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Archive for the ‘Piracy’ Category

Cyberlockers Also Prevail

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

File-hosting companies are the latest class of online service providers to successfully dodge copyright infringement claims.  Like online marketplace and search engine providers, cyberlockers have also triumphed in lawsuits filed against them because they were protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor. A recent example involved a lawsuit ...

e-Book Piracy: The Next Big Threat?

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

According to a CNN article, in less than 24 hours following the September 2009 release of Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel The Lost Symbol, pirated versions were discovered on file sharing sites, such as RapidShare and BitTorrent. Within days, the book had been illegally downloaded more than 100,000 times. As of ...

Paid Search Ads Can Lead to Fake Goods

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

MarkMonitor recently investigated to what extent popular product searches led to websites offering counterfeit and pirated goods via paid search ads. The research examined 20 of the top 1,000 product-related searches in 2008 and focused on paid search ads across the three major search engines – Google, Yahoo! and Bing. ...

Enforcement Success Rates on Online Marketplaces

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Most brand owners are likely familiar with eBay’s Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program for requesting de-listings of illegal auction listings and that eBay has a solid track record for removing infringing listings – close to 100%, in fact. What may be lesser known is that many major online marketplaces – including ...

Removing Copyright Violators from Search Engine Listings

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

It may not be widely-known but the big 3 search engines – Google, Yahoo! and Bing – have established procedures for removing natural search results on the basis of the DMCA.  That’s good news for brand owners:  if consumers can’t find infringing websites via the search engines, they’re less likely to ...

Expanding Internet Access Driving Software Piracy, Study Says

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

The global software piracy rate rose to 41% in 2008 from 38% in 2007, costing rights owners an exchange-rate adjusted $50 billion, according to a joint study between the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IDC released last week.  One of the factors driving greater piracy is increased high-speed Internet access, ...