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

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

The security experts have observed a massive spike in activity compared to 2011, mostly originating from locations in Russia, Canada, China, Australia and the USA.

The CERT group operates a system that scans for online threats and the attack on BitTorrent triggered several of their honeypot sensors. These attack sources send data packages that appear to be legitimate, but the IP-addresses they send are forged.

The security researchers, who say these poisoning attacks are happening on a massive scale, observe that they are targeted at specific BitTorrent swarms sharing Russian movie releases.

One of the likely explanations for these poisoning attacks is that anti-piracy outfits are utilizing them to “protect” their clients’ movies. For example, these outfits could overload BitTorrent swarms with corrupt data or “disconnect” messages while masquerading as legitimate downloaders.

This is exactly what the Microsoft funded startup Pirate Pay appears to be doing although other companies may also use similar methods. A company called ICM is currently listed as “protecting” the Russian film that was the subject of the attacks identified by CERT.

The security researchers don’t make any conclusive claims about the origins of the attacks, but they do note that anti-piracy groups are a possible source.

“At least one interest group that would benefit from uTP poisoning is easy to point at: multimedia companies and their subcontractors. Conduction of this kind of campaign by these institutions wouldn’t be precedent. It’s also possible that generated traffic is used for BitTorrent network mapping and data gathering for later use in other projects,” CERT comments.

Perhaps of even more interest, CERT also notes that the poisoning attack, or anomaly as they call it, may very well breach cybersecurity law.

“[The attacks] produce visible disruption in IT systems and large amounts of our false-positive high-level alerts is a good proof. In terms of Polish law, European Convention on Cybercrime and U.S. Codes (and probably many other sources of domestic law) legality of process producing the anomaly is questionable,” the security experts note.

In other words, the techniques these anti-piracy outfits appear to be using to prevent people from sharing copyrighted movies could be illegal. If that is the case then the movie companies who hire these anti-piracy outfits may be complicit in cybersecurity crimes.

That would be a problem.

TorrentFreak contacted the CEO of the Microsoft-funded Pirate Pay for a comment on the legality of his service, but we are yet to receive a reply. More details about the specifics of the attacks are available on the CERT website.

Source: Anti-Piracy Outfits Launch Attack on BitTorrent Protocol

The parties agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures, which include slowing down offenders’ connections and temporary disconnections.

The plan was announced under the name ‘Copyright Alerts‘ in July last year and the first ISPs were expected to send out the first warnings before the end of 2011. But this deadline passed silently and as things stand now it looks like the July 1, 2012 deadline is not going to be met by all ISPs either.

TorrentFreak asked the CCI about the upcoming target date, and their response suggests that things may take longer than expected.

“The dates mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are not hard deadlines but were intended to keep us on track to have the Copyright Alert System up and running as quickly as possible and in the most consumer friendly manner possible,” a spokesperson told us.

“We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly and able to be implemented in a manner consistent with all of the goals of the MOU. We expect our implementation to begin later this year.”

In other words, it’s taking more time than expected. That said, the CCI did inform us that they have finally selected a third-party company that will be responsible for monitoring BitTorrent swarms. However, the name of the firm remains a secret for now.

“The technology partner we have identified and begun working with is an independent and impartial expert and we expect to have an announcement about the independent expert shortly,” TorrentFreak was told.

As described in the agreement, this independent “technology partner” will first be tested by yet another independent expert to see if their data collection methods stand up to scrutiny. This is a possible reason for the “delay” but there are many more.

At their end the internet providers all have to create a system that allows them to keep track of the warnings. To ensure the privacy of subscribers, this database of alleged pirates is not stored centrally.

Hoping to find out more about what type of punishments ISPs have planned and their views on the agreement, we contacted several of them.

Verizon was quick to respond but didn’t want to provide any details on the planned punishments. The ISP did say that they believe the voluntary agreement is the right solution for the piracy problem.

“Verizon has always said that copyright infringement is wrong and through this voluntary consumer friendly system, we believe we can educate our consumers and offer them access to legal alternatives,” the company told TorrentFreak.

“We believe this program offers the best approach to the problem of illegal file sharing and, importantly, is one that respects the privacy and rights of our subscribers. It also provides a mechanism for helping people to find many great sources of legal content.”

Other Internet providers contacted by TorrentFreak, including Comcast and AT&T, did not respond to repeated inquiries about the BitTorrent crackdown.

The CCI, however, ensured TorrentFreak that none of the ISPs has plans to terminate the accounts of subscribers. Temporary disconnections remain as one of the possible punishments. Which measures the various ISPs will choose remains a mystery for now. We’ll publish more on this and other details of the scheme in the near future.

Source: US “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme Delayed

Billions in revenue are lost each year, they claim. But not for long if the Russian based startup “Pirate Pay” has its way. The company has developed a technology which allows them to attack existing BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible for people to share files.

The idea started three years ago when the developers were building a traffic management solution for Internet providers. The technology worked well. It was able to stop BitTorrent traffic if needed, which made the developers realize that they might have built the holy anti-piracy grail.

“After creating the prototype, we realized we could more generally prevent files from being downloaded, which meant that the program had great promise in combating the spread of pirated content,” Pirate Pay CEO Andrei Klimenko says.

With this new business model in mind the company continued to develop their product, and it didn’t take long before an investor was willing to support it. Last year Pirate Pay received a $100,000 investment from the Microsoft Seed Financing Fund.

Microsoft Russia’s president praised the innovative idea, which his company would also be able to use in the future.

With the cash injection the company continued working on their anti-piracy solution and December last Direktcya Kino was the first to hire Pirate Pay’s services. For a month Pirate Pay’s technology protected the film “Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I’m alive,” (distributed by The Walt Disney Studios Sony Pictures Releasing company) with moderate success.

The company doesn’t reveal how it works, but they appear to be flooding clients with fake information, masquerading as legitimate peers.

“We used a number of servers to make a connection to each and every P2P client that distributed this film. Then Pirate Pay sent specific traffic to confuse these clients about the real IP-addresses of other clients and to make them disconnect from each other,” Andrei Klimenko says.

The end result was that 44,845 transfers were successfully stopped. How many downloads slipped through, and whether the downloaders didn’t simply try again later is unknown. Pirate Pay don’t disclose their exact rates but say they charge between $12,000 and $50,000 depending on the scope of the project.

While Pirate Pay claim their technology is truly unique, it is not the first company to tackle BitTorrent piracy. The now defunct MediaDefender charged hundreds of thousands of dollars to attack BitTorrent trackers and upload fake torrent files.

MediaDefender was rebranded to Peer Media, and under this brand they continue to offer these and other anti-piracy services.

Whether Pirate Pay is truly different and more effective than any of the other solutions remains to be seen. Even if it’s hugely effective, the scattered nature of BitTorrent makes it practically impossible to stop all infringing downloads of a movie, while the costs may outweigh the “losses” that are prevented.

Companies that really want to make Pirates Pay are probably better off investing in improvements to their legal offers.

Article updated to emphasize that Direktcya Kino was the first client.

Source: Microsoft Funded Startup Aims to Kill BitTorrent Traffic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

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

The big change now is that there’s a formalized process under the name ‘copyright alerts‘. It basically boils down to a warning system that will notify people when their connection is suspected of being used for illegal file-sharing. After six warnings the ISP may then take a variety of repressive measures, which include disconnecting the offender’s connection temporarily.

The question remains, however, whether the plan will be effective.

While there will be significant numbers of individuals who will not even realize they are being monitored until they get their first warning, others will be more savvy from the start. Somewhere down the road the two groups are likely to converge and begin mulling some of the options available which remove the risk of receiving further warnings.

These users have plenty of options to avoid the warnings.

BitTorrent proxies and VPNs appear to be the preferred way for people to remain anonymous while downloading. As these services replace a user’s home IP-address with one provided by the proxy service, tracking companies won’t be able to identify who is doing the file-sharing meaning that no copyright alerts can be sent.

A recent survey in France, where Internet users can actually lose their connection after three strikes, revealed that only 4% of the polled file-sharers said they stopped pirating. Instead, many users signed up with proxies and VPNs to avoid detection.

TorrentFreak spoke to several owners of VPN services who all report a huge increase in clients in recent years, some of which can be directly linked to news about copyright enforcement efforts. It would therefore come as little surprise if their revenues grew even more after the “six-strikes” system is rolled out in the US.

And there is another type of business that will benefit from the MPAA/ RIAA anti-piracy plan. Since the alerts system only targets P2P file-sharing, which is pretty much limited to BitTorrent in the US, it means that people who use direct download sites won’t be affected.

Over the past several years one-click download sites, or cyberlockers as some call these services, have outgrown even the largest torrent sites by number of daily visitors. As with BitTorrent sites, sites like 4Shared, RapidShare and Hotfile are also used to share copyrighted material.

But despite their ever-increasing user bases, sharing on these sites can’t be tracked by third parties. This means that their users wont receive any strikes, ever. This also means that if BitTorrent users make the switch to using cyberlocker sites to avoid receiving warnings, revenues for these companies will go up.

Similar to one-click download sites, streaming portals are becoming more and more popular. Several streaming portals are indexing links to copyrighted movies and TV-shows and millions of people use these on a daily basis. Again, outsiders can’t legally spy on the users of these sites so they don’t have to be afraid of receiving a copyright alert.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are a range of other options for ‘pirates’ to get their daily fix and bypass the six-strikes system.

We’re not saying that the copyright alert system will have no effect whatsoever, in fact, it may be quite effective in deterring a small percentage of casual ‘pirates’. However, we expect that the overwhelming majority of copyright infringers will simply take measures to avoid being caught, while continuing their downloading habits.

Source: MPAA / RIAA To Boost Cyberlocker and VPN Revenues

However, the Obama administration is still dedicated to strengthen copyright enforcement.

Not only through legislation, but also by supporting agreements that put the public at risk of having their Internet disconnected if they are caught pirating.

Fight For The Future is encouraging people to let the President know that this is not what they want.

“Can you believe this? After the largest online protest in history, the Obama administration is still voicing support for SOPA,” they write.

“Tell Obama to promise: “I will never advance legislation that blocks websites or disconnects Americans’ internet access.”"

More info at Fight For The Future’s campaign page.

Source: Tell Obama to Promise SOPA 2.0 Never Gets Written

It’s clear that site owners are concerned that their business might become a target, and if it’s up to the major movie studios this fear is justified. “We continue to make criminal referrals,” Paramount Pictures’ Alfred Perry said during the On Copyright conference in New York yesterday.

CNET reports that the Paramount Pictures produced a list of five “rogue” file-hosters, presented in a fancy graphic where Megaupload is crossed out. The prime targets on this shutdown list are Fileserve, MediaFire, Wupload, Putlocker and Depositfiles.

The movie studio claims that these “rogue” cyberlockers receive 41 billion page views a year, which translates to five views for every person on the planet.

In recent months the MPAA has criticized the business models of these and other cyberlockers on many occasions.

Last November, for example, we got our hands on an MPAA fact sheet titled“It’s All About the Money: The ‘Business’ Model of Rogue Cyberlockers” with an overview of the several affiliate programs some cyberlockers have in place. According to the MPAA these programs motivate users to share copyrighted material, thereby promoting piracy.

“Rogue cyberlockers aren’t just distribution hubs for stolen movies and TV shows – both the users who upload content and the operators who run the sites can earn money from doing so. As Internet video traffic grows, the threat from rogue cyberlockers that profit from stolen content is rising rapidly,” the MPAA explains in the document.

This fact sheet will most likely be forwarded to the Department of Justice with every new “rogue” cyberlocker that the MPAA reports.

