In Italy, Fapav (Federazione Anti-Pirateria Audiovisiva) is currently embarking on one such mission. It has gone to the Civil Court of Rome asking it to compel Italy’s largest ISP, Telecom Italia, to take unprecedented action to deal with subscribers the anti-piracy group claims are infringing their members’ copyrights.

Fapav has several demands. It wants Telecom Italia to monitor their users and eventually report those who file-share to the authorities, block a whole host of sites (including The Pirate Bay, 1337x and isoHunt) and collaborate with them in the future to fight piracy. If it does not comply, Fapav wants the ISP to pay 10,000 euros per day by default.

Fapav insists that Telecom Italia has not done enough to stop its users from file-sharing and point to their own monitoring research which indicates that “hundreds of thousands” of the ISP’s subscribers had downloaded around 1.6 million copies of copyright movies.

Telecom Italia is refusing to comply and in turn has accused Fapav of breaching the privacy of its subscribers by spying on them, referencing an earlier case where German record label Peppermint Jam spied on Internet users via Swiss monitoring firm Logistep in order to extract money from them.

The label was ordered to stop by the authorities who deemed the activities to be illegal.

Paolo Nuti, President of ISP association AIIP, told Repubblica that Fapav were trying to force ISPs to become “sheriffs of the Internet” while taking responsibility for the activities of their subscribers. He went on to criticize the anti-piracy group’s unauthorized monitoring, stating that in his view Fapav had not only violated the norms of privacy but also committed a crime punishable by up to six years in prison.

The positions of both sides will be tested next week. The hearing will take place before the Civil Court of Rome on February 10th.

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

He rose to fame in the wider BitTorrent community when in early 2008 a Danish court ordered the ISP Tele2 to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay.

In response, the Pirate Bay team created a site in his name, TheJesperBay, which contained information and code allowing Tele2 users to evade the block.

Not only did Bay have a site named after him, Copenhagen’s ‘Pirate Cinema‘ even briefly changed their name in his honor.

But after many cat and mouse games with his opponents, Jesper Bay has just announced he will quit as IFPI Denmark’s director and spokesman at the end of January.

“I’ve been here six and a half years and think that maybe it’s time to try something else,” he told Computerworld.

Although Bay’s job has been very demanding with an understandably high workload and lots of pressure, he says that’s not the reason for his departure – he just feels he’s been in the position long enough. Bay admits that at times, things have been tough.

“Sometimes it may have been frustrating to be in a role where you know you have right on your side, but it is very difficult to penetrate with the message, because there are so many other interests at stake in the ongoing debate,” he conceded.

Bay went on to criticize the media’s coverage of the battle between online pirates and the recording industry.

“We are continuing to experience relatively sensible people at relatively reasonable media outlets, writing completely what suits them. And very often very poorly researched,” he said.

Noting that the issue of piracy and copyright is a hot one at the moment, largely due to the fact that there is so much at stake for the many parties involved, he accepts that while the industry has not won the war, they have won several battles.

Conceding in late 2008 that Denmark would not see the introduction of “3 strikes” for music file-sharers must have been one of the more bitter pills to swallow.

Bay explained that part of his job has been to refine the debate surrounding these issues, and extend it beyond combating piracy to include discussion of new business models and the way forward in a digital world.

But despite his upcoming departure, Bay says he has nothing lined up and will just take some time off to assess his future. He insists, however, that he has not received a better offer of employment from the pirates.

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

Their decision to prevent BitTorrent users from sharing content over their network has sparked the Net Neutrality debate, resulting in an FCC investigation and various lawsuits. One of these suits was settled last month.

Comcast agreed to put $16m into a fund to pay BitTorrent users that were affected by the ‘network management’ which made it impossible for them to share files after their downloads had completed.

Each of the affected users can now claim their $16 in damages, but those who do are required to state to the Court, under penalty of perjury, that their use of BitTorrent “was for lawful purpose consistent with applicable copyright and other laws.” This required statement came as an unpleasant surprise to many affected Comcast users.

“Am I supposed to be able to remember everything I downloaded during that period, and be cognizant of the copyright status of those items not only then, but now?” one worried Comcast user told TorrentFreak. “I certainly do not think that sixteen dollars is enough incentive to possibly suffer the penalties of committing unwitting federal perjury.”

Other Comcast users will have to agree with this assessment, simply because it is often not clear when one is violating copyright law. For example, there is still a large portion of BitTorrent users who think that downloading a TV-show that they could have watched for free on TV, is not a crime.

It wouldn’t surprise us if a large portion of the $16 million fund is left unclaimed because of this required statement, saving Comcast a significant amount of money.

That leads us to the question why was included in the first place. It somehow suggests that Comcast was attempting to stop copyright infringement with their throttling practices, aside from the network management purpose it served. Maybe they just want to hang on to their money.

