There is a lot of talk going on in the tech blogosphere about how Canada, a country where once upon a time technology was a good thing, is now facing the fact that they are now going to have to worry about everything they download thanks to a stupid government and greedy ISPs.

However as our now yoked citizens comes to terms with data caps on their web surfing a company by the name of Canadian Download is going to try a very low-tech approach to help out those people affected by these onerous data caps.

And by low-tech I mean … low-tech .. as in downloading the files in the U.S., burning those files onto CD or DVD and then mailing them to Canadians web users.

Yes folks, in this incredible technological era we are reduced to having our files sent to us in the mail on a DVD.

How fricken stupid is that.

While I commend the company for seeing if this will work (this still has to make it past Canada Post or Canada Customs and good luck with that) but one has to wonder just how many copyright laws are being broken in the process.

Yup, Canada … the land of the strong and the free yet having to break laws to be able to be a part of the modern world.

via VentureBeat

Canadian company finds low-tech way to ship data to capped Canadians is a post from: The Inquisitr

A jury in Minneapolis has decided on a third fine for illegal downloader Jammie Thomas-Rasset- the Minnesota woman was originally fined $1.92 million for downloading 24 songs.

The RIAA has offered twice to settle the case, once for $222,000 and once for $25,000, but Thomas-Rasset rejected both offers. The RIAA again gloated in a statement over the newest exorbitant, arbitrary fee, which works out to about $62,000 per song the defendant allegedly downloaded:

“We are again thankful to the jury for its service in this matter and that they recognized the severity of the defendant’s misconduct,” the RIAA said in a statement. “Now with three jury decisions behind us along with a clear affirmation of Ms. Thomas-Rasset’s willful liability, it is our hope that she finally accepts responsibility for her actions.” 

The third time around, the fine doesn’t seem any more reasonable or proportionate to the crime of which Thomas-Rasset stands accused. (Steven broke down the fines for downloading versus those for murder or dogfighting a while back.) Thomas-Rasset’s lawyers have vowed again to fight back, and a judge in a previous case did deem the original fine of near $2m to be “monstrous and shocking.” It was then that the RIAA offered the defendant the $25K settlement, but only if she agreed to request that the judge remove the decision from the record. She refused.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset receives third judgment, fined $1.5m is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve never been a big user of BitTorrent but just as there are illegal uses for it there are just as many legal ones. however if what the team at TorrentFreak has discovered is true you may want to seriously reconsider using it for those music or movie downloads.

It appears that they have stumbled across a website that will automatically show you your IP address as well as providing a list of all recorded BitTorrent downloads. Now TorrentFreak after doing some testing could tell for sure if the displayed results for real or not but if they are indeed real this isn’t a good thing.

Not only that but they found out that if you change the end of the tracking URL by adding on /?host=X.X.X.X (with the X’s being the IP address) you could retrieve a list of what files were downloaded by it. There is also other things that they discovered but aren’t releasing at this time because further investigation is needed but they say it is something to be concerned about.

You really might want to rethink using BitTorrent is a post from: The Inquisitr

Well, that’s one way to make fines for file-sharing look even more arbitrary, astronomical and totally imaginary.

The RIAA battled single mom Jammie Thomas-Rasset in court over 24 tracks the woman illegally shared over Kazaa. Despite Thomas-Rasset’s protests that she hadn’t downloaded the tracks and that other people had access to her computer, she was found guilty and fined $80,000 per song shared over the P2P network. Thomas-Rasset, a woman of fairly modest means, was slapped with a $1.92m fine for her crimes.

Of course, the RIAA did offer to settle before the trial, for the sum of $200,000- more than houses cost in many parts of the US. And the fine ultimately decided upon was nowhere near the fiscal severity of penalties levied typically if Thomas-Rasset had stolen hundreds of CDs each of the entire albums bearing the tracks she’d stolen. But the judicial system had spoken, and the single tracks had a determined value of $80K.

Now Thomas-Rasset has been offered, and will likely decline, a final settlement from the RIAA for the amount of $25,000. Even though it’s far from $1.92M, $25,000 is still a lot of money for such a petty crime. (See Steven’s post on much more serious crimes and comparable fiscal penalties.) And the wild fluctuation in offers only seems to indicate that the damage done to record companies by file-sharing is not very quantifiable. So the case is far from over, and Thomas-Rasset is likely headed to court to further tie up judicial proceedings over the theft of 24 really awful songs.

But what I’d really like to know is whether the record companies were damaged to the tune of $200,000? $25,000? $1,920,000? Maybe a dollar? Maybe a billion? Which is it, RIAA?

