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Items tagged with RIAA
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is showing no signs of slowing down when it comes to wiping the web of links that participate in or encourage piracy. Just the opposite, the RIAA is ramping up its efforts and has now surpassed 50 million pirate link takedown requests issued to Google, up from 25 million less than a year ago. On average, the RIAA requests that more than 321,000 URLs be taken down from Google's search results per week. Almost two million of those requests were related to FilesTube, a search engine that happily serves up links to illegal video downloads. The site...
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Kim Dotcom has a history of bad behavior that runs the gamut from computer fraud to insider trading and embezzlement. More recently, Dotcom ran Megaupload, a now defunct website that was once a popular portal for hosting files, especially copyrighted material, which is why the U.S. government shut it down in 2012. U.S. authorities are now trying to extradite Dotcom from New Zealand so that he can stand trial for various alleged crimes, and there will be a hearing on July 7 to see if that happens. In the meantime, Dotcom is fighting back with funds. Dotcom has put the word out that he's willing...
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Google has released a 26-page report detailing how it strives to balance the rights of copyright owners against fair use policies and individual users. The search giant has come under increasing fire from copyright owners over the past few years, and faced repeated accusations that it earns enormous amounts of money from the ads that run on pirate websites. Meanwhile, the company's YouTube takedown policy has been criticized at times from the other end, particularly when it's used to remove content that someone else found inconvenient, embarrassing, or just didn't like One of the changes Google...
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On any given day in the United States you will find a number of really, really terrible ideas being floated as smart decisions. Flying to Hawaii to give birth in the ocean surrounded by dolphins. A drunk man repeatedly directing traffic in midtown Manhattan. And, today, from the USA Intellectual Property Theft Commission, a 90 page report on the state of IP around the world, the dangers posed to American IP by the Internet, and one remarkable suggestion on how to fix the problem. Additionally, software can be written that will allow only authorized users to open files containing valuable information....
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The RIAA isn't an entity that's looked fondly upon by many consumers, given that they've been pretty bent on making it difficult for consumers looking to purchase music legally in the digital age. Granted, we're (mostly) out of the DRM era, but those memories remain for many. Despite that, the RIAA is still an important association in the grand scheme of the music universe, particularly when it comes to counting sales and pointing to albums and artists having the broadest impact. In a move that shows the association becoming more at peace with the digital shift, the Recording Industry Association...
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While the country's biggest music labels all seek out a passing of a "six strikes" scheme - one that would result in your Internet being cut off after your sixth offense - BMG has found another way to both increase its revenue and instill fear in music downloaders. Typically, if a copyright holder detects an infringement on your IP address, your ISP is legally-required to forward you a letter. Usually this letter is nothing more than a warning, and can usually be brushed off. But BMG has just gotten creative. Instead of sending a simple warning letter, BMG's creatively-written letter asks for $20...
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Yesterday, we covered comments from the RIAA on how it believes courts have weakened the DMCA to the point of uselessness and why the organization supports the highly controversial E-PARASITE Act. It's not the first time we've covered the controversial legislation, but the leader of the RIAA, Cary Sherman, has weighed in with his own personal views and rebuttal. It's unusual for the head of the RIAA to directly confront such criticism, and it's worth revisiting the topic to evaluate his response. Sherman's argument rests on two premises. First, it should be unacceptable to any of us involved in...
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It's no surprise that the RIAA is unhappy with the DMCA, given how fervently the organization supports the beautifully named E-PARASITE Act. However, a lawyer from the organization has shed new light on exactly why the recording industry (and presumably the MPAA as well) thinks the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is broken. "I think Congress got it right, but I think the courts are getting it wrong," Pariser said during a panel discussion at the NY Entertainment & Technology Law Conference. "I think the courts are interpreting Congress' statute in a manner that is entirely too restrictive of...
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New sales data from the RIAA indicate that record sales are up 1 percent for the first half of 2011 as compared to 2010. Total album sales in the first half of 2011 totaled 155.5 million, up from 153.9 million in 2010. A one percent gain might seem meaningless in any other industry, but we're talking about music sales, which have been declining every single year since 2004. There is, of course, a great deal of change going on underneath that single macro percentage point. Music consumption patterns have shifted dramatically in the past seven years. CD sales continue to decline, but a portion of...
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Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the boat a minute, young fella. We like to fancy ourselves an intelligent bunch, but something just isn't adding up. According to market research firm The Nielsen Company, music sales in the U.S. are up 1.6 percent in 2011. The reason, Nielsen says, has a lot to do with the explosive growth of digital album and track sales. How can that be if, as the RIAA would have us believe, starving artists are out in the streets begging for handouts as piracy kills the music business? We're embellishing a bit here, sure, but the point we're making is that the RIAA's fear mongering needs...
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Earlier this week, we covered Amazon's announcement of its new 5GB Cloud Drive service. Amazon is pushing the free service as a "upload once, access anywhere" option that allows users to play the music they want, wherever they are. When questions of licensing were raised, Amazon spokesperson Cat Griffin told Ars Technica: "Cloud Player is an application that lets customers manage and play their own music. It's like any number of existing media management applications. We do not need a license to make Cloud Player available." The music industry isn't particularly happy with that answer, and neither...
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It's been nearly a decade since the music industry declared war against file sharers via its controversial policy of suing individuals supposedly identified via their IP addresses. After all this time one would expect the various companies to present a consistent, united front. As a recent court filing against Limewire shows this is absolutely not the case. Last May, federal district court judge Kimba Wood granted the record industry's request for a summary judgement against Limewire. With their winning ticket in hand, the RIAA withdrew to contemplate the level of statutory and punitive damages...
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Many are concerned about the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA, S.3804), which could potentially make it possible for the Justice Department to have sites removed from the DNS system for doing something as small as linking to a BitTorrent site such as The Pirate Bay, even in the context of an article. It appears that the bill is dead, at least for this session of Congress, but the RIAA has already given us an example what might happen if it were to become law. PCMag.com, a respected tech journal, wrote about its experience. They described how, after writing an article...
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Most of the major television networks—CBS, ABC, and NBC, as well as Hulu.com—have blocked Google TV's from accessing their online offerings, on the grounds that allowing users to watch videos at CBS.com damages the website's ability to earn revenue. The networks' stance almost guarantees that the question of what is and isn't blockable will end up in court—but irate Google TV owners and hackers in general aren't waiting for a legal decision. According to a recent blog post on the subject, the Google TV block isn't based on a browser string or on the technical capabilities of the...
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