This Means War is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

Among other things, the new version aims to make downloads even faster for users with high bandwidth connections.

But there was something else quite unique about the release. Those who took a peek at the ‘about’ section saw the name of a new mysterious company. BitTorrent Inc. wasn’t listed there, but Gyre Inc.

So had uTorrent been quietly sold?

TorrentFreak contacted BitTorrent Inc. to find out more, and we were told that Gyre Inc. was listed there because of a “coding error.” The company didn’t want to confirm or deny the existence of a rebranding exercise, but did say that they “regularly test new brand and product names internally.”

This vagueness encouraged us to research the “Gyre” brand and to speculate about BitTorrent’s future.

Let’s start with some details on Gyre Inc. first. The company was registered in January of this year and lists BitTorrent Inc. CEO Eric Klinker as the service agent. The company address is identical to that of BitTorrent’s San Francisco offices.

One of the signs that points in the direction of a rebranding effort is the fact that BitTorrent Inc. copied all their BitTorrent trademarks for the term Gyre. These three Gyre trademarks cover devices, software and licensing and are identical to the existing BitTorrent trademarks.

And that’s not all.

There is also some evidence to suggest that Gyre is more than just a front for a new product. The company name already appears in the “Terms of Use” for the “Share” app released by BitTorrent Inc. a few months ago. In these same terms there’s also a reference to “SoShare”, another term trademarked by BitTorrent recently.

BitTorrent developers are also referencing Gyre in their code. In the new plugin.btapp.js for example we see several mentions. This is part of a yet-to-be-released product where web browsers can talk to uTorrent/BitTorrent via a plugin.

And what about the unusual fact that “Gyrecorp” is selling uTorrent stickers and shirts?

But perhaps the strongest support for a possible rebranding is that BitTorrent didn’t deny this when we specifically asked about it. We were informed that uTorrent and BitTorrent will continue to be released under BitTorrent Inc. But it wasn’t specified for how long.

BitTorrent Inc. wouldn’t be the first of its kind to change names. Several years ago Azureus changed its name to Vuze. This rebranding also covered the name of the BitTorrent client, but there is no indication that the uTorrent brand will disappear.

The ultimate question is of course why BitTorrent Inc. needs a new brand name to begin with. Could it be the pirate stigma? Are investors pushing for something new? Is there a sale on the horizon?

All speculation for now, but something is up for sure.

Source: BitTorrent Set To Rebrand Itself As Gyre?

Interestingly, torrent sites are not the only target. A similar block is also restricting access to the popular video sharing platform Vimeo, a site mostly used by indie filmmakers to share their work.

While there has been no official announcement, the blockade is currently affecting users of several large internet providers including Reliance Communications and Zylog Wi5.

Instead of gaining access to the sites above, subscribers are redirected to a message claiming that the site is “blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom.

While the exact reason for the blockade is unclear, the warning banner is the same as one users got when Megaupload, RapidShare and other popular cyberlocker services were censored last year.

This blockade turned out to be an overbroad implementation of a so called “John Doe order” which prohibited Internet providers from allowing subscriber access to unauthorized copies an upcoming Bollywood movie.

Whatever the reason for the current blackout, it’s clear that the Indian entertainment industries have access to tools Hollywood can only dream of. Either directly, of with help from the Government, allegedly infringing websites can be pulled down without a trial. Just last month more than 100 music sites were censored upon request from several music labels.

For the millions of filmmakers on Vimeo this new reality will be a rude awakening, but for the folks at The Pirate Bay it is hardly a surprise.

The notorious torrent site is already blocked in numerous countries, most recently the UK. And with the current pro-blocking climate, we doubt that India will be the last country to hop on the banwagon.

Source: India Orders Blackout of Vimeo, The Pirate Bay and More

The copyright holders who start these cases generally provide nothing more than an IP-address as evidence. They then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, allowing them to ask Internet providers for the personal details of the alleged offenders.

The problem, however, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material. Or put differently; an IP-address is not a person.

Previous judges who handled BitTorrent cases have made observations along these lines, but none have been as detailed as New York Magistrate Judge Gary Brown was in a recent order.

In his recommendation order the Judge labels mass-BitTorrent lawsuits a “waste of judicial resources.” For a variety of reasons he recommends other judges to reject similar cases in the future.

One of the arguments discussed in detail is the copyright holders’ claim that IP-addresses can identify the alleged infringers. According to Judge Brown this claim is very weak.

“The assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time,” he writes.

“An IP address provides only the location at which one of any number of computer devices may be deployed, much like a telephone number can be used for any number of telephones.”

“Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP address carried out a particular computer function – here the purported illegal downloading of a single pornographic film – than to say an individual who pays the telephone bill made a specific telephone call.”

The Judge continues by arguing that having an IP-address as evidence is even weaker than a telephone number, as the majority of US homes have a wireless network nowadays. This means that many people, including complete strangers if one has an open network, can use the same IP-address simultaneously.

“While a decade ago, home wireless networks were nearly non-existent, 61% of US homes now have wireless access. As a result, a single IP address usually supports multiple computer devices – which unlike traditional telephones can be operated simultaneously by different individuals,” Judge Brown writes.

“Different family members, or even visitors, could have performed the alleged downloads. Unless the wireless router has been appropriately secured (and in some cases, even if it has been secured), neighbors or passersby could access the Internet using the IP address assigned to a particular subscriber and download the plaintiff’s film.”

Judge Brown explains that the widespread use of wireless networks makes a significant difference in cases against file-sharers. He refers to an old RIAA case of nearly a decade ago where the alleged infringer was located at a University, on a wired connection offering hundreds to tracks in a shared folder. The Judge points out that nowadays it is much harder to pinpoint specific infringers.

Brown also cites various other judges who’ve made comments on the IP-address issue. In SBO Pictures, Inc. v. Does 1-3036 for example, the court noted:

“By defining Doe Defendants as ISP subscribers who were assigned certain IP addresses, instead of the actual Internet users who allegedly engaged in infringing activity, Plaintiff’s sought-after discovery has the potential to draw numerous innocent internet users into the litigation, placing a burden upon them that weighs against allowing the discovery as designed.”

Judge Brown concludes that in these and other mass-BitTorrent lawsuits it is simply unknown whether the person linked to the IP-address has anything to do with the alleged copyright infringements.

“Although the complaints state that IP addresses are assigned to ‘devices’ and thus by discovering the individual associated with that IP address will reveal ‘defendants’ true identity,’ this is unlikely to be the case,” he concludes.

In other words, the copyright holders in these cases have wrongfully accused dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of people.

Aside from effectively shutting down all mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the Eastern District of New York, the order is a great reference for other judges dealing with similar cases. Suing BitTorrent users is fine, especially one at a time, but with proper evidence and not by abusing and misleading the courts.

