This cuts to the crux of public consultations. Conclusions can only be as good as the data these consultations receive. We have seen many times how companies are willing to lie repeatedly when it comes to P2P, in order to maintain their positions. From Comcast and their ‘Sandvining’, the incorrect accusations of lawyers, MediaDefender and their entire business model, to anti-piracy agencies pushing their unique version of events to get the police to conduct raids. In an area where the people with the money and influence are well known for avoiding the truth on occasion, will the BERR release all documents to allow public scrutiny and thus ensure accuracy?

The answer, in a nutshell, is no. TorrentFreak contacted the BERR and pointed out that confidential submissions are as likely to be marked as such to cover lies and diversions from the truth as confidential business practices, and wondered how this was going to be handled. Also, as the BERR likely doesn’t contain experts that have the depth in knowledge of this subject as our readers, will they be able to spot errors without the public assistance that publishing would bring? Clare Keen at the BERR press office responded saying:

On the issue of standards of evidence, all responses received are considered on their merit. We expect there to be differences in opinions and in information respondents choose to submit in support of their position. However we do not rely solely on such submissions or a single information source when deciding policy. We use a range of sources to enable us to cross check and investigate claims to develop our own understanding and arrive at our own conclusions.

On your second point, in our experience the main reason why a company requests that their response be kept confidential is because their submission has included details of their own commercial business/contracts or operations – information they do not wish their rivals and competitors to have access to.

We would always seek to collaborate or cross-check key points of information. Additionally if a party deliberately provided false information they would risk losing all credibility within Government on future consultations or discussions.

However, it may be a moot point. The Guardian newspaper reported on the consultation saying that a proposal by Ingenious Media was getting serious consideration. The company, a London based consulting and venture capital firm, has reportedly proposed making broadband providers legally liable for copyright infringement by their customers. In return they get a small sum every time a legal download of a song or film happens. Where the money for this will come from, or what will qualify (such as Jamendo or other CC music tracks) for the payment isn’t mentioned. Also not mentioned is how an ISP is supposed to be able to regulate the actions of their customers, without using highly invasive methods, worse than the DPI methods that have already been protested.

The BERR finally published the non-confidential recommendations today, and the BERR has told TorrentFreak that the number of confidential and partially confidential responses were ‘a small number’. In a nutshell, though, the only respondents that wanted a co-regulatory approach, were rights holders. Everyone else expressed no desire for it, and significant concerns were raised over transparency and privacy issues. We’ll have a more detailed look at responses later.

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

The Motion Picture Licensing Company (MPLC), which is charged with collecting royalties for the big studios, recently wrote to 2,500 kindergartens (or playschools as they are known in Ireland), informing them that it is illegal for the kids there to watch DVDs without an appropriate license.

According to The Times, the letter was sent with the knowledge of the Irish Preschool Play Association (IPPA), which represents many schools populated by around 50,000 kids between 3 and 5 years of age. The IPPA had worked out a deal with the Hollywood representatives, and eventually managed to get the royalties down to 3 euros per child.

Despite the lowered fee, most kindergarten owners were stunned by the request. Paula Doran, who runs a playschool in Dublin, said that the kids hardly watch any DVDs at the kindergarten. “We would rarely show DVDs anyway because it’s frowned upon — kids get enough TV at home,” she said. In fact, the only time the kids are allowed to watch a DVD is when they are pretending to go to the cinema, a learning activity that Hollywood would fully endorse. Doran said she couldn’t understand how the MPLC could be acting legally, and refused to pay.

It turned out that she was absolutely right not to pay. The MPLC actually failed to register with the Irish Patent Office, and by demanding payments in the way they have, breached the 2000 Copyright Act. A spokesman from the IPO confirmed that an organization that acts in this manner could be fined or have its staff jailed.

The MPLC belatedly applied for a license to collect the royalties on Friday. It’s never too late to learn, or for the kids, never too early to start filling Hollywood’s pockets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, the thought of Miss Isabella Barwinska picking up a £16,000 bill from the civil courts recently for sharing one £10 game is outrageous too, but maybe even more so. Miss Barwinska didn’t turn up or defend her case, no-one seems to know why, but for a lot of people facing similar actions, the prospect of facing a legal system they don’t understand and can’t afford to participate in, financial issues are at the forefront of doing nothing about the threatening letters.

These people simply cannot defend themselves and this is why it might make sense to criminalize personal-use file-sharing. In a criminal case if you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you by the state and you get the benefit of proper justice at least, a right of reply within a proper structure, not grubby threatening letters designed to wear people down.

I’ll let you into a little secret. When people say file-sharing is “as bad as shoplifting”, in the UK that comparison is pretty ridiculous. Many shoplifters are let off with a simple caution and even the most persistent would have to be uniquely unlucky to get fined £6,000 (plus £10,000 costs) for a £10 game. If Miss Barwinska had been caught physically stealing it, a police caution would be likely, or perhaps a very small fine. In the ‘real-world’ she’d need to smash through the storefront with a truck to end up with a fine the size of the one she got.

The other reason why there might be benefits in bringing file-sharing out of the civil domain and into the criminal is because even fairly large-scale commercial piracy on and off the Internet is treated with extreme leniency in the UK.

Last week we reported that the UK’s Hull city council said it had such a massive piracy problem at its biggest market in Walton Street, it had to ban legitimate traders too in order to stamp it out. Well, it seems that a part of this ‘problem’ was one Robert Guiness.

Mr Guiness had been using the Internet to download movies, music and computer games which he then burned onto DVD and CD and sold them at Walton Street market. When the police searched his van and raided his house, they found over 10,000 pirate movies, more than 600 audio CDs, a couple of hundred DVDs filled with MP3s and 283 computer games. He was a commercial pirate and his long-term considered actions certainly contrast nicely with Miss Barwinska’s civil tort involving a £10 game uploaded for one second.

So, taking Miss Barwinska’s punishment as a guide, presumably Mr Guiness should enjoy a minimum fine of 283 games at £6,000 each? Plus the movies and music. Oh boy, Mr Guiness would be in some big kind of trouble if Davenport Lyons had got to him first. Luckily for him, he got arrested by the police instead and had the good fortune of having a criminal trial.

Due to the “exceptional circumstances” in the case (”i’m but a small cog in a big machine guv’nor”), he was given a suspended sentence and walked out of the court a free man. No fine.

Just to be clear, I don’t really want file-sharing criminalized and I certainly don’t want the UK courts jammed full of petty file-sharing cases. For their part, the police don’t even have time to come to household burglaries or car thefts, so we could never waste their time on non-profit file-sharing issues. However, I wonder how many of the UK’s ‘pinball pirates’ would wish they could be labeled a criminal in order to be excused a massive fine, picking up a criminal record in the process but walking away a free person instead? Desperate people will do desperate things – people have committed suicide over smaller debts than this. No-one in financial difficulty should ever have to aspire to criminal status in order to mount a defense, or aspire to a criminal conviction like that of Mr Guiness, in order to be treated with leniency.

But hold on just one moment. What about the OiNK users that are currently the subject of police criminal action for uploading ONE album each. Has petty file-sharing already become a criminal offense? The Crown Prosecution Service seems to think so.

In a country like Britain, which prides itself on its sense of justice and fairness, it can’t be right to have such a huge imbalance in the legal system, where an ordinary single mother of two making a single mistake is treated more harshly than a for-profit criminal like Mr Guiness. Equally, how can one set of file-sharers be the subject of a simple ISP ‘warning letter‘, another pick up a £16,000 bill and others get hauled off to the police station for interrogation, fingerprinting, DNA sampling and subsequent trial, for the same offenses?

