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The article discusses a research study conducted to unravel the reasons piracy thrives in the Nigerian environment in the face of a virile copyright law meant to protect the rights of copyright holders, punish infringers and defaulters of the law. It also analyzes factors responsible for the high level of piracy in Nigeria. Due to technological advancement, the Piracy business has become sophisticated and global in nature and scope.

Peer-to-peer streaming has emerged via software developed for swapping and sharing digital content (such as music, films, TV shows and live sports) with others across the internet. Peer-to-peer streaming has become an expedient technique for end-users, because it allows access to digital content without downloading it. However, while it is a novel advancement in technology, peer-to-peer streaming has heralded new challenges for copyright-protected works. This is because peer-to-peer streaming can affect the right of communication to the public, which is the exclusive right of the copyright owners. The process of making digital content available for others through peer-to-peer streaming can result in copyright-protected work being distributed illegally. This paper examines whether peer-to-peer streaming infringes the right of communication to the public in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author's rights and copyright law have gone through quite a few changes in the 'post-print' culture of binary systems, digital formations and techno-practices. Technological development supports a new concept of author's rights by promoting a free internet and digital market, as well as new contemporary experience of culture that is rooted in digital technology, mass communication and the world of multimedia and virtuality. Though computer and digital technology have served both authors and users in various ways, they have also served as a very fertile ground for sharing copyrighted content, thus leading to numerous copyright infringements and conflicts with the copyright law. The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the ways in which computer and digital technology have given rise to new trends in the production (e.g. remix culture) and consumption (e.g. peer-to-peer file sharing technology) of culture, but also to determine how new forms of distribution, use and sharing of digital content changed and shaped the perception of authorship in the 21st century. In order to analyze the dynamic, nature and structure by which new digital and networking technologies are affecting the concept of authorship and author's rights and to test the consistency of previously established hypotheses, we conducted a survey amongst the general public. 535 questionnaires were completed. Data was analyzed using SPSS tool and a quantitative method of analysis. In the analysis special attention was given to both, the concept of authorship in the digital environment and the concept of peer-to-peer file sharing technology as not so new, but still very popular networked architecture for distributing, using and sharing digital content. Results have shown that most of the respondents use peer-to-peer file sharing technology to access, consume and/or share different cultural content (e.g. movies, music, books, etc.) while violating the rights of copyright holders. That is one of the main reasons why copyright holders and creative industry constantly finds new ways to fight peer-to-peer networking technology, especially commercial file sharing, thus sometimes restraining cultural production and even technological development. This leads to the conclusion that this new dynamic, decentralized and distributed networked environment grounded in digital democracy and participating culture of prosumers asks for new legal initiatives and solutions. The research shows that the basic understanding of authorship and the rights of authors and other creative workers in the context of Internet culture and digital media has not changed a lot, but due to new available digital means of production and tools of consumption, users' attitudes, habits and practices towards them have. To resolve this conflict, the law needs to find new mechanisms to establish the balance between the needs and rights of both authors and users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for multimedia distribution has spread out globally in recent years. The mass popularity is primarily driven by efficient distribution of content, also giving rise to piracy. An end user (buyer) of a P2P content distribution system does not want to reveal his/her identity during a transaction with a content owner (merchant), whereas the merchant does not want the buyer to further distribute the content illegally. Therefore, there is a strong need for a content distribution mechanism over P2P networks that do not pose security and privacy threats to the copyright holders and end users, respectively. The existent systems for copyright and privacy protection employ cryptographic mechanisms at a cost of high computational burden which makes these systems impractical to distribute large sized files, such as music albums or movies. In this paper, we propose and analyze a P2P content distribution system which allows efficient distribution of large-sized content while preserving the security and privacy of merchants and buyers, respectively. Our proposed framework is able to resolve the problems of piracy tracing, buyer frameproofness, collusion resistance, dispute resolution and buyer’s anonymity. We have carried out simulations to evaluate the performance of our framework in terms of imperceptibility, robustness, throughput and content delivery costs. The experimental results confirm that the proposed framework provides an efficient solution to copyright infringement issues over P2P networks, reducing the multimedia file sizes as much as five times on average, while protecting the end users’ privacy and anonymity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues of an increase in online piracy through peer-to-peer (P2P) servers in Australia. Topics discussed include increase in piracy due to rise in price of legal content and unwillingness of users to pay for entertainment services, need to update copyright laws to preserve free market in Australia and regulation of internet access in the country by blocking certain websites.

The article looks at the music industry as of 2014, focusing on intellectual property and on the impact of innovations in digital technology on the industry. It notes that the use of the Internet to create unpaid access to music has led to a drop in revenue from the sale of recorded music and describes how the large mass media companies that dominate the industry have responded by using copyright to expand other forms of revenue such as the licensing of music for advertisements. It emphasizes that changes in business and society are not determined by technological innovations in themselves but rather in the context of political-economic structures. Topics include litigation against individuals and Internet service providers (ISPs) over file-sharing.

