When ‘caught’ uploading copyright works for the first time, the owner of the Internet connection used for the alleged infringement will receive an email warning. On allegations of a second offense, a physical letter will drop through the door. On the the third, the account holder will be summoned to appear before a judge who will have the power to fine, or even disconnect them from the Internet.

French senator Michel Thiolliere has told the BBC that the so-called Hadopi legislation will have the desired effect, with nearly everyone warned a second time abandoning illegal file-sharing for good.

“What we think is that after the first message… about two-thirds of the people (will) stop their illegal usages of the internet,” he explained

“After the second message more than 95% will finish with that bad usage.”

It is, however, much more likely that after getting a first warning, or even before, French Internet users will try to find a way round this system. They will discover that it’s surprisingly easy.

6 Ways Savvy Internet Users Will Neutralize Hadopi

Free options

MP3 Search Engines

One of the simplest ways to find music online is to use an MP3 search engine. That won’t be difficult as there are dozens to choose from. Sites like Skreemr, Songza, beeMP3, MP3Realm and AirMP3 are very simple to use and since there is no uploading, they drive a cart and horses through Hadopi. For those who don’t mind getting their hands dirty, Google offers similar functionality with their filetype: search operator.

Direct Downloads

During 2008 and 2009, the continued rise of blogs and forums that link to music, movies, tv shows and games stored on so-called cyberlocker sites was difficult to ignore. Although links can get taken down very quickly by copyright holders, they are often replaced just as swiftly by the communities that frequent such sites. The international music industry is particularly worried about the phenomenon, as tracking those that download from sites such as Rapidshare and MegaUpload is completely impractical.

Of course there are also perfectly legal alternatives, such as the excellent Jamendo.

Streaming Music and Video

While there are dozens of sites to visit directly, for those who really can’t be bothered to look any further and don’t mind closing a couple of slightly annoying popups, OVGuide is a huge portal to thousands of movies, TV shows and general video. With the assistance of the DivX plug-in, most content can be streamed directly in compatible web-browsers.

Music fans who don’t mind to stream tracks in their web browser actually have a few dozen legal alternatives. Grooveshark is one of the most elaborate music services. It holds more content than the average download store, supports playlists and it will roll out an iPhone app.

Premium options

Overseas MP3 Sites

Just over the English Channel from France lies the UK. Research carried out there recently by the BPI indicated that usage of MP3 pay sites had increased by 47%. While users do have to hand over money to use these services, at a tiny fraction of prices they would pay in their homeland they prove attractive to those on a tight budget.

Newsgroups

Using Usenet, or newsgroups as they are commonly known, is one of the most secure ways of downloading movies, TV shows, music and video games.

While the learning curve on Usenet is considered by many to be quite steep, once an individual discovers .NZB files – the .torrent of the newsgroup world – everything is hugely simplified. Within seconds of starting a transfer, the user’s connection will be completely maxed-out.

On a practical basis, and certainly as far as Hadopi is concerned, paying a few euros each month for a decent newsgroup account means that French citizens need never fear being disconnected from the Internet. Indeed, not even the first warning email will arrive.

Anonymous VPN

While the above options require that Internet users modify their behaviors, by spending a few euros a month on an anonymous VPN account they won’t have to change any of their habits at all. They can continue to use BitTorrent, eD2K or any other P2P method of file-sharing.

Once subscribed to a service such as Netherlands-based ItsHidden (who also offer a free, but speed-limited service), Hadopi file-sharing investigators will believe that the user behind that IP address is from another country and simply move on.

As the failed and now largely abandoned campaign against file-sharers in the United States proved, scare tactics simply don’t work. There are millions of file-sharers in France and many will simply carry on their activities in the belief that the odds of being caught are extremely slim.

And they would be absolutely right.

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

This lenient stance towards casual copyright infringement is about to change. The Spanish government is currently drafting amendments to current legislation in order to “to protect intellectual property against piracy on the Internet”.

Although individual file-sharers aren’t the current focus of the amendments, it is feared that further changes could be made in future to include them. However, what is certain is that sites that offer links to copyrighted material are almost certainly set to face an aggressive crackdown.

Spain’s Minister for Culture, Ángeles González-Sinde, announced that under the proposed legislation, such pirate sites could be taken offline without a judicial order.