Whatever the motivation to include this option, it is completely irrelevant to the case itself. Comcast has never used copyright infringement as a justification for stopping BitTorrent traffic, so the lawfulness of the traffic should not be an issue.

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

It might not come as a surprise to most people, but Bono’s wish is a little out of touch with reality. By mimicking the words of the record label bosses high up the food chain of the music industry, he fails to see where the real problem lies.

Over the last ten years the RIAA mounted the most aggressive anti-piracy campaign against file-sharers seen anywhere, collecting millions in settlements from thousands of households. The songwriters didn’t benefit much from that.

The RIAA also collected as much as $400m from settlements from the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt. That money was supposed to go to the artists whose rights had been allegedly infringed upon, but the labels weren’t that keen to hand any of that over either, even when faced with the threat of lawsuits from the artists themselves.

The major labels, Warner, Sony, EMI and Universal, are currently being sued by another group of artists over sales of compilation albums featuring their music for which they haven’t been given a cent. The money they’re owed collectively is a staggering $6 billion. Looks like the ‘little guy’ is in trouble without the assistance of file-sharing.

While one set of corporates ripping off musicians doesn’t get a mention in Bono’s top 10, other supposed evil-doers do. Singing from the same sheet as his paymasters at Universal, Bono also takes aim at ISPs, claiming that their “swollen” profits “perfectly mirror” the lost revenues in the music business.

This “blaming of the messenger” will be a continuing theme in the next decade, and one which Bono dwells on for a moment, noting that if it’s possible to crack down on online child pornography in the US, and China has the ability to suppress online dissent, then it’s also perfectly possible to track downloads of copyrighted music.

Well, yes, of course it is. That’s been perfectly possible for the last decade, but what good does it do? The RIAA has largely given up suing individuals and even when countries like France pass fairly draconian legislation to have people removed from the Internet for sharing content, there are plenty of ways around it.

“The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files,” says Bono. “The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we’re just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of “24” in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it free.”

While it’s true that we are only a couple of years away from being to download huge amounts of data in just a few seconds and that will have an impact on the volumes of movie and TV show downloading, we can’t actually watch a full season of “24″ in 24 seconds. Real-time will suffice, though.

Right at this moment via sites like Watch-Movies-Online, it’s possible to view the very latest movies instantaneously. With the new streaming functionality available in the latest beta of uTorrent, the same can be achieved via torrent swarms.

Bono, the future is now. Suing Internet users does not work and blaming the ISPs will only prove counter-productive. Monitoring the Internet will prove futile. The only way to deal with piracy is to compete with it.

As we pointed out in our article covering the most downloaded TV shows of 2009, there is huge interest in on-demand TV and there are millions of viewers that can potentially bring in millions of dollars in revenue.

The growth in unauthorized downloading of TV shows and other media is a sign that consumers want something currently unavailable through the official channels, and while price is a factor, it is not necessarily all about ‘free’.

Serving the insatiable demand during the next decade at a reasonable price should be the main aim of the media industry, as locking down the Internet will not only suffocate their customers, but also their own business. That definitely won’t help the songwriters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Ways Savvy Internet Users Will Neutralize Hadopi

Free options

MP3 Search Engines

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

Direct Downloads

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

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

Streaming Music and Video

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

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

Premium options

Overseas MP3 Sites

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

Newsgroups

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

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

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

Anonymous VPN

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

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

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

And they would be absolutely right.

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

Yates was asked by his employer to make a promotional copy for the Jay Leno show, but made an extra copy which he shared with friends and family.

Yates’s actions didn’t go unnoticed by his employer and the FBI, who tracked him down through the company’s surveillance cameras. Yates was later arrested and admitted that he distributed the movie among friends and family. The arrest led to a sentence of six months in a federal prison from which he was released in September last year.

The damage done by the leak didn’t stop there though. A member of the Yates family passed the film on to Mischa Wynhausen, who decided to upload it to Mininova. Following an FBI investigation, Wynhausen, a 31 year-old from Irvine CA, was busted as well.

Wynhausen confessed to uploading the film to Mininova and accepted a sentence of three years probation.

Although Wynhausen’s offense is considered to be more severe than that of Yates, he doesn’t have to serve time in jail. According to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, this difference is in part because Wynhausen cooperated with the FBI, while Yates initially lied about his actions.

On BitTorrent the movie was never a big hit, despite the fact that it was available online before the theater release. This lack of interest mimics the box office earnings. With a production budget of $62 million, ‘The Love Guru’ was a big flop for Paramount Pictures, bringing in little over $40 million at the box office worldwide.

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

Unlike the Pirate Bay operators, Oliver didn’t host any torrents on his website. No, he committed the crime of dressing in clothing similar to that worn by The Village People thirty years ago, but without their permission.

