A lawsuit filed Wednesday accuses the Motion Picture Association of America of hiring a hacker to steal information from a company that the MPAA has accused of helping copyright violators.The lawsuit (click for PDF), filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by Torrentspy.com parent Valence Media, doesn’t identify the man the company says was approached by an MPAA executive. But the suit calls the man a former associate of one of the plaintiffs and alleges that he was asked to retrieve private information on Torrentspy.com, a search engine that directs people to download links.

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The mission seems impossible. Hollywood is after all film pirates, people who illegally download first-run flicks and swap them in cyberspace.

Major film studios like Disney, Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures sued three Oahu men for allegedly sharing movies online.

“They oftentimes contact the FBI and highlight individuals who are the top downloaders of their product,” said FBI cyber crimes agent Arnold Laanui.

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µtorrent version 1.5 indicates that lude (the creator of utorrent) has decided to implement a modified searchbar. Once the user is redirected to the site in question a huge top banner is displayed. The actual site content is shown in a frame (nanatorrent.com). This development is in particular dangerous because utorrent is closed source meaning that they could have more spy/adware stuffed in the once clean software. We recommend that everyone uses a clean client without the advertising.

Germany is well known as an eDonkey2000 safe-haven. By many accounts it’s the most popular method of sharing information online; exceeding even the mighty BitTorrent protocol. Some of the most coveted file-sharing software has its origins from Germany, namely the highly popular and open source eDonkey2000 client, eMule.

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The Supreme Court sided with eBay in a patent fight Monday, ordering a lower court to reconsider whether the Web giant should have been barred from using contested technology.

Justices, in an unanimous opinion, said that judges have flexibility to consider several factors before they impose court orders barring continued use of a technology after juries find a patent violation.

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TRANSFERRING music from CDS onto iPods and other MP3 players will no longer be illegal after federal cabinet agreed to make sweeping changes to copyright laws.

But beware the trap of downloading from the internet. The Government will increase surveillance and fines on internet piracy in a package to be announced by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock today.

Once the new laws are passed, “format shifting” of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal. The new laws will also make it legal for people to tape television and radio programs for playback later, a practice currently prohibited although millions of people regularly do it.
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Red Hot Chilli Peppers launched an anti-P2P tirade when their song was leaked on the internets P2P networks. Even though you could find all these songs on Limewire and Kazaa  at the time, fast forward to today!

Today the music news from Hollywood: that new album from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers “topped the US charts for the first time in the band’s 22 year history.”! With unit sales 56% higher than their previous best seller, P2P sent this new CD into the sales stratosphere and without a doubt greatly improved everybody’s circulation. Other musicians should be so lucky to have legions of excited listeners supporting their latest releases by sending promo copies flying around the Internet.

Limewire and Kazza helped them get to where they are and the money that they are raking in as it was free promo, believe it or not!

There have been a few stories about this, but it hasn’t been clear just how widespread this is. In the article, the claim is made that an astounding 93% of domain names registered last month were for such scams — though, it would be nice to see something to back that up. Either way, consider this the next evolution of the typosquatting obsession.

Support a worthy course! This is from P2P net:

I’ve been doing my level best to keep this low key and between myself and Sharman Networks because I truly believe this is a 100%, solid gold, carved in rock freedom of speech issue, about people being able to say what they think and express what they believe online (or anywhere else) without fear. So Yes, I’m an evangelist. And Yes, I’m on a mission. Yes, I want to keep p2pnet online, and of course, I also want to keep my family safe because this has the potential to seriously affect us to a far greater extent than it’s done already, and no mistake.

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Helping you find the best lime wire or lime wire so you can live with lime wire today! We are currently updating the Limewire site! The freelimewire site will be down for a short period during the update.

Any reader who has ever tried to pick up a woman in Chicago may already be aware of the techniques which are absolutely guaranteed to result in abject failure - or worse.

For those of you yet to make a pitch to Illinois’ fairer sex, these no-nos include: sliming all over your intended victim; blatantly grabbing her breasts; throwing your hot sweaty oversized weight around near her; and shaking your big fat ass in her face.

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Plans for an area of the internet dedicated to pornography were killed last night in a vote by overseeing organisation ICANN.

In a split 9-5 board decision, the organisation acted ruthlessly, against its own previous position, in order to put an end to an increasingly difficult and controversial issue - the approval of a .xxx top-level domain.

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Several big travel sites are facing legal action in the US over unpaid hotel taxes.

Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Diego and Philadelphia are all taking action against sites including Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. The State of Texas is also getting involved. The different actions may be joined together as a class action case.

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US anti-piracy group the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) filed lawsuits yesterday against three suspected pirates who use eBay to sell copies of anti-virus software. The cases were filed at the District Court, Central District of California.

The three accused were selling copies of Symantec and McAfee products between October and November 2005.

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The prosecution of six men over allegations of software piracy as part of Operation Blossom racked up £18.4m in legal aid fees plus prosecution fees of more than £750,000. The case culminated with the conviction of all six men. One man was sentenced to two and a half years, the Guardian reports.

While the courts were happy to dole out porridge because of the case, the defendents’ lawyers are in a far happier position. Six firms of solicitors coined more than £14m between them while a team of 15 barristers who worked on the case won’t be short of a bob or too either.

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