Anti-Piracy Group Reports Torrent Site Users to the Police
Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit LANVA has reported the IP-addresses of 106 users of the country’s largest BitTorrent site to the police, on allegations of sharing a copy of Windows 7. The site’s owner has said he will do everything he can to help the users if legal action is taken, and in turn has reported the anti-piracy outfit to the police.
LinkoManija.net is the largest BitTorrent site in Lithuania and one of the prime targets for local anti-piracy outfit LANVA. Last year LANVA was ridiculed by the owner of the site who registered the domain lanva.lt after the group changed its name, something that didn’t do the relationship between the arch rivals any good.
Like all respected anti-piracy organizations, LANVA holds accounts at all the popular private torrent trackers, including LinkoManija. For a long time their account remained inactive, but this week LANVA claimed a small victory as it reported the IP-addresses of 106 users of the site to the police.
According to the anti-piracy outfit, the reported users were caught sharing a copy of the newly released Windows 7 Ultimate operating system. As evidence the self-proclaimed investigators submitted a screenshot of peers listed by uTorrent.
The owner of LinkoManija was not impressed by LANVA’s actions. “Anyone can copy a peer list, but it doesn’t prove that anyone downloaded the full file or actually uploaded anything,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. “It can’t be used as serious evidence,” he added.
LANVA disagrees and hopes that the police will track down the identities of the accused infringers. If this happens the users will face fines of up to several hundred dollars, plus additional damages Microsoft’s lawyers may call for.
In a response the owner of LinkoManija has reported LANVA to the police. People who are affiliated with an anti-piracy group are not allowed to use LinkoManija according to the site’s disclaimer, and Kestas has asked the police find out whether LANVA broke the law.
“We contacted the police and asked them to investigate how LANVA obtained the information, because we did not give them permission,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. The police informed him that they would look into the case.
If any of the reported users faces legal action, Kestas says he will help them out with legal support. “We told our users that we will be fighting for them if they get in trouble, because it’s a fight for the freedom of us all,” he said. “Our users are our strength,” he added.
