In a tech savvy world built on code and the interwebs, basically everything is programmable, including the songs on your iPod. And by programmable, we mean that everything digital can be composed of what we know and expect, but sometimes, it can also contain something… more.

This is mostly due to the massive switch from analog signals to digital signals. Analog signals can be converted or parsed into a digital bitstream from which a programmer can route or control which vector to manipulate. An example includes most modern vehicle stereos, which contain an ADC – Analog-to-Digital – to equalizer connection which converts analog signal to digital. From there, the signal is returned through a Digital-to-Analog Converter or DAC for short; rinse and repeat. The theory is that somewhere along the way code can parse the digital content. The odd part is that it’s totally legit and “legal” on pirated music.

To say that a virus could be coded onto pirated music and then transferred to a vehicle’s infotainment system, while quit plausible, is theoretically pointless unless the information from a random person’s car is valuable enough to take the time to code such a monster. Not to mention that it’s almost impossible to be incognito while attempting this feat while on the fly. When sending a digital signal over an analog connection, a driver would hear a series of beeps indicating the conversion. Since the driver would have to be playing his stereo, a hijacking would be an obvious give away every time. In the end however, no hacker would have the drive to code a program that would be destined to fail. And that’s where the Reddit thread below goes. Check it out for a quick laugh.

Over the past several years many BitTorrent search engines have claimed in court that they’re “just like Google”, another search engine that allows users to find information scattered around the web. All this time Google itself remained silent on the issue, until now. The search giant has involved itself in the MPAA vs. isoHunt case recently, but not completely to the delight of isoHunt’s owner.

In May last year the U.S. District Court of California issued a permanent injunction against BitTorrent search engine isoHunt.

The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S. The injunction was the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that started half a decade ago, in 2006.

IsoHunt owner Gary Fung decided to implement the filter, and is now up for an appealat the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There, he hopes to get the law on his side and quash the previous District Court ruling. IsoHunt argues that they’re just like Google – a neutral search engine – and hopes the court will decide that the keyword filter is needless censorship.

The appeal is currently ongoing. Two months ago isoHunt filed its opening appellate brief to the Court, requesting better protection from such mass copyright lawsuits for both isoHunt and other search engines alike. Even Google may face similar censorship threats if the injunction holds up, isoHunt lawyer Ira Rothken argued.

Google has been keeping an eye on the legal battle between the MPAA and isoHunt as last week, out of nowhere, the company unexpectedly got involved in the motion for summary judgment appeal. The search giant, which has always stayed far away from these types of cases, filed an amicus cuiae brief (third party testimony) at the Appeal Court.

“This cases raises issues about the interpretation and application of the safe-harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512 et seq. (“DMCA”) and common-law rules governing claims for secondary copyright infringement. Google has a strong interest in both issues,” Google’s counsel writes.

Google asked both isoHunt and the MPAA studios for their consent in filing the amicus curiae brief. Interestingly enough, the movie studios didn’t want Google to take part, while isoHunt was more permissive. That doesn’t mean, however, that the brief is in support of isoHunt’s case, not at all.

In fact, Google specifically states that it agrees with the District Court’s conclusion that the isoHunt search engine induced copyright infringement. According to Google isoHunt can be seen as a true “pirate” service and no objections are made against the Court’s final decision.

What Google is worried about is the reasoning the District Court used to reach its conclusion.

“While in agreement with the result reached in this case, Google is concerned that some of the reasoning offered by the district court goes too far and would upset the careful balance between copyright protection and technological innovation struck by the Supreme Court and Congress. Particularly because this case is not a hard one, it should be decided narrowly,” Google writes.

Google argues that there is plenty of evidence that isoHunt encouraged its users to download copyright infringing content. However, in the discussion on the relation between inducement and liability the Grokster standard is ignored, especially the question of whether the inducement led to direct infringements or not.

Google wants to address this because they fear it may otherwise lead to a negative outcome for themselves.

Another major issue Google addresses is the District Court’s analysis of the DMCA’s safe harbor and the inducement of copyright infringement. According to Google this discussion can severely impact ‘legit’ businesses like YouTube.

“As with its treatment of inducement, the district court’s discussion of the DMCA reached the right result but in a problematic way. The court complicated a straightforward DMCA case by wading into an unnecessary discussion of the relationship between the statutory safe harbor and judge-made principles of secondary liability, including inducement,” Google writes.

Google states that it is apparent that isoHunt doesn’t fall under DMCA safe harbor protection, since it failed to meet several of the requirements, so a detailed discussion and conclusions with regard to liability and the DMCA are not needed.

