Music Piracy Crackdown Targets Seventeen Countries

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has launched more than 8,000 legal cases against illegal music downloaders across 17 countries in recent weeks. "Consumers today can get music legally in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago ... yet some people continue to consume their music illegally," said IFPI chairman John Kennedy.

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Vietnam fines South Korean Daewoo's affiliate for software piracy

HANOI, Vietnam Authorities in Vietnam have fined an affiliate of South Korea's Daewoo Corp. for using pirated software, the first time a corporate user of illegal software has been targeted in the Southeast Asian country, officials said Wednesday.

Police and inspectors from the Ministry of Culture and Information raided the Hanoi-based Daewoo Hanel Electronic Corp., last week and discovered all the software installed in their computers was pirated, said Vu Xuan Thanh, the ministry's chief inspector.

The illegal software included copies of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Auto CAD, Thanh said.

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EU says China main focus of new anti-piracy push

BRUSSELS: China will be the main focus of new efforts by the European Union to crack down on intellectual property violations as it accounts for two thirds of pirated goods entering the bloc, the EU’s Commission said on Thursday.

“Secondary priorities are identified as Russia, Ukraine, Chile and Turkey,” the Commission said in a statement a day after stressing the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) in a paper on its future trade strategy. “While the EU does not exclude the possibility of action in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against IPR infringement, the EU is not creating a ‘black list’,” it said.

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Microsoft to step up anti-piracy stance

Microsoft Corp. is cracking down harder than ever on software piracy as it tries to boost profits, but some say the harsh repercussions facing people who use unlicensed versions of its new Windows Vista operating system could spur a backlash....The crackdown shows how much more seriously Microsoft has started taking Windows piracy, which for years has been extremely widespread in areas such as Russia and China. The Business Software Alliance, a software industry group, estimates that 35 percent of software installed on PCs worldwide is pirated.

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Hurd warning over investment in China

BRITISH companies may be taking enormous risks by investing in China, according to Lord Hurd of Westwell, the former Foreign Secretary.

He will tell a conference tomorrow that the country possesses few of the enforceable legal and regulatory provisions to which international companies are accustomed.

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Watch out! Big Brother is looking

PUTRAJAYA: The men were hunched over keyboards staring at LCD computer screens.

They were checking out the offers but were not interested in buying anything. Instead, they were relaying information on the websites through the hands-free communication set.

In another room, enforcement officers were sifting through the files to cross check the information received to make a decision whether to mount a raid.

Malaysians who sell pirated CDs, VCDs and DVDs on the Internet should realise that Big Brother is watching them.

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