Plenty of big name artists -- especially in the hip hop world -- use the paid accounts to make themselves money. This is how they release tracks. You sign up for a paid account from services like Megaupload, which pay you if you get a ton of downloads.

If they do deals with labels, they know they'll never see a dime. Putting music on Megaupload is a way to get paid. Working with a gatekeeper is not.

That's why the major labels are so freaked out by cyberlockers. It's not because there's so much infringement on there, but because it's a system whereby artists can get paid and can better distribute their own works to fans... without signing an indentured servitude contract with a label, which never pays any royalties.

It seems clear that the real fear on the part of the RIAA and the major labels is not so much about that. It's the recognition that such a distribution and payment system undermines much of their reason for existing, and takes away their ability to control artists.

The death sentence of Malekpour, who was convicted of "insulting and desecrating Islam" for developing software used by porn sites, was confirmed this week by Iran's Supreme Court. The software that Malekpour developed enables photos to be uploaded online and, according to Amnesty International, was used by a porn site without his knowledge.

Malekpour rescinded his confessions in a letter he sent from prison that said that he was physically and psychologically tortured and was promised an immediate release if he gave a false confession.

Malekpour wrote in his March 2010 letter. "I was forced to add that when somebody visited my website, the software would be, without his/her knowledge, installed on their computer and would take control of their webcam, even when their webcam is turned off."

“So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery,” he posted on his recently-started Twitter account. “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.”

The statement said that the White House couldn’t support the current legislation as it would interfere with the use of the DNS architecture which underlies most current internet use.

A 23-year-old student is facing extradition to the US, and possibly five years in a federal prison, after the British courts ruled he should face charges of copyright infringement for linking to websites hosting pirated content.

O’Dwyer gave evidence that TVShack “worked exactly like the Google search engine… (it)…. directed users through the use of searches to websites… at no point was there any infringing material, such as movies or programmes on my server. It just directed users to other websites by providing the link”.

O’Dwyer is being extradited under controversial laws agreed by Tony Blair in the wake of the September 11 attacks – then billed as essential to the war on terrorism - which are currently being used to try and extradite Gary McKinnon on hacking charges.

A breach-of-contract lawsuit filed yesterday against Grooveshark means that all the major recording labels are suing the popular music streaming service.

The free-music service has become a dartboard of late for the recording industry's lawsuits. Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group filed a lawsuit last month accusing the company of copyright infringement.

In a leaked letter sent to Spain’s outgoing President, the US ambassador to the country warned that as punishment for not passing a SOPA-style file-sharing site blocking law, Spain risked being put on a United States trade blacklist.

More than 100 leaked cables showed that the US had helped draft new Spanish copyright legislation and had heavily influenced the decisions of both the government and opposition.

Solomont’s threat was that should Spain not pass the Sinde Law (described by some as the Spanish SOPA) then the country would be degraded further and placed on the Priority Watch List. This serious step would mean that Spain was in breach of trade agreements and could be subjected to a range of “retaliatory actions”.

The video was back up after UMG failed to assert valid ownership rights, but the company is now saying it never claimed copyright ownership. Even though UMG used YouTube's automated tools for copyright owners to request takedowns under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, UMG says in a new court document that it wasn't claiming a DMCA violation.

"UMG is now claiming that it has a private, automated censorship right--supported by a secret process that can take down any YouTube video with immunity from the DMCA--and there is nothing that this Court could do about it," he wrote in a court filing today.

An associate of the Nikopik Web site found IP addresses allocated to the Elysee Palace, Sarkozy's residence, on YouHaveDownloaded.com, a Russian-based site that tracks public downloads from BitTorrent.

The TorrentFreak blog used YouHaveDownloaded.com earlier this week to discover that IP addresses within Sony Pictures, NBC Universal, and Fox were listed as having downloaded pirated material from BitTorrent.

"I expect the administration will be receiving a series of FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests from our office and that the senator will have very pointed questions with regard to how the administration chooses to target the sites that it does," said Jennifer Hoelzer, a Wyden spokeswoman.

Wyden’s interest comes a day after federal authorities returned the domain name dajaz1.com, which was back online greeting visitors Friday with a powerful message about proposed web-censorship legislation that expands the government—and copyright holders—power to shutter and cripple sites suspected of copyright infringement.

The only publicly available court record regarding the seizure was the initial filing of a court order a year ago. Everything else was sealed—invisible to Splash, his lawyer, the public and the press.

Digitude was founded in 2010 and raised $50 million from Altitude Capital Partners, with aims to “acquire, aggregate, and license key technology areas within the consumer electronics and related technology fields in a patent consortium” — in other words, it buys up patents and then sues other companies until they settle and agree to pay licensing fees.

Apple appears to have transferred its patents to the patent troll Digitude, though it first routed them through a shell company that shares the same office as Digitude’s lead investor and Chairman. Further evidence of the relationship between Apple and Digitude can be found on the ITC’s own website, where a list of files relevant to the lawsuit can be found.

If Apple were deliberately aiding Digitude, Samuels says “it would be horrifying — the patent troll problem is completely out of control. Apple has every legal right to sue over its patents, but it should be the one to do it”.