Source: Judge: An IP-Address Doesn’t Identify a Person (or BitTorrent Pirate)

While the Department of Justice proudly presented the case as one of the biggest criminal cases ever brought in the US, critics claim the Government has gone too far.

Many law experts agree with this assessment and point out that Megaupload is a lot less guilty than portrayed by the authorities.

This weekend Eric Goldman, a Prof. at Santa Clara University School of Law, joined in with his comments. His attack on the US Government is scathing, describing the Megaupload prosecution as a “depressing display of abuse of government authority.”

Siding with Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom who lashed out against the Government earlier, the Prof. claims that the shutdown of the world’s most popular cyberlocker was a gift to the entertainment industry.

“The government’s prosecution of Megaupload demonstrates the implications of the government acting as a proxy for private commercial interests. The government is using its enforcement powers to accomplish what most copyright owners haven’t been willing to do in civil court,” Goldman writes.

“The revolving door between government and the content industry” and the “Obama administration’s desire to curry continued favor and campaign contributions from well-heeled sources,” are the main motivations Goldman cites.

According to the Professor, Megaupload should have never been taken offline. He claims that it’s a modern-day equivalent of the printing press.

“Megaupload’s website is analogous to a printing press that constantly published new content. Under our Constitution, the government can’t simply shut down a printing press, but that’s basically what our government did when it turned Megaupload off and seized all of the assets.”

“Not surprisingly, shutting down a printing press suppresses countless legitimate content publications by legitimate users of Megaupload,” Goldman adds.

In addition, by shutting the site down and arguing that all data can be destroyed, the authorities are destroying evidence and ignoring the constitutional rights of the millions of US citizens who stored data on Megaupload.

“The government’s further insistence that all user data, even legitimate data, should be destroyed is even more shocking. Destroying the evidence not only screws over the legitimate users, but it may make it impossible for Megaupload to mount a proper defense. It’s depressing our government isn’t above such cheap tricks in its zeal to win.”

Professor Goldman continues by pointing out that the Government has to prove “willful infringement” when they want to hold Megaupload accountable for the infringements of its users. This is going to hard, he argues, as Megaupload has several strong potential defenses.

“Whether it actually qualified for these is irrelevant; Megaupload’s subjective belief in these defenses should destroy the wilfulness requirement. Thus, the government is simply making up the law to try to hold Megaupload accountable for its users’ uploading/downloading,” Goldman writes.

In his closing arguments, Professor Goldman points out that actions like the Megaupload prosecution will only make the public more skeptical about the Government’s attempts to control the Internet on behalf of a few multi-billion dollar companies.

“In the end, the Megaupload prosecution demonstrates that SOPA advocates are inevitably going to win. The content owners’ ire toward ‘foreign rogue websites’ combined with the administration’s willingness to break the law, if necessary, to keep content owners happy, leads to lawless outcomes like the Megaupload prosecution and ICE’s domain name seizures,” he concludes.

Source: Megaupload Prosecution Is Lawless and Unconstitutional, Law Professor Says

One of the key speakers at the event was Gerard Lewis, Vice President of Internet provider Comcast, who informed participants about the upcoming copyright alerts system that will become active in three months.

The system will be managed by the Center for Copyright Information, and is the result of a voluntary agreement between copyright holders and all major ISPs that was signed last summer.

Under the agreement a third-party company will collect the IP-addresses of alleged infringers on BitTorrent and other public file-sharing networks. The ISPs will then notify these offenders and tell them that their behavior is unacceptable. After six warnings the ISP may then take a variety of repressive measures, which includes the option to cut off the offender’s connection temporarily.

In his talk Comcast’s Vice President explained that the “six-strikes” system is needed because the DMCA law doesn’t work well for P2P infringements. Instead, the copyright holders and ISPs needed a more flexible approach, which culminated in the copyright alerts system and a historic memorandum of understanding.

Lewis went on to emphasize that the deal safeguards the privacy of subscribers, as copyright holders don’t get the personal details of alleged pirates. The warnings are mostly educational, informative, and point people to sources where they can download content legally. Additionally, Lewis said it’s important that the repressive measures don’t disrupt vital services such as phone calls.

He further noted that while ISPs are now playing a valuable role, more anti-piracy work can be done with other parties. Payment processors and search engines could be around the table as well according to Comcast’s Vice President.

Overall, Lewis said that a flexible and voluntary agreement is a good model to follow, but that they are still learning as the system is being rolled out. The effectiveness of the copyright alerts system remains to be seen.

In France a three-strikes warning system is mandated by the Hadopi law, and at the conference Marie-Françoise Marais of the Hadopi office shared some new statistics. Since the law was implemented late 2010 a total of 970,000 warnings have been sent out. 88,600 alleged infringers received a second warning and 270 are on their third strike.

The last group risks a 1,500 euro fine and Internet disconnection of up to a month, should a judge agree.

Marais used the above statistics to argue that relatively few people continue downloading copyrighted material after being warned. But, she also noted that it doesn’t always work, as one person begged to download one more episode of the US TV-show “24.”

The impact of the US “six-strikes” version will become apparent in the months to come.

While Comcast and the other partners are confident that alerts are an effective and reasonable way to deter online piracy, others have their doubts. For one, the monitoring system is relatively easy to bypass through a proxy or VPN.

Secondly, the multi-million dollar plan only covers a few of the many sources of online piracy. The millions of U.S. Internet users who download via cyberlockers and streaming portals are not affected by this agreement at all, as these downloads are impossible for third parties to track legally.

How ‘reasonable’ the “six-strikes” system turns out to be largely depends on what punishments Internet providers intend to hand out. Needless to say, a temporary reduction in bandwidth is less severe than cutting people’s Internet access. More details on this are expected to come out in the near future.

Source: Comcast Praises Voluntary BitTorrent Crackdown Agreement

Indeed, after a few weeks a conglomerate of music labels filed a lawsuit against several Internet providers, demanding that they block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay.

Nine labels including EMI, Polydor, Sony, Virgin and Warner said that The Pirate Bay infringes their copyrights and that several ISPs including TalkTalk and Virgin Media should implement a blockade under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

In February the High Court agreed that The Pirate Bay and its users do indeed breach copyright on a major scale, and today this decision was followed by a court order.

ISPs Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must censor The Pirate Bay website in the weeks to come. A sixth ISP, BT, has asked for more time to consider its position.

A Pirate Bay spokesperson told TorrentFreak that this measure is going to do very little to stop people from accessing their site, as there are many ways to circumvent it. “This will just give us more traffic, as always. Thanks for the free advertising.”

The UK Pirate Party is also prepared for the block and is offering a reverse proxy which allows blocked Internet users to access The Pirate Bay.

Virgin Media responded to the BBC by saying that a blockade won’t be very effective unless the entertainment industry works on legal alternatives as well.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behavior to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price,” their spokesperson said.