In a promo trailer for the show, Jamie’s American Road Trip, the British cook dressed up as the 70’s style icons. The clip ran on TV, accompanied with a poster campaign in the London Underground, all featuring Jamie dressed up as each of the six members of the hit disco band.

According to the Web Sheriff, Jamie Oliver’s actions are blatant trademark infringement, seriously hurting the revenues of the Indian chief, cowboy and the four other members of the band. “The Village People are still a huge, multimillion-dollar global business,” the Sheriff commented.

Much like the Pirate Bay, Channel 4, the broadcaster of Jamie’s show, is not impressed by the Sheriffs threats. “We are confident that the promotional campaign for Jamie’s American Road Trip does not infringe any copyright/trademark rights which the Village People may have. No parties have received a formal legal claim from the Village People and, if one is received, it will be vigorously defended,” a Channel 4 spokesperson said.

If the case does indeed come to court, it could be risky for the Web Sheriff to dress up in his usual outfit, as that is more than likely trademarked by a third party who might also wish to issue similar frivolous legal threats.

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

Nevertheless, Uggla insisted that Spotify is a fantastic service with a great range of music to sample. However, he felt that the fact he wasn’t getting paid was the fault of the major labels involved in the project (Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros, Universal Music got 4.8% for 2,446 euros, Warner Music paid 1,957 Euros for 3.8% and EMI pocketed 1.9% for an investment of 980 Euros), claiming that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.”

As the dust settled on the story, many non-Swedish readers were saying “Magnus who?” and wondering if this artist’s lack of mainstream popularity was the real reason behind him earning virtually nothing. But what about big artists? What about really, really big artists with huge international appeal. Say, an artist like Lady Gaga, who has sold more than 4 million albums and shifted in excess of 20 million paid digital downloads?

According to a report today, Lady Gaga’s track “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks during a five month period on Spotify and was played more than a million times. So how much money does she get paid by STIM (the Swedish Performing Rights Society) for this massive achievement?

SEK 1150 – that’s around $167 or roughly 113 Euros.

Commenting on the story, Douglas Léon, better known as Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito, said he was dismayed.

“It is totally sick. We musicians have no rights, you may not charge [for music] anymore,” adding that Lady Gaga could’ve earned more driving an illegal taxi-cab.

Swedish artist, music producer and philosopher Alexander Bard, however, said that this payment was better than Lady Gaga would have achieved from her music being available via The Pirate Bay, noting that the amount was “…more than zero.”

Technically Bard is absolutely right, but let’s be honest – Lady Gaga would blow the money she earned from STIM in a 20 minute hotel mini-bar bender. Looking at the overall downloads, let’s face it, per track she earned pretty much near to nothing from both services.

While Spotify is to be commended for having the guts to try something new, for providing a truly wonderful service and for having achieved such a lot technically in a such a short space of time, one can’t help but wonder if it is ever going to bring in decent money for the artists.

After all, aren’t these the very people the music industry continually holds up as the important ones to encourage, nurture and support?

Lady Gaga’s example shows that Spotify’s business model needs some work, and the labels seem to agree on this. The US launch of the service has been delayed earlier this week, allegedly because of concerns about Spotify’s ability to upgrade free users to paid customers.

“We think Spotify is a great service but they’re going to have to convince us they can convert enough people from free to paid subscriptions to make it worth our while,” one label told the Financial Times. “As an ad-supported service the economics don’t work at all.”

Despite the startup troubles for Spotify the reviews from users, many of which were avid file-sharers, are still extremely positive. The service recently launched an iPhone app that allows users to play the tracks on the go, with or without an Internet connection, which many saw as the missing link. Now all they have to do is come up with a plan to actually make money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The case continued Thursday in the Federal Court, with iiNet CEO Michael Malone taking the stand for the fourth consecutive day, and possibly his last.

Not unusually for a copyright trial involving BitTorrent, the issue of The Pirate Bay was raised.

Yesterday AFACT barrister Tony Bannon incorrectly suggested that iiNet’s very own BitTorrent tracker’s functionality had been taken down, later to discover that in fact the court’s network blocked BitTorrent transfers.

Bannon indicated that he would like to be able to give a courtroom demonstration of The Pirate Bay Thursday, and the judge agreed that it would be possible to lift the block so he could do so.

According to ITNews, Bannon was today true to his word.

After the demo, Bannon enquired of Malone whether iiNet had a desire for its subscribers to be able to access the world’s largest tracker, “…when the only purpose it serves is providing a way to download unauthorized copies of films?”

This question was met with objection from iiNet barrister Richard Cobden, who argued that customer “desire” was irrelevant to the case. The judge, Justice Cowdroy, was also keen to discover the relevance.

Bannon then became the latest in a long line of movie and music industry lawyers to reveal that should his clients win the case, they will take legal action to have not only the world’s largest tracker blocked from iiNet’s customers, but other similar sites.