The article looks at intellectual property (IP) as of 2014, focusing on music copyright. The author, a musician and composer, notes that he derives some income from song royalties and outlines how he became interested in the larger political and economic implications of IP in the context of the disputes over music file-sharing on the Internet. He describes typical recording industry contracts with musicians, saying they have generally been exploitative. He discusses efforts to reform the copyright system and says alternatives to IP exist in terms of systems for providing credit and compensation to musicians and encouraging creative endeavors.

The article discusses unenforceable copyrights in America in relation to the nation's music industry and the process of sharing digital music on the Internet through the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) computer software as of 2014. The U.S. Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and litigation involving P2P services such as Napster Inc. and Grokster Ltd. are mentioned. Other topics include class action lawsuits, copyright infringement cases, and the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Abstract: The effectiveness of many proposed policies regarding both online copyright protection and network neutrality depend on the extent to which it is technically possible to detect peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), the transfer of copyrighted files, or both. There are many detection approaches, some performed primarily by network operators and some by application-layer agents. This paper describes capabilities, limitations, privacy issues, and policy implications of detection technologies and their countermeasures, in part through quantitative analysis of empirical data. Different approaches are better for different purposes. Network operators are well-positioned to estimate how widespread copyright violations are, but application-layer detection from outside entities has important advantages when the purpose is punishment. Detection is also imperfect, so policies should require more transparency regarding how it is done than we see today. It is shown that, although network operators may not detect every transfer, and they typically miss more video than audio, they can identify most individuals who share copyrighted files via P2P after several weeks of monitoring provided that traffic is unencrypted, which is useful for some purposes. However, it is also shown that encryption is already in use, and it effectively prevents network operators from detecting transfers of copyrighted content. Thus, if network operators are held responsible for monitoring illegal file sharing, there is a tension between using detection to identify violators of copyright law for punishment, which may motivate even greater use of encryption, and using detection for other purposes such as creating fair compensation schemes for copyright-holders, warning users that they may be violating copyright law, or allocating network resources. Alternatively, there are forms of detection that are not evaded through encryption, and application-layer agents rather than network operators are primarily responsible for these. These copyright policy issues are intertwined with network neutrality policy in subtle ways. Network neutrality rules do not protect illegal transfers of copyrighted content, but if network operators are responsible for enforcement (as in “graduated response”) then regulators must determine when it is reasonable to terminate or degrade service based on allegations of copyright violation given the limitations of detection technology to prove those allegations. Allegations of copyright violation should be considered invalid unless they are accompanied with information about how detection was performed and an opportunity for rebuttal. Such transparency has been routinely lacking in both laws and industry agreements. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The proportionality of the UK Digital Economy Act 2010 which aims to curtail illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing is examined in this paper in the light of changes in online norms and culture. Based on an analysis of recent studies and a critical reflection on the nature of changes in digital media production and file-sharing behaviour, we conclude that the Digital Economy Act introduces disproportionate social costs for UK Internet users, with uncertain prospects for improving creative industry revenues. The wider implications of these developments for the emerging online culture are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a significant reversal, the leading copyright treatise, Nimmer on Copyright, has changed its position on the controversial subject of whether merely making a copyrighted work available for distribution violates the distribution right--an issue most significant in the context of peer-to-peer file sharing. Nimmer on Copyright had previously concluded that the distribution right did not extend so far. It now embraces whole-heartedly the "making available" theory of copyright infringement. Courts and practitioners should not follow suit. First, the treatise relies heavily on legislative materials that predate the actual passage of the current Copyright Act. Second, it argues that the current distribution right encompasses the old publication right of the predecessor Copyright Act, and that the old publication right included offers for sale. It fails, however, to acknowledge that "publication" had two very different meanings under the predecessor Act, and it makes the mistake of conflating those two meanings. In the end, the question of the "making available" right is intractable and requires congressional action to set straight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In Technics and Time, 1, Bernard Stiegler (1998) challenged the prevalent philosophical distinction between tekhnē and ēpistēmē, arguing that humans are fundamentally technical beings. According to Stiegler, the industrialization of civilization led to a disequilibrium in the evolution of culture and the evolution of technics, with technics evolving more quickly than culture. Stiegler''s discussions of technics, culture, time, and memory provide a useful theoretical framework for understanding some of the cultural implications of copyright issues, which are often viewed in terms of economics, legality, and/or ethics. In this article, I focus on the intellectual property debate as it pertains to peer-to-peer networks and the music industry. Drawing from Technics and Time, I theoretically frame these issues as a problem of temporality, memory, and a disconnect in the evolution of culture and technology. I then use small-scale/observational ethnographic analysis to examine a private torrent community to consider how torrent communities are cultural phenomena, the implications of this assumption, and how these considerations might inform or extend existing approaches to issues of intellectual property. More broadly, I ask, what are the affordances of thinking about these economic, legal, and political issues from a cultural framework? [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A conference paper on the development of the Hellenic National Audiovisual Archive (HeNAA) as a Digital Library (DL) in relation to the use peer-to-peer (P2P) computer file sharing is presented. It says that the architecture of HeNAA digital library relies heavily on P2P. However, it says that P2P is seen by Copyright holders as detrimental for their individual business interests. It also asserts that legislations should be passed which consider the importance of the noncommercial role of P2P.

