James Burt, a 24 year-old manager at games retailer Electronics Boutique, admitted uploading the game on November 6th, a week before its commercial release in Australia.

In a statement the Japanese games giant said it used a range of forensic techniques to track down the uploader and on 23rd November obtained a Federal Court search order. This was used to locate and seize items from Burt’s property in Sinnamon Park, Queensland, to be used in evidence in the case against him.

As part of the investigation, Burt was also ordered to allow access using his passwords to social networking sites, email accounts and other websites he had used.

Australia traditionally lags behind the United States and Japan when it comes to media releases, but with the release of New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii the reverse was true, leading Nintendo to refer to the leak as a “global issue”.

“This legal proceeding was commenced to protect the creative rights and innovation of game developers, and to combat the growing international problem of Internet piracy,” the company said in a statement.

The game was a sure fire hit on BitTorrent. Data collected by TorrentFreak indicated that by December 27th 2009, the game had been downloaded 1,150,000 times.

Nevertheless, the game was still a huge commercial success. The game sold in excess of 10 million units in its first 2 months on sale – that’s 1 in 6 of all Wii gamers buying a copy – making it the fastest-selling single-platform game ever.

It’s unclear how Mr Burt will be able to pay this huge amount in damages. His salary at Electronics Boutique is unlikely to cover it – if he still has a job there.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

A ruling by a court in Frankfurt on January 29th could now have put DigiProtect’s “Turn Piracy Into Profit” mass-warning business model into jeopardy.

An individual was sent a letter by the lawyer Udo Kornmeier on behalf of DigiProtect. The letter contained accusations of illicit file-sharing including a customary cash payment demand of around 651 euros to cover legal costs based on an infringement claim of 10,000 euros. It was accompanied by a demand to pay a further 150 euros in order to acquire a license from the copyright holder for the material downloaded.

While the file-sharer didn’t contest the 150 euro license fee, he refused to pay the 651 euros legal bill. DigiProtect’s lawyers countered with an offer for him to pay 450 euros plus the 150 euros license fee. Again the file-sharer rejected the offer.

DigiProtect then went on to sue the man for 651.80 euros and the case went to court.

In court the judge asked DigiProtect and its lawyers to open up their books to show what legal costs were actually incurred (and paid) to perform legal actions against the file-sharer and send him the letters. Both DigiProtect and their lawyer refused to submit the information.

During the hearing the judge discovered that the relationship between DigiProtect and its lawyers was covered by an agreement similar to the one it had previously with lawyers Davenport Lyons for their UK operations. The details of that arrangement were leaked out last year by a disgruntled insider and revealed some embarrassing truths about the operation.

DigiProtect and its German lawyer refused to allow the agreement between them to be shown in court which meant that the true costs of pursuing the file-sharer remained unproven.

The judge said that even if DigiProtect had paid 651.80 euros to its lawyers to pursue the file-sharer, these cannot be considered as involuntary damages since DigiProtect paid this fee to its lawyer voluntarily. Therefore the only involuntary damages in this case was the 150 euros rights holder licensing fee.

Due to this lack of transparency, the judge decided that the file-sharer did not have to pay DigiProtect the claimed 651.80 euros legal action costs, only the 150 euros licensing fee.

Clearly, if the lawyers can’t get their sizable share of the spoils in this “Turn Piracy Into Profit” operation, the whole business plan falls down. There was certainly no profit to be made from this file-sharer – time will tell if this effect ripples on to other cases.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Below is an excerpt of Twitters blog post revealing the threat.

It appears that for a number of years, a person has been creating torrent sites that require a login and password as well as creating forums set up for torrent site usage and then selling these purportedly well-crafted sites and forums to other people innocently looking to start a download site of their very own. However, these sites came with a little extra — security exploits and backdoors throughout the system. This person then waited for the forums and sites to get popular and then used those exploits to get access to the username, email address, and password of every person who had signed up. Additional exploits to gain admin root on forums that weren’t created by this person also appear to have been utilized; in some instances, the exploit involved redirecting attempts to access the forums to another site that would request log-in information. This information was then used to attempt to gain access to third party sites like Twitter.

So, the company blames ’someone’ of installing backdoors in a torrent site script that was sold to prospective torrent sites operators, something that has apparently gone unnoticed for years. The question that comes to mind immediately is, if this is such a serious and widespread threat, why doesn’t Twitter name the source or at least give some examples of affected sites?

All of the popular public torrent sites are custom built and cannot be the source of the exploit. From the information Twitter has made available it seems they could be blaming a private tracker script for the attack – most private trackers also operate forums which matches Twitter’s description of the sites involved.

There are quite a few private tracker scripts out there and the most established ones, such as TBDev and Gazelle for example, have been examined by untold numbers of experts and come free of charge – any suggestion that they could be involved in underhand activity is unthinkable. But there are also a few scripts that are created by middle-men whose reputations are less-easily tested.

Accusations of including back doors and exploits in tracker code are not new. The owner of Template Shares, a site that sells a heavily modified version of the TBDev BitTorrent tracker script, has been accused by several people of installing backdoors which provide access to the user databases of customers’ sites.

Template Shares is used by hundreds of smaller private BitTorrent trackers.

To warn the public, other online services and the operators of the affected torrent sites, it would be appropriate if Twitter gave out some more information. TorrentFreak will continue to look into this case and will post an update if we find out more.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Peter Makepeace, prosecuting, naturally painted an extremely negative picture, labeling the Pink Palace as a place designed from the ground up as a personal money-making machine for Ellis.

“21 million downloads. 600,000-plus albums. £300,000. This was a cash cow, it was perfectly designed to profit him and it was as dishonest as the day is long,” said Makepeace.

It is common sense to come to the conclusion that Oink was dishonest, claimed the prosecution lawyer, adding that Ellis knows that it’s dishonest “to promote, encourage and facilitate criminal activity,” and accusing him of telling the jury “persistent, cunning, calculated lies.”