He also revealed that around 50% of the alleged copyright infringements in the case came courtesy of The Pirate Bay.

Then Bannon attempted to show that by allowing its customers to access The Pirate Bay, iiNet effectively sanctioned and authorized their infringing activities.

“We seek Mr Malone’s position as to whether or not his customers should have access to sites such as this,” said Bannon.

However, after legal argument, Bannon withdrew the question.

Malone did, however, concede that iiNet had taken no steps to block The Pirate Bay, but qualified this by indicating that the company didn’t possess the means to do so. Bannon asked if it was technically possible and Malone replied that he could achieve a primitive block with additional equipment, but even that could be easily circumvented

“To completely and conclusively block access to The Pirate Bay, I believe it to be beyond our technical capability or of any ISP,” replied Malone.

Asked by Cobden if iiNet had ever blocked any web sites, Malone said the company had not.

This technical inability led to iiNet pulling out of the Australian government’s filtering trials, reports ComputerWorld. Malone has been an outspoken critic of the filtering scheme, labeling it “fundamentally flawed” and saying his company would only participate in the trials to prove that filtering would fail.

The case continues.

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

The case continued Wednesday in the Federal Court, with iiNet CEO Michael Malone taking the stand for the third consecutive day.

Again AFACT barrister Tony Bannon tried to portray iiNet as an encourager of copyright infringement on its network, by referring to iiNet marketing where the ISP measures bandwidth in terms of how much music or TV episodes people can download. Malone said the company did this simply to give a customer an easier barometer by which to measure their consumption.

When questioned on the music aspect, Malone said the company referred to legal downloads, such as those from iTunes. Bannon countered by saying this could not be the case, since iiNet did not count downloads from iTunes towards a customer’s bandwidth quota.

According to iTWire, a welcome email from iiNet to new customers ended with, “Thanks for choosing iiNet. Happy downloading.”

By drawing attention to the above ponts, AFACT hopes to show that iiNet encouraged infringements, thereby losing its safe habor protection as a carrier.

CW reports that AFACT presented press articles regarding the levels of BitTorrent transfers on the Internet, in the context of actions taken by ISPs in order to limit P2P traffic.

In one article, Malone had said that BitTorrent transfers accounted for around 50% of all Internet traffic and admitted in court that BitTorrent had been used on iiNet’s network since it became available. He went on to agree that while much of this traffic involved the transfer of movies and TV shows, he didn’t feel that “..every young person in Australia is downloading illegally using BitTorrent.”

One exchange apparently raised a laugh in the courtroom when Bannon accused Malone of attracting heavy-usage customers in order to boost iiNet profits.

“I would prefer [those customers] go to someone else and let someone else be sued,” said Malone.

“And you’re happy to take their money in the meantime?” Bannon asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

Yet again, Bannon raised the issue of iiNet’s failure to forward AFACT copyright infringement allegations to its customers. However, an email presented from the Internet Industry Association’s Peter Coroneos, indicated that he was concerned that doing so could lead to an assumption that ISPs are responsible for the actions of their customers.

In the email exchange with Malone, Coroneos said it would be preferable and advantageous for all involved if the content owners could provide some legal alternatives.

After Bannon showed the court documentation showing policies in place at rival ISPs to deal with allegations of copyright infringement, Malone again confirmed that iiNet has no formal policy on how to deal with these type of allegations, noting that the company had yet to be presented with evidence of what he described as a “repeat infringer”.

Earlier in the case, Malone had defined a repeat infringer as one who had been proven as such by a court, but Bannon mocked Malone, asking if the iiNet CEO had just heard what he’d said and would he like to think about the question again for a moment.

Malone said he didn’t and Bannon accused him of treating the proceedings as a game.

The case continues tomorrow.

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

Continuing first from yesterday’s proceedings, ITnews reported an exchange between iiNet CEO Michael Malone and movie industry barrister Tony Bannon, over Malone’s understanding of BitTorrent.

Malone told the court that while he had an understanding of the protocol, he had never used uTorrent, the client used earlier by Bannon to give the court a technical demonstration. Bannon’s demo used iiNet’s own tracker (an installation of RivetTracker) which it has used to distributed several press releases which all relate to the trial.

It is difficult to see where Bannon was going with his questioning, but it began with an admittance by Malone that the torrent files were intended to be used by people with access to a BitTorrent client. Malone then denied that the releases were specifically targeted at iiNet customers, noting that anyone can access them

Under further questioning regarding the inclusion of a note in the torrent files dialogue box indicating the files were non-pirated, Malone reiterated that while he had an understanding of the BitTorrent protocol, he did not have experience of the client used by Bannon

Then, with an apparent deafness towards Malone’s perfectly clear response, and demonstrating an apparent ignorance between a BitTorrent client and the BitTorrent protocol, Bannon sought to press Malone into admitting to his 400,000 customers that he didn’t understand BitTorrent.

