A month after carrying out one of the largest anti-piracy crackdowns ever, federal authorities have added charges and broadened their case against the defendants.
When the Department of Justice shut down Megaupload.com last month, it wasn't just Megaupload users' files that went offline.
On the first day of every year, works of art whose term of copyright has expired enters the public domain. This year's class is particularly strong, as the novels of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are now free of copyright protection. If you ever wanted to stage a puppet show of Joyce's masterpiece "Ulysses" or set Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" to music, now is your chance.
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Poland over the signing of an international treaty to enforce intellectual property rights on the Internet.
Megaupload, the file-sharing website shut down Thursday by the U.S. federal government, is a Web hosting tool that now finds itself accused of being an online haven for digital pirates.
When the entire Internet gets angry, Congress takes notice. Both the House and the Senate on Friday backed away from a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills, tossing them into limbo and throwing doubt on their future viability.
The tech industry is abuzz about SOPA and PIPA, a pair of anti-piracy bills. Here's why they're controversial, and how they would change the digital landscape if they became law.
In one of the U.S. government's largest anti-piracy crackdowns ever, federal agents on Thursday arrested the leaders of and shut down Megaupload.com, a popular hub for illegal media downloads.
"Hacktivist" collective Anonymous on Thursday took credit for taking down U.S. Department of Justice, FBI and entertainment company websites, following arrests in one of the federal government's largest anti-piracy crackdowns.
MPAA's Christopher Dodd defends SOPA's ability to eliminate internet piracy and save American jobs.
Some lawmakers are rethinking their support of controversial anti-piracy bills that led to some websites shutting down in protest.
While Internet giants staged a massive online protest against proposed anti-piracy legislation, hundreds gathered in New York for an in-person show of opposition.
Members of Congress may be on vacation, but that hasn't calmed critics who say an effort to stamp out online piracy would create an unprecedented threat to free speech on the Internet.
Two business giants -- one a upscale manufacturer, the other a discount retailer -- clashed at the Supreme Court Monday in an important business case dealing with imported goods sold at low cost in the United States.
Log onto popular video streaming websites on a Sunday during football season and you can usually find several channels showing decent-quality live feeds of the games.
To help answer some questions about this week's Copyright Office announcement regarding the legality of so-called cell phone jailbreaking, or the modification of the software that comes with iPhones and other handsets that is designed not to be changed, we've compiled the following list of Frequently Asked Questions:
CNN's Errol Barnett has an exclusive look at the new CNN iPhone application for users outside of the U.S.
IPhone users can now legally hack their phones to download applications that aren't in Apple's App Store.
Google triumphed in a nasty, three-year war with Viacom on Wednesday as a federal court ruled that Google's YouTube subsidiary is not liable for its users' copyright infringements.
A set of documents released Friday reveal just how nasty the Viacom and YouTube legal battle has become.
One of the longer-lasting Internet memes in recent years has been the parody trend of the 2004 German film Der Untergang (also known as "Downfall").
A bitter feud between Google's online video site YouTube and media conglomerate Viacom turned ugly on Thursday, as both companies hurled accusations at one another about engaging in deceptive and illegal practices.
Cyber-pirates in France may soon face huge fines, an Internet ban and even jail time. CNN's Errol Barnett explains.
French lawmakers passed a tough new measure to crack down on illegal downloading.
"Don't copy, don't copy that floppy!"
When the highly anticipated movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" opened Friday in theaters, many fans had already seen it.
If mention of The Pirate Bay conjures up images of parrots, peg legs and planks, or geeky jargon like BitTorrent and jailbreak leaves you all at sea, this handy A-Z will help you navigate the choppy waters of the online piracy debate.
A verdict is expected in a copyright battle between movie studios and Internet pirates. CNN's Neil Curry reports.
Four men behind a Swedish file-sharing Web site used by millions to exchange movies and music have been found guilty of collaborating to violate copyright law in a landmark court verdict in Stockholm.
The founders of a Swedish file-sharing Web site could face jail time and multimillion-dollar fines if convicted of copyright infringement.