It is no surprise that these announcements have been met with huge resistance from Internet users, who feel that once again their rights are being violated in order to meet the demands of the entertainment industry.

In a response to the Government’s proposals, hacktivists have defaced the website of Promusicae, a music industry body that has lobbied long and hard for more strict copyright laws in Spain.

The hackers have replaced the site’s content with a manifesto in which they call for a real reform of current copyright law, a limit placed on the power of the copyright cartels and the placement of Internet users’ rights above the commercial interests of copyright holders.

Below is the manifesto in full, as it appears on the defaced Promusicae website.

Manifesto on the rights of Internet users

A group of journalists, bloggers, professionals and creators want to express their firm opposition to the inclusion in a Draft Law of some changes to Spanish laws restricting the freedoms of expression, information and access to culture on the Internet. They also declare that:

1 .- Copyright should not be placed above citizens’ fundamental rights to privacy, security, presumption of innocence, effective judicial protection and freedom of expression.

2 .- Suspension of fundamental rights is and must remain an exclusive competence of judges. This blueprint, contrary to the provisions of Article 20.5 of the Spanish Constitution, places in the hands of the executive the power to keep Spanish citizens from accessing certain websites.

3 .- The proposed laws would create legal uncertainty across Spanish IT companies, damaging one of the few areas of development and future of our economy, hindering the creation of startups, introducing barriers to competition and slowing down its international projection.

4 .- The proposed laws threaten creativity and hinder cultural development. The Internet and new technologies have democratized the creation and publication of all types of content, which no longer depends on an old small industry but on multiple and different sources.

5 .- Authors, like all workers, are entitled to live out of their creative ideas, business models and activities linked to their creations. Trying to hold an obsolete industry with legislative changes is neither fair nor realistic. If their business model was based on controlling copies of any creation and this is not possible any more on the Internet, they should look for a new business model.

6 .- We believe that cultural industries need modern, effective, credible and affordable alternatives to survive. They also need to adapt to new social practices.

7 .- The Internet should be free and not have any interference from groups that seek to perpetuate obsolete business models and stop the free flow of human knowledge.

8 .- We ask the Government to guarantee net neutrality in Spain, as it will act as a framework in which a sustainable economy may develop.

9 .- We propose a real reform of intellectual property rights in order to ensure a society of knowledge, promote the public domain and limit abuses from copyright organizations.

10 .- In a democracy, laws and their amendments should only be adopted after a timely public debate and consultation with all involved parties. Legislative changes affecting fundamental rights can only be made in a Constitutional law.

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

Tobias Andersson was briefly questioned about the speech Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) gave after the TPB raid in 2006. Andersson told the court that he wrote the speech for Neij, since speech writing isn’t Neij’s thing. Andersson’s appearance was over in a few minutes and by 9:15 John Kennedy was testifying in English, through a Swedish translator.

IFPI’s John Kennedy confirmed he was the CEO of IFPI and summarized his duties there, noting the group has 1500 members worldwide and it’s main aims were to ‘improve’ copyright laws through government lobbying and fight piracy around the world since “piracy has done immense damage to the music industry.” Kennedy says that IFPI takes up strategic litigation against various targets worldwide.

Kennedy said that for a long time the industry sold its product in physical form (and experienced a limited piracy problem) but with the advent of digital music this situation has grown worse, with some claiming that copyright didn’t even exist in the digital world. He noted that the main sets of previous litigation were in the US (Grokster) and Australia (Kazaa).

Kennedy then said how pleased the music industry was with the legal wins against these two companies and in the wake of their demise, The Pirate Bay took their chance to develop their business. Kennedy said he first heard of TPB in 2004 and it was quickly becoming the #1 source of illegal music and this was damaging to the industry.

Kennedy noted the transition to digital music was a great threat to them, and although more music is currently being consumed than ever before, “less is being paid for than ever before.” If music is available for free, says Kennedy, many people find that temptation too much to resist and new business models can’t flourish.

The discussion then moved to the claim for damages. Kennedy said the claims were “justified and maybe even conservative, since the damage is immense.” Talk moved to the link between the cost of downloading legally and the claim for damages. Kennedy said that for the industry, CDs were more profitable than digital downloads are today.

