According to reports, police arrested 10 members of staff and seized more than 20 servers, after the military assisted in locating the operators.

France is becoming known as a country engaging in an increasingly aggressive fight against piracy and their enthusiasm seems to have gone through the roof in this case, with an ALPA spokesperson confirming that they had "worked very closely with the military" to locate the staff of the semi-private site.

Around seven million people in the UK are involved in illegal downloads, costing the economy tens of billions of pounds, government advisers say.

Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the report put into context the impact illegal downloads had on copyright industries and the UK economy as a whole.

Dame Lynne Brindley, SABIP Board member, said: "This report gives us some baseline evidence from which we can develop a clear research strategy to support policy development in this fast moving area."

DRM is so rage-inducing, even to ordinary, legal users of content, that it can even drive the blind to download illegal electronic Bibles.

The study confirms what anyone who has ever wanted to rip a DVD to their computer or iPod could have told you: DRM, coupled with anticircumvention laws, makes pirates of us all.

Of course, as Bright points out, the massive lobbying, legislative, legal, and technical effort that underlies all these DRM regimes does so little to stop piracy that we'd be tempted to laugh at the folly of it all if we weren't already weeping.

In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided.

This of course opens up the possibility for rights holders to go after a wide range of file-hosting services and potentially even BitTorrent sites. Indeed, everyone who now uploads a torrent file to a site hosted in Germany is at risk of having his personal details revealed.

Hollywood may have won a battle, but the war against piracy is far from over. Unauthorized file-sharing will continue (and likely intensify), if not through The Pirate Bay, then through dozens of other near-identical swashbuckling Web sites.

The bad news for copyright-holders is there is obviously a market demand for this type of content distribution model.

It's no surprise the Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing the pre-release leak of the upcoming flick, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

And if the theft was done in the United States, the defendant faces up to five years in prison under a closely guarded copyright law making it a criminal offense to upload pre-release material. That's because uploading pre-release material -- movies or music -- is considered the most egregious form of piracy warranting FBI involvement.

It's been nearly nine years since Lars Ulrich became one of the most vocal opponents of Napster and the generation of file-sharers it spawned.

However, the once vehemently anti-p2p Ulrich came out with a softened stance.

Now, just a few months later, Ulrich has admitted that following years of aggression against file-sharing, he has actually just tried it out for himself.

"I sat there myself and downloaded 'Death Magnetic' from the Internet just to try it," he said. "I was like, 'Wow, this is how it works.' I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download 'Death Magnetic' for free, it's me."

Irish internet users are to be blocked from accessing music swapping websites, as internet service providers bow to pressure from the music industry.

The country's other internet providers have been told by the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma) to follow suit or face legal action.

Under the terms of an agreement between Eircom and Irma, Eircom will not oppose any court application, meaning that the orders will be automatically granted.

In order to prevent the full album from leaking before launch, U2 organized 'private hearings' for the press, but these failed. Today, ten hours after the album leaked, downloads on BitTorrent are 100K - and counting.

U2 manager Paul McGuiness has been particularly aggressive in his stance against file-sharers and has suggested that people who share copyrighted files should have their connection to the Internet severed.

It would be trivial for the authors of filesharing software to enable the encryption of traffic flowing between peer-to-peer clients.

The US government spent 25 years trying to prevent the widespread availability of encryption software, and failed spectacularly.

"Well-known" sites that contain infringing content and hence might be blocked by ISPS are easily duplicated at less well-known sites - at a speed that would likely outpace the ability of right holders to keep up.

The widespread availability of multi-gigabyte hard disks and USB data sticks is making it ever�easier for users to exchange entire music collections face-to-face.