It’s crystal clear – to the man in the street the legal system to deal with file-sharing right now in the UK seems just about as clear as mud and maybe, just maybe, it’s time for the government to step and decide once and for all. Should file-sharers be warned, bankrupted or jailed? Don’t forget Mr Brown, there are an estimated 6 million of them. Choose wisely.

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

Two months later, two of the six alleged uploaders were released from further investigation, but (at least) two of the remaining four have been charged today. The alleged uploaders were charged with copyright infringement for uploading one CD. The “conspiracy to defraud” accusations vanished, as they were not mentioned.

The case(s) will be heard in two weeks at a Magistrates Court, after which there is a possibility that it will be passed onto a Crown court. TorrentFreak had the chance to talk to one of the charged uploaders. “I think it’s a sledgehammer to crack a walnut,” he said. The alleged uploader is convinced that he is being used to set an example.

It is indeed strange that thousands of UK residents get off with a friendly warning letter from their ISP, while the four OiNK uploaders are being charged for doing exactly the same thing. The fact that it is only one CD makes the case even more bizarre.

OiNK was one of the largest private BitTorrent trackers, hosting hundreds and thousands of torrents. The site was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement in October 2007, based on intel from the IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations.

The police have yet to release an official statement, so more details about the charges may come available in the coming days. Until then, the BPI told us they can not comment on the case.

Early report, more information might be added

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

One of the crucial questions is how “bad” the agreement will turn out to be. We reported earlier that ACTA might allow “competent authorities” to “search iPods” without the need for a complaint from a rights holder. The most absurd ACTA suggestions we’ve seen so far come from the RIAA, with a strong focus on the liability of ISPs.

The RIAA’s wishlist was published several weeks ago, but hasn’t received much press (thanks Brokep). There are several scary suggestions in there though, and if the RIAA could have its way, the Internet would be turned into a virtual police state immediately.

Let’s highlight some of the RIAA’s suggestions regarding online copyright infringement, mostly targeted at ISPs. You can read the document in full at Keionline.

Require internet service providers and other intermediaries to employ readily available measures to inhibit infringement in instances where both legitimate and illegitimate uses were facilitated by their services, including filtering out infringing materials…

The RIAA wants Internet providers to spy on the files that are transferred by their customers and check them against a reference database of “fingerprints” to check whether the files are infringing copyright. The IFPI, RIAA’s international counterpart tried to convince European lawmakers to do the same a few months ago.

Require Internet service providers or other intermediaries to restrict or terminate access to their systems with respect to repeat infringers.

Many countries have looked into the possibility of disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet, often gently pushed by anti-piracy lobbyists. France was the first to present their idiotic “3-strikes” law earlier this year, allowing anti-piracy outfits to police the Internet. The RIAA wants to see such legislation implemented worldwide of course.

“Establish, adequately fund and provide training for a computer crimes investigatory unit.”

A crime unit to track down and bust pirates, sounds like a great idea. The RIAA is vague about what such a unit is supposed to do as they already send thousands of takedown notices a year themselves, even to network printers. Perhaps they will use the funding and education to come up with harvesting techniques that actually work?

Establish liability against internet service providers who, upon receiving notices of infringement from content provides via e­mail, or by telephone in cases of pre-release materials or in other exigent circumstances, fail to remove the infringing content…

It gets even worse for ISPs. The RIAA wants to hold them responsible for the alleged copyright infringements of their customers. They even came up with a 24hour deadline. It’s interesting to see that they focus on pre-release material, the same strategy the IFPI and BPI used to take down OiNK.

…in the absence of proof to the contrary, an Internet service provider shall be considered as knowing that the content it stores is infringing or illegal, and thus subject to liability for copyright infringement…

Guilty until proven innocent, that makes sense. Of course, ISPs should know what files their customers store. The RIAA wants to ditch the “safe harbor” the DCMA created, making them responsible for the copyright infringement of their customers.

There is much more, but we suggest everyone reads the entire list of suggestions, it is entertaining and scary at the same time. Let’s hope that the politicians who are drafting the agreement will use their brains, instead of blindly accepting such proposals.

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

The Pirate Bay has already taken several countermeasures to make sure Italians can access the site. These don’t work across all ISPs yet, and those users are redirected to the following page by their ISP. Interestingly, this page is hosted on a server that belongs to IFPI – a reverse IP lookup shows that the page is linked to www.pro-music.org, IFPI’s legal music site.

“I think it’s a scandal,” Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak in response to this remarkable finding. “I hope that people start noticing that IFPI gets more and more into bed with the police. It’s really disturbing that one side of an ongoing fight gets more authority without a legal basis.”

Peter finds it hard to believe that the IFPI now gets all the traffic destined for the Pirate Bay, without any legal grounds, and he urges Italian users to clear their cookies before the IFPI decides to steal them. We have to agree with Peter here, it is indeed very disturbing that the traffic is redirected to a site which belongs to an anti-piracy lobby, instead of diverting neutrally to the ISP or local authorities.

The IFPI was contacted for a response several days ago, but hasn’t replied so far. It’s not the first time that they’ve “hijacked” traffic from a torrent site. Last October they did the same thing with the OiNK domain. That instance was even worse, as they used the opportunity to threaten members of the BitTorrent tracker, in advance of any trial.

Last October, the IFPI lost their .com domain, which was mysteriously transferred to the Pirate Bay, who started International Federation of Pirate Interests. Even though the IFPI managed to get the domain back in their possession, the incident marked an increase in efforts from the organization to take out The Pirate Bay.

Thus far, only John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the IFPI, has responded to the Italian move against The Pirate Bay stating: “This decision sends out a clear message that The Pirate Bay’s activities are illegal under Italian law. The Pirate Bay facilitates the mass infringement of copyright across music, film, television and games. Its very name shows the contempt its operators hold for the creators of legitimate content.”

Italy is trying hard to get rid of their fascist label, and some Italians were quite upset about the Pirate Bay calling their country a fascist state, but scandals like this don’t help to improve this image. Things get even worse if you take into account that the IFPI covered up the fact that the organization was founded in Rome, Italy, under the watch of Mussolini, one of the greatest fascist dictators. Enough said.

update: A great video for our Italian speaking friends

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

There is some good news though, as two of the six – a 19 year old man and a 28 year old women – wont face any further charges, and now go free. For the other four, and Alan Ellis himself, the wait continues. Alan told TorrentFreak that his new bail date is set for September 10th.

Thus far, the police have not replied to our inquiries so it remains unclear why two of the six uploaders have been released from any charges. The uploaders were arrested by detectives involved with ‘Operation Ark Royal’ this May, on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry” and other copyright offenses. No further arrests have been made since then.

OiNK was one of the largest private BitTorrent trackers, hosting hundreds and thousands of torrents. The site was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement in October 2007, based on inaccurate intel from the IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations.

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

Cleveland police, having originally stated that the charges against Alan would be revealed December 2007, extended the bail for another for two months, only to extend it again until May and then again until the end of June.

When they still weren’t ready to charge anyone by this date, they extended bail again until July 28th 2008. However, today, the police have extended the date again for Alan, and the other six arrested in connection with the case.

The six who were arrested, five men aged between 19 and 33, and a 28-year-old woman, were done so on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, and other copyright offenses.