[Ars Technica]

RIAA offers to settle with Jammie Thomas-Rasset for $25K is a post from: The Inquisitr

Well color me surprised but not all of the record companies are happy with UK ISP Virgin Media’s planned subscription service for downloading music.

The UK company believes that consumers want to be able to download as much music as they want and without it being loaded down with DRM restrictions. It’s newly announced subscription service is built around this idea that will allow their subscribers to download as much music as they want for an additional monthly fee and allow them to keep it permanently. The fee for the service hasn’t been announced but people in the know are suggesting it will be around the £15 mark.

At this point only Universal and some smaller indie labels have signed up with the ISP’s service. The other record companies, like Warner Bros, EMI, and Sony Music aren’t too happy with the service as they believe that it will cannibalize their existing digital sales. They also don’t believe that it will do anything to convert persistent file-sharers.

A Virgin Media spokeswoman said it’s committed to launching a “comprehensive” service this year. “We’re making good progress in developing the service and are on track to launch before Christmas,” she said. “We’re in talks with both major and independent labels and are committed to launching a comprehensive service.”

However, while record labels are keen to work with Virgin because of the reach it offers via its 3.7m broadband subscribers, they argue the music download service needs to make commercial sense.

A label executive involved in the negotiations said the labels support Virgin Media’s music plans in theory, but any service must deliver both feasibility and scale.

“We want to work with Virgin Media as a partner but any deal has to sit comfortably with how we value our assets against how it values its customers,” he said. “We have to evaluate each deal as it comes in and make sure we’re happy with the overall value of the proposition.”

Source: New Media Age – Record labels cast doubt on Virgin Media’s music model

Somehow I don’t hold out much hope that the Virgin Media subscription idea will end up seeing the light of day.

Virgin’s solution to piracy not sitting well with all record companies is a post from: The Inquisitr

There is no doubt that the RIAA deserves all the bad press and flack it gets but on a scale of utter doucebaggery they pale in comparison to a company called Digiprotect.

This company exists only to trap and sue people who download possible illegal files, music and video, from the Internet. It’s one thing to try and protect your copyrights and sue people you legitimately believe have stolen your music or movies but it is another thing to purposely set up a company that does nothing but place copyrighted material in order to encourage people to download and then sue them.

And that is Digiprotect’s business model folks.

They get the legal rights from companies to distribute these media files and because they have those rights they can sue illegal downloaders – regardless of country. As Ernesto from TorrentFreak writes in his post on the company

So Digiprotect acquires the right to distribute movies, music or games from the rights holders, which they then share on various P2P networks. All they have to do is wait for people to take the bait. If someone tries to download the file they collect the IP-address and initiate legal action through one of their befriended law firms.

That is, if it’s profitable, otherwise Digiprotect can’t afford to protect the copyright holder’s rights, as Hein explains.

“No one working for DigiProtect has a fixed salary. If we make money, everybody makes money. If we don’t, nobody does. This means the lawyers, sales people and customers. It’s all about how much money can be recouped and then sharing it.”

So in other words this amounts to nothing more than legalized entrapment meant to do nothing more than make them, and probably the original rights holders, a lot of money.

Talk about scummy.

If you think the RIAA sucks check these guys out is a post from: The Inquisitr

A Minnesota mother of two has been fined $1.92m for “willful copyright infringement” in the illegal sharing of 22 songs.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset (pronounced “Jamie”- can they tack on a fine for that?) was found to be responsible for the illegal downloads and ordered to pay $80,000 per track for her crimes.

Thomas-Rasset’s lawyers contend that it’s impossible to prove that she was the individual who illegally downloaded and shared the files, positing that her children and ex-boyfriend both had free access to her Kazaa account. They also made a point of her willingness to stand up to the RIAA and indicated that if precedent was set, many more people could stand to be tried on flimsy evidence.

This was Thomas-Rasset’s second trial, with a decidedly less favorable outcome for the single mother- however, the idea that most Americans could cough up that kind of cash is pretty silly. Originally, she was fined a total of $222,000 for the downloading spree, but the judge in the first case called a mistrial after acknowledging he may have erred in instructing the jury. Thomas-Rasset chose not to settle as most defendants had, resulting in the astronomical fine.

