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Financial results for the 2008 year show the RIAA spent more than $16 million and recovered less than $400,000.

Any wonder the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has stopped going after individual file sharers and has changed it's target to ISP's and bigger fish like LimeWire. Documents released at P2Pnet show they are making substantial losses in legal fees for prosecutions.

Results for 2006 and 2007 aren't much better with expenditure in excess of $50 million for legal fees and investigations with a grim return of less than $1 million.
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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has alleged that Mark Gorton, the founder of the largest file-sharing service LimeWire, has been hiding profit he has obtained through Lime Wire in an attempt to avoid paying damages to the industry.

The RIAA filed a complaint against Mr Gorton in 2006 for copyright and now claim that since then he has been placing LimeWire profits in a trust that he, his wife and their children control. The RIAA have appealed to the court to freeze both LimeWire and Mr Gorton’s assets. They went on to say that LimeWire had generated profits of $20 million through illegal file-sharing ...

Brazil, like many other countries, is obliged to implement rules on the use of digital rights management (DRM) technology and in doing so has developed a unique approach by allowing the ‘fair use’ of copyright material provided that it is not violating copyright laws. This approach allows for the prosecution of both those who illegally break copyright protection and those who unfairly use copyright protection.

According to the inquirer, the approach is a move towards a leniency in copyright protection so that copyright laws are not so easily broken while allowing the appropriate penalties to be ...

Internet users and file sharing gurus across Australia drew a collective sigh of relief last week when government officials announced their intentions to back off of their attempts at imposing a nationwide Internet content filter. After drawing a multitude of complaints from citizens concerned that the system would sensor far more than child pornography, Australian officials have decided to take the next year to refine the system.

Besides everyday computer users, the Department of Broadband, Communications, and Digital Media had been contacted by Google, Electronic Frontiers Australia, and even the
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You know what they say - 'If you can't beat them get someone else to try it for you' (that's right isn't it?). Anti-Piracy groups can't get rid of BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay on their own so they've decided to put pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to do the job for them. Anything for a result ... unfortunately for them, they don't seem to be getting the result they would like.

The Beligian Anti-Piracy Foundation (BAF) brought legal action against two ISPs - Belgacom and Telenet - in an attempt to get them to block the notorious BitTorrent site. The result has left them less than pleased as the Antwerp Commercial Court stated that the BAF's request was 'disproportionate'.
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The Pirate Bay, the worlds most resilient BitTorrent site has been hacked by a 23 year old known as Ch Russo. A security “hole” in the Pirate Bay's blog allowed Ch Russo to exploit 4 million user accounts, including details email and IP addresses.

According to Krebsonsecurity CH Russo gained access to the edit and delete functions along with creating user accounts including details of torrent uploads.

Since the hack, the Pirate Bay have issued a statement on their blog advised all users to change ...

Two UK ISP's are set to challenge the Digital Economy Act (DEA). TalkTalk and BT, have requested a judicial review of the Act which was rushed though by the Labour government before the election. In fact, MP's from all parties, including the current Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg argued that the bill should be passed and instead should have been debated longer due to it's complexity. He also said that it "badly needs to be repealed".

Both ISP's are seeking to clarify the legality of the act, and are questioning whether its proposals to cut file-sharing will work without harming "basic rights and freedoms".
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A representatice for the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) this week announced that the UK Government are opposed to new laws that ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) are planning to introduce.

In a statment to Computer Active the UK IPO said:

"ACTA should not introduce new intellectual property laws or offences. Instead, it should provide a framework to better enforce existing laws. The UK is opposed to the creation of new criminal offences at UK or EU level through [the treaty]."

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In 2007, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Native American from Minnesota was the subject of the first file-sharing copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States brought by major record labels. Thomas was found liable for sharing 24 copyrighted songs and ordered to pay a total of $222,000 in damages. However, it later transpired that there was an error in the jury's instructions and she was given a new trial that would take place on June 15th, 2009.

During the second trial, infringement had to be assessed as willful or non-willful, and damages assessed accordingly. Thomas was again found guilty of willful copyright infringement of all songs and was ordered to pay $1.92 million ($80,000 for each song) in statutory damages. The figure was later reduced to a more sensible one of $54,000.
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Pioneer One, a TV show that had it's debut on BitTorrent just over 2 weeks ago has proved to be a massive success with over 1 million downloads.

The first episode of the show that is exclusive to file sharers and cannot be watched on any of your television channels, is a project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith in conjunction with Vodo. The writer/director duo shot the episode for only $6,000 and surpassed all expections when the download tally was reported to have passed traditional television shows including Doctor Who and Family Guy released at the same time.
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Piratbyran, the Swedish anti-copyright group which founded The Pirate Bay has disbanded.

According to BBC News, one of Piratbyran's Founders, Marcin de Kaminski has said "we don't feel we are needed". He also went on to say that since the death of Co Founder Ibi Kopimi Botani, things have been tough. "Our group was very small, and when one of our members is no longer alive, it is hard to keep the group alive,"

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After a few years and numerous court battles, Search Engine giant Google has won it's court case against Viacom. Google was facing a $1 Billion claim for alowing users to upload and share copyrighted videos on it's YouTube video service.

Judge Louis Stanton said that Google are protected by the DMCA’s "safe harbor provision". In short, this means that Google do not have to remove any copyright infringing clips, unless the copyright holder formally requests it be removed.
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Alt.Binz is arguably one of the best newsreaders available. It is simple to setup and use, has automated repair and unpack functions, and it is free up to version 0.25.0. This is a step-by-step setup guide to optimize Alt.Binz.

1. Download Alt.Binz


2. Double click the download file and follow the installation steps.

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LimeWire the company that has been under increasing pressure in recent months by copyright infringement lawsuits has revealed a new plan to save it's bacon. It's going legit.

After discussions at the weekend with top executives the company has described it's new service expected to launch post lawsuit. The new service is said to include Desktop, Mobile and Web Based applications allowing users to both stream and download music. In addition to these services they will be reccommending components like push playlisting and curated content.

With so many available platforms, users will have access to their content, playlists and collections on the go at any given time. ...

There is always a new emergency going on in Government that demands constant attention and immediate action. However, in some cases the only emergency part about the situation is the actions that the Senates take for security purposes. The newest bill in Washington was proposed last Thursday, which stated that the President would have greater powers and control over the Internet for emergency situations. This includes being able, if necessary, to completely shut down sections of the Internet.
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SABnzbd is quickly becoming the dominant newsreader on Usenet and for good reason. This guide will serve as an overview for the basic installation and configuration.

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It's official, Newzbin is back online under the ownership of Team R Dogs.

The new "owners" had been keeping the site name and domain a secret from the beginning but have managed to bring the site back at Newzbin.com the original domain name. The name of the site is Newzbin2.
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Last week we told you how a hacker group named Team R Dogs claimed it hacked the Newzbin site before and obtained the source code and databases. Now Deepsharer, an ex Newzbin editor has published an interview with "Mr. White" of Team R Dogs.

The short interview was carried out on IRC and suggests that when the site is brought back, they hope will be around for a long time.

In terms of a time scale, Mr White said Newszbin will return "sooner than you think". The site design is expected to be a clone of the original Newzbin with a redesign planned a few months down the line. They also want to extend the current retention to 400 days, then to 600+ days after around 9 months.
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