Repeated in the mainstream press such as the BBC, these allegations of serious fraud take on a really sinister tone, but the reality is somewhat different. At most these individuals did what an estimated 6 million others do in the UK on a regular basis – they simply shared files. None of the six are accused of anything more than offenses linked to the uploading of a single album each, yet today they will report again to the police, their lives on hold.

Elsewhere today in the UK, will be the characteristic sound of letters dropping through the front door onto the mat. Some people will be getting bills, others direct mail and junk. Some will be getting well wishes on a happy occasion. Others will be opening an unexpected letter from their ISP which claims they have been caught uploading music by the BPI, that they’ve been very naughty and shouldn’t do it again.

After long negotiations between the music industry and ISPs, along with a considerable amount of government ‘encouragement‘, sending out educational letters was considered a proportionate response to the ‘problem’ of file-sharing. Even the disconnection of uploaders was considered draconian, and there is certainly no suggestion of police involvement.

Shouldn’t the six OiNK uploaders be getting a “friendly” letter and a slap on the wrist too?

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

A few days later, and those same offenses are now just worthy of a simple warning – confusing times.

Today, the strange world of copyright has the music industry threatening those it has encouraged to work for them in the OiNK case – the police.

UK music licensing outfit the “Performing Right Society” (PRS) – the guys that come asking for money when you play any music within earshot of the public – is rolling out the big guns ready for a High Court showdown with a little known group of music pirates, known in the UK as ‘the police’. Not the band of the same name, but that government organization people rely on for keeping law and order.

According to a report, the police in the county of Lancashire have apparently committed a terrible crime and let the whole country down. Rather like the copyright infringing tea-rooms and their carol-singing occupants we wrote about last year, it appears that the police have been recklessly listening to music in stations all over the county – without a license. The PRS aren’t happy.

Chief Constable Steve Finnigan is the guy being held accountable for this awful breach of copyright across 34 police stations in his county. One shudders to think of the damage that these boys-in-blue have caused the industry, as they coincidentally listen to the radio at the same time as serving the citizens of Britain. But it doesn’t stop there – according to a High Court writ, unlicensed music has also been played in police gyms, conferences, presentations and office parties.

As if things aren’t bad enough, there are worrying claims that telephone callers to police stations were put on hold and forced to listen to unlicensed music while they waited to report crimes. The trauma of ‘holding music’ is bad enough, but throw ‘unlicensed’ holding music into the mix and the gravity of this infringement is obvious.

The PRS is looking to get an injunction against the force and if it’s successful it will silence music in police stations right across the county, unless they dig deep for the appropriate license. The PRS is also sensitively and sensibly claiming damages from the already under-funded police.

It seems that further police forces in the UK have informed the PRS that music is often played in the background in their offices, with eleven of them either failing or refusing to obtain licenses enabling them to listen to it legally.

Generally, the PRS make a request for information from people who they believe should be paying them money, usually by letter. The recipient is then expected to tell them all about their music-playing antics and after this is complete, the PRS calculate and then send out a bill. Interestingly, it’s claimed that the head of legal services at Lancashire police told the PRS that she had instructed her colleagues to ignore the requests for information. She then emailed the PRS and said she had instructions to accept the service of proceedings against the force.

The PRS legal eagles believe that Steve Finnigan is admitting the claims, which could mean that the UK will shortly have its first Pirate Chief Constable. Let’s hope his associates at Cleveland Police don’t get involved – the last thing the police boss needs is to be arrested on conspiracy to defraud the music industry.

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

In the UK and at the forefront of this controversy has been Virgin Media. Various reports suggested that Virgin would implement the 3-strikes policy with the BPI but this proved very unpopular and it took just a few days for Virgin to deny any such deal had been struck.

Undeterred, the BPI has carried on working with Virgin who, according to a Music Week report, have now agreed to some sort of halfway-house. Virgin will not (yet) disconnect persistent uploaders, but after receiving information from the BPI about users making unauthorized uploads, Virgin Media will start sending out warning letters along with ‘educational’ advice about how to ensure that the customer’s account isn’t ‘misused’. Included in the advice will be links to authorized music sources, along with the usual fear mongering about viruses and spyware.

In this 10-week trial, along with the letter from Virgin, the subscriber will also receive a warning letter from the BPI. It will state that persistent offenders will be disconnected and/or taken to court, despite the fact that Virgin appears to be refusing to disconnect users so far.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “Virgin Media is the first ISP to publicly address the problem. It is a socially responsible ISP and I think other ISPs will look at this and see progress. I am very encouraged they have engaged with us. They understand the rights of musicians.”

A Virgin Media spokesman added: “We want people to enjoy music online without infringing the rights of musicians and music companies. This campaign is about helping our customers understand how they can do this.”

It’s unclear what the BPI strategy will be on this but to really put Virgin under pressure, it will probably decide to put IP-addresses it collects into a database. This way it would be easy to flag IP-addresses that had already been ‘caught’ before, and put these IPs forward to Virgin as persistent users – prime candidates for disconnection. Virgin Media (unlike comparable ADSL ISPs in the UK) hand out static IP addresses, so most users will be an easy target as they display the same IP address all the time. But for those Virgin customers with a router, simply changing the MAC address of the unit will force Virgin to hand over a new IP, which then offers the user the same perceived ‘protection’ as a dynamic IP ISP.

So at the end of it all lies a very large inconsistency. If a casual uploader simply gets a warning from the BPI/Virgin and only persistent, regularly-caught users MIGHT be disconnected or MIGHT get taken to court (in a civil action, of course), why has the BPI ignored all of these things while effectively directing the police that the recently arrested uploaders from OiNK should be treated as serious criminals?

TorrentFreak knows that at least two of those accused uploaded just a single album. Persistent? Hardly. Conspiring to Defraud? Give us a break.

Where were their friendly, education-based warnings from the ISP?

Update:The Register ran a piece and are also hosting copies of the letters that will be sent out to users. You can find the Virgin letter here and the BPI letter here.

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

The first thing to remember is, there is nothing on the net that you know of, that anti-piracy organizations don’t. No protocol, or secret piece of software, that you know of but which shouldn’t be talked about ‘in case they get to hear of it’. They employ people who do nothing all day but surf and chat. They act just like you or me – there’s no reason for them to behave in any other way. So, one of the first things to remember is, there’s no such thing as security by obscurity in P2P. If you can find it, what’s stopping someone in the pay of an anti-piracy organization from finding it too? That’s just common sense. Of course, as in the old saying – poachers make the best gamekeepers – quite often the people doing the investigations are not newcomers to p2p, but have been doing it for years themselves. In that respect, over most users, they have the advantage in experience.

The one thing most people seem to fail to understand, is that there are no magic solutions. At the end of the day, you have to get data back to your IP. In order to do that, at some point, your IP has to be known. While this can be obfuscated to the point at which it’s extremely impractical to trace, it is at the expense of bandwidth. This is why torrenting over Tor is a no-no. You could use a VPN service, but they also know your home IP, and also generally billing details for the account. In that way, they’ve not only associated it with a name, as they would with a home IP, but also your financial information, which would be a great way to prove you personally were behind it.

There are some common misunderstandings about anti-piracy activities that seem to be pervasive. So let’s address them.

1. There have been very few actual legal cases, as yet, that have involved torrents.
2. The majority of copyright cases are CIVIL, not criminal
3. What most people think of as being the law, often isn’t.
4. The RIAA and the MPAA never get involved in anti piracy evidence collection directly.
5. Most of the time, people are going from what someone they have met on a forum had read in an IRC channel.

