Studies: music industry overstating threat of P2P piracy
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| Or perhaps it's not all that amazing. A more likely explanation is
| that the numbers aren't even right. As Canadian law professor Michael
| Geist showed a few weeks ago, claims about piracy rates can be wildly
| variable and downright fictional. High numbers are often used to
| support legal threats or calls for Congressional action, as in the
| MRT case. MRT has a lot to gain by overstating the threat of
| streamripping and, so far, has not showed its numbers. Both MRT
| and NPD agree, though, that P2P is hardly the music industry's
| biggest problem.
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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070531-studies-music-industry-overstating-threat-of-p2p-piracy.html
Some people are probably being paid to pass these 'studies' and influence
politicians.
This affects distribution of Free software as well. Other issues include
so-called 'hacking' tools that Linux distros ship with (just illegalised in
Germany) and software licensing requirements (an idea that is not compatible
with Free software), e.g. in Russia. 'Circumvention' affects France,
Australia, and the US, among some other countries.
Related:
File sharing could threaten personal and national security
,----[ Quote ]
| A recent government report says that the old adage "buyer beware" now
| even applies to those who are not technically buying anything at all.
| Despite the reputation of "free" downloads, much of the illegal file
| sharing done on the internet comes at a steep price: personal and
| national security.
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http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6424471&partner=eb&spacedesc=news
The European Parliament approves new, stricter anti-piracy directive
,----[ Quote ]
| The European Parliament voted yes on the new controversial directive
| Ipred 2 which concludes that all kinds of infringement of the
| intellectual copyrights will be considered criminal. The directive
| is actually stricter than that and even criminalizes attempts of
| infringing on copyrights. In theory this means that basically all
| video sites, P2P developers and other services used to spread
| material around the web is criminal.
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http://www.nordichardware.com/news,6197.html
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