Piracy

Within the next few weeks the BBC is planning to introduce password protection to iPlayer. The system is intended to prevent people from using the streaming TV catch-up service without paying a licence fee.

The corporation says that it does not plan to introduce "mass surveillance techniques or ask internet providers for IP addresses," but is merely interested in ensuring people comply with the law. The system should also help the BBC to reduce the number of people from outside the UK using iPlayer for free.

A new patent from Microsoft could enable the company to not only identify and block pirate material from being shared via cloud services, but also to identify repeat offenders and take action against them.

The patent specifically refers to the ability to identify and block the sharing of "prohibited content," and this could be used to mean copyrighted material, or files that a company simply does not want to be shared. The technology relies on a fingerprinting technique which makes it possible to identify files rather than having to worry about trying to track down and delete files to prevent further sharing.

Like Google, Facebook places great importance on advertising. The social network not only earns money from ads itself, but also allows companies and individuals to do so by displaying ads in videos. Pirates were quick to spot an easy way to earn money -- steal someone else's popular video and watch the ad revenue roll in.

Now Facebook is fighting back in a way that has already been used to some extent by YouTube. There is a new "claim ad earnings" option in the Rights Manager tool which enables the owner of a particular video to bag the ad revenue when their material is pirated. But the update to Rights Manager are more far-reaching than this.

Most people alive today have seen the evolution of the internet over the course of a couple of decades, and can remember life before it was so integral. But there is a growing proportion of the population that has never lived without internet access, and such people have developed something of a different outlook on things.

Millennials, in particular, have been able to reap the benefits of being permanently connected, and have no experience of what it was like before. One of the side-effects of the always-on, always-available nature of content is that piracy has become second nature. Not only are most millennials streaming pirate content, they do not see it as wrong -- although downloading the same content is viewed differently.

A new survey reveals that education could have a big impact on piracy, cutting the numbers who illegally share video content.

The study by digital platform security specialist Irdeto of more than 25,000 adults across 30 countries finds that despite the high number of consumers around the world watching pirated video content (52 percent), almost half (48 percent) would stop or watch less illegal content after learning the damage that piracy causes to the media industry.

Kim Dotcom, the larger-than-life character behind file-sharing services Megaupload and Mega, can be extradited from New Zealand to the US. The German national has taken up permanent residency in New Zealand and has been fighting calls for him to face the US legal system.

The judgement came as part of an appeal to a previous ruling which was heard back in September. While the judge today, on the face of things, has ruled against Dotcom, the court case could yet go in favor of him due to various technicalities.

Users of Google and Bing will find it more difficult to track down illegal content via the search engines after Google and Microsoft signed up to a voluntary code of practice. The deal means that pirate search results will be demoted in results in the UK, making it less likely that searchers will click on them.

The two technology companies have been in talks with the entertainment industry to find a way to stem the flow of illegal content that's available online. As well as protecting the rights of copyright holders, it is hoped that the new arrangement will help to protect users, as websites that deal in pirated material often pose a security risk.

Almost a third of consumers watch pirated content even though they know it's illegal to do so and that it deprives the content creators of revenue.

The study for platform security company Irdeto conducted by YouGov finds that 74 percent of US consumers know that sharing pirated content is illegal and 69 percent that downloading it is.

Back in October there was a mixture of great excitement and huge worry that the controversial Pirate Party could end up winning the general election in Iceland. That didn't happen, but with no clear winner there was an attempt to create a five-way coalition that ultimately failed after weeks of talks, paving the way for the radical party made up of poets, hackers and online freedom activists.

The Pirate Party -- which says it would offer exile to Edward Snowden and also embrace Bitcoin -- could still end up in power after being invited to form part of the government by Iceland's president. But even if the controversial, anti-establishment party does end up wielding power, it's unlikely that its more radical policies would come to fruition.

The internet has posed a serious problem for movie and television studios for many years now. Usually it is pirated copies of movies and shows that are cause for concern, but for the likes of the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, it's the dreaded spoiler that needs to be tamed.

Spoilers tend to be a problem on Facebook and other social media the night after a big show has aired, as those yet to watch the show don’t want to have the plot ruined. In the case of season 7 of Game of Thrones however -- not due to air until the middle of next year -- the problem is that the entire plot has leaked to Reddit.

Even though US authorities have taken down KickassTorrents and managed to get owner Artem Vaulin arrested in Poland, the most popular BitTorrent website in the world is now back in the game.

KickassTorrents is alive and well through two working mirrors which have been set up by supporters to ensure that fans can continue to enjoy the content distributed through the website. In the wake of these events, it would seem that it's business as usual in BitTorrent land.

The High Court of Paris has ruled that Google and Bing do not have to have automatic filters in place to scrub torrent-related results from searches. The battle against piracy is something that search engines have found themselves pulled into, but this latest ruling turns the debate on its head.

French music industry group SNEP went to court on behalf of a trio of artists, requesting that Microsoft and Google automatically filter out links to pirated material. The group had called for a complete block on searches that include the word 'torrent' as well as blocking sites whose name includes the word.

Security researchers from Ben-Gurion University Cyber Security Research Center (CSRC) have unearthed a vulnerability in Google Chrome that can be exploited to make copies of DRM-protected video streams. The problem affects all Chromium-based browsers, and makes it possible to circumvent Widevine encryption technology Google uses to secure streams.

Widevine has been used in Chrome for a while, after Google acquired it back in 2010. It has been used to prevent piracy of premium YouTube channels, and is also used to protect Amazon Prime and Netflix streams. Google was informed about the problem back in May, but is yet to issue a patch.

Adobe software is among the most expensive out there, so it should come as little surprise that the likes of Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat are among the most commonly pirated titles. In a bid to clamp down on piracy, the company has launched a new initiative that seeks out "non-genuine software" and issues warnings to people.

At the moment it appears as though the checks are restricted to the US and Adobe seems to be checking Acrobat X licenses. But while the scope is limited right now, it's hard to imagine that the Software Integrity Service checks won't be rolled out on a wider scale and include more Adobe products.

The Pirate Bay is no stranger to court cases, and the site has just lost another one in Sweden. A Swedish court has ruled that the torrent site's thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se domain names must be handed over to the state.

The two domains have been confiscated after a judge at the Court of Appeal decided that they were being used to (gasp!) commit crimes under the Copyright Act.