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

Generating revenue from porn proves controversial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What bothered us the most is that the item conveniently mixed file-sharing with commercial piracy, while linking it to organized crime, human trafficking and child prostitution. This setup is a bit misleading to say the least. That aside, the claimed role that piracy plays in organized crime is based on an MPAA-funded study we have previously debunked.

The MPAA’s stance didn’t really surprise us that much though. Their job is to manipulate public opinion in the hope that less people will engage in illicit file-sharing. But it was disappointing to see that CBS didn’t care to bring someone in to counter the arguments of the anti-piracy lobbyists.

No, instead they managed to get director Steven Soderbergh on, who joined the movie industry trade group by providing more twisted facts. Reciting the MPAA’s propaganda, Soderbergh said he wished the Internet was never invented. “Piracy is costing Hollywood $6 billion a year at the box office,” he told the reporter, adding that “as the margins of profit shrink, fewer projects get made, which means fewer people go to work.”

These statements are both inaccurate, or at least highly doubtful. The $6 billion statistic Soderbergh is referring to actually comes from an MPAA-funded report for which the sources were never revealed. In fact, the MPAA itself had to release a statement saying that they “made a mistake” with one of the figures, but they continue to use the report nonetheless.

Similarly, Soderbergh’s claim that “fewer projects get made” was debunked only last week after Sony boss Michael Lynton made a similar statement. The opposite seems to be true. Hollywood is far from bankrupt. In the past decade box office earnings actually increased significantly.

The only piece of the entire item that was pretty accurate and worth watching was the explanation of how BitTorrent works. John Malcolm, a former Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA shows that his work for the trade group paid off, as it turned him into a BitTorrent expert (video below).

The entire piece is disappointing nevertheless. It fails to ask the questions about why people download movies illegally and acts as if the movie industry is a powerless victim. Perhaps Hollywood should start to see the millions of illegal downloaders as potential customers instead of thieves. There’s a huge demand for online entertainment, so why not compete with piracy instead of spending millions of dollars fighting it?

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

In 2002 he launched TuckerMax.com, a site where millions read about his real-life drunken and sexual antics, including one article about his earlier relationship with Katy Johnson, Miss Vermont 1999, which led to a lawsuit which fortunately for him, was later withdrawn.

Of course, Tucker Max had plenty more outrageous alcohol-fueled exploits to blog about, in fact so much so that in 2006 he released his book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell which became a NY Times Bestseller in the same year.

Tomorrow, Max will bring his unique blend of entertainment to the big screen with the movie release of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. It will be a ‘limited’ release, which means that initially the movie will be available on a small number of screens then increasing as (hopefully) the movie grows in popularity.

However, at the moment the movie will only be available in the US, and initially only in Chicago. A Canadian release will take place in two weeks, which Max described as “stupid” while stressing that he has zero control over foreign distribution, “In ANY country.”

So what if you’d like to see the movie and it’s not available in your country?

Pirate it on the Internet.

“If you live outside the US and are desperate to see the movie and can’t find the release date in your country, then just pirate the movie and watch it online. I am serious. I have no issue with that,” says Max on the movie’s website. He also says the way to market a great movie is through word of mouth.

“Put it in front of people, let them see it, and have them tell their friends how much they liked it. That’s why we did the premiere tour. There is no better way to market quality, and by starting with a smaller release, it allows word of mouth to build and develop. This strategy has worked great with movies like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and ‘Juno’,” says Max.

Of course, there’s no reason why the same can’t be true with BitTorrent. But there are plenty of other movies around, why watch this one?

“Go see this movie,” says Max. “At the very least, you will laugh a lot and you will definitely see the most epic shit scene in movie history.”

I’m there.

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

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

BitTorrent: Attacked by Copyright Holders, Crushed by Courts, but Needed for Innovation.

The Pirate Bay and other P2P sites continually find themselves on the defensive. Copyright holders repeatedly threaten and sue them. Courts zealously document their contribution to copyright infringement. But copyright holders and courts ignore P2P’s vital role in fostering innovation. I would like to change that.

