Spotify may be about to lose one of its most high-profile competitors, thanks to a copyright infringement lawsuit filed at the end of last week. Grooveshark, the streaming music service that recently relaunched itself with a new site, has been hit by a suit brought by Universal Music Group, which claims that the company has uploaded more than 100,000 songs without permission.

What’s unusual for this type of lawsuit, is that the UMG filing goes as far as naming those it suspects of illegally uploading material, including accusing Grooveshark CEO Samuel Tarantino of personally uploading at least 1,791 songs without permission. UMG is seeking maximum damages of up to $150,000 per infringement from Grooveshark, which could mean more than a $15 billion payout if the lawsuit is successful.

This isn’t the first time that Grooveshark has found itself facing allegations around issues of copyright; not only has UMG previously sued the company’s owner, Escape Media Group, for releasing access to the label’s pre-1972 catalog, but a group of Danish rights-holders filed sued against the company earlier this year, and Google pulled the company’s app from the Android market earlier this year over copyright worries.

The UMG lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction against Grooveshark, which could result in the service being forced to permanently shut down. The company’s VP of external affairs, Paul Geller, told CNET that the company hadn’t seen the complaint yet and would refrain from comment until it had.

[This post republished from Techland.]

You could argue that movie piracy is much more popular for those movie watchers who don’t feel like paying an arm and a leg for a movie they’ve already seen, or is a couple years old. Just like an old car, these films lose their value. Thus piracy seems an attractive option since you don’t have to pay for it.

Enter Netflix. Its streaming movie service offers a lot of these films that these folks are looking for, and its price — only $7.99 a month — makes it quite attractive. Add to this the quality is likely much, much better in most cases than you’d ever get from a ripped movie, and more on-demand than downloading, and you’ve got a winner.

Ernesto says the site does have some evidence that the number of pirates out there in the US has decreased. With Netflix’s growth, one could easily argue that the site could be a contributor.

That’s right, an old-school combination of letters and numbers. Players who buy new PS3 games will reportedly have to dig up a unique code — from where is not totally clear, but presumably a slip of paper inside the game box — and dial it in to verify that the copy is legit. Each code, the rumor says, will be valid for up to five authorizations.

I’m skeptical that Sony could pull off something like this. Serial codes aren’t a very high-tech way to stop pirates, and they aren’t very effective either. Key cracking is a hallmark of PC piracy, and as long as Playstation 3 hackers can create their own software, serial codes on the console would eventually be cracked as well.

Meanwhile, an authorization limit would cause a nightmare for the used game market. Perhaps that’s the point — Sony has burned used game buyers in the name of piracy before by locking out parts of its games with access codes — but the rumored system is too messy. Imagine being the sixth person to buy a used game, only to get home and find out it doesn’t work. Retailers such as GameStop would also have to ensure that codes are included in the packaging for every trade in. As with many anti-piracy methods, serial codes are inelegant.

If this rumor has any credibility, my guess is that Sony is testing the system internally as part of a broader effort to regain control of its console. Clamping down on piracy is a big deal for Sony; the company is now suing the hackers who released jailbreaking tools and documentation onto the web. This isn’t the last we’ll hear of anti-piracy efforts on the PS3, even if this particular method doesn’t see the light of day.

Ticked off by PCMag’s list of alternatives to Limewire — the file-sharing website that recently shut down after losing a copyright infringement lawsuit — members of the Recording Industry Association of America fired off an angry letter to Vivek Shah, chief executive of PCMag publisher Ziff Davis. The execs argue that PCMag is “slyly encouraging people to steal more music” by acknowledging the existence of other file-sharing websites, and asks that article be removed.

(The letter also blames PCMag for an article about the resurrection of Limewire, despite being written for PC World. Apparently the RIAA can’t tell the difference.)

Of course, PCMag isn’t backing down, and has no legal reason to do so. “It worries me that the music industry took this action, because it reeks of desperation,” Editor Lance Ulanoff writes. “… It’s time for these music execs to pull their collective heads out of the sand and fully acknowledge and accept all the ways their industry has changed.”

The most amusing part of the RIAA’s letter to PCMag was this little tidbit at the end: “We suspect you’d feel differently about this issue if, like the music industry, you’d had to let go more than half of the talented writers and journalists who create your magazine because of uncontrolled piracy of their work.”

Um, didn’t PCMag discontinue its print edition two years ago? Aren’t major magazines and newspapers around the country downsizing due to the changing media landscape? Whether it’s music piracy or an abundance of free websites and blogs, every old media company is struggling to adapt on the Internet.

In fairness, the music industry has warmed somewhat to new digital music ventures lately. On-demand subscription services like MOG, Rdio and Rhapsody let you stream more music than you could listen to in a lifetime for flat monthly rates, and Internet radio services like Pandora and Slacker Radio give you personalized playlists for free. The amount of legal music you can get these days for less than the price of a CD is astounding, and record labels deserve praise for allowing it to happen. Even piracy can’t give you these kinds of services.

And yet, the music industry can be so draconian at the same time. The RIAA spends millions of dollars every year on legal costs and recoups hardly any of it. New file-sharing resources pop up as soon as others shut down. And for every PCMag that the music industry tries to bully over an article about peer-to-peer services, there’s a PC World that’s willing to write about the same topic. I don’t see the point.

Will they sell the data to the MPAA or RIAA? Nope. According statements posted to Russo’s blog and elsewhere, it was done to prove a point. “The community caused problems to huge companies and corporations which turned into threats between [those] companies and them. What we have done, we did not do it with anger, or for commercial value,” he wrote.

I’m pretty confident that the entertainment industry wouldn’t be able to use this data anyway even if it was sold, due to the somewhat-less-than-legal method in which it was obtained. I’m sure a judge would look down on data obtained through a hack when it was used as evidence.