Music industry group BPI, on the other hand, sees today’s verdict as a major victory.

“The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them,” BPI boss Geoff Taylor said.

The Open Rights Group says the court-ordered block represents the thin end of the wedge.

“Blocking the Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism,” ORG Executive Director Jim Killock said.

“Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes.”

The UK is not the first country in Europe where the Pirate Bay is blocked by court order. Similar verdicts were already handed down in Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Finland previously.

Despite these blockades, The Pirate Bay continues to grow month after month.

Source: UK ISPs Must Censor The Pirate Bay, High Court Rules

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

Pirates are ruining the industry and are the direct reason for the loss of thousands of jobs, they say. Better copyright protections are the solution, they conclude.

A recent example of this reasoning was displayed by MPAA boss Chris Dodd earlier this week at the CinemaCon meeting in Las Vegas. Dodd told the audience that copyright protection has always been vital to the US movie industry, and it’s copyright that has allowed Hollywood to thrive .

The MPAA used this to emphasize that the movie industry and the tech sector have a mutual interest in strong copyright legislation. Or put in his words:

The truth is that neither the content nor the technology industries could survive without strong protections for intellectual property.

Many of you are familiar with how the name Hollywood became synonymous with the birth of the American film industry. It was in Jacob Stern’s horse barn, at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, the story goes, that Cecil B. DeMille screened the first full length feature film 100 years ago.

Well, when it comes to the tech sector, replace “Jacob Stern’s horse barn” with “Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room” at Harvard, and you have almost the same story with the birth of Facebook.

In these and countless other examples throughout our history, the ability to give birth to an idea and convert it into economic success, whether it is the content of a film or the technology of the internet, depends on copyright and patent protection

An interesting argument, but also an unfortunate one. Not only because Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of stealing the Facebook idea himself, which Hollywood turned into a movie recently. But also because it’s easy to argue that the American movie industry was built by copyright “thieves.”

In fact, Hollywood wouldn’t be what it is today if a bunch of rogue filmmakers hadn’t fled New York early last century. This “pirate” version of the movie industry history starts with one of America’s greatest innovators, Thomas Edison.

Little over a century ago Edison stood at the cradle of the filmmaking industry. He was the first to invent a device through which people could project film and obtained many movie related patents. To make money from his hard work he asked a licensing fee from those who were making movies with his technology.

This licensing requirement motivated a group of rogue filmmaking pirates to flee New York, including a man named William. They left for the then still wild West, where they recorded many films without a license until Edison’s patents expired. These pirates continue to do business there today in a place they named Hollywood. William’s last name? Fox.

So Edison got no money from these Hollywood pirates. While today’s Hollywood would be up in arms about this gross circumvention of intellectual property rights, we should mention that Edison himself wasn’t squeaky clean either.

In fact, in 1902 Thomas Edison himself copied “A Trip to the Moon,” a movie from Georges Méliès, without permission to show it in US theaters. This overt act of piracy eventually resulted in the bankruptcy of the French filmmaker.

The above shows that it’s not a stretch to argue that the movie industry was built by pirates. Or to put it in other words, if early 1900 filmmakers would have paid for their licenses, Hollywood would probably have never been built.

But you won’t hear that from the MPAA of course…

Source: MPAA Boss ‘Forgets’ Hollywood’s Pirate History

The Megaupload founder is allowed to keep his $20,000 a month spending budget and regains use of his Mercedes-Benz G55AMG, a luxury car worth $250,000 that sports “Police” on its license plate. A bank account containing $301,000 was also returned.

Dotcom’s wife Mona will have her expenses covered and can have use of a Toyota Vellfire.

Despite the partial success, Stuff reports that the High Court chose to uphold the majority of the US District Court seizure order. This means that most of Dotcom’s cars and other goods will remain with the authorities until further notice.

Dotcom’s attorney Willie Akel had asked the court to return all properties because the New Zealand authorities didn’t investigate the US request, but Judge Potter said that the Attorney General is not required to evaluate the legitimacy of the US order.

A significant portion of the new funds will be used to pay for legal expenses, both in New Zealand and the United States.

Among other things, the legal team will try to prevent Dotcom’s extradition. A court will review whether the Megaupload founder has committed an extraditable offense that violates New Zealand law. Earlier this week Dotcom’s US lawyer Ira Rothken said they are confident that this is not the case.

“According to our New Zealand counsel we don’t think that would be the case so we’re optimistic that Kim Dotcom will have a good result in New Zealand,” Rothken said.

The extradition hearing is scheduled for September. In the meantime Megaupload’s defense team is preparing a response to the US indictment, which is expected to be filed in the coming weeks.

Dotcom believes that they have a strong case against an indictment he describes as “nonsense.” The Megaupload founder previously shared several issues that the defense team will bring up in their reply, and he characterized the whole case as a political move.

“This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood,” he said.

Whether Megaupload will have to defend itself is still uncertain though. Last week Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that a trial in the United States may never happen because it is impossible to serve a foreign company with criminal charges.

Source: Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Gets $750,000 Back

These are the first words of a new book that two Pirate Party icons shared with all members of the European Parliament this week. In a time where copyright laws increasingly violate basic human rights, Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom and Rick Falkvinge want to break this trend.

Instead of merely pointing out what is wrong with current proposals such as ACTA, they’re going a step further by offering alternatives.

“We feel that there are many people who know that the Pirate Party is unhappy with copyright legislation as it stands today, but who are unaware that we have a constructive proposal as to how it should be reformed. We are not just complaining,” Christian Engstrom told TorrentFreak.

In the early years the Pirate Party was often jokingly characterized as a bunch of spotty nerds who simply want free stuff. While this perception has changed somewhat in recent years, especially when Christian Engstrom joined the European Parliament, there is still a need to clarify the Party’s position.

“We wanted to explain why this issue is about preserving fundamental rights on the internet, and not just about getting free films or pop music,” says Engstrom.

“The battle over ACTA has made many politicians aware of the fact that freedom on the internet is an issue that citizens (a.k.a. voters) care about, but most mainstream politicians are not very familiar with the issue.”

The book gives a broad overview of how the current copyright monopoly is starting to degrade free speech and people’s privacy. Internet censorship proposals have become commonplace and alleged pirates are punished without due process, all without any clear evidence that more stringent measures actually cause a decline in piracy.

Therefore, one of the key issues of the book is to offer alternatives. The Pirate Party doesn’t want to abolish copyright, they want to reform it. For example, the moral rights of authors would remain unchanged, but all non-commercial copying would be legalized. In addition, DRM woud be banned entirely.

“I am hoping that the book will be helpful in that respect, and that the timing is quite good right now. If we manage to stop ACTA, the natural question becomes ‘okay, so what should we do instead?’ Then we have a realistic and sensible answer,” Engstrom told us.