Again, Malone stated that he didn’t know how to put a comment on a torrent file, but Bannon persisted in trying to get Malone to admit that he knows how uTorrent 1.8.4 works, but Malone said he’d never used it. There could, however, be people in iiNet who had, he conceded.

Bannon then said that in the last 24 hours the torrent file functionality for the press releases had been removed. Malone said that if it had, he certainly hadn’t requested it, asking Bannon how he was attempting to access the Internet, suggesting that a firewall in the court was stopping the transfer.

TorrentFreak’s checks show a single seeder on each torrent and each one worked absolutely perfectly.

Moving on to iiNet’s handling of copyright infringement allegations, iTWire reports that Bannon tried to paint a picture that iiNet’s policy of forwarding AFACT notices to the police was little more than a cynical attempt to pretend that they were dealing with them, when in fact they were not.

For the umpteenth time in this case, Malone said that he was under no obligation to act on mere allegations from AFACT which were not backed up by a court order.

“AFACT was telling us to disconnect customers without further ado,” said Malone. “The question is, what should we do when confronted with illegal activity? And our response is, report it to the proper authorities.”

While iiNet said it had always been policy to forward the notices to the police, ITWire notes that evidence emerged that the company had sent notifications twice, although there was no indication of how many infringement notices were in each batch.

Yesterday Malone said that the evidence provided by tracking company DtecNet’s investigation was “compelling” and should be reviewed by a third party and the courts. In the face of this statement, Bannon asked Malone why he had not taken action based on AFACT’s allegations.

“This is a right,” said Malone, “not an obligation of iiNet.”

These days arguments in favor of anti-piracy action seem almost incomplete with the obligatory reference to child pornography, as we heard in yesterday’s propaganda piece from CBS. This case is no different.

Bannon put it to Malone that if the evidence provided was “compelling” and Malone had received “compelling evidence” that an iiNet customer was accessing child porn, would the company allow the user to do so “day after day?”

Of course, any allegations of this nature would involve the police, and the police or the courts would do the investigation, get the proper paperwork and order iiNet to comply, which they naturally would. Malone said that on mere AFACT allegations of civil infringement (as apposed to an infinitely more serious and jailable criminal offense), such action would not be permitted.

Bannone then pressured Malone to admit that “…you’re happy to tell your customers this from the witness box,” that iiNet will not disconnect subscribers for infringing copyright.

At this point one has to wonder if Bannon is deaf or just plain stubborn. It is absolutely crystal clear to anyone following these proceedings that yes, iiNet will disconnect customers for copyright infringement, providing there has been due process and a court has ruled that disconnection is appropriate.

The case continues tomorrow.

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

Today, iiNet CEO Michael Malone was questioned at length over dealings he had with Westnet, another ISP which was acquired by his company for AUS $81 million in May 2008.

Westnet had developed an automated system to pass on infringement notices from copyright holders to its customers, a process which Malone earlier described as “making more work for no benefit,” and was said to be scathing in defense of due process and consumer rights.

“Taking the opposing argument, a random third party is lodging an unsubstantiated accusation against a customer and you’re passing it on?” wrote Malone in an email to Westnet, continuing, “Your current approach is doing damage to the industry and iiNet’s position on this matter.”

According to itNews, today Malone admitted he had “hit the roof” when he had discovered Westnet’s policy on infringement notices.

When any company acquires another there is often a need to standardize procedures and policies, and with iiNet and Westnet the position was no different. Malone said that whenever he found differences in policies between the two companies he took steps to bring those of Westnet into line with those at iiNet. He also stated that he was unaware that Westnet had failed to follow his instructions and adopt iiNet group policy following the acquisition.

One of the reasons he sought to change the Westnet policy, he said, was to bring the company into line with the position held by the Internet Industry Association on the issue.

Cross-examining Malone on iiNet’s role in providing a broadband service which enabled users to share movies using BitTorrent, senior counsel Tony Bannon for the movie industry referred to infringement notices sent to iiNet for the Sony movie, Pineapple Express.

According to CW, Malone responded that as a mere service provider, iiNet had no way of knowing if any of its customers were engaged in copyright infringement, but could confirm that the individual who allegedly committed the breaches was still an iiNet customer.

The company was not aware, however, if the customer continued to breach copyright.

The case continues tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today the group serves more than 16 million visitors a month on its website alone, and a multiple of that on the other torrent sites they distribute their releases on.

Several days ago EZTV’s website suddenly went offline without prior notice, something that usually leads to wild rumors about what the cause. Luckily EZTV’s problems are due to technical problems and they are currently working on a comeback.

