Founded in just three years ago in 2009, KickAssTorrents has shown that it’s serious about becoming a leading torrent site player. Of course, that has its drawbacks too.

The site’s increasing profile has caused it to appear in numerous MPAA, RIAA and government reports, in the US and elsewhere. News today reveals that the authorities in Italy have been watching the site for some time.

According to a report coming out of the police department with responsibilities for tackling cybercrime, KickAssTorrents will soon be subjected to a nationwide ISP blockade.

Translated as “Financial Guard”, the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) is a department under Italy’s Minister of Economy and Finance. Part of the Italian Armed Forces, GdF has in recent years been involved in many file-sharing investigations, most recently against KickAssTorrents.

Operation ‘Last Paradise’ has just concluded with the public prosecutor of the Sardinian capital Cagliari granting an “order of inhibition” which requires the country’s ISPs to cease providing access to the site. Similar orders were previously granted against The Pirate Bay and the now-defunct BTjunkie.

“This is another memorable dark day for digital piracy in Italy. After starting with The Pirate Bay in 2008 and the final closing of the doors at BTjunkie in February 2012, the Guardia di Finanza has targeted another super-pirate platform, virtually located in the Philippines and servers scattered around the world,” GdF said in a statement.

“This colossal site of 10 million active torrents receives over 3 million visits daily from all over the world and Italy was the third most popular country of origin for users behind only India and the USA.”

GdF adds that by their estimates, KickAssTorrents generates $8.5 million per year from advertising and other revenue.

“This international platform has long been targeted by U.S. authorities as one of the worst sites for the illegal distribution of music,” said Enzo Mazza, chief of FIMI, Italy’s answer to the RIAA.

“The intervention of the Italian authorities was very important, especially for the protection of legal music in Italy, which now represents 30% of the market. Platforms such as The Pirate Bay, BTjunkie and KickAssTorrents are run by criminal organizations that make millions from advertising.”

Responding to the news, Italian lawyer Giovanni Battista Gallus told TorrentFreak that unlike The Pirate Bay blockade, there is no “proper” court order for the current blockade. This also happened with the BTjunkie block earlier, which was handled by the same prosecutor.

“In this case the order has been issued only by the public prosecutor, without any judicial intervention,” he said. “I have serious doubts whether this is appropriate under Italian criminal procedure law, and I’m very curious to see the outcome of an appeal against this order.”

The extent of the forthcoming blockade isn’t clear from the information currently being released. However, the GdF statement specifically mentions kickasstorrents.com, a domain the site left behind when it switched to Kat.ph in April 2011.

Update: FIMI boss Enzo Mazza confirmed to TorrentFreak that both the old and new domains and IP-addresses will be blocked, and added the following message.

“The investigation into the criminal organization behind the site is still making progress and the public prosecutor is in touch with the authorities in the countries involved in the case. The case is followed by the Fiscal police who are usually investigating Italian mafia bosses. This means they are well equipped to take the members of the KAT gang to justice.”

Source: Italian Court Orders All ISPs To Block KickAssTorrents

On May 10th, the Court of The Hague ordered an additional five ISPs – UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort – to block two TPB IP addresses and 20 domain names within 10 days or face fines of up to 250,000 euros.

These pair of court rulings, although similar, were not identical. In the first ruling permission was given for BREIN to add additional IP addresses should The Pirate Bay choose to switch or add IP addresses to their site.

Not surprisingly and as already reported, TPB did in fact add a new IP address plus a proxy-friendly version of their site in recent days. BREIN was quick to react and has now ordered Ziggo and XS4ALL to block the IP address 194.71.107.80 within 10 days or face fines of up to 250,000 euros.

However, in the second ruling against the five other ISPs, the Court felt that the XS4ALL/Ziggo ruling went too far. As a result the Court only allowed two TPB specific IPs to be censored and disallowed BREIN from simply adding more. This means that even when the ban kicks in during the days to come, users of UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort will be able to access TPB by using the IP address listed above.

Although not required by law to block the recently-added IP address, Webwereld reports that two ISPs have confirmed they were approached by BREIN to do so.

“We will do not comply without a court order”, said Jan-Willem te Gussinklo Ohmann, spokesman for Tele2.

“We will not respond to [BREIN's] request,” said a spokesperson for KPN. “Our position is: we’re not going to make destinations on the Internet inaccessible to our subscribers without a judge determining that it is necessary.”

However, contesting the addition of new IP addresses isn’t the only way these ISPs are resisting web blockades. From the first ruling, Ziggo and XS4ALL already announced that they will appeal and now from the second ruling, Tele2 have just confirmed that they have done the same.

“At the moment BREIN wants a blockade of The Pirate Bay, but tomorrow there may be other interest groups preparing their wishlists,” Tele2 said. “The ruling is a threat to Internet freedom in our country.”

Source: ISPs Refuse to Block New Pirate Bay IP-Address

It’s an incredibly simple concept. The meme is based on a bait and switch, whereby someone posts a hyperlink which allegedly provides content relevant to the current discussion, but in fact leads to the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up” instead.

People who follow these links and end up viewing the song/video are said to have been “Rickrolled” and over the years millions of people have been fooled into doing so. However, those falling into the trap today are being met with something not nearly as entertaining and, if it’s even possible, something that is even more annoying.

Due to a copyright complaint, the original Rickroll video has been removed from YouTube.

Taking down a five-year-old video with tens of millions of views is strange enough, but it is far from clear why AVG Technologies – the people behind AVG Anti-Virus (?) – would want to do so at all.

Hopefully there has been some terrible mistake and everything will be sorted out soon. If not, the consequences could be unpredictable. The Rickroll meme started life on the notorious 4chan message board in 2007 and developed into a worldwide sensation from there, and as we all know that particular community is not known for its patience, nor lack of creativity when it comes to revenge tactics.

This is not the first time that the Rickroll video has been removed though. It was removed by YouTube in 2010 but reinstated shortly afterwards.

TorrentFreak contacted both AVG and Google-owned YouTube for comment and we’ll post their statements here when they arrive.

Update: After being blocked for 24 hours, the video is now back. We’re still waiting for an official explanation on what happened.

Source: Rickroll Meme Destroyed By Copyright Takedown

Determined to break the plundering habits of these misguided souls, the US movie and recording industries have continuously meddled in the country, lobbying for tougher responses to file-sharing.

The results have been notable, not least the implementation of IPRED and the Data Retention Directive plus numerous prosecutions of file-sharing site operators and their users. But do tougher laws actually encourage people “to do the right thing” or even change their perception of what that thing is?

According to new findings from the Cybernorms research project at Lund University, the introduction of aggressive legislation has done little to reduce levels of file-sharing carried out by young people.

“In Sweden we saw a moderate drop in file sharing in 2009 when IPRED was implemented. Since then it has remained at approximately 60 percent among 15-25 year old people,” researcher Marcin de Kaminski told TorrentFreak.

“Our conclusion is that repressive actions that lack societal support may still have effects, but that the effects are limited.”

The problem for the copyright industries is that while they’ve been very effective in lobbying for more legal restrictions, they have failed to make ground in matching those frameworks with what people consider to be acceptable behavior.

“As a part of our research regarding cybernorms we try to understand and
describe informal social control,” says Kaminski.

“Our results show that young people feel no pressure from neighbors, friends, relatives, teachers etc. to refrain from file sharing. A higher degree of pressure or social control would most possibly have a clear impact on habits and practices regarding file sharing.”

Essentially, file-sharers do not believe they are doing anything wrong and while this remains the case the ‘problem’ is unlikely to go away. Kaminski told us that the research shows a slight increase in young people who file share on a daily basis, from 18% in September 2009 to 20% in January 2012. Additionally, more file-sharers are turning to anonymity services to hide their activities.

“File sharing is an interesting case illustrating the fact that repressive sanctions alone might have some effects on illegal practices, but that the effects first and foremost seem to be limited and secondly might be for the wrong reasons.

“Without support for repressive efforts in social norms the effects tend to result in a feeling of increased risk or danger – rather than [the activity being repressed] actually being considered wrong,” Kaminski concludes.

That said, tougher laws don’t leave file-sharers entirely untouched. But instead of stopping their behavior, they take measures to hide it. Previously, researchers from the Cyber Norms found that when compared to figures from late 2009, 40% more 15 to 25-year-olds are now hiding their activities online through VPN services.

Source: File-Sharing Prospers Despite Tougher Laws

Today we can report that Greece is the latest country to walk down the controversial path of web censorship for the protection of intellectual property. The Athens First Instance Court has just handed down a ruling which orders the country’s ISPs to begin censoring a pair of sites the music industry says are infringing their copyrights on a grand scale.

The ruling is based on Article 64A of law 2121/1993 which states that “Rightsholders may apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe copyright or related rights.”

A similar provision in Section 97A of the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act led to The Pirate Bay being blocked there earlier this month.

Interestingly, neither of the sites to be blocked in Greece is The Pirate Bay, and the unusual features don’t stop there. The first site to be censored is Ellinadiko.com, a music sharing forum that was once very popular with locals. We’re referring to the site in the past tense since it appears to have shut down.

The second site to be blocked is Music-Bazaar.com, a Russian operated and hosted ‘AllofMP3′-style webstore selling MP3s at bargain basement prices. These sites are a thorn in the side of the recording industry but operate with both impunity and arguable legality in Russia.

The blocks will be initiated in two ways. ISPs will have to tamper with their DNS records so that subscribers trying to access the sites will be redirected elsewhere, probably to an ISP holding page.

Second, and to thwart people trying to visit the sites without the use of a domain name at all, the IP addresses for the sites will be filtered out. However, according to discussion on Greek file-sharing forums, the IP addresses listed in the court order are no longer in use by either site having been changed a while ago.

Following similar actions taken by the Dutch and UK Pirate parties, the Greek Pirate Party are indicating that they are “ready to implement any lawful technological measure to ensure freedom of communication, speech and exchange ideas online and in society.”

Source: Greek Court Orders ISP Blockades of ‘Pirate’ Music Sites

Two issues made this case stand out. One, this is the first time sharers of music have been sued since the RIAA ended its infamous campaign. Two, the suing of All Shall Perish’s fans is being done without the band’s permission. Indeed, the band’s label, Nuclear Blast, didn’t even tell ASP that they’d signed over the band’s copyrights to Panama-based World Digital Rights so that they could sue.

TorrentFreak has kept in touch with ASP manager Ryan Downey who has been hoping that the lawsuit would be withdrawn. However, we discovered that World Digital Rights have persisted with their lawsuit and earlier this month were granted permission from Judge Sheri Polster Chappell to obtain the identities of 80 alleged file-sharers from US ISPs.

We informed Downey of the development and he and the band’s lawyer went away to see what could be done.

“The band’s attorney made it clear to the licensing people [at Nuclear Blast Records] that the band wanted no part in lawsuits against fans. The industry is changing, illegal downloading is troublesome for bands and of course, for record labels, but whatever the solution will be – streaming, subscription, Kickstarter, new ways of looking at it entirely, whatever comes about – the band and I are in agreement (as is their lawyer) that SUING MUSIC FANS SURE ISN’T IT,” Downey told TorrentFreak.

But of course, when this story broke last month Nuclear Blast were already aware that the band didn’t support suing fans yet either couldn’t or wouldn’t stop World Digital Rights persisting with the lawsuit. Clearly the band’s protests needed underlining.

“The licensing folks at Nuclear Blast in Germany took all of this to mean we wanted them to prevent World Digital Rights from pursuing any new actions / claims. I don’t know how we could have been more clear, but, we emphasized again, after receiving your email and being made aware of these new developments, that what we were saying all along was DISMISS ANY AND ALL LAWSUITS AGAINST ALL SHALL PERISH FANS,” Downey told us.

Then this week there appeared to be a breakthrough.

“We were informed [Wednesday] by Nuclear Blast that they would tell World Digital to dismiss all of this. Furthermore, we have pressed (yet again) to ensure the copyright registration returns to the band as owners of all recordings, as nobody else had the right to register the band’s copyrights as World Digital seems to have either done or attempted at some point.”

But while Downey has answered questions and been very responsive, the same cannot be said about Nuclear Blast. Request for comment sent to several members of staff, from those in the licensing department to the label owner, were not responded to.

That said, the silence is not unexpected. While Downey has gone out of his way to be unfailingly polite when speaking to us about Nuclear Blast, using terms such as “hard working”, “passionate”, “communicative” and “supportive”, it’s impossible to overlook the fact that someone there transferred the band’s copyrights to a troll without even having the courtesy to mention it. And that troll continued with the lawsuit despite knowing the band were against it.

The best outcome now is that the whole thing goes away, but it’s still possible that World Digital Rights will persist and people will get settlement demands through the mail. If that happens, recipients will have someone to turn to.

“The band, their attorney and myself have and will continue to take any steps to protect their fans, yes, even those who file trade,” Downey told us. “The band would prefer that their fans legally purchase, stream or otherwise enjoy their music. But they definitely have not, will not and do not wish to sue their fans.”

If any reader receives a letter from World Digital Rights, write to us at the usual address.

Source: Music Pirates Will Be Unmasked, Despite Band’s Protests

For more than a decade the mode of operation employed by these companies has followed a similar pattern. Pick the most famous or popular file-sharing client of the day, use flashy websites and confusing domain names to attract users who can’t tell an imposter from the real thing, lull them in with the suggestion of free downloads, and then extract money from them.

These outfits have picked on just about every file-sharing brand out there with impunity, but now one of them is being held to account.

In a lawsuit filed this week, BitTorrent Inc. is claiming damages from a German-based company for trademark infringement, unfair competition and cybersquatting.

According to the San-Francisco based owner of uTorrent, BitTorrent Marketing GMBH is
making money from users who start out looking for BitTorrent Inc.’s products but then get “misdirected” to dozens of domains bearing similar names, all operated by BitTorrent Marketing.

Listed in the lawsuit are a sample 54 domains such as Bit-Torent.com, Bit-Torrent.com and Bitorrent.net, plus many other misspellings of the official BitTorrent brand.

Once users have visited one of these domains they wrongly presume to be operated by BitTorrent Inc., they are led down a misleading path promising media downloads.

“U.S. users who select the links on Defendant’s BitTorrent website are redirected to websites enabling them to sign up for a variety of services associated with accessing and viewing media and online content, including, among others, ultimate-downloadcenter.com and itv-dish-pro.com,” the lawsuit reads.

However, those who are eventually convinced to part with their money end up disappointed.

“Users who sign up and pay to obtain the services offered through Defendant’s BitTorrent website do not in fact receive those services. For example, after paying over $50 to sign up for ultimate-downloadcenter.com, U.S. users are redirected to third-party websites of other digital media providers, like Netflix.com and Hulu.com, and invited to sign up for membership with those services as well,” the lawsuit continues.

“Accordingly, Plaintiff is informed and believes, and based thereon alleges, that Defendant is intentionally using Plaintiff’s BitTorrent trademark to deceive U.S consumers into signing up for memberships and other ‘services’ that do not afford those users any tangible benefit, with knowledge that such conduct is a result of confusion as to whether those websites are associated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Plaintiff.”

It appears that Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, became aware of the people behind BitTorrent Marketing around 9 years ago. In 2003 Cohen was contacted by an individual requesting permission to register the BitTorrent.de domain name. He refused, but the company (at the time known by a different name) went ahead and started registering BitTorrent-like domains anyway, as well as the German and European trademarks for BitTorrent.

