Items tagged with copyright infringement
"Don't be evil" -- that used to be part of Google's corporate code of conduct until last year. With that unofficial motto now gone, it may not be too surprising that Google has been fingered for a rather underhanded move regarding song lyrics that pop up in Google search (among other things). Genius, a popular song lyrics site, is accusing Google of blatantly and directly copying content from its site to populate its results panel when someone search for song lyrics. There are a number of lyrics sites on the web, so how could Genius possibly know that Google was stealing content from its website in particular? Well, here's the genius part of it the whole sting operation: Genius digitally...
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Nintendo is not a fan of third-party emulators and ROMs, to put it lightly. There is an entire FAQ section on its website that explains Nintendo's stance on emulators and ROMs, but lest the point has not been made, the company is suing two of the more popular console ROM sites for hosting pirated games. One of them has shut down. The two sites include LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co. According to TorrentFreak, both sites are believed to be operated by the same person, Jacob Mathias and his Arizona company Mathias Designs LLC. Arizona is where Nintendo filed the lawsuits, alleging copyright infringement for hosting a "staggering number" of pirated games. "The LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites are...
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Google's efforts to thwart piracy and appease organizations like the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) are pretty much non-stop. It involves removing millions of infringing links from search on a weekly basis, and more recently, Google tweaked its search algorithm to be better at downranking sites that receive a large number of valid DMCA notices. "We've now refined the signal in ways we expect to visibly affect the rankings of some of the most notorious sites," said Katherine Oyama, Google's Copyright Policy Counsel. "Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in search results. This ranking change helps users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily."...
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The impact of piracy on the music business has been studied in detail, but the relationship between illegal downloads and film revenue hasn't been explored to nearly the same degree. A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan and Wellesely College has examined the impact of BitTorrent on domestic and foreign ticket sales and come back with some interesting conclusions. The results of the study are being somewhat erroneously reported as "Piracy doesn't hurt the movie industry" but the truth is rather more nuanced. What the researchers found was that in the US, the drop-off in movie revenue from week to week for the period 2003-2006 remained consistent. In theory, the widespread...
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