1) – There have been very few actual legal cases, as yet, that have involved torrents.

Cases involving torrents are rare, as yet. This will probably change over the next few years. Despite the protocol having been around since 2002, it wasn’t until around 2004 that it started to gain widespread acceptance. Since then there have been a few cases, such as the DVDr-core, and the Elitetorrents enforcement activities, but they are in the main, the exception rather than the rule.

The Torrentspy judgment, handed down this past week, is also now heading for appeal, which could significantly change things, or could have it all stay the same. It’s too early to tell at present. Likewise, the ISOhunt case hasn’t even gone that far. Despite there being in excess of 100+ torrent sites active now, and a similar number at least having been opened and closed for various reasons over the past 5 years, that only one has got to an initial judgment says something.

Torrents are a difficult subject to litigate – the ISOhunt case is evidence of that. Unlike most other methods, which rely on a few centralized servers to index and sort, torrents rely on trackers, and on DHT. File names can be used to find torrent files, but owning a torrent file is not actionable. They are metadata (data about data) files and are not covered under the same copyright as the original source, any more than a film review belongs to the movie studio. The error checking aspect has a legitimate use as well, as it could be argued (how successfully I don’t know) that the torrent file is being used to error check existing data legitimately acquired.

Most recently, cases centering around BitTorrent sites have focused more on vicarious infringement, as in the Pirate Bay and oink cases. Basically, this means that the defendant had the right and ability to control the infringer’s acts, by being able to add or delete torrents, and that the defendant gets a direct financial benefit from these acts of infringement. Hence the claims of ‘paying for membership’ given to the police for the OiNK raids, and the focus on advertising in the Pirate bay trial. However, this can be a tricky subject for other companies too – including ISPs and technology companies like Sony, where they have to be certain to not fall foul of the ability+control aspect. This is why bandwidth-choked ISPs are firmly opposed to be involved in any sort of P2P-policing.

2) – The majority of copyright cases are CIVIL, not criminal

Now, civil cases are unlike criminal ones in that there is no ‘innocent until proven guilty’. There are just two groups of litigants. Whoever has the most proof (or preponderance of evidence) is the winner. So, where in a criminal trial, they must prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you did commit the acts, in a civil case, they only have to prove you did it better than you can prove you didn’t. Of course, I refer you to the caveat at the beginning, and note that many countries have differing requirements of proof for a civil case.

Another major factor that sets ‘criminal acts’ from those that are ‘civilly actionable’ is that whilst the former is always against the law, and doing that act means you’ve broken the law. If you punch someone, that’s always assault (with a few exceptions). Running a BitTorrent client, or participating in a BitTorrent swarm is not against any law. The contents of it might however be civilly actionable. If the copyright owners decide to sue, they can, but if they don’t, as the law goes, there’s no complaint to be answered.

3) – What most people think of as being the law, often isn’t.

This is especially common. When we broke the story on Mivii last year, a large number cried “entrapment”. There was a similar response the other day, to our story about the IFPI and limewire. Many people also believe that if a media enforcer is on a torrent, they can’t share data, else they’re complicit in the copyright infringement and are giving you some sort of permission to distribute yourselves. This could not be further from the truth.

First of all, entrapment relates only to criminal cases, in the main, and for that matter, only occurs in a specific set of circumstances. If a law enforcement officer (as in someone with the actual power to arrest you) asks or incites you to commit a crime that you wouldn’t otherwise have done, that’s entrapment. However, if you’re not a law enforcement agency, then it can’t be entrapment, pure and simple.

The implicit permission argument is similarly flawed. Whilst the enforcement agent (’snooper’) might have permission to distribute, by distributing in part of a bit-torrent swarm, it’s hard to argue that he’s similarly giving you permission to distribute. Try telling the judge “he did, so I thought I could” and you’ll not get a very positive reaction – mainly because he can point to his ‘distribution agreement’ from the owner of the copyright, and you can’t. If you want an example, look at alcohol. In most countries, alcohol can only be sold by persons licensed to sell it. If you try and sell it, without a license, you can face penalties under the law. Saying ‘I’m selling it because he’s selling it’ won’t work there, and it’s the same case for copyright and distribution.

4) – The RIAA and the MPAA never get involved in anti-piracy evidence collection directly.

Finally, lets just clear something up we all know at the back of our minds, but forget in the heat of an impassioned board post, or IRC comment. The RIAA and MPAA do not directly get involved with the details of ‘evidence gathering’ in these cases. The MPA and IFPI are lobby mouthpieces, not enforcement agencies. Their existence is not to investigate, or to sue. They exist to bribelobby politicians, to issue press releases, and ’studies’, to hide conflicts between the major studios, and to discourage independent works. Member companies put money into these organizations, in exchange for getting their ideas across to those that make the law, to conduct studies to back up the wants and desires of the members, and to be a face to be interviewed by the media.

The enforcement activities are carried out by companies that exist for this purpose. In effect, they are digital private investigators (although most don’t seem to have bothered applying for the licenses) and like the old fashioned gumshoe, they work for whoever pays them. Some activities of the investigator might be illegal, but that’s nothing new from private investigators. Companies like Safenet, and BayTSP aren’t in it for an ideological reason, it’s just a business. As such they work like any other business, with long hours, and trying new things to get clients and please them.

Think you’ve tried hard to get onto that private tracker? Imagine the guy that got onto it, AND got paid to do so, sitting in a nice air conditioned office. I’m certain there are people who’s only task is to gain memberships to private trackers. To collect evidence, build up contacts, and invites. How do I know this? Well, it’s what I would do, if I were running such a company, and it’s fairly obvious, especially given the evidence of the EliteTorrents bust back in 2005. Sites know this as well, which is why most private trackers heavily discourage trading invites, and why the rule is that you only invite those you “know”.

The lack of knowledge most people have about these subjects, especially in relation to the law, is mind boggling. Also, whilst the power to change laws seems to be solidly with the cartels, the position now is better than it was just three or four years ago. If you want to help improve it, join your local Pirate Party, the EFF, or similar organizations and help them out. It might not be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever was.

5) – Most of the time, people are going from what someone they have met on a forum had read in an IRC channel.

Unlike most, I actually used to work in copyright enforcement – those of you that have read my bio will know that. Of course, this was around 10 years ago, when Napster was just becoming popular, and I dealt with physical copyright infringement (people selling CDs). However, I do have a grasp of the law, and personal experience in making and pursuing a copyright case. So, as you can see, this isn’t someone repeating urban myths, or something read in an IRC channel. It’s based on fact, and experience, which isn’t that common in this area.

What to do about it?

To be frank, there is no way to stop the logging bots that harvest peer info from torrents. They don’t give themselves away, because they don’t have to act any differently than normal clients. With a WebUI, or even a VNC set up, it can easily be controlled from the office, and provides much greater anonymity. After all, the bandwidth and reliability of a co-located server isn’t required.

