The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $222,000 in damages against her.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.

In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, the record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn’t have a Kazaa account.

Record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.

The RIAA says the lawsuits have mitigated illegal sharing, even though music file-sharing is rising overall. The group says the number of households that have used file-sharing programs to download music has risen from 6.9 million monthly in April 2003, before the lawsuits began, to 7.8 million in March 2007.

CNN

Yesterday, the electronics giant LG patented a washing machine that can play MP3s.

Now, families around the country can enjoy their favorite tunes and wash their dirty laundry with the same machine, which I’m sure has been the dream of many.

As LG describes their invention, “The washing device comprises: an input/output terminal for physically connecting the washing device with the MP3 player for data communication with the MP3 player; a connector for physically connecting the washing device with the MP3 player to receive an audio signal outputted from the MP3 player; a key input unit for inputting washing or drying mode conditions and a control command for the MP3 player from a user; a display unit for displaying information regarding an operation of a washing or drying mode and information regarding an operation of the MP3 player; an audio output unit for outputting a mode state in the form of an audio signal and the audio signal from the MP3 player received through the connector; and a controller for, in response to a control of the user through the key input unit, controlling the operation of the washing or drying mode, and controlling the operation of the MP3 player by performing the data communication with the MP3 player through the input/output terminal.”

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/9901.cfm

French antiP2P agency CoPeerRight has been distributing flyers to advertise their new services to film makers and executives at the Cannes Film Festival. Titled “Bytes Corrupted”, the company claims it can “protect your rights, before and after the digital piracy of your films.”

A closer look at their claims reveals it is nothing more than a standard IP trace and obfuscation technique. Their first step is to log the IP’s of those sharing it, reporting this to both the ISP of the users, and the service producers. The second, to attempt to flood the system with fake versions of those files.

How the thinking behind this goes to protect any rights before it’s been released onto the internet is unknown. Pretty much the only way to do this is to have a watchdog in the agency’s employ overseeing every single screening of those films – it’s well known that the vast majority of “film piracy” is committed by so-called industry insiders, and those are also the people entrusted to keep the copies secure, as well as being in the best position to make high quality copies of them.

The second phase of the Bytes Corrupted plan is a method that’s been around for more than 10 years, and is suggested by the plans name. In essence, it is the same plan that the RIAA tried years ago with Napster, in that they attempt to flood the networks with fake/corrupt versions of the file, hiding the real ones. The only problem is that this isn’t 1997 any more, and sites like Mininova have user accounts, where uploaders can attach a user name to the upload, giving a sort of ‘badge of quality’ to the torrent, that copycat fake uploaders can’t match. It already helps on Mininova to identify fake axxo film, as well as EZTV & VTV TV-torrent uploads.

Ultimately, its another 3rd rate anti-p2p effort undertaken by someone with no head for the fluid and dynamic world of file sharing, and probably more business acumen than techknowlege, and is doomed to be as impotent as most of these other techniques and services offered by a plethora of other anti-p2p companies.

http://torrentfreak.com/company-offers-to-sabotage-pirates/

This is a court case from Virginia where officers searched a man’s car because they saw what appeared to be home made cds on the seat of the car. They then found marijuana and arrested the man. He appealed the decision and the eveidence of the marijuana was thrown out because of the unlawful search. What I find very interesting is the officers had “training from the recording industry in recognizing pirated cds.”

What if the guy was a musician and it was his music? Talk about guilty until proven innocent. Where does the recording industry’s influence stop? They are conducting raids in foreign countries, training police here, what next? Their own terror squad?

According to an Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) news briefing, on May 29 a home in Pengang, Malaysia was raided for piracy of optical discs. The raid was carried about by ten Malaysian enforcement officers, accompanied by Motion Picture Association (MPA) represenatives.

The raiding party arrested a 42-year-old man, seized 200 DVD burners, 83 CD burners, as well as 15,800 blank DVD-recordable discs. The MPA estimates that the DVD burning lab was capable of creating 8,760,000 DVDs per year, yielding a revenue over $28million USD.

Of course, this is just a fraction of what the MPA would make if all discs were purchased legally for an average price of $20USD per disc, that would result in a $175,200,000USD payout.