EZTV’s Novaking told TorrentFreak that a rebuild of the servers stuffed up and they are currently waiting for some tech people to look into it. It’s not clear when the site will return, but it’s safe to assume that it will be a matter of days, not weeks or months.

This is not the first prolonged outage the popular TV-torrent site has suffered this year. During the summer the website was down for six weeks. It went offline because of hardware problems, but EZTV decided to take advantage of the situation and relocate all hardware to a new datacenter while implementing several new features.

Even though the website is currently offline, EZTV’s releases are still widely available though a number of sites. “You can still get our stuff from Mininova, The Pirate Bay, Twitter and Zoink,” Novaking told TorrentFreak.

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

One major site that has showed an acute aversion to saying just about anything to outsiders is Demonoid. This semi-private site has nevertheless made the news dozens of times, most recently due to its recent downtime, as reported here on TorrentFreak.

“We are experiencing power outages that have caused some ram and hard drive issues. We might have to shut down everything to fix and prevent further damage,” said Demonoid in a statement six weeks ago, warning that downtime could run to “…days maybe, until we can change the power circuit.”

However, TorrentFreak has received possibly conflicting information from Demonoid’s host, Colocall in Ukraine, who said in a statement: “There were no problems with power supply at the location where Demonoid servers are hosted.”

While information about Demonoid is always scarce, information coming out of Colocall is a rarity too, since the company has previously refused to speak with journalists about their most infamous customer. That’s why it was of great interest when Ukrainian blogger Pavel Golubovskiy contacted TorrentFreak to say he had netted an interview with Colocall. Here is a translation of the questions related to Demonoid;

Why did you choose to host Demonoid?

The customer came to us and ordered a particular service. For us it wasn’t a political decision, Demonoid is an ordinary client for us.

What exactly do you host, the inferno.demonoid.com tracker?

They brought their servers, which are now located in our data center. We don’t know what information is stored there – we do not have access to this information. These servers are supported remotely by Demonoid technical staff.

Is there a way to contact the Demonoid admins?

They will not answer you. Many people want to contact them – journalists, fans, police, local authorities from different countries. But the Demonoid admins have a very selective approach to e-mail correspondence. When the police wanted to contact them, I specifically warned the admins that they had to respond to this request.

So the police already inquired about Demonoid?

Well, our local authorities are interested in Demonoid all the time. Rightholders associations are constantly trying to put pressure on us, including pressure with the help of Ukrainian authorities. We redirect them to the admins, but do not interfere or try to negotiate.

Are they putting any serious pressure on you?

It sounds strange, but Ukraine is still a jural state. Therefore IFPI’s personal opinion is just that, their personal opinion, despite the fact that the budgets of the IFPI participants are comparable to the budget of the Ukraine.

Aren’t you afraid that there can be a similar situation with Demonoid’s servers as there was with Infostore.org site? [famous Ukrainian file-sharing site, its servers were confiscated by police about a year ago]

As a hosting-provider we take such risks into account. This can happen not only with Demonoid, but with any client. We do not control what information is stored on servers, anybody can buy our hosting service.

Anti-pirates and the media-lobby are now trying to shift all the responsibility for file-sharing onto Internet providers, so that providers will have to monitor user activities. Will this affect hosting providers too?

We have such laws in draft in our parliament periodically. But the Ukrainian law “On communication” is clear about this: providers are not responsible for what their customers do. And the fact that rights holders want to change that is their personal opinion, they are not legislative bodies. Let them buy a parliament member and lobby for such law, then we will observe this law. But until then they are nobody to us, and we are nobody for them too.

About a month ago Demonoid reported technical problems. Due to those problems all data for the last several months has vanished. In an attempt to recover from these problems the site went offline. Do you know what happened?

Some time ago several of their hard-drives crashed. But that was several months ago and we don’t know what was the reason of recent problems.

According to their admins, the man who can restore the tracker is not available. Are they speaking about some Colocall programmer?

No, all the technical support of servers is performed remotely. They aren’t speaking about one of our specialists.

Torrentfreak wrote about the president of Lithuanian antipirates, who demanded the closure of access to Demonoid. He said that it is very hard to even make contact with you. Have you spoken with him?

Yes, someone called us. We just could not speak with him: from the start of the conversation he immediately began to threaten us, he was absolutely non-constructive. We sent him to the court and have said that if he brings the court’s decision, we will be happy to execute it, because we observe all Ukrainian laws. Until then we are not going to speak with him.

Access to Demonoid is blocked for several countries including Ukraine. Is this your initiative or the tracker’s decision?

It is the tracker’s policy, not our initiative. I think this is due to DDoS-attacks.

Are there any DDoS-attacks aiming at Demonoid?

Yes, there are many large and serious DDoS-attacks. But they are always the problem of every hosting provider. We have learned how to neutralize them, so such attacks have almost no effect on Demonoid’s operations. And, incidentally, Demonoid isn’t the only site to be attacked: during the last election we hosted the server of the central election commission committee, it was constantly under DDoS-attacks.

