Asks Judge Davis to allow a federal appeals court to review the case rather than force the parties to "invest unnecessary time and resources." The RIAA is certainly still reeling from US District Judge Michael Davis' decision to declare a mistrial in its first ever successful prosecution of an accused file-sharer using the "making available" argument. In the case of Jammie Thomas, Judge Davis said he erred in instructing the jury that simply making music available in KaZaA's "shared folder" was the same as copyright infringement, and that his error "substantially prejudiced" her rights. He also implored Congress to reform copyright law to prevent similarly "oppressive" awards in music file-sharing cases. Based on the judge's instructions, jurors later found her guilty of having some 24 songs in KaZaA's shared folder and set damages of $9,250 for each.

Admin blames "concern of legal action" and "upkeep of a site this size" for his decision to permanently close down the BitTorrent tracker site. College students everywhere are certain to be saddened over news that Textbook Torrents, the BitTorrent tracker site that once offered more than 6,000 college textbooks for download in the .PDF format, has been shut down for good. "There are very few scanned textbooks in circulation, and that's what we're here to change," used to read a welcome message on the site. "Chances are you have some textbooks sitting around, so pick up a scanner and start scanning it!" Visitors are now greeted with a much more somber message.

Canada was headed into political uncertainty with copyright legislation being successfully pushed under the rug throughout the election this year. For those hoping for a minority government to stop the Canadian DMCA really got their wish at this point in time. Just minutes ago, the CBC has projected that Canada will be headed into a Conservative minority government. As we noted earlier, a minority government may be instrumental in keeping the Canadian DMCA out of the law books for another little while. For the last two governments, Canada was faced with a possible Canadian DMCA.

PRO-IP Acts makes cabinet-level piracy position on par with the US drug czar. President Bush signed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP Act) into law yesterday which increases penalties for intellectual-property infringement and provides the Justice Department with more resources to coordinate federal and state efforts against counterfeiting and piracy. The bill covers everything from film and TV to music, drugs and software. The White House had initially opposed the bill out of concern that Congress was making unconstitutional attempts to create executive branch positions and a reluctance to divert precious Justice Dept resources towards civil prosecutions for copyright infringement. After the latter proposal was removed from the bill, the President apparently found the legislation palatable enough to sign.

There's a lot of talk in Canadian circles about the up and coming Canadian election and what it could mean for the future of copyright laws in the 21st century. We examine what the past has taught us and what the future may hold. A lot of corporate driven polls suggest that the election has started out with the question of Conservative majority or Conservative minority governments. Lately, the same polls are now raising the question of Conservative minority or Liberal minority. It stands to reason that this new prospect for those who watch the copyright file should be thrilled at the prospect of a minority government given that it has lately been the only reason why there hasn't been a Canadian DMCA pushed into law.

Refocuses on "core usability by revamping the user interface" while adding new features like subscriptions and an integrated search capability of both public and private BitTorrent trackers. Due to be released this Wednesday, the latest version of the Vuze BitTorrent client is definitely impressive. Vuze 4.0 sports the lighter look and feel of older versions while adding new functions and features that set it miles apart from other available BitTorrent clients. "Find, download, and play" is the new Vuze motto and it defines the spirit of Vuze 4.

PM candidate Jack Layton notes importance of net neutrality and how social networking and BitTorrent sites are "fundamental to making a democracy work" and for "helping human intelligence to be shared and exchanged." I sadly know very little about Canadian politics other than conservative Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister. So it was certainly interesting to watch a message that New Democratic Party candidate Jack Layton gave to P2PNet readers recently that emphasized the importance of P2P. "People to people, that's the way we want to use the Internet," he says of P2P. Layton notes the importance of net neutrality and the danger of big corporations threatening the ability of Canadian citizens to freely use the Internet.

The copyright industry, namely the RIAA and MPAA, have said for years that file-sharing has caused the industry billions of dollars and loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Now, the stock markets have shown that there are serious questions being raised about whether or not we are headed in a global recession - so how is the copyright industry holding up in face of economic uncertainty? There are those that suggest that the downfall of the copyright industry is the direct result of file-sharing. Now, the dominant headlines all week in big media have been how massive sell-offs in the stock markets push the world-wide economy into a potential global recession. Since the copyright industry companies are on the stock exchange, let's take a look at how well they did in times of economic uncertainty. RIAA Members One of the big four major record labels is Sony.

Latest album debuts on BitTorrent tracker sites well ahead of its official October 20th release date. BitTorrent savvy hard rock fans everywhere are surely happy to learn that a copy of AC/DC's latest album "Black Ice" has leaked to tracker sites almost 2 weeks prior to its scheduled appearance on Wal-Mart and Sam's Club store shelves. The Australian hard rock becomes the latest veteran act to offer an album exclusively with the retail giant, following Garth Brooks, the Eagles and Journey. Meanwhile, Undercover News has reported that the band's label, Sony Music, might be flooding file-sharing and BitTorrent sites with fake downloads to frustrate eager fans. It's an effort in futility for AC/DC will still find decent copies regardless and essentially just anger most those wanting to finally hear their beloved band for the first time in years.

Guitar Hero has become a successful product in North America for quite some time. While the basic ideas about the game isn't entirely new, apparently, this was lost on someone since a company is attempting to produce a Guitar Hero for Djs that seems practically identical to Konami's “Beatmania”. The year was 1997 and a gaming company called Konami produced an arcade game called “Beatmania” This is according to Wikipedia. Beatmania is simple, wait for notes to fall down to a line at the bottom of the screen and press the corresponding key at the exact moment it touches the line. If you miss too many, you lose.