More than half of computer users admit that they pirate software according to the findings of a recent study. The Business Software Alliance, a software industry lobbyist group dedicated to combating digital piracy, released its ninth annual Global Software Piracy Study earlier this month. For the first time, the new edition of the trade group’s report includes the results of a survey involving 15,000 computer users from 33 countries around the world where respondents were directly asked, “How often do you acquire pirated software or software that is not fully licensed?”

According to the results of the survey, 57% of global PC users pirate software, up from 42% in 2011. The BSA says that this rampant digital piracy now costs the software industry $63.4 billion annually. Piracy rates are highest in emerging markets according to the study, and young make computer users pirate the most software.

“This year’s survey finds that frequent pirates — people who admit they acquire unlicensed software all of the time, most of the time, or occasionally — also are the most voracious software users,” the BSA wrote in its report. “They report installing 55 percent more programs of all types on their computers than do non-pirates. This gives them an outsized impact on the global piracy rate.”

The report continued, “Even more striking is the difference in behavior between users in emerging economies and users in the developed world. Frequent pirates in emerging economies install nearly four times as many programs of all sorts per new PC as do frequent pirates in mature markets. Among infrequent pirates — those who say they rarely acquire unlicensed software — there is a greater than two-to-one gap in the total number of programs they install.”

Despite acknowledging that instances of digital piracy increase dramatically in emerging markets, the BSA does not explore the correlation between the cost of software and digital piracy rates.

The Business Software Alliance, a group with members that include Apple, Microsoft and Adobe, is calling for new legislation that would double the fines levied on digital pirates. It also supports new laws that would make it easier to impose jail time on people found guilty of software theft, as well as those found to have pirated copyrighted material.

In its latest Transparency Report, Google has included information about takedown requests related to copyright infringement for the first time ever. According to the data from this past year, nearly 8,000 copyright owners have contacted Google with requests to remove search results that lead to copyright infringing websites. Microsoft led the charge with more than 500,000 removal requests across 9,108 domains during this past month alone, and a total of 2,554,475 takedown request across 23,485 domains over the course of the past year. According to research done by TechDirt, the software giant was mainly targeting pirated Xbox content, which Google agreed to take down. Search results for the very same websites, ironically, often remain present on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

[Via TechDirt]

Read

Despite numerous attempts to halter file-sharing services such as The Pirate Bay, users continue to download copyrighted files. According to Lund University’s Cybernorms research project, file-sharing levels remain stable because those downloading the files out feel that they are doing nothing wrong, and the introduction of aggressive legislation has done little to reduce the amount of file-sharing carried out by young people, TorrentFreak reported. “In Sweden we saw a moderate drop in file sharing in 2009 when IPRED was implemented. Since then it has remained at approximately 60 percent among 15-25 year old people,” said researcher Marcin de Kaminski. “Our conclusion is that repressive actions that lack societal support may still have effects, but that the effects are limited.”

Kaminski believes that “a higher degree of pressure or social control would most possibly have a clear impact on habits and practices regarding file sharing.” The research also found a slight increase in the number of young people who use file-sharing services on a daily basis, up from 18% in September 2009 to 20% in January 2012, and more file-sharers are using anonymous services to hide their activities as well.

Read

The first version was hardly a hit, but Hollywood is already planning a sequel to the Stop Online Piracy Act that it will push in 2013, reports claim. Comments made by Motion Picture Association of America chief executive Chris Dodd suggest that the MPAA will work to get a new anti-piracy billed passed next year, and it plans to take a more cunning approach. ”We’re going to have to be more subtle and consumer-oriented,” Dodd said of the new legislation that the MPAA will push, according to Variety. “We’re on the wrong track if we describe this as thievery.” Details surrounding the organization’s plans were not discussed, and Dodd noted that he will not be able to lobby his former U.S. Senate cohorts until next year. ”I can’t say anything to them about this for another seven months, but I think my colleagues understand how important this is.” SOPA was put on hold in January after a number of widely publicized protests rattled lawmakers.