It is also probably wise to avoid anything considered high profile, initially, and if you’re in the US, avoid any films that hit the net before the cinema. It is also safer, in the long run, to avoid private sites which deal in what could be called ‘mainstream’ material, better known as ‘scene releases’. This is stuff that is most likely to be tracked, and private sites, whilst fast, have the great disadvantage of being part of a very small subgroup. Put another way, you could be one of up to 20 million that use the PirateBay, or you are one of 40,000 that use SceneTorrents. And unlike the PirateBay, a private site has your activities stored (in some form anyway, to generate the ratio) as well as an identifier – the email address you used. Remember, it was the similarity between an email address login, and a kazaa login that was the ‘pivotal’ evidence in the Thomas case, and removed doubt about the identity. If the site displays user names on the torrent though, you might as well never contest any case that you are hit with. Being able to track user names as well as IPs in a torrent means they’re likely to get repeat hits on you, even when you switch IPs. You might be able to convince a court that once was a mistake in their evidence gathering, but if they have you on multiple occasions, with different IPs each time, that argument is out the window.

Some suggest using blocklists, but since there is no way to identify an IP logging you, and no way to tell what IP it’s logging from, they really don’t keep you “safe”. Additionally, the most popular list provider, Bluetack, has added such a large number of IPs to their anti-piracy list (something like 700,000,000) that you are only eliminating legitimate peers slowing you down, and increasing the chance of being logged. Besides that, the people who do the logging are very aware of these blocklists, use proxies, and change IPs all the time. Additionally, the criteria for adding may not quite be at the “a guy that works there’s sister’s neighbor gets her hair done at the same place as the nephew of a guy whose company works for the company that delivers the water for the MPAA’s water coolers” – but it’s getting close (see here and here) as well as blaming hosting companies for the actions of their customers (example). The sad thing is, people run this, see all the blocks that come up, marked as being antip2p, and think “look at all those being blocked, now I’m safe” when the reality is, a group of people has claimed this, and how much do you trust the list makers. however, the final word on this comes from Phrosty, one of the coders of Peerguardian, who told one of our researchers “PG might help it might not. we think it does, but make no guarantees. make your own choice”.

Probably the most important thing you can do is know your rights, and know the truth. Use some common sense, and if in doubt, imagine yourself as an antip2p guy, and think of what you might do in their place. Unless it’s illegal, they’re probably doing it already (and maybe some of the illegal stuff too). The lack of knowledge, however, is to their advantage and not yours.

DISCLAIMER – We at TorrentFreak would like to remind you that we neither support or condone copyright infringement or theft, and that all infomation is for news reporting purposes only

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

The site, which closed in December 04, after Hanff and the site’s administrators heard about raids in Holland, was not administered by Hanff, but by some online friends of his. Shortly after this dawn raid by a process server, Hanff -who had just started a new job- appeared on an episode of the BBC show “NewsNight”. The day after it aired, he was fired, for having views on copyright that the company felt were incompatible with its own, and for not disclosing the case.

That was the situation at the end of 2005 anyway. And now, more than two years have passed and he has heard nothing new. Despite the claims in the letters he has received, Hanff doesn’t think the case went any further, and was quietly dropped. “The last thing I had was a letter from the MPAA lawyers with a copy of a motion for a default [judgment]“, he told TorrentFreak. “That was November 2005 , had that motion been granted I should have heard from the courts.” The hearing in question would have been around the middle of December 2005. “I haven’t even received anything from the court about that hearing , which I should have done , so I am sceptical as to whether or not it actually went ahead”

Perhaps the MPAA felt they didn’t need to proceed any more, after all, thanks to the case, Mr Hanff lost his job, and they didn’t have to run the risk of an adverse judgment in court. As has been discussed in the past, the anti-filesharing litigation campaigns seems to be less about compensating the artists, and more about harassment, and manufacturing cases to boost lobbying efforts. It would appear that this is just more of the same , mudslinging in lieu of any actual case. The document received by Mr. Hanff is certainly full of accusations, threats, and exaggerations , something that recently cost a French Lawyer her ability to practice law.

It does bring into some doubt the ability or the desire for the MPAA to litigate outside the cozy confines of the US. It also seems to indicate the way the oink case will go, as it just had it’s bail date extended again, although it is a criminal case, whilst dvdr-core is a civil case. Nevertheless, the extension of the case with no action except the initial accusation does draw the similarities closer.

In the meantime, Mr Hanff has been spending his energies tacking Phorm, the illegal and widespread invasion of browsing privacy to target adverts via deep packet inspection in association with UK ISPs. His dissertation on the subject can be read here.

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

TorrentFreak contacted Cleveland Police, but we were told that there was was no one available at the press office who could comment on the bail extension. Most likely, they need more time to gather evidence from the computers, laptop and mobile phones they still have in their possession.

OiNK was considered by many to be the finest BitTorrent music tracker the world has ever seen. The site tracked hundreds and thousands of torrents of the finest recordings, from virtually every musical genre. With millions of peers, it was more popular than most public trackers.

Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit described OiNK differently, and said the site was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online,” he said.

Based on information from IFPI and others, Cleveland police claimed that OiNK was a money machine, and that Alan was making hundreds of thousands of pounds. The people who actually visited OiNK, however, know that the site was free to use. This was backed up by Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails: “If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

The IFPI and BPI did not only feed the police “misleading” information, they also took over the OiNK.cd domain and displayed an ominous message indicating an investigation into the site’s users had begun. These threats were intended to scare former OiNK members, and they succeeded in this until OiNK reclaimed the domain.

With the third extension in a row, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find, but I assume they have figured out by now that the site is not as evil as the IFPI and BPI wanted them to believe.

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

In most countries around the world, the legality of running a tracker is still uncertain, in that definitive court decisions have not been made. Even in the US, the last two big trackers to be shut down , LokiTorrent and EliteTorrents , weren’t shut down by a court, but thanks to the mainstream media, public perception is that these sites are operating illegally. The lawyers of the MPAA, RIAA and IFPI maintain they’re illegal so that’s often enough to cost an admin , if his identity is compromised , lots and lots of worry, and probably money too, regardless of his status under the law. It seems that being an admin these days is more about keeping an identity secret rather than acting within the law, as more often than not, old fashioned threats take down torrent sites, not legal action.

TorrentFreak spoke to the admin of a BitTorrent tracker to find out how he stays safe, not sorry.

Introduction

“I’m fairly paranoid and I find that’s a good start point” he told us. “I’m probably overly cautious, but if that’s what it takes for me to sleep right, that’s cool. I’m nothing special and not a huge target but I don’t leave much to chance, even though I don’t have much to worry about compared to the really big boys. I don’t claim to be an expert on security, I’m self taught only, but I’m happy to share my precautions with you (and happy to hear from others on where I need to improve!). I know of admins who run their trackers from their parents residential ISP account with little extra care at all, so any protection is better than nothing!”

Below, our admin gives a breakdown of some of the measures he takes to stay safe. Although an experienced security aware user might spot some holes in this series of measures, it’s interesting to see the lengths to which people will go to protect themselves when seemingly, others take few precautions. This article is entirely consistent with the admin’s message, but at his insistence, it has been re-written by TorrentFreak:

Identity is Everything , If you never tell anyone, no-one will ever know

If the authorities/MPAA/RIAA don’t know who I am or where I live, they can’t threaten me. When I’m working on the site I use either an encrypted connection via an Internet connection available in these premises (my name isn’t on the bill, adding another layer of confusion), or a secure VPN over a local open wireless network. For me, hiding my activities from any ISP accounts even remotely linked to me is important, as I don’t want any ISP to be able corroborate anything specific about what I do. If approached by a 3rd party for information (with a request like “can you confirm that such-and-such connected here at XX:XX time”, for example), they know little or nothing about what I’m doing, throwing any gathered evidence into doubt.

