French court says downloading may be OK for personal use. A French appeals court has dismissed charges against a P2P user accused of downloading over 500 movies and sharing them with friends. The court stated that article L-122-5 of the French Intellectual Property Code allows users to make copies ...

Rat said:

ProgRocker wrote:
How much garbage does your P2P app install on your PC?
Yeah, see also: http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.php?t=1767

Rat, I think you & I are reading the same news sources.

Cheers.

Australian ISP raided for BT link.
Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) just served a warrant on an ISP in Perth, Australia. This one's striking close to home, Battye. I sure hope it's not your ISP.

Cheers.

How much garbage does your P2P app install on your PC? A rather eye-opening chart compares several P2P apps based on the length of their EULAs (end user licensing agreements) and how much spyware and registry changes the apps add to the user's system. If you thought Kazaa only installed a few bundl...

SXSW is big on file-sharing.
So big on it, that the South by Southwest music festival folks are providing a huge BT file with 750 songs (2.6GB) for fans. Talk about opening the floodgates on free stuff...

Cheers.

FEC backpeddles on blogger stance. The other day I reported (ranted?) on how a Federal Election Commission member warned bloggers about linking to campaign sites, lest they run afoul of federal campaign laws. This caused a hotbed of concern and much discussion among bloggers (my news aggregator has...

First person convicted under Arizona file sharing law. A University of Arizona student pleaded guilty to "possession of counterfeit marks, or unauthorized copies of intellectual property," under Arizona's novel antipiracy law. The student, who had been downloading, copying and selling mov...

Russian cheapo .mp3 download site off the hook for now. AllofMP3.com, a Russian site that sold downloads for pennies per megabyte will not be prosecuted by the Moscow police afterall. Although the site lacked proper license agreements with The Music Cartel, it apparently had not violated any Russia...

Bloggers under fire? This isn't a file-sharing issue, but it's one that may be of interest to the bloggers among us. Recently there have been a few potential legal concerns surrounding the operation of weblogs. The first being whether or not bloggers enjoy the so-called "reporter's privilege,&...

Apparently, some of the defendants didn't settle out of court, which means their litigation will continue. I'm surprised such a large number of them settled. A much smaller percentage of the U.S. cases have settled, leaving a lot of file-sharing cases that may go to trial.

Cheers.

The incentive for keeping P2P illegal. A blog article I found discusses The Entertainment Cartel's incentives for making P2P technologies illegal (i.e., Grokster). The mere fact that infringing activity is occurring by way of certain technologies may work in the industry's favor, as that gives them...

There are a lot of reasons to avoid iTunes, DRM being one of them. The story Rat posted gives us all another reason. The Reg has coverage of the iTunes pricing scandal.

Cheers.

RIAA sues another 753 alleged file-sharers. The Music Cartel has filed lawsuits against another batch of alleged file-sharers , including defendants on networks at 11 colleges and universities. Sadly, these news stories are becoming routine. This latest batch of defendants brings the RIAA jihad bod...

The next generation of downloading. A Washington Post article discusses the paid download services and the challenges faced by the Music Cartel. (Article requires free registration - use BugMeNot to side-step the reg. process.) The trouble with implementing those objectives and making them palatabl...

Musicians speak out in favor of Grokster. Not all major recording artists march in lockstep with the RIAA's attack on P2P. A group of musicians, including Steve Winwood, Heart, and Chuck D, are adding their support for Grokster in an amicus (friend of the court) brief to be filed with the U.S. Supr...