Party
Pirate Parties are everywhere now! 10 Countries and Counting. The P2PNet article has links to all of them.
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P2Pnet - Swedish Pirates: 33,000 votes
Ars Technica - Pirate Party falls short of Swedish election goals, blames faulty procedures
Wired - Voters Keelhaul Pirate Party
Looks like the Swedish Pirate Party didn’t make the 4% cut. Oh well. It probably just means that Sweden will more peacefully sucummb to corporate intellectual tyranny.
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P2PNet - FairUse4WM: unDRM
If the RIAA could remove unprotected and rippable CDs without tremendous consumer backlash, they would in a hot second. Right now, the RIAA is playing microsoft and just waiting it out for CDs to become obsolete on their own accord. Then its DRM on proprietary devices only and only open devices and formats will be like the flash advance carts for Game Boy Advance or region-free DVD players or pirate sattelite smart cards — illegal, but relativitly open black-market accessible with only basic connections or some intelligent web surfing / patient googling (to get around all the bogus sites and not get ripped off).
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P2PNet - FairUse4WM Take Down orders
Ars Technica - Microsoft tells web site owners to take down FairUse4WM
FairUse4WM got enough of microsoft’s attention to get canned cease and desist letters. The Pirate Bay ignores, actually mocks, them. FairUse4WM can probably do the same. FairUse4WM doesn’t import encryption keys, so it won’t cracked pirated, DRM material, though you can pirate out the cracked material. Its better to just not buy the DRM material to begin with, especially with non-DRM music CDs are still abundant.
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P2PNet - Make a killing by killing YouTube
RedSwoosh Blog - How to Kill YouTube and make $10MM in 30 days
Red Swoosh outlines a mafia-like corporate exploitation of the america civil court system… Severely harm YouTube’s open nature for 10 million in your own pocket, and the other $10M goes the buddies that you need help from because you’re a random nobody that doesn’t own any of the copyrights seeking to act on other companys’ behalf.
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CopySense - New Video Services Rip From YouTube
You don’t need PeekVid or KeepVid to rip Google Video or YouTube. KeepVide cannot rip JobingTV - flash-streaming of .flvs encoded in Sorenson Squeeze that doesn’t allow caching in the browser (it keeps clients coming back rather than taking the videos and putting it on their site which I hate but the clients don’t pay for the production). YouTube can be ripped through the browser cache. Google video can be ripped with the aid of GetRight (assemble the url via the source to the video and put it into getright) and probably can be cache-ripped too. If you have Media Player classic and Flash installed, it will play .flv files, as long as you have the codec of the movie inside the .flv (.flv is a container format not a particular codec). The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack can help you there, even for the Sorenson encoded videos. YouTube has to be ripped from the browser cache (this is easier to do manually than you think, especially if you clear the cache before ripping). Their flash player applet loads the video based on the referrer or something.
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P2PNet - MySpace gets ink —–
P2PNet - MySpace targets indie music
EarthTimes - Snocap, MySpace in music store agreement
NYTimes - MySpace to Sell Music From Nearly 3 Million Bands
MySpace is going to sell DRM-free indie music (major labels won’t go near it). I hope it can win over the stupid people (especialy the tecno-stupid). Thats if the RIAA doesn’t take out MySpace (because people put copyrighted RIAA-member music in their profiles) before their open music retailing gets popular. DeviantArt does this with artists. I don’t they any artists make enough money to live off. Some make a significant supplemental income though (double ‘fun’ money but still can’t pay the bills). Hopefully MySpace will fare better. Hopefully, the ‘distribution fee’ isn’t too high, as their is both MySpace and SnoCap that need to get paid.
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P2PNet - Warner Music does YouTube
Reuters - YouTube signs partnership with Warner Music
Ars Technica - Warner Music coming to YouTube
ZDNet - YouTube partners with Warner Music
The RIAA is allowing free-for-all direct and derivitive use of its music and even putting all of it’s music onto YouTube themselves?? Wow. Thats if Universal doesn’t take out YouTube first. And if YouTube doesn’t go bankrupt. Maybe the RIAA will have a corporate civil war. Warner could backslide. Warner is not the alpha corporation in the RIAA. And YouTube is easily ripped through the browser cache, requiring the same computer ability as ripping an non copy protected music CD (most are not copy protected unlike DVDs) with CDEX (lightweight freeware CD ripping program). In addition to warner getting a cut in ad revenue, they are probably going to rip-off the videos themselves (at least samples and clips) too.