Spanish researchers at the Carlos III University of Madrid have posted interesting results today in regards to filesharing.
The researchers say a tiny fraction of users are responsible for over two-thirds of all content published, and over three-fourths of all downloads.
Using the names, ISPs and IP addresses of uploaders and downloaders to 55,000 torrents published to Mininova and the Pirate Bay, the group concluded that just 100 users were behind 67 percent of the uploads and 75 percent of the downloads.
Result for: Downloaders
LimeWire, once the world’s most popular P2P client, is now officially shut down, following a four-year legal battle against the record industry.
A New York federal court has issued a permanent injunction against the site this week, ruling that LimeWire caused a “massive scale of infringement” by intentionally giving users a platform to share millions of unauthorized music tracks.
At its peak, LimeWire was seeing 50 million monthly users.
Visitors to the site are greeted by the pictured “legal notice.”
While the company can no longer make unauthorized music readily available, the site says it is now “working with the music industry to move forward.”
The court also added that LimeWire should use all available resources to remove all copyrighted materials currently available to downloaders of the client.
Result for: Downloaders
Record label representatives have been caught issuing DMCA takedown notices for Radiohead’s In Rainbows album despite apparently not having any legal standing to do so.
Radiohead released In Rainbows online in 2007 after severing their relationship with EMI. It was initially offered online, with downloaders allowed to choose their own price - even if they chose to pay nothing.
The DMCA’s takedown provision allows rights holders or their agents to have infringing content taken down by service providers. But the rights in question would have to be for digital distribution.
A few months after it’s initial online release, the band made a distribution deal with a RIAA member, ATO Records, which doesn’t seem to include any digital distribution (ie download) rights.
In fact it appears that Warner/Chappell Music, a publishing company owned by Warner Music Group, is contracted to be Radiohead’s representative in digital licensing. Although public details of the arrangement are somewhat vague, Last.fm lists the company as the label for In Rainbows.
A guick search of the Chilling Effects database shows that the RIAA has included the album in at least one DMCA takedown request.
Another takedown notice which includes the album comes from the RIAA’s international equivalent, IFPI, which ATO Records isn’t even affiliated with. Even stranger is the frequent listing of In Rainbows in takedown notices by a Brazilian anti piracy organization called Anti-Pirataria Cinema E Música (APCM).
[More]>>