“In short, the question whether a defendant is eligible for DMCA protection is distinct from whether the defendant is liable for inducement under Grokster. Those two questions should not be conflated, as the district court appears to have done,” Google writes.

Google further addresses various issues that they feel are not needed to arrive at the verdict, but can negatively impact other services on the Internet. Several of these conclusions are the result of suggestions made by the MPAA movie studios, which Google claims are misplaced and incorrect.

Although isoHunt’s owner was initially happy to see that Google got involved in the lawsuit, the end result is a huge disappointment. Google clearly doesn’t agree with the assessment of isoHunt that they are ‘just like Google’.

Google taking part in the MPAA vs. isoHunt appeal is mainly done in their own interest, but in doing this they make some valid points which are important for torrent sites also.

Google notes that the DMCA comes before any secondary infringement liability, such as inducement for example. In its ruling the District Court said that inducement disqualified isoHunt from DMCA safe harbors, which is strange as that completely defeats the purpose and definition of “safe harbour” for online service providers.

TorrentFreak contacted isoHunt owner Gary Fung for a response. Fung appeared to be disappointed, but couldn’t comment on the implications the Google brief could have. His lawyer Ira rothken was asked for a comment as well, but didn’t respond. It is now up to the Appeal Court to decide whether Google’s suggestions and comments will be taken into consideration.

Pirates are in it for the free stuff, and there are plenty of them: That’s the gist of a new PricewaterhouseCoopers study of consumer attitudes toward piracy. The study asked some 202 self-described pirates about their behavior and the reasons for it. At the top of the list was the fact that pirated content doesn’t actually cost anything.

Respondents signaled some willingness to pay, but not much — and the vast majority said that they’re going to continue to hunt for free loot. However, people don’t seem to mind ads, so the Hulu model might actually working to curb piracy.

Streaming clearly dominates video piracy, with 82 percent of respondents saying that they get their TV fare as streams, and 69 percent streaming pirated movies online, while 62 percent admitted to downloading TV show episodes, and 52 percent do so with movie titles.

So what makes them pirate? For 69 percent, the content being free was a deciding factor; 68 percent said DVDs are too expensive; and 58 percent believe that digital downloads are also too pricey. And if that wasn’t bad enough news for Hollywood, consider this: 54 percent “felt that everyone was doing it,” and 57 percent actually had a friend or family member recommend unlicensed content.

Of course, this isn’t statistical proof that everyone actually is pirating content, but this kind of perception may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone believes that everyone is doing it, then everyone may as well be doing it themselves.

And there’s little that could get people to abandon piracy: 81 percent said that they’re likely going to continue to get their video fix for free. People signaled some willingness to pay for movies if they had access to it right after it came out in the theaters, but even then, 45 percent said they’d pay less than a dollar to stream a movie. That’s not exactly what Hollywood has in mind with its new premium VOD plans.

The only thing that seems to be working to get people back to legitimate offerings is pricing them at zero; 58 percent responded that they’d frequent free, ad-supported websites. Thirty-four percent were open to subscription-based offerings like Netflix, but only nine percent want to pay iTunes or Amazon for each and every movie or TV show episode.

You’d probably be hard-pressed to find many people in Hollywood happy with these kinds of findings, but the PwC survey comes as a validation to Hulu’s approach, which has been questioned lately. Offering ad-supported content seems to be working as a piracy deterrent, and adding a subscription-based offering to the fold may actually have helped Hulu to tap into that one-third willing to open their wallets.

Update at foot of post.

As we recently reported, the BBC is set to close down 200 of its websites in the near future as part of cost-cutting measures. Hearing that 172 of these sites would be deleted from the Web entirely, an anonymous (and possibly even “Anonymous”, judging by the picture on the website) individual has taken matters into his or her own hands.

The result is a BitTorrent file that anyone can download to store a backup of these “lost” websites forever. The cost of the project? Apparently no more that $3.99 for a VPS server to crawl and retrieve all the sites.

Arguing that the removing the hosting costs of these websites which were no longer being actively developed was no real saving to the taxpayer at all, the individual writes:

“The purpose of this project is to show how the entire 172 public facing websites that are earmarked for deletion have been copied, archived, distributed and republished online – independently – for the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee (around $3.99).

In other words the true cost saving of this horrendous exercise is nothing more than your morning’s grande skinny caramel latte.”

Taking a more political tone, the author continues:

A weaker BBC means a weaker free press and in turn a weaker British democracy and society at large.

The purpose of this project is to expose the ‘cost savings’ of this proposed exercise as nothing more than a charade to appease the detractors to a strong BBC and to curry favour with the current government. BBC’s current senior management has demonstrated a lack of leadership and a lack of courage in pushing back on these demands.