DRBIG Corner of the net

The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), along with Italian authorities, have announced the shut down of Colombo-BT.org, Italy’s largest BitTorrent site.

Over the course of two days, the tracker’s servers were seized and two bank accounts associated with the site have been frozen. The administrators of the site have been charged with multiple counts of criminal copyright infringement and can face large fines and prison time.

Visitors to the site will be greeted with a new splash screen, “Access denied in execution of an Italian Court Authority injunction.”

“Colombo-BT.org was Italy’s version of The Pirate Bay,” said FPM (anti-piracy group) president Enzo Mazza. “Its operators deliberately facilitated availability of copyright infringing content to line their own pockets. The gang of three now face potential prison sentences and hefty fines as a result of their activities. This police action sends a strong message that Italy will not tolerate serious online music piracy so criminals looking for get rich quick schemes should consider other options.”

Although there are hardly any sites on the planet that can compare with The Pirate Bay, Colombo-BT did have a large presence, especially in Italy. The site had an “extensive collection of Italian music and multimedia, 390,000 music files and 500,000 movie files, including numerous pre-release titles. The illegal service had more than 400,000 registered users and 800,000 unique user accesses each month.”

Although those almost 1 million files are now unavailable, 400,000 users will be looking for a new torrent site to call home. And the cycle begins.

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Yahoo has finalized the reimbursement options for users affected by the recent shutdown of Yahoo Music Unlimited and has said users can either get their money back or be given credits to use at Rhapsody.

Last week the company said they would be refunding users but did not reveal the alternative reimbursement options.

“For any consumers that have problems with their DRM licenses after the store closes, our customer care group will provide coupons to the Rhapsody MP3 store so they can purchase an equivalent collection of MP3s,” Yahoo added in a statement. “If any users have serious problems with this arrangement, we will provide refunds to them through our customer care service.”

Any interested former users can get reimbursed until December 31, 2008, 3 months after the DRM servers shut down for the Yahoo! Music Store. The offer is only available to those who purchased individual songs from Yahoo Music, as subscribers will have their entire library migrated to Rhapsody for free.

Yahoo even noted that users could strip the DRM from their tracks by burning them to audio CDs and then re-ripping them, but added that users found that to be a hassle.

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At the 200 CES event, LG announced that they would in time be introducing a device that could stream movies from Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming, on-demand service. At the time however, there was no word on what the device was or how much it would cost.

This morning however, LG announced that the device would in fact be a Blu-ray player with the built-in ability to stream Netflix movies.

There was still no exact word on price, but the company did say it would be “well under $500 USD.” Allan Jason, LG’s vice president for sales and marketing in its digital media division, did add however that he expects the player to retail for $400 USD.

One notable feature that is lacking however is a wireless networking connection that is even available in the $100 Netflix set-top box from Roku. Mr. Jason does not believe that is a problem however as he feels “the sort of early adopters who are likely to buy Blu-ray players in the next few years mostly already have Internet connections in their family rooms.”

“Consumers want more content,” Jason added. “Netflix has a catalog of over 12,000 movies that can be streamed. We said, ‘This makes the perfect marketing partnership with LG.’”

The new player marks the first Blu-ray player with Internet video but it will certainly not be the last. BD Live calls for mandatory Internet connection and Sony and Panasonic have BD Live players going live (no pun intended) soon.

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Following the growing trend, the large Italian broadcaster Mediaset has announced a new lawsuit against Google and its video sharing site YouTube claiming the site illegally used its material. The broadcaster is asking for damages of 500 million euros.

Mediaset, controlled by Italian Prime Minister Silvio joins other broadcasters in claims that YouTube is infringing their copyrights.

YouTube however, did not see the need for the suit. “YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously,” a spokesperson added.

“There is no need for legal action … We prohibit users from uploading infringing material and we cooperate with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified.”

For its case, Mediaset added a “sample analysis” that claims that as of June 10th, “at least 4,643 videos and clips owned by us, equivalent to more than 325 hours of transmission without having rights”. The broadcaster also noted that those videos equal to “the loss of 315,672 days of broadcasting by its three TV channels.”

YouTube is already facing a 100 million euro infringement suit from the French broadcaster TF1 and a $1 billion USD infringement suit from US media group Viacom.

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