In my book, Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law, I examine (1) why copyright holders continually seek to quash new technologies, (2) why courts fail to appreciate P2P, and (3) why we should lament these developments.

First, I trace the long history of copyright holders reacting with alarm to new technologies that threaten their business models. John Philip Sousa bemoaned the introduction of the player piano, which would lead to “a marked deterioration in American music.” Jack Valenti warned that the market for copyrighted movies would be “decimated, shrunken [and] collapsed” by the VCR. And the recording industry, lamenting a decline in CD sales, has sued numerous P2P services.

In fearing the potential of the new business models, copyright holders offer a classic example of market leaders that fail to appreciate disruptive innovation. A decade ago, the recording industry responded to Napster, which was striving to be “the online distribution channel for the record labels,” not by striking a deal that would have seamlessly transported the industry into the digital era, but by suing it. While the record labels may have won the battle in shutting down Napster, they began to lose the war, as former users migrated to other P2P networks.

Nor are copyright holders the only ones that fail to appreciate the new technologies. Courts also do. Why? Because of an innovation asymmetry. Courts downplay the future benefits of new technologies and overemphasize copyright owners’ present losses. Copyright owners offer evidence of losses from infringement on a silver platter.

In contrast, non-infringing uses are less tangible. It is difficult to put a dollar figure on the benefits of enhanced communication and interaction. And when a new technology is introduced, no one knows all of the beneficial uses to which it will eventually be put. I offer numerous examples of this (including, just to pick two, the telephone, which Alexander Graham Bell thought would be used to broadcast the daily news, and the phonograph, which Thomas Edison thought would “record the wishes of old men on their death beds”). This asymmetry, combined with costly litigation (which ensnares small technology makers in a web of complex tests and unaffordable lawsuits) explains why courts do not sufficiently appreciate P2P.

This lack of appreciation threatens innovation. As this site’s readers are well aware, BitTorrent and other P2P protocols offer revolutionary forms of interaction and distribution. By breaking up large files into many small pieces, BitTorrent speeds up transfer, allowing the distribution of numerous works, such as home movies, independent films, TV shows, video games, educational videos, computer software, and high-resolution images. Just a few of many examples discussed on this site that have utilized BitTorrent include (1) computer manufacturer Asus, which offers fast, cheap software updates, (2) the airing of a high-definition movie in Norway, and (3) FrostWire’s offering of a service that promotes music of new artists.

Courts’ failure to appreciate P2P and BitTorrent threatens to stifle the development of new business models that attempt to free participants from the shackles of traditional distribution methods. Independent artists would find it much more difficult to break away from mainstream record labels if they lacked an inexpensive method of rapidly and widely distributing their work. Independent filmmakers would no longer be able to reach the masses, instead having to rely on boutique movie theaters or direct DVD mailings.

And of course, we can only see the tip of the P2P innovation iceberg. To pick two of countless examples, in my book I explore potential P2P benefits in providing alternatives to the Google search engine and cloud computing.

In short, the trend—as typified by developments such as the Pirate Bay decision, Malaysia’s order to shut down the tracker LeechersLair, exorbitant statutory damage awards, and various “three strikes” legislative proposals—is to clamp down ever harder on any technology that could contribute in any way to copyright infringement. But in squeezing technologies in this infringement vise, courts and copyright holders threaten to suffocate P2P innovation.

Michael’s book ‘Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law’ is available on Amazon.

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

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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.

But there are other more subtle ways for the company to benefit from copyright infringement. Who remembers our article from 2008, when we showed an aXXo release being used to sell Macs in a John Lewis store? Well, now it looks like another retailer had the same idea – why spend money on real DVDs when you can just download them?

On a visit to the Rivas H2Ocio shopping mall in Madrid, Miguel Ángel Moro walked into a Saturn store. There, in the Apple section, he saw demo machines – and they were all running pirate movies.

Miguel told TorrentFreak, “This is not the first time I’ve seen this stuff in MediaMarkt/Saturn, a big consumer electronics store in Europe. They sell from computers to washing machines, including DVD and Blu-ray discs.”

