The days of streaming copyrighted content on the internet for profit could be coming to an end soon. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that if approved by the entire Senate, would make it a felony for anyone to commercially stream copyrighted content. If this law is passed, chances are there will be someone still streaming illegal content, but their numbers could decrease drastically out of fear of jail time.

Sometimes when you put a video on YouTube you really want to splice in a few seconds of C-SPAN or Al Jazeera coverage, but you’re afraid of the copyright issues. Well, be afraid no longer. YouTube has just added the option to license content under Creative Commons, making it easier for everyone to remix videos more »

Everyone’s favorite torrent site (if only for the interesting news they provide) looks to be in quite a bit of trouble again. It just can’t seem to catch a break — it’s as if every organization with a ton of copyrights finds it necessary to sue the site. Last time it was the amalgamation of organizations that sued the site for various copyright infringements. This time the suit comes from Dutch antipiracy group BREIN.

Soon after the Pirate Bay founders were sentenced to over a year in jail and slapped with hefty fines, accusations began to fly that the judge sitting on the case was biased and the verdict should be overturned. Now the person appointed to investigate the claims has been found to have a conflict of interest more »

The Swedish courts handed down a landmark decision by finding the four founders of the wildly popular torrent site Pirate Bay guilty of hosting copyrighted material on their website. Along with being sentenced to one year in prison each, the company will have to pay an estimated $3.5 million to several defendants in the case, more »

Apparently it isn’t only pirates that do the attacking. At least not when it comes to Pirate Bay. They’ve found themselves under attack quite a bit as of late, and it doesn’t look like that is going to be abating any time soon.

Just last week, the trial kicked off in a landmark case against the four founders of the Pirate Bay site on accusations of breaking copyright law. The defendants, (Carl Lundström, Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg), claimed that regardless of what happened in the case, the site would live on. They also didn’t seem too worried that their prosecutors would be successful. “What are they going to do? They have already failed to take the site down once. Let them fail again,” said Svartholm Warg in a quote from TorrentFreak.

Raise your hand if you remember the Spore SecuROM fiasco. The community backlash, and the resulting huge amount of pirated copies of the game that became available. You’d think that somebody would try to create a form of copy protection that both copyright holders and consumers can be okay with. Apparently the people at CD Digital Card didn’t get that message.

CD Digital Card is trying to bring 2 Geeks In A Lab’s Global Garde copy protection to mass market. Apparently the code is small (only about 250 to 500 KB), takes only five minutes to install, and is supposed to be invisible to consumers. According to the press release it’s currently hailed as “the holy grail of anti-piracy and copy protection.” In other words: the bane of those who simply want to access the content that they paid for, or those who want to pirate it.

You’ve got to feel bad for YouTube. After becoming the Internet’s darling for such fun gags, it wants to get a day job. No longer content with just the clearing house for pranks and short clips, it wants to be in the full length movie business as well as the TV show business.

YouTube served up this kind of content at one time but was forced to take most of it down over copyright claims. Now YouTube is working with Hollywood to gain their trust and their content.

But it isn’t an easy road. Sure YouTube has the traffic, 81 million folks in September but they also have the baggage. And it’s more than just past indiscretions.

Find out what’s next for YouTube.

You don’t even have to be illegally sharing your files to have the gaming firms after you apparently. Just ask Gill and Ken Murdoch.

They’re senior citizens who don’t even play computer games and had never even heard the term “peer-to-peer” until they got a letter in the mail telling them they were being accused of sharing the game Race07 by makers Atari. Their case was eventually dropped, but there are still hundreds of people this is happening to according to a Which? Computing magazine investigation. More details after the break.

“The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.” So says the warning on all movies released since early 2004. Well, granted many get a bit of a chuckle every time they pop a movie into their player and see that flash across their screen knowing they’ve just downloaded it from somewhere on the ‘Net, but still…it’s the thought that counts. And apparently, the thought of RealNetworks is that they want to make it a little easier for their customers to burn those dvds; since they are coming out with a new product called RealDVD which allows users to burn a digital copy of the movie of your choice…ummmm..legally? Guess that remains to be seen. Because there hasn’t been enough chatter about the whole piracy/fair use thing lately.