A new study looking at the relationship between movie piracy and Hollywood revenues has found that the mass illegal downloads movie studios complain about while spending vast resources to put a stop to, are not that relevant. TorrentFreak reveals that economist Koleman Strumpf has conducted a tremendous amount of research before releasing his determination – that movie piracy is not harmful to Hollywood. He looked at data from 150 blockbuster movies that were released over a period of seven years and, and drew data from a popular BitTorrent tracker as well as revenue projections from the Hollywood Stock Exchange. More →
Comcast didn’t earn its reputation as America’s Worst Company overnight — it took years and years of hard work. From offering customers ridiculously overpriced bundle packages, to having the highest fees among any of its competitors, to offering some of the absolute worst customer service of any company in the United States, Comcast has toiled away tirelessly to perfect its craft of angering its own customers, who have little choice but to stick with the cable giant due to the sorry state of America’s home broadband market. More →
In case you haven’t noticed, Google is not at all happy about having to sift through thousands of different takedown requests from citizens in Europe who want to be “forgotten” in its search results. In an editorial written for The Guardian, Google chief legal officer David Drummond says that Google has so far received 70,000 takedown requests and they aren’t all from some poor kid whose most embarrassing moment got memorialized by a viral YouTube video. More →
There are many interesting projects on Kickstarter, but few of them can say they managed to reel in more than $4.1 million. That’s more than 80 times what Ryan Grepper, the mastermind behind the Coolest cooler, wanted to raise in order to make a smart device that knows many interesting tricks in addition to simply keeping beverages cold. More →
Popcorn Time, also known as Netflix for Pirates, also known as a nightmare for Hollywood and its fight against piracy, has just gotten better for users, or at least for those people who happen to have an Android device. Popcorn Time announced on its blog that it has updated its Android app, adding Chromecast streaming support to the mix. More →
So now we know why Verizon decided to come out and accuse Netflix of essentially choosing to make its own traffic slow on its network — it seemingly wanted to preempt some more bad news in the most recent Netflix ISP rankings. Ars Technica notices that Netflix’s performance on Verizon’s FiOS network tanked by another 17% over the last month, which is a major embarrassment for Verizon given that it had already come to an agreement with Netflix months ago to improve the connections that Netflix used to send traffic through its network. More →
Netflix has really gotten under some major ISPs’ nerves over the past few months by picking high-profile fights with both Verizon and Comcast. In an interview with The Washington Post, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explains why he’s decided to call out ISPs for what he says is poor service and to weigh in against the controversial proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. More →
This is something we’ve certainly never thought of before: What if Netflix is intentionally make its own streaming services slow for some inexplicable reason? That’s what Verizon is telling us in a new blog post that was written in response to a customer who complained about getting poor Netflix performance on his home connection even though it was a 75Mbps FiOS connection. Verizon says that there was absolutely no congestion in its last-mile infrastructure, which only leaves one plausible explanation: Netflix and its transit provider partners were intentionally choosing suboptimal connections through which to send traffic. More →
Hollywood has been on a holy war against piracy for years, but that doesn’t mean it actually managed to achieve anything worth bragging with, especially as some studies have revealed that piracy doesn’t actually have an impact on Hollywood’s bottom line. No matter what Hollywood comes up with to defend against piracy, pirates still figure out ways to illegally download copyrighted content. In fact, TorrentFreak reveals that even Hollywood downloads just as much content as regular Internet users, no matter what its official stance against piracy is. More →
There’s a reason that people prefer using Google Maps over other mapping applications: It’s just a flat-out terrific service. That said, there is one downside to having Google Maps serve as the de facto online mapping service: It’s a major target for hackers who can use it to effectively ruin small businesses. More →
When we first brought you word about the amazing Potato Salad Kickstarter project last week, it had only raised $300. Less than a week later, we see that Potato Salad has now raised a mind-melting $36,000 — and it still has 25 more days to go. Unsurprisingly, the freakish success of Potato Salad has led to a slew of knockoff projects that are looking to capitalize on the success of what might be the most profitable Internet joke in world history. More →
Popcorn Time – the controversial service offers a Netflix-like movie streaming experience to users interested in pirating movies in a different, more exotic way than traditional downloads – has just gotten better, Business Insider reports. The service now allows Windows users to stream their selections to a Chromecast-connected big-screen television, letting them enjoy new flicks free of charge on a larger display. However, the feature is only available in an alpha version at this point. More →
