Apropos my recent response to the EFF’s standard policy of shrugging at online piracy, I want to highlight one paragraph from the post to which I replied. Katherine Trendacosta wrote: From the fever-pitch moral panic of the early 2000s, discussions about “piracy” disappeared from pop culture for about a decade. It’s come back, both from the side explaining why and the side that wants ...
Image by stefanocar75 Copyright holders have long insisted that search results play a substantial role in driving users toward pirate sites. Google and piracy advocates have generally countered that search does not drive much traffic to illegal sites because the people who consistently use infringing sites know what they’re doing and will go directly to the content they’re seeking. This is a ...
Andrew Orlowski reports at The Register that last week Google quietly suspended its legal action to “muzzle” an investigation by Mississippi Attorney General Hood into whether or not the search giant was abiding by the terms of its 2012, non-prosecutorial settlement with the government over illegal online sales of prescription drugs. Any explanation of Google’s change in strategy or the ...
View image | gettyimages.com I imagine most people, whether they’re users of pirate sites or not, haven’t paid much attention to the growing number of safety warnings associating content theft with identity theft and related crimes against consumers. For one thing, the whole idea of media piracy itself has, for too long, enjoyed undeserved credibility as a so-called victimless crime ...
“We the consumers are outgunned and outmanned. We don’t have the tools needed to protect ourselves. While you are still better off having a 2013 anti-virus program, it won’t protect you against zero-day malware anymore than the polio vaccine will protect you from Ebola.” That quote is from the introduction of a new report published last week by the Digital ...
