TorrentFreak

A ruling by a High Court judge today means that New Zealand’s spy agency will have to reveal details of their secret surveillance of Kim Dotcom. The decision, which will see the Government Communications Security Bureau added to Dotcom’s lawsuit over an illegal January raid on his mansion, means that the GCSB may now be sued for damages after it was revealed the agency illegally spied on him.

Last Friday a pair of leading BitTorrent sites and a handful of streaming and linking portals had their domains put on hold by EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names. Fresh information this week from a source familiar with the situation suggests that someone filed a complaint against the sites with the prosecutor in Brussels. In response, some of the affected sites have been taking steps to mitigate the effects of what could be pending legal action. .

Several BitTorrent sites including Torrentz and Fenopy have had their .EU domains put on hold by EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names. The new status for the domains, forcibly applied by EURid within seconds of each other yesterday afternoon, suggests that legal action against them might be pending and prevents the owners from making changes.

Uploading just over a handful of movies to a BitTorrent site has turned into a financial disaster for a man from Upper Marlboro, Maryland. A federal judge entered a default judgment in favor of adult company Flava Works this week, awarding the company $1.5 million in damages. Anwar Ogiste, who failed to defend himself, shared a total of seven “clips” putting the damages at more than $214,000 per infringed movie.

Following a tip from the MPAA the feds arrested four members of the prominent BitTorrent release group IMAGiNE in 2011. All pleaded guilty earlier this year and yesterday one of the group’s leaders was sentenced to a 40 month prison term, the largest file-sharing punishment in U.S. history. A fifth member of the IMAGiNE group, not included in the indictment, pleaded guilty on the same day and will be sentenced next year.

A group of adult movie companies is suing Verizon for failing to hand over the personal details of alleged BitTorrent pirates. The provider systematically refuses to comply with court-ordered subpoenas and the copyright holders see these actions as more than just an attempt to protect its customers. According to the them, Verizon’s objections are in bad faith as the Internet provider is profiting from BitTorrent infringements at the expense of lower-tier ISPs.

A court in Hamburg, Germany, has granted an injunction against a user of the anonymous and encrypted file-sharing network RetroShare . RetroShare users exchange data through encrypted transfers and the network setup ensures that the true sender of the file is always obfuscated. The court, however, has now ruled that RetroShare users who act as an exit node are liable for the encrypted traffic that’s sent by others.