Those who are interested in reading the book can download it for free in several formats. A paper version is also available on the self-publishing platform Lulu.

Source: Pirate Party Presents ACTA Alternative to European Parliament

With a song titled “Sharing is Caring,” Bull is not exactly the type of artist music execs want to see in there. And that is exactly the point.

Dan Bull has no corporate promotion machine behind him. He has virtually no radio play and his music can’t be bought in bricks-and-mortar music stores. Instead, Bull is a self-confessed ‘pirate’ who relies on a crowd of like-minded people to earn a living.

“Sites such as The Pirate Bay do more to help unsigned artists than industry lobbyists ever have. Projects like The Promo Bay, which devotes The Pirate Bay’s home page, free of charge, to any musician who applies, creates overnight success stories,” Bull explained.

So instead of signing away his rights to a major music label, Bull is sharing his work with the public for free. That has worked well for the rapper thus far, but to show just how powerful the Internet can be he’s now aiming for a listing in the international singles charts. Not for the recognition, but to make a statement.

“The singles charts are worthless as an indicator of quality, and artists needn’t strive for the validation of reaching them. However, by taking a free song by an unsigned artist to the echelons normally reserved for the industry elite, I want to smash the glass ceiling and show that there is another way of doing things,” Bull said.

“We don’t need the protection of ACTA, CISPA or any other acronym. As long as our internet is free, creativity will thrive.”

And with a healthy boost from The Pirate Bay earlier this week this plan might just succeed.

After Bull introduced the goal here on TorrentFreak last Sunday, singles sales took off. When The Pirate Bay joined in a few hours later with a front page promotion, they skyrocketed. By Monday morning several versions of the “Sharing is Caring” single were on Amazon’s top 10 bestseller list.

Bull decided to release 10 different versions of the track because every individual download counts towards the eventual chart position of the single. In other words, the more versions people buy the higher “Sharing is Caring” will end up in the single charts.

After the initial boom the sales are now going on steadily. In the UK the most popular version of the single is currently listed at #75, with 4 others listed in the top 100 as well. In the rap category 8 versions are listed in the top 17, and in the Reggae chart “Sharing is Caring” is topping the chart.

While the above stats are encouraging, there is still some work to be done before the official single charts are released this weekend. Since the Pirate Bay promo campaign has now ended, it is now up to the public to spread the message further.

Help is still needed.

“The campaign has been going really well, although it’s much harder than I imagined to compete with the big-budget campaigns behind people like Jay-Z and Calvin Harris. I need absolutely everyone who can to contribute in order to get a place in the ‘official’ charts,” Bull told TorrentFreak.

To encourage people to buy all 10 versions of the single, Bull is going to thank all mass-buyers in an upcoming music video.

Those who want to help out can go to the campaign page where all the paid versions of the tracks are listed. Please don’t feel obliged to do so, but if “Sharing is Caring” doesn’t appear in the single charts this weekend we’ll have to blame all the cheapskate pirates, and declare an official victory for the major music labels. Sort of.

Source: Pirate Bay Boosts “Sharing is Caring” Into The Music Charts

The lawsuit is the next move in BREIN’s attempt to deny Dutch citizens’ access to The Pirate Bay.

In January, a Dutch court ruled that Ziggo, the largest ISP in the country, and competitor XS4ALL, must block access to The Pirate Bay. As a result hundreds of individuals setup proxy websites allowing subscribers to route around the blockade, effectively rendering the order useless.

In a countering move BREIN obtained an injunction from the court to shut these proxies down, including one operated by the Pirate Party. However, the Pirates are determined to put up a fight and have taken BREIN to court to get the order overthrown.

The case, in which the Pirate Party asked the court to lift all censorship restrictions, was heard by the court yesterday. BREIN, however, did exactly the opposite by submitting a rather broad set of new demands essentially asking the court to gag the political party.

In short BREIN’s demands are as follows.

1. The Pirate Party should be banned from operating a reverse proxy for Pirate Bay

2. The Pirate Party should be banned from operating a generic proxy service

3. The Pirate Party should be banned from linking to third-party proxies

4. The Pirate Party should be banned from listing new IP-addresses / domains Pirate Bay registers

5. The Pirate Party should be banned from encouraging people to circumvent the Pirate Bay blockade

If the Pirate Party violates the above terms BREIN asked for a penalty of €10,000 per day, up to a maximum of €250,000.

Needless to say, the demands of the anti-piracy group are unprecedented for a copyright related case. It is essentially a gag-order to enforce a previously obtained court verdict. If the court sides with BREIN this will have rather far-reaching consequences for people’s freedom of speech. It may also invite other parties to consider making similar demands.

The question is also how far BREIN wants to take this. Should other generic proxy sites be banned as well? And what about VPNs or the TOR network? All of these services allow the public to bypass the court-ordered blockade.

Meanwhile, the popular Dutch weblog Geenstijl is making some noise as well, as they launched a redirection site (FuckTimKuik.org) that forwards people to available proxies. BREIN has yet to respond to this initiative, but it shows that it will be quite difficult to root out all circumvention methods.

The court’s decision in the case between the Pirate Party and BREIN is expected to be published in two weeks. This verdict will coincide with BREIN’s case against two other Dutch Internet providers that are still allowing access to The Pirate Bay.

Source: Anti-Piracy Group Asks Court to Gag The Pirate Party

There is, however, an even ongoing bigger case in which the New South Wales police are accused of massive software piracy involving its criminal intelligence database.

The software in question, ViewNow, is developed by the UK company Micro Focus. While the company licensed its software to the police in the past, it discovered nearly two years ago the police were using thousands of unauthorized copies.

Even worse, the police also shared the software with third parties such as the Ombudsman’s Office, the Department of Correctives Services and the Police Integrity Commission. All without permission from the software company.

In an attempt to get compensated for several years worth of mass piracy, Micro Focus has filed a lawsuit in which it’s demanding more than $10 million in damages. Micro Focus’ managing director Bruce Craig says they saw no other option than to sue, as they can’t go to the police.

“When someone pirates your software you think who am I gonna call, the police? In this case, they’re the pirates,” Craig comments on 7.30.

“This is potentially a crime that has to be handled as a civil matter because everybody’s got their hands dirty,” he added. “The victims can’t go to police – it’s the police who are doing the stealing.”

At the center of the legal battle is a dispute over the licenses for the ViewNow software. Micro Focus says the police had licenses to install ViewNow on up to 6,500 computers, but in fact more than 16,000 copies were installed. In addition, the police shared copies with other organizations without permission.

“The licenses were for police only. Yet police were out there handing out our software like confetti,” Craig says. “They did not pay for those extra licenses. It’s incredible. It shows an organization that’s completely out of control.”