Whether the Department of Justice will act on new referrals from the movie studios has yet to be seen. For now they have their hands full on Megaupload, whose founder told TorrentFreak that his defense teams is working on a killer motion in response to the “nonsense” US indictment.

Source: MPAA Targets Fileserve, MediaFire, Wupload, Putlocker and Depositfiles

“ISPs hold the key to reducing online movie and TV theft by 72%,” the headline of a now-debunked anti-piracy lobby group report shouted in September 2011.

But the pressure on ISPs had only just begun. Since September a series of meetings have been held between the entertainment companies and Aussie ISPs, all under the watchful eye of the Federal Attorney-General’s Department. The aim: to come to an agreement on what to do about illicit file-sharing.

It won’t come as a surprise to those familiar with the way ACTA was ‘negotiated’ that these meetings have all been held behind closed doors. Incensed by this and the fact that both content creators and Internet users have been locked out, journalist Renay LeMay at tech news site Delimiter has been making Freedom of Information requests to find out what has been going on. He has been stonewalled every step of the way.

Finally last week the Attorney-General’s Department sent LeMay five documents, but disappointingly nearly of the information contained within had been redacted.

While the documents did reveal the groups and companies in attendance – AFACT, Music Industry Piracy Investigations, the Communications Alliance, Telstra, iiNet and the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy – the names of individuals were redacted along with the meetings’ agendas.

The Attorney General’s senior legal officer Jane Purcell told LeMay that “..disclosure of the documents while the negotiations are still in process, would, in my view, prejudice, hamper and impede those negotiations to an unacceptable degree. That would, in my view, be contrary to the interests of good government — which would, in turn, be contrary to the public interest.”

But after LeMay accused ISP iiNet of compromising its integrity by participating in the closed-door meetings, iiNet chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby gave a general insight into the current state of play.

“The gap between rightsholders and ISPs is massive,” said Dalby. “Just because we meet doesn’t mean that we are skulking around the back corridors of the Attorney-General’s Department clasping sweaty palms with those same opponents. Meeting isn’t agreement.”

“Most, if not all of the discussions over the years have been conducted between the rightsholders and the ISPs. These have been fruitless. The rightsholders want all the benefits of remedial action, but want the ISPs to foot the bill. ISPs don’t want to pay to protect the rights of third parties.”

Noting that “the gap between the parties is considerable and unlikely to close”, Dalby countered claims that something evil might be going on in the meetings.

“I understand that it is not very exciting if a bunch of boring businessmen continue to meet and get nowhere – compared to the idea that some super secret cabal is conspiring to turn the goodies to the Dark Side, so that Australian consumers are sold into economic slavery controlled by the faceless henchmen of Hollywood,” he added.

But in any event the people still want transparency and now politicians say they want answers too. Yesterday, Greens Communications spokesperson Scott Ludlam filed an order in the Senate asking the government to disclose what went on during the most recent meeting held in February.

“Even with the best will in the world, simply inviting the intermediaries to come up with something that suits their collective commercial interests is hardly an encouraging recipe for looking after the public interest,” said Ludlam. “I acknowledge that ISPs have done their best to prevent predatory behaviour by rights holders in the past, but there’s no substitute for a diversity of views in a forum such as this.”

And that is the key to success – an open forum. It’s perhaps understandable that the rightsholders and ISPs don’t want their personal arguments heard in public. But by not allowing the people whose habits they hope to change get involved, it leads away from greater cooperation and understanding and towards suspicion and isolation. Piracy reductions definitely won’t be found at the end of that road.

Source: ISP: Secret Anti-BitTorrent Piracy Talks Are Failing

The ruling was the first to bring broad censorship to the Netherlands, but as always the Internet finds ways to route around such blockades. In the space of a few days hundreds of individuals setup proxy websites that allow customers of the ISPs to continue using The Pirate Bay.

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 has contacted the owners of these proxy sites, ordering to take down the proxies – or else.

This week the anti-piracy group obtained an injunction from the Court of The Hague which instructs the proxy site tpb.dehomies.nl to shut down. If the site owner continues to offer access to The Pirate Bay he risks a fine of 1000 euros per day.

Armed with the court papers, BREIN also contacted the operators of many other proxy sites including alwaysapirate.org and remastered.nl who quickly took their sites offline and replaced them with a message from the anti-piracy group.

Depiratebay.nl and thepiratebay2.nl were also contacted by BREIN, but these sites remain accessible for now.

The 15-year old operator of the latter site confirmed that he will take the site offline before BREIN’s deadline passes this Friday. While he doesn’t agree with BREIN’s request, he simply doesn’t have the resources to put up a fight in court.

In their letter to the site owners, BREIN threatens legal action against those who continue to keep their proxies online. In many cases, this threat of being sued by a conglomerate of US movie studios is enough to convince proxy owners to fold.

“These sites deliberately offer a service to circumvent a court injunction. If they do not comply, we will hold them liable for damages,” BREIN director Tim Kuik said in a comment to Tweakers.

It will be interesting to see for how long BREIN can continue this cat and mouse game. The proxies targeted so far were all specifically aimed at Dutch visitors and hosted on Dutch servers. Whether it will be as effective against sites hosted elsewhere remains to be seen.

The Pirate Bay team informed TorrentFreak that they are not worried about the fate of their Dutch visitors. They expect that for every proxy that goes offline, new ones will spring up, as is usually the case. There are plenty of free proxy tools available and everyone with a WordPress blog can set one up in a few clicks.

If anything, The Pirate Bay crew believes that BREIN is giving them a helping hand.

“Thanks yet again for the free advertising,” they say.

The Pirate Bay has a point here. All the talk about censorship and blockades only appears to strengthen the notorious torrent site. When there was talk about a UK blockade two weeks ago, local traffic surged. And visitors from Belgium and the Netherlands have massively turned to proxy sites after the torrent site was censored there.

To quote John Gilmore once again: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

Source: Anti-Piracy Group Shuts Down Pirate Bay Proxies

The UFC has a track record of aggressive anti-piracy action. They’ve threatened countless bars for showing both illicit streams and under-licensed deliveries of their events, and gone after numerous sites, their operators, and uploaders.

But for quite some time the MMA organization has threatened to expand its reach by going beyond suing those actually providing illegal streams to suing those who simply watch them. To be fair most observers thought this was just another of UFC president Dana White’s famous rants, but this week an interesting picture began to emerge.

UFC announced on Tuesday that parent company Zuffa LLC had successfully taken down a site called Greenfeedz which had illegally streamed a dozen UFC events. While there’s nothing particularly unusual about that, the UFC casually noted that they had also obtained the email addresses, user names and IP addresses of people who allegedly watched unauthorized streams.

So maybe the UFC are just throwing that out there to scare people a little? Apparently not. In an interview with MMA Junkie, UFC chief legal counsel Lawrence Epstein confirmed that the fight organization will be going after individuals who watched events dating back to May 2011, a number said to be potentially “voluminous.”

Who gets sued and who doesn’t is yet to be decided, with Epstein noting that the the UFC needs to “have the requisite proof” that individuals actually watched shows without paying. Nevertheless, the lawyer predicts that the Greenfeedz databases will provide lots of information including “names, emails, telephone numbers and sometimes even addresses to identify those people that are watching illegally.”

But according to First Amendment attorney Marc Randazza, it is not at all clear how the UFC will take action against those who simply watched illicit streams.

“I have a very hard time finding a theory of liability for someone who merely watched an illegal broadcast. That’s like saying if a bar was illegally publicly presenting a movie or an NFL game, that everyone in the bar would be liable,” Randazza told TorrentFreak.

“My guess is that the UFC’s attorneys will not really go after people who merely watched the fights. They may, however, use the data they gather in order to find out if any of those people were re-distributing it,” Randazza adds.

Although it seems unlikely that the UFC will carry through with their threat to sue stream viewers, if they do they can expect opposition.

“If they’re really going after people for merely watching an illegal stream, I’d defend that case free of charge,” Randazza told TorrentFreak. “That’s not the right thing to do.”

Source: Can You Be Sued For Simply Watching An Illegal Video Stream?

“We encourage the Indian film industry to reject as we have, the false argument that you cannot be pro-technology and pro-copyright at the same time,” he continued.

In framing “content theft” as a problem affecting the county’s middle-classes and alongside a clear dig at the likes of Google and Wikipedia, Dodd’s words could have been pulled verbatim from any pro-SOPA speech. But unlike the United States, India doesn’t need new legislation to allow site blocking – they already have it – and Dodd must be as jealous as hell.

Indian film companies have previously obtained court orders to have sites blocked at the ISP level but in recent weeks the IMI, the RIAA-like Indian Music Industry trade group, has shown the movie industry how it’s really done.

In a series of court actions at the Calcutta High Court, 142 music companies of the IMI have succeeded in obtaining orders to force every ISP in India – 387 in total – to block 104 sites (list here) the industry accuses of online piracy.

And when it comes to implementing the blocks, there are no half-measures. ISPs have been ordered to implement DNS and IP address blockades and for those thinking of using a DNS outside India, Deep Packet Inspection will step in to ensure the domains remain blocked.

“This decision is a victory for the rule of law online and a blow to those illegal businesses that want to build revenues by violating the rights of others,” said IFPI CEO Frances Moore in a statement.

But in a clear signal that for the music and movie industries even the toughest of anti-piracy measures are never enough, Moore says that current developments are a good start.

“The court ruled that blocking is a proportionate and effective way to tackle website piracy,” Moore noted, adding that the Indian government should now “build on this progress” by advancing further legislation to tackle digital piracy.

As tough as the Indian court orders are, already their weaknesses are being probed. One of the key sites on the lists – Songs.pk – has already circumvented the blockade by resurfacing with the new URL of Songspk.pk since the blockade was incapable of physically taking the Czech-hosted site offline.

But although the Indian labels have taken the nuclear option in blocking huge numbers of sites, Apurv Nagpal, CEO of Saregama, one of India’s largest music labels says that they don’t want to destroy their opponents. Interestingly, Saregama acknowledges the pirate sites’ “passion for music” and says the industry wants to befriend them.

“We don’t want these sites to be shut down, we want them to pay a license fee and flourish as a business,” Saregama said. “There are legitimate businesses in operation too. The scope is there, and we want these sites to be legal.”

It would be a cold day in hell before Westerners heard the likes of Chris Dodd or Frances Moore make a statement as radical as that. But if the stick is to work long-term it has to be backed up with a sizable carrot, and if the pirate sites really do only want money, surely that’s their Achilles’ heel right there.

Source: Court Orders SOPA-style Blackout of 100+ Music Sites

The deal involves content owners, such as recording labels and movie studios, monitoring peer-to-peer networks including BitTorrent for copyright infringements and reporting instances to Internet service providers. The ISPs have agreed to take steps to “educate” allegedly infringing customers through an escalating system of notices, warnings, and other measures.

While it was big news at the time and a very hot issue, since mid-2011 very little has been reported on the progress of the deal. The initial announcement said that ISPs would start implementing the alert system by the end of last year, but this obviously didn’t happen.

However, according to the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), the organization responsible for administering the scheme, all parties are on target to initiate the programs by July 12th this year.

“The members of the coalition are making significant progress at developing a cooperative system to educate consumers and deter copyright theft,” a spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

“CCI is working to implement what is an unprecedented effort and is proceeding on pace with the MOU. We will have announcements in the near future that will include the naming of the [anti-piracy monitoring] partner and details on how CCI and the technology partner will work together.”

According to CNET this positive outlook was confirmed by RIAA CEO Cary Sherman.

During the Association of American Publishers’ annual meeting yesterday, Sherman reportedly announced that ‘most’ of the major ISPs involved in the so-called “graduated response” (such as Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable)

Sherman said that the process hadn’t been easy, with each ISP having to establish their own database to keep track of repeat infringers, the very people whose habits the studios hope to change. So come July, what changes should customers of the major ISPs expect?

