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+17 +4
Why Games Should Enter The Public Domain
A few days ago I inadvertently caused a bit of a fuss. In writing about GOG’s Time Machine sale, I expressed my two minds about the joy of older games being rescued from obscurity, and my desire that they be in the public domain. This led to some really superb discussion about the subject in the comments below, and indeed to a major developer on Twitter to call for me to be fired.
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+19 +7
Pirate Bay Founder's Detention Extended as Investigation Continues
Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm had his custody extended for four more weeks during a behind-closed-doors court hearing today. The investigation into Gottfrid's alleged hacking activities is still ongoing, with the prosecution today revealing that police records obtained during the hack may have been transferred to servers abroad.
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+16 +4
MPAA Head Chris Dodd: I'm Willing To Discuss Copyright Reform As Long As Nothing Changes
Chris Dodd, head of the MPAA, has decided that, 16 years after the Napsterpocalypse (which singlehandedly killed the recording and motion picture industries, both of which are now nothing but vague memories for pre-Gen Xers), it's time to meet the tech industry in the middle and start working together.
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+21 +7
How Pirate Bay Came Close to Hosting on North Korean Soil
The Pirate Bay has flirted with North Korea on more than one occasion. While most attempts were practical jokes, in its early days the notorious site came close to actually hosting its servers on North Korean soil through a connection at the country's embassy in Sweden.
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+19 +6
Meet the man who could ruin porn—or save it
In a piece on last month’s AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, Forbes writer Susannah Breslin interviewed Nate Glass, the owner of anti-porn-piracy company Takedown Piracy. Breslin referred to Glass as the “Darth Vader” of porn piracy. But Glass, a longtime Star Wars nerd, would like to slightly amend that metaphor.
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+13 +4
RapidShare Stops Washington Lobbying Efforts and Regains Pirate Stamp
Popular file-hosting service RapidShare has stopped its lobbying efforts in Washington. The company invested over a million dollars in recent years to upgrade its image, an effort that initially paid off. However, just a few months after RapidShare's lobbyists left Washington and despite huge changes to the company's operations, the U.S. Government has now rebranded the service as a notorious market.
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+21 +5
Why Is The Copyright Monopoly Necessary, Anyway?
The copyright industry is amazing at pretending the copyright monopoly has always been there in its current form. But international copyright monopolies didn't exist in practice across the Western world before 1989.
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+18 +1
MPAA’s latest anti-piracy move accidentally, completely screws Hollywood studios
From Marlon Brando’s civil rights statement in absentia to Michael Moore’s anti-war speech, the Academy Awards ceremony played host to its share of high-profile protests. This year, though, the biggest protest will likely happen outside the Dolby Theater. Pando has learned that visual effects industry workers plan a mass demonstration against the major studios’ ongoing efforts to offshore post production work.
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+23 +5
Lawrence Lessig Wins Damages For Bogus YouTube Takedown
Law professor, Creative Commons co-founder and advocate for copyright reform Lawrence Lessig has agreed to receive damages from an Australian music label. Without considering fair use Liberation wrongly had some of Lessig's work removed from YouTube and threatened to sue - it didn't go well.
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+21 +4
Police Raid "Movie Cammer" and Family Twice - Then Drop All Charges
After police raided an alleged movie cammer in 2013, a few months later they were back, to arrest him again, plus his sister. Now, after expending a huge amount of resources, the police have informed the man that all charges against him will soon be dropped. But what do the Federation Against Copyright Theft have in store?
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+19 +5
Hollywood's Copyright Lobbyists Are Like Exes Who Won't Give Up
You know when you break up with someone and they just don’t get the message? A few months later, they’re trying again, testing the waters with a few small things that just keep getting bigger. They friend you again on Facebook. They start liking your posts. They show up at...
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+23 +5
Google: Piracy is An Availability and Pricing Problem
In a recommendation to the Australian Government, Google warns that draconian anti-piracy measures could prove counterproductive. Instead, the Government should promote new business models. "There is significant, credible evidence emerging that online piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem," Google states.
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+1 +1
Popcorn Time Is So Good at Movie Piracy, It's Scary
A new app called Popcorn Time raises that very question. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, Popcorn Time lets you stream the latest movies — including American Hustle, Gravity and Frozen – with just a couple clicks. The software uses BitTorrent to find and download movies, but eliminates the usual hassle of wading through sketchy torrent sites and waiting for the file to finish downloading.
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+14 +6
5 Myths We're Likely To Hear At Tomorrow's DMCA Hearing
Tomorrow, the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet is holding a hearing on the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Section 512, as part of a continuing reexamination of U.S. copyright law. We cover this important framework frequently, because it has been instrumental to the growth of the Internet – by many accounts online safe harbors “saved the Web.”
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+20 +5
SOPA may be returning in a much sneakier, worse fashion
Two years ago, major websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit blacked out their services as a form of digital protest against SOPA, the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act that leveraged law enforcement to prevent copyright infringement. While preventing piracy isn’t exactly an ignoble gesture, SOPA would have more or less given copyright holders exhaustive power over anything that arguably infringes on those rights...
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+7 +2
Supreme Court Denies Kim Dotcom Access to U.S. Evidence
Kim Dotcom and his alleged Megaupload co-conspirators have been denied access to the evidence gathered by U.S. authorities against them. Megaupload's legal team argued that this information is essential to mount a solid defense, but the Supreme Court ruled that full disclosure is not required under New Zealand law.
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+15 +4
Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament
In two months time citizens of all European Union member states will vote on who can represent them in the European Parliament. Pirate Parties will join the election race In several countries, with Finland having the most prominent candidate in Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde, who is also picked by the European Pirate Party as candidate for the European Commission presidency.
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+6 +2
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Will "Significantly" Restrict Online Freedoms
In October, Senate Finance Committee chairmen Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Max Baucus called on Congress to fast-track legislation that would give President Obama's trade representative, Michael Froman, power to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a broad-reaching, secretive trade agreement that, among other things, would create new internet regulations that concern open internet activists.
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+22 +4
Teller Wins Lawsuit Over Copied Magic Trick Performance
Teller is widely known as a great magician, but he has just pulled off a feat that is without equal among his peers. He has prevailed in a lawsuit against another magician who put up a copycat illusion on YouTube. Technically speaking, magic tricks aren't copyrightable. In a ruling by a Nevada federal court on Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Mahan states that explicitly.
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+19 +5
The Sweet Irony Of Popcorn Time
So the big fun story of last week was this streaming movie app called Popcorn Time. Essentially, it aggregated torrent links and packaged them with artwork and a nice interface that allows one-click streaming of movies.
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