It would, of course, be dishonest to promote “criminal activity”, but Mr Makepeace should be very well aware that the activity engaged in by OiNK’s users is covered under civil law.

Switching momentarily from criticism to praise and then back again, Makepeace said that the OiNK website was a “wonderful machine” for sharing music but noted that while the site had a really good brand name, it was a brand synonymous with “ripping off music.”

University of London professor Birgitte Andersenok gave evidence earlier in the trial, stating that file-sharing didn’t hurt the music industry and led to more sales. Mr Makepeace trashed her evidence.

“It’s nonsense, it’s flannel, it’s verbiage, it’s garbage,” he told the Court.

For the defense, Alex Stein said that Ellis had never knowingly acted dishonestly and that in 2004 when OiNK was launched, it was a “brave new world” on the Internet.

“In many societies he’d be an innovator, a creator, a Richard Branson. His talent would be moulded, not crushed by some sort of media organization,” he said.

The media organization being referred to by Stein was the IFPI, who he said had never requested that OiNK be shut down, and had instead “sat and watched.”

Gazette Live reports that Stein went on to launch a scathing attack on the IFPI.

“They used this site. Their own members used this site to promote their own music and now they’re crushing him. Maybe he grew too big for them, maybe they’ve taken a different marketing approach. I don’t know. But it was decided that this site should be taken down.

“All of us here are being manipulated to some sort of marketing strategy by the IFPI. If anybody’s acting dishonestly it’s them,” he said.

At the end of the two week trial the jury returned a unanimous verdict (12 to 0). Alan Ellis is not guilty of Conspiracy to Defraud the music industry. He walked out of Teesside Crown Court a free man today, his name cleared.

The verdict cannot be appealed and Ellis can finally put the past behind him and move on.

Breaking story…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Sounds great, but let me start off with the downside to Usenet. The biggest disadvantage is that high speed Usenet servers are not free. You need at least some kind of paid subscription plan to be able to get decent speeds on Usenet. For some people this is not a problem, their argument often is that they already pay a lot of money for high speed broadband access, so why not pay a little extra to get the best speeds out of it.

The Free and Easy Solution

For those who are new to Usenet and want the easy route, we recommend trying a free trial at Binverse. This allows you to try a premium Usenet provider for free. It gives you all the tools to start downloading from Usenet quickly, and guarantees fast downloads. Binverse has its own built in search engine and a custom download client.

If you’re not satisfied with Binverse you can try other providers. However, a premium service will always cost a few bucks.

The Alternative Solution

1. Download Grabit here.

2. Double click the downloaded file and proceed to install.
When installing make sure ‘Associate Grabit with NZB files’ is selected.

3. Before clicking “Finish” select “Launch Grabit”. If you missed this look for the grabit icon on the desktop and double click it.

4. Once launched you’ll be asked to enter the name of your usenet server. If you have a premium server (highly recommended, e.g. a free trial at Binverse) select the check box and press next.

5. If you selected the checkbox you’ll then be asked for your news server username and password. Enter them and press next.

Note: Your username/password are case sensitive! Be sure to enter them correctly.

6. You be asked whether to retrieve a list of groups from the news server. Select the checkbox and click finish.

7. Grabit will load fully and begin downloading the grouplist. While it’s downloading continue to step 8.

8. Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and select ‘Preferences’.

9. Select the ‘Folders’ tab. Click the button right of the box containing the download directory. Here you can select the folder you want files to download to.

10. Go to your favourite NZB site (eg. newzleech, yabse) and download an NZB file. Double click the NZB file. You’ll be asked whether you want to import the NZB file, just click ‘Grab’.

11. The NZB file will be imported. If you’ve done everything right the files should then begin to download.

Downloading:

That’s all there is! Well done you’ve downloaded your first files from Usenet.

The following isn’t completely necessary but can save alot of time, especially if you don’t want to deal with 100s of par/rar files.

1. Download ParNRar here

2. Double click the downloaded file and install.

3. Launch the ‘ParNRar’ by double clicking the purple icon on the Desktop.

4. Click the button on the right of the monitored directory and select your download directory. This is the same place you used for saving files with Grabit.

5. Click ‘Go’. ParNRar will then scan your Grabit download directory checking and extracting any files present.

For extra customization click the ‘Options’ button. There are a range of options to choose from.

One useful option is to have ParNRar check the download folder every X seconds for new parts. To do this select the ‘When done scanning:’ box and change to restart. Then enter a delay between restarts.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Labeling the claims “melodramatic,” in September boss of ISP BT’s consumer division, John Petter, warned that proposed measures to tackle these supposed loses would prove costly for ISPs – a staggering £365m ($583.4m) a year.

Today, according to a new report, government ministers have admitted that the costs will amount to £500m ($799.2m).

ISPs say that issuing warnings will cost every customer £1.40 ($2.24) and otherwise meddling with accounts at the behest of the music industry will add £25 ($40) total to an annual subscription.

Worryingly, ministers say that this extra cost will force 40,000 UK households offline, with BT’s John Petter calling the plans “collective punishment that goes against natural justice.”

Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, said that it is “grossly unfair” for the government to force all broadband customers to foot the bill, and noted that forcing tens of thousands offline will go against government targets of increasing Internet take-up among the most disadvantaged communities.

“We are confident that those costs will be a mere fraction of the stratospheric sums suggested by some ISPs,” a BPI spokesman told The Times, adding, “..and negligibly small when set against their vast annual revenues.”

British music churned over £3.6bn in 2008, up by 4.7%. In the same year British films accounted for 15% of worldwide box office takings, totaling £2.6bn ($4.2bn) – an increase of $1bn over 2007.

So, if this anti-piracy scheme really is destined to bring them an extra £1.7 billion extra in media sales over the next 10 years, why don’t they offset these “negligibly small” costs against their own “vast revenues” ? Because they can get the customer to pay, of course.

When this £25 charge is added to customer accounts, ISPs up and down the UK should put the amount separately on the bill as an extra item which clearly reads “Music industry surcharge.”

