PIRATE MOBILE APPS TARGETED BY STUDIOS

Movie studios are increasingly monitoring apps developed for smartphones and tablet devices that employ unlicensed content from their films, Reuters reported on Thursday, and they are often finding those bootleg apps available via top Internet destinations like Google Play and iTunes. Only last week, the wire service said, Warner Bros. sent Google a “take down” […]

BROADCASTERS FILE NEW LAWSUITS TO SHUT DOWN AEREO

Several broadcasters, including Fox, Univision and PBS, filed a brief on Friday challenging a federal judge’s decision to allow Barry Diller’s Aereo service to continue streaming their signals in New York City without permission. Aereo insists that its service does not violate copyright laws since it relies on thousands of tiny antennas that are assigned […]

DILLER: AEREO COMING TO ALL MAJOR CITIES BY NEXT YEAR

Given at least a temporary go-ahead by a federal judge on Wednesday, Barry Diller says he is planning to expand his Aereo streaming service to most of the largest U.S. cities by the end of next year. In an interview with Bloomberg Television conducted at the Allen & Co. annual gathering (commonly referred to as […]

STUDY: AD-SKIPPING RECORDERS COULD PLAGUE NETWORKS

Unless the broadcast and cable networks prevail in court, DISH Network’s new Hopper DVR, which automatically skips commercials on recorded shows, could increase 22 percent within four years to 11.7 million units, according to a study by IHS Screen Digest. That kind of proliferation could cause the networks to reexamine their advertiser-supported business model and […]

THREE NETWORKS SUE DISH OVER HOPPER

As expected, DISH Network was hit with lawsuits by NBC, Fox and CBS on Thursday over its Hopper DVR that allows users to skip and erase commercials automatically. (ABC said that it is monitoring the situation.) In its statement, CBS said, “This service takes existing network content and modifies it in a manner that is […]

DILLER WINS ROUND ONE AGAINST NETWORKS

Barry Diller has won an unexpected early-round legal victory against the major broadcast networks, as a federal judge on Monday threw out an unfair-competition complaint that they had filed against Diller’s Aereo service. The service allows subscribers to use what Aereo calls their own dedicated antenna to retransmit favorite over-the-air TV shows via the Internet […]

PARAMOUNT SIGNS DEAL WITH THE ENEMY: GOOGLE

Paramount is playing ball with Google’s new online rental platform Google Play, despite the fact that its corporate parent, Viacom, is still pursuing a $1-billion claim against it. The deal licenses some 500 movies to Google, including such recent releases as Hugo and The Adventures of Tintin to classics such as The Godfather trilogy. It […]

PIRATE BAY LOOKING AT ALTERNATIVE TO BITTORENT

After finding that The Pirate Bay violates British copyright laws on a massive scale, the high court in London on Monday will presumably order ISPs in the UK to block the BitTorrent site. Anticipating that action, The Pirate Bay has posted a message saying that it will no longer offer downloads via BitTorrent but will […]

NEW SAMSUNG DVD PLAYER MAKES DIGITAL COPIES

In the latest effort to marry the computer and the PC, Samsung plans to unveil several new home entertainment systems that will transfer DVDs and Blu-ray Discs to hard drives or other digital media. In a news release the company said that in order to use the conversion software, users will have to register ownership […]

PIRATE PARTY A SURPRISE WINNER IN BERLIN

The Motion Picture Association of America was no doubt left reeling by results of Sunday’s elections in Berlin that saw Germany’s Pirate Party win 8.9 percent of the vote to take 15 seats in the Berlin house of representatives. In an interview with the New York Times, Christoph Bieber, a professor of political science at […]

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