Displaying their own DVDs is illegal without clearance, so they might as well grab a copy off BitTorrent and safe a few bucks – right? Sharing copyrighted files is legal in Spain, but not for commercial use which is clearly the case here.

Below is a photograph taken by Miguel of a ‘Cars’ Blu-ray movie rip running on VLC Media Player, on a Macbook, in the store.

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

“It is extremely serious,” District Court’s chief Lena Berke said in a comment. “This is a breach of confidentiality, and therefore, we intend to notify the police,” she added, noting that it hasn’t influenced the court’s ruling in any way.

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde believes that there might have been more people who knew about the outcome beforehand. Just 10 minutes after the verdict was announced, movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted told a Swedish newspaper that the 107 was very well written, and that it would hold up all the way to the Supreme Court. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she wrote the verdict,” Peter said.

Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin was unpleasantly surprised and said he found it totally unacceptable that a verdict could be released in advance like this. He said that he is unaware of any previous cases where this has happened before. Sunde himself was not that bothered and joked about the leak. “Really, it’s a bit LOL,” he wrote on Twitter. “It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.”

The Pirate Bay crew had anticipated a defeat in the case, but the jail time was unexpected. Nevertheless, Peter is still positive about the outcome of the appeal and he’s going to wrap up the tumultuous day with a party in his hometown Malmo. “I’m gonna play some techno,” he said.

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

InfoPSP didn’t host any illicit content itself but instead offered links to video games, movies and music hosted on 3rd party sites. In Spain, merely linking to copyright works is not illegal. InfoPSP carried advertising and it was widely reported in the Spanish media that this was the reason the admin, Adrián Gómez Llorente, aka Kuve, was found guilty and sentenced to fines and 6 months in jail. However, in the murky world of copyright infringement, it’s no surprise to discover that all is not as it seems.

In September 2008 we reported on the case of Sharemula, a site which offered eDonkey links to movies, music, software and games. Just like InfoPSP, Sharemula found itself the subject of legal action but eventually the admins were found not guilty, since they had not carried out copyright infringement for profit. Here’s the strange part though – Sharemula DID carry advertising, just like InfoPSP.

Seeking clarification, TorrentFreak contacted the offices of David Bravo, a Spanish lawyer who specializes in intellectual property rights. According to Spanish law, the reason why the Sharemula admins were acquitted was because in order to have committed a crime, direct profit must’ve been made from the actual dissemination of the copyright works. Since the site carried only links, any dissemination was carried out by the site’s users and not the site itself. In short, no crime was committed on Sharemula and bizarrely, no crime was committed on InfoPSP either.

So it begs the question; how on earth did the admin of InfoPSP get found guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced to 6 months jail and fines of 4,900 euros?

The answer lies, unsurprisingly, with the complainants in the case – the Spanish Association of Publishers and Distributors Entertainment Software (ADESE) and the Spanish Videographic Union (UVE). Of course, file-sharing site admins being protected under Spanish law is the last thing these groups need. What they actually need is someone’s severed head displayed prominently on a pike in order to deter others, and a widely-reported 6 month jail sentence is ideal for reaching this aim.

To get the truth, lawyer David Bravo conducted an interview with KUVE, the convicted InfoPSP admin, which shines an awful lot of light on this issue – and pretty shocking it is too. First off David asked Kuve if he’d ever carried any copyright material on the InfoPSP server;

“Absolutely not. The web server contained only the files needed for the operation of the forum,” explained Kuve. “Under no circumstances did we ever host any copyrighted works.”

David then asked Kuve if it was true that InfoPSP simply displayed links which were supplied by users of the site. “Indeed, the website was a forum where users could share a link to a file,” Kuve replied. “These links were torrents, hosting servers or file upload sites like Megaupload, Gigasize, Rapidshare etc.”

Kuve then went on to explain that he and his lawyer understood that all ongoing trials against similar sites (such as Sharemula) were resolved in the favor of the sites in the criminal courts. However, the threat of being chased by the complainants for damages through the civil courts was very real and the costs associated with this would have been too much for Kuve to cope with.

