Although there has been some mainstream news coverage in the past, this week the press have really stepped up, helped along by the UK Lords who labeled the ACS:Law scheme “legal blackmail” – not exactly a shining endorsement.

Nevertheless, ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley has stood his ground, telling the media that his campaign will continue. Following criticism that so far he has taken a grand total of zero cases to court, Crossley told the BBC that cases are pending.

“It has been said that we have no intention of going to court but we have no fear of it,” he said.

While Crossley may not be scared of taking a couple of cut and dried cases of infringement against minnows to court to prove his point, it’s not entirely true that in all cases he has no fear of a court battle. In the words of the Lords, Crossley is engaged in a bullying scheme and, like all bullies, when the big boys step up to fight, the bullies shrink away.

On November 19th at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Crossley made NPO (Norwich Pharmacal Order) applications to force ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of subscribers the company claims had infringed their client’s rights. The NPO’s related to approximately 25,000 IP addresses harvested from UK ISP BT’s customer base and a further 5,000 from various other ISPs, covering approximately 291 movie titles. The order was granted and ACS:Law are now chasing these individuals for cash payments of around £500 each.

Someone present at the hearing provided TorrentFreak with information which suggested that several ISPs including Be, O2, BT, Plusnet, Enternet and Kingston were not opposed to the court order forcing them to hand over their customers’ private details to ACS:Law.

However, UK ISP Tiscali, whose customers had also been caught up in the ACS:Law dragnet, were strangely dropped from the court order. “Not seeking against Tiscali (previously respondent #8 in the application),” said the comment.

Tiscali were bought by TalkTalk for £236m last year. TalkTalk, as everyone must know by now, are absolutely against elements of the Digital Economy Bill and are refusing to sell their customers down the river on mere allegations of file-sharing. Could they be standing up to ACS:Law too?

We contacted TalkTalk and their response proved very interesting indeed.

“TalkTalk is the only major ISP which has refused to divulge customers’ information to lawyers pursuing alleged copyright infringers. We have held this position since the issue came into view and we continue to stick by this policy,” Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s executive director of strategy and regulation told TorrentFreak.

“If we are ever ‘instructed’ to disconnect or throttle a customer who has not been found guilty in a court of law, we will refuse to do so and challenge the instruction through the courts if necessary,” he added.

So, while the above-mentioned ISPs – and BT in particular – are collectively handing over thousands of their customers to be “legally blackmailed” by ACS:Law, TalkTalk will not and are prepared to fight for the rights of their customers.

TorrentFreak contacted BeingThreatened, a consumer group assisting those wrongfully accussed by ACS:Law.

“What the public want to see is a clear commitment from ISPs that they will protect their customers from the actions of these overly-litigious lawyers exploiting legal loopholes to demand money using groundless threats of court action. Given the tens of thousands of letters that have already been sent and the massive heartache caused as a result of this scheme, BeingTheatened would expect to see a concrete commitment from all ISPs,” spokesman James Bench told us.

“After all, TalkTalk’s stated position merely reflects the view of the wider industry (as stated by the ISPA) that the ‘evidence’ presented by these companies is unreliable,” he added.

“We are happy to see that one company has indicated an apparent willingness to display a degree of corporate integrity in looking after the data that its customers entrust to it and not to make this available to anyone that simply asks for it,” he concluded.

So, if you and your family are looking for an ISP run by people who are prepared stand up for your rights, look no further than TalkTalk. While Mr Crossley may not fear going to court against a lowly individual, it seems incredibly unlikely that he’ll take on TalkTalk’s lawyers.

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

There are 74 proposed amendments to the Bill.

In terms of file-sharing, amendments are suggested to the section which obliges ISPs to inform their customers that an infringement has taken place via their account.

In addition to informing subscribers who have allegedly infringed themselves or subscribers who allow another individual to use their account to infringe, the following category is proposed:

“..infringement of the owner’s copyright appears to have taken place through peer-to-peer filesharing networks on a subscriber’s IP address;”

This means that all copyright infringements that occur on an IP-address will be attributed to the person who pays for the account.

As pointed out by PaidContent, this addition is “sure to rile campaigners who protest that IP numbers do not correspond to identity.”

However, another amendment asks for the removal of the clause which allows action to be taken against subscribers whose connection was used to infringe copyright by someone other than the subscriber.

Amendment 52, proposed by Lord Lucas, states that the copyright infringement reports sent to ISPs by rights holders should also set out “the value of the infringement on the basis described in the initial obligations.”

This is an interesting one. When an anti-piracy company working on behalf of the music and movie industries track an infringement, it is only possible for them to track a single infringement, for example, the uploading of one track, movie, or part thereof. It is impossible for them to prove any additional infringement took place, i.e uploading the same to others.

This means that not only will the reported loss per infringement be very low, but it could also force the rightsholders to claim that an upload to the anti-piracy company equates to a lost sale.

Amendment 71 from Lord Whitty asks for the section below to be completely removed;

…the number and nature of copyright infringement reports relating to the subscriber may be taken into account for the purposes of any technical measures.

Should the amendment be accepted, this suggests that taking technical measures (3 strikes, throttling) on the basis that a subscriber has been ‘caught’ multiple times, will be disallowed.

There are also amendments tabled to change a number of instances where the term “infringement” should be changed to read “infringement allegations”.

The next sitting of the committee stage will be heard January 12th.

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

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.

Their scheme has attracted much negative press, even provoking statements from Members of the House of Lords in the UK.

“Of late, we have seen a proliferation of lawyers’ letters, acting for the pornography industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out, often against innocent people asserting copyright claims and threatening court action,” said Lord Clement-Jones recently.

Now there has been a surprising “Christmas update” from ACS:Law. Referencing earlier legal threats they made to thousands of individuals in the UK (you’ve been caught file-sharing, we can prove it, and if you don’t pay up we’re taking you to court), the law firm has announced that it will drop many of its cases.

As Christmas approaches, here at ACS Law we have been working hard dealing with our file sharing projects. We have been reviewing all cases which are currently open, and a good number of these cases have been dropped, where we do not either consider litigation to be a viable option or to be beneficial to our clients.

So, despite the “forensic” standard proof the company claims to hold on individuals, it appears that, as we’ve said many times here on TorrentFreak, this scheme is all about money. If individuals have no money to pay, ACS:Law cannot get blood from a stone.

Furthermore, when trying to force others to pay up who may actually have the money, faced with holding a single IP address as evidence and absolutely no way of identifying a specific individual sitting at a keyboard and conducting or authorizing the actual infringement, they have little choice but to back down.

