Yesterday an appeals court helped the RIAA extort some £140,000-odd from Jammie Thomas-Rasset for distributing just 24 songs on the internet. The original verdict called for a preposterous penalty of £1.2 million. Sure, this new amount of just under £6,000 a song is lower, but ugh, it's still absurd and horrible. Read More >>
Yesterday marked the end of Joel Tenenbaum's court battle with the RIAA over 31 songs he illegally distributed on Kazza. A federal judge denied his latest appeal, and now he's on the hook for £426,000-odd. That's just under £14,000 per song — the minimum under the law — plus some wholesale character assassination that has now been sealed with judge's rubber stamp. Read More >>
TorrentFreak has posted a supposedly leaked presentation by the RIAA's chief lawyer that says that it defended SOPA and PIPA even though it knew the censorship legislation wouldn't be effective against music piracy. Is the RIAA for real or is it just covering its arse, and what does it mean for your freedom going forward? Read More >>
Featured comment by TrustyDuckling:
"What job does the RIAA really have other than to try and push through anti-piracy laws to make themselves seem relevant?" More »
In February, the founders of notorious file-sharing having The Pirate Bay were ordered to pay out £430,000 to music labels; the money was intended to compensate the artists whose royalties had been depleted by piracy. Guess what? They're not going to see a penny. Read More >>
Featured comment by mamirian:
"I'm not a fan of piracy by any means, but limiting search results to avoid piracy appears to be another step towards limiting the web all together! No..." More »
An RIAA bigwig just laid a blog post smackdown on Google, claiming the search giant doesn't do enough to remove links to copyrighted material. Apparently, processing more than one million requests for removal per month isn't enough. Read More >>
Featured comment by TrustyDuckling:
"The industry really is never going to understand that prevention is better than cure are they? People are willing to pay, just stop making it so hard..." More »
LimeWire has been kaput as a file-sharing service since October but that hasn't stopped its legal woes. Now, after settling with the RIAA to the tune of £66 million, the MPAA and a host of indie music labels have filed lawsuits against the company as well. Talk about beating a dead horse. Read More >>
Featured comment by Tacos:
"If you mean to download illegally, I know a few who do, but if you meant to buy, I'm just learning they have an online store." More »
MegaUpload has been under fire recently from the likes of the MPAA and the RIAA, who accuse the site of facilitating piracy. They've even gone so far as to dredge up Kim Dotcom's — the founder of MU — previous conviction of "computer hacking" and blasting the company's use of overseas servers. Read More >>
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