After targeting other world-famous file-sharing brands such as Azureus, Vuze, Kazaa and Morpheus, in early 2012 BitTorrent Marketing started using the BitTorrent trademark in the US through the website BitTorrent.net.

“This filing is part of a series of actions that we’ve taken since 2010 to prevent this company from using the BitTorrent brand to trick users into using a service that is not the genuine article our company provides,” a BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

In conclusion, BitTorrent Inc. is asking for BitTorrent Marketing to be barred from using the BitTorrent mark “or any mark confusingly similar.” They also request damages for trademark related offenses committed by their German namesake including $100,000 for each infringing domain name.

Source: BitTorrent Inc Takes Legal Action Against Download Scammers

It’s not absolutely clear why this is the case but it’s certainly possible that the cross-continent shared understanding of the English language has brought the fear of censorship closer to home for all Internet users. Whatever the reason, the kick-back has been immense.

Rather than sitting idly by, net activists all around the world have been doing their part to re-connect millions of Britains to The Pirate Bay, many by running their own proxy services. At the forefront of this effort are the UK Pirate Party.

Inspired by their Dutch counterparts who recently set up a proxy to bypass a blockade in the Netherlands, Pirate Party UK reacted similarly to the High Court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK. In parallel with the first ISP block from Virgin Media, PPUK responded by firing up their very own anti-censorship proxy.

After being mentioned dozens of times in the media and featuring in the #1 position on the PirateReverse information site, PPUK’s proxy service quickly became the weapon of choice for UK Internet users wanting to unblock the galaxy’s most-resilient torrent site.

The effect on their web presence has been nothing short of dramatic.

Although impressive, it’s worth pointing out that the graph above doesn’t tell the whole story.

Just over 3 weeks ago the Pirate Party UK website was listed way outside the top 100,000 most-visted websites in the UK. Today, as a direct result of their response to Pirate Bay censorship, the site is listed by Alexa as the UK’s 1,550th most popular website.

According to PPUK’s Harry Percival, during a single 24 hour period last week the site received more than 1.8m hits. Given the unavailability of the Pirate Bay website over the past 48 hours, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the PPUK site’s ranking has increased again.

“Whenever the government tries to break the Internet we get a massive boost,” PPUK Culture & Media spokesperson Andrew Robinson told TorrentFreak.

“Whether it’s the PirateBay blocking, the CCDP snooper’s charter, or the latest idea for a porn morality filter, it seems like traditional parties just don’t get it – and people are starting to realize that you can’t just ignore this stuff, it really does have an impact on freedoms, civil liberties and innovation. That’s why the Pirates, both here in the UK and worldwide, are attracting more and more support.

“Another way of looking at it is: the BPI’s high court action has sent a very clear message to politicians of all parties: Voters love file sharing. If you want to be massively popular, you should support file sharing too,” Robinson concludes.

The big question is what happens next. Just over the North Sea in the Netherlands Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN obtained a far-reaching court ruling which banned the Dutch Pirate Party from not only running a proxy, but also telling people where to go to unblock Pirate Bay.

Will the members of the BPI, the companies behind the UK block, go back to court in an effort to silence the Pirates? That’s certainly a possibility but even if they were successful, given the response to censorship thus far there are plenty of people prepared to take up the slack.

Source: Pirate Bay Ban Rockets Pirate Party Website Into The Big Time

At the time of writing The Pirate Bay has been inaccessible to most of the world for nearly 24 hours and our ‘inbox’ is suffering. But it appears to be the timing of the downtime that has caused more people than usual to panic.

The root lies in the recent court-ordered censorship of The Pirate Bay in the UK. The country’s leading ISPs are required to block the site so millions of people were already expecting to have trouble accessing the domain. What they didn’t anticipate was the failure of the many published workarounds to resupply access to the site.

For those to work the site itself has to be working properly and currently it is not. While TPB is used to being censored by courts and ISPs, it is a little less used to being blacked-out by other means. TorrentFreak is informed by a Pirate Bay insider that the site is currently being subjected to a DDoS attack rendering it unavailable in many parts of the world.

Now, while we’re informed that the problem might be mitigated during the next few hours, the timing of this attack against the site is either ironic, ‘interesting’ or at the very least coincidental, depending on your viewpoint.

Just last week, The Pirate Bay openly criticized elements of the ‘Anonymous’ collective for carrying out a DDoS attack on Virgin Media, the first UK ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay.

“We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us,” said TPB in response to the DDoS attack against Virgin.

“So don’t fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.”

Right now, whoever is attacking The Pirate Bay has achieved what no copyright or governmental authority anywhere in the world has – an almost complete disruption of the site’s operations on a global basis with no court order required.

But despite the DDoS there are still ways for people to access the site. A handful of the proxies set up to circumvent the ISP blockades still appear to work and, when all else fails, the crazy methods still work too.

Source: Pirate Bay Under DDoS Attack From Unknown Enemy

From simple multiple PC locations to network-enabled storage devices and games consoles, effective home networking – wireless in particular – has gradually become a basic requirement.

In recent years, wireless routers – the now-commonplace devices enabling these networks – have become a conflict ground for lawyers working in file-sharing cases. When unauthorized (or at the least unidentified) people access them in order to engage in copyright infringement online, should their owners be held responsible?

In a landmark ruling yesterday which examined existing EU law, a District Court clarified the position in Finland following a near two-year long file-sharing case.

In 2010, anti-piracy group CIAPC obtained the identity of a local woman and sued her for copyright infringement. They claimed that she had used Direct Connect to infringe the rights of their entertainment industry members. Pay us 6,000 euros to make the case go away, they told her, or things will get much worse.

But instead of caving in the woman kicked back. The offense, which allegedly took place in a 12 minute time period on July 14th 2010, coincided with an event at the woman’s home attended by 100 people. Any one of them could have fired up a laptop, accessed the open WiFi, and been tracked by CIAPC.

“The applicants were unable to provide any evidence that the connection-owner herself had been involved in the file-sharing,” explains Ville Oksanen from Turre Legal, the law firm defending the woman.

“The court thus examined whether the mere act of providing a WiFi connection not
protected with a password can be deemed to constitute a copyright-infringing act.”

Oksanen notes that CIAPC had also requested an injunction to prevent the woman from infringing their clients’ copyrights in future. Had this have been granted the implications for anyone running open WiFi – domestically or in a commercial environment – could have been far-reaching. One instance of infringement could lead to an injunction, and the only way to be absolutely certain of avoiding a future breach would be to shut the system down completely.

In the event the court looked at the Finnish interpretations of several EU directives including Directive 2000/31/EC, Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC and the Copyright Enforcement Directive 2004/48/EC.

The District Court ruled that WiFi owners can not be held liable for the copyright infringing activities of third parties, an argument that still rages, for and against, in the United States.

While this ruling will be welcomed by Internet activists and network providers alike, it is still possible for CIAPC to take their case to appeal. However, should they choose to do so, Turre Legal say that taking the case to the European Court of Justice remains an option.

The ruling will be of concern to IFPI and Teosto, the Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society. They’re in the process of obtaining the identities of dozens of Pirate Bay users who allegedly shared the songs of Finland’s answer to Justin Bieber. If those alleged file-sharers are reading this story now, odds are that many of them will remember that their WiFi networks are wide open.

Source: Open WiFi Owner Not Liable For Illegal File-Sharing, Court Rules

This meant that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström would stand.

With Lundström’s and Svartholm’s fates settled and Sunde’s recent plea for clemency filed, only one person’s direction was left unclear – that of Fredrik Neij.

Through a statement penned by his lawyer Jonas Nilsson, today we learn that Neij intends to take his case to the European Court.

“According to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees citizens of Sweden the freedom to receive and impart information, we believe that Frederick Neij’s right to freedom of expression has been denied him,” says Nilsson.

“According to our complaint to the European Court, The Pirate Bay’s services – to transfer non-proprietary information among users through an automated process on the Internet – is protected under that article of the Convention.”

Nilsson says that The Pirate Bay never transferred or transmitted copyright information – that was the responsibility of the site’s users. The Pirate Bay’s function, he says, was “to allow the free dissemination of information via non-copyrighted torrent files.”

The lawyer also notes that since the torrent file information itself wasn’t illegal, the function should be covered by Article 10. He adds that he will also ask for further scrutiny as to whether it was indeed correct to hold Fredrik Neij responsible for what other people did when they used The Pirate Bay.

“In our opinion, it is like being held guilty in court because someone delivered a letter with illegal content. Another, and perhaps even more relevant analogy, would be if the founders of a buying and selling site were found guilty after someone sold a stolen bicycle after it was advertised on the site,” Nilsson explains.

Nilsson believes that it’s quite rightly not easy to get cases heard before Sweden’s Supreme Court, but by hearing certain pivotal cases valuable guidance can be gained for future rulings. Because a definitive ruling would provide much-need clarity in similar cases involving liability, the Supreme Court should have heard The Pirate Bay case, Nilsson says.

“In light of the Supreme Court decision [not to hear the case], we now see no alternative but to pursue this case through to the European Court. That clear legislation or legal precedent is missing in an area that affects us all – the Internet – represents a problem for the rule of law, today and tomorrow,” Nilsson concludes.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Takes Case To European Court

Following an earlier court ruling ordering two of the country’s largest ISPs to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay, the Court ordered a further five ISPs to block TPB IP addresses and 20 domain names Thursday. The Court then went on to make a decision that was perhaps even more controversial than the first.

The Dutch Pirate Party had been running a proxy service to facilitate access to the now-blocked Pirate Bay, but following pressure from anti-piracy group BREIN their activities were outlawed this week by the Court. The Pirate Party was ordered to shutdown its reverse proxy indefinitely and block Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses from its generic proxy.

However, in a decision that raised eyebrows, Judge Chris Hensen also banned the Party from using their own website to list the locations of other websites that allow the public to circumvent the blockade.

This decision by Henson – which some observers believe amounts to a curtailment of freedom of speech – is not the first the Judge has made of this nature. In 2010, movie studio Eyeworks won its lawsuit against Dutch Usenet community FTD. In that verdict, Judge Hensen ruled that by allowing users to talk about a copyrighted movie’s location on Usenet, FTD was effectively publishing the movie as if they had actually hosted it on their own servers.

After the ruling it transpired that Judge Henson and Dirk Visser, the lawyer for the movie studio, had a closer relationship than had been expected. Visser, who also represented BREIN in their victory over Mininova, had been running courses for copyright specialists where Judge Hensen was once one of the teachers.

Of course, now Judge Hensen has delivered a similar ruling, his connections with Visser are being re-examined, not least by Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge who is absolutely scathing.

“This is truly mind-boggling: not only was the plaintiff and judge personally and closely acquainted, the plaintiff in a controversial copyright monopoly case was running a commercial anti-piracy outfit together with the judge in the case,” Falkvinge writes.

“Money was involved. Commercial interest was involved. The judge was, as it appears from this brochure for the quite expensive course, getting money. From the plaintiff. Shortly after the case. In a directly related matter. That makes the judge not only corrupt, but textbook corrupt,” Falkvinge adds.

Claims of bias have hounded many big copyright-related cases in recent years, but for whatever reason have never gained any traction. In 2009 following the conviction of the founders of The Pirate Bay, it was revealed that two of the four judges set to hear their appeal were members of pro-copyright groups. The Supreme Court eventually decided that this would not affect their judgment.

The year before it was revealed that police officer Jim Keyzer, the leader and key witness in the initial Pirate Bay investigation, had been recently employed by Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the case. The controversy deepened when it was discovered that his employment with the studio was only temporary – he later returned to the police to head up an IT Crime unit.

This so-called revolving door phenomenon has raised its head time and again in the past couple of years. In March 2011, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell – a former RIAA lobbyist and anti-piracy company boss – delivered a helpful ruling for potential copyright trolls.

Then later that month it was revealed that a former music industry lobbyist had been appointed head of a unit dealing with copyright and enforcement issues at the European Commission.

During early May commenting on the case against Megaupload, law Professor Eric Goldman bemoaned “the revolving door between government and the content industry.”

Source: Pirate Bay ‘Censorship’ Judge is Corrupt, Claims Pirate Party Founder

For one, businessman Carl Lundström, the road ahead is certain. His sentence will be served electronically tagged in a Stockholm apartment. For three others – Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neik – questions remain.

Peter Sunde was scheduled to begin his 8 month jail sentence in the Västervik Norra facility Wednesday, but at least for now that won’t be going ahead. Sunde has filed a plea with the Swedish government requesting clemency, citing health concerns and fears for his fledgling micro-payment business, Flattr.

“The idea for the company came from Peter himself, and he has a tremendous commitment to it,” Sunde’s representative writes in the request filed with the Department of Justice.

It is the recognizable name and reputation of the 33-year-old, the plea continues, that has enabled Flattr to gain traction in the market, a personal presence the company will need to maintain in order to continue moving forward.

“Peter’s name and reputation in the industry will open many doors. The company has received a substantial amount of risk capital which has mostly been used to develop the product. After about two years development, the product is now basically ready to begin shipping to partners and large sites. A prerequisite for further development is that Peter is left on the company,” the plea concludes.

Sunde adds that if the authorities can’t see their way to a full pardon, a delay before he has to serve his sentence would be the next best thing. The specific nature of his health concerns have not been detailed publicly.

Site co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was previously ordered to spend 1 year in Mariefred prison roughly 65 km from Stockholm. His sentence was due to begin January 2nd 2012 but he became untraceable. A new deadline of April 18th was set for Svartholm to hand himself in but that date came and went with no further news.

In addition to prison sentences there is also the outstanding issues of damages. Recently it was revealed that the compensation amount the Pirate Bay founders are required to hand over to the movie and recording company plaintiffs has been growing steadily. Due to interest being added since May 2006, as of February 2012 the amount owed had jumped from roughly $6.9 million dollars to nearly $11 million.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Requests Pardon

To avoid a negative and potentially damaging legal precedent, Ziggo was joined in the case by rival ISP XS4ALL. After legal wrangling and initial progress, during November 2011 the case went before the Court of The Hague and in January 2012 it delivered its ruling.

While the ISPs were ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay, both immediately announced they would appeal. BREIN, on the other hand, used the momentum to announce that it would sue even more ISPs to force them to censor TPB too.

Today the Court of The Hague ruled that BREIN’s latest ISP targets – UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort – must also block The Pirate Bay.

The blocking order is broad covering 20 specific domains including ThePirateBay.org, ThePirateBay.se, ThePirateBay.com, DePiraatBaii.be and TheMusicBay.net. BREIN also asked for a total of three IP addresses to be blocked, but the Court only granted a block against two after it decided that one of addresses carried only Pirate Bay-owned content such as website images and CSS files.

A request from BREIN to be permitted to add further IP addresses and domains to the ruling was opposed by the ISPs and ultimately denied by the Court. This means that The Pirate Bay could simply add a new domain or IP-address to circumvent the block.

And that’s not the only way the blockade can be circumvented.

In a short statement welcoming the decision, BREIN said the Court’s ruling was good “for innovation and creation.”

While it’s believed that UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort will appeal the decision, they will still have to implement the blockage in the interim period. The ISPs have 10 days to do so or face maximum fines of 250,000 euros.

Source: Five More Dutch ISPs Given 10 Days To Censor The Pirate Bay

The site has its base in Argentina, where it is the country’s 65th most-popular site. However, it is in Chile, where it is the 135th most popular site, that it generated big headlines recently.