The police on the other hand claim that they are not aware of any restrictions. Instead, they claim that they could use as many copies as they want according to their interpretation of the contract.

To make matters even worse, Micro Focus is now threatening a new lawsuit as they suspect that the police have replaced the ViewNow software with an alternative called NetManage Applet. This application also belongs to Micro Focus, and they have not licensed the police to use that without restrictions either.

Who’s right and who’s wrong will eventually be decided by the court, but there is already one losing party – the taxpayer. The police have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and the case has barely begun.

Source: Australian Police Accused of Mass Software Piracy

Movie studio Voltage Pictures was not only one of the first studios to sue BitTorrent downloaders in the US, it also secured the award for the biggest mass-BitTorrent lawsuit by listing 24,583 alleged infringers at once.

This case dragged on for nearly two years and after collecting an undisclosed number of settlements it was eventually closed last December. It remains unknown how profitable the lawsuit was for the movie studio, but since they haven’t given up on the scheme yet we assume that it wasn’t a financial debacle.

Last week the studio filed a brand new lawsuit in Florida against 2,514 John Doe defendants, who are all accused of downloading The Hurt Locker.

Through this lawsuit the studio wants to obtain a subpoena so they can order ISPs to reveal the identities of the alleged downloaders. These account holders will then receive a settlement offer that generally lies around $3,000, which means that the Hurt Locker makes can receive over 6 million dollars in damages.

While the complaint filed at a federal court in Florida is pretty standard, there are a few details that stand out when we look at the list of sued IP-addresses.

Firstly, all the defendants downloaded the film in 2010. This means that the movie studio has waited two years before filing a lawsuit against the alleged copyright infringers. On top of that, we see that all the 2,514 defendants are subscribers of the same Internet provider, Charter Communications.

It could be that the points above are related. For example, Voltage Pictures may know that Charter keeps IP-address records for more than two years while other ISPs don’t. Another reason for targeting Charter subscribers could be that the movie studio knows that the ISP is not going to object to handing over bulk subscriber details.

Whatever the case, this new lawsuit is worth keeping an eye on.

While The Hurt Locker is a prominent name, this mass-lawsuit is just one of many being filed every week. In total more than 250,000 alleged BitTorrent users have been targeted in the United States and this number continues to increase.

While most of the plaintiffs are adult film studios, more reputable brands such as the major book publisher Wiley & Sons have joined in as well. And last week the first game publisher filed a lawsuit as “Airbus X” makers Aerosoft GmbH targeted 50 downloaders.

Depending on the success of the current cases, the BitTorrent lawsuits may continue for years. Thus far there is no indication that the end is in sight.

Source: Hurt Locker Makers Return to Sue 2,514 BitTorrent Users

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

Founded in 2007, the Polish-operated site is the largest meta-search engine for content hosted on cyberlockers such as Hotfile, 4Shared and Mediafire. FilesTube refers a significant amount of traffic to these sites, but not all of them are very happy about it.

In fact, Mediafire don’t want to be indexed at all, took action to block all incoming traffic from FilesTube last month.

“As a private service MediaFire was never designed to be indexed which is why we don’t have an index,” Mediafire co-founder Tom Langridge explains to TorrentFreak.

“Our meta tags for file access are set to not-indexable and services like Google, Bing and other search engines honor this. FilesTube was not honoring this and thus we were forced to block them.”

While the decision makes sense from Mediafire’s point of view, it would be naive not to relate the recent change to the increased debate about the legality of cyberlockers’ business models. After the Megaupload raids and arrests Mediafire and other file-hosting services have been publicly scrutinized by Hollywood.

Mediafire was among the five cyberlockers labeled as rogue sites by the movie studios recently. Mediafire was quick to refute the allegations and emphasize that they run a perfectly legitimate business.

This week the debate continues when RapidShare published a set of guidelines cyberlockers should follow to deter mass-copyright infringement.

While we assume Mediafire’s recent change is in part aimed at deterring infringement, it is no silver bullet.

The FilesTube block stops users from clicking through to Mediafire, but it doesn’t prevent links being indexed, as FilesTube gathers this information from third-party sources. This means that FilesTube users can still find content on MediaFire, but instead of clicking on a direct link they have to manually paste the URL in their browsers.

FilesTube points out this workaround on their Facebook page.

Update: The article was updated to make clear that Mediafire made these changes last month.

Source: Mediafire Starts Blocking FilesTube Search Traffic

While some defendants might respond with relief upon hearing such news, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is only becoming more furious at the people who destroyed his businesses.

“The US government has terminated Megaupload, Megavideo and 10 other subsidiaries, including a company called N1 Limited that was developing a clothing line,” Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

“They destroyed 220 jobs. Millions of legitimate Mega users have no access to their files.”

If Judge O’Grady is to be believed all this damage could very well have been for nothing because the authorities simply can’t serve foreign companies. This could lead one to wonder whether the whole setup was to simply destroy Mega’s businesses.

This is certainly a theory Dotcom subscribes to, and it’s not the only dirty trick Megaupload’s founder believes the US Government is playing. The US is structurally denying Megaupload the chance to put up a fair fight.

“We are refused access to the evidence that clears us, we are refused funds to pay our lawyers, we are refused to pick the lawyers we want to represent us and have any chance for a fair trial,” Dotcom says.

For Megaupload the worst part is that the damage can’t be undone. The site has been completely destroyed as well as the plans to become a publicly traded company.

“We have already been served a death sentence without trial and even if we are found ‘not guilty’ which we will, the damage can never be repaired,” Dotcom says.

And why?

According to Megaupload’s founder it is quite clear that the Mega investigation was a ‘gift’ to Hollywood, facilitated by corrupt forces.

“This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood,” he says. “Mega has become a re-election pawn.”

Nevertheless, Dotcom is confident that these forces will eventually be exposed.

“It is just a matter of time until the truth comes out. We are working on that and we are making good progress,” Dotcom concludes.

Source: Kim Dotcom Lashes Out Against “Corrupt” US Government

Charges in the indictment include engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.

While the prosecution is hoping to have Megaupload tried in the US, breaking news suggests that this may never happen.

It turns out that the US judge handling the case has serious doubts whether it will ever go to trial due to a procedural error.

“I frankly don’t know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter,” Judge O’Grady said as reported by the NZ Herald.

Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that Megaupload was never served with criminal charges, which is a requirement to start the trial. The origin of this problem is not merely a matter of oversight. Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken says that unlike people, companies can’t be served outside US jurisdiction.

“My understanding as to why they haven’t done that is because they can’t. We don’t believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States,” Rothken says.

Megaupload’s lawyer adds that he doesn’t understand why the US authorities weren’t aware of this problem before. As a result Judge O’Grady noted that Megaupload is “kind of hanging out there.”

If this issue indeed prevents Megaupload from being tried in the US, it would be a blunder of epic proportions. And it is not the first “procedural” mistake either.