This study explores file sharers' reported motivations for downloading and uploading content on peer-to-peer networks, including ethical obligations guiding file sharing. Drawing on Lessig's classification of purposes of file sharing and Giesler's theoretical framework of gifting systems, 40 in-depth interviews were conducted with file sharers in Singapore using a standard protocol, then transcripts were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Downloading is perceived as an alternative through which users satisfy desires that existing markets do not meet. Respondents reported downloading to avoid long waits for content to arrive in Singapore; to access difficult-to-find and censored content; to sample content, including content outside their usual tastes; and because downloading is convenient and free. Respondents reported a norm of reciprocity and sense of community that motivated them to upload and an obligation to purchase content they liked. Implications for understanding and combating file sharing during the inevitable transition to other business models are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses significant file sharing and copyright issues in the U.S. The author highlights how the topic of copyright infringement has reached universities and colleges across the country. He gives the example of the piracy case filed by Lars Ulrich, drummer of the band Metallica, against students who downloaded Metallica's music files through the peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster. According to the author, the big surprise of the lawsuit was the involvement of universities such as Indiana University, Yale University and the University of Southern California, all of which were implicated in facilitating file transfers. Continuing problems with file-sharing laws are discussed.

In the last decade, the phenomenon of peer-to-peer file-sharing and its various legal aspects have been dealt with extensively by legal scholarship. The purpose of this Article is to take a closer inspection of several particular legal aspects that are related to peer-to-peer file-sharing as a comparative, social, economic, and cultural phenomenon. The Article begins by providing critical comparative analysis of distinct paradigms that different legal systems have offered regarding the question of third party liability for copyright infringements that occur through peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms. The Article then presents three focal policy considerations that should serve as copyright law's compass in the context of peer-to-peer file-sharing: (a) adopting a requirement of compliance between the legal liability of third parties and copyright law's exemptions and limitations regime; (b) striking a socially desired allocation of risk between positive and negative externalities that peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms tend to generate; (c) understanding the unique distributional concerns that are raised by legal regulation of peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms, especially when taking into account the nature of such platforms as a novel emerging speech resource that society has to decide upon its allocation. The last part of the Article focuses on some of the next generation legal questions that peer-to-peer networks are already beginning to give rise to, including the legal liability of internet service providers for managing peer-to-peer traffic through active caching and routing applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concept of secondary copyright liability in the context of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology. It emphasizing the applicability of the Sony doctrine to P2P software providers; the legal background, previous P2P cases; reviews the Ninth Circuit's decision in Grokster II; the differences in interpretation of the Sony doctrine between the Ninth and Seventh Circuits; and the conflict between these interpretations may require Supreme Court clarification.

Summary: Illegal sharing of copyrighted materials in peer‐to‐peer (P2P) networks has become a serious threat to the content industries. Despite many copyright‐protected P2P systems that have been designed to prevent piracy, the user authentication–based approaches face the challenge of collusion attacks and the encryption‐based approaches may be vulnerable to poisoning attacks. Observing these, in this paper, we present a novel copyright‐protected content delivery scheme (CPP) for P2P file‐sharing networks based on piece‐level stochastic encryption. In CPP, peers must pay for decryption key sequences before accessing to the plaintext content. For each peer, the sequence of the decryption keys is different from others, so the unauthorized peers could not access the content even if some colluders share their keys. Modified piece with hash enable peers to check the correctness of each piece after downloading, preventing the propagation of poisoned pieces. There is neither massive state maintenance nor frequent user authentication during the download process. Peers purchase after downloading, protecting their benefits when quitting the system before paying. Analysis and experiments show that CPP is suitable for delivering large files, and it is resilience to collusion attacks and poisoning attacks. The paper presents a novel piece‐level stochastic‐encryption–based digital rights management approach and increases the key space by exploring the random characteristic of peer‐to‐peer networks, which can defend against collusion attacks. It also proposes a copyright‐protected content delivery scheme that can keep the efficiency of peer‐to‐peer networks and protect users' interests from download failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service of the United States, Grokster Ltd., stopped doing business in early November 2005. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that using Grokster to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Now the company has been banned from participating in the sharing of copyrighted file. According to another P2P company Mashboxx, who has agreed to buy Grokster's assets and recast it as a legal file sharing service called Grokster 3G, which will launch before the end of 2005.