In March, an alleged operator of Cuevana.tv was arrested by Chilean police, the culmination of a two month investigation prompted by TV show giant HBO.

Christian Alvarez, a 26-year-old student, was claimed to be one of nine alleged administrators of Cuevana.tv. The other eight, authorities claim, are stationed in Argentina.

Alvarez, a student at the University of Chile currently pursuing a Master’s degree, denied being a site admin, instead describing himself as just a user with some extra privileges. He also insists that he made no money from his activities at Cuevana.tv.

Despite his protestations Alvarez was subsequently charged with breaches of copyright law and forbidden from leaving the country while the investigation against him continued.

For their part, HBO said they were very happy with the arrest of Alvarez and congratulated the police on their action to protect intellectual property rights. But things quickly went downhill. Following his arrest, nothing could be found to link Alvarez to infringement of HBO’s copyrights. Perhaps worst still, Cuevana.tv continued to operate uninterrupted. Yesterday there was more bad news.

“Luckily everything went well for me,” said Alvarez in a statement. “A decision was made to suspend the case, because there was no evidence to support the accusations.”

While the 26-year-old will now go free, it seems that HBO didn’t leave completely empty-handed. They only agreed to dismiss their action against Alvarez after he agreed to abide by a set of fairly unusual conditions.

Firstly, Alvarez had to agree not to visit Cuevana.tv at all for the next 12 months, nor get involved in any other similar sites. Secondly and perhaps most controversially, Alvarez will have to give lectures on copyright issues to children in schools.

Commenting on the case, a spokesperson for the Argentinian Pirate Party told TorrentFreak that Cuevana.tv provides an important alternative distribution platform for local independents competing against Hollywood domination.

“Hollywood’s movies occupy all the space in theaters leaving little opportunity or decent running lengths for local films,” he told us.

To this end, Tomas Escobar, the alleged owner of Cuevana.tv, tried to reach agreements with local producers and called out to them to distribute their films through his platform. During December 2011, Cuevana.tv hosted the exclusive official release of the local movie ‘Stephanie’ directed by Maximilian Gerscovich.

Following recent events it’s unclear whether Cuevana will be able to continue this initiative. Authorities in Chile say evidence gathered in the recent case will now be sent to Argentinian authorities for their investigation.

Source: Streaming Site ‘Admin’ Freed, But Agrees 1 Year Hiatus With HBO

Later this month the now 29-year-old will go to court to face charges of copyright infringement on Hollywood blockbusters such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

According to the Anti-Piracy Union, the piracy activities of Stainless date back to 2006 and are on an unprecedented scale. He allegedly uploaded thousands of movies and TV shows to cyberlocker file-hosting sites before publishing their links online in order to facilitate downloads.

Initially Stainless is reported to have used RapidShare and Hotfile, but later used a web service called Multiload to upload to several sites at once. One of the main sites listed by Multiload is Hellshare and Stainless reportedly had around 11,500 files stored there. Exactly how many of those were infringing is unclear.

Nevertheless, Stainless still stands accused of significant infringement. He is alleged to be responsible for the piracy of more than 2000 movie and TV shows including Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and a selection of local movies. Not helping Stainless’ case is the fact he was the moderator of so-called ‘warez’ forum.

As is increasingly common in these cases, the damages claim made by the studios is significant. They claim that Stainless cost them more than $4 million and as a result when he goes on trial later this month he will face between six months and five years in prison, plus a fine.

“The way they estimated the damages is simply ridiculous,” Mikulas Ferjencik, vice-president of the Czech Pirate Party told TorrentFreak.

“The Czech Pirate Party believes that it should be up to the copyright monopoly owners to prove that they were actually damaged by downloads. We think that the current setup, where copyright monopoly owners receive the ‘average market price’ multiplied by three, is unconstitutional.”

The Czech Pirate Party, know for their provocative actions including setting up their own file-sharing sites, have courted controversy again recently.

In setting up their new web portal located at Pirat.cz, they blatantly copied the design of the Czech Republic’s biggest search engine, Seznam.cz, fueling a considerable online debate and an interesting outcome.

“Seznam.cz admitted that what we did is actually fully legal and they even drew another version of the Piráti.cz logo for us using their font – the one we originally used was just an imitation,” Ferjencik concludes.

Source: Major Cyberlocker Movie Pirate Faces 5 Years In Prison

These evils take many forms, from rich African dignitaries looking to share their wealth with strangers, to a worried ‘PayPal’ advising users to enter their username and password to ensure their accounts are still secure.

In the file-sharing world, however, things are often a little more subtle. People’s bank accounts aren’t usually emptied, but novices to the pastime are often taken for a ride for relatively small sums of money by people out to make a quick buck. Often these people take advantage of changes in the market, upsets in the status quo, and times of uncertainty to deliver their payload.

When the blockage of The Pirate Bay in the Netherlands became the hot topic in recent weeks, thousands of people were looking for ways to access the site. Inevitably lists of proxies appeared, most of which worked particularly well. But thanks to opportunists, some were problematic.

Although perhaps not technically a straightforward proxy, one site – ThePirateBay.ee (note the .ee extension) – became particularly popular. The site first appeared during the last quarter of 2011 and was an almost perfect clone of TPB with identical functionality. Intermittently, however, it pulled a sly little trick.

Sometimes the magnet / torrent links would disappear and up would come a box that wouldn’t clear until people made a ‘donation’. Seasoned Pirate Bay users aren’t so easily fooled of course, but countless others have been sucked in. TorrentFreak asked The Pirate Bay about this site and they weren’t impressed.

“Charging money for free downloads is against the whole philosophy of the internets. We do not condone anything like that. This site is a bad copy of other sites, like TPB, and it’s totally meaningless. Go for another site,” they told us.

The .EE is not the only fly in the ointment either. The Pirate Bay now say that they’ve found at least three sites charging for access. It also seems that in return the team are having a little fun at those sites’ expense.

The TPB crew say they have “re-hijacked” visitors to one and are now directing them back to their official blog. Furthermore, ThePirateBay.ee appears to have been visited by a pirate David Blaine who has made all ‘their’ content disappear.

However, just in case the .EE data reappears in a second puff of smoke, Greasemonkey users can use a couple of scripts to remove cash demands and replace them with torrent and magnet links instead. Really, though, it’s better not to use the site at all.

As the proxy wars heat up, The Pirate Bay renamed itself The Hydra Bay today, linking off its main page to PirateReverse.info, an information site dedicated to helping people to access not just TPB, but several other leading torrent sites too.

Source: Pirate Bay Slaps Pathetic Proxies and Scammy Copies

A selection of methods were suggested by the site’s operators, all of them very easy to carry out. In fact, some of the best solutions, such as the proxy being provided by the UK Pirate Party, require absolutely no technical knowledge. Indeed, they require no thought at all.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a brilliantly simple solutions, they are perfect for those who just want to get a job done with minimum fuss. However, to those who like to pop the hood and have a tinker, there are more interesting methods available too.

And there’s a point to making things harder than they need to be. One day – maybe next year, maybe five years on – censorship will be worse than it is now. Legislation like SOPA may have been defeated but it will be back, probably worse than ever. Preparing for the worst never hurts.

Luckily, this isn’t a tough challenge. While previous generations may have stretched their brains with a challenging crossword, the Internet generation relishes the kinds of mind-boggling puzzles thrown up by games such as Portal 2. Unblocking a website? -Yawn- Come on, that’s child’s play in comparison, so lets be a bit more obscure – just for fun.

So users of UK ISP Virgin Media can no longer access The Pirate Bay? Well, presuming you still have access to Google there are a few little tricks we can try. First, to access TPB paste this URL into your browser.

http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=thepiratebay.se&sl=es&tl=en

With this technique everything works apart from one key feature – the ability to search. Any attempt goes straight back to the piratebay.se domain directly which results in a Virgin block. But importantly it is possible to use The Pirate Bay’s most important resources – its index, magnet links and hash codes – without ever going to the site.

If you want to download Dan Bull’s song from TPB even if Virgin are blocking you, click here to search The Pirate Bay for “Sharing is Caring” using Google.

The same results as you would get on The Pirate Bay are now shown in Google’s results instead and if you hover over the correct link, Google will even show you a cached copy of the Pirate Bay page in question. Also, as you will have noticed, to make things more interesting we’ve added the term “info hash” to the search in order to make sure the hash code for Dan’s song is shown in Google’s results.

Now, if we copy that hash code into the entry box on this site, it will kindly generate a magnet link for us. In my case clicking that magnet link will open uTorrent, and Dan’s song begins to download.

A similar result can be achieved by conducting a search like this, finding and copying the TPB URL (in this case https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7205038) into the clipboard, then pasting that here and generating a magnet link.

This magnet fetching site goes about the same task in a slightly different way.

The important thing to note here is how important hash codes and magnets are. Once a hash code is known it can be converted into a magnet. With the help of uTorrent that magnet can be converted into a torrent. Have torrent, will download.

After going through the silly long-winded exercises above, a couple of things should be clear. One, you can’t stop people accessing the resources of The Pirate Bay, even if it’s successfully blocked. Two, you can’t block text and if you can’t block text you can’t block this CF87CC0D6B0DB21D2221694EFFAE3758479AD4D1.

And if you can’t block that then the web blocking brigade have already lost.

Source: Unblocking The Pirate Bay The Hard Way Is Fun For Geeks

Among them was DaJaz1.com, a hip-hop focused site from which a Special Agent Andrew Reynolds said he’d downloaded pre-release music. Of course, Reynolds didn’t find the site on his own. He’d been directed there by the RIAA who, for their own reasons, had chosen to target Dajaz1 over the thousands of other sites online.

The rhetoric was familiar. According to the authorities, who were being spoon-fed by the labels, Dajaz1 was a criminal enterprise sucking the lifeblood from the US music business by leaking tracks before their street date. But as later became clear, behind the scenes the site was being fed music to leak by the labels in order to create buzz and generate sales.

Last December, after lying in limbo for more than a year, Dajaz1′s domain was suddenly returned, astonishingly because the Feds had come to the conclusion there was no case to answer. But for the five months since up until this week, court papers have remained sealed, thus hiding the reasons the Dajaz1 case became such a disaster.

Now, thanks to pressure from EFF, the First Amendment Coalition, and Wired, the documents were unsealed Wednesday. They reveal an embarrassment for the US Government, the RIAA and due process.

For a year, DaJaz1 lawyer Andrew P. Bridges tried and failed to have the Dajaz1 domain seizure overturned. At every step he was obstructed and delayed. When he asked for copies of the documentation requesting the extension to the forfeiture procedure and the court’s documentation granting it, each and every time he was denied and told the papers were under seal.

It now appears that all along, despite claiming to have a good enough case to label Dajaz1 a criminal enterprise, the U.S. Government had no usable evidence. The proof was supposed to be supplied by the RIAA but it failed to arrive in quality or in a timely fashion.

In July 2011, the Department of Homeland Security asked for more time to build the case against the site, noting that content from the Dajaz1 website had been sent to rightsholders for “evaluation” but had not been returned.

But in September 2011 they were back again, seeking a further extension for exactly the same reasons. The RIAA, named in the newly unsealed court papers, weren’t coming up with the goods. Eventually the Government conceded defeat and handed the domain back.

“The records confirm what was already suggested by the initial affidavit used to obtain the seizure order: that ICE, and its attorneys, are effectively acting as the hired gun of the content industry at taxpayers’ expense,” the EFF said in a statement.

“Instead of relying on rightsholders to determine whether a seizure was appropriate, the government should have been conducting its own thorough investigation. If it had acted in anything like good faith, it could have determined that the site wasn’t a proper target even before the seizure, or at least could have discovered and rectified the mistake before a year had passed.”

In the whole copyright infringement / piracy debate there is a lot of fiery rhetoric from both sides but this case is truly scary. To have Dajaz1′s domain seized and the site effectively shut down without being in receipt of the proper evidence is unforgivable. Worst still, the parties that caused this to happen remain unaccountable, free to do the same again.

Source: RIAA Behind US Government’s Failed Domain Name Seizure

The study’s coverage is broad, but for the purposes of this summary we’ll take a look at the elements relating to unauthorized consumption of digital products.

The first section of the survey covers people’s entertainment activities such as watching TV, listening to music or reading ebooks. Despite the piracy crisis complained about by the entertainment industries, out of a Top 40 most popular activities list, it takes until position 34 for an unauthorized activity to appear.

Just 6% of respondents said they download movies or TV shows from linking and hosting sites. Even less – 5% – said they obtain video from regular file-sharing sites. When it comes to people acquiring unauthorized music online, the figure is a modest 5% of respondents. Just 4% said they obtain eBooks unlawfully.

Zooming in on the various age categories shows that file-sharing is mostly a habit of younger men. Of all men between 15 and 19 years old, 14% admitted downloading movies and TV-shows through file-sharing sites, compared to 2% of women. This percentage drops to 1% for both men and women aged 45 and up.

When it comes to those already consuming media from unauthorized sources, the survey indicates that they aren’t in any hurry to stop soon.

Of those confessing to an existing file-sharing habit, 29% said they would download more eBooks and 28% said they would download more games and software in the next 12 months. When it comes to downloading music from file-sharing sites and cyberlockers, the uptick is 28% and 26% respectively.

But overall respondents say they will use more legal alternatives too. Of those already streaming ad-supported music, 27% said they would do more during the next year. Of music fans already paying for a monthly streaming subscription, 36% said they would consume more music in that way.

Of current unauthorized movie and TV show downloaders, 26% said they would consume more from file-sharing sites during the next year, dropping to 24% for those who prefer cyberlockers. Of those already paying for their movies either from PPV or on-demand services, 34% said they would consume more over the next 12 months.

Interestingly, when it comes to a change of habits during the next year, between 15% and 19% of current downloaders said they would do less, a figure closely matched (18%) by those slowly abandoning DVDs. The good news for the movie industry is that 30% of current movie goers expect to go even more in the year to come.

For those who prefer to do their file-swapping offline with friends using USB sticks and hard drives, 26% said they would be doing more of that during the next 12 months, something that no ISP blockade can do anything about.

The Wiggin law firm counts many big entertainment companies as clients so expect some of the results of this survey to be quoted by the industry at a later date. One that stands out concerns the attributes of an online service that indicates to the user “that a site is legitimate and the content [offered by it] is legal.”

29% of respondents said that a site ranking high in Google’s results would make it stand out as legitimate. Of course, the entertainment industries are trying to pressure Google into downgrading sites like The Pirate Bay so this will add fuel to their fire.

On the thorny issue of regulating Internet content, 40% either “strongly” or “slightly” disagreed with the notion that the Internet should be regulated in the same way as TV while a total of 58% thought that it should.

When it comes to controlling the Internet in order to police unlawful downloading, a total of 53% said they thought greater regulation is required. Just 18% disagreed, a gift to the lobbyists.

The full report can be downloaded here (pdf).

Source: 30% of UK File-Sharers Intend To Pirate More In The Next 12 Months

The blocks – to be implemented by Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media (BT are still considering their position) – are designed to cut off all but the most determined file-sharers from the world’s most popular torrent site.

On hearing the news a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that the measure will do very little to stop people accessing the site and predicted that “the free advertising” would only increase traffic levels.