Last month the New Zealand High Court declared the order used to seize Dotcom’s property “null and void” after it was discovered that the police had acted under a court order that should have never been granted.

The error dates back to January when the police applied for the order granting them permission to seize Dotcom’s property. Rather than applying for an interim restraining order, the Police Commissioner applied for a foreign restraining order instead.

The exact ramifications of the failure to serve will become apparent in the near future.

Update: Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom responds, and he’s not happy.

Source: Megaupload Trial May Never Happen, Judge Says

Google users searching for terms like “torrent”, “BitTorrent” and “RapidShare” will notice that no suggestions or search results appear before they type the full word. The underlying idea is that Google will curb piracy by driving fewer visitors to these sites.

Last November several Pirate Bay related keywords were added, and to a certain degree Google’s efforts have been remarkably effective. If we inspect the search volumes for “The Pirate Bay” and “Pirate Bay” we see that the number of searches has been cut in half.

However, the real question is whether this actually does something to prohibit people from using The Pirate Bay website.

It could be that fewer people accidentally stumble upon the notorious torrent site than before. Previously “The Pirate Bay” showed up as the top suggestion when people typed in “The,” which probably led to a few hundred curious visitors a day. This is no longer the case.

However, the majority of the people who search for “Pirate Bay” are existing users who use this as a shortcut instead of having to type the full URL. It is doubtful that these people suddenly stopped using the torrent site.

Indeed, as is usually the case with censorship, the net routes around it. In this case Google’s algorithm picked up a new popular search that allows Pirate Bay users to access their favorite site with just three keystrokes. Where searches for “Pirate Bay” plunged, the alternative “thepiratebay.org” skyrocketed.

As a result, Google now suggests “thepiratebay.org” when users type in “pir”.

That is, for as long as it lasts, since Google may now add this new search to their piracy filter as well. And so the inevitable anti-piracy whack-a-mole continues as usual.

A Pirate Bay spokesperson told TorrentFreak that they are not in the least bit hurt by Google’s half-baked attempts to keep people away from their site. They haven’t noticed a decrease in referrers from Google, and even if that was the case it wouldn’t be a problem as only a tiny percentage of The Pirate Bay’s traffic comes from search engines.

The real problem, according to The Pirate Bay, is that Google is willing to censor its search functions on behalf of the copyright lobby.

Google, on the other hand, is determined to continue and expand their anti-piracy efforts. Aside from adding more “pirate” keyword to the ban list, they will also prioritize authorized media in the search results and prevent rogue sites from advertising their services through AdSense.

Source: Google’s Piracy Filter Cuts “Pirate Bay” Searches in Half, But…

As a company, RapidShare sees itself operating in the “cloud hosting” business, offering a service comparable to the likes of Dropbox. And since people are moving data from local drives to the cloud at an increasing rate, these companies will undoubtedly host some copyrighted material too.

During the past several years RapidShare has made tremendous efforts to cooperate with copyright holders and limit copyright infringements. The Swiss-based company is trying to position itself as a front-runner when it comes to responsible dealings with copyright infringers.

Emphasizing this role, the cyberlocker has just published an anti-piracy manifesto for cyberlockers, or a “responsible practices for cloud storage services” as they call it.

“RapidShare has always embraced our obligation to protect the intellectual property and copyright interests of creators. Today’s announcement takes that obligation to a new level,” said RapidShare’s general counsel Daniel Raimer commenting on the release.

The four page document is a summary of what RapidShare believes cyberlockers should do to assist copyright holders in preventing copyright infringements. While some of the suggestions are already baked into the US DMCA, several of the suggestions go above and beyond existing law, with inevitable consequences for the privacy of users.

It includes basic recommendations such as making files private by default, but it also goes further by granting copyright holders the power to get account holders disconnected when they are merely suspected of copyright infringement.

“Services should terminate account holders or subscribers not merely upon proof that they are infringers but when sufficient copyright holders have called their conduct into question,” RapidShare writes. Or in other words, account holders are guilty until proven innocent.

In addition, RapidShare also makes it mandatory for account holders to use valid email addresses, so these can be shared with copyright holders when there’s a legal dispute.

“Services should require valid e-mail addresses of subscribers and account holders in order for them to register new accounts. In the event a copyright holder seeks account holder information through valid legal procedures, the service should have access to valid e-mail address information to furnish in response, which may facilitate an inquiry to the e-mail service provider. “

The above is bad news for privacy loving anons, but there are more concerns on this front. RapidShare also suggests that all cyberlockers update their privacy policy to make it possible for them to inspect the personal files of those who are accused of copyright infringement.

“Privacy policies should establish that service providers retain the right to inspect files of repeat accused infringers or accused violators of the service’s terms of service who, after reasonable notice to them by the service provider, have made no good-faith counter notifications or efforts to justify their conduct as non-infringing or as not violating the service provider’s terms of service.”

Also, RapidShare recommends that cyberlockers operate from countries that respect copyright law.

“Service providers should either reside in a country that belongs to the Hague Convention for the Service of Process Abroad or should voluntarily comply with requests to waive service of process with respect to subpoenas for user information. They should also reside in a jurisdiction that shows respect for copyright law.”

In his announcement of the manifesto Raimer once again emphasized that his company is doing all it can to eradicate piracy.

“We want all stakeholders in the debate over online copyright infringement [...] to understand that RapidShare recognizes that piracy is a serious problem, that we’re reinforcing our efforts to eradicate it, and that we’re calling on other data logistics companies to do the same,” he said.

The company itself goes even beyond its own recommendations, by monitoring third-party sites and forums that post links to infringing material on RapidShare. In addition, the cyberlocker also decreased the download speeds of free users to drive pirates away.

Thus far the entertainment industry is quite content with RapidShare’s efforts, but whether the average RapidShare user is happy with these changes is doubtful.

Source: RapidShare Publishes Anti-Piracy Manifesto for Cyberlockers

By filing a mass-BitTorrent lawsuit the company followed mostly in the footsteps of several movie studios, who together have sued more than 250,000 people in the US since early 2010. And the publisher didn’t stop at just one.

In recent months Wiley has filed more than a dozen mass BitTorrent lawsuits involving a few hundred John Doe defendants in total. The Does are all accused of sharing digital copies of titles including “WordPress for Dummies,” Hacking for Dummies” and “Day Trading for Dummies.”

Talking to TorrentFreak, Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan said previously that one of the main goals of the legal campaign is to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers and offer them the opportunity to solve the matter through a settlement.

“Our intention is to stop the infringement and let individuals know that they are violating the law and depriving the creators of the works of rightful compensation. Our preference is to educate, settle, and prevent further infringement,” Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan told us.