James Bench, who works with Being Threatened, a consumer group which offers resources to individuals who are targeted by ACS:Law, says that those accused are becoming increasingly empowered by the knowledge currently available.

“Recently leaked documents exposed the inner workings of the process, dubbed by some ‘speculative invoicing,’ showing that claims are assigned a ‘litigation rating’,” he told TorrentFreak.

“Factors affecting the rating tended not to be based on the evidence supporting the claim but on the appointment of legal representation, technical ’savvy’ and the finances of the client – or lack thereof,” he added.

So does this mean that ACS:Law will be backing down completely? Hardly. The law firm says that following the court orders they obtained in November, more threatening ‘pay up or else’ letters will be sent out in January 2010.

Anyone receiving a letter from ACS:Law should refrain from replying to the company until they have spoken to the support team at BeingThreatened.com, who will give completely free advice.

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

Just over a month has passed since the first stable public release of the software and PeerBlock has now managed to clock up more than 100,000 downloads. To mark this milestone, TorrentFreak caught up with Mark from the project for the lowdown.

Mark told us that the creation of PeerBlock was inspired by him upgrading his PC from 32 to 64 bit in order to utilize 6gb of RAM. Everything worked fine – until he tried to get PeerGuardian (another IP blocker) to work.

Having hacked away and jumped through hoops to get around driver-signing it would still only work half the time and often crashed without warning. As a software engineer who has worked in the commercial sector for more than 13 years, Mark – who admits to being “an arrogant bastard who truly believes he can do just about anything better than just about anybody,” decided he could find a solution. It was “put up or shut up time,” he told TorrentFreak.

Noticing that the PeerGuardian code was open-source but hadn’t been touched for a couple of years, Mark contacted another developer who had the same thing in mind, but having heard nothing back, he went at it alone.

“I started setting up a Sourceforge.net project for it so we could get free source-control, but they took too long to set it up for me so I instead created a project over at Google Code where it was ready within minutes,” he told us.

Having heard from a few people who were interested in helping out with the development side – “night_stalker_z” who’d earlier started trying to hack the PG2 code into shape, “DarC” / “DisCoStu” who wanted to help out with fixing up the installer, XhmikosR who rewrote the installer, and some testers, things moved forward.

After facing troubles due to the lack of a “signed driver” for 64-bit versions of Vista (which resulted in Mark having to set up a registered company before they were allowed to buy a $230 code-signing certificate), a couple of blogs wrote articles on PeerBlock which attracted some much-needed publicity to the project. This resulted in 10,000 downloads in just one weekend.

“We’re still getting donations from people and we now have enough to pay for next year’s annual code-signing certificate, and we’re saving up to be able to rent our own VPS with full root access etc, upon which we’ll be able to build a ‘real’ online-update system, a custom web-app to tie our forums/issue-tracker/website all together, and some other neat things,” Mark explains.

The first stable release of PeerBlock came out on September 27th, and as of November 5th had clocked up an impressive 100,000 downloads. The site now receives up to 7,000 visitors each day.

Aside from fixing one or two bugs, the team has lots of new features planned for PeerBlock. Anyone that has tried to surf the web with a blocklist in place will know how painful that can be, so PeerBlock will have some new features which allow the “whitelisting” of certain apps, such as a browser, the creation of a proxy server to let users configure PeerBlock to listen on certain ports, possibly an integral “AdMuncher” style ad-blocking feature on a per URL basis (as opposed to just an IP-address), and an encrypted chat feature.

TorrentFreak asked Mark why users should choose PeerBlock over the competition.

“Well, first off we need to ask ‘Who IS the competition?’ The only ones I’m really aware of are: Protowall by the folks over at Bluetack which is closed-source and I don’t believe was ever updated for Vista, and Outpost Firewall, which is closed-source and basically just a hack add-on to a more professional firewall product,” he responded, while noting that uTorrent’s built-in IP-filtering feature only handles one manually-updated list.

“We protect your entire machine, and give you the option to try out any P2P app you want – this freedom of choice is a very important thing, I think. And since it does everything automatically, including list-updates, it’s one less thing to think about,” he added.

Another important question relates to the blocklists that have to be used in conjunction with PeerBlock in order for it to block anything.

He told TorrentFreak that he’s a big fan of iblocklist, who serve up a staggering 10TB of blocklists every month for free. The site doesn’t create the lists, but does offer those from Bluetack, including the Level1 list (renamed to ‘P2P’ in PG2/PeerBlock, which contains both Gov and Anti-P2P IP-addresses) and others.

Mark admits that even in a best case scenario, the available blocklists aren’t 100% effective. That said, there have been studies which show that using blocklists along with software such as PeerBlock can help speed up downloads, but no-one knows how many of the potential “bad IPs” are covered by currently available blocklists.

P2P aside, Mark says there has been feedback to suggest that PeerBlock discovered a Conficker infection on a user’s machine that their anti-virus programs missed, and can also stop ads appearing in browsers that lack in-built blocking.

One other exciting thing for the future of PeerBlock is porting it to the Mac. Mark says they’re saving all the donations for additional development and this is the most-requested request right now.

Users of PeerBlock are encouraged to give as much feedback as possible to Mark’s team, via their forums, IRC (#peerblock on freenode.net) or email.

PeerBlock can be downloaded here.

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

Like all respected anti-piracy organizations, LANVA holds accounts at all the popular private torrent trackers, including LinkoManija. For a long time their account remained inactive, but this week LANVA claimed a small victory as it reported the IP-addresses of 106 users of the site to the police.

According to the anti-piracy outfit, the reported users were caught sharing a copy of the newly released Windows 7 Ultimate operating system. As evidence the self-proclaimed investigators submitted a screenshot of peers listed by uTorrent.

The owner of LinkoManija was not impressed by LANVA’s actions. “Anyone can copy a peer list, but it doesn’t prove that anyone downloaded the full file or actually uploaded anything,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. “It can’t be used as serious evidence,” he added.

LANVA disagrees and hopes that the police will track down the identities of the accused infringers. If this happens the users will face fines of up to several hundred dollars, plus additional damages Microsoft’s lawyers may call for.

In a response the owner of LinkoManija has reported LANVA to the police. People who are affiliated with an anti-piracy group are not allowed to use LinkoManija according to the site’s disclaimer, and Kestas has asked the police find out whether LANVA broke the law.

“We contacted the police and asked them to investigate how LANVA obtained the information, because we did not give them permission,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. The police informed him that they would look into the case.

