Smurfs 2 might not be a memorable film, but it would probably go down in history in a notorious way. And not through any fault of its own, mind you. Almost comically, the film will be remembered in the piracy scene as the first title to have an Ultra HD, some would (incorrectly) call it 4K, copy ripped from a supposedly tightly protected UHD Blu-Ray Disc. In other words, the age of UHD BR piracy might be at hand.
The upcoming fifth season of the show Orange is the New Black isn't due to premiere on Netflix until June 9th, but most of the episodes have already been leaked online. A hacker by the name of "TheDarkOverlord" has taken responsibility for the leak, claiming to have stolen the episodes from a third-party production vendor. The first episode appeared online early Saturday, with the following nine released to torrent sites shortly after when ransom demands failed to be met.
The Recording Industry Association of America, more commonly known as the RIAA, is tired of the ‘antiquated’ process that is DMCA takedown requests. Both the RIAA and a total of 14 other groups have formally expressed their distaste for such takedowns, likening it to a game of whack-a-mole in which every request quickly results in a new listing for the same pirated content after the original is pulled. Instead, this collective wants to see ISPs filter out pirated content directly.
The days of content software receiving notices of copyright infringement from their internet service providers are about to come to an end. The Center for Copyright Information announced today that it's killing off its Copyright Alert System, which began seeing use four years ago. The system would send a number of warnings to consumers when ISPs, studios, and artists detected copyright infringement through P2P file sharing, with different punishments envisioned depending on how many warnings a person had received.
DRM, or Digital Rights Management (some call it Digital Restrictions Management), is a class of technologies and software aimed to protect copyrighted material from unauthorized access, a.k.a. piracy. But what if that DRM itself is guilty of helping pirates do exactly that? That is somewhat the position Google is finding itself in when the DRM technology it uses in its Chrome browser has been found to have a bug that actually makes it easier to lift encrypted videos streamed from the likes of Netflix or Amazon Prime and spread them around illegally.
There's no doubt that software piracy is a major issue around the globe, costing companies and developers no small amount of money. In an attempt to better understand the practice on national levels, a group of researchers from Germany's MPRA have conducted a study determining that the rate of software piracy is significantly lower in countries with a higher collective intelligence.
Since online piracy started becoming a thing in the late 90's, companies have warned that it cuts into sales. One could argue that piracy can act as a means for generating interest in something, which a person might later purchase. Or that pirates wouldn't be buying the movies/music that they illegally download anyway. A new study does show a link between movie piracy and lost sales, but it might actually be the studios' fault.
Piracy is bad, and you shouldn't do it. But that doesn't stop many people from doing it. While it's hard to say which company has their software pirated the most, Adobe is a company that is no stranger to the issue. They've tried different methods to prevent piracy, but today they're taking a different approach, shame.
An episode of Game of Thrones — already recognized as the world's most pirated show — getting leaked online early isn't exactly news anymore, especially after network HBO has taken great lengths to end such practices and only found partial success. However, in this case, where the latest episode of season six turned up online over 24 hours before its scheduled air date, it's the fact that it was HBO that leaked it in the first place that's interesting.
Piracy has been an issue for as long as digital content has been available. VCR's were once thought to kill the TV and movie industry, and we were told to not copy that floppy in the 90's. However, ever since Napster made online piracy almost mainstream, courts have cracked down on the offenders, and hard.
Different companies have different ways of dealing with piracy. Some will try to lock a game down with harsh DRM, which can sometimes backfire and prevent the game from being played by paying users. Others will simply use an Easter egg to shame pirates into (hopefully) purchasing a copy of the game. Quantum Break developer Remedy Entertainment went with the second option, but it looks like it still managed to affect legitimate game owners.
Following the recent sentencing of movie pirates in the United Kingdom, some curious folk hunted down the details on how police came to discover the pirates’ identities. Not surprisingly, and despite the prosecutor’s claim that the pirates had taken big steps to avoid detection, uncovering the pirates’ identities was pretty simple and largely revolved around the clumsy use of social media. In some cases, a single sentence was all it took.
