Earlier this year, anti-piracy outfit BREIN demanded the closure of Usenet community FTD. After negotiations between the pair came to nothing, BREIN declared FTD a criminal operation prompting FTD to take legal action against BREIN to clear their name. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD, demanding $70,000 a day in penalties.
Lawyers ACS:Law and their anti-piracy partners Logistep are currently harassing around 6,000 alleged file-sharers, demanding £665 from each to make threats of legal action go away. In yet another blow to their tenuous claims, ISP association ISPA says that its members are “not confident” that the evidence accurately identifies infringers.
The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has ruled that file-hosting service Rapidshare must proactively filter certain content. Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet. The court estimated the value of the tracks at $34 million.
The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has summoned The Pirate Bay’s founders to court through Twitter and Facebook. Emboldened by recent events in Sweden, BREIN is demanding a total blackout of the site in the Netherlands and has scheduled a court hearing for July 21st.
Just days after ISPs in Spain confirmed talks with the music and movie industry had ended without success, entertainment companies have now backed away from their “3 strikes” demands after it became clear the Spanish government does not support their plan. They will go after 200 BitTorrent sites instead.
Yesterday from the Palace of Versailles, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first president to address Parliament in 150 years. He took the opportunity to show his determination over the proposed HADOPI legislation, promising that he will “go all the way” to enforce law on the Internet.
Internet service providers in Spain have now ended all government mandated talks with the music and movie industry after earlier refusing to disconnect alleged pirates. The talks were supposed to reduce online piracy but the ISPs say this is impossible if legal alternatives aren’t provided.
The Swedish Supreme Administrative Court has ruled that collecting and storing IP addresses is in violation of the Personal Data Act. But as some celebrate this ruling as the death of the notorious IPRED anti-piracy legislation, the truth is a little more sobering.
A major online warez release group has been severely disrupted after a police and music industry investigation. A contender for the most prolific in its field, the group has suffered arrests, with the latest coming yesterday after police and the BPI conducted an early morning raid.
Several studios are currently taking legal action against Australian ISP iiNet. They accuse iiNet of failing to take steps to stop its subscribers from sharing files by disconnecting them from the Internet. Now iiNet has been ordered to hand over the personal details and logs relating to twenty alleged pirates, to anti-piracy group AFACT.
Anti-piracy groups and lawyers across Europe are unmovable - they say that since they logged a copyright infringement from a particular IP address, the bill payer is responsible. Now a court in Rome has decided that on the contrary, an IP address does not identify an infringer, only a particular connection.