If any of the reported users faces legal action, Kestas says he will help them out with legal support. “We told our users that we will be fighting for them if they get in trouble, because it’s a fight for the freedom of us all,” he said. “Our users are our strength,” he added.

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

The researchers surveyed a few hundred undergraduate students who were asked if they would buy the single “Right Round” from rapper Flo Rida for X amount of money. The price tag for the song was based on the last two digits of their social security number, ranging from 0 to 98 cents. The regular 99 cent price was excluded.

The students further had to indicate the likelihood of being faced by a lawsuit from the RIAA and what the expected settlement costs would be. On top of this, they were asked to fill out a morality questionnaire along with questions regarding their download behavior, all anonymously.

With this data in hand the researchers were able to draw some interesting conclusions.

First of all, they found that the students who were said to have pirated their latest track, were willing to pay less for the “Right Round” song. For every $0.01 students were willing to pay more, the likelihood decreased that their last song was pirated by 0.3%.

Even though the researchers claim that this means that pirates are cheapskates, it could also mean that pirates don’t like the song “Right Round” from rapper Flo Rida that much. Perhaps they have different music tastes?

Taste aside, the researchers conclude that dropping the price of a single track to $0.63 would decrease piracy by 50%.

Besides the pricing issue, the study also showed that pirates (compared to non-pirates) think the chance of getting sued by the RIAA is relatively small, and that the settlement fees are lower. The usual conclusion from this data would be that pirates are well informed since their guesses were closer to the real answer, but the researchers twist it somewhat different.

“If the goal of the RIAA was solely to deter piracy, it should not have abandoned its policy of suing the people it caught pirating digital music,” they write, referring to RIAA’s promises to stop mass-lawsuits against copyright infringers.

The latest insight from the study is that those who indicated that they had pirated their latest addition to their music library scored lower on the morality ‘proxy’ scale. However, the researchers note that the mean and modal respondents score very high on morality, which basically means that pirates are more normal (morality wise) than those who pay for music.

To summarize, the study makes it look like pirates are immoral cheapskates, but all it really suggests is that the music industry should lower the price of downloads if they want to sell more music and increase their net profit.

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

“We’re starting a BitTorrent tracker to show artists how to properly use P2P technology in order to gain access to a cheap and efficient marketing and distribution network,” Pirate Party spokesman Jake Daynes explained to TorrentFreak.

Just a couple of days later and already Canadian record label Thorny Bleeder Records is showing its support for the party and its new RivetTracker-based distribution system.

Thorny Bleeder Records is an independent record label and the fruits of a partnership between Art of Dying’s Jonny Hetherington and Greg Bradley along with industry veteran Brian Thompson. They aim to offer artists new options in today’s music business.

“As a show of support for the Pirate Party of Canada, Thorny Bleeder Records are proud to announce that our sixteen track, multi-artist Get Thorny compilation is now available for free on their website,” announced the label.

TorrentFreak caught up with Brian Thompson to learn more about their decision to embrace the Pirate Party and their tracker.

“Thorny Bleeder Records strongly believes in the culture of file sharing as a benefit to an artist’s development and to the growth of their fan base,” Brian told TorrentFreak. “It’s become increasingly difficult and expensive to have a band’s single added to a radio station’s playlist, so the Internet has quickly become the next best thing for new music discovery.”

“As a an artist and a record label, your number one goal is to be heard by as many people as possible. BitTorrent provides the perfect distribution for music discovery to occur, it’s today’s version of the record store listening post. Pirate Party’s new BitTorrent tracker provides us with the perfect avenue to expose our artists to an entire new audience that would otherwise be unaccessible,” he added.

Brian told us that Thorny Bleeder also supports the Pirate Party in their fight for copyright reform.

“The world has changed dramatically since these laws were introduced eons ago and it makes no sense to continue adhering to these old laws that no longer support creativity and distribution in the digital reality of today and tomorrow,” he added.

The compilation ‘Get Thorny’ can be downloaded here.

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

Seven weeks ago, the Canadian government launched the first national copyright consultation since 2001. The consultation, which has featured town hall meetings, by-invitation-only roundtables, an online discussion forum, and an open submission process, has attracted considerable interest with over 4,000 submissions to date.

While the overwhelming majority of those submissions have called for balanced reforms that would strengthen fair dealing, create a liability safe harbour for intermediaries, and link any new anti-circumvention rules to actual copyright infringement, there is reason for concern.

There are only six days left in the consultation and the thousands that have spoken out for fair copyright – the students, teachers, Internet users, software programmers, privacy advocates, librarians, and a growing number of creators – now find themselves under attack from two sides.

On one side stand well-known copyright lobby groups such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association, the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, and the Entertainment Software Alliance. These groups largely represent foreign interests and have consistently called on the Canadian government to adopt the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act as its legislative model.

They invariably claim that Canada should be embarrassed by the current state of copyright law and propose solutions that involve a combination of DMCA-style anti-circumvention rules, a three-strikes and you’re out system that could see users cut off from the Internet, and a rejection of any new flexibilities within fair dealing.

To support those positions, the groups turned out en masse for a public town hall meeting in Toronto late last month, resulting in multiple interventions from record label executives (four from Warner Music alone). Packing the room ensured that there was virtually nothing heard from education and consumer groups, many of whom could not even attend the town hall since all the tickets were scooped up in less than five days.

Standing on the other side are copyright creator groups such as Access Copyright and the American Federation of Musicians. Access Copyright opened the consultation by ominously warning its members that “users outnumber us” and claiming that the debate is dominated by people do not believe that authors should get fair compensation for digital and other reproductions of their work (so far five out of 4038 submissions have called for the elimination of copyright).

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Musicians circulated an email to creator groups calling a leaflet distributed by an opposition Member of Parliament “disgusting” since it supported stronger fair dealing. These groups are pushing for an expanded levy system and have been quick to criticize users that don’t agree or offer up alternatives.

Faced with these vocal lobbying efforts, Canadians have just a few days left to ensure that their voices are heard. The town halls and roundtables are now over. The best way to speak out is through the online submission process that takes only a few minutes to complete. Authors such as Cory Doctorow and David Collier-Brown, technology companies such as Tucows, and groups such as Project Gutenberg Canada, the Documentary Organization of Canada, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations have all already done so.

Now is the time for Canadians concerned with copyright to add their voices. Websites such as SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca, CCER.ca, Vancouver Fair Copyright, and Digitalagenda.ca provide tools to learn more about the issues and process submissions. If you already know what you want to say, simply send an email to info@copyrightconsultation.gc.ca. Once you have spoken out, tell your friends, send the submission to your local Member of Parliament, and raise awareness that the consultation deadline is Sunday, September 13th.

