Microsoft is offering Office pirates a tempting offer, giving them 50% off if they will convert to a paid license.
Feds Bust Illegal Streaming Sites With More Content Than Most Legal Sites Combined
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has secured guilty pleas from two programmers who ran massive illegal streaming sites, following an investigation by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. Darryl Julius Polo plead guilty “to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal…
HBO Is Going After Bars Hosting Game of Thrones Parties
If you live in a town with a good bar or brewery, it’s likely that come 9pm on Sunday, it’s packed with people gearing up for the new episode of Game of Thrones. Public viewing parties of popular shows have…
Wolf of Wall Street, Frozen Top Most-Pirated Movies List
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street was definitely the most gloriously profane movie of the year (it’s in the record books!), and now it has another title. According to data from Excipio, as obtained by Variety, the film was…
Kanye West Kills ‘Coinye’ Cryptocurrency
The creators of the cryptocurrency known as “Coinye” were officially shut down after receiving 84 court documents describing copyright violations from Kanye West’s legal team. Coinye, originally called “Coinye West”, a scrypt-based cryptocurrency that featured West’s face as its symbol,…
Game of Thrones, Once Again, Sits Atop the Iron Throne of Piracy
The season finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones has shattered a piracy record, previously held by…Game of Thrones. According to torrent trackers, over 254,000 people were, at one point, sharing a single torrent for the season four finale episode, “The…
Kim Dotcom Offers $5 Million Bounty for Information
In January 2012, New Zealand police arrested internet icon Kim Dotcom due to claims from the United States that Dotcom had used his website to host pirated files, costing the music and movie industries more than $500 million in assets.…
App Pirates Guilty of Copyright Infringement
Back in January the U.S. charged four people in connection with pirate app stores developed for Android devices. Now all four of these defendants has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. The cases represent the…
‘Game of Thrones’ Premiere Breaks Piracy Record
When the season four premiere of HBO’s fantasy-drama series Game of Thrones aired on Sunday night, a record 6.6 million viewers tuned in legally. Another million-plus viewers pirated the episode, setting another record. Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, which…
Google Suggests You Watch ‘House Of Cards’ Online For Free At Stream-TV Over Netflix [Updated]
Update: Since this was first published, Google is now showing Netflix at the top of the organic results for the House of Cards example. It has also been brought to my attention that nobody is really using the “watch house…
Android App Groups Charged For Piracy
The openness of the Android platform has many advantages, but it also makes the platform more of a gamble for developers. Apple’s iOS is still the leading platform for many app releases (especially games) and apps can often sell on…
Guy Wears Google Glass at a Movie, Shocked When Hassled by Feds
As the debate rages on concerning where you can and cannot operate Google’s new nerd goggles, Google Glass, can we at least agree on something – it’s probably best to leave them out of the movie theater? This is not…
‘Game of Thrones’ is the Most-Pirated Show of the Year, Again
In-between all of the end-of-year best-of lists, there are a few lists that it might be questionable for entertainment properties to end up on. One of these is undoubtedly the list most-pirated shows for the year. Though a good showing…
New Anti-Piracy Plan: Kindergarten Copyright Class?
The United States’ largest copyright lobbies, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, have initiated a highly controversial program nudging the educational system to shoulder the burden of teaching kids about how evil piracy…
IsoHunt Is Back From The Dead… Sort Of
Earlier this month, IsoHunt, one of the world’s largest torrent trackers, shut down after settling a seven year lawsuit with the MPAA. There were efforts to archive all of IsoHunt upon the news, but founder Gary Fung killed the site…
IsoHunt Settles With MPAA, Will Shut Down
IsoHunt was mine, and presumably many others, first run in with torrents and file sharing. Many have moved on, but the MPAA just couldn’t leave it alone. After launching a lawsuit against the site in 2006, the site’s founder, Gary…
Researchers Argue That Unavailability, Not Search Engines, Lead To Piracy
Every few months, the MPAA comes out of the woodwork to claim Google’s search results encourage piracy. According to their logic, the prevalence of illegal sources on Google’s front page indicates that something is wrong. Now a group of researchers…
Study Shows Online Piracy is Good for Showbiz
A new study by The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) says that online piracy isn’t hurting the entertainment industry, but is actually helping it. The study, authored by Bart Cammaerts, Robin Mansell and Bingchun Meng, also asks…
Breaking Bad Finale Already Breaking Online Piracy Records
As the Internet went wild watching the final moments of Walter White’s existence in the land of television–an existence that will no doubt live on in streaming reruns–folks who didn’t have access to the episode made sure they didn’t have…