Let’s see how that affects piracy and, indeed, the attitudes of people who now quite rightly feel they should at least be getting some music for their money.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In five days the game’s worldwide sales climbed to $550 million, crushing previous record holders Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (only $394m) and The Dark Knight (just $203.8m).

“In just five days of sell through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the largest entertainment launch in history and a pop culture phenomenon,” Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said commenting on the game’s success. This is, of course, reflected in the number of pirated copies being traded on BitTorrent.

With 4.1 million unauthorized downloads of the PC version alone, the game more than doubles the achievement of last year’s ‘winner‘ Spore. Modern Warfare 2 leads both the PC and Xbox 360 lists, by a landslide.

The overall trend across all platforms is that, unlike last year, all of the games are 2009 releases. What makes Modern Warfare 2’s chart-topping even more impressive is that this has been achieved after just two months of availability. We further see that the figures for the most downloaded titles have more than doubled compared to last year, equaling the growth in uTorrent users.

PC games are by far the most downloaded titles, with on average more than three times the number of downloads compared to Xbox 360 and Wii releases. As expected, Mario titles are in high demand on the Wii.

The data for these lists is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. All the data is carefully checked and possible inaccuracies are systematically corrected.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The media attention led to widespread protests. Most noticeable was ‘Operation Blackout’, where hundreds of thousands ‘blacked out’ their profile images on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and not without success. The objections eventually caused the government to scrap the law and go back to the drawing board. Not for long though.

Fast forward a few months and the government already has a new and ‘improved’ version of the anti-piracy legislation ready. The new plan no longer includes the ‘guilty upon accusation” section where consumers had little options to appeal a potential disconnection. However, the new text also includes the option for copyright holders to demand $15,000 in damages from repeated copyright infringers.

“I want to stress that account holders will have the opportunity during each of these processes to defend claims by right holders,” Commerce Minister Simon Power said in a comment.

Under the new law, ISPs would no longer be obliged to simply disconnect every user accused of repeatedly downloading copyrighted material, without solid proof. Instead, all account holders can request a hearing at the Copyright Tribunal if they don’t agree with the proposed penalty or the evidence presented against them.

From current reports it is not clear how the copyright holders will collect evidence on alleged copyright infringers. The past has shown that their data gathering techniques are not always the most accurate, to say the least. If this is the case, we can expect to see many appeals once the new proposals become law in the coming year.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

When it comes to copyright policy, there appears to be only one set of people the government is willing to listen to, and that’s the copyright lobbyists groups. Groups that don’t represent the creators as much as those that manage the creators; the middlemen. And so it is with the attendees of today’s meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden, whose political career – like many US politicians – has been partly funded by pro-copyright groups, came out to say that he is offended by the “flat unadulterated theft” some call piracy. A bold statement, but not really that surprising when you take a look at the one-sided list of attendees.

There are no consumer groups, no technology companies, and few representatives of the artistic creators themselves. There are plenty of are representatives of middlemen companies though. Companies that make their money from managing, distributing and promoting, tasks that are increasingly being made obsolete with technological progress.

We’re talking about the likes of Sony’s Michael Lynton, who on behalf of an industry that’s having one of it’s best ever years, plead poverty less than two months ago. And Edgar Bronfman, head of WMG – you remember, the company that claimed copyrights that aren’t theirs.

What will have been on the agenda? Well, probably no items on how factually inaccurate the recent CBS piece was, or how anti-piracy studies would be improved with the release of supporting data. Instead, it will be the likes of future anti-piracy laws such as ACTA, and questioning the ability to introduce similar legislation to France and the UK.

Not that we will find out though, as apparently the press has been kicked out. Perhaps, like ACTA, this is a national security issue too. After all, who says terrorists don’t download Die Hard films for training purposes?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

As demand grew Tony’s business expanded year after year, but by 2001 and although still busy, profits were being squeezed. By 2004 demand started to fall dramatically and in 2005 he had to close down his factory unit. Tony told TorrentFreak there was a new competitor in town.

“File-sharing, P2P – call it what you like. When you asked a customer why he wasn’t buying anything, 9 times out of 10 it was ‘BitTorrent this, LimeWire that’. Add that to the fact that huge numbers of PC users have burners and fast broadband and it’s obvious why I had to get out and earn a living another way. We had it good for a while but I don’t think those days are coming back.”

Cheap pirate media had just got even cheaper. With the advent of super-fast broadband there was little point in visiting the local counterfeiter when everything was just a few clicks away for free on increasingly user-friendly BitTorrent and other file-sharing sites. But what happens to the physical piracy market when the file-sharing sites are no more? Maybe China is about to find out.

During the last month Chinese authorities shut down hundreds of video sites, including some of the biggest BitTorrent trackers such as BTChina, for operating without an appropriate government license.

Now, according to a Chinese illegal DVD vendor, these shutdowns could be set to bring him and his competitors a sudden windfall – the exact mirror image of what happened to Tony several years ago.

“Pirated DVDs are the cheapest choice for people without free downloads online,” he said. “I expect my sales to triple before Christmas.”

While it’s still early days, officials in charge of clearing illicit vendors from the streets said that they had not yet witnessed a surge in demand for illegal DVDs. A spokesman for a Chinese IP lawfirm said that while there could be an increased demand short-term, file-sharers are resilient.

“Simply shutting down those websites might have an immediate impact, but where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he said. “The problem is, if you shut down the top two BitTorrent sites, then people are simply going to go to number three, number four or number five on the list,” he said. “You can cut off the head but sooner or later two more will grow back.”

Time will tell if an Internet crackdown on video sites will force customers back onto the streets, but perhaps more intriguing is the answer to this question – will it push them back into the arms of the legitimate vendors of movies and music? It seems unlikely.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Talking about copyrighted content on Usenet is illegal they argue, and BREIN wants FTD to be shut down for allowing this. The newsgroup community, however, is not prepared to tolerate BREIN’s accusations and has decided to take action. Earlier this year FTD took BREIN to court, demanding that it should retract its numerous statements that FTD operates illegally.