So a deal was done. Kuve would admit to being a criminal and accept the court’s decision with the assurance that he wouldn’t be chased through the civil courts by the plaintiffs. Kuve and his lawyer decided that it would make sense, financially at least.

“I am a student and therefore do not have the financial resources needed to hire a defense expert that could ensure results in the trial. Besides, continuing with the trial meant that the civil courts could convict me and I would be forced to pay financial compensation which I couldn’t cope with,” said Kuve.

“I would have loved to defend my interests to the end and it is for this that I wish all the people in my situation who can afford to stay and fight for something that affects us all, the best of luck.”

“The real news here is that a person has been found guilty of something that was not an offense under 100% of the judges who had resolved earlier identical cases,” says a concerned David Bravo.

Javier de la Cueva, a lawyer working with David, told TorrentFreak something that will be of interest to lawyers representing admins like Kuve in the future. Javier and David maintain a repository relating to Spanish court decisions on hyperlinking and release these documents under a CC-By License.

Thanks to this repository, any lawyer in Spain can use the documents to defend similar cases. The documents have already enabled lawyer Franciso José Andújar to successfully defend TVMix.

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

In a recent interview, Eddie Cunningham, president of Universal Pictures International said, “Your campaigning needs to evolve over time and have an appropriate message for today,” while denying that previous more-flashy campaigns had failed to deter piracy.

So is this a new, more sensitive approach from a movie industry looking to make friends rather than enemies? In part, yes. The movie industry does want to appear nicer to the public, after all they aren’t likely to be the main targets in the next phase in the war on piracy. That unenviable position is reserved for the ISPs – and it’s back to the old style when Cunningham speaks of them.

“If you or I owned a house in which prostitution was taking place, or where drug dealing was happening, we’d be responsible,” he said, implying that the ISPs are making money from serious crime while doing nothing about stopping it. Cunningham seems oblivious to the fact that if he plans to make a partner out of ISPs, you don’t start the relationship by referring to them in public as some sort of digital pimp.

But perhaps his most curious comment is that he feels that society is turning against piracy, viewing it as something going out of vogue. “Research shows us that most people now find it unfashionable – there’s been a gradual change in attitudes,” he said.

Quick – someone tell the Wolverine downloaders…

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

Established in 2000 by director Rick L. Winters, Annodam Productions is an independent film company. A forward looking outfit, Annodam will premiere its latest movie ‘Blank‘, worldwide today.

‘Blank’ is the story of a Johnny, a young boy who witnesses the violent death of his parents and older sister. Roll on some 20 years later and Johnny becomes involved in crime with his adoptive father – who is also a crime boss. While watching a game of poker Johnny discovers who murdered his family and sets about planning his revenge. Johnny unwittingly becomes involved with a pair of serial killers and the whole movie climaxes with a bizarre and shocking end.

While the plot may seems standard Hollywood fare, the way this movie has been financed and is set to be distributed is not – Director Rick L.Winters explains, “The thing that makes this film unique is that it is a co-op based concept where the entire cast and crew worked on a deferred percentage of the film’s gross. In other words, the cast and crew own a percentage of the film’s gross, so the profits are not going to Hollywood executives but instead into the pockets of the filmmakers themselves.”

After receiving several distribution offers for ‘Blank’, Rick turned them all down.

“I have seen firsthand the greed that lurks in the Hollywood corporate circles,” he said while explaining that after he released his first film, the cast and crew couldn’t understand why a distribution company was making all the money. So instead, Rick decided to let the audience distribute ‘Blank’ for him – via BitTorrent.

“This time around the fate of the cast and crew getting paid is in the hands of the audience who watch the film. No Hollywood bank accounts being filled to turn out more crappy remakes,” he said, while adding that the future of film is “in the home market, through peer to peer distribution.”

Today, ‘Blank’ is released on DVD for $14.99, via online streaming and of course, for free on BitTorrent. “No one should have to pay for a film they did not like,” says Rick. “No one should be denied the right to enjoy the art of film.”

The idea is that if people like the movie after they have seen it, they should go to the ‘Blank’ website and make a donation. People are asked to donate what they feel the movie is worth, and in return will be invited to follow the production of the next movie, which they will have helped finance through their donation.