However, this strategy doesn’t always work. While the courts and Internet providers have been cooperative in assisting Wiley to obtain the personal details of the alleged book pirates, a new filing suggest that some defendants are not taking the publisher’s settlement offer.

In a one of Wiley’s cases four defendants have now been named in an amended complaint.

New York residents Jeff Ng, Ralph Mohr, Robert Carpenter and Xiaoshu Chen are no longer anonymous Does. Wiley is proceeding to call for a full jury trial against the quartet in which they will face accusations of copyright infringement and up to $150,000 in penalties for each offense.

Contacted by TorrentFreak, Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan declined to comment on the recent developments in these specific cases. “We are proceeding with these cases as a part of Wiley’s overall copyright enforcement and education program,” was the comment we got instead.

If one or more of the three cases indeed proceeds to a full trial it will be the first time that actual evidence against BitTorrent infringers is tested in court. This is relevant because the main piece of evidence the copyright holders have is an IP-address, which by itself doesn’t identify a person but merely a connection.

In a past RIAA court case experts described the evidence gathering techniques “as factually erroneous”, “unprofessional” and “borderline incompetent.” In addition, academics have shown that due to shoddy technique even a network printer can be accused of sharing copyrighted files on BitTorrent.

If the evidence is indeed tested in court, it should be a case to watch for sure.

That said, there’s also the chance that the lawyers are using the threat of a full trial by jury as a pressure tool to convince the defendants to settle. After all, the RIAA’s litigation campaign against individual file-sharers has shown that even when a jury awards hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, lengthy trials cost more than they bring in.

Source: Major Book Publisher Demands Jury Trial Against BitTorrent Pirates

They are accused of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.

These are strong accusations that could potentially result in two decades of jail time for the people involved but according to Kim Dotcom, the charges are “nonsense.”

In recent years Megaupload surrounded itself with some of the best lawyers who all guaranteed that the company was operating a legitimate business. In fact, Kim Dotcom informs TorrentFreak that his company was planning to enter the US stock market through one of the largest tech IPOs in history.

Megaupload was negotiating with the world’s top accountancy firms to become auditors and large international banks were interested in underwriting the public offering. Aside from an IPO, Megaupload also researched the option of becoming publicly listed through a reverse merger, where it would buy an already listed company.

Hong Kong-based corporate advisor Robert Lim was asked by Megaupload management to help advise on this endeavor, and he agreed to give us some more background on the work that was done up until the raids in mid-January.

“I started providing advice to Megaupload management on exploring and researching options on becoming publicly listed by IPO or back door listing and other fund-raising options in early 2011,” Lim says. “I understand the management and some of the shareholders had been discussing and exploring these options even prior to this time.”

Preparing an IPO is not an easy or quick process, but Megaupload had serious intentions and was talking with several of the “Big Four” auditors.

“Megaupload management had discussion with a number of the ‘Big Four’ largest international professional accountancy firms , which handle the vast majority of audits for publicly traded companies. These Big Four firms were invited to be the auditor and to work together with management to build out a road map to prepare Megaupload for an IPO,” Lim explained.

“This included any management and corporate restructuring to enhance efficiency and management of the group, and to review and enhance internal controls and corporate governance processes in the company as needed. Basically, some of the essential key things private companies need to do to prepare for public listing.”

In other words, the auditors would conduct a thorough review of Megaupload on virtually all aspects, which is not generally something a criminal operation would be interested in.

Besides cooperating with the top audit firms, Megaupload also approached several of the world’s leading investment banks to assist with the IPO plan. According to Lim the list of banks included those experienced in taking technology companies to the stock market.

In an earlier conversation with TorrentFreak, Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom mentioned several of the interested parties by name (withheld from publication). Lim confirmed that the banks Megaupload talked to were very open to the IPO plan, which he believes could have been very successful.

“Most of the response was positive. As long as Megaupload provided the commitment and flexibility to follow the necessary road map recommended by the professional firms to prepare the company for an IPO, it should not have been a problem.”

Just how successful the plan could have been becomes apparent when the numbers come into play. As a profitable company that generated a healthy profit in its short existence, the company was looking at a multi-billion dollar valuation.

“Despite the global economic downturn, the tech sector still seems to be providing the most successful IPOs. Therefore, underwriters said Megaupload had a good chance to be a very successful IPO, with an estimated valuation of at least a couple of billion US dollars,” Lim told us.

After all, Megaupload was a reasonably large and very fast growing tech company and also a leader in its sector. Furthermore, unlike many high-profile tech companies going for an IPO including some video file sharing companies that had successful IPOs, Megaupload was profitable.

However, this bright future was shattered early 2012 when the US authorities shut down Megaupload and arrested several people connected to the site.

Lim was shocked by the news, and he believes that the IPO plan is an indication that the company isn’t really the criminal conspiracy the US authorities claim it to be.

“Objectively speaking, for the criminal case it brings up the question if there really was a so-called ‘Mega-Conspiracy’ among Megaupload management. It is clear Megaupload management was seriously exploring options for taking the company to public listing,” Lim told us.

“They also knew full well that it would require a lot of scrutiny, due diligence and review of the operations, financials and overall business model of Megaupload not only by the auditors / accountants, lawyers for regulatory filings and IPO underwriters, but also the various regulatory agencies which govern the stock exchanges and public markets.”

“This does not fit with the ‘Mega-Conspiracy’ concept that Megaupload management is accused of, including that they knowingly and secretly conspired to do and hide criminal activities in Megaupload,” Lim adds.

These revelations do indeed raise many questions, including whether the US government was aware of Megaupload’s plans.

It seems likely that the Megaupload legal team will reference the company’s extensive plans to enter the stock market in their upcoming defense. While it doesn’t answer the question of whether Megaupload’s operators are guilty or not, it does show that the company believed it was legitimate and wasn’t trying to hide anything.

Source: Megaupload Worked on a Multi-Billion Dollar IPO

Two weeks ago BREIN ordered the Party to take down a reverse Pirate Bay proxy. The site allowed subscribers of two Dutch Internet providers to bypass a court ordered blockade of the notorious torrent site, and BREIN argued that the proxy was sabotaging this order.

Initially the Pirate Party refused to give in to the demands, but when they were confronted with an injunction from the court right before the weekend they had no other choice than to comply. The Pirates took down the reverse proxy and replaced it with a protest page linking to dozens of other ways people can access The Pirate Bay.

On Saturday, BREIN sent a follow-up letter urging the Party to take down these links as well, including the Party’s generic proxy. However, aside from removing the hyperlinks, the Pirates rejected these demands. Instead, they have now announced that they will sue the anti-piracy group.

“By dragging BREIN to court, the Pirate Party finally has the chance to put forward arguments to strike the court injunction that was unilaterally imposed on it last friday by Dutch entertainment industry organization BREIN,” the Party announced today.