In a letter to the court in this ongoing case, FTD’s lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet stated yesterday that BREIN is going too far with its statements. Downloading copyrighted files and music for personal use is perfectly legal in The Netherlands, so he sees no reason why merely talking about it should be illegal.

FTD users do not ‘make files available’ and are therefore not acting against the law. “Hyperlinks, torrents, NZB-files or other technical possibilities to download copyrighted works are not provided. BREIN says in effect that it should be forbidden to talk about downloading material,” Engelfriet added.

Undeterred, BREIN maintained their stance and declared FTD a criminal operation. In a counter-claim against FTD, the anti-piracy outfit has demanded $70,000 a day in penalties if the Usenet chatter continues.

Needless to say, if BREIN wins their case this will have serious implications for many other websites and communities, including TorrentFreak. Simply mentioning that a movie such as 2012 can be downloaded through BitTorrent would no longer be allowed according to Engelfriet.

FTD’s lawyer is confident about the positive outcome of the case, arguing that FTD is operating within the boundaries of Dutch copyright law.

“We fully expect to win our case. BREIN is big on statements but often short on facts and legal arguments to back them up,” Engelfriet told TorrentFreak earlier, adding that they “have the law and the facts” on their side.

The verdict in this case is expected to be announced sometime next year. Until then, here’s our Usenet tutorial.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In reality, the truth proved somewhat different.

No one could argue Grokster had been defeated, but the consequences for file-sharing were limited. The real impact was that providers of file-sharing services could now be held liable if it could be shown that they promoted their products for infringing purposes. Careful advertising was all that was required. Furthermore, the decision only affected the United States. Considering the epic scale of the case and the supposed victory, the results were far from devastating.

And now, 4 years later, Mininova, another file-sharing giant that rode on the crest of the BitTorrent wave since the Grokster verdict, has effectively been forced to close down the vast majority of its site, prompting many to feel that BitTorrent is heading for its twilight years.

However, with careful consideration, it may just be possible to create another Mininova that avoids its namesake’s fate, since the court’s decision was not solely related to the existence of links to infringing content, i.e the .torrent files.

The DMCA is widely known in BitTorrent circles. It is the US copyright act (but accepted by many indexers and trackers regardless of location) which many sites quote when offering to take down torrents that link to infringing content. “If you’re the content owner, let us know,” they say, “..and we’ll take down torrents that link to your works.” Complying with so-called ‘DMCA takedown requests’ is widely accepted as a way to stay within the law.

Although Mininova operated such a system, comments by the site’s staff on their forums called their commitment to it into doubt. There are many samples given in the court’s decision, here are just a few. It’s worth noting that many of them date back to 2005, when users, staff and site admins would have been much more relaxed.

“May have been just a take down request (…) i’d say just re upload it (…) thanks for sharing” (posted by site moderator)

“Thanks for reporting, I deleted the fake version and uploaded the correct one” (posted by site admin)

“I made a mistake of downloading a shareware version of Monopoly Jr. only to find out it only allows you to play it for 15 minutes and then it becomes useless,” said a user. “Check the site, it’s there now” (posted by site admin).

Mininova also took pride in their efforts to proactively filter fake files (including in the decision are comments by staff who admit to downloading material to check if it is indeed as labeled), viruses, malware, pornographic and drug-related material, but this seems to have backfired by the corresponding lack of commitment to proactively filter copyright content in the same manner.

The site also carried some very specific categories for its torrents. Not just ‘movies’ or ‘TV’, but also sections such as “CSI” and “Desperate Housewives” which are widely known to be copyright works. One section highlighted in the decision was labeled ‘Disney’. The court decided that since so little Disney material is copyright-free, the section could have little other use than to infringe.

Mininova has never denied making profits (it is a company after all) and the court ruled that the site encouraged and profited “from infringements of copyrights and related rights of the holders represented by Brein.”

To see things from a different perspective, TorrentFreak has been discussing the closure of Mininova with Aldor Nini at digital distribution and anti-piracy solutions company, Easycom, who has been following the case closely.

Interestingly, Aldor informs us that 8 out of 10 torrents on Mininova were not covered by the BREIN lawsuit, which makes us wonder if the site could’ve stayed alive if the other 2 out of 10 were removed before the court’s hand was forced.

“We are very sorry to see a platform like Mininova shut down millions of torrent files,” he told TorrentFreak. “Based on our research we have found out that only 21% of the content was infringing rights of content owners for content used in the proceedings by BREIN. This 21% could probably be the most popular files on the platform, but we cannot confirm this for sure.”

“However, Mininova’s decision to completely remove everything was to 100% conform with what the judge has ruled. A 100% working filter was requested, and the removal of all non moderated user submitted torrents is the only 100% filter available nowadays,” he told us.

In a similar way that file-sharing applications similar to Grokster’s continue to flourish post the ‘big’ 2005 verdict, torrent sites can follow suit, if they are prepared to adapt.

“We do not think that this judgment will directly apply to other torrent portals at all,” Aldor told us, “but rather the way Mininova was operated as a torrent portal.”

Aldor has some interesting thoughts on how torrent sites can continue, without making the same mistakes as Mininova. He argues that torrent sites should behave neutrally, meaning that if they remove fake and spam comments they should filter copyrighted content too.

Based on Aldor’s reasoning, it seems another option is for sites to switch to user-based moderation, where content is automatically removed after a fixed number of downvotes. The bottom line is that the site’s operators (or moderators) should stay neutral.

Further suggestions are to take the takedown procedure seriously and make it easy to use. Sites should notify users that copyrights are to be respected and refrain from using specific categories (such as Disney). Again, based on the basis that site staff should stay neutral, user submitted tags should be fine.

Other more problematic ideas are the increased co-operation with content owners and to “stop thinking in black and white” – surely great advice for both sides and ultimately, the only long term solution.