Rick told TorrentFreak, “I am excited with the aspects of peer to peer distribution and the possibilities. Giving everyone the opportunity to see my film for free in hope of receiving donations is a little nerve wrecking – wondering if I will receive enough donations to make my next film. The concept is still scary for independent filmmakers who don’t have the big budgets like the big studios and most of the time drain their personal accounts and run up credit just to get their film made, in hopes of recouping the cost of making the film.”

Several large BitTorrent sites including Mininova will be offering ‘Blank’, but undoubtedly it will spread to many others too. Rick L. Winters is also writing a book which will document the whole process so that others can use the same methods to distribute their own movies.

“I can only hope for the success of this endeavor to show the world that the revolution of peer to peer distribution can no longer be ignored and the time is now,” Rick told TorrentFreak. “I decided to try the concept of a coop base film in hopes of encouraging other independent filmmakers to come together and create and share the art of film for EVERYONE to enjoy.”

Congratulations to Rick and the crew for effectively ending the piracy of their movies and we wish them the best of luck with ‘Blank’ and all future success.

You can grab the torrent for the movie from Mininova.

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

There are several large topsites hosted in Sweden, some of which host hundreds of terabytes of pirated material. However, according to ’scene’ etiquette, the files on these are not supposed to leak to other (more public) file-sharing networks but eventually they all do, with most of the big releases managing this in mere minutes.

This puts these servers close to the top of the ‘Piracy Pyramid‘ and one of the priority targets of anti-piracy outfits. Two weeks ago, Pirate Bay co-founder Anakata told the court that these scene members “hate The Pirate Bay” because they prefer to keep their releases within a select group.

Henrik Pontén from Antipiratbyrån – the Swedish anti-piracy office – applauded the police and said that this was one of the largest busts ever, and the largest in Sweden. According to one of our own sources, several well known scene groups were using the servers, which means that they may have been compromised.

For now, the investigation focuses on the person who operated the server in question. “A person suspected of running the server has been identified and it is now up to the police to investigate this. Now, we will continue to look for similar pirate servers,” Pontén told Aftonbladet.

Pontén also claimed that the Sunnydale topsite was the source of all pirated material available on The Pirate Bay, but this was denied by Peter Sunde. “More than 800,000 people have uploaded to The Pirate Bay, so I don’t believe it’s the source of everything. But it is possible that it’s a major source,” he said.

Antipiratbyrån’s involvement in this raid is questionable. In 2005 the police conducted an similar raid at Swedish ISP Bahnhof, only to be presented with evidence that Antipiratbyrån themselves had hired someone to plant copyright material. It turned out that the infiltrator was far from a passive observer. The infiltrator had transferred 68,000 files and went as far as buying hardware for the server to increase its storage capacity.

Antipiratbyrån was later sued for illegal trespassing and harassment because of these entrapment practices which are illegal in Sweden. Now, four years on and they are again involved in a similar raid, but whether they had any help from an insider this time is unknown. The exact role Antipiratbyrån played in this raid remains unclear, but it is likely that they tipped off the police about the location and existence of ‘Sunnydale.’

Pontén said that his organization will continue its “war on piracy.”

Update: Only one of Sunnydale’s servers was seized, the location of the other servers remains unknown.

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

Let us refresh our memories and take a look at what actually happened during and just before the past 8 years:

1. First, the explosive rise of computer and console gaming. This competitive ‘third element’ has appeared in the entertainment landscape, beaten both music and movies to the curb and taken a huge cut out of the music industry’s revenues. Consumers don’t have infinitely-deep pockets, and billions of ‘recreation dollars’ that used to go almost exclusively to music, are now going into gaming.

2. International trade agreements have allowed consumers to buy their music across borders, rather than accepting local prices on music based on the ‘relative wealth’ of nations, rather than the actual value of the product.

3. New forms of distributable media, most notably MP3s but also CDs, have become mainstream. These new media don’t degrade over time and rarely break at all, making music rebuys a thing of the past, and allowing the second-hand market for music to thrive and expand – both of which take a cut out of the music industry’s former revenues.

