Want to lure people away from pirate websites? Then be prepared to give them some free stuff. A new study from PricewaterhouseCoopers finds that most self-admitted pirates don’t mind ads, as long as they still get their content for free. VOD was much less popular. Read more »
Today on the Net: The Super Bowl was the biggest TV event ever, Evan Stone is trying to singlehandedly stop P2P piracy and Microsoft tried hard to get Conan for its Xbox Live service. Read more »
A few thousand consumers are pledging to never ever download any unlicensed movie via BitTorrent again, as long as Hollywood offers them a legal alternative that comes without DRM, local restrictions, release windows and premium pricing. Illusionary demands, or a necessary attempt to aim high? Read more »
Most video- game developers see digital piracy as an enemy to be fought tooth and nail, but not Markus Persson. While he isn’t happy about people copying his game illegally, he sees it as a necessary part of doing business, and even a potential marketing benefit. Read more »
The adult industry’s Free Speech Coalition has been using technology from Vobile to track porn piracy for a few months now while also trying to educate consumers. The results of these efforts have the coalitions executive director thinking about embracing iTunes-like pricing for adult content. Read more »
Private Media Group CEO Berth Milton doesn’t think it’s worth fighting piracy. The porn veteran wants to instead give the content of his adult entertainment company away and use it as a free promotional tool to build a new business based on actual real-life sex. Read more »
Today on the Net: Netflix edged out Hulu in terms of overall web traffic according to comScore, admins of BitTorrent site Inerfim.ru are charged in a $1.25 billion copyright infringement suit and 3-D TV is going to be huge by 2015. Read more »
Steve Jobs promised iPad users “freedom from porn,” and Apple isn’t approving any adult-themed apps for the device. Porn studios like Private Media nonetheless target iPad owners, and Private CEO Ilan Bunimovitz told us that his company has an equally promising offer to make: Freedom from DRM. Read more »
Authorities at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency seized the domains of nine websites that had been charged with illegally pirating first-run movies. But merely a day later, two of them have already reappeared, highlighting the problem of trying to enforce copyright globally. Read more »
Three strikes and you’re out used to be the entertainment industry’s favorite approach against P2P piracy. However, with more and more people moving towards one-click hosters, Paramount COO Frederick Huntsberry is now calling three strikes ineffective, instead calling for laws to have ISPs block pirate websites. Read more »
Ashton Kutcher has announced via Twitter that he is going to pirate part of the premiere of his upcoming movie Killers. Kutcher is known as an avid live streamer and social media user — but could this latest promotional stunt also turn him into a criminal? Read more »
Looks like P2P piracy isn’t just for zit-faced teenagers anymore: the act of downloading videos, music, e-books and other goodies is most popular with male users between the ages of 20 and 29, according to a new survey by Germany’s GfK Panel Services that was commissioned […] Read more »
Web-connected TV: A Distant Dream for App Makers; app developers are staying away from Yahoo’s Connected TV and similar platforms because environment is too restricted, fragmented. (Business Week) A Detailed Look at VUDU’s Streaming Technology, and What It Means to Walmart; optimized encoding and flexible UI […] Read more »
Which movie is gonna take home the prestigious Best Picture price: Avatar or The Hurt Locker? That’s the big question of tonight’s Academy Awards, if we can believe Hollywood pundits. Both movies have been nominated for nine awards, and anything seems possible. Of course, Avatar has […] Read more »
Livestream has issued an open letter touting its “zero tolerance” piracy policy while also comparing its policies against those of Justin.tv and Ustream, its closest competitors. The letter, which is addressed to “content and event owners” (i.e. potential customers), seeks to differentiate it how it treats […] Read more »
The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing members of the adult film industry, will be introducing its new anti-piracy program this week in an effort to weed out the number of sites that re-distribute porn content without paying its producers. The porn industry trade association’s […] Read more »
British ISP TalkTalk, who has four million customers after having gobbled up AOL U.K. and Tiscali U.K. in recent years, has vowed to not divulge any customer information to rights holders in pursuit of alleged P2P infringers, according to a report from Torrentfreak. TalkTalk also said […] Read more »
Okay, let’s admit it. We all have our own ideas of what a movie pirate looks like. Maybe we think of him as a sun-depraved teenager, spending his nights scouring torrent sites. Or we remember the guy who tried to sell us bootleg DVDs downtown the […] Read more »
An interesting article at the financial blog 24/7 Wall St. today estimates the total cost of pirated apps to the App Store, for both Apple and developers, to be somewhere near the $450 million-mark. That number depends on a revenue estimate of between $60 million and $110 […] Read more »
A new study released by a German consumer advocacy group is estimating that entertainment and software companies sent roughly 450,000 cease-and-desist letters to local file sharers alone in 2010 2009, yielding some $370 million in damages. That’s a steep jump from 2008, when the group tracked […] Read more »