Not making any profit or donating part of the site’s income to innovative music artists and film makers, and steering clear of scammy advertisers could be further plus points.

Aldor concludes that the lessons are there to be learned from Mininova’s demise.

“The next torrent portals, which will cover the next millions of torrent files, will hopefully learn from this situation. All in all Mininova’s partial shut-down will not influence the worldwide BitTorrent activity, it has just set up the rules for the successors of Mininova.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

DL then wrote to the individuals demanding several hundred pounds to make the threat of a lawsuit disappear. Some paid up, but many did not, and the only cases DL took to court were against those who didn’t defend themselves.

Generating revenue from porn proves controversial

Then the law firm overplayed its hand and got into bed with DigiProtect, the German piracy exploitation outfit with a catalog of hardcore porn titles to its name. The rights were signed over to the company by the copyright holders so that DigiProtect could use them to generate revenue – lots and lots of revenue.

After mountains of bad publicity, DL withdrew from this business model. In May this year, the exact same scheme reappeared with UK lawyers ACS:Law. TorrentFreak asked company owner Andrew Crossley about the connections between ACS and DL – his reply: “NONE”. However, it was crystal clear that there were many links, not least that staff from DL were now working at ACS:Law directly on these cases – known cyber-squatter Terence Tsang as one example.

We’ve known all along that if those threatened put up a spirited defense and refused to be cowed they were never taken to court, but we had no proof as to the mechanism employed. Then, out of nowhere, months ago someone from inside either Davenport Lyons or DigiProtect leaked lots of sensitive documents to German news outlet Gulli.

Having remained secret until now, the documents made very interesting reading and along with a helping hand from TorrentFreak and armed with the leaked personal details and email addresses of some of the letter recipients, Firebird77 at Gulli was able to confirm the authenticity of the documents.

Document 1 – Ranking alleged infringers in order to decide who to pursue

The first document reveals how the targets are ranked based on an estimation of how likely it is that they will pay up. Each alleged infringer has their details filled in on a form (download here from WikiLeaks). The document shows that despite the claims that an IP address alone is irrefutable evidence of an infringement and will lead to being taken to court, the reality is rather different.

Letter recipients are given a ranking based on many parameters. Does the law firm want to continue to pursue the person? What are the chances of success? A zero would mean “no action” up to ten which would mean the respondent is ripe for maximum pressure. One letter recipient hired Michael Coyle at Lawdit Solicitors to defend him and this earned him a “three”.

One part of the form is entitled “Circumstances” and this is a very surprising section indeed. Despite the “fact” that the law firms supposedly already have solid evidence of infringement that they say will lead to court action if recipients don’t comply, the section seems to show that they make their decisions on who to pursue based on the recipients’ personal circumstances.

One circumstance is labeled “impecuniosity”, i.e the letter recipient is flat broke. Another is whether the recipient is on state benefits – this is expected to be proven by way of copies of benefit books and/or letters. TorrentFreak has evidence that one gentleman was asked to prove that he was indeed disabled in order to make the claims go away. Other circumstances include whether the recipient is a pensioner, a student or a child.

One other circumstance is an eyebrow-raising “out of jurisdiction” (no rightful claim could be made the against the recipient) along with whether or not the individual was aware of that fact.

The form also lists possible defenses that recipients rely on, including the breach of their wireless router, a virus infected PC, not being at home when the infringement occurred, no knowledge of infringement or the possibility that someone else in the location carried out the infringement.

Document 2 – Letter from lawyer Dr Kornmeier from Kornmeier & Partner to Brian Miller at Davenport Lyons

The 14 page document (download from WikiLeaks) details the agreement DigiProtect enters into with rights holders in order to exploit their copyrights for profit.

Included is a section which confirms that the original rights holders sign over the rights to DigiProtect so that they are legally allowed to make the works (hardcore porn movies) publicly available on P2P networks such as BitTorrent. Dr Kornmeier asks: “Does this constitute any problem under UK law?”

According to page 2 of the letter, when the recipient of these letters pay up, the spoils are divided up as follows – 51% to DigiProtect, 37.5% to Davenport Lyons and 11% to DigiRights Solutions. The remaining pages detail the exact business arrangement along with a list of the hundreds of porn movies covered by the agreement.

TorrentFreak discussed the documents with staff at the excellent BeingThreatened.com, a site set up to support and inform those targeted by Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law in the UK.

“These documents confirm what we have long suspected,” they told us. “This scheme is not about getting justice for the rightsholders at all; it is there to fill the pockets of companies like DigiProtect by exploiting many innocent people. Everyone with an IP address has reason to be worried about becoming a victim of these exploitative practices, whether they use P2P networks or not.”

Indeed, John Stagliano, boss of porn company Evil Angel which also worked with DigiProtect, admitted to earning less than £50 from each infringement and told the BBC the scheme “…was completely misrepresented” to him.

Uk consumer magazine Which? earlier reported Davenport Lyons to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority for alleged “bullying”. It will be interesting to see how these documents develop that case.

Thus far just two documents have been made public. Stay tuned for further updates.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The legislation came into force on April 1st this year, and the very next day the Netnod Internet Exchange reported a significant drop of 30% in Swedish Internet traffic. This dramatic reduction in data transfers was attributed to file-sharers reigning in their activities on fears of being identified by anti-piracy companies.

In response to the news, Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that most experts believed that the initial “scare effect” would wear off in time. They were absolutely right.

Current data from Netnod reveals that traffic levels in Sweden have not only returned to normal, pre-IPRED levels, but actually seem on track to surpass them. This increase is partly natural, but the relatively steep climb in recent months seems to suggest that P2P traffic is on the rise again.

While anti-piracy and copyright groups are working hard to clock up successes in getting governments to implement increasingly tougher laws to deal with online file-sharers, they too aren’t sitting back and accepting defeat in the face of these new challenges. Many are turning to services which enable them to hide their identities.

