Entertainment industry wins big victory in its effort to censor the Net in the UK

A victory for them maybe, but it does nothing to stop people despising them.

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled.

The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly pirated free music and video.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site.

Read more here.

Jeffrey Miron: Idiot of the Day

Anti-bribery laws hurt U.S. companies! Do away with the law then...boohoohoo

What a moron.

public and policymakers should also consider whether the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is good policy. And despite good intentions -- particularly, the goal of reducing corruption -- it is not.

The act is difficult to enforce on a consistent basis, since companies that wish to pay bribes can circumvent the law in numerous ways, mainly with minimal risk of exposure. So, most violations go undetected. The act therefore hurts companies that break the law clumsily and get caught, thereby creating a competitive advantage for companies that break the law cleverly and get away with it.

The most likely outcome is therefore that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has minimal impact on bribes but enriches the least honest companies. And if the act deters bribes by U.S. companies operating abroad, that is even worse.

Read more here.

Warner Bros. and your "Disc-to-Digital" idea: F*ck you

The entertainment industry and their frustration with not making a dollar off every aspect of home entertainment takes a new twist:

...the first phase in this process is to let DVD owners bring their DVDs to a store that will handle the digital conversion. Tsujihara described this process as allowing consumers to convert their libraries “easily, safely and at reasonable prices.”

You did read that last paragraph correctly. The head of Warner Home Entertainment Group thinks that an easy, safe way to convert movies you already own on DVD to other digital formats is to take your DVDs, find a store that will perform this service, drive to that store, find the clerk who knows how to perform the service, hope that the “DVD conversion machine” is not broken, stand there like a chump while the clerk “safely” converts your movie to a digital file that may only play on studio-approved devices, drive home, and hope everything worked out. Oh, and the good news is that you would only need to pay a reasonable (per-DVD?) price for this pleasure.

Read more here.

Attorney General Eric Holder wants you to snitch on your neighbour

The War on Terror seems so yesterday.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder urged Americans to fink on their neighbors and report intellectual-property offenses like popping or hawking unapproved pharmaceuticals and downloading music and movies illegally.

The announcement at the White House came as the Justice Department kicked off a public campaign against intellectual-property theft, which like all successful wars against societal scourges, will have public-service announcements on MTV.

Read more here.

AT & T and T-Mobile plot new way to f*ck over consumers

US telecoms giant AT&T and Deutsche Telekom have cast doubt over the $39bn (£25bn) sale of T-Mobile USA by withdrawing their merger application to the industry regulator.

AT&T also said it would include a $4bn charge in its fourth-quarter accounts to cover any potential compensation due if the deal does not go ahead.

The US Justice Department moved to block the sale at the end of August.

The two firms said they would focus on clearing the deal with the government.

Read more here.

Zynga: Idiots of the Day

What you want to bet the "top executives" have made sure they haven't lost a dime...

Attracting top employees can be difficult for cash-strapped startups. So, in many cases, they give out company stock to supplement salaries that employees might feel is below-market.

Zynga followed that strategy. But now the CityVille and FarmVille maker apparently wishes it hadn't, according to a new report.

Citing industry sources, The Wall Street Journal reported today that Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, along with his top executives, decided last year as they were preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) that they had given out too much stock to employees. But rather than accept that reality, the executives reportedly tried a different tactic: demand employees give back not-yet-vested stock or face termination.

Read more here.

CRTC states what customers have known about Rogers all along

The CRTC siding with customers? Did Rogers miss a payment?

The CRTC is investigating Rogers Communications because it believes the way the company deliberately slows down some of its internet traffic violates federal rules.

The probe stems from a complaint by the Canadian Gamers Organization, an advocacy group for people who play video games, that Rogers has been hindering online games.

Rogers admitted in March that its network systems were unintentionally slowing down, or “throttling,” internet traffic for the game World of Warcraft, then said it had resolved the problem.

It further acknowledged in September that other games and programs might be getting tripped up by its throttling. The Canadian Gamers Organization's complaint detailed slow internet speeds experienced while playing Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The CRTC informed the gamers group on Thursday that it has referred the matter to its enforcement division, meaning commission staff consider Rogers to be violating the Telecommunications Act or CRTC regulations.

Read more here.

BofA chief: We have a right 'to f*ck over our customers'

Bank of America's CEO defended his bank's new $5 fee on debit cards on Wednesday, saying that customers and shareholders understand the bank has a "right to make a profit."

Which means if the government takes from the banks, the banks will take from the customers.

It's only fair...

Read more here.

CRTC might, maybe, sorta do something about ISP throttling

Now don't make us maybe do something...maybe...

Internet service providers that slow down games or other applications in violation of a CRTC policy may face a third-party audit or even a public hearing, the telecommunications regulator says.

Read more here.

Lack of competition helps make U.S. only 25th in global internet speeds

But, but, corporations say less competition is better for consumers. Would they lie?

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the U.S. has sunk to 25th in a global ranking of Internet speeds, just behind Romania.

Why? Because our nation's regulators abandoned an earlier commitment to foster competition in the marketplace for Internet access providers.

Read more here.

Record Industry scrambles for new excuses to f*ck over artists

Since their release in 1978, hit albums like Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute,” Kenny Rogers’s “Gambler” and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove” have generated tens of millions of dollars for record companies. But thanks to a little-noted provision in United States copyright law, those artists — and thousands more — now have the right to reclaim ownership of their recordings, potentially leaving the labels out in the cold.

When copyright law was revised in the mid-1970s, musicians, like creators of other works of art, were granted “termination rights,” which allow them to regain control of their work after 35 years, so long as they apply at least two years in advance. Recordings from 1978 are the first to fall under the purview of the law, but in a matter of months, hits from 1979, like “The Long Run” by the Eagles and “Bad Girls” by Donna Summer, will be in the same situation — and then, as the calendar advances, every other master recording once it reaches the 35-year mark.