It’s not possible to buy advertising “articles” from leading UK publications such as the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph, but yesterday The Pirate Bay news was spread across all of them and dozens beside, for free. The news was repeated around the UK, across Europe and around the world reaching millions of people. The results for the site were dramatic.

“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak today.

“We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.

The blockade, which was not contested by any of the ISPs listed above, will be implemented during the course of the next few weeks. While that time counts down, The Pirate Bay say they are viewing the interim period as an opportunity to educate site visitors on how to deal with censorship by bypassing it.

“Another thing that’s good with the traffic surge is that we now have time to teach even more people how to circumvent Internet censorship,” the insider added.

In court papers released today, Mr Justice Arnold said that since the terms of the court order (how the blocks would be implemented technically) had been agreed to by the ISPs in question, there was no need for him to detail them in his ruling. However, The Pirate Bay told us that by taking a range of measures, any blocking technique employed by any ISP can be overcome.

First off they advise that the most simple solution is to use a VPN, such as iPredator or other similar services that carry no logs.

These VPN providers cost money but there are free solutions too. Companies such as VPNReactor offer a free service that is time limited to around 30 mins per session, but that’s plenty of time for users to get on Pirate Bay and download the torrent files they need. Once users have the torrents in their client, the blocking has been bypassed and even with the VPN turned off, downloads will still complete.

Pirate Bay are also recommending the use of TOR but only for the initial accessing of their website and the downloading of the .torrent files. Torrent clients themselves should never be run over TOR, the system isn’t designed for it and besides, transfers will be pitifully slow. TPB also point to I2P as a further unblocking option.

While the above options will cut straight through any kind of blocking with zero problems, Pirate Bay are also advising people to change their DNS provider. By permanently switching to a DNS offered by the likes of OpenDNS and Google, users of UK ISPs that censor The Pirate Bay purely by DNS will have a free and effective work around.

As readers will recall, there are other simple unblocking solutions where domain names are blocked by ISPs but their related IP addresses remain unfiltered. These include the MAFIAAFire plugin and the simple action of typing a site’s IP address directly into a browser. However, in this UK case there is a problem with these solutions.

According to court papers made available today, it seems that on the advice of an expert and after being agreed to by the ISPs in question, IP address blocking of The Pirate Bay is now part of the injunction. This means that the techniques in the above paragraph simply won’t work.

To circumvent this kind of problem, The Pirate Bay can be accessed via a 3rd party – a so-called ‘proxy’. One of these purely for the job is being operated by the UK Pirate Party.

Quite how long this particular proxy stays up remains to be seen though. The Dutch Pirates tried a similar thing and were quickly pursued by rights holders. Nevertheless, there are countless free proxies online that can do the job just as well.

In just a few weeks the block of The Pirate Bay will be implemented and despite all the coverage and millions of extra visitors to the site, thousands of users will remain unprepared. Those patient enough to type a question into a search engine will regain access to the site in a few minutes.

But will the impatient start pumping more money into the pockets of the BPI? That’s the big question.

Update: Virgin Media just started blocking The Pirate Bay.

Source: Pirate Bay Enjoys 12 Million Traffic Boost, Shares Unblocking Tips

In Sweden, the results of intense lobbying are clear. Due to a combination of fat Internet pipes and its status as the spiritual home of The Pirate Bay, Sweden and file-sharing go hand in hand. As a result the country is being subjected to considerable online surveillance.

But according to new research from the Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University, an increasing proportion of the country’s population are taking measures to negate the effects of spying on their online activities.

The study reveals that 700,000 Swedes now make themselves anonymous online with paid VPN services such as The Pirate Bay’s iPredator.

A similar study carried out in 2009 revealed that 500,000 Swedes were taking steps to anonymize their connections. Today’s results therefore reveal a 40% increase in privacy service uptake in roughly 2.5 years.

Of particular interest is the response to surveillance by the younger generation. According to Cybernorms, 200,000 individuals aged between 15 to 25-years-old are now hiding themselves online. This figure represents 15% of the total group, up from 10% in 2009.

Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law at Lund and study manager, says that further uptake of anonymization services will only increase as new legislation is introduced.

“If the [recent] European Court of Justice opinion leads to an intensified hunt for file sharers, there is evidence that the use of these types of services for anonymity will grow even faster,” says Svensson.

While the researchers at Lund estimate that file-sharing is one of the key drivers behind the update of anonymity services, according to the foundation administering Sweden’s top-level .SE domain, monitoring of other kinds is also playing its part.

“Where monitoring is increasing, both from government and from private players like Facebook and Google, so does demand,” .SE president Danny Aerts told Svenska Dagbladet.

Whether it’s for file-sharing, domain blockage circumvention or freedom of speech, anonymization services are here to stay. Welcome to the encrypted Internet.

Source: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying a VPN

Since 2006, the Portuguese Phonographic Association filed more than two dozen cases with the Attorney General’s Office. Only two bore any fruit at all – one in 2008 and another just over a week ago having dragged on for an epic six years.

The case was brought against a then 17-year-old teenager who allegedly shared hundreds of songs online without permission. However, for “technical and procedural reasons” (read: lack of evidence), those claims were reduced massively and in the end it was decided he shared just three, a pair from local artists and ‘Right Through You’ by Alanis Morrisette.

Now, the Lisbon Criminal Court has finally delivered its ruling in the case. For violating copyright, the now 23-year-old received a two month suspended jail sentence. The Court decided that since the man was just 17 at the time of the offense and has a completely clean record, the sentence should be changed to a fine of 880 euros – 640 euros plus 4 euros in lieu of each day not served in prison.

After having made 40 similar complaints against file-sharers since 2006, the Portuguese Phonographic Association says it will now give up on the strategy.

“At the time, it was believed that, in fact, through the application of existing law we could begin to control the problem of Internet piracy,” said Association president Eduardo Simoes.

Current legal framework, Simoes added, can not cope with online file-sharing. Inevitably he is calling on the government to introduce new laws that do away with prolonged prosecution periods that reduce the deterrent effects of bringing cases to trial. What the Association wants is a “3 strikes” style arrangement whereby file-sharers are sent escalating warnings and eventually punished.

As the local branch of IFPI, the Portuguese Phonographic Association controls 95% of recorded music in Portugal but it is currently facing a crisis. The Association reports that in the last decade profits have dropped by 80%, and in 2011 sales of physical products nose-dived 34.4%.

Interestingly, in addition to blaming the piracy bogeyman and the economic crisis for these reductions in sales, Simoes also cites an undeveloped digital offering and artists’ growing tendency to self-publish as additional factors compounding the problem.

Despite the apparent lack of legal support, Portugal’s movie industry say they are working hard to reduce piracy by other means. According the MPA-backed FEVIP, they shut down 302 local sites offering pirate material during 2011.

Source: Epic 6-Year File-Sharing Case Over Just 3 Songs Comes To An End

Up to a point it’s a familiar story. A total of 80 IP addresses are listed having been harvested from a BitTorrent swarm sharing the album “This Is Where It Ends”. The plaintiff, a company called World Digital Rights, wants to discover the real-life identities of the alleged file-sharers so they can be hauled into court or, as is almost guaranteed, settled with for a few thousand dollars instead.

After the news broke, predictably the band started to receive negative feedback. But according to All Shall Perish’s manager, Ryan Downey, neither he nor the band know anything about the legal action.

“The band wasn’t consulted whatsoever and none of us have ever heard of this company,” Downey told TorrentFreak. “I spoke to the US label manager and German label president who both are as confused as we are. We are digging deeper and looking into the legality of it all. We are thinking it’s perhaps a sublicensor or some digital aggregator or something?!”

In reality the answer seems more straightforward. All Shall Perish’s German label are Nuclear Blast who according to their site are “the largest independent heavy metal label in the world.” Even if Nuclear Blast’s president is confused by the lawsuit, people working for him are definitely fully in the picture.

According to the lawsuit, on March 12, 2012, Nuclear Blast signed over the rights to “This Is Where It Ends” to World Digital Rights, Inc., an act that made the Panama-based company the “exclusive licensee” of the album. Along with that came the right to sue and it seems the company are now making the most of that right. After conducting another search of court documents today, it appears that World Digital Rights actually filed two lawsuits against alleged sharers of the album, one against 80 Does and another against a further 100.

In both cases World Digital Rights demands that each defendant is held “jointly and severally liable for the direct infringement of each other defendant” and held liable for statutory damages of $150,000.

Downey, who told us that the band were totally blindsided by the revelations, describes this action against fans as “awful” and has promised to stay in touch with developments. Ideally these lawsuits will get withdrawn, not only for the sake of the Does but for the sake of the band. But if Nuclear Blast and World Digital Rights persist with this ridiculous project, All Shall Perish might have no choice but to personally intervene – their reputation could rely on it.

Source: Copyright Troll Causes Chaos By Suing Fans Without Band’s Permission

The venture, which lasted 5 long years, saw the group target some 18,000 individuals and generate some of the most controversial anti-piracy headlines of the last decade.

Recent years have seen the same strategy revived, largely by adult studios. With less of a reputation to preserve and possessing additional leverage as their victims fret over their taste in media becoming public, news of the lucrative schemes spread deeper into the porn industry and beyond.

Eventually mainstream movie companies such as The Hurt Locker’s Voltage Pictures chanced their hand, and even more recently book publisher Wiley jumped on board.

Now, after several years’ break, music lawsuits are back on the agenda.

As revealed by a lawsuit filed April 20th in the US District Court For The Middle District of Florida, American metal band All Shall Perish are seeking to identify dozens of their fans who allegedly shared their music on BitTorrent without permission.

Founded in 2002, All Shall Perish are on the Nuclear Blast label. Through their lawsuit, filed by World Digital Rights, they are seeking to convert 80 IP addresses, harvested from a BitTorrent swarm sharing their album “This Is Where It Ends”, into real-life identities.

“Upon information and belief, each defendant went to a torrent site to download a torrent file and then downloaded and uploaded the copyrighted Work within the BitTorrent network,” court papers read.

Among other things, the plaintiff demands that each defendant is held “jointly and severally liable for the direct infringement of each other defendant” and held liable for statutory damages of $150,000.

A jury trial is demanded but as everyone knows by now, no robustly defended case will ever get to court. Settlements of a few thousand dollars will be offered and paid by terrified individuals, whether or not they are guilty.

This is the second BitTorrent infringement case filed in recent days by the Dorta & Ortega law firm. Worryingly, both cases have their roots in Germany where lawsuits of this nature are running riot. If these succeed, more will surely come.

Source: US Music Pirates Face New $150,000 Damages Claims

The year before IMAGiNE had launched their own private BitTorrent tracker that failed massively in its quest to stay under the radar. The site, UnleashTheNet (also known by its acronym UtN) attracted plenty of attention and it now appears it was the group’s Achilles’ heel.

As revealed by an indictment returned on April 18, 2012, and unsealed yesterday, four individuals have now been charged in the Eastern District of Virginia for their alleged roles in IMAGiNE.

Jeramiah Perkins, 39, of Portsmouth, Va., Gregory Cherwonik, 53, of New York, Willie Lambert, 57, of Pennsylvania, and Sean Lovelady, 27, of California, are all charged with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

Perkins, Cherwonik and Lambert are charged with two additional counts of criminal copyright infringement, and Perkins and Cherwonik are charged with a sixth count of criminal copyright infringement of a work being prepared for commercial distribution.

The indictment lists several movie titles that were reproduced, distributed and seeded on BitTorrent prior to the U.S. DVD release data including “The Green Hornet,” “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and “Yogi Bear.” All films carried the group’s “IMAGiNE” tag.

According to the announcement from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil MacBride and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton, Perkins, Cherwonik and Lambert were arrested Monday. Lovelady reported to the authorities yesterday.

“These four defendants are charged with serious intellectual property crimes. Through IMAGiNE, they allegedly sought to become the leading source of pirated movies on the Internet,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer.

“This Justice Department, working with our partners at ICE, has made fighting intellectual property crime a top priority, and we will continue to bring cases against individuals and entities devoted to cheating consumers and undermining artistic pursuits.”

Given the claims in the indictment and how the group’s activities are being portrayed, the IMAGiNE defendants are in serious trouble. First, it quite rightly points out that between 2009 and September 2011, IMAGiNE obtained video and audio for the latest movies from different sources, combined them, and then released them online.

But then, presumably because of their involvement with the UtN tracker, they are blamed for the subsequent infringing actions of UtN members. According to the indictment the four are responsible for the reproduction and distribution of “tens of thousands of illegal copies of copyrighted works.”

The maximum prison sentence for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and for each count of criminal copyright infringement is five years in prison. All four defendants are scheduled to be arraigned on May 9, 2012.

As reported by TorrentFreak last year, rumors persist that IMAGiNE were led to the slaughter by a rival group with a grudge.

Source: IMAGiNE BitTorrent Piracy Group Indicted, Face Years In Prison

In more recent times, however, the trend has been showing signs of reversal. These days cammed movies only make up less than 5% of the top 100 most downloaded movies and at this week’s CinemaCon 2012 convention, MPAA chief Chris Dodd said that instances of camcorder recordings had dropped by some 50% since 2007. “Almost all of this is due to your vigilance,” he told the NATO audience.

In several speeches since he took on the role of MPAA chief, Dodd has stressed that the absolute best way to watch movies is “in theaters, in the dark, on the big screen,” and millions of movie-goers agree with him. Unfortunately some of NATO’s MPAA-mandated approaches to combating camcorder piracy have sullied that experience.

Bag searches, pat downs, metal detectors, cell-phone confiscations, and even night vision goggles, have turned movie screenings (particularly early ones) into an experience more akin to that of a post 9/11 airport check-in than a relaxing evening out. But according to a presentation that took place yesterday at CinemaCon, all this has the potential to become a thing of the past.

PirateEye was developed with funding from Motion Picture Laboratories, Inc. (MovieLabs), a non-profit research organization funded by the major Hollywood studios. In development since 2006 and in new hands since 2010, $5m is said to have been invested in the technology to date.

The system involves the installation of cameras in theaters that scan the audience and have the ability to detect the lenses of camcorders and cellphones. PirateEye also records what it sees and retains “forensic quality” evidence for prosecutions.

While perhaps the natural reaction is to be concerned about yet more invasions of privacy in the name of protecting Hollywood, the people behind the technology say it is no more intrusive than other CCTV systems people encounter on a daily basis. They even say it could lead people to feel more comfortable.

“The purpose of PirateEye is to not have another person look at you suspiciously if you haven’t done anything wrong,” said Brian Dunn, chief executive officer of PirateEye. “If the cameras don’t catch a person trying to tape a film illegally, the images are destroyed.”

But it seems that PirateEye has more uses than simply cracking down on movie piracy. Earlier this week CinemaCon managing director Mitch Neuhauser revealed that someone had been detected at the convention not for partaking in movie piracy per se, but for recording Paramount’s presentation to exhibitors. That individual was apparently arrested and taken away by the police.

Finally, in his speech to the convention, Chris Dodd praised NATO for scheduling sessions on how to engage movier-goers through social networking, but interestingly one of the stated aims of the PirateEye system is to cut down on ways film fans might choose to promote their experiences with each other. In addition to curbing full-film professional piracy, their technology also aims to deter “social piracy” – the casual recording, storage, sharing of movie clips online.

According to its creators, thus far the system has already resulted in more than ten arrests and prosecutions in the U.S. However, thanks to aggressive US legislation, the uncompromising attitudes of theater staff, and the lack of discretion they are encouraged to show to anyone recording any part of a movie, Pirate Eye will suck in professional pirates and innocents alike.