Russo has said that the hack was done to show users of The Pirate Bay that they may not be as anonymous as they think. The data includes usernames, e-mail addresses, and IP address — the latter of which has been used in the past by prosecutors to identify pirates.

Technologizer readers, would this make you any less likely to use The Pirate Bay or other similar sites?

IGN reports that SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3, out this week, won’t play online without a voucher code that’s included with the game. If you buy the game used, you’ll need another voucher, which costs $20 on its own. I also wonder whether people whose PSPs are lost or stolen will have to pay another $20 to restore SOCOM’s online play.

The game costs $40 new, so until the used version costs half that, you won’t save any money on a used copy if you intend to play online. GameStop currently lists used copies of SOCOM 3 at $33, so it doesn’t seem that the extra expense for multiplayer is driving down used prices.

What Sony is doing isn’t novel. Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello is fond of saying he views illegal downloads as potential sales, in that people may decide they like the game enough to purchase some downloadable content. Sony’s approach is more sinister, effectively withholding a portion of the game from people who are technically paying for the whole thing.

I’m no pirate, which is why it pains me to see legitimate buyers become collateral damage in the piracy war. Sony’s director of hardware marketing, John Koller, won’t say whether the company will use this anti-piracy tactic in other games. It’s a trial run, he told IGN. Hopefully, the experiment is short-lived.

Gamespy reports that the publisher will allow unlimited installs of its future PC games, but Ubisoft’s servers will handle saved games and authentication. That means you can’t play without an Internet connection.

In way, it’s a forward-thinking plan. Ubisoft’s looking ahead to a time when Internet connections will be everywhere, so you’ll never have a problem proving you paid for a copy of the game. Storing saved games online also means you can start playing on your laptop from where you left off on your desktop.

The big problem is we’re not yet in the age of ubiquitous Internet connections. Sure, you’ll have no problem playing at home — unless your Internet connection goes out for whatever reason — but this scheme rules out airplanes, remote areas or hotels that don’t have Wi-Fi. Ubisoft is betting most people don’t play in those situations, but it’s not fair for the publisher to make that decision. At the very least, Ubisoft game boxes should have big warning labels so players know what they’re getting.

One other concern: Ubisoft’s authentication servers aren’t guaranteed for life, and 10 years from now, players could be shut out of the game they bought. In fact, last time Ubisoft tried online authentication with Assassin’s Creed, some players had trouble immediately after purchasing.

In any case, is this really a fool-proof method for stopping piracy? If it was, I’d think other publishers would be using the same methods. Even Steam, a major platform for PC gaming that uses online authentication, has an offline mode.

The funny thing is that, in 2008, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia for PC with no digital rights management, apparently fed up with its past failures to stop piracy. I don’t know the results of that little experiment, but I guess Ubisoft figured it’s more profitable to penalize their paying customers than to let pirates roam free.

“They can steal the disc, but they can’t steal the DLC,” he said, referring to downloadable content that’s often sold after a game’s release.

Riccitiello’s tone is less extreme than it was in June, when he told IndustryGamers that “if there are any pirates you’re writing for, please encourage them to pirate FIFA Online, NBA Street Online, Battleforge, Battlefield Heroes…” but the idea is the same: If you don’t demonize the bootleggers and illegal downloaders, there’s a chance they’ll purchase some extra content, and that’s better than nothing. They may even go legit as a way of showing support for developers.

Minus that last part, it’s essentially the same view Riccitiello — and much of the games industry — takes towards buyers of used games, from GameStop or other second-hand sources. Even if EA didn’t make any money off you for the base purchase, they can still get you on the optional extras.

I like Riccitiello’s dovish stance, but there’s a dark side in just how much DLC has become available, to the point where it seems like legitimate buyers are eating some of the costs of piracy and used games. Where extra content was once an afterthought that came months down the road from release, it’s not uncommon now to see additional content available on the day of purchase. Dragon Age: Origins, published by EA, is a recent example, where some of content was free, but some cost money. At least the publisher rewarded buyers with some free content as well, which pirates or second-hand purchasers would have to pay for.

Still, it’s hard to argue that you’re not getting your money’s worth from a game like Dragon Age, which boasts over 100 hours of play. And Riccitiello says that when customers are offered more DLC, they lap it up. He may be on to something.

So I’m thrilled to see that the Software & Information Industry Association is embracing the cheese with a follow-up to “Don’t Copy That Floppy,” the classic anti-piracy video from 1992. Just like the original, the new video features DP (“Disk Protector”) rapping about the dangers of piracy and the injustices of denying content creators their hard-earned cash.

The only thing is, the message has drastically changed. For starters, the SIIA is no longer saying you should buy one copy of software for every computer you use. (“Anything less is like going to the store, taking the disk and walking out the door,” DP used to rap. “It’s called thieving, stealing, taking what’s not yours.”) These days, it’s pretty common for consumers to demand a little more flexibility than one copy per PC.

More importantly, the latest video is not as endearing as the original. Instead of focusing on the moral consequences of ripping off content creators, the the sequel pushes the message that “it’s not just a copy, it’s a crime.” Images of a mother getting arrested for her daughter’s copy schemes accompany a college kid’s nightmares of being locked up and hassled in prison. Accordingly, DP’s voice has grown noticably deeper and more threatening. The video ends with a notorious software pirate, Jeremiah Mondello, warning viewers not to make the same mistakes as him.

The change in tone smacks of desperation. Software piracy has exploded in the 17 years since “Don’t Copy That Floppy,” thanks, of course, to the Internet. And because we’re a more cynical culture now, it’s no longer enough to appeal to the pirate’s conscience — everyone knows the executive’s pockets are affected, too. All that remains is the threat of hard time. For the average person, it’s hard to see that message as anything but, well, lame.