Recently the Cyber Norms sociological research project reported that 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 were taking measures to neutralize online surveillance, with as many as 500,000 of their countrymen following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.

In this cat and mouse game, the cats have to spend millions of dollars and years of effort to achieve their aims of getting new legislation to protect their interests. However, in a crushing response, the mice spend just a few minutes in thought deciding how to spend a few dollars in order to instantly neutralize the threat.

As people around the world look forward to the festive season, it must seem like Christmas every day for VPN suppliers.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In this short time span it was downloaded by more than 400,000 people on BitTorrent alone, earning it a spot in TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies this week.

For most Hollywood bosses this is usually a trigger to start complaining about lost revenue, but the makers of Ink are welcoming their new pirate audience.

In an email to the followers of their newsletter, Jamin and Kiowa Winans say that they have “embraced the piracy” and are “just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.” Thanks to the pirated copy their movie jumped to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter, and according to the makers this increased popularity also boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales.

Who needs a hefty marketing budget to promote a movie (and merchandise) when they have BitTorrent? Sent out a few hours ago, here’s the mailing in full plus a follow up response from Kiowa.

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn’t expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, we’ve embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb’s movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world.

This all started as a result of the completely underground buzz that you’ve each helped us create. We’ve had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that you’ve generated has made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many of you came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of you have bought the DVD and Blu-ray from us. All of this built up and built up and suddenly it exploded.

We don’t know exactly where this will all lead, but the exposure is unquestionably a positive thing.

Ink hits Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and many more tomorrow! Remember to get your signed copies, t-shirts and posters at the Ink Store.

Thank you so much for the constant love and support.

Jamin and Kiowa
Double Edge Films

And the follow up response we got from Kiowa, in reply to this article.

Dear Ernesto,

To say we are shocked by all this news and are digesting it rapidly is an understatement. We made this film in Denver, CO on a budget of $250,000 and have fought to bring it to 15 cities ourselves over the past ten months. Hollywood has claimed that they don’t know how to market the film or that it doesn’t have an audience, and what BitTorrent has done in the last four days is prove, unequivocally, that Hollywood is wrong.

So is this the best thing that could happen to our little film? Absolutely! There is no way this many people would know about the film otherwise, or that our IMDb MovieMeter would have shot up an astounding 81,000% from a few days of activity over the torrent sites. What Hollywood would calculate as lost dollars, we calculate as fans earned. Due to many suggestions from downloaders over the past few days we have established a Donate button on our Store page for people to contribute what they can. Thank you for posting that info.

We’re not looking to get rich, but would like to pay back our investors and the enormous amount of personal debt we’ve gone into making the film. We’re also not looking to make Hollywood films (Jamin has had several opportunities) and plan on continuing the march of making fiercely independent films. In order to do that we have to count on the power of the people, eyeballs all over the world and torrenters to throw our film a few bucks apiece. It’s the indie film model of the future and we appreciate each and every person who takes the time to watch our film. It appears we’re all rebels here… so let’s wave that flag proud.

Again, we are really floored that all of this is happening and that you’ve opened up the conversation!

All the best,

Kiowa K. Winans

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued Friday in the Federal Court, with iiNet’s chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby, taking the stand following his first appearance Thursday afternoon.

Yesterday, Dalby recalled having difficulty in understanding some of the terminology utilized by AFACT in the infringement notice spreadsheets it submitted to iiNet.

Dalby told AFACT barrister Tony Bannon that iiNet had told AFACT there was an issue with some items being unclear in the spreadsheets.

“There was no legend associated with this spreadsheet. I had to make an assumption. We asked AFACT for more information,” ITNews quotes Dalby as saying.

Bannon then criticized Dalby for not being specific and expecting AFACT to guess at which terms were not understood, but Dalby pointed out that he expected AFACT to contact the ISP for clarification.

Further discussion took place on the issue of IP addresses and how iiNet allocates them to customers. Time and again, Dalby explained that IP addresses are allocated to a customer account and they do not necessarily represent any particular computer that the customer may use.

In what is becoming a recurring theme, today Dalby told the court that iiNet had no intention of forwarding AFACT’s copyright infringement notices to its customers purely on their allegations.

“Our position was that we should not be doing AFACT’s work,” said Dalby. “If we had received authorization by way of court order, that would have changed our position.”

AFACT went on to tender a draft e-security code of practice from the Internet Industry Association (IIA) created earlier this year. It proposes that in future, ISPs could contact, and maybe even disconnect subscribers, who have malware-ridden computers which negatively affect networks. Despite Justice Cowdroy indicating that its relevance was peripheral to the case and wouldn’t but much use when he comes to make his decision, it was allowed.

Dalby said he believed that iiNet had not been involved in the draft and he was personally unfamiliar with it. CW reports that he had been quoted on the issue in the media, but Dalby said that it was a regular occurrence for the press to call him to comment on issues he was not yet familiar with, and in this particular case his comments were “neutral and non-committal”.

In September we reported that Australia’s Internet Industry Association (IIA) felt it had something to offer these court proceedings. IIA applied to be amicus curiae, a ‘friend of the court’, but AFACT objected, insisting the group would not be impartial and would favor iiNet.

The decision on whether this will be allowed or not has been delayed until next week.

In an indication that AFACT still objects to an IIA appearance, Bannon said that “….there’s a conceivable possibility they don’t want to add anything other than to say ‘hear, hear’,” apparently to the amusement of the court.

AFACT barristers are scheduled to make their closing statements next Monday afternoon.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, those who thought that these landmark cases would change public opinion towards file-sharing are wrong. In fact, not even the draconian anti-piracy legislation that went into effect in Sweden this spring could change social norms towards downloading movies and music without the permission of copyright holders.

These findings are the result of the Cyber Norms sociological research project carried out by Swedish researchers. They conducted survey interviews among 1,000 people between the ages of 15 and 25 to measure the strength of the social norms towards illegal file sharing. The aim was to find out whether the newly implemented anti-piracy legislation (IPRED) had been successful in reducing the gap between legal and social standards.