So of course..

“We believe the termination right doesn’t apply to most sound recordings,” said Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, a lobbying group in Washington that represents the interests of record labels. As the record companies see it, the master recordings belong to them in perpetuity, rather than to the artists who wrote and recorded the songs, because, the labels argue, the records are “works for hire,” compilations created not by independent performers but by musicians who are, in essence, their employees.

A thief is a thief is a thief.

Read more here.

You pay taxes so Microsoft doesn't have to

Corporations are people, just greedy devious ones.

If you want to know why tax from surging corporate profits isn't making much of a dent in the United States' crippling budget deficit, a glance at Microsoft Corp's recent results provides some clues.

Things were rosy in the giant software company's just-ended fiscal fourth quarter, which produced record sales of nearly $17.4 billion, a 30 percent increase in after-tax profit, and a 35 percent gain in earnings per share.

Read more here.

Comcast bans man from Internet for using too much data

Comcast needs their arrogant corporate ass kicked.

It is part of the effort by IPs to cut us off from the Net so we will have to keep buying their overpriced cable services.

They've already succeeded in neutering Netflix in Canada*.

The end of the internet comes not with a bang or a procession of four lolcats of the apocalypse, but just with two blinking lights on a modem.

At least that's how it came for Andre Vrignaud, a 39-year-old gaming consultant in Seattle, when Comcast shut him off from the internet for using too much data.

Vrignaud, it seems, committed the foul of using more than 250 GB of data on Comcast two months in a row, triggering the company's overage policy that results in a year-long ban from using its services.

Read more here.

* it was so bad in fact I canceled my subscription to it yesterday. Well done cable companies, you succeeded in your goal of making us hate you just that much more.

Who is keeping Spotify out of Canada?

So why not in Canada as well? WTF?

I suggest we track down whoever is responsible for this roadblock. The only ones benefiting from it are them, we should tell them to get the fuck out of the way. Their greed should not be an impediment to us all.

As a commentor said:

I'm in Canada which means I can't get Amazon onDemand, Hulu, ComedyCentral, BBC, spotify, decent Netflix streaming, decent iTunes shows, HBO, Amazon Mp3, and much much more.

'Cause, aren't you tired of Canada being behind in technology, only because of the greed of the gatekeepers?

Streaming music service Spotify is set to launch in the US, after thrashing out deals with the major record companies.

Its American service had previously been put on hold, apparently because the labels were not convinced about its ability to make them money.

About 10 million people use Spotify across parts of Europe, with one million paying for its premium service.

Read more here.

Business group: the little people have no right to know just how incredibly greedy company CEOs are

Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker.

Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison.

The lobbying effort began more than a year ago. It involved some of the biggest names in corporate America and meetings with members of both parties on the House Financial Services Committee and Senate banking committee.

The companies and their Republican allies in Congress call comparisons between the chief and everyone else in the company “useless.”

Read more here.

Ark Music Factory's rapacious greed deprives world of Rebecca Black

The official video for Rebecca Black's internet hit Friday has been removed from YouTube.

A message in place of the video now reads: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Rebecca Black. Sorry about that."

A spokesman for the 13-year-old says her team asked YouTube to take the video down because of a dispute with the song's producers Ark Music Factory.

The firm started to charge $2.99 (£1.85) to watch the clip last week.

At the time Black tweeted: "Thanks for all the messages regarding the $2.99 fee added to Friday video, I have NOTHING to do with this!!

"PS...My Manager and Lawyer are on this and are going to get to the bottom of this! Stay tuned..."

Read more here.

Bank Of America Raided By Deputies

Sweet

In shocking revelation, Canadian telcos are greedy bastards

Canadians may face restricted access to video services like Netflix and mobile access to Stanley Cup games unless new regulations are put in place, smaller telecommunications companies warn.

Canada's telecommunications regulator needs to set down rules to prevent possible "cartel-like behaviour" from telecommunications companies such as Bell and Rogers that also own content such as TV shows that competitors would like to be able to offer online, said Chris Peirce, chief corporate officer for MTS Allstream.

"If someone owns the content and competing with someone who also needs that content to deliver the service, then there's obviously the propensity for anticompetitive behaviour," Peirce said while taking part in a panel discussion on telecom regulation at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto Wednesday.

Read more here.

Jeff Pollack defends the record labels without acknowledging reason 1 for declining sales: the music sucks

If you're one of those that feels that major labels are the root of all evil, you may want to skip this post altogether because this time I'm sticking up for the majors. Well, if not stick up for them, at least show that this time around they might actually have the artists' interest (as well as their own) at heart.

It's one big long love letter...enjoy...except for the threat at the end...

So whether it is artist-to-consumer or label-to-cloud service, the deal needs to work for everyone.

Think about it.

Read more here.

The Entertainment Industry suffers setback after French hack

The Entertainment Industry's efforts to turn the Net into their own revenue generation vehicle has suffered a teeny setback.

The French government’s “three strikes” approach to online copyright infringement relies on a private company that scans file sharing networks and gathers the IP addresses of alleged Gallic content pirates. But that company, TMG, suffered an embarrassing security breach last week, and the French government has “temporarily suspended” its acquisition of new TMG data while an investigation is underway.

The embarrassing episode began last week when a French writer found a highly insecure TMG server on the internet and managed to extract internal TMG executables and scripts, along with a cache of IP addresses. According to the initial report, the security on the server was so bad that “one wonders if TMG recently became a Sony subsidiary” — or if the server was a honeypot.

Read more here.