I think the recent OiNK bust was quite a wake up call. I for one was laboring under the misconception that copyright issues are mainly civil and I really only thought through evading civil actions. Once the police get involved, they can find out pretty much anything about you from anyone. Thanks to what we learned about the OiNK bust, my improved security measures should save me from the police too, in the small chance they are interested in a relatively small fish like me.

Registering a Domain

The WHOIS for the site’s main domain is protected, for that added layer of annoyance, although even this isn’t foolproof. Our main domain name isn’t owned by anyone who has anything to do with the site, so it’s pointless threatening that person, even if they find out who it is. It might not stop them making threats so just in case the domain owner complies, other domain names point to our server too and every user is aware of these. None of the domains are owned by me.

Paying for Stuff Online

When we need to pay for something we use disposable credit cards, and the same via PayPal. We also have a few other PayPal accounts scattered around which we run unverified, then dump when PayPal start asking questions. ‘We’ is a term I (we!) get into the habit of using often, it’s less focused than ‘I’.

Using Email

Use a few varied accounts and try not to ‘cross contaminate’ them by doing *any* personal stuff on them at all , site business *ONLY*! If your email address typed into Google returns results other than to do with the site, you are taking risks. Ideally a search would produce nothing at all. In addition, I always hide my IP when I pick up or send email.

Security When Using Other Sites

They’re not, but I act as if all file-sharing forums are insecure. I work on the basis that someone on the staff could be a security risk so I make a policy of never discussing site business on other sites, unless I’m asking general questions. I’d certainly never say “I’m the admin of etc-torrents, hi!” on an open forum and wherever possible I use other aliases.

Find a good host you can trust who doesn’t ask for much verification of identity

Our site has had a few hosts since it began a few short years ago. The first was a friend of a friend of a friend who accepted us with no formal contract or ‘paperwork’, paid from any old PayPal account. For a while we just got users to donate directly to the host which meant I didn’t need to get involved at all. The second and third hosts were people who had established (anonymous) reseller accounts with big ISPs. As long as they got their money, they didn’t ask any awkward questions like: ‘What’s your name and address and credit card number?’ I communicate with any host using disposable email addresses (or something like Hushmail) combined with some sort of anonymizing system previously mentioned. I guess even more precautions could be taken, but time is time and we all have to do some productive work in the end!

Server Location

I would never choose a host in my own country and I’d never put a server in a country where my worst anti-piracy enemy is located, the legal wheels turn too easily. But if the wheels do turn really easily and your host hands over your personal details, you will have been clever enough to make sure that they never had the correct information in the first place. Pay your host on time and be a good customer, you need him onside.

Online Identity

Ok, so I may be a proud super admin (j/k!) but I’m not too keen to spread my nick around carelessly or needlessly. I try to resist the ego trip, even though it can be fun using your ‘power’ to get stuff you wouldn’t normally have access to! Remember, even online nicknames can be a source of identification over time. In my opinion, any admin who features himself on Facebook or MySpace in a way that could be linked back to his torrent activities, really needs a psychiatric evaluation. But I know of a couple who do and so far, they’ve survived. Maybe I’m crazy, and they’re all sane. It’s possible!

Security on the Site, Choosing and Dealing with Staff

Any logging on the server or control panel info excludes staff members details, so a rogue moderator with a grudge can’t get any useful information, should someone try to make it worth their while to provide it. No-one on the site knows anything really useful about me, even within my own team. None of us have ever met in real-life, but I make it my business to learn as much about them as possible, just in case. The very closest people to me on the site know my first name, I guess that’s ok?

Wrong!

I never let anyone know anything important about me, no matter how small. Small clues can easily add up to answers when put together like a jigsaw. Let people think they know your real name if you like, it’s functional and no-one really gets hurt. For the survival of the site I believe it’s acceptable for me to lie about my country of origin, my age, marital status and even my sex, but beware, pretending to be a girl will get you LOTS of attention! Look after the small things and everything else looks after itself.

It’s also a good move to encourage my staff to be security conscious too but I don’t force my regime onto them. I find that when choosing staff it’s best to never let people with inflated egos get close to you – they tend to have big mouths too. They generate tension and trouble and YOU will become a target with their boasting and trigger happy attitude. I like quiet, considered staff because i’m paranoid!.. but this style doesn’t suit everyone.

Try making other forum accounts and act like a normal user on them. You’d be surprised at what people will tell you about your own site that you didn’t already know when they think they aren’t talking to anyone important.

Site Donations

Anonymous PayPal accounts (or in a 3rd party’s name) are completely desirable. Although I suggest a level of transparency in showing users how much money in donations are received, making these records public provides a level of evidence of financial income to the site and you just know that this would be used against you at some point, should the shit hit the fan. If you know and trust your host, why not let users donate directly to him?

Don’t Break the Law!

Running a tracker is a gray area in most country’s laws but I try to stick to some basic guidelines to not show blatant disregard for things that are surely illegal in most places. Under no circumstances would I seed any copyright works on my own tracker. I saw an admin recently who had uploaded 4tb of warez and was showing off his stats for all to see. Why take the risk?

If you get a DMCA type takedown request, take the torrent down! The Pirate Bay guys are going crazy at me now I guess (they’re entitled to hold their own style of course!) but I see no point in doing anything unnecessary to annoy copyright holders, especially us small guys who don’t have many resources.

Do unto others as you’d have done to you!

Try and make good contacts at other torrent sites as they can be a valuable source of information. Try to stay out of conflict with others and be known as a problem solver, not a problem maker. A good reputation is a must to maintain admin karma ;) No-one wants online enemies, especially in huge numbers! People with a grudge and keyboard can really fuck you up. Don’t badmouth people to others unnecessarily , you have no idea who they know, who they might tell and what it could lead to.

A few basic tips to hopefully keep the right side of the law

1. If you can’t be identified, they can’t do anything against you personally.
2. Always respond to proper takedown requests. Be courteous, don’t make enemies.
3. Never seed anything yourself and don’t operate a seedbox. If others operate them on your tracker, that’s up to them.
4. Don’t run any kind of pay-to-download service unless you like police attention.
5. See 1

Final Thoughts About Being Anonymous

Being as anonymous as I can is a must for me and it helps me feel safe. It’s probably already past a healthy stage and it does have drawbacks. A few of my staff I love, I really do, they’re great guys but I can never let them know my true identity, which is sad for me because maybe we could become more to each other than just text on a screen. If I thought even one person knew who I was, my confidence in security would fall dramatically.

Being anonymous can be a quite lonely experience as you struggle to keep the very things that make you an individual, private, while constantly having to view people that probably don’t deserve it, with suspicion. But in the end you gotta keep the torrents going, so it’s all good.

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

Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit described it differently, as he said at the time: “OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.”

Among other things, the police claimed that OiNK was a money machine, and that Alan was making hundreds of thousands of pounds. However, everyone knows that OiNK was free to use and this fact was backed up by Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails: “If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

The IFPI and BPI did not only misinform the police, they also hijacked the OiNK.cd domain and displayed an ominous message indicating an investigation into the site’s users had begun. These propagandistic threats were supposed to scare former OiNK members, and they succeeded in this until OiNK reclaimed the domain.

With today’s extension, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find, but I assume they have figured out by now that the site is not as evil as the IFPI and BPI wanted them to believe.

To be continued.

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

Happy New Year!

The quotes…

The MPAA after they were caught infringing the copyright of Patrick Robin’s blogging software “Forest Blog”:

“The blog was only ever used for testing purposes.”