Through the courts the Pirate Party hopes to get the ex parte injunction overturned. The Party argues that they have the right to be heard, and say that the court allowed BREIN to take justice into their own hands by adding extra demands under threat of draconian penalties.

“It is time that the industry attack dogs understand that you can’t trample on people’s freedoms for your own monetary gain,” Pirate Party board member blauwbaard says.

“Today we’ll try to explain to the judge how giving BREIN one blocking instrument causes them to stretch it in unjust ways to stifle free speech and the free flow of information. Paraphrasing Victor Hugo, nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” he adds.

The Pirate Bay case is keeping BREIN busy this month as the group is also taking two new Dutch Internet providers to court to expand the local blockade.

The Pirate Party is glad that finally they will be able to strike back at their nemesis. Freedom of speech and an Open Internet are two core issues of the Party which they are eager to defend.

“The Dutch Pirate Party calls upon all pirates and freedom-loving landlubbers to stand up and support our fight against censorship. Because as Martin Luther King might have said it, were he alive today, ‘freedom on the Internet is indivisible, a threat to freedom of the Internet anywhere is a threat to freedom on the Internet everywhere’,” they state.

Update: Adding fuel to the fire, the prominent Dutch weblog Geenstijl created a proxy redirector at FuckTimKuik.org. Ouch.

Update 2: The Pirate Party scored a first victory in court.

Source: Pirate Party Sues Hollywood Backed Group over Pirate Bay Censorship

Contraband is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

While the US Government won’t mind if the servers are destroyed, Megaupload, the EFF and even the MPAA all argued that would be a bad idea because they contain critical evidence and irreplaceable user data.

Hosting company Carpathia, on the other hand, said it can’t bear the costs of $9,000 a day indefinitely. So the company called for a meeting where they asked Judge O’Grady to come up with a solution. That hearing was held on Friday and proved to be quite interesting.

While Carpathia hoped the hearing would bring relief, in the event the company was warned that it too might become a target for litigation.

As reported by CNET, Judge O’Grady was sympathetic to the hosting company’s call for help, but the attorney representing the US Government wasn’t. The attorney stated that Carpathia made $35 million from Megaupload and insinuated that the company might not be as neutral as it claims to be.

The lawyer further said that Megaupload’s host may be partly responsible for the copyright infringements that occurred through the cyberlocker, and added that the host itself could become the target of a civil lawsuit.

The attorney didn’t substantiate the alleged wrongdoings of Carpathia and neither did he identify the potential source of a civil suit.

One possible party that could go after the hosting company is the MPAA. The movie industry group previously said they want the data to be preserved for potential civil cases against Megaupload-affiliated entities. However, during the hearing on Friday they were no longer interested in keeping the data intact, so this seems unlikely.

Neither of the parties involved was willing to comment on the claims made by the US attorney, but it’s clear that the US Government thinks Carpathia is not totally innocent.

After hearing the various arguments, Judge O’Grady decided that the parties involved should get back together to find a suitable solution. This was one of the suggestions made by the Megaupload legal team, but with so many different interests at stake it will prove to be a challenging endeavor.

Source: US: Megaupload’s Hosting Company Might be Sued Next

These proxies render the court order useless, which is a thorn in the side of local anti-piracy outfit BREIN. In an attempt to take these proxies offline, BREIN obtained an injunction against one of the sites and used this to convince others to shut down as well.

While several site operators gave BREIN what they wanted, the local Pirate Party refused to do so. They claimed that BREIN’s demands are hampering people’s freedom of speech, and objected to the fact that an “ex parte” decision against one proxy was used to “threaten” other site owners.

“The demands are ridiculous,” Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak last week.

“A private lobbying organization should not be allowed to be the censor of the Dutch internet. We were also amazed to find an ex-parte decision attached, threatening Dutch minors with €1000 per day fines for operating their proxy,” he added.

So the Pirate Party kept the proxy site offline and consulted with lawyers to see what steps could be taken next. However, BREIN wasn’t sitting still either and asked the Court of The Hague for a new injunction, specifically naming the Pirate Party proxy.

This injunction was issued yesterday, and the court orders the Pirates to take the proxy offline within 6 hours, or face a penalty of 10,000 euro per day. BREIN successfully argued that the proxy is an immediate threat to the effectiveness of the ISP blockade, and submitted tweets of Pirate Party chairman who confirmed how much traffic the site received.

The Pirate Party was not heard in the matter (ex parte) and according to board member “blauwbaard” the judge ignored their requests to be heard.

“The judge has decided to ignore our express and valid request to have the injunction either denied flat-out, or to at least be heard in the matter before a decision was made,” blauwbaard states in a response.

“This decision is even more strange because BREIN was allowed to bring over 20 pages of arguments to convince the judge to stretch a quaint rule of IP-law, meant to block the sudden appearance of mass quantities of counterfeited goods, far enough to be applied to the website of a political party.”

Faced with huge fines, the Dutch Pirate Party saw no other option than to take the proxy offline, replacing it with a list of tip and alternative proxies. Monday the Pirate Party will file a request to overturn the injunction, meaning that while BREIN won the first battle, the war is far from over.

Source: Pirate Party Ordered to Shut Down Pirate Bay Proxy

The verdict was the first to bring broad censorship to the Netherlands, much to the disappointment of the two Internet providers.

But for BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group that started the court case, it was a major victory.

The Hollywood-backed group had convinced the court that many subscribers of the ISPs shared films that were linked through The Pirate Bay. Among other things, the group presented data on the percentage of Ziggo and XS4ALL subscribers present in several popular BitTorrent swarms.

The assumption of BREIN and the court was that a blockade of The Pirate Bay would lower the number of infringers at the two providers, but new research from the University of Amsterdam shows that this is not the case.

Researchers from the System and Network Engineering group repeated the initial BREIN tests with new torrents that were not available prior to the blockade. If censorship is effective, this number would have declined, but the researchers found that it makes no significant difference.

“The claim that The Pirate Bay blockade by Ziggo and XS4ALL leads to a decrease of copyright infringement by their subscribers via BitTorrent transfers must be rejected. There is no significant effect of this measure,” the researchers conclude.

In other words, despite the court order the number of BitTorrent pirates at the two censored Internet providers remains constant.

“Ziggo and XS4ALL subscribers who use BitTorrent apparently found different routes other than ‘The Pirate Bay’ to share files, and remain active as seeders to upload files to others,” the researchers note.

The results are not really unexpected, as there are countless other ways to download the torrents that are available on The Pirate Bay. Reverse proxies are one example, or indeed the many other BitTorrent sites that are out there.

The results will prove interesting in respect of a new lawsuit filed by BREIN against two other Dutch Internet providers. Now that it’s clear that a blockade has little effect, the anti-piracy group will have to present new arguments to warrant a Pirate Bay block.

Source: Censoring The Pirate Bay is Useless, Research Shows