Source: Movie Spy Cameras Attack The Dying Art of Camcorder Piracy

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament have just announced that they will reject the controversial treaty.

“Although we unambiguously support the protection of intellectual property rights, we also champion fundamental rights and freedoms. We have serious concerns that ACTA does not strike the right balance,” announced Guy Verhofstadt, ALDE group leader.

Verhofstadt said that ALDE continues to support multilateral IP enforcement efforts, but only those with a transparent, publicly discussed mandate. He added that ALDE shares the legitimate concerns of those who participated in the anti-ACTA protests in recent months.

“Civil society has been extremely vocal in recent months in raising their legitimate concerns on the ACTA agreement which we share. There are too many provisions lacking clarity and certainty as to the way they would be implemented in practice,” Verhofstadt noted.

One of the key problems raised by anti-ACTA activists is the way the treaty has morphed and grown since its inception. From its roots as a mechanism to deal with counterfeit goods, ACTA grew to encompass the unauthorized sharing of digital media online. This means that from targeting strictly criminal enterprises, ACTA now risks sucking in the man in the street. This one-size-fits-all approach is opposed by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats.

“Furthermore, ACTA wrongly bundles together too many different types of IPR enforcement under the same umbrella, treating physical goods and digital services in the same way,” said Verhofstadt. “We believe they should be approached in separate sectoral agreements, and following a comprehensive and democratically debated mandate and impact assessment.”

Yesterday the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said that ACTA may have unacceptable side effects on fundamental rights of individuals.

“While more international cooperation is needed for the enforcement of intellectual property rights, the means envisaged must not come at the expense of the fundamental rights of individuals,” assistant European data protection supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli said in a statement.

“A right balance between the fight against intellectual property infringements and the rights to privacy and data protection must be respected. It appears that ACTA has not been fully successful in this respect.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

Source: Liberals and Democrats Announce Rejection of ACTA

From its roots three years earlier, in 2009 Cleland created myPDFscripts, a platform which enabled him to share his passion with others. In recent months, however, things have not been easy. To cut a long story short, Cleland has been plagued with DMCA takedown requests from movie studios, one in particular.

November last year Cleland was forced to take down the site after Universal issued complaints against more than a hundred scripts. One of them, at position #69 on the list, was from the classic movie ‘Repo Man’. Interestingly, its creator Alex Cox contacted Cleland about the takedown directly.

“I believe you have received a ‘takedown’ notice from Universal to remove the script. I do not agree with this. I’m very pleased you have my script on your site and would like to see it remain. If you would like to add any other of my scripts, get in touch. You are welcome to post them,” Cox wrote.

But given the direct interest of a powerful company such as Universal, Cleland was concerned of the consequences should he simply repost the script. So he contacted the studio for clarification.

“Mr. Cox is the author of the Repo Man screenplay; however, his rights to and interests in the screenplay for the film were granted to Universal Pictures, which is the exclusive owner of Repo Man throughout the world in perpetuity, including, without limitation, all copyrights in the film and in the underlying screenplay,” the studio responded. “Accordingly, Universal stands by its request that you take-down the Repo Man screenplay from your website.”

So, if posting the actual script was off limits, maybe it would be OK for Cleland to post a link to the copy of the script that Alex Cox hosts on his own website? Apparently not.

“Please don’t post the links,” advised Universal. “I don’t believe Mr. Cox is authorized to post the script on his personal website either.”

Cox disagrees.

“Universal are both right and wrong. Right because in many cases writers do cede all their rights to a purchaser, and lose them. Wrong because REPO MAN wasn’t a work for hire, and in three years time all rights to the script will revert to me under an obscure provision of US copyright law. This may be why they haven’t sent me a takedown notice: but it’s disgraceful that your site has been kneecapped in this way,” Alex told Cleland.

“Have you thought about transferring all the material to a server outside the US — in Brazil, perhaps? I know of others who have done this to keep valuable sites alive.”

But Cox doesn’t end there. After giving Cleland permission to post up every script he’s ever written (he’s already given everyone permission to download his films), he finishes up with an alarming broadside against the studios.

“The studios, including Universal, are pretty clearly a criminal enterprise, operating an illegal blacklist and functioning as a price-fixing cartel. They actually have legislation which permits them to operate as a cartel abroad (the law is called Webb-Pomerene) but absolutely no right to operate as a cartel domestically. They do so because they’re powerful and have politicians in their pockets,” Cox notes.

“If the cops ever went after them using the RICO statutes the whole studio cartel would collapse like a pack of cards, and individuals like their ‘litigation counsel’ would have to look for honest work. It’s unlikely that this will happen, but we can dream,” he concludes.

At the moment myPDFScripts is suffering a bit of a crisis after Mediafire blocked the site’s locker account so whether Repo Man and the other scripts will ever appear there remains to be seen.

Source: Repo Man’s Alex Cox: Move Sites Overseas To Kill Copyright Complaints

Most often these lawsuits are filed by porn companies, independent movie studios such as the one behind The Hurt Locker, and more recently book publishers such as Wiley. In almost all cases the aim is to identify users and get them to settle out of court, a strategy dumped by the major labels of the RIAA several years ago.

Now, however, there has been an interesting development in northern Europe. The case involves an album from a very young artist called Robin Packalen, a child sensation who appears to be Finland’s answer to Justin Bieber.

On 22nd February 2012, Packalen, who’s signed to Universal Music, released his first album. Unsurprisingly the official street date was beaten by two days thanks to an uploader on The Pirate Bay. This didn’t go unnoticed by his label.

After monitoring the swarm, IFPI and Teosto, the Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society, went to court to obtain the personal details of the individuals behind a total of 82 IP addresses.

IFPI and Teosto convinced the Helsinki District Court that the pre-release leak cost them significant sums of money. The Court subsequently ordered two ISPs, Telia Sonera and Elisa, to provide the names and addresses of the alleged infringers to the rightsholders as requested.

Telia Sonera, to which 34 of the IP addresses relate, said it would comply with the Court and had no further comment. Elisa (30 IP addresses) also indicated it would comply if it could, but it may not have the information being requested.

The news has spooked one individual who contacted TorrentFreak this afternoon. He told us that he was one of the file-sharers in the swarm when the album was released and after seeding for a long time he’s “99% certain” his IP address will have been tracked.

“It happened to be my little sister’s birthday and guess who is her idol? Yep, you guessed right. As I’m such a nice big brother, I decided to download for her Robin’s newest album as a birthday present,” he told us.

“Well, it now seems like that present is turning out to be quite expensive, should they decide to send me a letter asking for money. If they do, I guess I have no other option but to pay. I’m just a poor student that can’t afford an expensive legal adviser to help me out.”

The question now is what IFPI and Teosto (or perhaps Universal directly) will do with the identities once they have obtained them. According to Antti Kotilainen of anti-piracy group TTVK (the outfit that conducted the investigation), the responses will vary.

“Every case will be investigated separately. Consequences will vary from compensation to a criminal investigation,” he said.

But considering the artist in question here – none other than Finland’s Justin Bieber – the chances are that many children will be caught up in the sweep. What will happen to them?

“In those cases, we hope the families will have a serious conversation with their children about piracy,” Kotilainen added.

Jarkko Nordlund, CEO of Universal Music Finland, warned that more albums had been monitored and more action could follow.

“This is a constant fight against piracy. We want to make sure people know there are legal ways to buy music online. We will communicate with the TTVK and see if there are serious infringers that we want to take to court,” Nordlund concluded.

Update: Comment from Joonas Mäkinen, Pirate Party of Finland

Robin’s album has sold more than 80,000 thousand copies, and IFPI and the court handling the case see 82 downloads as notable financial losses? This is ridiculous. He can’t even get to the official top lists in the broken system because the album is low-priced in the first place. Simply the act of just going after these filesharers costs more money and time for the lawyers and courts than could be gained if those downloads were directly converted to physical album sales.

It’s now even in the official PR discourse that the millions of YouTube views of his music video are celebrated as a success. From the perspective of a fan and end-user, it often makes no difference if the musical pieces are available for listening on YouTube, streaming services or as downloaded files. 82 people thought the latter was a more convenient way for them. This is not a good enough reason to allow third party organization get their hands on private information of ISP customers.

Source: Court Gives IFPI Permission To Identify Pirate Bay Users

For RapidShare, one of the market leaders, taking either of these actions wasn’t an option. The company has long insisted that it does business legally and has been trying extra hard in recent times to tackle infringement. Its scale means that closing down was never on the cards.

What RapidShare has been doing for some time now is promoting itself as a good digital citizen prepared to go that extra mile. A company appreciative of copyright holders’ needs but one that balances those requirements against subscribers’ rights.

This week RapidShare went even further when it published an anti-piracy manifesto containing guidelines on how responsible cyberlocker and cloud hosting sites should conduct their business going forward.

“RapidShare continues to work with all parties and wants to serve as an industry ‘best practices’ leader in accountability and transparency,” RapidShare CEO Alexandra Zwingli told TorrentFreak.

But while RapidShare’s proposals go far beyond file-hosting services’ responsibilities under the law, the response from rightsholders has been tepid at best.

In a comment to CNET a spokesman for the top four record companies made it clear that although RapidShare’s overtures represent a “commendable step forward”, the company will have to go even further if it is to meet the standards required by the labels.

“Unfortunately the new measures announced fall short if the goal is indeed to meaningfully and effectively reduce the massive amount of copyright theft occurring on [RapidShare's] service,” the unnamed spokesman added.

When comparing these comments and a statement given to us by RapidShare CEO Alexandra Zwingli, there is clearly a mismatch between the RIAA’s assessments and those of the Swiss-based file-hoster.

“Contrary to unverified ‘studies,’ RapidShare believes that by any practical measure, online piracy on its servers is very small,” says Zwingli. “Nevertheless, RapidShare has committed nearly one-third of its staff to policing and responding seven days a week to copyright infringement. DMCA take-down notices are instituted within one hour during regular business hours.”

But despite their efforts on takedowns (1 hour response is very impressive indeed), the RIAA still has issues and it’s interesting where their spokesman draws a line in the sand. The implication is that on one side are sites that provide personal storage lockers where users place their own files for their own use. On the other are sites that allow users to upload files for sharing with anyone online.

“RapidShare allows unlimited distribution of copyrighted files among millions of anonymous strangers without taking adequate steps to prevent this illegal activity,” the labels’ spokesman added.

Perhaps not surprisingly, RapidShare believes the measure of a responsible hosting site lies elsewhere.

“RapidShare fully agrees that the file hosting marketplace provides opportunities for providers and seekers of copyright protected files,” Zwingli told TorrentFreak.

“However, RapidShare believes that a distinction must be made between legitimate companies providing above-board services to users, the vast majority of which are engaged in lawful activity, from illegitimate entities for whom revenue is linked to the purveyance of illegal, copyright infringing activity.

“Unlike other file hosting sites, RapidShare maintains no incentive programs whatsoever, the likes of which reward users for the number of times their files are downloaded. The RIAA and Policymakers need to create distinctions between those companies, such as RapidShare, that are cracking down on abuse and ‘shadow actors’ that tacitly encourage copyright infringement.

“RapidShare welcomes an open dialogue with the RIAA as RapidShare believes they share goals to combat piracy and foster technology,” Zwingli concludes.

Source: RapidShare Overtures Snubbed, “Must Do Better” Say Labels

Rather than come to the negotiated settlement preferred by YouTube, GEMA commenced legal proceedings on copyright grounds against the Google-owned video site. The action concerned 12 specific music videos uploaded by YouTube users to which GEMA owns the rights but for which YouTube paid no royalties. GEMA argued that YouTube hadn’t done enough to monitor content submitted to the site.

Today a court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube is indeed responsible for the material its users upload to the site, despite the site having state-of-the-art filters which aim to detect and remove infringing content.

Presiding Judge Heiner Steeneck said his ruling gave both sides a reason to declare victory. GEMA wanted YouTube to take responsibility for videos uploaded in the past as well as those uploaded in the future but that was denied.

“YouTube isn’t the perpetrator here, it’s those people who illegally upload songs,” Steeneck said. “That’s why YouTube doesn’t have to search all videos uploaded in the past. It only has to help detect videos from the moment it is alerted about possible violations.”

Although YouTube operates its ‘ContentID’ anti-piracy system which detects infringements by way of digital fingerprints, the court ruled that in isolation that is insufficient. In addition YouTube must now filter by keyword too.

Both sides say they are considering their options and are yet to announce whether they will appeal the ruling.

Source: YouTube Liable For Copyright Infringements, Court Rules

The rightsholders, represented by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, wanted to force local ISP ePhone to hand over the personal details of a subscriber who allegedly stored more than 2000 audio books on his server, 27 of which breached the publishers’ copyrights.

In June that year the court ordered ePhone to provide the information but the ISP felt it would be wrong to comply, and instead took their case to the Court of Appeal. The ruling of the lower court was overturned on appeal and the case was sent to the Sweden’s highest court.

In the event even the Supreme Court couldn’t decide and it in turn forwarded the case to the European Court of Justice. A few moments ago the ECJ released its decision, one that is sure to please rightsholders.

The ECJ decided that there are no EU barriers which stop ePhone being ordered to provide the information as requested by Antipiratbyrån and the book publishers. The Court said that Swedish law strikes an appropriate balance between the rights of copyright holders and citizens’ rights to privacy.

Having obtained the decision from the ECJ, the case will now head back to Sweden’s Supreme Court.

“We feel very satisfied with this judgment. It is extremely important that we have received this message,” said Kristina Ahlinder, president of the Publishers’ Association.

“The important next step is that the Supreme Court gives us the authority, that the evidence is sufficient and that we have the right to share this information. The illegal publication that has occurred from this IP address is comprehensive,” Ahlinder added

If Sweden’s Supreme Court indeed decides that ePhone must hand over the information, it is not clear if the publishers are even ready to continue with a civil case against the alleged infringer. But of course, other entities such as the music and movie industries have been watching closely too, since it clarifies their position going forward. IFPI, among others, are welcoming the ruling.

Source: ISPs Have to Identify Alleged Pirates, EU Court Rules

Its outward structure is simple. Internet users who are discovered uploading copyright material are first sent two warnings via their ISP. On receipt of a third, copyright holders can take the Internet account holder to the Copyright Tribunal where they face hefty fines.

If entertainment industry lobbyists were to be believed the legislation couldn’t come soon enough since local artists were being seriously hurt by downloading. But it took a full two months for RIANZ – the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand – to deliver their first batch of just 75 warnings. All of them related to international artists and local artists were completely absent.

Now, more than 6 months after the so-called ‘Skynet’ law was introduced, local ISP TelstraClear has confirmed that one of its customers is the unlucky recipient of a third and final “enforcement” warning, delivered on behalf of RIANZ.

The alleged music pirate now has a week from the date of the notice to lodge a dispute. Failure to do so could lead the individual to be referred by RIANZ to the Copyright Tribunal for a punishment which could include a fine of up to $15,000.

TelstraClear, an outspoken critic of the ’3 strikes’ legislation, confirmed that it had been receiving just 15 notices a week from RIANZ. Nevertheless, that’s a significant amount when compared to those sent to any and all ISPs by the movie industry.

The MPAA-affiliated New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft (NZFACT) has sent a grand total of *zero* notices since the new law allowed it do so.