He said that artists, studio producers, songwriters, music publishers, studio staff and the marketing and promotion people all have get paid and the music industry spends more money than most other industries on R&D. It invests 20% of its revenue on finding new artists and although some suggest that this isn’t needed in the Internet age, they are wrong said Kennedy.

Kennedy went on to explain that music marketing is designed to take effect in “Week One” of an album’s release and in an ideal world a new release would chart at #1 and would reach its sales targets in that first week. But if products are made available on Pirate Bay during that time he said, “then purchases are taken out of the market and because of the illegal use of music, the legal use of music under-performs and in some countries that can have a dramatic effect.”

Kennedy was asked about CD sales in the last 10 years. He said they dropped from $27 billion to $18 billion. He said that the Top 10 CDs in 2001 sold 69 million units and the Top 10 CDs in 2008 sold 46 million units. 9 years ago the #1 record sold 13 million units but in 2008, Coldplay sold half of that.

Kennedy was asked what impact legal downloads have on these figures, but he denied they made up the difference. The music industry has always relied on young people for sales he said, and these same people have got used to using illegal sites. “Many legitimate sites have struggled to compete with free. It’s impossible to compete with free,” said Kennedy.

When put to him that some claim that illegal downloading promotes sales, Kennedy labeled this as old-fashioned thinking and said that people don’t think this way anymore. When asked about P2P providing live performance promotion, Kennedy said that every single live performance success is linked to a previously successful recording career/sales.

When asked about the differences between TPB and Google, Kennedy said there is no comparison. “We talk to Google all the time about preventing piracy. If you go to Google and type in Coldplay you get 40 million results – press stories, legal Coldplay music, review, appraisals of concerts/records. If you go to Pirate Bay you will get less than 1000 results, all of which give you access to illegal music or videos. Unfortunately The Pirate Bay does what it says in its description and its main aim is to make available unauthorized material. It filters fake material, it authorizes, it induces.”

Kennedy says TPB threat is growing all the time. “They are proud of this with their statistics – there are 22 million users, 1 million visitors each day, 1.6 million .torrent files and they say they are responsible for 55% of BitTorrent traffic. They pride themselves on the quality of what they deliver.”

When questioned about the IFPI’s 10X damages multiplier for pre-release material, Kennedy felt this was fair considering the damage it does to the launch of a product. Kennedy says they have teams of experts monitoring the Internet everyday for piracy.

He went on to say that people who download music from TPB spend much less on music than they would otherwise and if they didn’t get it for free they would buy it. “It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.”

When asked if downloaders have less money than others, Kennedy said that younger people have the money but just don’t spend it on music anymore. Kennedy said that the reduction in sales in the music industry is directly attributable to illegal downloading.

When asked about scientific research on the issue, Kennedy said that of several reports, only one said there was no causal link between file-sharing and lost sales – all the rest say there is. Discussion of certain reports on the issue took place, with defense lawyers questioning Kennedy on the details of the reports.

The defense lawyers pointed out that in one of the reports Kennedy refers to, lesser known artists appear to be downloaded a lot on TPB but Kennedy said although he is 56 years old, he recognizes nearly all of the artists in the TPB Top 100 list.

Carl Lundstrom’s lawyer asked about the profit on the industry’s $18bn turnover from 2008. “Terrible,” Kennedy replied. Of the big players “..only one company is making a profit.” Kennedy was pushed, if he knows the turnover, why doesn’t he know the profit. He said it was difficult to say.

He was also asked how much of this $18bn turnover is used to fight piracy, Kennedy said there are three main areas of expenditure. Funding the RIAA in US, IFPI globally and more local groups such as IFPI (Sweden). They all have budgets and a large proportion of this is used to fight piracy.

The global amount used by IFPI on lobbying and fighting piracy is £75 million.

Kennedy said he qualified as a lawyer since the 70’s but hasn’t practiced recently. He was asked if he understood BitTorrent. Kennedy said he did, but in “very vague terms.” When the defense lawyers asked more detailed questions, about uTorrent for instance, Kennedy said he’d heard of it but had no idea of the details. It was very clear he knew nothing about any remotely technical issues.