Many Canadians felt anger and frustration when the government introduced DMCA-style legislation in 2008. The next six days provide a great opportunity to do more than just complain. They offer the chance to help influence the next copyright bill. Don’t wait – speak out on copyright today.

—

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

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

Thus far, they have booked minor successes in Denmark and The Netherlands. But they show no sign of stopping and now they are moving on to Irish and Norwegian ISPs.

This week the music industry sent an email to several Internet providers in Ireland, asking the companies to block their users’ access to The Pirate Bay or face legal action. In a response to this request, Eircom said it would agree and the ISP will block customers access to the Pirate Bay starting September 1st.

Thus far Eircom is the only ISP that has caved in to the threatening letter. UPC and BT Ireland – two other local ISPs – explicitly denied the request from the music industry and said they would rather fight the issue out in court.

“UPC has informed the rights holders that there is no basis under Irish law requiring an ISP to block access to certain websites and that it will not agree to a request that goes beyond what is currently provided for under Irish law,” UPC said in a statement.

“Should the rights holders proceed with their threat of legal action if UPC fails to block access to Pirate Bay, UPC has every intention of vigorously defending its position in Court,” they add. BT Ireland sides with UPC and said that there is no legal basis for the request to block The Pirate Bay.

Eircom’s decision to agree to the demands from the music industry doesn’t come as a big surprise. Earlier this year they already reached an agreement in which they promised to warn alleged pirates, and disconnect those who are caught repeatedly.

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

Unfortunately, users of Torrent.kg found their favorite site inaccessible at the end of last week when a message in Russian appeared on its homepage. “For reasons beyond our control the site is temporarily suspended. The administration hopes for a speedy solution to all problems. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

Of course, P2P users in the west would probably be suspicious that an unexplained torrent site shutdown could be linked to copyright issues, but for those from Kyrgyzstan this would be a fairly unusual event. However, those suspicions would prove correct – Torrent.kg had been shut down by the police.

A staff member at the site confirmed that the police had indeed closed down the site by confiscating the servers. The police said that on Monday they were due to conduct an examination of the seized hardware but as of yet the site remains down, even though a temporary forum is now available for concerned users.

The site’s owner seems confident that the site will return fairly soon and is asking the userbase not to remove any torrents they have in their clients so as not to damage the health of the tracker.

TorrentFreak caught up with Tolkun Umaraliev, a blogger from Kyrgyzstan who expressed doubt that the closure of Torrent.kg would make any meaningful impact on availability of pirate material in the country.

“Piracy cannot be stopped in Kyrgyzstan, because people – consumers – do not really know what piracy is, and that it is illegal. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, our market has been filled with underground VHS cassettes of Hollywood movies poorly translated into Russian and underground audio cassettes of western singers. And their prices were reasonable – consumers could afford them,” he told us.

Interestingly, Tolkun explained that Kyrgyzstan was introduced to pirated products long before legal options were available.

“It was several years after the fall of the Iron Curtain that licensed products came to our markets. But they were so expensive that people continued buying illegal copies. And until recently the state has not been taking any firm steps in fighting piracy in Kyrgyzstan.”

But just as in the west, the authorities shut one site down and other, more resilient ones appear. Kyrgyzstan now has its own version of OpenBitTorrent.

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

In September 2006, Scott pleaded guilty to two charges – ‘conspiracy to commit copyright infringement’ and ‘criminal copyright infringement’. For his ‘crime’, Scott was sentenced to 5 months in jail and 5 months home confinement but his release didn’t mean his life was back to normal.

After his release in 2007, Scott was fitted with a monitoring ankle bracelet which restricted his freedom, but the government hadn’t finished limiting his life. Scott had to have special software installed on his computer to monitor his online activities, but since it was Windows only, he had to give up his beloved Ubuntu.

In the months that followed, Scott publicly shared details via his blog of his struggle to come to terms with his severe treatment for uploading a single movie, which at times made pretty upsetting reading. Thankfully his nightmare is now coming to an end.

It has been around 3 weeks since Scott was taken off the US government’s monitor list, which means that he is no longer on probation. Scott says things have been pretty good since and he can now do things we all take for granted – like being able to use Ubuntu instead of Windows.

TorrentFreak caught up with Scott who said he was happy to send a message to his friends and readers here to mark his official freedom.

“I have officially been off probation since July 12th. What a great feeling to finally be free from the clutches of evil (or the federal government). It was actually a really easy time on probation. It was 2 years, dealing once a month with my probation officer… who was really a great person,” he told us.

For those of us who remember the exact time and date of the EliteTorrents raid, it seems like only yesterday, but so much has happened since and as Scott puts it, his freedom has been a long time coming.

“I haven’t had a clear head since May 25th, 2005. Over 4 years of what I would call the worst period of my life is over,” he recalls.

But in the end the release from the nightmare comes from Scott himself and he is certainly trying to make the best of things now.

“I have been focusing a lot of time on my family. We bought a house in November, while I was still on home confinement. I am working at a local college, dealing with ERP implementations, specifically Oracle, and I am still actively participating in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and MMA,” he told TorrentFreak.

As if these things won’t keep Scott busy enough, he’s looking forward to a brighter future and a very special occasion.

“I will be hopefully starting back to school for my MBA in the spring. And I am getting married in May 2010. Aside from the economy, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Scott told us that he felt his story is probably no longer worthy of news, so he will take this opportunity to move back into the shadows to get on with his new lease of life.

“This will be the last time most of you hear from me – although there is sk0t.com. The good majority of you have been really supportive… so thank you all for caring, and for
those of you who didn’t care… thanks also.”

I’m sure that the readers will join us in wishing Scott all the best for the future and every happiness in his forthcoming marriage. Good luck Scott.

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

Back in 2006 the police, who were conducting a search linked to an unrelated fraud case, stumbled across the man’s sizable pirate media collection which included 12,591 MP3 files, 426 movies, 16 full TV-series and dozens of items of pirated software.

During the April hearing the retired IT expert said in his defense that it took him a whole year to accumulate the collection by using eMule on the eD2k network, but it was intended for private, not commercial use. He also told the court that he believed he had been acting within the law.

Unfortunately for the man, the legal system wasn’t sympathetic. A court in Vannes has just handed him a 2 month suspended jail sentence coupled with 33,000 euro (apprx $46,200) in damages.