There are a couple of theories as to why this is the case. NBR, who spoke with an industry source who did not wish to be identified, said the size of the market in New Zealand meant it was too small for Hollywood to bother sending notices.

The other theory, which is connected to the first, is related to cost. When an ISP sends out a notice they can charge copyright holders a fee of $25. There is a further cost of $200 to take a case before the tribunal. With thousands of notices sent the costs would soon mount up.

There is speculation that to overcome this cost-related problem, RIANZ have been monitoring file-sharing networks in order to work out who is doing the most infringing and targeting those users first. Proportionately, users will download more individual instances of music than they would movies, making them easier to spot on separate occasions.

The $25 fee is currently being reviewed by the Economic Development Ministry which will have to decide if the level should be increased, reduced, or maintained. NZFACT boss Tony Eaton has asked for them to be thrown out completely, which suggests the movie industry might have more interest in sending notices if they become free.

But according to a report out of the TelCon12 telecommunications conference in Auckland today, ISPs have been bemoaning the costs of preparing the system versus how things have turned out.

“It’s more complex than just, ‘receive information, send notice’,” TelstraClear’s Oonagh McEldowney said, adding, “We’re nowhere near recovering our setup costs.”

An industry source told TorrentFreak that the ISPs budgeted for many more thousands of notices to be pushed through in order to ensure their initial outlays on systems implementation were covered. Being left high, dry and out-of-pocket will not have been well-received.

Update: Scott Bartlett, CEO of ISP Orcon, has confirmed his company has also sent out a ’3rd Strike’ notice.

Source: Kiwi ISP Issues First Music Piracy ’3rd Strike’, Movie Biz Can’t Be Bothered

By now it’s a well-trodden path – send out scary letters to alleged copyright infringers and ask for money to make mostly imaginary court cases go away.

This controversial business is almost always conducted with a law firm front and center, who spend much of their public-facing time throwing around legal jargon and talking endlessly about infringed rights.

But Lyndsay Honey, who became famous in the UK for his ‘gonzo‘ style movies which placed himself at the center of the action, seems to want to ‘keep it real’ by continuing the tradition of doing his own dirty work – and that includes speaking publicly about his latest attempt at monetizing porn.

In an interview with Vice.com, Honey explains that due to “everything on the internet being free”, his income dropped by 90% in 2 years. This development didn’t go unnoticed by Revenue and Customs who apparently thought something underhand might be going on in Honey’s tax affairs. While noting that he assured them that wasn’t the case, Honey is clear about his motives for entering the ‘speculative invoicing’ market.

“At the end of the day, if I can’t make money out of porn, the only way I can make money is to get to the people who are not buying it,” Honey explains. “I need to earn a living. I’m not a charity.”

But while talking straight has its benefits, sometimes little nuggets of information leak out. From his own mouth it seems Honey isn’t that desperate for cash. After separating from his wife (their house went on the market for £2.5m), Honey now lives in a “beautiful apartment block” and goes on to admit that things are pretty good.

“I still have a very nice lifestyle,” he told Vice. “When I say I’m skint, people say, ‘No, you’re not skint mate, it’s just now you’ve only got three cars instead of five.’”

And even while claiming porn is “a sinking ship”, Honey admits that he’s still shooting movies (which of course someone must be able to sell) and to this day remains the highest earning porn star in the country.

“I still do like, two or three shoots a week in porn for other people, so I literally just turn up, fuck someone and come home and it pays good money,” said Honey.

As his venture into file-sharing settlements shows, Honey is trying squeeze every drop of revenue from the most popular items in his back catalog. His 2003 film Fancy an Indian is the movie that will appear in the letters going out later this year, but far from picking a title that hasn’t done well, the reverse is true. Honey says that Fancy An Indian and The XXX Factor are not only his most pirated titles, but also the ones he’s made the most money from.

However, according to the 60-year-old, not all free content online is bad. Currently he’s working on a mockumentary (NSFW), apparently in the style of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Ironically, Lyndsay is giving it away for free to build an audience with the intention of later selling it to a TV company.

But while an impoverished Honey isn’t an impression that springs from his interview, it may well be that getting even more rich from file-sharing settlements is something that will remain out of reach.

Due to restrictions placed on his company by the High Court, the letters sent out to O2 customers will be much more tame than those previously sent out by ACS:Law. Furthermore, when people respond with a clear “I didn’t do it, and I don’t know who did,” Honey and his associates at Golden Eye may well have to accept that answer as final rather than bully them into submission.

Internet users in the UK may have bent over initially for Andrew Crossley, but they’re better prepared for Ben Dover, there’s little doubt about that. Don’t give up your day job, Honey.

Source: BitTorrent Troll Admits Its All About Making Even More Money

SOPA and PIPA became the acronyms on everyone’s lips and then, just when it seemed the netizens of the free world were about to be outgunned, something amazing happened. Tech giants such as Google and Wikipedia joined the protests, the balance of power tipped, and Hollywood and the music industry were forced into retreat.

With SOPA dead but with the whispers on CISPA getting louder, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been voicing his concerns for the future of freedom on the Internet.

In an interview with The Guardian, Brin spoke of “scary” developments which have seen powerful forces “line up against the open internet on all sides and around the world.”

From repressive regimes such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia which seek to control access to the Internet and restrict the communications of their citizens, to companies like Apple and Facebook which tightly control their platforms making search engine indexing impossible, online threats are growing.

So given the scale of the threats listed above, one might expect the issue of intellectual property enforcement to be less of a priority for Brin, but the opposite is true.

As the protesters recently made clear, the introduction of PIPA or SOPA would have seen the United States follow Iran and China down a dangerous one-way street of increasing web censorship using the very same technologies the US has been critical of in the past.

Brin says that by lobbying for legislation that has the potential to bring such censorship to the West, the entertainment industry is “shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot.”

Following up on comments last week in which the RIAA finally admitted that innovation is the best tool for tackling piracy, Brin said that the piracy problem would continue as long as people found it easier than using legitimate offerings.

“I haven’t tried it for many years but when you go on a pirate website, you choose what you like; it downloads to the device of your choice and it will just work,” Brin explained, adding that the restrictive mechanisms employed by authorized sites only represent artificial walls and “disincentives for people to buy.”

The entertainment industries insist that Google doesn’t do enough to fight piracy (and might even get sued as a result), but it’s increasingly clear that through the haze of war, Google will object to anything that stops it going about its own legitimate business.

An artificially limited web, with corporate controlled restrictions such as walled gardens or court-ordered censorship, are a direct threat to that. Accessibility is what Google needs to grow its business – maybe the entertainment industries do too.

Source: Google Co-Founder Blasts Entertainment Industry On Piracy

Securing your privacy when your VPN fails

Ok, so you’ve purchased your VPN subscription, enabled the service, and you’re enjoying your new found levels of privacy. Then – disaster strikes. While you were away from your machine somehow and for some unknown reason your VPN disconnected and now snoopers have a clear view of your IP address.

Fortunately, there are solutions.

“To protect against the event of VPN failure/disconnection, disable any internet access that does not tunnel through your VPN service provider,” Andrew from PrivateInternetAccess told TorrentFreak. “This can be achieved using specific Firewall rules (Ubuntu) or by changing TCP/IP routes.

But of course, not everyone wants to spend time with these manual configurations that could potentially cause problems if they’re not done properly. So, TorrentFreak spoke with the creators of two free pieces of software that do the job more easily.

VPNetMon

“VPNetMon continuously watches the IP addresses of your PC. If the IP address of your VPN is not detected anymore, VPNetMon closes specified programs instantly. The program reacts so quickly that a new connection through your real IP will not be established by these applications,” creator Felix told TorrentFreak.

VPNetMon (Windows) can be downloaded here.

VPNCheck

“VPNCheck helps you to feel safe if your VPN connection breaks, this is done by shutting down your main network connection or programs of your choice and showing a notification box,” Jonathan from Guavi.com told TorrentFreak. “Basically it constantly looks for a change in your VPN network adapter. You can connect to either PPTP or L2TP with VPNCheck.”

VPNCheck (Windows/Linux) can be downloaded here.

Stop DNS Leaks

When using a VPN service one might expect that all of the user’s traffic will go through the privacy network, but on rare occasions a phenomenon known as “DNS leakage” might occur. This means that rather than using the DNS servers provided by the VPN operator, it’s possible that the user’s default DNS servers will be used instead or otherwise become visible.

“A DNS leak may happen whenever a DNS query ‘bypasses’ the routing table and gateway pushed by the OpenVPN server. The trigger on Windows systems may be as simple as a slight delay in the answer from the VPN DNS, or the VPN DNS unable to resolve some name,” explains Paolo from AirVPN.

A tool for checking for leaks can be found at DNSLeakTest.com and a solution for fixing any problems can be found here. Alternatively, anyone using the pro version of VPNCheck will have this feature built in.

Double up your security for extra sensitive data transfers

What if you don’t have 100% trust in your VPN provider and worry that even they might snoop on your communications? Admittedly it’s a very unusual hypothetical situation, but one with an interesting solution.

“If you don’t trust your VPN provider 100%, use two VPNs,” explains Felix from VPNetMon. “This way you are tunneling your already encrypted connection through another tunnel.”

In Windows this is easily achieved. First, simply set up at least two VPN accounts as normal (if you’d like an extra one for testing purposes you can get a free limited account from VPNReactor). Then connect to one VPN, and when complete connect to another without disconnecting the first. Like magic, a tunnel through a tunnel.

Its also possible to VPN over TOR, but please please don’t use TOR for file-sharing traffic, it’s not designed for it.

“VPN over TOR gives several security advantages, for a performance price, above all partition of trust,” explains Paolo from AirVPN. “In case of betrayal of trust by one party, the anonymity layer is not compromised in any way.

A VPN over TOR tutorial can be found here, further discussion here.

Fix the PPTP / IPv6 security flaw

As revealed here on TorrentFreak in 2010, people using a PPTP VPN and IPv6 are vulnerable to a nasty security flaw which means that Windows and Ubuntu users could leak their real IP addresses. The following fix comes from Jonathan at VPNCheck.

For Windows Vista and above:
Open cmd prompt and type:
netsh interface teredo set state disabled.

For Ubuntu 10+:
Copy and paste all four lines into a terminal:
echo “#disable ipv6″ | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
echo “net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1″ | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
echo “net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1″ | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
echo “net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1″ | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

Pay for your VPN with untrackable currency.

“When anonymity is a factor, pay with an un-trackable currency,” explains Andrew from PrivateInternetAccess.

“For example, signup for an anonymous e-mail account using Tor and use a Bitcoin Mixer to send Bitcoins to a newly generated address in your local wallet. Alternatively, use the Bitcoin-OTC to purchase Bitcoins ‘over the counter’ from a person, rather than an exchange.

“Then, use a patched Bitcoin client, such as coderrr’s anonymity patch to avoid linking the newly generated address to any of your pre-existing Bitcoin addresses.”

Only use VPN providers that take your privacy seriously

We’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating. VPN providers who heavily log are useful if all you’re concerned about is securely communicating with the Internet through an open public WiFi connection, but not beyond that. For a run down of providers who do not log any data which would enable a 3rd party to identify a user, see our previous article here.

Do you have a helpful security tip for VPN users? If so, feel free to add it to the comments below.

Source: How To Make VPNs Even More Secure

A sample of the major anti-piracy companies working with the MPAA can be found on the movie outfit’s ‘Around The World‘ page.

There are many famous outfits listed including BREIN, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and Sweden’s Antipiratbyrån.

INFACT, the Irish National Federation Against Copyright Theft, is also present on the list and has been working away on the film industry’s behalf for many years both on- and offline. Back in 1999 INFACT was listed in court papers as a non-profit subsidiary of the Motion Picture Industry Association.

During 2010 INFACT was targeted by Anonymous’ Operation Payback and as recently as January this year the group was reported as having assisted with the investigation which led to the closure of Library.nu, a site dedicated to indexing ebooks. Indeed, whenever the anti-piracy drum has needed beating in Ireland, INFACT has been there.

Then a few weeks ago TorrentFreak had a tip from a source that has proven reliable in the past. Word on the street was that INFACT would soon close down and there would be an ‘interesting’ reason if we could get someone to speak.

So we contacted INFACT and asked them if there was any truth in the rumor but we received no response. This week we tried to follow up the lead and press INFACT for an answer but to no avail.

It appears that INFACT – the MPAA’s eyes and ears in Ireland – has simply disappeared. There has been no announcement as to its fate and its website, INFACT.ie, has completely gone.

We contacted the MPAA and asked them for information but haven’t heard anything back from them either. Emails to former employees of INFACT also remain unanswered.

So what has happened to INFACT remains a mystery. Maybe they did such a good job in tackling piracy in Ireland they’re just not needed anymore, or maybe the reverse is true. If you know, drop us a line at the usual address…..

Source: MPAA-Affiliated Anti-Piracy Group Mysteriously Disappears

These were the words that accompanied the launch of a new file-sharing site in 2008. The aim of The Student Bay was to bring to free books to the masses.

“Student Bay does not publish the course books as a whole, rather we divide them up in chapters, so that one can download them for personal use,” they added.

Due to the similarities present in their domain names and logos, speculation grew that The Pirate Bay and Student Bay were connected. There were even claims that The Pirate Bay’s Gottfrid Svartholm (aka Anakata) was directly linked with the site, an accusation he denied.

By December, Student Bay had been reported to the police by the Swedish Association for Educational Writers (SLFF) with the organization insisting that Svatholm was connected to the site. In fact the only connection was that the site had been hosted at PRQ, a web host previously owned by Svartholm.

Indeed, The Pirate Bay openly criticized Student Bay for taking subscriptions via premium SMS and suggested that sharing should be free, but by May 2009 it was a moot point – Student Bay had closed.

Last December, very nearly 3 years after the original complaint against the site, Swedish prosecutor Frederick Ingblad announced that a 23-year-old man had been prosecuted for founding and running Student Bay.

He was charged with violating and assisting in breaches of copyright law between August 2008 and May 2009, and charged with “regularly receiving and assimilating payments” from site users totaling $8,000.

But despite a lengthy investigation and legal process, the prosecution were left disappointed by a ruling from the Södertörn District Court today.

In the judgment the Court said that the prosecution had not shown “that [the defendant] alone or in concert with others had started the website StudentBay.se, whose domain was registered by another person during the fall of 2007.”

The defendant had previously admitted doing some paid design work on the site but denied being the site’s operator. The District Court agreed, noting that it had “not been established” that the defendant had “administered the website.”

The Court concluded that despite being involved with the website the defendant had not done enough to be found guilty of the crime in question – facilitating copyright infringement of textbooks.

“It’s excellent that there was an acquittal,” said Victoria Westberg, spokeperson for the Young Pirates. “We believe that it’s obvious that no one should be found guilty for only having designed a website and created a logo. It feels good that the District Court shares our view.”

The prosecution is expected to appeal.

Source: Student Bay File-Sharing ‘Admin’ Walks Free

Initially a law firm called Sidley Austin LLP had been negotiating on Megaupload’s behalf for the return of such assets and funds held in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Canada. Funds were indeed released from Hong Kong in February (to pay Mega employees) and from New Zealand in March (to pay for Kim Dotcom’s living expenses).

At the end of last month, Sidley Austin LLP and Rothken law firm filed a motion in the US to have more funds released to cover Mega’s legal fees. Later Sidley Austin withdrew and a new law firm called Quinn Emanuel Urguhart & Sullivan took their place.