BitTorrent Inc. co-founder Ashwin Navin on iTunes DRM:

“iTunes DRM Inspires People to Pirate Content.”

The Pirate Bay’s Gottfrid Svartholm about his favorite anti-piracy organization:

“The MPAA can most accurately be described as rabid, obsessed lunatics.”

Mediadefender CEO Randy Saaf when we found out about Miivi:

“This is really fucked.”

Mark Cuban to Bram Cohen, in a rant about the new BitTorrent movie store:

“But where are they ? Not just the customers Bram. The content? I searched for Prison Break. Lots of torrents. None of them Legal. Is this what Fox had in mind when they signed up with you?”

President Basescu (Romanian President) on copyright infringement:

“Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world … Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania’s friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates.”

Shaw, Canadian ISP gives advise on how to configure BitTorrent:

“Set the KB/s LAN max upload speed [0:unlimited] value to 1.”

MPAA’s Dean Garfield about Pirate Party politicians:

“There’s nothing about what the Pirate Bay does or what the Pirate Party does that is legitimate.”

P2P virus to its victims:

“Ah, I see you are using P2P again……if you don’t stop within 0.5 seconds, i’m going to kill you!”

Scener about Feds that try to stop the Scene:

“No matter how hard the Feds try to stop the scene there are always people smarter than them out there. What they should be doing is leaving us to it and catching pedophiles, rapists and psychopathic killers rather than wasting resources on a few geeks.”

The Pirate Bay about the Caribbean pirate Jack Sparrow:

“Hollywood is trying to ridicule us pirates by portraying us as crazy but sympathetic adventurers. Not far from the truth, but in the 21st century real pirates are riding other torrents than that of the ocean”

BitTorrent admin about Leaseweb:

“It looks like we’re not going to be very safe anymore on Leaseweb, we are putting backups in place on another location, just in case.”

Demonoid explains why they were offline for almost a week, and moved from The Netherlands to Canada:

“We had a system problem which will force us to restore everything from backup. The disks are pretty much empty right now and until we are able to upload the backup and set up everything up, we have to close down.”

IsoHunt’s Gary to Brokep from The Pirate Bay:

“You are either illiterate and don’t check the frontpage of sites you are pointing fingers at, or you are a communist. Or both. What makes you think you have rights to content you didn’t produce? People’s rights vs. copyright holders’ rights? Please. I will laugh at you when you are marked a terrorist and US armies hunt you down. Not that I like the whole anti-terrorist thing from the US but I digress.”

Marnie stern about her BitTorrent addiction:

“Since I’ve been here I have downloaded…I mean I feel I’m going to jail, well, I discovered the torrent, but I feel I’ve downloaded, I would say, honestly 40 or 50 movies, which I hear isn’t that bad, you know, for jail. But I mean, because I’ve pretty much been staying in the studio and a little bit with Zach [Hill], I have all of this time to just sit….”

MPA to “Christmas” movie Pirates:

“We can say this to all the pirates out there: you’d better watch out, you’d better not try”

Pirate Bay admin Brokep on US politics:

“The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don’t want to see us give in to them.”

NiN’s Trent Reznor about OiNK after it was raided:

“I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted.”

TorrentSpy’s Justing Bunnel on the power of the entertainment industry:

“Unfortunately many companies use their power and influence to halt and punish innovations they cannot think of ways to make money with. The monopolies tried to stop the VHS, DVD, and MP3 player, but thankfully failed when they took it to Court. Now Imagine for a second all the amazing products they did manage to squash…”

Dave Peters, frontman of “Throwdown” on supporting musicians:

“If you wanna really support a band, “steal” their album….help bury the label….and buy a tshirt when you show up at their show and sing every word.”

“A former music buyer writes to the CRIA:

“The music industry itself needs to recognize that they are to blame for sagging record sales. For years, they have been marketing recycled crap, and people are getting tired of it.”

Comcast to its customers:

“Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.”

(but we do slow it down)

Researchers on the effect of filesharing on CD sales:

“We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.”

Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the Canadian police on piracy:

“Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted. It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it,” he added.

TorrentFreak council in an open letter to the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN:

“Your “news release” is peppered with inaccurate information, calculated to mislead and intimidate the millions of legitimate users of the many peer-to-peer filesharing services that are in common use throughout the world.”

50 Cent on filesharing:

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”

Eric Wilkinson, the producer of the independent film “The Man from Earth”, wrote an email to RLSlog in which he thanks them for the free promotion they gave him:

“In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”

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

In fact, the police returned the servers last week, not before deleting all the “evidence” that it held. The police made images of the servers, but it is doubtful if destroying OiNK’s property, and the original evidence is even legal.

The British and the Dutch police both contributed to what they named “Operation Ark Royal”, allegedly acting upon twisted information fed to them by the IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations.

Among other things, the police claimed that OiNK was a money machine, and that Alan was making hundreds of thousands of pounds. However, everyone knows that OiNK was free to use and this fact was backed up by Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails: “If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

The IFPI and BPI did not only misinform the police, they also hijacked the OiNK.cd domain and displayed an ominous message indicating an investigation into the site’s users had begun. These propagandistic threats were supposed to scare former OiNK members, and they succeeded in this until OiNK reclaimed the domain.

What once was the best BitTorrent music tracker on the Internet is now gone and wont return. Although most of its members and releasing talent found a new homes by now, there is little doubt that the music industry will continue to alienate itself from their customers until they are dead and gone.

For those who want to help Alan out, there is an official OiNK legal defense fundraiser where money can be donated to cover the legal costs. If for some reason the money isn’t needed it will be donated to an animal charity. At this point it is still unclear what the charges against Alan will be, if there will be any at all.

Stay tuned.

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

We’ve carried articles in the past about the Scene. So legend goes, these people are ultra-secretive but of course there’s always a few who like to talk, despite being targeted by law enforcement in cases such as Operation Fastlink and Operation Buccaneer.

Last week, an administrator of a Topsite (an important guy, near to the top of the so-called ‘Piracy Pyramid‘) linked to some very famous release groups, broke cover in a very rare interview with Trond Bie of itavisen.no, seemingly giving away quite a few secrets such as the security techniques used by the Scene and the locations of some of their servers. He also explains why the Scene dislikes torrents and sites like The Pirate Bay, and reveals how some torrent sites manage to get Scene releases so quickly.

In the interview, the Site-Op mocks the efforts of Norwegian police in trying to shutdown the Norwegian Scene, joking that Norwegian law prevents them from being caught in the traditional ways. This attitude could’ve been the thing that attracted the eye of Espen Tondel, the aggressive MPAA/IFPI lawyer who also talked about action against torrent sites recently. RayJoha, a reader of TorrentFreak who did a lot of work on this article, contacted Tondel and asked him a few questions which you can read at the bottom of this article.

The Interview (translation from Norwegian, courtesy RayJoha)

The guy we talked to is one of the few administrators of a Topsite in Norway. He’s in his mid twenties, is a student of programming and has been a part of the Scene for many years. He first became a Topsite Site-Op in 2003 and has since been responsible for adding users, banning ruleset violators and programming automating IRC-scripts.

In addition to being a Site-Op he also has his own home-based server where he downloads movies, games and TV-shows to and from the Topsites. He has a very fast Internet connection which make it possible to download a DVD movie in minutes.

Everybody keeps everybody informed

In addition to categories such as games, software, music and movies we have a news category on the Topsites warning against raids. Lamers are also posted in this news category. It’s also possible to find out who leaks warez to trackers and the P2P community. Those who leak will be banned from the Scene. It is very easy for the police to find those people who are spreading torrents.