Kennedy was asked if IFPI has taken any action against the actual sharers of the music made available via TPB, as detailed in this case. He said he couldn’t say and didn’t know who these individuals are. He then admitted to not knowing how The Pirate Bay works so the defense lawyers put it to him – if you don’t understand how TPB works, how can you say they are to blame? Again he was pressed why he took no action against the actual sharers but he said he didn’t know and admitted “It’s probably unlikely we took action.”

Kennedy was asked why they haven’t sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn’t announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too.

When pressed on the earlier reports that Kennedy referred to, the defense lawyers wanted to know if IFPI had commissioned any of them. Kennedy said he didn’t know.

The court then took a morning break.

After the break the hearings continued as Bertil Sandgren, a board member of the Swedish film institute took the stand. He was asked to explain what he knows about file-sharing, and told the court that he knew that some movies leak on filesharing networks before they premiere, that there is no copy protection on these files and that there are even subtitles available.

The court then asked to keep the questions relevant to the damages that are claimed. Sandgren went on to say that he believes that the impact of file-sharing on the movie industry started in 2002/2003. He claimed that there is statistical evidence that illegal file-sharing has affected the number of seats sold per film. In Sweden, the ticket sales between 2002-2006 have fallen by 31%, Sandgren explained.

“The reason for this drop is that the number of premieres have increased but sales have decreased. File-sharing has somewhat made the market thinner. The difference between number of sold tickets on average has dropped 10,000 per film per year. That equals between 800,000 and 1,000,000 SEK per film,” Sandgren said.

Sandgren further told that the damages they claim are based on a fictitious license fee. They have calculated the total number of movie downloads in a year, and use the film’s market share (4% for the movie “Mastermind”) to come up with the total number of downloaders . “If there were 1 million downloaders in total, it’s probable that 4% downloaded Mastermind,” Sandgren said. “Of those, 28,5% were downloaded from TPB. That gives 12000.”

After his explanation of how the damages are calculated, the defense lawyers questioned Sandgren. Most of their questions focused on the link between downloading and the decline in ticket sales. According to the defense lawyers there is research showing this link is not that straightforward, while stressing that 2008 has been the best year for the Swedish movie industry ever. Sandgren said that he didn’t want to comment on factors underlying the success year.

Around noon the court took a lunch break.

After lunch Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music and Louis Werner of IFPI Sweden were questioned. Again, most questions dealt with the amount of damages the entertainment industry suffered, with the defense questioning whether the figures presented by the entertainment industry are justified. Werner told how music sales declined in 2002 and 2003, but as blogger Anna Troberg points out, IFPI’s own data seems to contradict this statement. Illegal file-sharing was the main reason of the loss in sales in recent years Werner stated.

When Per Sundin was asked whether the decline is sales could be fully attributed to illegal filesharing, he said yes. Sundin went even further and claimed that 50% of the loss in sales the music industry has suffered can be linked to The Pirate Bay. He had to admit, however, that he has no evidence to back these claims up. “It is what they see and experience every day,” Sundin said.

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde and Universal Music CEO Per Sundin bumped into each other after the hearings. Peter just Twittered “I just played the angry game with Per Sundin, Universal. Always fun at #spectrial! Oh, and I won of course.”

At 16:00 the court decided to end the hearings for today.

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

Now it is the turn of Japan to target a pre-releaser, this time of the movie ‘Wanted‘. The movie, starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, was released early September in the United States and Europe, but won’t enjoy an official Japanese release until Saturday. The movie is, of course, already available for download on P2P networks in its native English, but thanks to the work of Kazushi Hirata, a 33 year-old from the city of Sendai, the movie is also available with Japanese subtitles.

According to the authorities, after adding his own home-made subtitles to an already-released pirate version of the movie, Hirata uploaded it onto the Winny network, which is hugely popular in Japan. Hirata was tracked down on Thursday by the Kyoto Prefectural Police, who were also responsible for the 2004 arrest of Isamu Kaneko, the creator of the Winny software.

The arrest of Mr Hirata is believed to be the first in Japan relating to the uploading of a pre-release movie. According to a report, he faces up to 10 years in jail and a $95,000 fine.

The Winny network has always been touted as anonymous, and indeed functions on this level to a degree. The police were unable to crack the encryption used by the file-sharing part of the software, however, they did manage to exploit a loophole to identify certain users. Winny’s forum feature fails to protect the anonymity of people who start discussion threads. In the past the police have searched for copyright material in such threads and recorded the IP address of the poster. By initiating a file-transfer but denying connections from all IP addresses apart from the suspected infringer, when someone started to upload to them they knew that the original poster was sharing the illicit material.

