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Tag Archives: copyright infringement
Is there a way we can protect companies’ copyright interests while not harming consumers? It has been difficult to achieve one aim without harming the other. The Megaupload case demonstrates the tension between the two sides, as the FBI may now face a lawsuit from Megaupload users over its shutdown of the popular website last month. The FBI targeted Megaupload for its millions in revenue that it brought it from offering copyrighted works free on the internet. However, there were also many legitimate uses of Megaupload’s services, and all those who had important files on Megaupload’s servers have no access to their data. The government and entertainment conglomerates have been battling with technology for several decades now – the debates we now see have their roots in the 1984 case that pitted Sony’s VCR technology against University City Studios. Yet here we are, some 28 years later, still wondering whether…
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One consumer market set to grow exponentially in the coming years is the e-book industry. E-books have already grown from devices that let people haul around hundreds of books on a lightweight tablet to a way for students to cut costs, for authors to publish books cheaply, and for the environmentally conscious to reduce their impact on the environment. Proof of the increasing popularity of e-books, Apple’s recently launched iBookstore sold 350,000 digital textbooks (or eTextbooks, as some call them) during its first three days of operation. Depending on whom you talk to, e-books have both advantages and drawbacks. We already mentioned several of their advantages. Some of the drawbacks and concerns of moving to an increasingly digital way of reading include the following: Decreased sales for companies in between writers and their readers; there is less of a need for all of the middlemen like distributors, publishers, and marketers…
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A sure sign of increased enforcement efforts to come against alleged copyright infringers, the US Department of Justice took a bold step on January 19 when it shut down Hong Kong-based file-sharing service Megaupload.com. To say that Megaupload was a popular site would be an understatement – the site received four percent of all internet traffic on any given day, with 50 million daily visitors. Visitors to the site will now simply see a “seized” picture with the logos of the Justice Department, FBI and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. Megaupload is different from torrent file-sharing services in that Megaupload is more like a drop box for files. Internet users upload their files and then receive a hyperlink that they can share with others. Many internet users and companies used Megaupload’s services legitimately. They could upload files too large for e-mail or large files like software and then…
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