During Google’s ongoing legal dispute with Oracle, the judge presiding over the case revealed the Internet giant’s Android mobile operating system was not profitable in 2010, Reuters reported. Google does not publicly report financial information regarding its Android operating system, however the judge did not disclose specific figures, but instead said it lost money in each quarter of 2010. “That adds up to a big loss for the whole year,” he said. Oracle argued that Google should not be able to deduct certain Android expenses for the purposes of copyright damages related to the case.

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Lawyers representing the six major Hollywood studios, the United States government and Megaupload met in District Judge Liam O’Grady’s courtroom on Friday, CNET reported. The appearance pertains to digital files belonging to as many as 60 million people throughout the world that are stored on Megaupload’s 1,100 servers. The files are currently located on servers owned by Carpathia Hosting, which is now housing them at its own expense, however the company is looking to delete the information or possibly sell off the servers. Carpathia claims the cost of hosting the data is a financial burden and has asked the court for relief. The U.S. government in January arrested and charged Megaupload’s founder Kim Dotcom, along with six others, with racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering. But before the trial even starts, the first order of business will be to determine whether Megaupload’s lawyers will be allowed to address the court.

Government officials have argued that Ira Rothken, the lawyer in charge of the company’s defense, and his law firm Quinn Emanuel, should not be allowed to represent Megaupload in court. Schapiro’s past record in copyright cases has come into question and it may pose a possible conflict of interest. The law firm represented Google and YouTube after Viacom filed a copyright suit against them in 2007, and YouTube managers may testify as witnesses against Megaupload.

The government also claimed that in order to reclaim the data, Megaupload will need more of its money that was seized, and officials are opposed to the idea of releasing more of the company’s funds. Rothken argues that all parties are in agreement over Megaupload’s data, however, and they believe it should be preserved. The Electronic Frontier Foundation would like to see the court return the data to its rightful owners and even the Motion Picture Association of America wants to preserve the information for possible legal action in the future.

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A federal appeals court on Thursday revived Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google’s YouTube video-sharing website, The Wall Street Journal reported. The media conglomerate had alleged that YouTube allowed users to post unauthorized Viacom content between 2005 and 2008. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to a lower court, instructing a district judge to determine whether YouTube had knowledge or awareness of infringing material and if it was unwilling to remove it. “We are pleased with the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals,” Viacom said in a statement. “The court delivered a definitive, common sense message—intentionally ignoring theft is not protected by the law.” Tensions between the two companies looked to be easing; just yesterday, Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures struck a deal with the Internet giant to allow more than 500 of its movies to be rented through YouTube and the Google Play marketplace.

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Google on Tuesday offered to pay Oracle a percentage of its Android revenue if Oracle wins a patent infringement suit set to be tried soon. Google offered to pay the company roughly $2.8 million in damages on the two patents remaining in the case, giving Oracle 0.5% of Android revenue on one patent until it expires this December, and 0.015% on a second patent until it expires in April 2018. Reuters reports that Oracle rejected the offer, however, claiming it was too low. Earlier this month, a U.S. judge in San Francisco scheduled the trial between the two companies for April 16th. Oracle sued the the Mountain View-based firm in 2010, alleging that Google’s Android operating system infringes Oracle’s intellectual property covering the Java programming language. In addition, the company is also suing Google for copyright infringement, which could reportedly earn Oracle hundreds of millions of dollars. The company previously claimed that the search giant earns $10 million in annual revenue each day from Android activations.

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Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who was arrested and charged with racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering in one of the largest criminal cases of its kind, is maintaining his innocence. Dotcom has previously questioned his accusers’ motives, claiming he isn’t a so-called piracy king, but a man who ran a legitimate business that offered online storage and bandwidth. In an interview with TorrentFreak, Dotcom said that he can refute nearly every claim in the case being brought against him. Read on for more.