The addition of the Los Angeles-based company to Megaupload’s legal team was widely considered a great asset for Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants to exploit. Andrew Schapiro, a partner at Quinn Emanuel, had previously represented several technology and media companies including Google and YouTube, leading the latter to a summary judgment in its $1 billion lawsuit against Viacom.

In a new court filing the US government complains that Schapiro’s past record in copyright cases, and that of Quinn Emanuel as a whole, present a series of conflicts of interest.

The government says the first conflict concerns YouTube. Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed a lower court’s decision to issue summary judgment in the Viacom v YouTube case, so now that battle is back on. YouTube is also listed as a victim and potential witness in the criminal indictment against Megaupload. Quinn Emanuel can’t have interest in both cases, the government says.

The second claimed conflict concerns Google, a company represented by Quinn Emanuel on a number of occasions including some involving the company’s AdSense advertising service. According to the Megaupload indictment, Google withdrew its Adsense service from the now-defunct file-hosting service in part due to copyright infringement concerns. The government intends to call Google as a witness in the Megaupload case.

But it doesn’t stop there. The government goes on to list several companies that have been represented by Quinn Emanuel in copyright matters who are also alleged victims in the Megaupload case and who could be called as witnesses.

The list includes a who’s-who of Hollywood and TV companies including Disney, Fox, Time Warner, Warner Bros. and HBO, in cases dating between 2006 and 2009. Another, a trademark dispute involving the company Danjaq LLC (holder of copyrights and trademarks relating to James Bond) and Sony dates back to 1998.

Software companies make an appearance too. Quinn Emanuel represented Brøderbund Software back in 1986, Intuit (the company behind Quicken) in 1997, and at some point Bulletproof Software. It is claimed that all of these companies had their products distributed unlawfully via Megaupload and could be called to give testimony.

“It is unclear how Quinn Emanuel intends to zealously represent defendants Megaupload Limited and Kim Dotcom while also protecting confidential attorney-client information gained in the course of representing other clients [...] particularly where those clients’ interests are directly opposed to those of the defendants,” the government writes.

But according to the government the conflicts go even deeper, particularly since Quinn Emanuel are now applying for funds seized from Megaupload to be released in order to pay legal fees.

“The possibility of a conflict of interest raised by Quinn Emanuel’s proposed representation of Megaupload Limited and Kim Dotcom is not limited to mere subject matter. The assets seized by the government from defendants may eventually be restored to victims – including possibly the current and former Quinn Emanuel clients listed above – as restitution,” the government adds.

In any event, the US government believes that the amount of money already released by New Zealand to Kim Dotcom ($240,000 to be released in monthly installments of $32,000 until the funds are depleted then indefinite monthly payments of $16,000) will not prove restrictive when it comes to hiring a “competent” legal team, “..even if such funds prove insufficient to pay Quinn Emanuel’s billing rates.”

The government’s complaints pose a real problem for Megaupload. Will it ever be possible for Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants to recruit a high-quality copyright specialist law firm that hasn’t ever represented any of the potential witnesses in the case? It seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, the fight for legitimate users of Megaupload to get their data back continues.

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will ask a federal judge on Friday to establish a process that would allow lawful users of Megaupload’s cloud storage service to get their files back,” the EFF reports.

Update: Quinn Emanuel just responded to the objections in quite an entertaining rebuttal.

Here’s a quote:

“[I]f the Government is to have its way in this case, the only lawyers before the Court will be those representing the Government. If the Government is to have its way, the only evidence available to the Court would be that cherry-picked by the Government, for the Government, from the universe of relevant servers slated to be wiped. If the Government is to have its way, in sum, Megaupload will never get its day in Court and the case will effectively be over before it has even begun.”

Source: US Govt. Objects To Megaupload Hiring Top Law Firm

In recent months its been all about the file-hosters themselves, the Megaupload raid in January and the fall out ever since. Today we bring news of action against a site that supplied links to films, music and games hosted on file-hosters all around the world.

On Monday, Greek police swooped on addresses in the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki and arrested a woman said to be 40 years-old and one of the operators of GreekDDL.

The site, which is hosted in the United States and remains partially online but with “major upgrades” underway, was a significant player. Authorities claim that it had in excess of 500,000 members.

To get an idea of the gravity local police are putting on the case, we can compare some recent stats. According to US authorities Megaupload, one of the world’s largest websites at the time, cost rightsholders $500m. GreekDDL (according to Alexa Greece’s 63rd largest site) allegedly cost rightsholders $85.4m (65m euros).

The amounts quoted are, as always, up for debate. It is being claimed that GreekDDL had to shut down for a while in January (traffic stats do indeed show a nosedive) since much of its indexed content had been stored on Megaupload. If that was the case, presumably the ‘losses’ to rightsholders would have been counted twice in two separate cases.

Authorities add that GreekDDL charged its members a subscription for access, although it’s not currently clear if these are simply donations by another name. GreekDDL did have a so-called ‘premium’ VIP section but what went on there is unclear. Nevertheless, police say that in January alone the site received 220,000 euros.

It’s also claimed that the admins of the site generated “substantial amounts” of revenue both from advertising and directing site members to online gambling sites located abroad, earning “commissions of up to 40%” on the latter.

Police say they want to detain two other site admins, one of whom is reportedly being tracked with the help of Swedish authorities and Interpol.

Source: Police Make Arrest, Hunt Admins Of 500,000 Member File-Sharing Site

Worldwide lobbying efforts have borne fruit and now it’s almost routine to see ISPs dragged into the debate on illegal file-sharing and treated as if they are the reason the problem exists, or at the very least that it’s their place to take responsibility.

According to a report coming out of Russia, authorities there are about to get tough on Internet service providers whose local networks are being used to share copyrighted and other illegal material.

These networks, present within the ISPs’ own infrastructure, provide users’ access to a wealth of legal content and services such as Internet Relay Chat, but inevitably unauthorized content is available too. While there is no suggestion that the ISPs directly advertise the availability of such material, there are claims that they use the existence of these networks as a plus point when marketing their product.

Authorities say that in advance of a crackdown, the Interior Ministry’s cyber crime department is currently carrying out nationwide checks on Internet service providers. Results of that audit should be come available either late this month or during May.

However, according to representatives from three of the countries largest ISPs who spoke to Vedomosti.ru, none were aware of any investigations currently underway.

Penalties for direct copyright infringement in Russia can be as harsh as 6 years imprisonment. Extending liability to intermediaries is something being touted in a series of amendments to the country’s Civil Code proposed by President Dmitry Medvedev and passed to the State Duma last week. They could be in force as early as September.

Source: Russia Moves To Hold ISPs Responsible For Illegal File-Sharing

It has become so important that some of the world’s leading Internet companies such as Google and Facebook, rights groups such as the EFF and Public Knowledge, and the biggest entertainment companies through the MPAA, have all become involved in the case.

First a little background. Marques Gunter owns a site called myVidster, a site designed for users to upload links and embed videos hosted on 3rd party sites. In 2010, adult studio Flava Works filed a copyright complaint against myVidster and 26 Doe users of its service.

Flava Works alleged that Gunter had failed to correctly police his site for infringement. Although Flava did not deny that Gunter had responded to specific takedown requests, the company said that despite being made aware of them, Gunter had done nothing to stop a sample of 26 repeat infringers who continually reposted links to infringing material on the myVidster site.

In July 2011, a contributory infringement claim was upheld and a preliminary injunction awarded against myVidster. The company was denied a DMCA safe harbor defense after it was said to have not done enough to deal with repeat infringement.

“[Gunter] removes videos from myVidster that are listed in DMCA notices, but goes no further. Beyond his mechanical response to the notices, Gunter refuses to concern himself with copyright protection,” Judge John F. Grady wrote.

“It is true that service providers are not required to police their sites for infringement, but they are required to investigate and respond to notices of infringement—with respect to content and repeat infringers,” Grady added.

Noting the importance of the case, late November 2011 the EFF and Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief. The pair said that Grady had gone too far with his interpretation of the DMCA and noted that the law “….does not say when and how service providers must terminate the accounts of ‘repeat infringers,’ nor does it define ‘repeat infringer’.'”

Also in November, Internet giants Google and Facebook signaled their interest in the case and their desire to have the original decision overruled. Their submission is complex, but boils down to a common theme.

“Lack of certainty not only harms established businesses like Google and Facebook, but may prevent investment in and development of the next Google or the next Facebook. A [recent study] found that imposing greater liability on Internet intermediaries for the actions of their users would have a devastating effect on investment in early-stage Internet companies,” the pair wrote in a joint amicus brief.

With such important issues at stake, and with their interests leaning more towards holding service providers liable wherever they can, on April 4th the MPAA added their amicus brief to the mix. The MPAA wants Judge Grady’s 2011 ruling upheld.

“Contrary to the assertions of myVidster and amici Google and Facebook, search engines and social networking sites are not the only businesses that desire certainty in a challenging online marketplace,” MPAA wrote. “MPAA member companies and other producers of creative works also need a predictable legal landscape in which to operate.”

“By advertising infringing material, refusing to terminate any of its users’ accounts, and failing to identify and stop infringers who repeatedly embedded links to unauthorized video streams and displays, myVidster did not qualify for safe-harbor protection,” the MPAA continued.

Again, the brief submitted by the MPAA is highly complex, but it too can be boiled down to a simple interest.

“Given the massive and often anonymous infringement on the internet, the ability of copyright holders to hold gateways like myVidster liable for secondary infringement is crucial in preventing piracy,” the MPAA states.

In keeping with that theme and according to a statement from Flava Works CEO Phillip Bleicher seen by AVN, Flava Works are also suing the web hosts of myVidster.

US-based Voxel.net and Netherlands-based LeaseWeb.com are said to be on the hook “…for failing to remove MyVidster.com from its servers despite dozens of DMCA notices alerting Voxel.net and LeaseWeb.com that Gunter was a repeat infringer. Under DMCA, safe harbor no longer applies to sites that fail to remove repeat infringers.”

Flava Works, Inc v. Gunter, currently up before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, is one of the most important copyright-related cases around and definitely one to keep an eye on.

Source: MPAA Joins Google, Facebook, EFF In Repeat Infringer Copyright Battle

From residing almost exclusively in the awareness of computer engineers and nerds, recent attempts by various copyright holders to censor sites such as The Pirate Bay and introduce even more broad powers with the introduction of the SOPA legislation in the US, the existence and mechanisms of the Internet’s DNS have now broken through into the mainstream.

In a response to growing attempts at censorship, various alternative DNS systems have been proposed with an emphasis on those that can’t be meddled with by the authorities. The latest, called ODDNS, comes out of France.

As its name suggests, ODDNS (Open and Decentralized DNS) is an open and decentralized DNS system running on the P2P (Peer-to-Peer) model. It’s creator, web developer Jimmy Rudolf, told PCinpact he invented the system with two specific aims in mind.

The first, and of most interest to people fighting censorship, is to “show governments that it is not possible to prevent people from talking.”

The second, of interest to anyone who owns and maintain their own domain names, is to take back control of them. “I find it absurd to have to regularly pay for a domain name,” Rudolf explained.

ODDNS is an application which allows everyone running the software to share information about domain names with each other, a bit like how a P2P network functions. ODDNS can supplement or even replace regular DNS.

Because domain names and related IP addresses are shared among peers in the network, they can no longer be censored. Furthermore, buying a domain name from a registrar is no longer required since people running ODDNS can create and maintain their own.

Still under development, as expected the source code to ODDNS is licensed under GNU GPLv3. PCinpact reports that the current ODDNS website will be updated next week and the first beta release of the software will follow shortly after.

Of course the success of the project will sit on the developers’ ability to overcome the technical hurdles and, crucially, if they can encourage enough people to come on board and stay on board. The desire to stick with this kind of system will be driven by need so more censorship will become this and similar projects’ lifeblood.

Source: ODDNS: Decentralized and Open DNS To Defeat Censorship

Gather IP addresses from BitTorrent networks and go to court to obtain the physical identities of those alleged to have infringed their copyrights. From there, approach account holders with an offer to settle for a couple of thousand bucks to make (in almost all cases) an imaginary lawsuit go away.

In this case Hard Drive asked the court to force ISPs to hand over the details of 90 Internet subscribers alleged to have downloaded and shared the movie “Amateur Allure – Natalia” at some point during a 63 day monitoring period.

The court noted that discovery can only be permitted with a court order and after showing “good cause”. The “good cause” standard can be met on four conditions:

(1) the plaintiff can identify the missing party with sufficient specificity such that the Court can determine that defendant is a real person or entity who could be sued in federal court;

(2) the plaintiff has identified all previous steps taken to locate the elusive defendant;

(3) the plaintiff’s suit against defendant could withstand a motion to dismiss; and

(4) the plaintiff has demonstrated that there is a reasonable likelihood of being able to identify the defendant through discovery such that service of process would be possible.

But Judge Howard R. Lloyd had problems, particularly when considering whether the requested early discovery would be “very likely” to reveal the identities of the Doe defendants.

Hard Drive had previously stated that discovery would allow it to “fully identify” each BitTorrent user suspected of violating its copyrights. However, as Judge Lloyd pointed out, while the ISP account holder may have been the infringer, he may also be merely the bill payer. Indeed, anyone with access to the IP address could be the actual infringer.

The court then went on to list all seven of the subsequent “fishing exercise” processes Hard Drive goes through in order to find out who did infringe when the account holder isn’t the person they’re looking for. It was all too much for the court.

“It is abundantly clear that plaintiff’s requested discovery is not ‘very likely’ to reveal the identities of the Doe defendants. Indeed, plaintiff admitted at the hearing that neither it nor any other plaintiff it is aware of has ever served a single defendant in one of these cases where early discovery has been granted,” Judge Lloyd wrote.

And when it came to “good cause” things didn’t improve either.

The plaintiff in the case needed to show all Does to be in the State of California but Hard Drive shot itself in the foot when it admitted that its IP geo-location tool was “…only truly reliable when predicting the country in which an IP address is located.”

Confirming the above, Hard Drive admitted that in other cases where discovery was granted it later found that some of the ISP subscribers did not live in the state where the lawsuit was brought.

The court also had problems with 90 Does being connected together in one lawsuit after Hard Drive admitted that it had no evidence to show that the BitTorrent users ever shared the movie between each other.

“Plaintiff has not shown that the defendants acted in concert simply by appearing in the same swarm at completely different times,” said Judge Lloyd. “Therefore, the court cannot find that ‘a single transaction or series of closely related transactions’ connects these 90 Does and makes joinder proper.”

The court denied Hard Drive its application for discovery of the Doe’s identities and ordered all but one defendant to be severed from the lawsuit. If Hard Drive wants to pursue them it will have to file individual complaints against them.

Judge Lloyd’s summing up will be music to the ears of those who oppose so-called copyright trolls.

“The court realizes that this decision may frustrate plaintiff and other copyright holders who, quite understandably, wish to curtail online infringement of their works. Unfortunately, it would appear that the technology that enables copyright infringement has outpaced technology that prevents it,” Judge Lloyd wrote.

“The court recognizes that plaintiff is aggrieved by the apparent infringement and is sympathetic toward its argument that lawsuits like this one are the only way for it to find and stop infringers. However, the court will not assist a plaintiff who seems to have no desire to actually litigate but instead seems to be using the courts to pursue an extrajudicial business plan against possible infringers (and innocent others caught up in the ISP net).