4. Radical technological innovation has taken place in the field of music creation, processing, mixing, and mastering. Recording hardware, CD burners, music software, and media encoders have evolved to the point where most artists can actually afford decent-quality equipment to do their own recording and producing. Furthermore, this has fostered literally thousands of smaller, specialized studios that are challenging the ‘Big 4′ with lower prices, better terms for artists, genre-specific expertise, etc. Successful artists can now leave the big labels and start their own recording outfits on relatively modest budgets. Naturally, super stars like The Beatles or Frank Sinatra have always had this option, but the recent technological advances have lowered the bar drastically. This development is depriving the ‘Big 4′ of many of their former cash cows, who now use the major labels for their advertising and distribution infrastructure alone.

5. The World Wide Web has become an omnipresent force in the world, allowing cheap, end-to-end distribution of digital music, increasingly cutting out the corporate music distributors, who deal in trucks and CD covers, rather than bytes and bandwidth. With iTunes leading the way (very successfully ‘competing with free’, I might add), billions of songs are now purchased digitally rather than physically, no longer necessitating the big labels’ distribution networks.

6. The total number of radio stations, music television networks and other ’streaming’ sources of music has grown exponentially, giving music fans a huge selection of free (and legal) music options. Satellite radio, DAB, and internet radio broadcasts have made it trivial for consumers to simply tune into a channel broadcasting the exact sub-genre of music that they feel like listening to (they can even have a stream created for them dynamically, e.g. on Pandora), making the *purchase* of music entirely optional for the casual listener.

7. A massive selection of entertainment alternatives (home computing, console gaming, mobile devices, etc.) have appeared in the home, effectively marginalizing music as an activity. 15-20 years ago, youths would regularly visit each other just to listen to music together; today, that is virtually unthinkable without some form of activity involved, such as playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band, or dancing at a concert.

8. And finally, the music industry itself has embraced the opportunities of digital media, at last letting consumers buy *single* tracks at a time rather than forcing entire albums full of ‘fillers’ on them. Looking at the RIAA’s own sales figures for the past 10 years, there is a *direct* correlation between the break-off in album sales and the introduction and increase in single track digital sales. Looking at the actual numbers, it is abundantly clear that the vast majority of consumers never wanted to buy full albums in the first place, but were merely forced to by the lack of affordable single-track media. Now that the digital revolution has arrived, countless millions of 16-track album sales are being turned into 1- or 2-track sales, *decimating* the former revenues on music. THIS is the real reason why the music industry is hurting.

In other words: The “it’s common sense” argument that the music industry is peddling in their attempt to tie the declining revenues to piracy, simply doesn’t hold. It is not as clear-cut as the industry believes; the true reason for the decline is something they are still unwilling to face, but will have to face sooner or later:

The fact is that the music industry’s revenues have been artificially inflated for decades because of limited consumer options. The last 15 years of innovation have lifted those limitations, effectively leaving the music industry with an obsolete, defective business model of monopolized production technology, forced album bundling, and almost nonexistent competition in the realm of home entertainment. What is happening now – the decline of music profits and the piracy witch hunt by the music industry – is merely the panicked struggle of a dying business model, a complacent industry’s refusal to accept its diminishing role in a digital world. The pirates are not the reason, and the decline is the not the disease. It is the cure.

This is a guest post by Jens Roland. Jens is a computer scientist by training, but a technology forecaster by trade. He has worked at international think tanks as a consultant and researcher in emerging technologies and has written more than 300 articles and a book on the subject.

———————————————————————-
DATA: Net value of shipped music, in billion dollars

1991 7.83
1992 9.02
1993 10.0
1994 12.1
1995 12.3
1996 12.5
1997 12.2
1998 13.7
1999 14.6
2000 14.3
2001 13.7
2002 12.6
2003 11.9
2004 12.3
2005 12.3
2006 11.8
2007 10.4

(source: RIAA’s annual reports)

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.

“Right now, society is developing at a fantastic pace. That is immensely wonderful and everyone involved is having fun. Let us try and make it a good development,” said Johan Allgoth of the Pirate Bureau.