Lawyers for 19 plaintiffs including the National Federation of Film Distributors, Sony, Paramount, Sacem and SCPP demanded between 1 and 2 euros compensation for each illicit MP3 and between 7 and 12.50 euros for each movie. It is believed that SCPP will collect the largest share of around 17,000 euros.

In a statement the man’s lawyer said: “There is stuff like this on all kids’ computers right now,” while pointing out that many of the files had been downloaded by the defendant’s children.

In January 2007, a court in Nantes also sentenced a file-sharer to two months suspended prison sentence for being caught in possession of 400 downloaded movies.

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

This might have been in the back of the minds of the Be Broadband users who found out that a variety of torrent sites including The Pirate Bay, Mininova and Torrentz were no longer accessible. It didn’t take long before they started to complain to customer support on forums, IRC and Twitter.

“Why are BitTorrent websites being filtered by my ISP?! Going through a proxy proves they’re up,” customer Andrew Mason hinted to Be Broadband on Twitter, and he was not the only one. Similar reports came in on the Be Broadband forum and the topic of the IRC channel said “Connectivity issues to Mininova and TPB and potentially other remote hosts for some customers”.

So has Be Broadband decided that torrent sites are a no go for their customers? Luckily the support team on Twitter was quick to reassure its customers that the truth is not as evil as it seemed.

“We’re not blocking sites but trying to get to the bottom of the issue now,” the Be Broadband team later replied, with a follow up message later. “On the access to torrent site issue: only certain IPs are experiencing connectivity issues to these sites. Our network team is investigating.”

Be Broadband gave out some more details on their forum writing “There appears to be an issue affecting some of our IP ranges accessing some networks mainly in Sweden and the Netherlands regions. Whilst a lot of the torrent sites may be hosted in this region.”

Since most of the popular torrent sites are indeed hosted there, this does seem to explain why the problem appeared limited to torrent sites only. And since they have many more visitors than most other sites hosted on these networks, a conspiracy is easily born.

Thus far the issues haven’t been resolved.

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

Maybe, just maybe, in future our answers will be different. Allow us to introduce BitBlinder, a new and free cross-platform (Mac support coming soon) open source project which not only claims to make anonymous BitTorrent transfers a reality but also hides your IP address while browsing the web. Its functionality also extends to the bypassing of some web filters and in the future will be compatible with more applications, such as email, IRC and instant messaging clients.

Although anonymity with the previously-mentioned TOR is good, using it for torrents is a big no – it’s too slow and the operators of the network do not appreciate it. BitBlinder was born to solve the problems that TOR couldn’t. TorrentFreak caught up with Josh Albrecht, one of the creators of BitBlinder, for the lowdown.

“BitBlinder is an attempt to address the aforementioned issues with Tor – we want to make online anonymity fast, usable, and ubiquitous to the point that organizations give up on spying and filtering us,” Josh told TorrentFreak. “BitBlinder is actually built on much of the same technology as Tor, though we have a completely separate network.”

The anonymity itself is provided by BitBlinder’s own P2P network, inside which everyone is required to contribute their own bandwidth to proxy other users’ data. The diagram below shows a standard user setup, without anonymity;

As seen in the diagram below, your request for data using BitBlinder is passed encrypted through multiple peers. Each peer in the chain only knows the IP address of the next person in the chain, not the original requester/sender.

Since decent BitTorrent-capable anonymity services cost money these days, how can BitBlinder offer the same for free? The key is to think of it as operating a little like a private BitTorrent tracker.

In order to maintain a good ratio on a private tracker, at a minimum you need to upload the same amount of data as you downloaded. With BitBlinder there is a similar system – in order to get the service for free you have to proxy X GB of data for other people inside the swarm if you want to share X GB of anonymized data. In common with some new accounts on private trackers, BitBlinder accounts come pre-loaded with some free credit to get the user going – 2GB to be precise. If anyone prefers not to be bound by ratio rules in the future, just like on many private trackers it will also be possible to buy ‘upload credit’ to use BitBlinder, but there is no reason why people can’t use it for free, as long as they share their bandwidth as detailed above.

At this point some readers will be asking how it’s possible for no-one to know what’s going on inside the BitBlinder swarm, yet somehow BitBlinder manages anonymity ratio tracking. It is possible though, and for those interested to learn about the micro-payment system BitBlinder’s is based on, further (highly technical) reading can be found here (pdf).

Of course, since traffic is sent from your PC to others in the BitBlinder swarm before reaching its destination in order to anonymize it, it won’t be as quick as regular non-anonymous BitTorrent use, but Josh told us speeds should be respectable and in any event, much faster than TOR. Indeed, within a few seconds of starting a ‘Steal This Film’ torrent from The Pirate Bay, we experienced speeds in excess of 2Mbit/s, which is massively faster than my previous experiences of BitTorrent over TOR.

For Windows users the BitBlinder package comes in a 17mb installer. The torrent client is a custom version of BitTornado and although it doesn’t have all the features of say uTorrent, more features will be added as time goes by. The bundled anonymous browser is naturally built on Firefox.

Josh told us that the BitBlinder network could be made to work with uTorrent or another browser such as Internet Explorer but unfortunately both applications are closed source, which means that it’s impossible to be certain that all data will be sent through other users (proxies) in the BitBlinder swarm and not directly to the Internet. For the same reasons, Flash is unavailable in the bundled version of Firefox.

Another trick up BitBlinder’s sleeve is the development of techniques to bypass web filters.

“BitTorrent encryption is pretty good at avoiding ISP level restrictions but it doesn’t do much for things like avoiding university or corporate firewalls. One of Tor’s goals is to circumvent the Great Firewall of China and we hope to make BitBlinder even better,” explained Josh. “Filters generally work by either blocking ports, a certain IP address, or by inspecting the traffic itself for specific protocols. We’re working hard to make BitBlinder effective against all three of these methods, but we still have some work to do on these features, so results may vary.”

Since BitBlinder has an anonymous browser, it should prove useful if you don’t want your employer knowing what you’re doing on Facebook or other social networks, for example. Indeed, if these sites are blocked it’s possible to use the BitBlinder network to access them. Of course, the anonymity would also be useful for signing up to and using the HTTP element of a torrent site.

Inevitably there are some issues with an anonymity system such as BitBlinder, and they parallel those experienced by users of TOR. Any traffic generated inside the BitBlinder network eventually needs to escape to the wider Internet. In order to facilitate this, some users need to act as an exit point. In basic terms, this means that an exit node operator’s IP address will be associated with the traffic leaving the network.

