HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

UPDATE (4/14/09, 12:14 pm):  The court found the Pirate Bay defendants guilty and sentenced them to 1 year in prison and ordered them to pay $3.6 million in damages to several record labels.

Tomorrow a Swedish court is expected to announce it’s ruling in a criminal case that has been closely watched by nearly everyone with a stake-financial or otherwise-in the free-wheeling world of P2P file swapping.  At its core, the ruling will determine whether the operators of the Pirate Bay, the popular torrent search and indexing site, are guilty of violating Sweden’s copyright law.  A conviction-which many observers expect-could lead to imprisonment and a possible fine, as well as a shut-down of the site.  However, despite the potential immediate impact on the Pirate Bay and its operators, the broader implications of a guilty verdict, including whether or not it will serve as a deterrent against unauthorized file-sharing, are a little less certain. Continue Reading »

We had previously written about the proposed Patent Reform Act of 2009 that was introduced in Congress.  On April 2, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a version of the Patent Reform Act reflecting a number of compromises (click here for the Senate redline of the bill).  Although the bill survived a vote in the committee by a comfortable margin, Senator Arlen Specter noted that further revisions to the bill could cause the coalition that supported its passage through the committee to unravel. Continue Reading »

Clark will be speaking at the Distributed Computing Industry Association’s annual P2P Media Summit LA. The Summit is being held in conjunction with Digital Hollywood Spring, one of the leading digital entertainment conferences and expositions. Clark will be participating in a panel entitled “Next Generation P2P-Music, TV and Film.”