The Megaupload founder claims that the entertainment industry was eager to work with the site and even offered emails from big media companies including Disney, Warner Brothers and Fox as evidence. Dotcom previously claimed many U.S. government officials including members of the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate used the file-sharing service as well. He even said the service had more than 15,000 members who were serving in the U.S. military, many of whom used it to share photos with their loved ones.

While Dotcom appears able to prove U.S. government officials and employees used Megaupload’s services, he offered very little in the way of concrete evidence proving his innocence with regard to the charges filed against him.

“We did nothing wrong,” Dotcom said. “Watch out for our first motion in response to the MPAA-sponsored Department of Justice indictment. It will be enlightening and maybe entertaining.”

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In an effort to bypass censorship as well as heat from authorities and copyright owners, The Pirate Bay on Sunday unveiled new plans to “experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air.” The GPS controlled drones will hover over international waters and host parts of the website. “Everyone knows WHAT TPB is. Now they’re going to have to think about WHERE TPB is,” The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak. “We’re already the most resilient and the most down to earth. That’s why we need to lift off, being this connected to the ground doesn’t feel appropriate to us anymore.” The Pirate Bay has been the subject of a number of raids and investigations stemming from numerous claims of copyright infringement. In order to stay afloat, the service seemingly must find new and innovative ways to reach the masses. ”We’re just starting so we haven’t figured everything out yet. But we can’t limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore,” the team stated on its blog. “These Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) are just the first attempt. With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away. For the proxy system we’re building, that’s more than enough.”

[Via TorrentFreak]

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A U.S. judge in San Francisco has scheduled the trial between Oracle and Google for April 16th, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Oracle sued Google in 2010, alleging that the Mountain View-based company’s Android operating system infringes Oracle’s intellectual property covering the Java programming language. In addition, the company is also suing Google for copyright infringement, which could earn Oracle hundreds of millions of dollars. “These patent and copyright claims are without merit, and we look forward to defending against them at trial,” Google spokesman Jim Prosser said. The trial is expected to last eight weeks.

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On Wednesday, Sweden’s Supreme Court announced that it decided not to grant an appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay trial. After a nine-day trial in April 2009, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to one year each in prison and payment of roughly $7 million in damages. Each defendant appealed the verdict, and in November 2010 the sentences were shortened, but the fines were increased. The new sentence was again appealed, and now the Supreme Court has rejected those appeals. Sunde must serve eight months in prison, with Neij facing 10 and Lundström to face four months. Svartholm, who missed the hearing do to illness, will be forced to serve a one year prison sentence. One of the defendants, however, reached out to TorrentFreak and informed the website that he plans appeal the new sentence at the European Court of Justice.

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AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon have reached an agreement with music and movie publishers that will help enforce copyright infringement while giving the ISPs a chance to level with their customers. According to Ars Technica, copyright owners will continue to scour the dark corners of the net looking for anyone downloading and illegally sharing their content. If an IP is found to be downloading or sharing illegal content — likely via P2P networks — the music and movie companies will alert the ISP directly. ISP’s will then send a note to the offending customer, without passing off private information unless there is a court order to do so. Users may get up to four alerts from the ISP, but after that the ISP can choose to start implementing “temporary reductions of Internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some educational information about copyright, or other measures that the ISP may deem necessary to help resolve the matter.” If a user believes he or she has been targeted without merit, an appeals process can be started for a $35 fee but, as Ars Technica notes, it’s unclear who will be the judge in that process. Read on for the full details on the six strikes.

First Alert: In response to a notice from a copyright owner, an ISP will send an online alert to a subscriber, such as an email, notifying the subscriber that his/her account may have been misused for content theft, that content theft is illegal and a violation of published policies, and that consequences could result from any such conduct. This first alert will also direct the subscriber to educational resources which will (i) help him/her to check the security of his/her computer and any Wifi network, (ii) provide explanatory steps which will help to avoid content theft in the future and (iii) provide information about the abundant sources of lawful music, film and TV content.