Via Wired, the two-million dollar playlist:

• Guns N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle”; “November Rain”
• Vanessa Williams “Save the Best for Last”
• Janet Jackson “Let’s What Awhile”
• Gloria Estefan “Here We Are”; “Coming Out of the Heart”; “Rhythm is Gonna Get You”
• Goo Goo Dolls “Iris”
• Journey “Faithfully”; “Don’t Stop Believing”
• Sara McLachlan “Possession”;  “Building a Mystery”
• Aerosmith “Cryin’”
• Linkin Park “One Step Closer”
• Def Leppard “Pour Some Sugar on Me”
• Reba McEntire “One Honest Heart”
• Bryan Adams “Somebody”
• No Doubt “Bathwater”; “Hella Good”; “Different People”
• Sheryl Crow “Run Baby Run”
• Richard Marx “Now and Forever”
• Destiny’s Child “Bills, Bills, Bills”
• Green Day “Basket Case”

RIAA trial ends in $2m fine is a post from: The Inquisitr

Well it turns out that the French National Assembly has indeed passed the law, even if it was with an almost empty assembly. For those that don’t know about this law – that many other countries are looking at copying – it means that you get three warnings if you or your IP is connected with downloading illegal movie files, music files or other types of files that someone might deem as being copyrighted. On the third warning you lose your access to the Internet – bing bang you’re done.

Now as much as this may suck rotten lemons I noticed something else in the post by John Ozimek of The Register that while it doesn’t affect me it still chilled me to the bone with it’s implications to the French people. John noted that the new law had a future – broader – implication (emphasis is mine)

The law is also referred to as the loi Hadopi, because it creates a "High Authority" (Haute autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet), which will in future be charged with monitoring and regulating the use of the internet in France.

So under the guise of protecting copyrighted works the French government has just created a law that will allow them to completely monitor all Internet activity within France, and I would imagine any traffic coming into the country. Talk about a backdoor trampling of privacy rights.

The new French 3-strikes law hides a bigger threat is a post from: The Inquisitr

As usual of course the beating of chests and proclamations of how bad this is being echoed through mainstream press online and offline media. Which is really funny when you consider the fact that the biggest downloads of movies on the web have also been some of the biggest box office winners.

Here’s the thing though. Fox had a perfect opportunity with this happening to almost totally turn around peoples perception of the movie industry. As Michael Masnick at Techdirt said

But, even so, instead of going all legal and threatening, the studio could have responded in a way that built anticipation to get people to actually go see the movie.

Why not be straightforward about it, saying, something along the lines of:

Hey Wolverine fans! We know that you’re all looking forward to the release of the movie next month. We’re excited too! By now you may have heard that an early totally unfinished version has been leaked online. It’s missing a whole bunch of stuff — including some amazing special effects — and honestly, this version isn’t a finished product at all. We think you’ll get a much better overall experience by waiting for the full finished product, but we certainly understand that some of you just can’t wait (trust us, we feel the same way!). If that’s the case, please, feel free to check it out, but please remember that this isn’t even close to the final version. If anything, think of this as a "behind-the-scenes" peek of just what a movie looks like before all the real "movie magic" gets put in there. If you do check it out, we hope you’ll join us May 1st to check out the finalized version as well on the big screen the way we intended for you to see this awesome movie. It’s just a month away!

Yet another missed opportunity.

And by the way the movie is great but the workprint copy floating around out there is very incomplete and has a lot of cleaning up to do with the special effects. Which raises an interesting thought – this release I think could actually encourage people to go see a great action movie if only two see how much it differs from the workprint release.

[photo courtesy of My Hollywood Dream]

20th Century Fox misses perfect chance with Wolverine workprint is a post from: The Inquisitr

According to a post at TorrentFreak this is something that Mininova will be changing. In a move to encourage even more artists to use their service and possibly to prove to labels that BitTorrent is a valid alternative marketplace Mininova has launched an addition to their distribution service. Starting today artist, in just a few clicks, will be able to add links to CDs, concert tickets and other merchandising products that they want to sell alongside the torrent download link.

The new feature integrates a link to products in the artist’s myshopify.com store, as the record label Beep! Beep! has done with one of their latest releases.

The label even gives Mininova users a 20% discount for helping out with seeding. According to the label, the reason why they have decided to give all their albums away for free is simple. “Because it’s only fair not to pay for something you haven’t heard yet,” they say.

“In our opinion torrents are an excellent way to present you with our music. That’s why Beep! Beep! and Mininova have teamed up. We like the fact that you’re taking the effort to get to know new music. In fact, we’d like to thank you for downloading and seeding our music by giving you a discount on our hardcopies,” the label announced.

I gotta admit this is a pretty cool feature to see added and in my opinion actually puts Mininova a definite step above The Pirate Bay.

Mininova helps musicians monetize their BitTorrent downloads is a post from: The Inquisitr