Francesco Pizzetti, president of the official Italian body for Guaranteeing the Protection of Private Data, has ruled that Italian companies are not permitted to spy on individuals who engage in illegal file-sharing.
In the past, companies were allowed to obtain street addresses of file-sharers from their internet service providers in order to send registered letters to each individual.
Italian consumer rights groups protested this practice and a ruling was handed down preventing companies from tracking down people through IP addresses who were thought to be sharing files.
The consumer groups were happy with the ruling… but needless to say, Italy’s record labels are not so happy.
Posted Thursday, March 20th, 2008
When it comes to illegal music downloads, Spain is the king of Europe.
More than 1.2 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded from computers in Spain during 2007, according to authors’ and publishers’ society SGAE. In fact, the number of illegal music tracks downloaded illegally in Spain is up 566% from the year 2002 when only 180 million tracks were downloaded for free.
The European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) says that 58% of all Spanish Internet users illegally downloaded music during 2006… while the European average was 37%.
Free music reigns king in Spain.
Posted Monday, February 4th, 2008
My first response was… Does prince have fans? It turns out he does, and it turns out he has served legal notices to owners of Prince fan sites ordering them to remove all images of the singer, his lyrics and “anything linked to his likeness”.
I have an idea for these fan site owners… replace all photos of him with a photograph of a pile of crap, because that’s what he is.
I can understand a crackdown on the illegal proliferation of his music, but to serve a notice to fan sites based on images or “anything linked to his likeness” is a bit extreme - barring copyrighted photography.
Get over yourself Prince, everyone else has!
Posted Friday, November 9th, 2007
Dr. Dre (Andre Young) has a filed a lawsuit against his former label Death Row Records over copyright ownership to the album “The Chronic.” In 1996, Dr. Dre agreed to give up 50% ownership of the rights to the album in exchange for continued royalties. However, Death Row never paid up and now Dre wants his music back!
Timeline of events via Pitchfork
Specific details about this case via Billboard
Posted Thursday, August 30th, 2007
503 pre-litigation settlements letters have been sent to 58 different Universities from the RIAA.
These letters are part of the RIAA’s education and deterrence campaign that is focusing on illegal file sharing on college campuses. This campaign offers students a chance to settle copyright infringement claims against them at a discounted rate. If the students choose not to participate… formal lawsuits will be filed.
Since February, the RIAA has sent 2,926 of these pre-litigation settlement letters to university students.
Read the full article.
Posted Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