The majority of young people who will be allowed to vote for the first time this September during national elections are in favour of file downloading - despite the fact that it is illegal.

The youngest voters, those aged 18-20, say the law prohibiting file sharing is wrong and is a cultural phenomenon, according to a May poll conducted by the Swedish paper Sydsvenskan and Temo Synovate survey.

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More than 50 law enforcement officials raided 10 locations, confiscating the computers and detaining three people.

ThePirateBay.org had described itself to be the largest search index for BitTorrent, a system used for sharing large files across the internet.

The entertainment industry welcomed the action against a site it argued was a major source of music and film piracy.

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LimeWire is a free and open source peer-to-peer file sharing client for the Gnutella network. It is released under the GNU General Public License. The program allows users to share files using the Gnutella peer-to-peer protocol. It was the first file sharing program to support firewall-to-firewall file transfers, a feature introduced in version 4.2, which was released in November 2004.

LimeWire is written in Java and therefore runs on any computer with the Java virtual machine installed. To facilitate installation for casual users, the developers release installation packages for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and for Linux, in RPM format. Classic Mac OS (Mac OS 9 and before) support has been dropped with LimeWire 4.0.10.

LimeWire uses the SHA-1 and Tiger tree hash cryptographically secure hash functions to ensure that downloaded data is uncompromised. Although researchers have identified possible vulnerabilities in the SHA1 algorithm, because LimeWire does not rely on SHA1 alone, these vulnerabilities do not have many adverse implications for LimeWire’s verification of downloaded files.

The Windows version of LimeWire installer includes a stripped-down version of Sun’s Java installer which will download and install version 1.5 of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) if it detects the machine doesn’t have Java, or has a version of Java below version 1.4.1.

Lime Wire LLC, the developer of LimeWire, distributes two versions of the program; a basic, free version, and an enhanced version sold for a small fee, which the developers claim [1] offers faster downloads. Prior to April 2004, the free version of LimeWire was distributed with a bundled program called “LimeShop” (a variant of TopMoxie), which was considered by computer security experts to be spyware. Among other things, LimeShop monitored online purchases in order to redirect sales commissions to LimeWire LLC. Uninstallation of LimeWire would not remove LimeShop. With the removal of all bundled software in LimeWire 4.0 (released May 14, 2004), these objections were addressed.

Being open source, LimeWire has spawned several forks, including LionShare, an experimental software development project at Penn State University, FrostWire, and Acquisition, a popular Macintosh-based Gnutella client with a proprietary interface. Researchers at Cornell University developed a reputation management add-in called Credence that allows users to distinguish between “genuine” and “suspect” files before downloading them.

According to a 28 June 2005 report in The New York Times, LimeWire LLC may stop distributing LimeWire due to the outcome of MGM v. Grokster. However, new versions are being released (4.10 released on March 18) with smarter search results, optimized downloads and other features. On September 25, it was reported that Lime Wire LLC was working on a version of the program which will refuse to share files that lack valid license information.

An October 12, 2005 report states that some of the LimeWire open source contributors have forked the project and called it FrostWire. The FrostWire project has a beta release, which is claimed to be equivalent in power to the nonfree version of Limewire. The FrostWire developers emphasize that they will never place any sharing-related restrictions on the client.

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Download Limewire here

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Here’s some points for helping to fix LimeWire if it’s not working properly. Close LimeWire before you try these things.

Try these things one by one until one works:

1. Update your Java version 1.5 (take the JRE) using the “Offline” version or for some people 1.4.2 HERE (Choose the JRE) seems to behave better in certain circumstances. Download the Java installer to your computer before installing by choosing the “Offlne” version. Don’t install it over the net.

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The website, run by MediaServices Inc., has long protested its innocence. Yet the prices are remarkable: a British shopper can download an album from iTunes Music Store for £9.79; or typically about £0.75 from AllofMP3, which prices its downloads by file size. And the choice is enormous. All those Beatles albums that Apple is not allowed to sell can be found at AllofMP3.com for under a pound.

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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.

Read more »

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.

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!

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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