“Plaintiff seeks to enlist the aid of the court to obtain information through the litigation discovery process so that it can pursue a non-judicial remedy that focuses on extracting ‘settlement’ payments from persons who may or may not be infringers. This the court is not willing to do,” Judge Lloyd concludes.

Source: Court Kicks Out Copyright Troll Who Has “No Desire To Litigate”

The site looked familiar enough, with plenty of instances of the Party’s famous pirate flag around and Pirate Party written across the top, but the stories on the site made little sense when viewed through the prism of the Pirate Party’s core values. It’s the Pirate Party, Jim, but not as we know it.

I quickly came to the incorrect conclusion that Google translate was messing with me when in fact the truth was even more strange – someone had pirated the Pirate Party.

The real Pirate Party – known locally as Partito Pirata (we’ll refer to them as this from now on to avoid yet more confusion) – have their online base located at partito-pirata.it.

The ‘imposters’, who appear to promote environmentalism, both animal and social rights but nothing remotely ‘pirate’, have set up camp at PirateParty.it. They have been passing themselves off using the Partito Pirata brand for some time.

“We were born in 2006, together with the Swedish movement,” said former Ministry of Finance employee and Partito Pirata founder Athos Gualazzi, clarifying Partito Pirata’s roots. “Those others just want to use our reputation as leverage.”

In an interview late last year, Marco Marsili, the 43-year old professor of communications and journalist behind PirateParty.it, turned things around somewhat.

“We are people with experience in politics, they are just a cultural association,” Marsili said of Partito Pirata.

“They live attached to the keyboard and if the current is pulled they die. In all these years nobody has ever heard of them and now they take advantage of the visibility obtained by us,” he concluded.

But now, following a complaint made by Partito Pirata, perhaps more than a little ironically the Court of Milan’s specialist intellectual property section has moved to defend the name, identity and ‘brand’ of the genuine Partito Pirata.

According to a source familiar with the case, the judge’s reasoning in ruling in favor of Partito Pirata was that the Pirate movement is defined worldwide as being critical of copyright and seeking its reform. The ‘fake’ Pirate Party do not so they are not even conforming to the identity they’re trying to ‘kidnap’.

In his ruling the judge ordered the ‘fake’ Pirate Party and Marco Marsili to cease using the name Partito Pirata, Pirateparty or Pirate Party, on- or offline. The use of the name in a domain name is also banned. The group is further forbidden to use the official Partito Pirata logo and has 15 days to comply or face fines of 500 euros per infraction and 200 euros per day for non-compliance.

But the strange story doesn’t end there. According to Partito Pirata founder Athos Gualazzi, the attack on his Party’s identity has sinister toots.

“From the very beginning there has been an attempt to distract from our political experience by people we believe to be paid by the SIAE and the majors,” said Gualazzi. SIAE are the Italian Authors and Publishers Association, an organization responsible for the protection of copyright in Italy.

As well as being the individual behind the ‘fake’ Pirate Party, interestingly Marco Marsili is also the president of the Confederation of Italian Music, a trade group representing record producers, publishers, authors and artists. According to his personal site, Marsili claims to have “signed major contacts” with, among others, SIAE.

Although some will find this attempt at ‘pirating’ the Pirate Party quite delicious, ‘pirated’ is almost certainly the wrong word here. This appears to have been an attempt at identity theft in order to mislead. Quite how deep the rabbit hole goes after that is a question for another day….

Source: Court Orders “Copyright Lobby-Linked” Group To Stop Pirating The Pirate Party

On March 1st the Sinde law went into effect and now, a month on, the Spanish Ministry of Culture has revealed that in total almost 300 official complaints have been received.

The Comisión de Propiedad Intelectual (Copyright Commission) has received 213 copyright complaints plus 79 closure requests from rightsholders against specific websites accused of online piracy.

The Commission will investigate all allegations and has the power to dismiss claims or set the ball rolling for further action, including the removal of links said to infringe copyright through to the court-ordered closure or ISP blockade of entire websites.

Although the process between complaint and site shutdown can in theory be completed in about a month, the Ministry of Culture reports that no punitive action has yet been taken in respect of the 300 complaints.

It is not clear how many of the complaints being processed, if any, are the result of a hacktivist sabotage campaign launched on the day the Sinde law came into effect.

The group Hackivistas encouraged sites to link to a copyrighted track from artist Eme Navarro, a member of the music rights group SGAE but also an outspoken critic of the Sinde law. Hundreds of websites reportedly linking to Navarro’s song without permission, with Navarro subsequently reporting them to the Ministry of Culture.

While the initial aim of the campaign was to overload the Commission, it was also designed to discover more about the uncertain takedown process. Current thinking suggests that Spanish hosting companies will be asked to shut down non-compliant websites and ISPs will be asked to block those hosted outside Spain.

In theory it’s possible to shut down sites within a month, which could mean that the first closures from the first batch reported by the Ministry of Culture will be seen in April.

Source: Spanish ‘SOPA’: 79 Site Takedown Requests in First Month

“We continue to make criminal referrals,” said Paramount Pictures’ Alfred Perry during a conference last week.

Perry, Paramount’s vice president for worldwide content protection, went on to list five other hosting services in the MPAA’s spotlight – FileServe, MediaFire, Wupload, PutLocker and Depositfiles. At the weekend MediaFire insisted that they aren’t run by some criminal gang and today we’ve spoken with Putlocker to get their take on Paramount’s statement.

“In any other industry, a person making this type of statement could be sued for libel. Funny how that works,” PutLocker Operations Officer Adrian Petroff told TorrentFreak.

“PutLocker takes a strong stand against copyright infringement and in the past year and a half we have taken down hundreds of thousands of infringing files and blocked the accounts of hundreds of repeat offenders,” adds Petroff. “PutLocker always cooperates with copyright holders and law enforcement agencies at home and abroad to uphold the rights of content producers and distributors alike.”

In common with competitor RapidShare, PutLocker says it’s going the extra mile to tackle infringement. Like its Swiss counterpart, PutLocker also has a program to monitor external sites for abuse of their service and aggressively takes down files that contravene the company’s terms of use.

PutLocker, a service with offices in the UK, has only been existence for a little over 18 months but during that time it has grown quickly. From a standing start the service had reached around 800,000 visitors a day by early January 2012, and like many other comparable services benefited greatly in traffic terms after Megaupload was shut down. It now brings in around 1.6 million visitors every day.

Petroff told us that the company exists to enable legitimate users to quickly and easily upload large files and access them anywhere in the world, filling a gap in the market that not even GMail with its 25mb attachment limit can match.

“Less than 2% of the files uploaded to our servers are flagged as infringing which is a strong indication of the amount of legitimate usage we provide to the online community,” he told us.

Another of the issues that has become a hot topic since January is the rewarding of cyberlocker users when others download their content. Despite Megaupload discontinuing its program many months ago, the fact that it once had such a program is referenced heavily in the US government indictment. On February 1st 2012 (and in common with many other similar services) PutLocker also shut down its affiliate program.

Other sites in the crosshairs of the MPAA are Wupload and FileServe. Today we can report that following the Paramount statement on Friday, both file-hosting services have taken the most drastic of actions.

“All sharing has been disabled,” Wupload said in an announcement. “Wupload is not a file sharing site. If you uploaded a file, only you can download it and it can’t be shared with anyone else.”

Having temporarily blocked 3rd party sharing in January, FileServe appeared to re-enable the feature, only to switch it off again in the last few hours. As of now, it appears that FileServe too are no longer in the file-sharing business. (read more here on Wupload and FileServe)

Petroff told TorrentFreak that these are worrying developments.

“Who needs SOPA when a studio exec can make a wish/hit list and sites ‘voluntarily’ shut down?” he questioned.

From our discussions with PutLocker it seems clear that while maintaining existing popular features such as not throttling free users or putting limits on the number of files people can download, the service intends to move onwards and upwards with upgrades and additions.

“We are currently in a middle of a major site overhaul which will introduce a wide array of unique features that will help PutLocker secure itself as a leader in cloud storage and collaborative sharing platform for regular users, and businesses alike.”

“At the same time, we are always looking forward to working with content producers, distributors and their agents to diversify their distribution strategies and uphold intellectual property rights,” Petroff concludes

Source: We’re No Rogue Site: PutLocker Responds To Hollywood

On February 22nd, just over a month later, he was released on bail but heavy restrictions meant that life would not be getting back to normal.

In addition to general limits placed on his movements and activities, Dotcom – someone who lives and breathes the Internet – was banned from going online or even having a cellphone with Internet capability.

Today, Dotcom and his three New Zealand-based co-defendants – Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato – appeared in the North Shore District Court with requests to have their bail conditions modified.

Dotcom’s legal team told the Court that the 38-year-old needed Internet access reinstated so that he can properly mount his defense. Along with his co-accused, Dotcom faces charges in the United States of racketeering, money-laundering and various copyright infringement offenses.

To assist with a back complaint, Dotcom also sought permission to use a swimming pool at the mansion where he and his family were living at the time of the raid. They currently live nearby.

Dotcom’s fortune was seized by authorities so the former multi-millionaire is now looking to generate revenue wherever he can, as is his human right. To that end Dotcom, who has been honing his skills as a musician for some time, requested permission to finish an album he has been working on.

The prosecution naturally objected to Dotcom continuing his work and said that his album, a collaboration with several international artists, was unlikely to succeed. TorrentFreak was given a sneak preview of the upcoming release late last year and we liked what we heard.

Despite the complaints, Judge David Harvey said that Dotcom and his associates had behaved commendably whilst on bail. He subsequently granted Dotcom access to the Internet, 90 minutes access to the swimming pool and two trips each week to Roundhead Studios in Auckland to finish his album.

The Judge also granted Batato, Ortmann and Van der Kolk permission to travel to Dotcom’s home once a week for a maximum of six hours so that they can work on their defense.

An extradition hearing is planned for August this year and in the meantime Dotcom is staying strong in the belief that he can successfully defend the US charges against him.

Source: Kim Dotcom Back Online, Prepares To Release Music Album

The good news is that both publications now want to include a greater range of BitTorrent and other file-sharing related terms and phrases in their next publications. It was an honor when they approached TorrentFreak for our input and we’ve been working hard to ensure that the most important items are included.

If you think we’ve missed any out, please feel free to add your definitions in the comments and we’ll be delighted to add the best to this article and send them off to Oxford and Merriam-Webster in due course.

The shortlist

Bitatone – The act of buying a product previously downloaded due to wishing to support the artists involved.

BitTorrent Babysitting – The art of carefully monitoring a rare torrent’s seeds and leechers (versus percentage left and time to completion) to ensure its long-term welfare.

Bittorrent Bukkake – Having a ratio of seeders far in excess of leechers. Having an embarrassment of seeds.

Darknet - A network that will never, ever be busted by the **AA’s, largely because its obscurity lends itself to having no users and no content.

DHT Desperation – The feeling of concern used to describe grabbing a torrent currently displayed as having no seeds and no leechers and knowing there is just one chance left.

Digital Discount – A special price reduction system available to Internet users when procuring virtual goods file-sharing networks.

DVD Screener – A really good copy of a movie sent out with the studio’s name printed across the middle of the screen so that BitTorrent users get advance warning of which company will be monitoring the torrent they just finished.

Enrarged – The unprecedented anger experienced when having spent hours downloading a torrent, the unrar’ing process inexplicably asks for a password.

Free Anonymous Proxy – A special site which can be used to hide your IP address and private data transmissions from all the evil people on the Internet, except the completely anonymous and undoubtedly completely trustworthy person running the proxy.

Hash Collision – A statistically interesting occurance on which subjects of torrent lawsuits sometimes rely in order to prove they downloaded the latest Ubuntu distro and not MILF Mommageddon 5.

Open Wireless Router – A security-related network device essential to successfully defending oneself in a file-sharing copyright case.

P2P or Not P2P – The question of whether ’tis nobler in the mind to download the media you desire, or buy it because it belongs to a niche genre that lives off the small money it makes.

Peerstipation – The phenomenon experienced when using a ‘security’ IP filtering software and list combo that has so many IP addresses on it collected over several years it becomes completely blocked and nothing can pass.

Peersimisstic – The emotion felt when trying to finish a 4.7gig DVD and there’s no seeders and just 9 peers stuck at 99%.

PEX Panic – (see DHT Desperation)

Pi-curious – A BitTorrent pirate who sometimes fancies having a go on eDonkey to see what it’s like.

Piratnoia – The creeping feeling of unease suffered by some security conscious file-sharers the closer they get to 100% of a download. Escalates exponentially when seeding.

Quentin Torrentino – A BitTorrent releaser at the top of his game.

Ratio – A statistical comparison which indicates whether a BitTorrent user is 1337 or utter scum (7331). Can be used to claim victory in the elite pissing contests frequently held on private trackers.

Ratio Credit – A fiscal recompense-related statistical adjustment made to a private tracker user’s account which results in the impression that the user always seeds 7:1 but actually doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

Restorrection – The physically exciting bodily response to bringing a previously dead torrent back to life by pasting in a list of 250 public trackers.

Restroom Countdown – A courtesy service offered by most cyberlockers whereby they promise not to begin your download for X number of minutes allowing you to rush off and get back before the action begins. At 20kb/s.

Seedbox – A server designed to pump so much bandwidth into a private tracker swarm it makes it impossible for regular users to seed, resulting in them making an entirely voluntary donation to avoid being kicked out for having a bad ratio.

SeedTease – Repeatedly taking a hot torrent to 99% then backing out leaving the leechers frustrated.

Swedish Netflix – The Pirate Bay

Swarm – An egalitarian collection of Gentlemen and Ladies whose purpose is to share the world’s cultural anthologies.

The Pirate Pay – What the Pirate Bay would’ve become if Hans Pandeya had his way in 2009.

Torrendous – A word to describe a torrent site with more ads and popups than torrents.

Torrentard – The impossible-to-please commenters on sites like The Pirate Bay who despite getting the latest stuff for free, always find something to complain about.

Torrenteer - Anyone in the Top 10 Releasers or Seeders list on a private tracker. (See also MPAA Magnet)

Torrential – Maxing out your download speed. (I got 30mb/s…It was fricken torrential ! )

Torrent Relief – An annual charitable initiative which helps smaller and more needy trackers avoid having to shut down through lack of funds. Every. Single. Christmas.

Torrent Shopping – The art of walking around bricks and mortar stores looking for things to download when you get home.

TorrentWhore – Someone who will download torrents from anyone who offers them, without considering who they are, where they’ve been, and without using any kind of protection.

Torrorists – An MPAA-coined term to describe a huge group of people using up all the bandwidth on the Internet through indiscriminate BitTorrent use, thereby undermining national security.

Tracker Invite – The key to a highly delicate enforced-rarity economy whose scarcity is directly linked to the both the perceived exclusivity of the issuing private site and the amount Eastern Europeans can get for them on eBay.

Usenet Binaries – A place to download completeley free content, conditional only on paying monthly subscriptions to a newsgroup provider and often a Usenet indexing site too.

Vapidshare - An uninteresting file-hosting service that offers nothing new.

As mentioned above, please add your definitions to the comments below and we’ll pass your suggestions to Merriam and Oxford. Probably.

Source: BitTorrent Terms & Phrases Set For Inclusion in Famous Dictionaries