Crash avoidance
updated: Mon Oct 27 2008 00:25:00
Computer expert Ken Colburn has some advice on how to prevent a hard drive crash and what to do if it happens.
The Internet age's philosopher-king, Lessig argues in favor of abolishing the anti-piracy laws corporations have pushed so hard to install
It looks like Apple won't be closing the iTunes store because of a dispute with music publishers over royalties on downloaded songs.
Congress has cleared the way for a potential agreement intended to save the emerging Internet radio market from a crippling hike in copyright royalty rates
For five years, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been the Internet's most successful music store. But as music publishers have sought a higher share of its proceeds, Apple has threatened to shutter iTunes.
In a crucial win for the free software movement, a federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material
The maker of the classic word-based board game Scrabble has sued the makers of the wildly popular online knockoff, Scrabulous
Google says that a lawsuit challenging YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how millions of people exchange information on the Internet
It's a battle worthy of Harry Potter himself.
Dear FSB: Do I have to patent greeting cards?
YouTube, which has had to pull copyrighted videos off its site after legal attacks by some big media franchises, has enjoyed a surge in U.S. audience share that leaves it far larger than the next 64 video-sharing sites combined, a survey found.
Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to ...
The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) filed a lawsuit against XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc on Thursday for providing radios that allegedly let users reproduce and distribute copyrighted music without paying appropriate royalties.
In the epic philosophical and financial battle between West Coast and East Coast, between software and old media, the East this week fired perhaps its biggest gun so far. Viacom filed a $1 billion-plus lawsuit against Google's YouTube, asserting "massive copyright infringement" as a result of YouTube airing hundreds of thousands of video clips taken from Viacom television programs like The Daily Show and South Park.
Viacom, with its lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Google and YouTube, has shown that it's serious about copyright infringement.
Viacom sued Google and its online video subsidiary YouTube for $1 billion Tuesday, the first big lawsuit against the online video site and its parent for copyright infringement.
A key tenet of life in Silicon Valley is that the technology industry is different from other businesses.
Google may face more lawsuits once its acquisition of video sharing site YouTube closes, the company said in its latest quarterly report.
Oh my God, they purged Kenny!
Up until very recently, John Hall was in his 18th year of teaching management at the University of Florida. Then he wound up on YouTube.
Fortune: Unlocking the iPodupdated: Mon Oct 23 2006 14:54:00
Growing up in a small town in southern Norway, Jon Lech Johansen loved to take things apart to figure out how they worked. Unlike most kids, though, he'd put them back together better than they wer...
Allan Keiter awoke one recent morning to the scary news that his Atlanta company's website was nearly impossible to find on a Google search. MyRatePlan.com helps consumers compare cellular calling ...
Francisco Mingorance was on vacation in Spain last winter when he logged on to an Internet webcast and heard French politicians debating how to require Apple Computer to disclose its secret underlying code for iTunes software - a move that would allow millions of music lovers to play downloaded music and video on any device they chose.
NBC put out a serious fire this weekend, but critics aren't so sure they should have.
Fortune: Google nudesupdated: Wed Mar 01 2006 10:22:00
The most successful Internet companies have grown rich by exploiting other people's content -- without paying for it.
Google will resume its plans to scan copyrighted library books into its search engine after a self-imposed hiatus, according to a published report that says the effort could set the stage for a legal fight affecting both the future of the Internet and the publishing industry.
Warner Music Group said it will launch a digital-only record label that will be a boon to new artists, amid industry struggles with copyright infringement created by file sharing.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that software companies can be held liable for copyright infringement when individuals use their technology to download songs and movies illegally.
On March 29, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., a closely-watched case involving peer-to-peer file sharing - a process in which people send or receive music or movies over the Internet.
Since 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been suing peer-to-peer (P2P) file swappers and downloaders. The RIAA alleges, in its suits, that P2P file swapping and downloading, when it involves pirated files, violates copyright law -- and, at times, also the Digital Music Copyright Act (DMCA).