[Via The Daily Dot]

Read

The new “six strikes” anti-piracy policy soon to be implemented by a number of major Internet service providers in the United States will reportedly stumble out of the gate. The policy, which is set to be adopted by Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other ISPs, will see action taken against users caught downloading pirated files in six steps, ultimately resulting in bandwidth throttling or even service suspensions. The system responsible for managing the new policy may not be ready on schedule, however, and the targeted launch date of July 12th may slip back as a result.

According to a recent report from TorrentFreak, the newly formed Center for Copyright Information and major U.S. ISPs will not implement the new system on schedule this July. The go-live date for the new policy, which is the result of an agreement struck between major ISPs, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, will be pushed back for the second time as the companies involved finalize a number of details.

“The dates mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are not hard deadlines but were intended to keep us on track to have the Copyright Alert System up and running as quickly as possible and in the most consumer friendly manner possible,” a CCI spokesperson told TorrentFreak. “We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly and able to be implemented in a manner consistent with all of the goals of the MOU. We expect our implementation to begin later this year.”

The group also clarified that while repeated offenses may result in bandwidth throttling and service suspensions for those caught downloading pirated material, no permanent service disconnections will result from this new policy.

Read

A recent study found that contrary to arguments repeatedly posed by major record labels — and perhaps contrary to logic as well — BitTorrent piracy has a direct correlation to increased album sales. Between May 2010 and January 2011, North Carolina State University assistant professor Robert Hammond tracked BitTorrent download statistics for new albums ahead of their releases. He then compared his data to music sales figures and found what he believes to be a connection. ”I isolate the causal effect of file sharing of an album on its sales by exploiting exogenous variation in how widely available the album was prior to its official release date,” Hammond wrote in his paper. “The findings suggest that file sharing of an album benefits its sales. I don’t find any evidence of a negative effect in any specification, using any instrument.” Of course, the case may simply be that popular music is popular music; whether consumers steal it or buy it, massive marketing budgets help ensure that people are exposed to labels’ premier acts as much as possible, thus promoting demand.

[Via TorrentFreak]

Read

A Russian startup that received $100,000 of funding from Microsoft made headlines recently as its emerging efforts to battle digital piracy found their way to the spotlight. Dubbed Pirate Pay, the company’s technology launches attacks on groups of computers hosting pirated content, theoretically making it impossible for them to share copyrighted material. While the company claims to have already successfully trialed its technology when it blocked nearly 45,000 attempts to download pirated copies of a Russian film, one expert believes Pirate Pay’s system may be illegal.“Reading the article it sound like they are spoofing traffic to confuse torrent clients and force disconnects,” former BitTorrent VP of engineering John Pettitt wrote in a note distributed in Dave Farber’s Interesting-People elist, Techdirt reports. ”It’s not at all clear if this will work against all versions of the protocol (particularly the udp based version). Leaving aside the technical issues it’s also unclear if such action is legal.”

Pettitt continued, ”It sounds like a targeted denial of service attack, a major corporation paying for such an attack leaves itself wide open to civil and criminal legal action particularly if they accidentally target the wrong torrent which given the history is highly likely.”

Pirate Pay’s trial was performed in cooperation with Russia-based Walt Disney Studios Sony Pictures Releasing, and it is unknown if the company is currently in talks with any major studios or related companies based in the United States.

Read

Russian startup Pirate Pay is taking aim at the growing popularity of illegal file-sharing as it looks to cooperate with music labels and movie studios to stem the distribution of copyrighted materials on the Internet. The company’s technology launches attacks on “BitTorrent swarms,” or groups of computers hosting pirated content, making it impossible for them to share copyrighted material, TorrentFreak reports. “After creating the prototype, we realized we could more generally prevent files from being downloaded, which meant that the program had great promise in combating the spread of pirated content,” Pirate Pay CEO Andrei Klimenko said recently in an interview. Pirate Pay recently received a $100,000 investment from the Microsoft Seed fund, and it claims to have blocked nearly 45,000 attempts to download pirated copies of Russian film “Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I am Alive” in a test campaign launched earlier this year for Russia-based Walt Disney Studios Sony Pictures Releasing.

