Crime Too, It Seems, Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

This morning I read in this Technically Incorrect post of Norwegian author Anne B. Ragde who publicly  spoke out about the amount of money she has estimated to have lost due to piracy of her e-books, apparently about $72,500. "I cannot stand the thought of someone stealing something. I look at Norwegian musicians who have to do live concerts. We have nothing to live on other than the physical product."

She then goes on to say that she buys knock off hand bags because the originals are too expensive. Say what?

Further, her son Jo has outed her for having some 1,800 pirated songs on her iPod! To which she originally admitted, then blamed Jo, and now is promising to delete the pirated music... I'm not about to stand on any soapbox and preach the virtues of good versus evil, but I do think we all need to step back and seriously consider what our values are, and then be true to them, and to ourselves. 

TrackDropper For Android - Putting The Booty Back Into Piracy

Think of how exciting it must have been back in the swash buckling days of yore when pirates sought riches and buried their treasure in chests, with maps marked with X's. arrrgh!

Today pirates are much less scary, mostly geeks who choose to acquire their audio files in less than acceptable ways, at least according to the real pirates who run the music industry. If the thrill of a potential lawsuit is not enough for ye thrill seekers there is a new way of looting your music. Trackdropper is an Android app that lets users "drop" songs in physical locations. Then, other users of the application can go on a treasure hunt to find and play the dropped songs. The goal is to make music piracy much more like old-fashioned nautical piracy. Here's how it works, courtesy of one of it's coders Yves Raimond:

TrackDropper from Yves Raimond on Vimeo.

Source: cnet

Tweet

France To Track And Punish Illegal Downloaders

French law makers have passed a lower house bill on Tuesday that would give the government of France the right to cut off the Internet access of repeat offenders in the illegal downloading battle. "Warnings to culprits would begin with two e-mails followed by a certified letter. If the piracy continues within the following year, access can be cut from two months to a year — while the user keeps paying for the service." according to this article published in the Globe and Mail. The law has its challengers however as some view it in conflict with a measure passed by the European Union a week ago, that would prohibit such measures. At the heart of the controversy is the illegal downloading of music and movies.

e-Books The Latest Target Of Pirates

The music and film industries have been fighting piracy on the Internet for years now, and it's become old news. Author's however have been relatively spared the fight, until now. With the proliferation of e-readers such as the Kindle, more and more digital copies of literary works are making their way onto the Internet where they are being made illegally available, for free.

“It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.”

Interestingly enough, one of the worlds best know authors has this to say “The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” Stephen King wrote in an e-mail message. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.”

Source: The New York Times

Backlash Against Movie's Leak Online

Logic would dictate that geeks everywhere would rejoice at the thought of an early, all be it illegal, release of an unfinished version of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” on the Internet. It seems however that movie and comic book fans as well as bloggers and some members of the BitTorrent community are encouraging each other to resist temptation and see the film in theatres. The NYTimes Bits Blog points out that "...one commentator on Releaselog, a popular blog among the file-sharing community, wrote : “i think it’s worthy of being seen the right way in the theatre. everyone should support this movie and help it get a massive take making it look like the leak actually helped it.” A commentator on SuperHeroHype, a forum geared toward comic book fans, wrote: “The workprint did nothing but make me want to see the final completed version even more.”"

I, for one, am a big fan of watching movies the way they were intended to be viewed... in the theatre!

U2's Bono Responsible For Leaked Music

In an interesting twist of fate, Bono is said to be responsible for the recent unauthorized release of 4 tracks from U2's upcoming album. According to this article in The Sun, Bono was blasting the tunes at his villa in the South of France when an alert passerby heard and recorded the music. The clips made it to youtube but it seems as though they have since been removed. Interestingly, U2 manager Paul McGuinness has been an outspoken opponent of tech companies like Apple and of some record labels saying "through lack of foresight and planning allowed a range of industries to arise that let people steal music."

CNet's news.com

RCMP make arrests under new copyright laws

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are claiming victory in the fight against movie piracy. With new legislation to back them, the RCMP have arrested a 25 year old Montreal man who is "facing two counts under the Copyright Act of knowingly distributing copyrighted material - pirated Hollywood films - on the Internet." according to the Globe and Mail. The police admit they have no way of knowing how many movies were pirated and sold but say they were tipped off by the FBI and the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association. The Canadian Government took action against piracy in June "when the government passed Bill C-59, amending the Criminal Code to make recording a movie without permission a crime punishable by two years in jail. Taping a film for future sale or rental carries a maximum five-year jail term." In this case the defendant is alleged to have used a camcorder to tape movies inside of a theatre and then distributed the pirated tapes via the Internet and on the street.