The U.S. Army got caught pirating $180 million in software. It’s settling for $50 million.

For the Army to function, it needs to keep track of where its soldiers are deployed. So in 2004, it hired a software company to help locate its units down to their exact positions, even if they were in a moving transport vehicle. The Army allegedly liked the solution so much that it wound up installing the program thousands of times more than it was supposed to — and didn't pay for it. Oops.

Now the government is handing Apptricity $50 million to settle the developer's copyright infringement case, a fraction of what the government would actually owe based on the number of missing licenses. The government initially bought a handful of server and device licenses for $4.5 million in 2004. That was followed by another purchase about five years later.

But according to Apptricity's complaint, the U.S. Army then installed the software on another 100 servers and 9,000 devices and didn't come clean until June 2011, after a series of inventory reports revealed the inconsistency. Not only did the Army stall in telling Apptricity about the infringement, the complaint alleges, but the Army also tried to get out of paying by tampering with the software...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/29/the-u-s-army-got-caught-pirating-180-million-in-software-its-settling-for-50-million/

Australian Police Accused of Mass Software Piracy | TorrentFreak

Australian police are involved in a massive piracy lawsuit. Software company Micro Focus is claiming that the police are making unauthorized use of its ViewNow software, which they use to access the COPS criminal intelligence database. In addition, it’s alleged that the police shared the proprietary software with third parties. Micro Focus is fighting the case in court and is demanding at least $10 million in damages.

The Aussie police are clearly not setting the right example when it comes to copyright infringement. In 2008 computers of the South Australian police force’s IT branchwere found to contain hundreds of pirated movies.

There is, however, an even ongoing bigger case in which the New South Wales police are accused of massive software piracy involving its criminal intelligence database...

http://torrentfreak.com/australian-police-accused-of-mass-software-piracy-120424/

Infographic: Why the movie industry is so wrong about SOPA

via matadornetwork.com

While Drafting SOPA, the U.S. House Harbors BitTorrent Pirates

In recent weeks we discovered BitTorrent pirates at the RIAA, Sony, Fox, Universal and even law-abiding organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security. By now it should be clear that people are using BitTorrent pretty much everywhere, and not only for lawful downloads. Today we can add the U.S. House of Representatives to that list, the place where lawmakers are drafting the much discussed “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA).

YouHaveDownloaded is a treasure trove full of incriminating data on alleged BitTorrent pirates in organizations all across the world.

Unauthorized downloads occur even in the most unexpected of places, from the palace of the French President, via the Church of God, to the RIAA.

Although we don’t plan to go on forever trawling the archives, we felt that there was at least one place that warranted further investigation – the U.S. House of Representatives. Since it’s the birthplace of the pending SOPA bill, we wondered how many of the employees there have engaged in unauthorized copying.

The answer is yet again unambiguous – they pirate a lot.

via torrentfreak.com

Piracy problems? US copyright industries show terrific health

Pity the poor people who work in the US "copyright industries." Battered by a decade of digital piracy and facing even more of it thanks to cheap computers, fast Internet, P2P file-sharing, and online file lockers, the US creative industries teeter on the verge of collapse. You can tell because the industry:

• Pays better than most American jobs
• Has outperformed the US economy through a horrific recession
• Sells record-setting amounts of product overseas, earning more foreign revenue than the entire US food sector or US pharmaceutical companies

Things are going so "badly" that a major new report commissioned by copyright holders says that these "consistently positive trends solidify the status of the copyright industries as a key engine of growth for the US economy as a whole."

via arstechnica.com

Piracy May Boost Sales, Judge Concludes

A Spanish judge came to an interesting conclusion in a case dealing with a seller of pirated copies. According to the judge the defendant doesn’t have to pay compensation to the rightsholders because it is not possible to determine to what extent piracy actually decreases sales. On the contrary, the judge suggests that piracy may even boost sales.

Anyone who says that piracy is only helping or hurting content creators is wrong.

Piracy has a different effect in each unique case. Not only does it differ between the gaming, music, book and games industries, but also between the relative popularity of the artists and the characteristics of their audiences.

As we’ve pointed out repeatedly in the past, there are plenty of cases where piracy may have a positive effect on sales. Research has shown that “pirates” are the music industry’s best customers, something EMI’s new music boss Douglas Merrill confirmed earlier this year.

via torrentfreak.com

SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets A Chance to Break the Internet

As promised, here’s the first installment of our closer review of the massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation that is the Stop Online Piracy Act. We’ll start with how it could impact Twitter, Tumblr, and the next innovative social network, cloud computing, or web hosting service that some smart kid is designing in her garage right now.

Let’s make one thing clear from the get-go: despite all the talk about this bill being directed only toward “rogue” foreign sites, there is no question that it targets US companies as well. The bill sets up a system to punish sites allegedly “dedicated to the theft of US property.”  How do you get that label?  Doesn’t take much: Some portion of your site (even a single page) must  

1. be directed toward the US, and either
2. allegedly “engage in, enable or facilitate” infringement or
3. allegedly be taking or have taken steps to “avoid confirming a high probability” of infringement.

via eff.org

UN: Disconnecting File-Sharers Breaches Human Rights

"According to a report set to be adopted today by the UN’s Human Rights Council, anti-filesharing provisions such as those outlined in the UK’s Digital Economy Act are disproportionate and should be repealed. The provisions, which include disconnecting Internet users for violating the rights of the music and movie industries, breach human rights, the report concludes.

According to a UN report published in May and set to be adopted today, tough provisions in the UK’s Digital Economy Act and France’s ‘Hadopi’ legislation breach human rights..."

http://torrentfreak.com/un-disconnecting-file-sharers-breaches-human-rights-1...

IP-Address Is Not a Person, BitTorrent Case Judge Says

"A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. may spell the end of the “pay-up-or-else-schemes” that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person.

In the last year various copyright holders have sued well over 100,000 alleged file-sharers in the United States alone. The purpose of these lawsuits is to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers, and use this information to negotiate a settlement offer ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars..."

http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent-case-judge-says-11...

Google’s the Largest Torrent Search Engine, isoHunt Tells Court

via torrentfreak.com