Those not engaging in file-sharing on P2P networks or those who use BitTorrent over a VPN or proxy will probably notice very little (cyberlocker sharing is not covered), apart from ultimately having to help finance the scheme through their ISP bills.

For those who choose to download and share popular music from EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner, or do likewise with movies owned by Disney, Sony, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner, things will change.

Under a White House and lawmaker supported “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) published last July, ISPs will send advisories to alleged copyright-infringing customers.

The first so-called ‘Initial Educational Steps’ will advise customers that copyright infringement is illegal and a breach of the ISP’s terms of service, that legal alternatives are available, and that continuing to infringe may have consequences including account suspension or termination.

The Acknowledgment Step, reached when an Internet subscriber is accused of additional infringements by rights holders, will see ISPs send Copyright Alerts requiring acknowledgment of receipt from account holders along with a pledge to end infringing activity from the account.

Should several attempts at ‘educating’ a subscriber fail, ISPs will be able to send a Mitigation Measure Copyright Alert which again requires customer acknowledgment. It will advise that a customer has received prior warnings and as per the ISPs terms of service, a ‘Mitigation Measure’ will now be applied to the account.

Mitigation measures can include throttling of upload or download speeds, a temporary reduction in service quality to one step above dial-up, redirection to a landing page so that the customer can be further ‘educated’, or even account suspension. No ISP has yet agreed to the latter and no ISP is allowed to disable VOIP, email, security, or TV services.

Source: ISPs To Begin Punishing BitTorrent Pirates This Summer

Gorman reports that in January of that year he’d been out riding his bike when he spotted letters of the alphabet that had been painted on metal shop shutters. He photographed ones he could find, posted them to Flickr, and then people started posting that they knew where the rest were located.

Over the next two days he’d photographed them all and posted them as a single image to his Flickr page. They turned out to be by an artist called Eine and the post by Gorman was a huge hit, netting him a couple of hundred thousand hits to his blog and publicity for the artist.

On February 17th, however, Flickr deleted the entire page. The company had been responding to a DMCA complaint from an anti-piracy company called Degban who do takedowns on behalf of porn studios. Only when Gorman filed a counter-complaint challenging the takedown did he discover that Degban had screwed up.

Flickr allowed him to repost the image but the damage was done – hundreds of fan comments and 6 year’s worth of inbound links to the page had been rendered useless.

Degban CEO Taban Panahi apologized in an email to Dave but said it wasn’t their fault.

“I do apologize for the inconvenience, we have been victim of a phishing/hacking attack, which was aimed at reducing our credibility among clients and the public as you can see how, I truly am sorry that you were effected as such, but allow to humbly suggest that you channel a part of your anger at those holier than thou hackers who effect users like yourself by such irresponsible actions we are working hard to fix the matter, but alas we cannot do much as the size of the attack was larger than we could have expected.

I am hoping you can manage to get back your traffic and are never affected by such issue ever again.”

In comments to AVN yesterday, Degban said that on February 29th their SMTP server had been accessed via a phishing scam and the intruder went on “to report legitimate content as piracy, using our own Take-Down notice templates. ”

Dave Gorman’s opinion is that the explanation “is either bullshit – which is worrying…or true… which is even more worrying.”

TorrentFreak has no way of knowing if Degban was really hacked or not (although Dave’s image was taken down before the company says it was hacked), but ignoring other claims made against the company recently, we thought we’d have a look at Degban’s track record with DMCA takedown requests to see if they take their work seriously.

Degban have been working on behalf of a company called Switchback Media taking down content owned by porn actress Destiny Dixon [NSFW] and quite frankly their efforts are a mess.

“I made a few ring-tones and uploaded them so I could distribute them on the fly but [Degban] took them offline out of Google. How can they do this? Is this not illegal? I hope others find this post and do something about them,” writes a disgruntled guy, coincidentally also called Dave.

The content Dave posted can be found here on TorrentTV, but a Google search advises that Degban took the content down via DMCA request in September last year on behalf of Destiny Dixon.

The problem, it seems, is down to Degban using an extremely primitive scanning system. They also fail to check their own results before they make a sworn declaration they are correct.

In a DMCA notice sent to Google against a listing for the torrent site H33t, they took down a link to an album titled Floorfillers 2010 which is owned by Universal Music. A scan of the track listing shows a track by A R Rahman Ft The Pussycat Dolls – Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny) and another called Breathe Slow by singer Alesha Dixon.

In a DMCA notice to Google against a listing for the torrent site Bitreactor.to, they took down a torrent containing MTV music videos containing content from Destiny‘s Child and Alesha Dixon again. There are several more erroneous takedowns featuring these pair of famous artists, mostly on music compilation albums.

Here are more takedown examples, in brief. (We’ve only linked to the first couple to highlight the errors and for news and research purposes only)

- Reggae Hits Vol.01 to 37 (Contains artists Trevor Dixon / Pure Silk And One Destiny)
- Comic – DC Comics Chronology (References: Chuck Dixon, JLA: Destiny)
- Limitless (movie) – (Reference: “Eddie must stay wired long enough to elude capture and fulfill his destiny.”
- Haven (TV show) – Takedown reason unknown.
- Breaking Bad (TV show) – Takedown reason unknown.
- Leaves’ Eye – My Destiny (music)
- Howard TV (Howard Stern collection) – Takedown reason unknown.

In fact, of 82 DMCA takedown requests issued on behalf of Destiny Dixon in September 2011, at least 25 of them are completely incorrect and relate to other people’s content. Of course, the TV studios and music labels won’t mind the takedowns related to their work, but people like Dave Gorman absolutely do.

TorrentFreak asked Degban for comment, but at the time of publication we were yet to receive a response. It seems fitting that Dave Gorman should be left with the last word…..

Source: Anti-Piracy Co. Blames Hack For Bogus DMCAs, But They’re Just Sloppy

For Swepiracy, a private BitTorrent tracker founded in 2006, it’s now too late. On Thursday, police in Sweden and the Netherlands swooped on the 30,000 member site after it was accused by the authorities of being one of the most important locations when it comes to illegally distributing Swedish films.

Anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån said that the tracker’s operators had ignored warnings to close down and instead took measures to protect themselves. The site’s servers were in the Netherlands, but police there assisted their Swedish counterparts and took the site down.

This is not the first time that Swepiracy has been taken offline. Following a similar torrent site crackdown following the “guilty” verdict in the Pirate Bay trial in April 2009, Swepiracy disappeared for a few weeks, but reappeared before the month was out.

Now, Antipiratbyrån say they will take the operators of Swepiracy to court and seek damages “according to The Pirate Bay model.” They also warn that other sites – including The Internationals (which was recently closed down only to later reappear) and famous private tracker Scene Access – are next if they don’t comply.

Also this week, police in Gothenburg carried out a raid against an individual they say is suspected of widespread file-sharing on The Pirate Bay and another local site, Shareitall. The man denied the charges and was subsequently released.

Other Swedish-based sites have already had enough. This week the admins of eBook-focused site Bibliotik.org closed down the site of their own free will.

“Bibliotik has shutdown all operations. We are no longer able to assume the risks involved. The staff would like to apologize for the sudden (but necessary) decision and thank everyone that participated and made Bibliotik such a great place for so long. We love you guys!” they said in an announcement.

Earlier this week, Sweden’s number 2 torrent site Tankafetast shut down after its operators decided that enough was enough. At the time, Antipiratbyran confirmed they had threatened the site with legal action. However, just days later, the site has changed owners and is now back online.

Update March 1st: Bibliotik say they are moving to a new datacenter and will soon be back online

Source: BitTorrent Crackdown: Police Raid Private Tracker, Others Shut Down

Quickly, prominent copyright enforcers for the entertainment industries – Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted and Antipiratbyrån lawyer Henrik Pontén – announced that the decision would signal a new crackdown on file-sharing sites in Sweden.

Although there was no immediate news of site closures, now there is a significant development. Tankafetast, Sweden’s second largest torrent site behind The Pirate Bay, has announced that it has ceased its operations with immediate effect.

“After many ifs and buts, we have decided to close down TankaFetast,” the site’s operators said in a statement.

“Maybe we can one day see an end to the fascist tendencies that comfortable businessmen in the film industry and corrupt politicians have turned to something common in recent years.”

While Tankafetast may not be hugely popular overseas, its importance in Sweden was reflected by its inclusion in Google’s 2010 Zeitgeist report. At the time the site claimed 39 million page views per month.

“As long as we allow the reality of facing fossils bribe away our rights, they will do it. We will never agree that copying is theft, and will always consider the distribution of culture as something positive,” the site’s operators conclude.

At the start of the month the entertainment industry lawyers said that more than 150 file-sharing sites with Swedish connections would be pressured to close. According to Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyrån, Tankafetast’s closure is a result of their action.

“We can confirm that we have acted against Tankafetast and many other similar sites,” he told TorrentFreak this morning. The bitterness in the site’s shutdown statement certainly appears to confirm that.

However, the Swedish Pirate Party are claiming that Tankafetast’s loss is their gain. The site encouraged outgoing users to join up to Piratpartiet to assist with the fight against over zealous copyright enforcement, a push which resulted in 250 new members for the Party overnight.

“Tankafetast gave the party the best parting gift you can imagine,” says Party leader Anna Troberg. “By helping the party to get more activists we have strengthened the Party’s capacity to work for a reform of copyright which is in line with the times and can not be used to tighten the thumbscrews on ordinary culture lovers.”

Significant copyright enforcement actions in Sweden have resulted in membership boosts for the Pirate Party not only locally but worldwide. Following the first Pirate Bay trial in 2009, the Party added record-breaking numbers of new members but administrative issues meant they couldn’t maintain all of them longer term.

“We learned a lot from the huge influx of members after the first Pirate Bay trial. Then we weren’t able to take care of all new members,” says Troberg. “We will this time.”

To the south-west of Sweden in the Netherlands, local anti-piracy outfit BREIN is reporting that during 2011 they managed to shut down 383 BitTorrent sites, 83 streaming sites, 71 cyberlocker link sites and 52 Usenet indexers.

The news would of course be even more dramatic if we could back up these claims with some site names and other details, but BREIN are traditionally tight-lipped on providing extra information to accompany their annual reports.

Source: Swedish Piracy Crackdown: #2 Torrent Site Calls It Quits

Today the European Court of Justice delivered its ruling, concluding that the social network can’t be forced to install an anti-piracy filter.

“This obligation would be contrary to the requirement that a proper balance is ensured between the protection of copyright and the freedom of entrepreneurship, the right to privacy freedom, and the freedom to obtain knowledge and information,” the Court announced.

The Court noted that the privacy of users is more important than protecting copyright. In addition, it fears that a filter would result in censorship of legitimate content, thereby obstructing freedom of information.

“[The filter] could potentially undermine freedom of information, since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content, with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications,” the Court writes.

The unprecedented decision may have major implications for all services in Europe that host user uploaded content, not least among cyberlockers such as RapidShare. Also, the verdict would prevent copyright holders ordering BitTorrent sites to filter uploaded files, something that isoHunt already does based on a US injunction.

“I think this would apply to general file-hosting services, just as it has also done to conventional ISP services,” Mark Owen, head of the intellectual property practice at the London law firm Harbottle & Lewis told TorrentFreak. “A rightsholder may be able to get an injunction provided it is drafted narrowly enough. The ruling is against injunctions which it thinks are too wide, such that they are tantamount to a general duty to monitor.”

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party in Sweden, is happy that the EU Court of Justice has placed the rights of people above those of corporations.

