The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has joined the steadily growing crowd that’s had enough of the Big Four Organized Music cartels’ vicious and bizarre sue ‘em all marketing scheme.
In its latest phk-up, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), owned by Warner Music, Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal and EMI, subpoenaed a Georgia family which A) doesn’t own a computer and B) isn’t even online.

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The music industry began the next phase of its fight against file sharers in Europe Tuesday, filing 2,000 more lawsuits against people in 10 countries. Altogether, some 5,500 lawsuits have been filed in 18 countries since the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) started its latest effort.

The IFPI is the European equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Here in the United Sates, the RIAA has filed nearly 18,000 lawsuits.

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A US man has been charged with conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud over a ‘click fraud’ scheme allegedly carried out against an internet firm that rewards subscribers who complete online surveys and view banner ads.

US Attorney Kevin Ryan said Allen Tam, of Daly City, California, was indicted on Tuesday, after an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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M’LEARNED FIENDS working on Nvidia’s behalf have served up a legal letter to hardware site ngohq.com, threatening it over a breach of the Digital Millenium (sic) Copyright Act (DMCA).The argy bargy has come about because Nvidia claims the site offered an “SLI” patch on the website- and that’s trademarked in the US and “in a number of foreign jurisdictions”.

Nvidia accuses the site of confusing consumers.

The site has responded. First of all, it said, the patch came from Asrock. Secondly, it claims that Nvidia hasn’t trademarked SLI in its country” and “didn’t even bother to open an office here”.

The web site is registered in Israel.

The site said it removed the patch anyway yonks ago and that it doesn’t care for threats. “If Nvidia wants to solve this nicely then there is a way to discuss this matter with us. And that’s by PR.”

Beijing Secondary People’s Court has begun to hear a lawsuit filed by Shanghai Busheng Music and Culture Company against Beijing Feixingwang Music Software Development Company, who is accused of software copyright infringement.

No judgment has been released and another hearing is expected soon.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31026

Hong Kong record companies are dropping their first civil action against a man who illegally shared music files on the Internet after he expressed regret and agreed to pay compensation, an industry body said.

Yeung Chun-choi, who said he was a computer novice and that his daughters spent much of their time on the machine, had been served with a writ by seven record companies earlier this month alleging that he uploaded music onto the Internet, making it available for illegal sharing.

However, following two rounds of negotiations with the senior management of the companies, Yeung vowed not to infringe copyright again and the companies would drop the case against him, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said.

A patent infringement dispute has erupted between rival DVD rental services Netflix and Blockbuster over an alleged breach of Netflix business method patents by the older firm’s internet arm, Blockbuster.com, according to reports.

In general, Netflix operates by allowing subscribing members to choose DVDs – the number allowed depends on the subscription plan chosen. These are then posted out to members for viewing and return.

The most popular plan costs $17.99 per month, for which members can rent as many DVDs as they like and keep them for as long as they want, but can only have three DVDs out at any one time. The firm does not charge for late returns.

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A Swedish prosecutor says Big Six studio efforts to nail a man they say shared a movie online may have effectively slammed the door in their faces.
A Swedish appeal court yesterday ruled it couldn’t hear a case against a 27-year-old man who’d been fined the equivalent of 80 days’ salary by Sollentuna district court for breaking copyright laws, says The Local.
“He admitted making the Swedish action film ‘The Third Wave’ accessible to others through a file sharing programme.”

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Organized Music cartel members Warner Music (USA), Sony BMG (Japan, Germany), Vivendi Universal (France) and Emi (Britain) have gone to the mattresses in their desperate efforts haul alienated customers and former customers, driven to the p2p networks and independent music download sites by exorbitant corporate download prices, poor quality product and ongoing intimidation tactics, back into the fold.

The multi-billion-dollar Big Four own numerous ‘trade’ associations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association), ARIA (Australian RIAA (Recording Industry Association), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), and so on, ad nauseum.

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Technical post ahoy. In February this year the Razorback Ed2k (Edonkey) server was seized by Belgian Police. Here’s a quote from Slyck:

Razorback2 was an eDonkey2000 indexing server - very different in nature from an indexing site such as ShareReactor. Unlike indexing sites, Razorback2’s index was only available through an eDonkey2000 client such as eMule. While it does not host any actual files or multimedia material, it does index the location of such files on the eDonkey2000 network. The legality of such indexing remains questionable, however this has not deterred copyright enforcement actions.

The important point here is the “indexing server” part, and that’s what this blog entry is about.

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People have complained about the price of recorded music for decades. It’s always seemed a little fishy that there was no price competition between the labels, and that CDs have always remained more expensive than cassettes, even though the discs are now dirt cheap to make. When music went digital, why did we see so few price points for individual tracks? Today, why are all the major labels simultaneously making noise about wanting Apple to offer variable pricing? The whole situation fueled paranoid claims about industry collusion and price-fixing that later turned out to be totally justified.

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TorrentSpy, as its name suggests, is a BitTorrent indexing site. Considering much of the terminology associated with file-sharing is rooted in little more than colloquialisms, the exact function of a “BitTorrent indexing site” is generally considered a “catalog” of available files - including movies. An indexer shouldn’t be confused with a tracker, which hosts the actual torrent file, coordinates the file swarm and directs BitTorrent traffic.

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The Columbus Farmers Market in Burlington County must pay the record industry to compensate for thousands of pirated CDs and cassettes sold there, a federal judge has ruled. The exact amount will be determined later, but the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued the indoor-outdoor flea market in 2003 for copyright infringement on behalf of 14 big record companies, said damages could range from $500,000 to $125 million.

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The MPAA, the organization representing the interests of the major movie and television studios, filed several lawsuits against various indexing sites on February 23, 2006. These sites included many of the larger BitTorrent, eDonkey2000 and Usenet indexing communities. ed2k-it.com, an eDonkey2000 hash link exchange site, was among those named in the seven lawsuits.

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