It’s not unusual to have 30 TerraBytes of warez on a Topsite. Last summer German police raided a Topsite which had 40 members. The following was posted on Topsites news sections to warn the entire Scene, (from German):

New police action in Germany. This morning 40 members got a visit from the BKA, (Bundes Kriminal Amt). All user accounts etc…. Everybody that has visited the site is in great danger!

I miss you

Laws must change?

Changing the laws will have no effect. The MP3 legislation… the only thing they do is make it difficult for ordinary downloaders/torrent users – those who download from a website, torrentsite, Limewire or with any other P2P software. It would be easier for the government if the police could create their own ‘entrapment servers’, but they could only hurt the Scene, not destroy it.

What’s the probability of getting caught?

HaHa, there’s almost no chance of getting caught in Norway. The Norwegian police cannot do anything illegal to get somebody. By law, they cannot set up servers to entice users to join. All the users in the network know each other. Members of the Scene have joined only through someone vouching for them. I do it because it’s a learning experience and fun. I learn a lot about running servers, programming, (C, C ++, Java and scripting). I started with this before I realized I could have a career in programming. When you learn a few programming languages it’s quite easy to pick up new ones.

His interest in file sharing has been there for years, but it took some time before he became a Topsite Site-Op. He reveals that there are lot of Norwegian ISPs, especially those that deliver fiber connections, that have Topsite servers as customers.

The first time I became a Site-Op it was 2003. I started setting up servers on my own, but at that time we had no affiliation with the Scene. There are lots of sites on Lyse, Hafslund and Sandefjord and I also know that servers are found around university campuses.

The Site-Op tells us that he has no plans of quitting piracy, even when he gets a real job in the software business.

It’s real hard to catch pirates, i’ve learned. I get to understand how it works, making it possible to protect myself against it. Anything that comes to market is cracked even before we post it. There’s no point for the industry in spending millions on copy protection.

The social side of the Scene

Is there a social environment in the Scene or is it just IRC chatting all the time?

Nobody sees anybody. The IRC OPs knows who the others are, but normally we don’t know who they are in real life. We only use nick names.

The Site-Op feels it’s easy to replace persons that are arrested in raids with some exceptions. Game crackers [people who remove copy protection] can’t easily be replaced. There’s just a few people with their skills around.

It’s correct that you can’t easily replace a cracker, it’s a real genius game. Sometimes we might lose everyone, but they’re real hard to catch. Let’s say they manage to cripple the Game-Scene, but they still have to deal with movies and music, and thats something Mr. anybody can do. [Rip movies and music]

The FBI are allowed to set up fake servers, but they are not successful in their endeavors. If the Norwegian police are going to catch anyone they have to adopt the same strategy. You can’t take down Topsites without resorting to illegality: they’d have to distribute copyrighted material. Actually doing something illegal. note: strictly prohibited in Norway

Site-Op’s responsibilities

I don’t know any informants, but there is a strong possibility there are some. If the Scene discovers this the individual will be banned with the help of Topsite news and barred from access to any resource within the Scene.

As a Site-Op he has a series of tasks perform in order for the site to work properly.

A Site-Op adds users and makes sure the ruleset are obeyed. He’s programming and scripting. Linux servers are almost always running glftpd.

Pre-Information

The Site-Op is one of a selected few who has pre-information. Pre-information is information about a specific warez that haven’t been shared with anyone yet. The different groups, (Razor1911, Fairlight etc), have their own folders on the Topsites with not yet released content. The competition is fierce when it comes to being the first to release a movie or a game.

When a “ware” is pre-released a so-called Race starts. A Race means that every Topsite tries to be the first to distribute. In this way the Scene is almost like an economy in itself. First to market doesn’t mean monetary survival but rather the gain of Respect.

There are unbelievably few people that has pre-information. Only Admins can browse all Pre-folders. One shouldn`t sneak a peak on a pre. It’s a rule not to browse on somebody else’s folder.

The Site-Op’s connections with the ‘Big’ people in the Scene

A Site-Op communicates with the real ‘big-wigs’ in the Scene – the ones that really puzzle the game and movie industries. The largest groups use their own IRC servers to communicate, while the Topsites often use Linknet with SSL.

We are in direct contact with Fairlight and the others. We talk to them on IRC. A great proportion of them are Linknet. The largest Topsites have their own servers giving them increased security.

Additionally, the Site-Op reveals that many Sceners post internal information on Wikipedia.

The scene harbours ill feelings towards the torrent community. According to the Scene they are stealing their warez and posting it on trackers. The Scene is of the opinion that it’s real easy to bust people that posts warez on torrent sites like The Pirate Bay.

What happens is that people leak from the Scene to torrent sites just before a release. That indicates that these lamers have access to early sites. And if you are the one of those that does this you are categorized as an Insecure user and therefore banned from the Scene. So, to be clear, this is the only connection we have to the torrent scene.

Dislike of The Pirate Bay

We, as Site-ops, have no fondness for The Pirate Bay. We do not want to talk to the press because it pressures the police to focus on us. As a software programmer I dislike file sharing, because of the small companies that suffers from it. Members of the Scene learn a lot and find it to be a fun experience. The top Sceners buy the music and the movies on DVD anyway.

As an example I have purchased, ( With money ), FlashFXP to support the developers. This is software I use a lot. If you follow this thinking the best thing to do is to get rid of all the file sharers, mainly because it`s so insecure. The police are able to just walk in and identify the sharers. END

Q+A: Espen Tondel, MPAA/IFPI lawyer

Q: Is there anything in this interview that gives you tips on how to get these guys?

Let me put it this way – we have a considerable amount of information about these sites. We know how they work.

Q :Do you think this article [the original interview] will make it easier to bring the Norwegian Scene to justice, considering that he reveals what kind of software and which ISPs they’re using?

From my point of view the Norwegian Scene will be brought to justice, we possess a lot of information.

Q: Norway has always been at the forefront of technology development. Do you think Hollywood should target Norway first?

Norway is obviously a good place for tech development and we have necessary legislation hence Norway is a good place for pursuing these kind of activities. We have the full backing of the Motion Picture Association in doing that.

Did this guy give away too many secrets or is Tondel simply bluffing? Time will tell.

Update: Some people are naturally questioning the authenticity of the guy claiming to be a Site-Op. The author of the original article, Trond Bie from Norway’s ITavisen has just confirmed that he conducted this interview at his home and all the time he was watching the Site-Op doing ‘administrative stuff’ on the topsite which he says, couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

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

OinkPlus displays a list of similar artists, a link to other torrents from that artist on the BitTorrent site you’re on, the artist/band’s bio, a Last.fm player, and, if available, a MySpace player. The script also displays links to the artist’s presence on Wikipedia, Amazon, Hype Machine, Pandora, and so on.

The extra data loads beneath the regular content on the .torrent download pages and integrates very well into the style of each of the compatible sites. Personally I find the script very useful to preview tracks from artists and to discover new music. Below is an example of what it looks like on The Pirate Bay.

Indieana told TorrentFreak that in future versions it will be possible to disable certain features or block the use of OinkPlus on certain sites.

Music discovery is an essential part of private torrent sites. Although OinkPlus was originally developed exclusively for OiNK, after the site was taken down by the BPI and the IFPI, its author decided to go all-out and support not only the most popular private torrent sites, but some of the most popular public ones too.

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