“I think it is quite remarkable, and very promising, that Europe’s highest court says outright that the copyright monopoly and people’s right to privacy of correspondence cannot be protected at the same time – and most importantly, that the latter has unequivocal precedence,” Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak.

“This is what we have been saying since 2006, that there is a strong conflict between the copyright monopoly and fundamental rights. It is quite a relief to see that not only confirmed in black and white, but also a verdict that the fundamental rights override the copyright monopoly.”

The entertainment industry on the other hand, will be greatly disappointed, as they are pushing hard for online services to take greater responsibility when it comes to copyright infringement.

Today’s ruling follows a similar European Court of Justice ruling last November which concluded that Belgian Internet provider Scarlet could not be forced to monitor subscriber traffic to detect piracy because that would violate the fundamental rights of both the ISP and its subscribers.

Source: EU Court Bans Anti-Piracy Filters On Hosting Services

In recent weeks, however, worry about the future has increased drastically among the owners of some of the largest torrent sites. Yesterday, BTjunkie closed its doors for good, and TorrentFreak has learned that at least two other sites in the top 10 have toyed with the same idea.

“There have been talks of shutting our site down, even before BTjunkie did it,” one admin told TorrentFreak on condition of anonymity.

The aggressive actions against MegaUpload – site founder Kim Dotcom was raided by an anti-terrorist squad last month – are frequently mentioned as cause for concern. So much so that several people involved with one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet have already dropped out.

“A couple guys on the staff decided not to be involved anymore with the site after the MegaUpload incident,” the admin told us.

The fact that a German citizen can be arrested in New Zealand upon request from the US authorities signaled that regardless of local laws, people connected to file-sharing sites have become a global target.

“It’s turning into a witch hunt. It is worrying,” said the admin.

The thoughts of this admin are shared by one of the owners of another major torrent site, who told TorrentFreak in private that shutting down has crossed his mind on several occasions.

Things have become more and more complicated in recent weeks. Even those who are as cooperative as possible with copyright holders, by swiftly responding to DMCA takedown requests for example, can’t be entirely sure that they won’t become the next target.

On the other side, however, there are also those who continue undeterred, such as isoHunt.com owner Gary Fung, who is battling in court with the music and movie industries.

“After 6 years of 2 civil lawsuits with MPAA and CRIA, we are still here. None of these events is really new to us. From Lokitorrent to Suprnova, we’ve seen sites we index come and go. And as long as the Free Internet exists, sharing will endure. As will isoHunt,” he says.

Ironically enough, isoHunt’s ongoing legal battle might be what keeps Fung relatively safe. If the authorities planned to launch a criminal investigation against a torrent site it would be strange to pick one that is already involved in a civil lawsuit with a copyright holder.

Besides not being worried about the future, isoHunt’s owner is going on the offensive and is urging the entertainment industries to embrace technology, instead if fighting it.

“Perhaps more than ever, I wish the content industries will wake up to the fact you can’t fight technological progress, that battles maybe won, the war is already lost. Unless Content really starts working with technology to accelerate spread of culture, as the Internet has naturalized it. And make more money than ever in the process,” Fung says.

“Because so-called piracy enabled by the Internet and media consumption is not a zero-sum game, a download does not equal a lost sale, and what pirates really want is not necessarily free as in beer, but free as in speech and convenience.”

isoHunt’s determination to continue operating is shared by Extratorrent‘s admin Sam, whose site became the 5th largest torrent site after BTjunkie folded.

“What happened with MegaUpload is not at all good for the torrent world, but I would say it is impossible to stop the unstoppable. After all, if one site is shut down, a hundred new sites will open,” Sam told TorrentFreak, adding, “We have no plans to shut down,we will continue running as usual.”

Another site that’s not going anywhere is The Pirate Bay, the largest torrent site of all. Although its founders are now very close to serving jail time, the site itself will remain online. In the coming weeks The Pirate Bay will replace .torrent files with magnet links, which makes the site more portable and resilient.

The above shows that the end of BitTorrent is not near, but it’s hard to ignore the changing climate. People who previously saw no problems with running a torrent site are now reconsidering their position. The exact fallout, and whether there will be any newcomers to fill the gaping hole BTjunkie left, will become apparent in the coming months.

Source: Is BitTorrent Done? Major Torrent Sites Consider Shutting Down

Leading up to the Super Bowl this weekend, a total of 307 domain names were seized, 16 of which provided access to online streams of popular sporting events.

Commenting on the actions, ICE Director John Morton was quick to declare victory, but perhaps this came a little too soon. Firstrow, one of the largest sites which had several of its domains taken over by the US government, is not planning to give up the ‘battle’ anytime soon.

Quickly after its firstrow.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net and firstrowsports.com domains were seized, the service was operating as normal under a new domain – Firstrowsports.eu. Talking to TorrentFreak, one of the owners said that the US has stepped out of line by simply taking away their property.

“The US has prided itself on their ‘innocent before proven guilty’ mantra, yet is clearly hypocritical when it comes to this,” the Firstrow co-owner told us. “Numerous times the US has seized domains, before the defendants have been proven guilty in a court of law.”

“What is the point of trying to approve SOPA and PIPA if they do the same without these laws,” he questioned, referring to the pending US bills that would make it even easier to seize allegedly infringing domains.

The response of Firstrow stands in sharp contrast with that of ICE Director John Morton yesterday.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law,” Morton said.

This comment forms the base of the dispute. What is the law of the land? The people who operate Firstrow don’t live in the US, and neither are their servers located there. In fact, Firstrow says that their site is perfectly legal where they are based, so they will continue business as usual.

“Since we don’t live in a third-world country here, the courts decide if something is illegal not the entertainment industry lobbies. We will continue until a court decides that the site is illegal, but for now we’ve seen three court decisions on this matter that say it is not.”

Firstrow’s co-owner is referring to the court cases in Spain, where sites that merely link to copyrighted works have been declared legal. Rojadirecta, a site very similar to Firstrow, won in Spanish courts twice.

In the US, however, things work differently. Two operators of streaming sites have already been arrested and await criminal trials. And if the domains are linked to foreigners, the US believes it has the authority to take them over if they are deemed to infringe copyrights.

This stance has raised eyebrows among foreign governments. A few months ago the European Parliament adopted a resolution which criticized US domain name seizures. According to the resolution these measures need to be countered as they endanger “the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication.”

Yesterday’s actions show that the US authorities are not impressed by the international critique, just as Firstrow refuses to change course after yet another domain seizure. Firstrow says ICE is wasting its time and continues to provide access to sports fans all across the world, who are otherwise unable to see their beloved games.

“ICE must have a lot of spare time if they can waste it on these domain seizures,” Firstrow’s co-owner says. “They should invest time in the real important stuff , instead of chasing people who have no other option than to watch a sports game for free.”

Source: Seized Sports Streaming Site Makes a Blazing Comeback

“I should write a book about doing business in Hong Kong, that’s how good it is. People there leave you alone and they are happy for your success,” he added.

But leaving him alone wasn’t on the agenda of the Hong Kong authorities. In a triumphant January statement they revealed how they had worked with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to “smash a transnational cyberlocker syndicate” – aka Megaupload.

The commitment from Hong Kong Customs was significant. Not only did they invest a year’s worth of investigative manpower, but also supplied 100 officers from their various copyright enforcement divisions to carry out raids on the company.

According to an FT report, authorities there are set to go even further. Later this year, Hong Kong Customs will set up an “electronic crime investigation” center after being called on by media companies to pay closer attention to other cyberlocker-type services operating locally.

The announcement is likely to further unsettle several other file-hosting services that have a presence in the territory such as Filesonic.com, Uploading.com, Uploaded.to, zshare.net, Filepost.com and Hulkshare.com.

Just a couple of days after the Megaupload raids, Filesonic – one of the top 10 file-sharing sites on the Internet – reacted by disabling all 3rd party sharing.

Like Megaupload before it, Filesonic blocks all local IP addresses, presumably in an attempt to avoid local difficulties. But although there is no suggestion that Filesonic has done anything wrong, this type of blockade alone will not ensure it has a quiet life.

Hong Kong authorities described the motivation behind Megaupload’s IP block as “a bid to hinder investigation by law enforcement agencies.” Filesonic told FT that they have “a zero tolerance” approach to piracy.

Uploaded.to, another site with Hong Kong links, reacted to the Megaupload raids by blocking all visitors from the United States. Others have disabled their affiliate programs or taken other measures.

“Targeting the organized and transnational nature of IP infringing activities in the wake of technology development, the Hong Kong Customs will continue to monitor the situation and co-operate with the IPR industry and overseas law enforcement agencies so as to suppress infringing activities effectively,” HK Customs said in a statement.

Whether Customs will follow-up with further action remains to be seen, but in the meantime an Eastern chill is certainly blowing through cyberlocker land.

Source: Megaupload: Hong Kong Mulls Copyright Crackdown

The Megaupload indictment focused on several issues including alleged payments of cash rewards to known uploaders of infringing material. This prompted some rival services to cancel their affiliate/reward programs altogether and even end 3rd party downloads (Note: Fileserve have since re-enabled sharing).

Last week, TorrentFreak noted that traffic to many rival sites had increased following Megaupload’s demise – including sites like RapidShare that have no rewards program.

Today, however, German anti-piracy outfit GVU said that sites that have removed their rewards programs are now on a downward trend, while those that have maintained them are doing better than ever before.

GVU, which carried out the investigation preceding the record-setting raids on Kino.to last year, note that some linking sites are now removing links to sites that have no rewards programs and replacing them with those that do. The existence of rewards, the group suggests, means that more content is posted, ensuring traffic – and revenue – for both the linking sites and cyberlockers.

While it is fair to say that in some instances the existence of rewards can encourage infringement, GVU are now using this background to call for a review of cyberlocker and hosting provider liability, and are calling for a “reverse burden of proof” to be applied.

“In Germany, Service Providers are (at first) not liable for copyright infringements in content which is uploaded by third persons,” Otto Freiherr Grote of the Wilde Beuger & Solmecke law firm told TorrentFreak this morning.

“But the GVU now demands a reversal of this principle, at least for those filehosters which reward uploaders for uploading very popular files,” Grote adds.

GVU Director Dr. Matthias Leonardy says that while there is authorized content being stored and delivered by hosting services, much of the mass volume consists of unauthorized movies, TV shows and games, and it is this content that draws the bulk of the traffic and generates the revenue.

“Therefore, a file hosting provider must be aware that it promotes this through commission payments to those uploading pirated copies,” Leonardy notes.

On this basis, what Leonardy wants is a review of liability for those file-hosting services offering rewards programs.

It should not be the responsibility of rightsholders and authorities to show that such programs are being abused by infringers [such as is being claimed in the Megaupload indictment], Leornardy says, but the opposite – cyberlockers should be forced to prove that their businesses aren’t based on piracy in order to avoid liability. How this can be achieved remains to be seen.

The German legal system is no stranger to these apparent reverse burdens of proof when it comes to file-sharing cases. Domestic Internet users are responsible for infringements that happened via their accounts, whether they carried them out or not.

Source: Cyberlocker Burden of Proof Should Be Reversed, Anti-Piracy Group Says

Founded in 2009, the file-hosting site allowed users to share files up to 50 gigabytes. Unlike similar services, Ex.ua was completely free to use. The site made money from advertisements and didn’t offer a paid subscription.

Because the site was widely used to share copyrighted files, several international companies including Microsoft, Graphisoft and Adobe filed complaints against the service. After a six month criminal investigation, this resulted in the shutdown of Ex.ua today.

A spokesperson for the authorities confirmed that the service was targeted and said that 200 servers were taken, holding a massive 6,000 terabytes of data.