[Via TorrentFreak]

Read

The FBI Anti-Piracy Warning that is found on all modern DVD and Blu-ray discs is getting an upgrade. The United States government earlier this week announced that it will require two copyright notices on DVD and Blu-ray discs, Ars Technica reported. The first notice will warn potential piracy thieves, while the second one is meant to educate viewers. All six major movie studios have agreed to include the notices, which we will begin seeing on new discs this week. The screens will “come up after the previews, once you hit the main movie/play button on the DVD.” The warnings will each last 10 seconds and users will not have the ability to skip or fast forward through them. “Law enforcement must continue to expand how it combats criminal activity; public awareness and education are a critical part of that effort,” ICE Director John Morton said in a statement.

Read

As the company’s court battles with major music label EMI Group, file-sharing service MP3tunes was forced to file for bankruptcy in a United States court earlier this week, Reuters reports. Mp3tunes, which bills itself as “a Music Service Provider (MSP) and the home of MP3tunes Locker: the only secure, online music space to feature unlimited listening,” is one of a number of online services targeted by major labels and the MPAA for allegedly facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials; Megaupload was shuttered earlier this year after authorities raided the home of company founder Kim Dotcom, who was arrested and now awaits trial. A federal judge ruled in 2011 that MP3tunes and its CEO, Michael Robertson, did not violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act when they allowed users to download music from the service, except as pertaining to music files that were identified as having been pirated. The judge also said that Robertson was personally liable for a number of pirated songs downloaded from other file-sharing services and hosted by MP3tunes. The case is still pending.

Read

The United States House of Representatives has voted to pass the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), talk of which has swept the Internet over the past few weeks. The House vote was moved up to Thursday night, and CISPA passed as 248 members of Congress voted for the bill and 168 voted against. The bill is sponsored by Representatives Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), and it now faces further modifications in the Senate if it is to avoid being vetoed by the White House. President Barack Obama has indicated that he intends to veto the bill if it makes it to his desk, noting that as it is written now, the legislation would allow “broad sharing of information with governmental entities without establishing requirements for both industry and the government to minimize and protect personally identifiable information.” The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement following the vote. “Cybersecurity does not have to mean abdication of Americans’ online privacy,” said ACLU legislative counsel Michelle Richardson. “As we’ve seen repeatedly, once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there’s no going back. We encourage the Senate to let this horrible bill fade into obscurity.”

Read

Thousands of broadband subscribers in the United Kingdom who illegally downloaded pornography will soon have their identities exposed. The United Kingdom’s High Court has ordered O2, a large U.K.-based Internet service provider, to hand over personal details identifying more than 9,000 subscribers to Golden Eye International and Ben Dover Productions, two companies run by British porn actor and producer Lindsay Honey. The subscribers in question are found to have illegally download copies of copyrighted movies owned by the pornographer, and their identities will be turned over to the court so that Golden Eye International and Ben Dover Productions can seek damages. O2 reportedly fought in court to protect the identities of its subscribers, however the company confirmed that it would cooperate with the court’s ultimate decision. “Clearly we respect the court order and will therefore be co-operating fully,” an O2 spokesperson told AKAScope.

Read

Three separate lawsuits have been filed in China on behalf of 12 writers who claim Apple is selling unlicensed versions of their works in its iBookstore. Apple is accused of selling 59 unlicensed works in total, and the three suits seek a combined $3.5 million in damages. Apple has not denied the allegations, though the company did say that it responds to intellectual property complaints quickly. “As an IP holder ourselves, we understand the importance of protecting intellectual property and when we receive complaints we respond promptly and appropriately,” Beijing-based Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu told the Associated Press. Wang Guohua, a lawyer representing the group of writers, said Apple violated copyright laws by making the books available for purchase without securing the necessary licenses. Wang also said that while some titles were removed after lawsuits were filed in January, many have been uploaded to Apple’s digital store again and Apple has not taken the appropriate measures to prevent the pirated books from being sold. ”Some developers, with whom Apple has contracts, put them back online again,” he said. “It is encouragement in disguise, because they did not punish the developers. The developers could have been kicked out. But nothing happened to them.”