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

Tommy Wirkola is the director of ‘Kill Bill’ parody, ‘Kill Buljo‘, which has been one of this years most discussed Norwegian movies.

Having started as a joke and despite its feeble $163,700 budget, its been a success, and has so far pulled in 90,000 domestic admissions and 62,000 DVD sales in 26 territories.

Inevitably, ‘Kill Buljo’ was available for download from file-sharing networks around 6 weeks before the DVD was due its commercial release.

However, in a interview with Thomas Talseth of VG Nett, director Wirkola reveals that he’s not concerned about people downloading the movie and feels that they probably wouldn’t have bought it anyway, which is quite an unusual stance for someone in the movie industry.

This article is in part, direct translation of the original Norwegian interview. Many thanks to HÃ¥vard and RayJoha.

Wirkola believes it is an honor to have people download your movie and reveals he is a BitTorrent user himself, downloading TV-shows such as ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘South Park’. He explains why:

“I download lots of TV-shows, I’ll admit that. But it’s also about them already having been aired on TV, and have kinda been accessible for free already. I also think it’s stupid to have to wait for six or seven months to get to watch a TV-show that’s already been aired in the USA.”

Despite the pro-sharing stance of Kill Buljo’s director, the distributor of the movie CCV and their lawyer (uh oh, here he is again) Espen Tondel, are going on the offensive against BitTorrent users. This week they sent a letter to the Norwegian police wishing to press charges against 14 individuals it accuses of sharing ‘Kill Buljo’ on The Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker.

Director Tommy Wirkola doesn’t think that downloading causes any problems, on the contrary, he believes the opposite is true:

“I understand that CCV is pressing charges, and feel the need to protect their movie. But it’s flattering that people are making copies of the movie and releasing it on the internet. Besides, all movies today are released onto the web. It would have been worse if no one wanted to share the movie.”

“The artist in you feels some pride?” asks Thomas Talseth, the interviewer.

“Yes, you can say that” admits Wirkola. “I love watching movies in the cinema, in large theatres, and I don’t like the bad quality you often find on the versions floating around online. But I have no moral position on this.”

Lawyer Espen Tondel, representing both CCV and Norwegian Videogramforening (they distribute all films in Norway), disapproves of Wirkola’s downloading habit:

“No, he shouldn’t be doing that” Tondel tells VG adding that there’s no difference in downloading TV-shows or motion picture movies: “The laws on copyright have not introduced any way to make a difference between this kind of material, independently of what sequence the TV-show has been aired around the globe.”

Tondel is making quite a noise around Norway at the moment. It’s a shame he doesn’t listen to people like Wirkola and Eric Wilkinson – he might learn something.

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

Imagine the scenario – you’re the head of a multi-million dollar label, someone has convinced you that your business is losing money due to file-sharing. What do you do? Call in the Ghostbusters? Or do what lots of companies do and call in the likes of MediaDefender to help them. As no anti-piracy system can do anything other than make a very small impact on file-sharing, it’s a far from satisfactory solution.

Early in 2005, established anti-piracy company Viralg of Finland burst onto the P2P scene with a staggering claim: With their technology it was possible to end 99% of all file-sharing.

In 2004, Viralg listed Electronic Arts, Vivendi, Microsoft Game Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment, Atari, Nintendo, Codemasters and THQ as just some of their customers. They were among the nominees for the ICT Prize 2005 and the winner of the Venture Cup business plan competition.

The portfolio certainly made them appear impressive at the time, so when an eBay auction caught the eye today offering to sell Viralg’s technology for a cool $1,000,000, TorrentFreak became a little curious.

So what’s on offer? Looks like Viralg’s ‘intellectual property’ in the form of some patent applications:

Viralg supplies technology aimed at preventing sharing of illegal content such as music, movies, GPS maps, games and software from being shared over P2P networks such as Gnutella. Viralg technology is in widespread use by record companies in Finland (90% of customers) and in the other Scandinavian countries. Technology has generated turnover of over 500.000 US dollars. The patent applications for sale cover the necessary key technology for the only possible effective protection against illegal P2P sharing. Depending on the source illegal P2P causes damages of 4 to 12 billion US dollars to media companies per year.

