You probably remember the online outrage over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) copyright enforcement proposal. Last week, the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force released a report on digital copyright policy that endorsed one piece of the controversial proposal: making the streaming of copyrighted works a felony. As it stands now, streaming a copyrighted work over the Internet is considered a violation of the public performance right. The violation is only punishable as a misdemeanor, rather than the […]

I know people who do it. You probably know people who do it. And we’re not talking about falling in love. File sharing, the euphemism for copying and sharing copyrighted material without paying, was one of the early hallmarks of the digital, anything-goes-on-the-Internet age. Names like Napster became synonymous with killing the music industry. And there were countless lawsuits against groups and individuals aimed at curbing illegal sharing — but nothing seemed to work. Now, […]

Ready for your ISP’s and media outlets to know exactly what you are downloading, when, and where from? They have been doing that, but now they are not only keeping track of it, but they are going to use it against you. It is about to get a bit more difficult to download TV shows, movies or music online. A new alert system, rolling out over the next two months, will repeatedly warn and possibly […]