Items tagged with file-sharing
Everyone has heard of patent trolls or copyright trolls like Righthaven, but the rapid evolution of the new porn troll has scientists puzzled. This new species of lawyer has emerged in the past two years as an intriguing example of how natural selection can quickly influence the trajectory of a species. Like its brethren, the porn troll issues a flood of letters to alleged infringers. What's unique about many of these lawyers, however, is the scope and nature of the actions. Think of it as a class-action lawsuit in reverse. Porn trolls gather several hundred anonymous users who are identified only by IP address, files suit against all of them simultaneously, subpoenas the ISP, and sends a letter...
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After the arrest in New Zealand of MegaUploads founder Kim Dotcom and shutdown of the site over allegations of digital piracy, any and all sites that facilitate file sharing should take notice. At least one, FileSonic.com, is taking steps to distance itself from that kind of negative attention from law enforcement. It announced, via a simple banner on its homepage, that it has disabled file sharing. The banner reads: “All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.” FileSonic, which is based in Hong Kong and UK, offers free and paid storage plans. The free option gives users 10GB of...
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Minnesota has always been an interesting and often unpredictable state when it comes to politics and law. That's why a court case against 30 year old Jammie Thomas is certainly worth following.Thomas has been accused of sharing over 1700 songs via Kazaa. Things get interesting when she, along with numerous other Kazaa users, received a spam message (Wait, isn't that against the TOS?) that warned users of the file-sharing service that they were violating copyright law. So far this is nothing new, we've all heard this kind of story before.Things get interesting when you talk about the date the she allegedly received the TOS-violating spam, which would be 2/21/2005. Mrs....
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