In a landmark case the music copyright group SABAM has been chasing a local Internet provider in court, trying to force the company to filter P2P traffic, thus far without result. The Brussels Court of Appeal has now referred the case to the European Court Of Justice where it will be thoroughly examined once again.
A man who uploaded Super Mario Bros. for the Wii before its commercial release has agreed to settle with Nintendo. The 24 year-old, who uploaded the game to the Internet in November 2009, has agreed to pay the games giant $1.3m in damages.
DigiProtect has shot itself and its business model in the foot during a recent court hearing. The notorious anti-piracy outfit refused to open its books for scrutiny during a case where it claimed compensation against a file-sharer. The judge consequently ruled that the defendant didn’t have to pay the majority of the claim against him.
The 2010 Oscar nominees were announced yesterday, inspiring many people to fire up their BitTorrent clients. Each year we take a look at the availability of the nominated films online. This year there is a downward trend as only 79% of the films have leaked online in DVD quality.
Australian Internet service provider iiNet has won its court battle against several Hollywood studios. Justice Dennis Cowdroy today announced that iiNet was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers when they shared copyright material using BitTorrent. The Australian Pirate Party has welcomed the decision.
Following investigations carried out by the IFPI, police carried out several raids across Sweden yesterday, targeting individuals sharing thousands of music tracks via Direct Connect. The alleged operator of the hub was arrested while others admitted to copyright infringement offenses.
An anti-piracy group which acts in the interests of the movie industry has asked a court to force an ISP to take measures to reduce online piracy. Federazione Anti-Pirateria Audiovisiva wants Telecom Italia to report file-sharers to the authorities, block some well known torrent sites and work with them in the future to fight piracy. Telecom Italia has refused.
Ignited by the Comcast fiasco in the US, the concept of Net Neutrality has been brought into the mainstream resulting in planned government interventions. However, unlike the name suggests, Net Neutrality might not stop BitTorrent blocking and could leave us worse off than when this all started.
“3 Strikes” is a regime being introduced in various countries around the world to try to deal with illicit file-sharing. Already Taiwan, South Korea and France are putting their versions of the plan into action and other countries have similar proposals under discussion. In one form or another, could the same be coming to the United States?
Several UK Lords have criticized the practices of law firms that send out warning letters to alleged copyright infringers demanding big payments. These schemes have been labeled a scam, and the lawyers operating them accused of “harassment, bullying and intrusion” and “legal blackmail” in the House of Lords.
The French anti-piracy outfit Trident Media Guard has been chosen by the entertainment industry to track and report illegal downloaders in France. The company, known globally for its pollution of BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks with fake data, will assist in the recently passed Hadopi three-strikes law.