In addition, sixteen employees were taken in for questioning. At the time of writing it is unclear how many arrests have been made, if any. The authorities did confirm that the site was run by a Latvian citizen.

While Ex.ua has some similarities to MegaUpload and other file-hosting sites, it was also crucially different in several aspects. Ex.ua allowed users to search for files and browse categories such as “MP3″ and “Video,” which is quite uncommon for a cyberlocker.

In 2010, the RIAA reported Ex.ua to the Office of the US Trade Representative, branding it a “pirate haven.” Among other things the RIAA highlighted that users of the site could not only upload, but also search for files on the site.

“This is the largest service in Ukraine and the vast majority of the Internet users in Ukraine use the site to download music and film content. None of the content made available on the site has been authorised by the copyright owners and the site operators are unresponsive to takedown notices as a result there are thousands of music titles available on the site,” the music group wrote at the time.

If found guilty, the operators of the site face up to five years in prison.

Breaking story.

Source: Authorities Shut Down Ukraine’s Largest File-Sharing Site Ex.ua

As of today, the case is still ongoing.

In 2009, a jury found Tenenbaum guilty of “willful infringement” and awarded damages mounting to $675,000. A year later this amount was reduced by 90% when Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the penalty was excessive and unconstitutional. In 2011 this decision that was reversed after a new hearing at the Court of Appeals.

In yet another appeal, Tenenbaum’s legal team, headed by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, is asking the court to reduce the $22,500 fine per song to the minimum statutory damages of $750 per song. This request is made on due process grounds.

As expected, the RIAA doesn’t agree with the request and presented its arguments to the court last Friday. But they were not alone – on the same day the Department of Justice also filed a brief with the court, backing the RIAA’s vision on the case.

In a 26-page filing the Department of Justice makes the argument that previous cases, as cited by Tenenbaum’s legal team, do not apply in this instance. It concludes that the due process grounds are not relevant yet and that the damages therefore shouldn’t be reduced before the case continues.

The due process question should only be answered when the court decides that the jury’s award of $22,500 per song is not excessive, according to the Departement of Justice.

“The only circumstance in which the Court can reach Defendant’s due process challenge at this time is if the Court first determines the jury’s statutory damages award is not excessive under the common law remittitur standard. The United States, therefore, does not believe it is necessary at this juncture to address the merits of Defendant’s constitutional claim,” the DoJ writes.

Although this is not the first time the Justice Department has become involved in an RIAA civil case, it remains unclear why they chose to intervene this time. What we do know is that the authorities are very up-to-date with the legal proceedings, as five former RIAA lawyers are now employed by the Department of Justice.

Whether these connections between the Justice Department and the RIAA have increased the likelihood of the authorities getting involved is hard to say. However, it is clear that Tenenbaum and his legal team are up against some serious resistance, and that the US authorities don’t want the student to get off that easily..

To be continued, indefinitely.

Source: Justice Department Backs RIAA Against Pirating Student

Today we can add a VP at one of the major RIAA labels to this list, which is quite unique and yet another game changer.

Speaking for himself, EMI’s VP of Urban Promotions Craig Davis said that the two pending anti-piracy bills are not the way to move forward.

“Personally, I feel that the method they’re using is incorrect. All it will do is cause headaches and issues for everyone,” Davis noted.

While the EMI VP opposes PIPA and SOPA, he does admit that piracy is a problem. However, Davis thinks that the problem can be better solved from within the music industry itself. In other words, the key to solving piracy isn’t legislation, but innovation.

“I do believe that a person should be compensated for their work. I feel that piracy is a big issue, and things like Spotify will assist in combating this problem,” he said.

Reiterating this point, the EMI VP refers to comments that were recently made by Gabe Newell. The Valve co-founder said that piracy is a service issue – once you give people what they want it will mostly disappear.

“Gabe Newell is correct, it’s a service issue not an issue of money. Sales have gone up from sales concerts and merchandise, it’s obvious that our fans still love music. We’re just not giving them their music in an easier way,” Davis noted.

Adding to the above, Davis also commented negatively on DRM in a separate question that he was asked on Reddit.

“Personally I’m not happy with the way DRM is right now. We need to re-evaluate technology to find a better way to give you music,” he wrote.

Davis’ take on the piracy problem stands in clear contrast with the policy of the RIAA, who tend to prefer the repressive approach over innovation. Defining piracy as a service issue, however, is in line with the things we, and many others with us, have been saying for years.

People are happy to pay as long as they get what they want.

This is also illustrated by the fact that people are willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for premium access to file-hosting sites, often to download content that’s not available at all legally, or only in inferior quality. In recent years the music industry has caught up quite a bit by removing DRM and launching services like Spotify. But the movie industry is lagging behind, especially outside the US.

Implementing harsh anti-piracy laws and disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet doesn’t change the mismatch between what the public wants and what the industry offers. Improving availability, quality and other service issues can probably make a much bigger impact.

It’s good to see that some people in the industry are well aware of this, but we doubt that the RIAA would make itself obsolete by agreeing.

Source: EMI Boss Opposes SOPA, Says Piracy is a Service Issue

Even today, when more music is being sold than ever before, the RIAA, IFPI and other music groups still lobby hard for draconian measures to curb piracy. Whether it’s SOPA, PIPA or similar legislation as currently being presented in Finland and Ireland, the music industry begs governments to help them out.

One of the countries where these lobbying efforts have paid off is France, where Internet users are now monitored by the state and disconnected if they are caught pirating three times. The big question is whether this law, which costs 11 million euros a year, has any effect at all.

Yes, says the music industry, backing up their claim with a non-peer reviewed academic study. Last week some of the results were already teased to the press, and yesterday they were presented to the public, coinciding with the publication of this year’s Digital Music Report published by IFPI.

We decided to take a look at the two reports, and the only reasonable conclusion we can make is that France’s three-strikes anti-piracy law is not having ANY affect at all. Let’s start off with how IFPI summarizes the results in their report.

“The analysis found that French iTunes sales saw a significant uplift at exactly the period when awareness of Hadopi was at its highest, in Spring 2009, when the law was being debated in the National Assembly.”

This is bogus. The researchers don’t conclude this at all. There is no uplift in sales reported. What the researchers found is that in France, compared to five other European countries, more music was sold through iTunes. Looking at the graph below (from the report), it’s clear that the “uplift” in France before Hadopi was introduced (March 2009) is actually much sharper than the two years after.

Another quote from the IFPI report:

“This effect was maintained throughout the period studied. French iTunes sales were 22.5 per cent higher for singles and 25 per cent higher for digital albums than they would have been, on average, in the absence of Hadopi.”

This is interesting, and indeed pretty much what the researchers conclude. However, as long-time followers of Hadopi and other anti-piracy laws, this conclusion doesn’t feel right. The huge increase in sales reported by the researchers is based on the alleged impact Hadopi had in the year and a half before it went into effect, not after

The following footnote from the researchers is also quite revealing.

“We also estimated the model for the 6 months before and after September 2010, as this was the first month that HADOPI began sending out first notices. In this case, the resulting coefficient was close to zero and statistically insignificant.”

Indeed, when the three-strikes warnings were actually sent out, there was no effect on iTunes sales compared to the control countries. This is unusual, because you would expect that the hundreds of thousands of warnings that went out would have had more of an impact than the ‘news’ that this could happen in the future.

In addition, if we look at the search trends for Hadopi and The Pirate Bay we don’t see a drop in interest for the latter, suggesting that the interest for pirated goods remained stable.

The researchers, however, are convinced that their findings are the result of the “potential implementation” of Hadopi. We find this strange. Could there be an alternative explanation? Let’s have a guess.

At the same time Hadopi was introduced (early 2009) there was a lot of buzz around Spotify in several of the countries that were used as a control group in this study. Could it be that Spotify resulted in relatively less iTunes sales in countries like UK and Spain than in France? This could potentially explain all of the findings reported in the study. And that’s probably just one of the many alternative explanations.

Whatever the case, concluding that expensive privacy-invading legislation such as the French Hadopi is boosting sales is going way too far.

Source: Anti-Piracy Warnings Have No Effect on iTunes Sales

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

First, MPAA CEO Chris Dodd described the blackouts of Wikipedia, Reddit and others as corporate PR stunts which manipulated and exploited the sites’ users.

“Some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns,” Dodd said.

Then, a few days later when many lawmakers had already dropped their support for the anti-piracy bills, the MPAA’s comments turned even more grim. Talking to Fox News, the MPAA’s boss threatened to stop contributing to politicians who don’t back legislation designed to protect Hollywood.

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,” Dodd said.

Although it’s no secret that the movie industry has a powerful lobby in Washington, explicitly admitting that bribery is one of the tactics the MPAA uses to have their way wasn’t well received by the public. A few hours ago a White house petition was started to investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for alleged bribery.

“This is an open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting of the ‘above the law’ status people of Dodd’s position and wealth enjoy,” the petition reads.

“We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.”

In just a few hours the petition amassed more than 5,000 votes and this number is increasing rapidly. As a former Senator, Chris Dodd has many friends in Washington so it’s unclear whether the petition will accomplish anything, but if the numbers grow big enough the White House won’t be able to ignore it either.

The MPAA’s response to the PIPA and SOPA opposition this week is a sign that they might be losing control in Washington. At the very least, they are starting to lose their patience and become frustrated, which may not help their cause at this point.

Source: White House Petitioned to Investigate MPAA Bribery

While the timing came as a huge post-SOPA protest surprise, the fact the site was targeted was not – for many months there have been rumblings behind the scenes that something might be “done” about MegaUpload. Nevertheless, the manner in which the action was taken and the language used by the authorities in doing so was utterly unprecedented.

So the key question this morning is this – What made MegaUpload a rogue site which deserved to be completely dismantled and its key staff arrested? The answers lie in the 72-page indictment and show just how the authorities (with the massive assistance of the MPAA, no doubt) framed Mega’s activities in such a way as to strip it of any protection under the DMCA.

In the U.S., online service providers are eligible for safe harbor under the DMCA from copyright infringement suits by meeting certain criteria. However, the indictment states that member of the “Mega Conspiracy” (capital M, capital C no less) do not meet these criteria because…

…they are willfully infringing copyrights themselves on these systems; have actual knowledge that the materials on their systems are infringing (or alternatively know facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent); receive a financial benefit directly attributable to copyright-infringing activity where the provider can control that activity; and have not removed, or disabled access to, known copyright infringing material from servers they control.

Let’s cover the last point first – the apparent non-removal of known copyright material from MegaUpload’s servers. First, a little background on how MegaUpload’s user uploading system worked because this is absolutely crucial to the case against the site.

Mega had developed a system whereby files set to be uploaded by users were hashed in order to discover if a copy of the file already exists on the Mega servers. If a file existed, the user did not have to upload his copy and was simply given a unique URL in order to access the content in future. What this meant in practice is that there could be countless URLs ‘owned’ by various users but which all pointed to the same file.

Megaupload’s “Abuse Tool” to which major copyright holders were given access, enabled the removal of links to infringing works hosted on MegaUpload’s servers. However, the indictment claims that it “did not actually function as a DMCA compliance tool as the copyright owners were led to believe.” And here’s why.

The indictment claims that when a copyright holder issued a takedown notice for content referenced by its URL, only the URL was taken down, not the content to which it pointed. So although the URL in question would report that it had been removed and would no longer resolve to infringing material, URLs issued to others would remain operational.

Furthermore, the indictment states that although MegaUpload staff (referred to as Members of the Conspiracy) discussed how they could automatically remove child pornography from their systems given a specific hash value, the same standards weren’t applied to complained-about copyright works.