Before panic sets in, this is not necessarily bad news. Acting as an exit node provides the operator with plausible deniability, since they will have no idea what data is passing through. It would also be difficult to say if the data leaving that PC had originated from there or elsewhere, extending the deniability of their own traffic too. And it’s not as if that user’s IP address wasn’t perfectly visible already before BitBlinder came along.

For most users, however, opting to act as a beginning or middle proxy in the BitBlinder network means that no-one outside can see any traffic emanating from their PC and the good news is that this internal traffic still adds upload/download credit to the user’s account.

Time will tell if BitBlinder lives up to its dreams (and everyone else’s) but from what we’ve seen so far in the beta version, things are looking very promising indeed. That said, remember folks this is a beta and it is likely people will uncover bugs so please be patient and consider allowing the app to send crash reports, it will help the team a lot.

BitBlinder can be downloaded here – don’t forget to register and please read the instructions on how to forward ports etc, it will be good for your ratio.

New users should note that invite codes will be sent out at a controlled rate. Early adopters will be able to register fairly quickly but as more and more people apply, the longer the wait will become. This is merely to ensure a healthy network with an adequate number of quality proxies.

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

In film circles, Pallotta is known for his outstanding animation work that defines most of his work thus far. His last film, A Scanner Darkly starred Keanu Reeves and was a smash hit on BitTorrent. With more than a million downloads, the movie earned a place in our list of Top 10 most downloaded movies four weeks in a row.

Pallotta’s latest work is something totally different though. It’s a follow up documentary to film legend Martin Scorsese’s cult-classic American Boy that was shot more than thirty years ago. In American Boy Scorsese documented the life of his friend Steven Prince, who was also the inspiration for one of the best known scene’s in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. With American Prince Pallotta continues the saga.

Since Scorsese’s original documentary is a rarity nowadays, Pallotta had to ‘pirate’ much of his material on BitTorrent sites and YouTube. In return, Pallotta is giving the film away for free on BitTorrent. This of course caught our attention and we decided to catch up with the director to lear a little more about his motivation to embrace BitTorrent.

TF: First off, A Scanner Darkly – which you produced – became quite successful on BitTorrent and was downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. Were you aware of that at the time? What do you think of people who use BitTorrent to download the film?

Tommy: Really, A Scanner Darkly was successful on BitTorrent? GREAT! I wish it was more so, I have to admit, I get jealous when I look at the top 100 downloads on the trackers and I don’t see my movies. In fact, part of the reason I am releasing American Prince on BitTorrent is for the hope that it breaks the top 100. I live in Amsterdam now, so the only way I can keep up with some of my favorite shows, events, and films is to download. I think it is great, especially for filmmakers of niche movies. My movies tend to get limited releases and are more of the cult film status, so the initial release is often overlooked or simply the movie is unavailable in many areas. For me as a filmmaker it is most important that the work I make get seen. I feel for many people and places, downloading is the only way they will get to see my movies. Waking Life is a movie that I produced that is a pretty interesting example of that. It seems more popular today that when it came out in 2001. I think BitTorrent and steaming sites like YouTube are completely responsible for that phenomena. Since I use BitTorrent, I wanted to give back to the community, that was part of the motivation is releasing American Prince via BitTorrent.

TF: The MPAA has often argued that the movie industry loses billions of dollars through piracy. Others think that it has close to no impact. What’s your position in the ongoing ‘piracy debate’?

Tommy: Well, everyone has a different opinion. It is pretty simple to me: The exact same thing that happened to the music industry will happen to the film industry. I suspect the film industry knows that and is trying to hold off the inevitable as long as they can. My guess is that they will try to make as much money as long as they can until they have to change or someone comes in and organizes and unifies the industry in the way Apple did for music. But even that is tricky because obviously Apple benefited more than the music industry. So they should be looking at alternative revenue streams, I find it hard to believe that many DVDs will be sold a few years from now. I would rather embrace new technologies and distribution methods, I feel this gives me greater and more immediate access to an audience.

TF: For American Prince you’ve used material from BitTorrent and YouTube, which is great. Did you license all these clips, or are they pirated copies?

Tommy: Yes we used material from BitTorrent and YouTube for American Prince and no, we did not license them. I did receive the Master copy of American Boy from Steven Prince himself, but we found a copy via BitTorrent that was better than that copy, so we used that! Plus, there is some confusion as to who actually owns the rights to American Boy. Part of the motivation of this film was to get a proper release for Scorsese’s American Boy. I felt this film would help uncover who has the rights and hopefully get it in front of a larger audience.

TF: Why did you decide to release American Prince for free on BitTorrent and what do you expect from it?

Tommy: Scorsese’s American Boy has been and is still generally unavailable for over 30 years, yet so many filmmakers have been influenced by it. The way we saw it is through multi-generational VHS tapes. Now with BitTorrent, there is a whole new audience and generation ready to be influenced by that film and I hope mine. Steven Prince is a gold mine of future cinema scenes and I hope a whole new generation of filmmakers will understand how he has influenced American Cinema. My biggest expectation is that the most people possible will watch my film! Also, I would really like to encourage people to talk about the film, with each other as well as on the Internet. It would make me happy to see Wikipedia entries and IMDB boards as well as Internet sites. I would love for people to get together and have screenings of it with their friends, or for universities to suggest to their class for the students to watch it. I look at American Prince as the film school I never had, what I always imagined film school to be.

TF: Do you think that the Internet and file-sharing technology will play an important role in shaping the future of film distribution?

Tommy: I absolutely believe how we watch and share movies will shape the future of film distribution. I believe it will have such a profound influence that it will even change how movies are made. I think it is a win-win for the filmmakers and the viewers. Filmmakers will have a more direct reach with audience and viewers have more to choose from. I wanted to release this film in support of file sharing and to prove to myself and others that it can have a profoundly positive effect.

TF: Amen.

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

A video mixtape is a collection of bootleg clips from movies, tv shows, home grown videos or just about any other source. These tapes grew in popularity along with the advent of home VHS and Betamax videos – the masses now had the equipment to make their own shows and compilations. Of course, nowadays while they are still called ‘mixtapes’, they are more likely to exist in digital form on the Internet or on DVD.

Mixtapes are also known for the strange and unusual material they can contain. From weird B-movies to sporting accidents and dramatic news footage, through to unintelligible TV shows and rare pilots from countries far and wide, they contain all types of mind boggling clips that most people never knew existed. The heavy doses of porn and various stomach-churning activities and curiosities turn some of these tapes into controversial items, even on the underground.

