On January 18, some of biggest websites on the internet will be going dark to send a message to its users: This is a test. This is only a test. The real emergency, these websites say, would be if the Stop Online Piracy Act (known as SOPA) gets signed into law. more ›

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) member who leaked five feature films to The Pirate Bay was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $3,000 today. Wes DeSoto, 34, pleaded guilty in October to a single federal account of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution. more ›

The FBI have conducted a raid on the Los Angeles apartment of an actor they believe uploaded theatrical releases like "The King's Speech," "127 Hours, " "The Fighter, " and "Black Swan," to file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, according to Wired. Wes DeSoto, a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, was allegedly the first person to upload those titles to the site in January. more ›

The MPAA filed a suit on behalf of five major Hollywood studios against Hotfile, a subscription-based online streaming media service. The suit alleges that the Panama-based company engages in "unabashed theft" of copyrighted material and of further fostering it by incentivizing and rewarding its users to upload and link to the most popular files. more ›

Last week, the LAPD arrested 28 people at downtown businesses and seized 200,000 pirated or counterfeited DVD's, CD's and other apparel equaling up to $2.76 million in street value. more ›

This morning, the RIAA announced that it will cease filing mass lawsuits on behalf of major record companies against individual users of file-sharing software, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. It is estimated that an approximate 35,000 users have been sued in these cases since 2003. Instead, as reported by Wired, the music industry trade association will focus on working directly with Internet Service Providers to slow or cut off Internet service to frequent offenders. more ›

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pissed about the "hundreds of billions" of dollars swallowed by piracy and counterfeiting and it has taken the outrage to our fair City of Angels ("...and Demons," as the press release says). The Chamber has released results of a Gallup survey, coinciding with this week's Counterfeiting and Piracy Awareness shenanigans claiming that one-quarter of all Angelenos are admitted pirates. But we're certain that percentage is far greater. In fact,... more ›