TorrentFreak

A second administrator of NinjaVideo, one of the first targets of the US government’s Operation in Our Sites, has been sentenced. Matthew Smith, known online as Dead1ne, received 14 months in prison, two years supervised release, and was ordered to pay back just over $172,000 he allegedly earned from the site.

File-hosting services all around the world will have looked on in horror yesterday as MegaUpload, one of the world’s largest cyberlocker services, was taken apart by the FBI. Foreign citizens were arrested in foreign lands and at least $50 million in assets seized. So what exactly prompted this action? TorrentFreak read every word of the 72-page indictment so you don’t have to, and we were surprised by its contents.

The founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, has been denied bail in an extradition hearing in New Zealand this morning. Dotcom, who was raided by 76 armed police in helicopters yesterday, is wanted in the United States alongside other key MegaUpload employees on racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges.

After it was revealed that games developer CD Projekt had been sending cash settlement letters to Internet users based on flimsy IP address-based anti-piracy evidence, this week the company decided to end their campaign. Today TorrentFreak reveals the names of many other famous games companies conducting almost identical operations – “Send us cash settlements,” they tell their targets, “…or else…”

Despite protestations that merely linking to copyright material isn’t an offense in the UK, a judge has today ruled that the UK-based ex-administrator of the TVShack video linking website can be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement charges. Richard O’Dwyer, 23, has never set foot in United States but now faces being used as a ‘guinea pig’ for US copyright law.

After failing last year in its attempt to force a local Internet service provider to block online piracy, a major record label is now taking on a much bigger opponent. Yesterday, EMI Records filed a lawsuit against the Irish state for not fulfilling its obligations under European law which would otherwise allow for the “blocking, diverting or interrupting of internet communications” which breach copyright law.

Two of Bulgaria’s largest torrent sites have been raided by the country’s organized crime unit. The sites, which served in excess of three quarters of a million members, had been established for several years. Three locations were raided and two site admins, one just 17-years-old, were arrested.