In June 2010, it appears that MegaUpload was subjected to a something of a test by the authorities. The company was informed, pursuant to a criminal search warrant from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, that thirty-nine infringing movies were being stored on their servers at Carpathia Hosting in the Eastern District of Virginia.

“A member of the Mega Conspiracy informed several of his co-conspirators at that time that he located the named files using internal searches of their systems. As of November 18, 2011, more than a year later, thirty-six of the thirty-nine infringing motion pictures were still being stored on the servers controlled by the Mega Conspiracy,” the indictment reads.

The paperworks goes on to accuse MegaUpload of running a program between September 2005 and July 2011 which rewarded users for uploading infringing material.

A citation from an internal MegaUpload email from February 2007 entitled “reward payments” claims to show that at least two key staff members knew that cash payments were being paid to users who uploaded infringing material including “full popular DVD rips” and “software with keygenerators (Warez)”.

Then the indictment starts to throw up some very interesting questions, specifically how the authorities managed to get hold of not just one but many of MegaUpload’s internal company emails (dating back to 2006) to use in the case against them.

It’s certainly possible that the authorities were monitoring MegaUpload’s correspondence but there are also at least two mentions in the indictment of an unnamed person described as “an unindicted co-conspirator”. While prosecutors sometimes use this term to describe people who have been excluded from an indictment on evidentiary concerns, they also use it to describe individuals who have been granted immunity from prosecution.

In any event, these emails are being heavily relied upon since many appear to indicate a knowledge among staff that copyright works were held on the company’s servers. Here’s a sample:

An email from 2006 claims to show how MegaUpload attempted to download large amounts of content from YouTube and appeared by April that year to have obtained 30% of the site’s content. A follow up email in 2007 claimed that “Kim [MegaUpload's founder] really wants to copy Youtube one to one.”

An email from August 2006 titled “lol” contained a screenshot of a MegaUpload download page showing a cracked copy of CD burning software Alcohol 120%.

Other correspondence quoted in the indictment appears to show key staff members sending each other links to copyright works hosted on MegaUpload.

One contained 100 MegaUpload links to content by recording artist Armin Van Buuren. Another, allegedly sent in December 2006 by Kim Dotcom to another staff member, carried a link to a music file hosted on a MegaUpload server entitled “05-50_cent_feat._mobb_deep-nah-c4.mp3”. No context for the sending of these links is given in the indictment.

Other emails show staff asking each other to help locate copies of infringing content including TV series The Sopranos and Seinfeld, and music from a band called Grand Archives. Again, no context is offered in the indictment.

An email sent in July 2008 shows a key staff member reporting an earlier conversation with another entitled “funny chat-log.”

“We have a funny business . . . modern days pirates,” the exchange begins. “We’re not
pirates,” came the reply. “We’re just providing shipping services to pirates.”

But aside from exchanging links to copyright works, the indictment claims that key staff members also uploaded material themselves including a TV show from the BBC and a copy of the movie Taken.

The indictment lists several other examples which are supposed to demonstrate that the admins of MegaUpload knew that their service was being used for the storage and distribution of illegal material.

Emails from customers are cited where they complain that for various reasons they’re unable to watch named copyrighted works. Others ask how to find pirate movies on Mega and are told to go to sites that index Mega-hosted material, such as the ThePirateCity.org, a site seized as part of Operation in Our Sites.

On at least two occasions the indictment reports key MegaUpload staff discussing TorrentFreak articles on seizure operations being carried out by the US authorities.

In one email, Kim Dotcom reportedly stated: “This is a serious threat to our business. Please look into this and see how we can protect ourselfs [sic],” adding, “Should we move our domain to another country, Canada or even HK?”

The indictment separately lists several movies being distributed from MegaUpload’s servers in the United States, all of which were not yet commercially available. There is no indication, however, that MegaUpload’s operators knew they were there.

On face value it would seem that in a handful of cited instances staff at the company did indeed link each other to copyright works, but when the massive scale of the MegaUpload operation is set beside them, their significance is put into a different perspective.

The issue of not taking down content is a fascinating one. MegaUpload is not on its own when it hashes content then allows users to access already-stored versions of the same files. Nevertheless, will taking down a specific URL and not the content itself be enough to appease the courts?

Finally, and despite the assertions of the MPAA, RIAA and the authorities, MegaUpload carried a huge amount of non-infringing content, giving the service itself “substantial non-infringing users”. Nevertheless, all content has now been seized, leaving millions of people and companies without their personal data.

Cyberlocker services and potential startups all around the world will be watching this case like hawks. Seismic doesn’t really come close.

Source: MegaUpload: What Made It a Rogue Site Worthy of Destruction?

By 3pm Washington time millions of people had already voiced their concerns. Google just reported that more than 4 million people signed the petition on their site, and the EFF says that 250,000 people sent messages to Congress through their site. These are just two examples of the many initiatives currently being organized.

The big question is, of course, whether this wave of protest is having any effect. The answer is an unequivocal YES.

Not only have Senators’ websites been knocked offline due to the massive flow of traffic, but quite a few initial backers of the bills are having second thoughts.

Below is a list of PIPA and SOPA co-sponsors who have now dropped their support for the pending legislation. They are joined by more than a dozen lawmakers who didn’t sponsor the bills, but have now stated on the record that they are not planning to vote in favor. Some even decided to black out their own site.

Senator Marco Rubio was one of the first to de-list as a PIPA co-sponsor today, stating:

“Earlier this year, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy. Since then, we’ve heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s power to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences. “

“Therefore, I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor. Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet.”

Initial PIPA backer Senator Roy Blunt drops out saying:

“While I believed the bill still needed much work, I cosponsored the Senate version of the Protect IP Act because I support the original intent of this bill – to protect against the piracy of lawful content. Upon passage of this bill through committee, Senate Judiciary Republicans strongly stated that there were substantive issues in this legislation that had to be addressed before it moved forward. I agree with that sentiment. ”

“The right to free speech is one of the most basic foundations that makes our nation great, and I strongly oppose sanctioning Americans’ right to free speech in any medium – including over the internet. I continue to believe that we can come to a solution that will cut off the revenue sources for foreign websites dedicated to counterfeiting and piracy that steal American jobs, hurt the economy, and harm consumers. But the Protect IP Act is flawed as it stands today, and I cannot support it moving forward.”

Senator Mark Kirk also decided that it is a good idea to withdraw his support. He said:

“Freedom of speech is an inalienable right granted to each and every American, and the Internet has become the primary tool with which we utilize this right. The Internet empowers Americans to learn, create, innovate, and express their views. While we should protect American intellectual property, consumer safety and human rights, we should do so in a manner that specifically targets criminal activity. This extreme measure stifles First Amendment rights and Internet innovation. I stand with those who stand for freedom and oppose PROTECT IP, S.968, in its current form.”

Senator Orrin Hatch followed, and is no longer a co-sponsor of PIPA either. He said:

“After listening to the concerns on both sides of the debate over the PROTECT IP Act, it is simply not ready for prime time and both sides must continue working together to find a better path forward”

“Rushing something with such potential for far-reaching consequences is something I cannot support and that’s why I will not only vote against moving the bill forward next week but also remove my cosponsorship of the bill. Given the legitimate vocal concerns, it is imperative that we take a step back to allow everyone to come together and find a reasonable solution.”

Senator John Boozman is no longer backing PIPA, he stated:

“I will have my name removed as a co-sponsor of the bill and plan to vote against it if Majority Leader Reid brings it to the floor in its current form.”

“The PROTECT IP Act seeks to address an issue that is of vital importance to the future of intellectual property rights in the modern era. However, the concerns regarding the unintended consequences of this particular bill are legitimate. Therefore, we should not rush to pass this bill, rather we should be working to find another solution so that the epidemic of online piracy is addressed in a manner that ensures innovation and free speech is protected. I have confidence that we can do this, but not as the PROTECT IP Act stands today”

SOPA also lost two of its co-sponsors. Politico reports that Representatives Ben Quayle and Lee Terry have quietly withdrawn their support for the House bill.

The various protests are still ongoing and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the list above is already outdated by the end of the day.

Although these first signs are positive, it doesn’t necessarily mean that PIPA or SOPA are now off the table. There are still many sponsors and supporters left. Both bills are still on their way to be passed in Congress, but with a little less support than before.

Source: SOPA / PIPA Co-Sponsors Drop Like Flies As Millions Protest

Could this pattern be broken today?

Judging by the scope of today’s protests it’s now or never. In the coming hours hundreds of millions of Internet users will be confronted with blacked out pages and similar “strikes” in opposition to the PIPA and SOPA bills, and if enough people take action the people in Washington may just listen.

The first signs are positive, but there’s still a long way to go. Here’s how YOU (corporate pawns) can help:

- Tell Congress you oppose PIPA/SOPA.

- Not in the US? Email the State Department.

- Call your Senator.

- Leave your computer and visit a Senator.

- Discuss, share and inform others about the bills.

For those who are wondering, TorrentFreak is not going dark. Our purpose has always been to inform the public, whether it’s the latest news or a call to action like this article. We believe we can contribute and achieve more by keeping the site online than to black out completely. That said, we are alerting all visitors to take action through the excellent censorship script put together by FAT LAB.

To save an impression of today for future generations, we’ve listed below a few of the many protest pages being run today. Did we miss a good one? Paste a link in the comment section and attach a screenshot!

Google

Google has blocked its logo to protest PIPA/SOPA and added a link to a resource page where people can take action.

Demonoid

Demonoid, one of the largest BitTorrent communities, is going dark completely, with a nice spotlight effect.

Firefox

Firefox users will be welcomed with a dark themed default home page today, alerting people about the looming PIPA/SOPA threats.

Reddit

The online community Reddit will point the public to a resource site where they can take action.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia will be completely inaccessible for 24 hours, except the pages about censorship, PIPA and SOPA, of course.

WordPress

WordPress is joining the protest as well, and has decided to censor itself today.

Minecraft

Minecraft is protesting as well, but in red with the tagline “PIPA & SOPA, How About NOPA.”

Source: Historic: The Internet Protests Anti-Piracy Bills

After spending years on various educational campaigns, none of which worked, a new plan was put into motion. It involved monitoring P2P networks for infringements, unmasking the perpetrators, and then threatening to sue unless a large ‘fine’ or settlement was paid.

Although the RIAA stopped its settlement actions against US citizens some time ago, the fallout from the campaign is still felt today, with cases ongoing against Jammie Thomas and Joel Tenenbaum. However, while those Stateside are no longer targets for the RIAA’s so-called “sue-em-all” campaign, the same cannot be said of citizens in Europe.

In common with their counterparts in the gaming industry, the major labels – Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner – are all actively sending out cash settlement demands to alleged file-sharers.

For the past several years, 2011 included, the labels have been pursuing cash settlements from German Internet users for the alleged sharing of music from dozens of major stars artists. A small sample is shown below:

Universal

Amy Winehouse, Blink 182, Bon Jovi, Eminem, Florence And The Machine, Jamiroquai, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Take That, The Black Eyed Peas, The Rolling Stones.

Settlement amount demanded: 1,200 euros

Sony

AC/DC, Alexandra Burke, Alica Keys, Avril Lavigne, Backstreet Boys, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Foo Fighters, Kasabian, Kesha, Kings of Leon, Leona Lewis, Michael Jackson, Ozzy Osbourne, Pink, Pitbull, R. Kelly, Shakira, The Strokes.

Settlement amount demanded: Up to 950 euros

EMI

Bryan Ferry, Coldplay, David Guetta, Depeche Mode, Good Charlotte, Gorillaz, Katy Perry, Snoop Dogg, U2

Settlement amount demanded: Up to 1,200 euros

Warner

Of the four labels, Warner appears to be least active, particularly when chasing settlements on behalf of major acts. Warner’s activities appear to be limited to local artists of limited international appeal.