Second Alert: If the alleged activity persists despite the receipt of the first alert, the subscriber may get a second similar alert that will underscore the educational messages, or the ISP may in its discretion proceed to the next alert.

Third Alert: If the subscribers account again appears to have been used for content theft, he/she will receive another alert, much like the initial alerts. However, this alert will provide a conspicuous mechanism (a click-through pop-up notice, landing page, or similar mechanism) asking the subscriber to acknowledge receipt of this alert. This is designed to ensure that the subscriber is aware of the third copyright alert and reminds the subscriber that content theft conducted through their account could lead to consequences under the law and published policies.

Fourth Alert: If the subscribers account again appears to have been used for content theft, the subscriber will receive yet another alert that again requires the subscriber to acknowledge receipt.

Fifth Alert: If the subscribers account again appears to have been used for content theft, the ISP will send yet another alert. At this time, the ISP may take one of several steps, specified in its published policies, reasonably calculated to stop future content theft. These steps, referred to as Mitigation Measures, may include, for example: temporary reductions of Internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some educational information about copyright, or other measures that the ISP may deem necessary to help resolve the matter. ISPs are not obligated to impose any Mitigation Measure which would disable or be reasonably likely to disable the subscribers voice telephone service (including the ability to call 911), e-mail account, or any security or health service (such as home security or medical monitoring). The use of the mitigation measure is waivable by the ISP at this point.

Sixth Alert: Whether or not the ISP has previously waived the Mitigation Measure, if the subscribers account again appears to have been used for content theft, the ISP will send another alert and will implement a Mitigation Measure as described above. As described above, it’s likely that very few subscribers who after having received multiple alerts, will persist (or allow others to persist) in the content theft.

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After weeks of leaks and speculation, Canada’s reigning Conservative government outlined its plans to amend the ageing Copyright Act. According to the outline, anyone convicted of bypassing the DRM of a given media format — even if legally purchased — will be subject to a fine of up to $5,000. But if the circumvention of DRM is done for profit, then the fine is raised to $1 million. Convicted downloaders of copyrighted materials will face significantly weaker penalties with a fine of $5,000, down from the present day maximum of $20,000. Canadians will also be allowed to use copyrighted materials to create mashup videos for sites such as YouTube, and the law books will finally acknowledge that commonplace activities such as recording TV, radio and internet broadcasts are okay. The same applies for backing media for personal use or archival purposes, but so long as DRM is not tampered with. Cellphone unlocking was not mentioned, although Heritage Minister Tony Clement said that it is currently legal to unlock phones so long as that phone is not currently under contract from a carrier. In an editorial co-autored with Heritage Minister James Moore published in The National Post on Wednesday, Clement argued that “Canada’s Copyright Act is more than 80 years old and has not been significantly modified for many years” and needs a serious overhaul in order to protect the interests of Canadians and the rights of content creators. The legislation is expected to be tabled in the House of Commons on Thursday.

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Arizona resident Jeffrey Howell learned some a hard lessons this past week. If you are being sued for copyright infringement, get a lawyer and if you are served with a lawsuit that tells you not to tamper with your hard drive, don’t go ahead and format it anyway. In an unfortunate turn of events last week, the second high profile RIAA copyright infringement case came to a screeching halt as it was revealed that the defendant Howell had tampered with the evidence. Howell uninstalled Kazaa, deleted its logs, and formatted his hard drive after receiving the lawsuit; thereby making any evidence irretrievable. The RIAA argued and the judge agreed that “The deliberate destruction… by itself, compels the conclusion that such evidence supported Plaintiffs’ case.” The case was found in favor of the RIAA and a final judgment was announced today. Howell must now cough up a mere $350 in court costs and whopping $40,500 in statutory damages. This case was notable as the RIAA was handed a big setback last April when a judge ruled that simply making a file available on a P2P network did not constitute copyright infringement. A crushing blow to the legal basis of the RIAA’s infringement cases. Too bad it had to end so badly.

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