Piracy, Copyright Infringement | featured news

Google is smart. We all know that. Here's a great bit of search engine cleverness of Kafka-esque proportions. How can you be seen by the entertainment industry as fighting piracy of copyrighted material and yet not have a negative impact on one of the largest infringers, YouTube—who you happen to own?

A group of more than 30 rightsholders have won their case targeted against Grooveshark in Denmark. A court agreed that both the streaming music service and its users infringe recording label copyrights and granted an injunction forcing an ISP to initiate a block of the service. The anti-piracy group behind the action hopes that other ISPs will now follow suit.

January 18 is a date that will live in ignorance, as Wikipedia started a 24-hour blackout of its English-language articles, joining other sites in protesting pending U.S. legislation aimed at shutting down sites that share pirated movies and other content.

The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store where links to infringing material will redirect to.