Settlement amount demanded: Up to 1,200 euros

Although these labels are playing a major part in the settlement business, they are not doing so in isolation. Dozens of other labels are acting in their own right including RoadRunner Records, Ministry of Sound and Pink Floyd Music.

As previously reported, getting payments from Internet users in Germany is trivial since the law there requires the accused to prove their innocence (rather than rightsholders prove guilt) and holds account holders responsible for the actions of others.

So, despite their recent protestations in response to findings from YouHaveDownloaded, the RIAA would be found liable had they been judged by German standards.

Although hundreds of thousands of people are currently being targeted for settlements in the United States for sharing adult titles, currently the major labels and movie studios there aren’t pursuing the strategy locally. That, however, could all change at the flick of a switch.

Source: RIAA Labels Demand Cash from Alleged BitTorrent Pirates

But bad publicity and intense controversy greeted the law firm and its owner Andrew Crossley at every turn and eventually the company went bust. Today, Crossley faced the ultimate shame as a lawyer, by appearing before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT).

Despite previous displays of stubborn bravado, according to ‘Speculative Invoicing’ expert Will Gilmour who was in court today, Crossley disputed only one of the seven charges against him.

Firstly, the charge that he allowed his independence to be compromised and acted in a manner contrary to the best interests of his clients – ironically the copyright holders on whose behalf he extracted cash settlements from the public – was not contested.

Crossley, whose disastrous foray into this controversial work was laid bare when his company documents were leaked onto the web in 2010, lodged no dispute against claims that he acted in a way that was likely to diminish the trust the public places in him or in the legal profession.

The fourth accusation, that Crossley “Entered into arrangements to receive contingency fees for work done in prosecuting or defending contentious proceedings before the Courts of England and Wales except as permitted by statute or the common law” was also met with acceptance from the lawyer.

Furthermore, Crossley did not contest that he acted where there was a “conflict of interest in circumstances not permitted, in particular because there was a conflict with those of his clients,” nor that he “used his position as a Solicitor to take or attempt to take unfair advantage of other persons being recipients of letters of claim either for his own benefit or for the benefit of his clients.”

The only point contested by Crossley related to an SRA/SDT accusation that he acted improperly in connection with data breaches from ACS:Law’s website during 2010. Crossley pointed the finger at the company’s web host for allegedly leaving a backup of the lawfirm’s data in a publicly accessible area.

In their decision announced just a few moments ago, the Tribunal suspended Crossley from operating as a lawyer for 2 years and ordered him to pay costs of £77,000. While opponents had hoped for a permanent ban, the lengthy suspension will be seen as a huge black mark against his reputation.

Also revealed in the hearing was the personal cost to the now-suspended lawyer. In addition to being unable to find work since the revelations against him, Crossley remains bankrupt and has split from his partner of 15 years.

Source: ACS:Law Anti-Piracy Lawyer Suspended For 2 Years

As highlighted dozens of times before, companies making these accusations rely on weak IP address-only evidence and use their legal teams to intimidate their targets into paying up – guilty or not.

CD Projekt wisely moved to protect their hard-earned image and relationships with both the gaming press and their customer base, but quite rightly noted a few weeks ago that they were not the only companies sending out these letters demanding cash.

So, addressing concerns that CD Projekt might have been unfairly singled out, TorrentFreak decided to dig deep into the archives of various resources including legal firms, campaign groups and the account holders themselves, to find out which other games companies – either directly or through local distributors – have been generating revenue from cash settlement schemes in recent years.

We discovered that not only are new games being targeted but older ones too, possibly to bring in extra cash from games well past their sell-by date when it comes to generating profit from more conventional sources.

Atari, the distributor of the original The Witcher, pulled out of chasing alleged file-sharers in the UK several years ago, but like many of their competitors simply transferred their settlement businesses to Germany. Atari has been sending settlement demands of several hundred euros for several of its titles including Alone in the Dark, Test Drive Unlimited and 2011′s Test Drive Unlimited 2.

Survival horror fans might be interested to know that distributor Koch Media has been sucking the blood from alleged sharers of the Techland game Dead Island. Tales of Monkey Island distributor DAEDALIC Entertainment are doing the same for publisher Lucas Arts.

Those who prefer a good stealthy RPG might be surprised to know that alleged sharers of Eidos/Square Enix’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution are being crept up on and told to pay-up-or-else to the tune of 800 euros by local distributor Koch Media, as are those accused of obtaining Dungeon Siege III (800 euros on this baby) and Final Fantasy games for free.

Codemasters, another company that first tried the UK and then took their settlement work elsewhere, originally pursued alleged file-sharers over their Colin McRae Dirt game.

But having gotten bored with sending out letters for F1 2010, they are currently sending cash demands of 800 euros over their latest off-road installment, DiRT 3.

Ending the racing theme, RaceOn (BitComposer) and Nail’d (Techland) complete the grid.

Holy settlement letter Batman! The Eidos/Square Enix/Warner title Batman: Arkham Asylum has been the subject of an unknown number of cash settlement letters sent out in Germany.

If you like your adventures a little more open, Eidos/Square are back again, asking for several hundred euros from ISP account holders connected to Just Cause 2 downloads. The duo come in again on the 3rd person settlement front with Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, closely followed by the Prison Break: The Conspiracy action/adventure from Koch Media (yet again).

Tactical shooter fans might be concerned by the scattergun approach taken by (and here they are again) Codemasters when they ask for 800 euros in connection with their game Operation Flashpoint Red River. The same goes for Ubisoft when they send out letters to claimed Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six:Vegas downloaders.

First person shooters are always enjoyable, but being put in the crosshairs for allegedly sharing Painkiller addons Painkiller:Resurrection and Painkiller:Redemption can’t be much fun, especially when there’s a 300 euro headshot at the end of it destined for local distributor Koch Media.

Finally, if simulators are more your thing, stand by for a realism overload. Airline Tycoon 2 and Tropico 3 and 4 (Kalypso Media), Cities XL 2012 (dtp entertainment), City Bus Simulator/Simulator Gold (Aerosoft), Airbus X (Aerosoft), and Agrar Simulator 2011 (Koch Media), are all keeping it super-real with multi-hundred euro settlement demands.

The bad news is that the above sample is just the tip of the iceberg – dozens of devs and distributors of lesser known games are sending out these letters demanding anything from 300 to more than 1000 euros to make cases go away. But despite there being many games companies at the end of these settlement chains, three local names – Koch Media, dtp entertainment AG and Kalypso Media GmbH – appear more than any other.

It would be great if the companies listed above followed CD Projekt’s example and reconsidered their support for these horrible settlement letters. If any gaming publications would like to see the full list of games companies engaged in these schemes, feel free to contact us and we’ll happily send them over.

Source: Square Enix, Eidos & Other Game Giants All Demand Cash From Pirates

Despite this lack of action, the RIAA sees BitTorrent sites as the main source of music piracy. In their most recent submission to the US Trade Representative (USTR) last November, they claimed BitTorrent “is responsible for approximately 50% of the industry’s global P2P piracy problem.”

One of the sites reported to the USTR is TorrentHound, and this week the RIAA put the wheels in motion to find out who is operating the torrent site. The music group obtained a subpoena from the U.S. District Court of Columbia and has ordered Namecheap’s WhoisGuard service to hand over all identifying information they have on the owner of the domain.

“We believe your service is hosting the above-referenced domain name on its network. This website associated with this domain name offers direct links to files containing sound recordings for other users to download by such artists as Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Coldplay, Madonna and Kanye West,” the RIAA writes in a letter to Whoisguard.com.

“As stated in the attached subpoena, you are required to disclose to the RIAA information sufficient to identify the infringer. This would include the individual’s IP-address and e-mail address,” the RIAA adds.

Interestingly, the identification request is not for the actual torrent site TorrentHound.com, which is registered through Katz, but for TorrentHound.net. The latter domain redirected to the .com site in the past, but it currently points to an entirely different site.

Despite the non-infringing nature of TorrentHound.net, WhoisGuard is expected to hand over the domain owner’s details.

In their Service Agreement they specifically mention that all personal information will be revealed when it’s “necessary to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, subpoenas, court orders or requests of law enforcement.”

The question remains, however, what the RIAA is planning to do with the information. Are they preparing to strike on torrent sites in the US? Last summer the music group also requested the personal information of the domain owners of three other torrent sites – LimeTorrents, BitSnoop and Monova – but thus far no notable action has been taken against the owners.

TorrentFreak contacted the RIAA for a comment, but we have yet to receive a response.

Source: RIAA Orders WhoisGuard to Identify Torrent Site Owner

TorrentFreak wasn’t really surprised by the statement. CD Projekt had done exactly the same before with the first installment of The Witcher.

“Mark our words, CD Projekt aren’t going to get an easy ride with this,” we predicted back then. But would they carry it through?

While trawling through endless Germany-based lawsuits in connection with another issue, the answer was right there – documents which showed that CD Projekt were sending so-called pay-up-or-else letters to alleged pirates demanding more than 900 euros per time. So, early December 2011, we reported what we’d found.

Response to the news was mixed. Some thought it was OK to chase down pirates but soon it became clear that this company, who had built up so much goodwill with impressive games and a refreshing attitude to DRM, risked damaging their hard-earned reputation with people they needed onside – the gaming press and their readers.

One of CD Projekt’s most vocal opponents (TF aside) were RockPaperShotgun, who proceeded to give the company a pretty hard time over their actions. Their arguments are well-worn, centering on the potential of accusing the innocent with disproportionate actions. But now, just a couple of months later, it is all over.

“In early December, [a TorrentFreak] article was published about a law firm acting on behalf of CD Projekt RED, contacting individuals who had downloaded The Witcher 2 illegally and seeking financial compensation for copyright infringement,” says CD Projekt’s Marcin Iwinski in a statement sent to RPS. “The news about our decision to combat piracy directly, instead of with DRM, spread quickly and with it came a number of concerns from the community.”

“Repeatedly, gamers just like you have said that our methods might wrongly accuse people who have never violated our copyright and expressed serious concern about our actions,” Iwinski adds.

“Being part of a community is a give-and-take process. We only succeed because you have faith in us, and we have worked hard over the years to build up that trust. We were sorry to see that many gamers felt that our actions didn’t respect the faith that they have put into CD Projekt RED.

“Our fans always have been and remain our greatest concern, and we pride ourselves on the fact that you all know that we listen to you and take your opinions to heart. While we are confident that no one who legally owns one of our games has been required to compensate us for copyright infringement, we value our fans, our supporters, and our community too highly to take the chance that we might ever falsely accuse even one individual.

“So we’ve decided that we will immediately cease identifying and contacting pirates,” Iwinski writes.

The full statement can be found here and is important on a number of fronts, all previously outlined in great detail.

But perhaps the most refreshing thing is the tone of the announcement. Look, let’s be under no illusions, the decision to abandon this ill-fated scheme is a commercial one, but CD Projekt did not tow the typically corporate line with a carefully sanitized release saying that their scheme had simply run its course, they actually listened to and then addressed the concerns of their fans.

For those already targeted by the scheme it’s too late, but the company can now move forward doing what they do best – making great games without needless distractions.

Oh, and for the other games companies doing the same in Germany but currently flying under the radar – we know who you are and we’re coming for you next, so you might want to get your retaliation in first, it’s easier in the long run.

Source: Witcher 2 Devs Abandon Games Piracy Shakedown

To help avoid a damaging legal precedent, Ziggo was joined in the case by rival ISP XS4ALL. Initially the partnership was successful. The Court of The Hague decided that blocking all customer access to The Pirate Bay was a step too far. BREIN, refusing to give in, launched a full trial.