The findings of the surveys show that despite stronger anti-piracy legislation, the attitudes of young Swedes towards piracy haven’t changed.

“Despite the intensive efforts of the government during the six-month performance period, social support for copyright law in relation to file sharing is still at a record low. Young people in the survey do not feel any social pressure to refrain from interchange, whether from adults or peers,” researcher Måns Svensson comments.

Interestingly, the new law does seem to have an effect on the file-sharing habits of the younger Swedes. The percentage of people who say they don’t download any files illegally has increased from 22 percent in February to 39 percent in September. However, as the norms do not reflect the letter of the law it will be hard to maintain compliance, which could result in an increase in piracy in the months to come if people feel less threatened by possible punishments.

“In cases where the law is not supported by the social norms, it makes it extremely difficult to maintain compliance. Humans tend to follow social pressure rather than the letter of the law. With regard to intellectual property and copyright provisions, the Internet and file sharing technologies have created new conditions. In a short time, the social norms have developed in a direction that gives very little support of the law,” Svensson explained.

The study emphasizes that the law does not reflect what the general public considers to be legal, fair use, or even moral. Most people don’t feel that they’re doing anything wrong when they download an MP3 or share a movie, often because the legal alternatives are hard to find, full of DRM or simply overpriced.

So, as long as the entertainment industries fail to innovate and offer some real competition to piracy, the social norms wont change.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Then, a little later, Lynton hit back at his critics. He pointed to the leak of an unfinished copy of Wolverine, which appeared on the Internet (from a movie studio source who has never been identified) a month before its official release. As Techdirt pointed out, none of this hurt the movie.

Despite terrible reviews and this “devastating” leak, Wolverine still did very well at the box office, taking $35 million on its first day, beating both X:Men ($20.8m) and X2: X-Men United ($31.2m).

In a guest piece in The Times today, Lynton is complaining again. “Internet piracy means less money to make movies,” warns the headline.

Lynton begins by plugging Sony’s launch tomorrow of Michael Jackson’s This Is It, noting the importance of releasing it simultaneously worldwide.

“If Sony released it only in the US on Wednesday, by late Thursday it would be camcorded, uploaded on to the internet and available free to anyone with a broadband connection,” he said.

While absolutely correct, everyone also knows that the following is also true. The quality would be absolutely dire, Jackson’s singing would be punctuated by the rattling of candy packets and accompanied by a myriad of noisy cinema-goers singing their own version of his songs, probably all in D-Minor. The video would undoubtedly bring a whole new dimension to Black or White. People download this garbage but no-one enjoys it, and for good movies sales are not affected – but I digress.

“Online theft siphons billions of dollars out of the marketplace. That means less money to make movies. Projects get scaled back and others dropped. Some potential blockbusters won’t get made. Some new writers, actors and film-makers won’t get discovered,” writes Lynton, adding;

“Last year the leading Hollywood studios made 162 films — more than 40 fewer than in 2006, and the lowest number in a decade.”

But of course, just counting the “leading” studios doesn’t give the full picture. Even the MPAA’s own stats reveal a slightly different picture;

“The total number of films released domestically in 2008 was up 1.8%, to 610 films.”

So, if one casts the net slightly wider (yes, there is a world outside Universal, Warner, Paramount, Sony and Twentieth Century Fox), things look slightly different.

2004 Total Movies Released: 567 Total Combined Gross: $9,327,315,935
2005 Total Movies Released: 594 Total Combined Gross: $8,825,324,278
2006 Total Movies Released: 808 Total Combined Gross: $9,225,689,414
2007 Total Movies Released: 1022 Total Combined Gross: $9,665,661,126
2008 Total Movies Released: 1037 Total Combined Gross: $9,705,677,862
2009 Total Movies Released: 1177 Total Combined Gross: $7,596,626,766
(2009 figures incomplete, total movies scheduled to be released, gross to date)

Admittedly less money seems to be being made per movie, but that hasn’t resulted in less being made – movie releases are set to almost double from 2004 to 2009.

But in the end, Lynton is arguing that more piracy means that less money goes into the studios’ pockets. But in an Ars Technica piece ‘What piracy crisis? MPAA touts record box office for 2007‘, the stats speak for themselves;

“..data that shows the US box office doing its biggest year of business ever in 2007, growing 5.4 percent over 2006 and bringing in $9.63 billion.”

So maybe 2008 was a disaster? Not quite. In another Ars piece ‘What piracy? Movie biz sees record box office in 2008‘, the stats also speak loud and clear;

“Domestic film box offices broke multiple records this year [2008], grossing an estimated $9.78 billion.”

Even the MPAA’s own stats reveal that the “Worldwide box office reached another all-time high in 2008 at $28.1 billion, an increase of 5.2% over 2007.”

I’m absolutely no statistician, but I simply find Lynton’s claims confusing. I can’t imagine that I’m on my own.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The main problem is that most people just don’t understand what DHT is, what it does, and how it works. Not really a surprise since the documentation and even the Wikipedia page are filled with technical jargon, and no simple explanation.  Without that basic understanding confusion is inevitable. We did explain DHT in our jargon piece back in 2006 but after 3 years, we decide to cover it again.

The easiest way to think about DHT is to imagine it as a form of ’super tracker’, in some ways a lot like WinMX and Kazaa of old. A large ad-hoc network of peers pass on information requests about torrents without a central server, meaning no control or single point of failure. No information about the contents or even the names of torrents are passed around, making this legal and hard to shut down.

Myth: You must turn off DHT when you use private trackers.

Wrong — There is an element to a torrent that is called the ‘private flag’. It’s a small flag that marks to a client that the torrent is ‘private’ and disables any method of sharing peers (including DHT), except via the tracker. This flag also changes the hash, so peers on a non-flagged torrent could not connect to a flagged torrent in any case. Most private torrent sites check for the flag, and add it if missing when the torrent is initially uploaded to their site.