Read

A court in Germany ruled on Thursday that RapidShare must implement a system that proactively filters user uploads in order to prevent the illegal sharing of copyrighted content. Like Megaupload, which was shuttered earlier this year, RapidShare allows users to upload large files and share them online. The service has become widely known for hosting copyrighted software, music, movies and books that are then shared illegally on forums, blogs and a variety of of other websites. Following verdicts in three separate cases filed by two book publishers and an group representing music publishers called GEMA, the firm has been ordered to take a more active role in preventing infringing content from being uploaded to its servers, TorrentFreak reported. RapidShare has not yet stated whether or not it will appeal the decision.

UPDATE: RapidShare has issued a press release in response to this ruled, which now follows below.

Premature rejoicing at GEMA and the German Publishers and Booksellers Association

Baar/Switzerland, 16 March 2012. On 14 March 2012, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg affirmed injunctive relief sought by GEMA and the publishers Campus and De Gruyter against RapidShare in three separate judgments. Both the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and GEMA issued “jubilant statements” immediately afterwards. In doing so they are conveniently ignoring the fact that it is considered unprofessional to evaluate a judgment before the written reasons for the judgment are on hand. Only then will it become apparent which party can truly celebrate a judgment as a success.

However, the Higher Regional court of Hamburg has issued a press release indicating a possible reason for the plaintiffs’ hectic actions: in the present cases the Court has amended its previous position, according to which RapidShare’s business model was not approved by the legal system. For the first time, the Court has also acknowledged that files only become “publicly accessible” when users publish the links in the Internet. In the past the previous diverging assessment had resulted in extensive obligations, already when uploading a file. Accordingly, the Court now sees the duties of RapidShare in particular in fighting the issue of piracy where illegal files are actually distributed, namely on the respective link pages. That is exactly what RapidShare has already been engaged in for years.

Alexandra Zwingli, CEO of RapidShare: “Of course, we will only make a detailed statement once we have the complete text. However, I am convinced that our tried-and-tested actions against copyright infringements are the right way to go, and I am pleased that the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg has confirmed as much in its press release. This demonstrates that we are not only technological, but also legal pioneers in cloud storage.”

Read

Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other Internet service providers in the United States will soon launch new programs to police their networks in an effort to catch digital pirates and stop illegal file-sharing. Major ISPs announced last summer that they had agreed to take new measures in an effort to prevent subscribers from illegally downloading copyrighted material, but the specifics surrounding the imminent antipiracy measures were not made available. Now, RIAA chief executive Cary Sherman has said that ISPs are ready to begin their efforts to curtail illegal movie, music and software downloads on July 12th. Read on for more.

“Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system,” Sherman said during a talk at the annual Association of American Publishers meeting, according to CNET. Measures will also be taken to establish databases “so they can keep track of repeat infringers, so they know that this is the first notice or the third notice. Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion.”

Customers found to be illegally downloading copyrighted material will first receive one or two notifications from their ISPs, essentially stating that they have been caught. If the illegal downloads continue, subscribers will receive a new notice requesting acknowledgement that the notice has been received. Subsequent offenses can then result in bandwidth throttling and even service suspension.

The news comes shortly after the closure of file-sharing giant Megaupload and increased pressure on other networks thought to be major hubs for the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials. Some studies show that these measures have had no impact on piracy, however, so organizations like the RIAA have been lobbying for ISPs to intervene and develop systems that will allow them to police their networks and directly address subscribers who illegally download copyrighted content.