During November last year that case was heard before the Court of The Hague. BREIN argued that it would be trivial for the ISPs to initiate a block of The Pirate Bay, while the ISPs stated that doing so could compromise the security of their networks, threaten freedom of expression, and would ultimately prove ineffective.

BREIN countered by insisting they have rights too – copyrights – and that the reason the ISPs don’t want to block TPB is because they profit by selling bandwidth to users so they can access it.

Today, the Court of the Hague delivered its verdict – and it’s victory for BREIN.

The Court noted that approximately 30% of Ziggo subscribers and 4.5% of XS4ALL subscribers use The Pirate Bay to share unauthorized media. Downloading copyright material is currently legal in the Netherlands but uploading is not, so due to the two-way nature of BitTorrent it is deemed that those customers are infringing copyright.

While the Court noted that an ISP blockade against The Pirate Bay would also prevent subscribers with legitimate business from accessing the site, it said that the legal offerings available there are not only limited, but also available from other sites. Preventing a large number of copyright infringements trumps the availability of a more limited supply of legal content, the Court noted.

Furthermore, the Court concluded that in granting an injunction to block The Pirate Bay it would only be preventing access to a site already subject to a court order which forced its operators to block access to Internet users in the Netherlands. That order was previously issued by the Amsterdam Court but was ignored by the site’s operators.

Spokesperson for XS4ALL, Niels Huijbregts, said the company is “bitterly disappointed” by the decision, noting that fundamental rights had been traded for “commercial interests”.

The ISPs have ten days in which to initiate the blockade – failure to do so will result in fines of 10,000 euros per day.

Update: BREIN says it will ask other Dutch ISPs to block The Pirate Bay as well.

Update: XS4ALL says it will appeal the verdict.

Update: Ziggo will also appeal.

Source: Dutch ISPs Ordered To Block The Pirate Bay

A few days ago Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff wrote an article in the Salt Lake City Tribune. In the column the Attorney General stresses how important it is for Congress to pass the SOPA and PIPA bills. The MPAA is delighted with the support and praised it in a blog post yesterday.

“Shurtleff effectively hammers the point that Google, Yahoo and others have spent millions trying to distort – that states which allow rogue websites to operate unfettered will experience massive revenue reduction and job loss,” the MPAA writes.

The Attorney General’s statements do indeed bolster what the MPAA and other pro-copyright groups have said all along. By itself this is not unusual, but when we examined the article in more detail we began to notice that many of the sentences that are passed off as Shurtleff’s work actually look very familiar.

Could it be that the column was partly written by the MPAA?

We say yes. To back up this claim we will highlight a few sentences from the Attorney General’s article, and compare them with those previously delivered by the MPAA and affiliated pro-copyright groups.

The first sentence that caught our attention is: “It will take a strong, sustained effort to stop Internet thieves and profiteers.”

Strong words, but also familiar ones. In fact, former MPAA President Bob Pisano uttered exactly the same words in 2010 when he congratulated the Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimously approving the COICA bill, the predecessor to SOPA and PIPA.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg really. Here’s another example.

“Congress can make a significant contribution to that effort with legislation to strengthen law enforcement tools. In the interests of American citizens and businesses, it is time for Congress to enact rogue sites legislation.”

The sentence above is copied from a pro-COICA column (bottom paragraph) written by Mike McCurry, co-chairman of the pro-copyright outfit Arts+Labs. At the time, McCurry’s piece was praised by pro-copyright lobby groups and in his writing McCurry also uses the previously mentioned sentence from the MPAA’s former president.

But there’s more. The column from McCurry, which is often quoted by the MPAA and affiliated groups such as FightOnlineTheft, displays more similarities with the article published by Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

For example: “[Rogue sites legislation] cut off foreign pirates and counterfeiters from the U.S. market and deprives them of what they want most — our money. By disrupting the business models of these online criminals, this legislation would make it less profitable and more difficult for those who wish to engage in blatant intellectual property theft.”

Now compare that to this quote from McCurry’s MPAA-inspired column which is nearly identical, far beyond what can be called a coincidence.

The Attorney General was also directly inspired by the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, a Chamber of Commerce outfit that belongs to the same pro-copyright clique.

Compare: “[rogue sites] represent the worst of the worst infringers on the Internet, are a threat to our economic security and they have no place in a legitimate online market.”

..to this quote (PDF) “[rogue sites] represent the worst of the worst on the Internet, and have no place in a legitimate online market.” And the list goes on.

Although we can’t say with certainty that Attorney General Mark Shurtleff was fed by the MPAA directly, it is obvious that the article wasn’t written by him. It’s a collection of ripped off sentences that can be directly traced back to the MPAA and affiliated groups.

This is quite a concern coming from someone who is supposed to be objective, especially considering that this Attorney General will have the exclusive power to grant requests for domain seizures and DNS blockades if SOPA or PIPA passes. The way we see it now, this Attorney General is clearly in the pockets of the pro-copyright lobby.

Holmes Wilson of the citizen rights group Fight for The Future agrees with this assessment.

“This is a reminder that SOPA/PIPA—the language, the money behind it, and the arguments used to justify it— are coming straight from the same place: the copyright industry,” he told TorrentFreak. “It’s possible that they’re turning up the heat in Utah in response to the meetings Utah residents have scheduled with Utah Senator Mike Lee.”

Unfortunately this isn’t an isolated incident. A lot of seemingly independent groups that recently supported PIPA and SOPA use the exact same language that appears to be fed to them by a single source.

Just Google the sentence “Criminals have turned to the Internet, abusing its virtually unlimited distribution opportunities,” and you’ll see that it was used in pro- SOPA/PIPA letters by the National Governors Association, Public Safety and First Responder Groups and others. Letters that were coincidentally all highlighted on the MPAA blog.

The more we dig, the more we find…

Source: ‘Rogue’ Attorney General Spreads MPAA-Fed SOPA Propaganda

Officers from the National Directorate for Combating Organized Crime said they raided a total of three locations in the western city of Pernik, the central northern city of Gabrovo and the capital Sofia. The aim: stop the illegal distribution of music and movies.

Although not directly named in yesterday’s Interior Ministry announcement, the action was targeted at P2PBG and Elit-BG, sites with combined userbases of at least 750,000 members.

P2PBG alone had more than 600K members but the exact userbase of Elit-Bg is unclear since a database issue last year caused them to ‘lose’ 200K members. Nevertheless, their popularity placed them in the country’s top 5 most popular torrent sites.

The authorities say that they have arrested two individuals, allegedly the sites’ owners. According to the Interior Ministry, one of them is “a minor”. TorrentFreak is informed that he is a teenager, just 17-years-old.

While computer equipment and other hardware is said to have been seized, that does not appear to include site hardware. Both sites remain up on the same host located outside the country in Germany. Access to their trackers, however, has been disabled.

A notice on P2PBG declares: “Access to the torrent section is disabled for all users. Please save your angry comments.”

The Interior Ministry described the raids as “another successful operation” in the Ministry of Culture’s overall plan to crack down on copyright infringement.

Source: Anti-Mafia Unit Raids Large Torrent Sites, Arrests 17-Year-Old Admin

Five people connected to NinjaVideo were arrested but it took until September 2011 for them to be indicted by a federal grand jury. One of those indicted was site co-founder Hana Beshara.

Later that month, Beshara – known online by her pseudonym Phara, and referred to by NinjaVideo members as their “Queen” – pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Beshara admitted her role in the founding of NinjaVideo during February 2008 and confessed to negotiating agreements with online advertisers. In total the site is said to have generated revenue and donations totaling around $500,000. Of this amount, Beshara admitted personally receiving around $200,000.

Today, 30-year-old Beshara was sentenced. For crimes of conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement, she was sentenced to 22 months in prison followed by 2 years probation and 500 hours of community service. She will have to repay the money she made from the site, a total of $209,826.95, and forfeit financial accounts and computer equipment.

“Hana’s lawyer was happy with the sentence,” a source close to NinjaVideo told TorrentFreak.

“Judge Trenga rarely gives the max penalty like some judges do. He was clearly unhappy with her being unremorseful but Hana does not separate her accomplishments in building the community with the crime,” the source added.

“Beshara had several character witness letters and made a statement to the court. The judge recognized that she is a capable, intelligent woman who created a high quality site.”

Last year, NinjaVideo co-founder and coder Matthew Smith (known online as Dead1ne) also pleaded guilty to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement and was due to be sentenced December 2011. A delay means the 23-year old will be sentenced at a later date.

Joshua David Evans (known online as Wadswerth), 34, of North Bend, Wash. previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of criminal copyright infringement relating to the release of the movie Iron Man 2 before its commercial premiere.

Jeremy Lynn Andrew (known online as htrdfrk), a 33-year-old of Eugene, Ore. pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy.

Justin A. Dedemko (known online as Afr1ka), 28, of Brooklyn, N.Y was responsible for uploading content to NinjaVideo and marketing the site. He previously admitted receiving just over $58,000 from site revenue and will pay restitution in that amount.

All face a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when they are sentenced in the coming months. Beshara’s relatively lenient sentence (considering the maximum available) is an indication that their sentences are likely to be no more than 2 years.

A fifth defendant in the case, Zoi Mertzanis of Greece, known online as “Tik”, is accused of being one the site’s most active uploaders. A warrant is outstanding for his arrest.

Source: NinjaVideo Founder Sentenced To 22 Months in Prison

One of the most prominent sites that has rallied against the bills is the largest online community Reddit. The site’s users have organized various successful protests, which led domain registrar GoDaddy to drop its support for the bill. But the site itself also actively encouraged its users to speak out against SOPA and PIPA on several occasions.

For the site’s staff, taking a political stand is very much a matter of self-preservation. Reddit’s general manager Erik Martin recently said that the bill would “almost certainly mean the end” of the popular site.

Strong words, but First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert Marvin Ammori tells TorrentFreak that it’s certainly not far-fetched. While some SOPA and PIPA supporters say that Reddit is safe because the bills only target foreign sites, Ammori disagrees.

The former law professor says that thousands of US businesses, large and small, may be hit by the bills if they pass Congress. Ammori explains his views in a recent article where he lists three scenarios under which American websites could be targeted.

“Reddit is most likely to be illegal under the second category as anti-circumvention,” Ammori tells us. This means that should The Pirate Bay be declared illegal under the new laws, any US-based site or service that talks about gaining access to the site via the various loopholes, breaks the law as well.

“Any tool that helps anyone circumvent the bills’ remedies are illegal. Since the bills’ remedies include domain-name breaking and removal from search engines, any American sites that permit you to search for, or find, The Pirate Bay’s new domain name is potentially liable for circumvention,” Ammori reasons.

“I think if the community posts an article and votes for an article that helps people get to a targeted site, perhaps by listing the target site’s IP-address or new domain name, then Reddit itself might be ‘a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures’. The copyright industry might argue that Reddit’s products (links) are designed or marketed by Reddit or by users ‘in concert with’ Reddit.”

Reading the above it’s clear that the current language of the bills could indeed have far-reaching consequences. Not just for Reddit, but for every site or service that relies on user-based input. Perhaps even for TorrentFreak, should we report on how people are making tools that can circumvent SOPA and PIPA.

And what about VPN providers? Or TOR? The list of potential targets goes on and on.

Supporters of the bill have pointed out that these fears are not justified, and they promise that the bills will only be used to take out the bad apples. But if that’s really the case, wouldn’t it be a good idea to draft the law in a way that makes it absolutely clear that only rogue sites are at risk? Just a thought.

Source: How SOPA Can Kill Reddit and Many Other US Sites