Myth: Certain clients leak DHT data and should be avoided.

Wrong (with one exception) — There are always going to be people that want control. When it comes to torrent sites (especially the private ones) they like to express their control through lists of clients you can and can’t use (a form of DRM) and sometimes give reasons to support this. An example would be this statement from a staff member at a private tracker:

Not all torrent clients respect the private flag. But if you are using a client like Vuze, uTorrent or similar if the private flag is on (set by the tracker) the DHT, peer exchange settings etc are ignored. However, if you are using something like BitComet, BitLord or their ilk they ignore the private flag so if you have DHT etc enabled it is going to be enabled no matter what.

This statement is completely false. All torrent clients that support DHT respect the flag. The flag is set by the torrent file, not the tracker (although the tracker can add the flag to the file, it’s still set by the torrent), and BitComet does NOT ignore the flag. The one exception is a single build of BitComet (0.60) that was available for 2 weeks at the end of 2005, and even then, was a fallback only if the tracker was unable to be contacted for a 30minute period. Bitlord is unable to leak to DHT, as it doesn’t use DHT at all.

If you see staff making claims like this, it’s a good indication that the staff is clueless, which might be an idea to leave that tracker. If they can’t get the basics right who knows when else is wrong. Of course, we ask those claiming other clients leak to let us know so we can test it.

Myth: You can be tracked by DHT / AntiP2P groups use DHT to find you

Unlikely — It’s much easier and simpler to use the tracker. Blocklists, used on your client and on the trackers, are generally ineffective and easily circumvented through the use of residential connections. Last year’s University of Washington study showed that they will send letters just based on tracker info.

Myth: DHT slows your system down

Generally not true — It can slow down your connection depending mainly on network hardware. The actual data used in running DHT is low, generally less than 1kilobyte a second. Some routers and modems, however, can have problems with DHT causing lockups and restarts if they run out of ram. This mostly happens with lower spec ‘home’ equipment (such as older Belkins, Netgears and D-links), or telco-provided hardware.

Myth: You need to connect to a tracker, before you can use DHT

Wrong — When DHT is enabled (certainly in uTorrent) it connects to a bootstrap node (such as router.utorrent.com or router.bittorrent.com for mainline, or dht.aelitis.com for Vuze) and uses that to enter the DHT ’swarm’. It’s handed a set of DHT nodes and uses that to build up a small group of connected nodes. Those nodes are then used to get peers. No tracker is required at any time.

Myth: When enabled, it sends usage data back to [insert company]

Wrong — This is another case of people not knowing what they’re talking about. Generally they’re misinterpreting the bootstrap node connection for their client.

When the demonoid tracker was finally resurrected last year, many of it’s torrents were still active thanks mainly to DHT. DHT with Peer Exchange (PEX) is a very powerful addition to the torrenting world, and allows torrents to stay active, irrespective of the trackers stability or even existence. Also, Azureus/Vuze users, despite having their own DHT system, can join in using a mainline DHT plugin.

Should you use DHT? Not if you only use private trackers, but if you use public ones and your network hardware can cope, then yes. It can help reduce tracker load. If you have a question about DHT not answered here, then again, let us know.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, none of this stopped the lobby groups, or the politicians looking to push for the ruling.

In the EU, the amendment, which would protect against 3-strikes laws by requiring due judicial process to occur before any sanction (such as cutting off Internet access), has been substantially watered down. Meanwhile, in France the Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of a slightly modified version of HADOPI – their legislation which includes a 3-strikes sanction.

On Tuesday, the Parliament gave up on Amendment 138, which had been voted on twice by the assembly, gaining a majority both times. The amendment was supposed to protect the rights of citizens from being treated as guilty upon the accusations of an industry group, and punished based on the same. It read;

Applying the principle that no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, save when public security is threatened in which case the ruling may be subsequent.

Instead, they are now considering a version which does not guarantee the right to an effective and timely judicial review.

Christian Engstrom, the Pirate Party’s MEP, commented on the amendment in his blog. He included the differences in text that have been made since Tuesday (bold denotes added text, strike-through indicates removed) in a meeting between three negotiators for the European Parliament and representatives for the Council of Ministers.

The changes included the removal of the judicial guarantee, that any measures should come only after a fair an impartial procedure (and should now just ‘respect’ such things), and the ACTA-like inclusion of ‘National Security’ clauses.

He summarized things simply, saying: “It shows utter contempt for Parliament by totally ignoring everything it says. The Council plans to bypass Parliament and once and for all prove that it is they who make the decisions, end of story.”

Meanwhile, France’s highest Constitutional Court has approved a slightly modified version of HADOPI. While initially blocked last September, a change to require a judge to sign off on the disconnection action (rather than the Agency itself) has meant it passed the Court. However, such court measures will be ‘fast tracked’ rather than given full judicial process, a situation the New York Times describes as ’similar to traffic violations’.

This has angered many, including (of course) the Pirate Party. Laurent Le Besnerais of the Parti Pirate and Pirate Party International called it “a huge blow for Internet Freedom.”

“In June 2009, this same Council declared that Internet access is a fundamental right which cannot be restricted without judicial process,” he told TorrentFreak. “Today, the council gives a judge the right and responsibility to pronounce a closure of Internet access to anyone suspected of having shared illegally. Furthermore, the suspect will have to prove his innocence, which creates a presumption of guilt.”

With the flip-flopping over these measures, it can only be seen as a greater boost for the European Pirate Parties in future elections. However, since much of the party works and draws its support online, there is the risk that members could start having their net connections cut off. With evidential standards so low, would it really be beyond the realms of possibility that political critics of these plans could end up being cut off at the say-so of those they oppose?

If all goes as planned the agency will be staffed next month, with letters starting in the new year, and terminations starting as soon as next summer. How long the law will stay once the innocent start being punished is harder to predict. As with IPRED, the people the law aims to deal with will just use seedboxes, VPNs, and open WiFi hotspots instead of their home connections.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.