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

With no legal basis, ISPs were extremely reluctant to comply, so government-mandated talks on the issue came to an end. On this particular battle, at least for the time being, the Coalition had to concede defeat, but they weren’t about to give up on the war.

Since it could not force sanctions on the end users, the Coalition – which includes the likes of Promusicae and SGAE – began to focus on Spain’s BitTorrent sites. In his first public appearance as Coalition president, Aldo Olcese noted there were 200 of them, up from 70 in just a few months.

However, as we mentioned in our earlier report, the Coalition’s ability to deal with these sites in the current climate is limited. Spanish courts have ruled time and again that if profits aren’t made directly from copyright infringements, BitTorrent sites are perfectly legal. Add this to the Chief Prosecutor’s May 2006 official instruction that effectively decriminalized non-commercial file-sharing, and the Coalition have an even steeper mountain to climb.

According to a new report, yesterday the names of the 200 sites were handed to the Spanish industry minister following the presentation of a report called Parasites’ Business (video below in Spanish), which was made jointly by the Coalition and CoPeerRight, who claim to be the world’s ‘premier’ anti-piracy company.

Coalition president Olcese pointed out the difficulties his group faces, describing Spain as a “piracy paradise” with “no legal, civil or administrative measures in place to combat this problem.”

CoPeerRight then gave a presentation based on its own research which it says shows that the average Spanish pirate web site can earn an absolutely astonishing €1.5 million ($2.2 million) a year in revenue, this based on an average of 150,000 users each, with some of them drawing 4 million unique visitors in a single month.

However, as we highlighted earlier, pure BitTorrent and other similar ‘linking’ sites do not profit directly from infringements, which means they are entirely legal. The Coalition hopes to be instrumental in changing this position.

Last week the Spanish government announced the creation of a commission to consider legislation to deal with the issue of copyright infringement. Coalition president Olcese told Billboard that he believes “there is a correlation between the setting up of this commission, with the fact the Spain’s assumes the six-month presidency of the European Union next January 1, and with the improved relationship between the leaders of the Spanish and U.S. governments”.

Indeed, earlier this year a very impatient US government growing tired with what it sees as a total lack of inaction on the issue, said that part of Spain’s “priority action” to decrease online piracy should include an agreement between ISPs and copyright holders to prevent infringing content being available on the Internet – code for “3 strikes”, a measure that not even the US has implemented.

While that option has disappeared, last week saw Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero make his first visit to the White House in his six years in office – the first by a Spanish leader since the country’s 2004 Iraq pullout, an event which didn’t go down well with the US. Zapatero is now offering to assist with the closure of Guantanamo Bay, a sign that relations are beginning to warm.

It seems now that the only savior of the Coalition and its partners will be a change in the law, but Coalition president Olcese couldn’t resist mixing up terms in order to create the impression that the 200 BitTorrent sites are currently illegal.

“We gave the government last April our proposals to establish an official register of legal Web sites and act against illegal sites. When we meet the commission, we shall reiterate our position,” he said.

Illegal is not the same as unauthorized or unofficial, as much as the Coalition would like it to be so.

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

After AFACT dropped the claim that iiNet was a primary infringer by caching copyright works on their servers, according to ZDNet the case will now examine a sample of 20 iiNet customer accounts.

Earlier in the case, AFACT submitted evidence that it claimed showed around 95,000 breaches of the studios’ copyrights by iiNet subscribers. iiNet barrister Richard Lancaster cross-examined AFACT lawyer Michael Williams on techniques used by AFACT’s investigators to count these alleged breaches of copyright.

The recording of these claimed breaches were described by iiNet lawyer Richard Cobden during day two of the trial as a “novel composition and adventurous” and “a dramatic extension of the application of the law”. He then went on to describe AFACT’s claims of 94,942 infringements as “artificially inflated by a contrived process”.

It was then revealed in court that AFACT had probably counted some of the same infringements more than once – if it checked in the morning for infringements and then again in the afternoon, if the same infringement on an individual’s computer was still ongoing, AFACT counted it as yet another infringement, not a single extended one.

Another process AFACT used to record alleged breaches of copyright breach was by using a Reverse DNS Lookup – a process used to determine a domain name associated with a an IP address by using the Domain Name System (DNS) available on the Internet.

iiNet’s lawyer Richard Lancaster said this was not a reliable method since DNS records were often out of date. Lawyer for AFACT Michael Williams agreed this method was “not 100 per cent reliable”.