So should likely buyers (unhappy MediaDefender customers perhaps?) invest in this technology?

Viralg claimed to be able to create a corrupted file but with a working hash, giving it the appearance of a genuine file. As people downloaded they got a selection of genuine and corrupt parts sent to them rendering the final file useless. Although partially effective on the FastTrack network (KaZaA [R.I.P] )years ago, Viralg’s offer of 40 hours of training to use the system still doesn’t cut it in today’s BitTorrent dominated file-sharing world.

Before Prince gets any fancy ideas about buying this for the Web Sheriff to use against The Pirate Bay, this outdated system is pretty useless against BitTorrent, which renders its ‘Patented Virtual Algorithm’, well – useless.

TorrentFreak spoke to Dr. Ir. Johan Pouwelse, researcher on P2P technology at Delft University of Technology, who explained why: “Bittorrent uses a separate hash for every 1-4 MByte. This means you can still exploit the weakness in the protocol by sending bad data. However, clients are now generally so smart that they only accept maximum 1 fake 1-4MB block from an IP address.”

Of course to corrupt lots of files, you need lots of presence on file-sharing networks (servers, accounts, the whole MediaDefender-style setup) so the $1m tag is just the tip of an enormous iceberg.

Maybe some of the sales statistics will tempt prospective buyers? The system has been running since 2003, and in that time it generated a turnover of $500,000. Potential buyers are likely to be more interested in the bottom line, especially now that the bottom has fallen out of the FastTrack network.

Anyone with a bulging bank balance needing a guarantee of being able to corrupt files on the FastTrack network (and is unaware that MediaDefender’s tools are available for free) should hurry over to the eBay auction right now, there’s not long left to go – for the auction or Viralg

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

The ‘Social Center Elimäenkatu 15′ isn’t an official social gathering place – it’s a squat, a disused building into which the organizers wish to breathe new life by showing the latest blockbuster movies, free of charge to all who attend. August 8 2007 saw the screening of ‘Transformers’ at 19:00 followed by ‘The Simpsons Movie’.

At the Elimäenkatu 15 social center they aren’t just showing movies – in the last week there has been a silkscreen printing workshop, a presentation on Korean Left-Wing movements, their own ‘Fight Club’ which teaches self defense skills and even a full beach party – minus the beach of course.

Around 20 people squeezed into the ‘Pirate Cinema’ (or Occupied Autonomous Center as the organizers refer to it) on August 15 when they were offered the chance to watch more free movies, specifically Planet Terror and the latest Die Hard movie. However after what was presumably a good night, the viewers left the social center only to be confronted by police.

Finland’s Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre (CIAPC) had prompted the police to investigate the ‘Pirate Cinema’. As the organizers tried to leave, their car was prevented from doing so by three police cars. Officers handcuffed and detained two people from the car and arrested one of the organizers along with a laptop computer used to play the movies. According to reports, although the viewers aren’t in any trouble, the organizers are facing charges of breaking copyright law. The driver of the car was later released.

When speaking with Helsingin Sanomat an organizer said: “It is ridiculous that under the new copyright law, a large number of people are criminals”, adding that copyright legislation only benefits large companies and big stars: “Copyrights do not solve the livelihood of culture workers, and the enforcement of piracy laws will not promote it”

A statement on the organizers site said: “The idea of Pirate Cinema has been to show movies for free for everybody. Everybody don’t afford to go see movies in the movie theatres. At the same time Pirate Cinema has been a statement for the right to share files. P2P filesharing is a mass movement: millions of people are sharing files everyday in P2P networks, and no kind of repression will ever stop this.”

Antti Kotilainen, Executive Director of anti-piracy group CIAPC commented: “We are pleased that officials have taken action. They say that they are anarchists, fighting against big movie moguls. Then the only recreation that they have is to show movies produced by the companies that they despise so much.”

The people at Projekti Sosiaalikeskus (the organizers) are in defiant mood, as is clear from a posting to their site: “True pirates never die! Despite recent repression Pirate Cinema will continue, just wait a bit for updates. We won’t back off or give up. Stay tuned!”

According to the site, the next movie screening is set for August 22.

Thanks to Xtacy for the translation

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