The cheerful spirit was not only due to the events in the first week of the trial (where the prosecution repeatedly failed to present any evidence) but also down to a supply of free champagne for all pirates in attendance.

“The Pirate Bureau operated for many years without economic resources and that was a very good way for us to work. Lately, we’ve had some money coming into the organization and we needed to put it to good use. Buying champagne for great people is definitely a good way to channel our resources, paying the poor artist another way,” Johan Allgoth told us.

The Pirate Bureau has had a busy week in Stockholm, doing their part in the performance of the Spectrial theater. Their headquarters have been located in the S23K bus, parked outside the court. From the bus they created audio visual art, published op-eds and streamed impromptu parties with everyone welcome to participate.

Anyone with an instrument could come by the bus and add their piece to a composition called “Düsseldorf versus Bochum“, a recording which was premiered at yesterday’s party. Support for the pirate movement has never been so massive as it has this week, even coming from the Stockholm police.

“Late Wednesday night, we had some problems with the police because there had been complaints about the electrical generator outside the bus being noisy. The situation was resolved in 2 seconds and the police actually said they support us. Even the very people who are to uphold law and order love The Pirate Bay, doesn’t that tell something about the absurdity of the trial?” Allgoth said.

There was also political support for the defendants. During yesterday’s party The Pirate Bay was given the Freedom Prize by Swedish Moderate Party’s youth organization. Most importantly, however, the party offered some time to relax after hours in court, or listening to and translating the trial’s audio streams for days.

Last night, artists Ollibolli, Tobias Bernstrup and Goto80 played live. On the walls were projections of the IRC channel so party-goers could see The Pirate Bay torrents being posted real-time. There was also video art made of the movies whose supposed sharing is cause for the prosecution in the trial.

As evening turned into night, brokep entered the DJ booth to keep the pirates dancing. Whether or not an anti-pirate party from the opposing side would have been successful is doubtful.

“I do not think the anti-pirates are partying tonight, I believe they are sweating. But we’d welcome them with open arms here. I think especially Henrik Pontén and Monique Wadstedt would make great additions to the party. Some of the more aggressive copyright-coterists wouldn’t fit here.”

“There are rules on how to behave, in nightclubs as well as on the Internet, and the way some of them behave they would probably be thrown out by the bouncers from the nightclub. And from the Internet.”

All in all it has been an exciting week for all the spectrial followers, most of who also actively participated. The party (more pics) was well deserved and turned out to be a great success. On Tuesday the trial will continue, and we will make sure to keep you updated on the latest developments.

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

The outfit sees itself liaising with the authorities, tipping them off and assisting in raids. Scott Butler, the CEO of the company who’s obviously from the U.S judging from his accent, said in a radio interview last year that his company assists in hundreds of raids a month.

Butler proudly added that, contrary to the situation in the U.S, everyone they catch violating copyrights in the United Arab Emirates goes to jail. “Amazingly, every single copyright case within United Arab Emirates resulted in imprisonment,” he said.

While the AAA might do a good job at protecting the intellectual property of their clients, preventing their own website from being hacked seems to be a real challenge. For days now, the news section of the site has been stripped of all its content, displaying the following message: “hacked by ashiyane security team”.

When it comes to securing websites, anti-piracy outfits seem to fail time and time again. Last year, the RIAA website got hacked, and the IFPI and a Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit both lost their domain names to BitTorrent sites after they failed to renew their registrations. Perhaps they should consider investing a few of their hard earned dollars in a proper sysop.

In the meantime, perhaps the Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance should consider checking their own site every now and again.

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

The RIAA recently announced that it would stop its massive legal campaigns and limit the court visits to a minimum. No surprise there. Lawsuits are expensive and the RIAA lost more of those than they had hoped, so they turned their attention to lawmakers, local governments and ISPs instead.

The new plan is to get legislation implemented that will allow the entertainment industry to spy on the filesharing behaviors of individual Internet subscribers, and order their disconnection when they are suspected of repeated copyright infringements. Ideally they would like to make “downloading” a criminal offense of course, and this is exactly what the Pirates Prison Project is anticipating.