While re-addressing the possibility that AFACT was relying on evidence which artificially inflated the number of alleged infringements, following cross-examination both AFACT and iiNet conceded that technical issues can cause iiNet subscribers to leave and then reconnect to the network, resulting in the same iiNet users being allocated multiple IP addresses during an online session. If AFACT was tracking these particular users, it would then identify each IP address as a separate infringement, which would inflate their claims on numbers of infringements.

Of course, the accuracy of such evidence is important, since any damages awarded for, say, 50,000 breaches, would be substantially less than 95,000 breaches.

“If the judge finds further down the track that iiNet is guilty of the claims AFACT is making – which I don’t believe they will – because they are seeking damages, the number of offences does matter in terms of the final decision on what the damages will be,” an iiNet spokesman told ARN.

Today’s proceedings bring an end to the first two weeks of hearings in the case. It will resume November 2nd.

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

Today iiNet’s lawyers cross-examined representatives from 20th Century Fox, Disney, Warner and Paramount via video link.

After being accused earlier in the trial of having deals in place with BitTorrent Inc, ZDNet reports that Paramount admitted it had a deal with the company for it to prevent illegal copies of its movies being shared via its BitTorrent software. However, this seems more likely to be a filter applied to search results on the BitTorrent.com site, rather than any obstruction in the software itself. Any notion that BitTorrent Inc spied or spies on users of its software in order to restrict their activities would be a disaster for the company.

Paramount could not confirm if the deal prevented piracy or not but acknowledged that it ran from October 6 2006 until October 6 2008, and had now expired. Paramount had an option to extend it for a further year, but did not.

As mentioned in our earlier coverage, iiNet lawyers suggested that the publishing of studio logos (including that of Paramount) on the BitTorrent.com website could have caused some confusion for potential BitTorrent downloaders.

However, according to a report, Paramount could be set to lodge a formal complaint with BitTorrent Inc over what it described as “unauthorized use” of its logo. This development seems to be somewhat of a cheap shot by Paramount. Their logo has been on the BitTorrent.com site for a very long time (and remains there today) so the ‘revelation’ in court that it exists there should hardly come as a surprise – they were business partners after all.

iiNet lawyers put it to 20th Century Fox anti-piracy boss Ronald Wheeler that making material available online helped to reduce piracy. While he could not confirm that immediately, he did say that because content is available online, it counters the argument that the only way to obtain the content is illegally.

Warner representative David Kaplan confirmed that his company also had a deal with BitTorrent Inc but although he couldn’t be certain, he felt the deal had expired since the MPA hadn’t kept him updated about it.

iiNet lawyers also produced a document which was alleged to be license agreement between Warner and the defunct Wurld Media, to distribute content via P2P. While Kaplan admitted the deal was now dead, he confirmed the authenticity of the document.

A further interesting development came after AFACT chief Neil Gane admitted that his organization’s investigative techniques – hiring someone to pretend to be a regular iiNet customer in order to engage in file-sharing of copyright works with other iiNet customers – could be construed as copyright infringement in itself.

In last week’s court sessions, iiNet lawyers put it to Gane that AFACT could have been involved in condoning copyright infringement, referring to the actions mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Gane admitted that there would have been occasions where AFACT’s own investigators had undertaken an activity which had been described by iiNet lawyers as “an infringement of copyright”.

“And that’s something you will tolerate happening at your own premises?” said iiNet lawyer Richard Cobden.

“It’s an investigative technique,” Gane replied

The case continues.

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

After Justice Cowdroy allowed several documents to be used in court yesterday which were used by iiNet’s legal team to cross-examine AFACT witnesses, senior counsel Tony Bannon for the movie industry said he wants to subpoena the Internet Industry Association (IIA) for documents it says relates to meetings held with ISPs in 2006/2007 on how to handle p2p copyright infringement.

The documents are required for further cross-examination of witnesses. Earlier IIA had applied to be a friend of the court, an application to which AFACT objected.

Also revealed in court today is that iiNet is on the brink of launching an online kids entertainment service. Nothing particularly unusual about that, until one learns of iiNet’s business partner – TV company Village Roadshow, one of the litigants in the case. The content will be free to view and iiNet won’t even count the bandwidth its customers use on these downloads.

AustralianIT notes that iiNet was due to announce the service in around a month’s time, but will now launch it this weekend.

A computer forensics investigator who was previously a key witness in the 2004 KaZaA trial, was called by iiNet’s legal team today. Nigel Carson, a key witness for AFACT, was questioned on whether an IP address alone is enough to identify an individual infringer.

Carson admitted that any ISP account could have multiple users in the same household and could have other unauthorized 3rd-party users if a wireless router was compromised.

He further admitted that to accurately identify a precise individual, a court order and police action could be required to interview account holders and other individuals living at the address.

The open court session was also closed for the continuing cross-examination of DtecNet’s CTO Kristian Lockegaard which began yesterday.

The case continues to the end of this week, where there will be a two week gap before the court reconvenes for a further two weeks.

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