Anyone Googling “Video mixtape” will be immediately exposed to links and references to the Retard-O-Tron (ROT (NSFW)) mixtapes – possibly the most controversial and popular mixtapes around. Already banned in the US, Canada and Ireland, we caught up with ZXQL3000, the creator of the ROT mixtapes, to find out why the hell he does it.

“Before the Internet was available in every household, many people around the world used to trade music with each other by taping stuff from their collections onto audio cassettes, and sending them to each other by snail mail,” ZXQL told TorrentFreak.

“These things were called mixtapes, and were a great source for discovering music. Getting new and unknown songs from all kinds of obscure sources was only part of the fun — MAKING your own mixtape was even better.”

Projects like ROT are the natural progression from purely audio based output to video, with the emphasis on fun. “They’re made for lazy Saturday nights after (or before!) going out, for having a drink and having a no-brainer laugh with your buddies,” says ZXQL.

As Internet availability became widespread, mixtapes traded by standard mail pretty much died out, taking the mixtape phenomenon with it. “And then P2P came along,” said ZXQL, “and like it did for commercial music and movies, it changed the rules — if you wanted it to or not.”

This new found ability for individuals to take control of their own distribution coupled with the availability of cheap and even free audio and video editing packages, gave mixtapes a new lease of life. But P2P wasn’t just used for the distribution of completed projects, it was to became a prime source of raw material.

“P2P offers you a nearly unlimited library of digital media: there’s no song obscure enough for you not to find it,” says ZXQL enthusiastically. “Even better: there is SO much stuff out there that still needs to be discovered, the chase is as much fun as the catch. Mixtapes help you show what’s out there.”

Finding the source material can be entertaining in itself, ZXQL explained. “There’s so much about today’s availability of media that makes this so much fun: hunting for that perfect clip to end your sequence, exploring new music by just typing in keywords and seeing what comes up.”

“Say you start your mixtape with one single video clip of Bill Gates getting a pie thrown in his face, but it needs some music in the background. So you start looking for a song that fits the clip. Maybe you just type in “pie” in Emule or Limewire, or Google for lyrics that contain the phrase “in your face”. Maybe that song makes for an excellent link to the next clip. You’ll be amazed with where your search can take you.”

Having laughed, cried, been bemused, shocked and sickened all within the space of a few minutes at Retard-O-Tron 2 – I can see what ZXQL meant by “be amazed” at the kind of footage available. While a lot of the footage is suitable for everyone (and some of the B-movies and obscure footage is amazing), overall it is definitely one for the over 18’s. Actually, better make that 25, with a very broad mind too.

To be honest I would have preferred fewer sex scenes, as I think I would’ve watched more of it. We understand ROT1 is more of an easy ride. “ROT3 is in the making, and it will feature less porn,” ZXQL reassured me. “Or at least easier to view with a group of people, so it won’t be as explicit. ROT2 kinda went overboard with the porn, I think so myself,” he added.

Of course, porn aside, many of these mixtapes can hardly be considered legal. Who knows how many instances of copyright infringement there are in each one – dozens would seem conservative – but since the mixtape scene is still fairly focused and most of the source material so obscure, the creators seem to be largely left alone.

For those wanting ROT1 or ROT2 on DVD, one is available from the site, but there are other ways to watch. ROT1 was already ripped and released by a group specializing in releasing cult and b-movies called PiMPRiPPaZ. ROT2 was ripped by a similar group called ViDEOCULT who ZXQL says did a much better job and delivered a high quality, scene-standard compliant rip. He’s happy for people to grab these rips of course, adding;

“In the end, I just want the ultimate thing I can create. Not held back by copyright, censorship, good taste, a commercial drive or other barriers. I wanted a DVD for when my buddies and I chill on the couch with a beer and a bong. I love making my mixtapes, and I love watching them. It’s a hobby, it’s underground and it might even be considered art – but it isn’t about money.”

Just in case you didn’t get the message – the ROT mixtapes are NOT for kids or anyone easily offended. Absolutely, categorically NSFW – you have been warned. And don’t forget, July is unofficial video mixtape month on The Pirate Bay – who knows what it will turn up.

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

The most recent intervention by the coalition of artists concerns the call by entertainment industry lobby groups for so called ‘three-strikes’ legislation, to disconnect repeat copyright infringers. Again, the copyright lobby has been acting on its own and without asking for input from the very artists they claim to represent.

“Not for the first time, we at the Featured Artist Coalition are forced to question whether the record industry is representing the best interests of artists in calling for such measures,” UK musician Billy Bragg writes in an article for the Guardian, dealing with the topic. According to Bragg the music industry is trying to blame ISPs for a ‘problem’ that is not as easily solved as it would first appear.

“Never mind that this is a shameful attempt to pass responsibility on to another sector of industry, the question remains whether or not such measures will have the desired effect. Technology has so far stayed ahead of enforcement. Any unauthorised filesharers who fear being caught out can simply encrypt their exchanges,” Bragg writes.

He further claims that it is sometimes hard for fans to find DRM-free music anywhere else than on file-sharing networks. The demands of music fans have changed with the emergence of the Internet, but the music industry has failed to offer decent alternatives thus far.

“The Featured Artist Coalition is opposed to copyright infringement, but we recognise that, if technology allows people to access music for free, they will take advantage. The next generation of music fans may no longer want to pay for music, but they are still hungry to hear it. The challenge to the industry is to find ways to monetise their behaviour.”

“Clearly, some form of P2P subscription service is the way forward, if only because it provides the most convenient way for consumers to access music,” Bragg argues.

Eventually the labels might have to give up the distribution component that has been at the core of their business for years on end. This paints an uncertain future for the labels and that might be one of the main reasons why they are so resistant. Or to put it in Bragg’s words;

“Yet for the major labels, the success of such an initiative would mean the end of their control over the distribution of music. Is this the real reason why they seem determined to do everything they can to clip the wings of the fledgling digital industry before it can fly?”

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

The next step was to write to the individuals and threaten them with legal action, unless an amount ranging from £450 to £700 was paid. Somewhere between 40 and 60% of recipients panicked and paid up, while the rest engaged in ‘letter tennis’ with Davenport, corresponding back and forth and getting nowhere – literally – those who stood their ground have not been taken to court.

Of course, due to the weakness in their system and poor evidence gathered against alleged file-sharers, it wasn’t long before Davenport accused the wrong people of file-sharing, including pensioners erroneously accused of downloading gay porn. One of Davenport’s clients, Atari, found it all too much, and withdrew from chasing file-sharers through the company. The mountain of bad publicity continued to grow culminating in the respected consumer magazine Which? reporting Davenport Lyons to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. Then everything went a little quiet. Until this week.

