Tag Archives: filesharing

Mark Pack

Massive $6bn lawsuit for repeated breaches of music copyright

By Mark Pack | Fri 18th December 2009 - 1:10 pm

Defendants in Canada are facing an eye-watering $6 billion payout in a court case over repeated breaches of music copyright over several years. Claims for unpaid royalties total $50 million, but on top of that the defendants face having to pay $20,000 for each copyrighted song which has been used without payment. Records show that the total number of such songs is more than 300,000.

Although the songs involved have easily identified copyright owners who would happily accept payment and who are paid by other law abiding users of their music, no such payments have been made in the case of …

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Iain Roberts

Filesharing plans ignore legal rights, claims Foster

By Iain Roberts | Thu 29th October 2009 - 11:49 am

The rights and wrongs of filesharing may still be very much up for debate, but Don Foster again confirmed that, if Lord Mandelson wants support for his “three strikes and you’re out” policy against filesharers, he won’t get it from the Lib Dems.

Lord Mandelson wants those suspected of illegal file sharing to have their bandwidth restricted or to be cut off from the Internet altogether. Mandelson claimed that young people downloading content for free was morally unsustainable.

Don Foster, who just last week was speaking out for live music performers (the clown’s the one on the left) has made …

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
Jim Killock

Open Rights Group call to action

By Jim Killock | Thu 22nd October 2009 - 11:04 am

This week, for the first time, public opinion was tested on the government’s proposals to disconnect people from the internet for copyright infringement.

Open Rights Group commissioned a YouGov poll, which came back with some remarkable findings.

The political implications are profound, if our poll is to be believed. While Labour have certainly got this wrong, we are yet to see any UK parliamentary party fully backing the public’s instincts shown in this poll. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats will be ready to pick up the challenge.

In our poll, 42% said that disconnection, should it be applied to them, would disrupt their …

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Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
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