Japan’s onerous Unfair Competition Prevention Law has created what looks from here like a massive overreach on the criminalization of copyright laws. Past examples include Japanese journalism executives being arrested over a book that tells people how to back up their own DVDs, along with more high-profile cases in which arrests occurred over the selling Read more about Japanese Police Arrest Man For Selling Modded Save Files For Single-Player Nintendo Game[…]

Google was fined €500m ($590m, £425m) by the French Competition Authority on Tuesday for failing to negotiate fees with news publishers for using their content. In April last year, the regulator ruled the American search giant had to compensate French publishers for using snippets of their articles in Google News, citing European antitrust rules and Read more about Google fined €500m for not paying French publishers after copying their texts on search results[…]

DRM has shown time after time to be of almost no hindrance whatsoever for those seeking to pirate video games, but has done an excellent job of hindering those who actually bought the game in playing what they’ve bought. Ubisoft, in particular, has had issues with this over the years, with DRM servers failing and Read more about DRM Strikes Again: Ubisoft Makes Its Own Game Unplayable By Shutting Down DRM Server[…]

Contributors disgruntled with the recent direction of cross-platform FOSS audio software Audacity are forking the sound editor to a version that does not have the features or requirements that have upset some in the community. One such project can be found on GitHub, with user “cookiengineer” proclaiming themselves “evil benevolent temporary dictator” in order to Read more about Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features and govt / police spyware[…]

As expected, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal in cassation by Dutch FilmWorks. The highest judicial body follows the motivation of the Prosecutor General, who previously issued advice on this. DFW announced in 2015 that it would take enforcement action against people who illegally download films. The matter was widely publicized. DFW wanted to address Read more about High Court disallows Dutch Filmworks forcing ISPs to give out personal details of potential movie downloaders[…]

For the past few years, a YouTuber known as Krollywood has painstakingly recreated every level from GoldenEye 007 inside the level editor of Far Cry 5. This week, Ubisoft removed all of those levels from Far Cry 5 due to a copyright infringement claim. Kotaku first reported on Krollywood’s efforts earlier this month. Over the Read more about Ubisoft Takes Down Fan’s Incredible Far Cry 5 ‘GoldenEye’ Maps[…]

With streaming games and “let’s plays” becoming a dominant force of influence in the gaming world, one of the sillier trends we’ve seen is video games coming out with “stream safe” settings that strip out audio content for which there is no broadcast license. We’ve talked already about how this sort of thing is not Read more about New ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Game Has Game Streamers Worried Over Integral Music In The Game, shows you how stupid copyright and DMCA is nowadays[…]

The GNU C Library (glibc) and GNU Portability Library (gnulib) are laying the groundwork to divorce themselves from the troubled Free Software Foundation by removing the requirement for copyright assignment. This move follows in the footsteps of the same shift by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on 2 June. Like many projects under the GNU Read more about Open-source projects glibc and gnulib look to sever copyright ties with Free Software Foundation[…]

As a recent Techdirt article noted, the European Commission was obliged to issue “guidance” on how to implement the infamous Article 17 upload filters required by the EU’s Copyright Directive. It delayed doing so, evidently hoping that the adviser to the EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), would release Read more about European Commission Betrays Internet Users By Cravenly Introducing Huge Loophole For Copyright Companies In Upload Filter Guidance[…]