According to Dimitri Johnson, CEO of Pirate Prisons Project (PPP), billions of Internet users around the world will have to be thrown in jail if the anti-piracy lobbyists have their way. “Everyone is guilty by default: since nobody will want to do without Internet access, no matter what, everyone will end up going to jail. All of our kids, parents, friends and peers. Off to jail we go,” he writes.

“This trend has led PPP to foresee a gigantic business opportunity,” Dimitri adds, while introducing his plans to build thousands of prisons where these Internet pirates can be locked up. Investors can buy shares in these yet to be built prisons, and pirates have the opportunity to book a comfortable cell in advance. PPP currently offers three options:

1. Buy Shares

You can invest in the new prisons due to be built, which is a solid investment according to the PPP. 150 shares currently trade at $10,000, but people with a smaller budget can get 2 shares for just $200.

2. Denounce Someone

If you happen to know someone who pirates music, software or movies on the Internet, you can first report them, and then send them over to the PPP website to book their cell early on. There are several options to choose from, and early birds get the best picks.

3. Book a Cell Yourself

Last but not least, you can book a cell yourself, and make sure that you’ll have a comfortable time in prison once you’re locked up. If your budget allows it, you can book the “jail premium” package: the largest cell available, complete with broadband Internet.

TorrentFreak contacted one of the project leaders, who told us that he hopes to get the RIAA and MPAA on board as one of the main investors in the project. He’s right, it’s their future…

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

While some producers, directors and actors actually believe that BitTorrent and other filesharing tools help to boost the fanbase of films and TV-shows, this group disagrees. Signed by a staggering 116 names including the likes of directors Sir Alan Parker, Mike Leigh and supported by several entertainment industry groups, the letter claims:

At a time when so many jobs are being lost in the wider economy, it is especially important that this issue be taken seriously by the Government and that it devotes the resources necessary to enforce the law.

Ignoring for a moment that notably they make no mention of job losses in their sector, one of the problems with their demands is that the law they seek to enforce is civil law, not criminal.

Beyond employing judges there is nothing more that the government can do to enforce it. That is the problem with copyright law, it’s hard to know what’s legitimate and what’s not, what can be copied and what can’t, without checking with the rights holders first. This was exemplified perfectly earlier this year, when the IFPI sent out takedown notices for Travis tracks, despite the actual copyright holders, Travis, having already given permission to distribute.

The bigger problem comes from their data, the 98 million illegal downloads and streams. While we know TV shows are popular, our own data shows that British TV rarely features in the top 10. Movie downloads are more fleeting, with a certain bias towards the newest films, with a few exceptions. Their figures are also questionable; while we count downloads, we can’t quantify them with a figure for the UK.

Yet, if their stats on downloads are of questionable accuracy, it’s nothing compared to the power they ascribe to the ‘almighty ISP’. They believe that ISPs have the power to stamp out file sharing, stopping people from downloading TV shows and movies; they just need a prod. In this belief they are sadly mistaken.

Again, recent news has shown how hard it is to control access to even one image in the UK, on a cut-and-dried subject like child pornography. Being able to determine if something is infringing copyright or not would require huge lists of content, and real-time examination of all Internet traffic. Not just deep packet inspection, but an all-invasive Big Brother monitoring system, beyond the dreams of even the most totalitarian dictator.

Of course, those that bother to check facts know that not only is such a thing illegal (criminally illegal, not just civil) but that the tools they’ll want to use just don’t work. The problem is highlighted by Michael Malone, CEO of ISP iiNet, currently under attack from various movie studios, “I think they genuinely believe that ISPs have a secret magic wand that we are hiding and if we bring it out we can make piracy disappear just by waving it.”

And, when just this year it was reported that UK commercial TV broadcasters “enjoyed a bumper April with the highest viewing figures in five years”, that total TV viewing was up 10% year-on-year, and “the valuable yet hard-to-reach 16 to 24-year-old demographic [i.e the typical file-sharer] watched 4.9% more commercial TV in April year-on-year and saw 12% more ads,” you have to wonder exactly what the problem is.

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