During the last few days more letters, almost identical to the ones sent out by Davenport Lyons, have been dropping onto doormats around the UK. The claims go through all the usual legal jargon but amount to the same – give us between £550 and £750 or we will take you to court.

The letters are sent out by a company called ACS Law, who can be found on the web via their website. According to the site, the partners at ACS Law are Andrew Crossley and Nicola Beale. Many specialties are listed for the pair, but copyright law is not one of them.

Some of the company’s clients are listed on the site – games publishers Reality Pump, Techland, Topware and German ‘porn-protectors’ Digiprotect – and all of them are previous (or maybe even existing) clients of Davenport Lyons. The titles being ‘protected’ by ACS Law on behalf of these companies are the exact same titles previously ‘protected’ by Davenport Lyons. One could be forgiven in thinking these companies are connected, particularly since much of ACS’s documentation sent to the public and listed on their website is ‘cut and pasted’ from Davenport Lyons documentation. They even have a Microsoft Word document entitled Notes on Evidence, which was created on a version of Word actually registered to Davenport Lyons.

During our research some interesting things came up. Andrew Crossley, a partner at ACS Law (who recently defended the Dubai ‘sex on the beach‘ case), lists his email address on most issues unconnected to these anti-piracy cases as andrew.crossley@acs-law.co.uk – note the .co.uk part in the domain.

However, ACS-Law.co.uk as listed on the Law Society website is not the website address given to anti-piracy cases – that is ACS-Law.ORG.UK - and it was registered just weeks ago. Delving into the WHOIS information for the site reveals that the domain is not registered to ACS Law, but to one Terence Tsang. This same Mr Tsang is a known cyber-squatter who has previously locked horns and lost domain disputes with Morgan Stanley and others.

Of course, we sent Andrew Crossley at ACS Law an email (to both the .co.uk and .org.uk addresses) and gave him an opportunity to respond. We asked several questions (listed in summary below) but as yet we’ve received no response. When (if) ACS Law respond, we’ll publish their answers. In the meantime, recipients of letters should not worry and certainly shouldn’t feel hurried in responding to these allegations. Good starting advice can be found here along with a discussion thread here.

1. What is your connection with Davenport Lyons?
2. Why are you servicing so many (ex?) Davenport Lyons clients?
3. Why does ACS Law have two web presences – ACS-Law.co.uk and ACS-Law.org.uk?
4. Why is ACS-Law.org.uk owned by a known cyber-squatter and not your company?
5. How many of these cases against alleged file-sharers do you intend to pursue and who is on your client list?
6. These cases got hugely messy for Davenport Lyons and it’s only a matter of time
before ACS Law accuses a pensioner or child of downloading porn, or makes other errors. Are you concerned that you, your partner and/or your company will be bought into disrepute by taking these cases on?
7. If your client’s aim is to reduce copyright infringement (rather than simply generating revenue from it), why not give us a list of all the titles you ‘protect’ and we’ll publish them, to warn people away from downloading them?
8. Around the web, the specialties of the ACS Law partners can be found, but copyright law is not listed as one of them – why is that?
9. Considering your approach to these cases is almost (if not) identical to that of Davenport Lyons, do you anticipate contact from Which? and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority in the coming months? If not, why not?

Stay tuned for updates!

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

The Pirate Party has tripled its ranks in only three weeks up to 44,000 members, and it’s on course to become the second largest political part in the country. TorrentFreak caught up with party leader Rick Falkvinge to congratulate him on this unprecedented achievement, and we used the opportunity to find out more about his future plans. First off, we asked him if the recent surge in members can be solely attributed to the outcome of the Pirate Bay trial.

“The Pirate Bay verdict was not a single event, but the final straw in a long series of events,” Falkvinge replied. “We tripled our member count in a week, and have kept growing at an accelerated pace. With just one month till the European elections, the timing of these horrible events arguably work as a catalyst for change.”

Falkvinge is looking forward to the upcoming European Parliament elections on June 6 this year. “I’m extremely optimistic,” he told TorrentFreak. “It’s not a question of ‘a’ seat any more. If everybody who is angry with the Pirate Bay verdict goes to vote, we will get at least one seat, and probably more.” Although things are looking good, the road to Brussels is not guaranteed yet. There are two hurdles left.

“One is to get our ballot papers out — contender parties are not served by the Election Authority, but have to distribute their ballot papers to all 7,000 polling stations by hand. That’s a logistical nightmare, but with 13,000 activists, we should be able to fix that. We had 1,600 activists in the last election, and covered 93%. The other hurdle is getting our folks to actually vote, but I believe they’re still angry enough.”

A question that has been under reported is what the party actually plans to achieve when they arrive in Brussels. One of the questions we asked is how torrent sites and trackers such as the Pirate Bay should be handled. “The Pirate Bay is infrastructure,” Falkvinge told us. “The messenger immunity, that the messenger is never responsible for the contents of a message, is crucial to how our society works. The Lobby is trying to gut that immunity, along with boneheaded politicians who see a chance to look tough on crime.”

“First of all, copyright needs to be reduced to cover commercial activities only. That would get copyright out of ordinary honest peoples’ bedrooms, which is badly needed. That would also make everything that happens over The Pirate Bay legal overnight, and so, there would be no copyright infringement that TPB could potentially facilitate. At that point, since they can’t be facilitating, aiding or abetting anything illegal [anymore] in any interpretation, this would also mean that they can be as commercial as they like.”

Falkvinge further told us that he’s toying with the idea of writing “Nothing that happens at The Pirate Bay violates copyright law” directly into Sweden’s copyright law. In 2010 the Pirate Party hopes to enter the Swedish parliament, and they want to make it absolutely clear that The Pirate Bay four will be acquitted on appeal.

“But that’s not enough,” Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “The issues at stake are more important than that. The Lobby is constantly nagging on the gray area, making inroads, establishing new precedents, and acting very aggressively. They can do this without any risk at all, and that needs to stop. The Lobby is damaging the open society and our economy at a level that I think should be criminal, especially since they’re doing it as a commercial operation.”

So, the Pirate Party wants to reduce the abuse of power and copyright by the entertainment industry, and make that illegal instead. With the current level of support and indications by recent polls there is no doubt that they will get a seat in the European Parliament, and we hope they will be able to be heard there. Avast mateys!

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