An unlikely feud is seeing the film empire that built its name on cartoons for children -- the giant Disney corporation -- at odds with Britain's most famous hospital for sick children.
As Congress got back to work this week after a summer break, legislative proposals to ban gay marriage and to revamp the nation's security appartus dominated headlines.
Goodbye CD, we barely knew you.
CNNMoney: A Jibjab showdownupdated: Mon Jul 26 2004 10:49:00
With something as fun as a cartoon Bush and Kerry hurling musical epithets at one another, you knew lawyers would have to get involved.
In the ascetic waiting room of the SCO Group's Lindon, Utah, headquarters, the only reading matter is a stack of beige, telephone-book-sized binders. They are volumes I, II, III, and IV of the comp...
Allan Vilhan is a musician who has yet to hit it big in the United States. In part, that's because Vilhan--who records under the name Cargo Cult--lives in Filakovo, a small town in Slovakia's Cerov...
It may not be a strategy that's tried, tested and true, but that hasn't stopped inmates across the nation from claiming copyright to their names and then demanding money from lawyers and judges who dare to utter them.
As part of a Los Angeles-based investigation into the bootlegging major motion pictures, an Illinois man was arrested on charges of copyright infringement and illegal interception of a satellite signal, according to the FBI.
Just when almost everybody else is trying to exit the music business, who's rushing in but Edgar Bronfman Jr., who recently joined a team of investors in a successful $2.6 billion bid for Time Warn...
In late February 2002, the users of an online file-sharing service called Morpheus found themselves suddenly cut off from their network. Their mass freezeout, it developed, had been engineered by a...
Alas, there is no morning-after pill for impulsive acts committed in a state of dot-com-bubbleheadedness.
It's surprisingly easy to become a federal criminal these days. In my case I barely had to lift a finger. The finger was on a computer mouse, and with just a few clicks I made a perfect copy of a D...
It's the same old copyright song, copied over and over. Only now the volume is getting louder.
A self-satisfied federal judge, a self-righteous music industry, and a self-important Napster agree to disagree about how the embattled Internet service should comply with American copyright law. T...
After a federal judge in Manhattan ruled last month that MP3.com must pay Universal Music Group up to $250 million in damages for copyright violations, a lot of people's attention shifted to Napste...
It's the Fourth of July in San Francisco, and big John Hummer, co-founder of the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, is holding court at the Dolphin Club. The club stands out amid the tony tourist...
Of all the people in all the world you'd expect to find engaged in a debate, one of the unlikeliest duos would have to be rap star Dr.Dre and Intel Chairman Andy Grove. Yet here they are, speaking ...
Early this year officials at Indiana University began noticing a curious thing: A rapidly rising percentage of the university's Internet bandwidth was being consumed by students using a new Web ser...
Last year I wrote a column wondering whether copyright protection has a future ("Copyright Protection Is for Dinosaurs," April 26, 1999). I've just had an experience that convinces me it doesn't. T...
Why do we need to protect intellectual property? Seriously, I'm beginning to wonder if we really need government protection of intellectual property in our new cyberworld.
In the waning days of the last election, President Clinton often disparaged the Republicans' "do nothing" Congress, pointing to its failure to pass anti-tobacco legislation or a plan to save Social...
All I wanted was a cool birthday cake for my kid. Stephen, zeroing in on age 9, had passed through phases of fascination with Thomas the Tank Engine, dinosaurs, dolphins, and killer whales. Now we ...
Is your company a criminal enterprise? The software industry estimates that 40% of software used by U.S. corporations is pirated. Companies, often unwittingly, break copyright laws by buying a new ...
TWO YEARS AGO in Milan, a squad of court officers and lawyers burst into the gloomy headquarters of Montedison, Italy's chemical giant. Sweeping through the building, they ordered employees at comp...
FORTUNES HAVE been made and lost over the ownership of ideas. The concept of intellectual property takes on special urgency in high-technology businesses because invention is the industry's stock i...
Japanese companies don't like going to court, but last December NEC asked a federal judge in San Jose, California, to declare that its 16-bit V20 and V30 microprocessors don't infringe on the instr...
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