COPYCENSE

“A study (.pdf) released two weeks ago by the Business Software Alliance, which estimated the yearly losses from software piracy at $29 billion, has managed to stir real passion.

“The piracy study has become an issue because of a copyright bill, introduced in the Senate last month, that is strongly supported by the business alliance.

“In a letter last week to the Business Software Alliance, the heads of two other trade groups, who oppose the Senate bill, wrote that the results of the software piracy study were deeply troubling.”

Steve Lohr. Software Group Enters Fray Over Proposed Piracy Law. The New York Times. July 19, 2004.

(Editor�s Note: The Times allows free access to their stories on the Web for seven days before sending the stories to the paper�s fee-based Archive.)

"While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings.

"But outragedmoderates.org isn’t offering copyright music and videos for download. The site, launched two weeks ago, has aggregated more than 600 government and court documents to make them available for download through the Kazaa, LimeWire and Soulseek P2P networks in the interest of making government more transparent and accountable.

"Steven V. Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says the site answers a growing demand from the public to examine original source documents."

Kim Zetter. Downloading for Democracy. Wired News. July 19, 2004.