This change is expected to go into effect before the end of the month. From then on, Pirate Bay users can only download files through magnet links.

The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages of the transition to a “magnet site” is that it requires relatively little bandwidth to host a proxy site. This is needed, because The Pirate Bay is currently blocked in several countries, and more are bound to follow in the months to come.

Without torrents, the Pirate Bay also becomes extremely portable which makes it possible for people to download a personal backup. As we said before, such a copy would easily fit on a thumb drive. Pirate Bay user “allisfine” was intrigued by this idea and decided to find out how small a copy of the torrents site would be.

“I did a complete snapshot of ALL the Pirate Bay torrents, in case somebody wants to close it or something similarly crazy,” he told TorrentFreak.

Using this script, “allisfine” managed to copy the title, id, file size, seeds, leechers and magnet links of 1,643,194 torrents. Comments were not copied to keep the files as small as possible, and the end result is a full copy of all magnet links (magnet) on The Pirate Bay in a 90 megabytes file, 164 megabytes unzipped.

There is some confusion as to whether the 1,643,194 torrents are indeed a full copy of the site, as The Pirate Bay itself lists 4,199,832 torrents in the footer link on its site. However, the latter stats apply to the number of torrents that are available on several public trackers, The Pirate Bay itself only hosts a fraction of those.

With the release of the copy everyone can now download a personal backup of The Pirate Bay in a few minutes. Although searching the copy isn’t as convenient as using The Pirate Bay itself, there is little doubt that someone else will soon come up with another script that solves this problem.

Recent history has shown that when a site is threatened with shutdown, or censored, the Internet is very quick to come up with a workaround. And with thousands of backups of The Pirate Bay floating around, it will be very hard at this point to get rid of the famous torrent site.

What’s perhaps even more striking is that the greatest arch rival of a billion dollar entertainment industry is nothing more than 164 megabytes of text. Something to think about.

Update: Here’s a copy of 17 million torrents from Bitsnoop.com, pretty much the same format but nicely categorized. It’s only 535 MB.

Source: Download a Copy of The Pirate Bay, It’s Only 90 MB

The Church’s creator, philosophy student Isak Gerson, told TorrentFreak that he hoped the development would encourage people to be more open about the fact they are practicing Kopimists.

“There’s still a legal stigma around copying for many,” he told us. “A lot of people still worry about going to jail when copying and remixing. I hope in the name of Kopimi that this will change.”

One group that will hope the opposite is true are the long-time Kopimism rivals at the MPAA. But according to The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, an employee of the movie industry group actually provided the inspiration for the original Kopimism movement to be transformed into a full-blown religion.

“In an interview in 2007 or 2008 (I believe, not sure about the date) the Swedish lawyer for the MPAA, Monique Wadsted, got a question about her views on the people advocating file sharing,” Sunde explains.

“It’s just a few people, very loud. They’re a cult. They call themselves Kopimists,” Wadsted responded.

Wadsted, who participated in the prosecution during The Pirate Bay trial, had previous experience with cults having represented the Church of Scientology in a copyright case. Little did she know that the seeds of inspiration had just been planted and were about to turn “a cult” into something more.

“It made me think that it might be of benefits to look at what we do as a religious movement,” says Sunde. “One of the fun things working with The Pirate Bay has always been that we’ve started lots of fun crazy projects. Some work, some (most) fail. I started researching what kind of angle it would give us if we registered a religion.”

Interestingly, Sunde says that in Sweden its possible for anyone to create a religion as long as they’re organized – the actual content of a religion is not examined. But it was the fact that religions enjoy more protection than political groups that piqued Sunde’s interest most.

Nevertheless, several years passed before the idea for a copying church were turned into reality by Isak Gerson, who at just 19-years-old has already gained more exposure for his new faith than many other religions achieve in a lifetime. Even the Catholic church have noticed but perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re not impressed.

“It’s crazy and seems like a send up of religion, a send up of copyright and a send up of the government to register such a body as religious,” says Bishop Peter Ingham, head of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong in Australia.

“There should be some measuring stick against what you call religion,” he said. “In my mind, if religion has nothing to do with God — or what people perceive to be God — then it’s a sham. It looks like it’s just a way of getting around the law of piracy and copyright. How could a religion promote illegal activity?”

The Missionary Church of Kopimism has no requirements for its congregation to break the law, but Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge does raise an interesting issue – that of religious confession.

“Conversations with preachers of official religions acting on official duty are privileged conversations, meaning they can’t be eavesdropped on or forced as evidence; a priest can even go to jail for inadvertently disclosing something that was said under the privileged conversation of confession,” he explains.

“In the case of this religion, the preachers are defined as the ones facilitating holy copying (and remixing). Translated to nerdspeak, that means the communications between operators of trackers/hubs and the people who partake in the sacrament of copying now carries confessional status, by and large making it illegal and impossible to collect as evidence in a trial,” Falkvinge continues.

“That brings a whole boatload of interesting legal ramifications with regards to evidence collection and trying to persecute the worshipers of holy copying and remixing, doesn’t it?”

Source: MPAA Lawyer Inspired File-Sharing Religion, Catholic Bishop Unhappy

“We urge Government to ensure that in future, policy on Intellectual Property issues is constructed on the basis of evidence, rather than weight of lobbying,” was the damning indictment on past copyright consultations and legislation efforts, and has clearly prodded Her Majesty’s Government into action.

Last week, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office opened a consultation into the topic, covering several proposals. Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Wilcox stated:

“The Government is focused on boosting growth and some freeing up of existing copyright legislation can deliver real value to the UK economy without risking our excellent creative industries. We are encouraging businesses to come forward with thoughts and evidence on our proposals to help us achieve this.”

Along with the 171-page consultation document comes a handy little 5 page document (pdf) on data and evidence which is going to leave people at the British Phonographic Institute, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, and other similar industry lobby groups feeling a little sick.

Claims will now have to be backed with numbers, and those numbers will have to be attributed, and where possible, peer-reviewed. Graphs should be accompanied with the raw data in an electronic appendix (to avoid visual manipulation of data) and studies cited will have to include the name of the group that funded it.

Of course, tech-heads also put on notice.

“Documents to be written in clear language: a summary to be given, where possible without the use of technical language”. This is a clear warning for those of us who talk of technical issues beyond general knowledge, since as a rule, politicians don’t understand the Internet.

Yet it’s in the footnotes that the barbs really dig deep into the sides of Big Copyright’s lobby groups, with a demonstration of how figures can be manipulated. In the example given, they show how an actual loss of £55 can be turned into an estimated loss of £451. The press have started to doubt some of the claims by the copyright industry, but now it seems governments are too.

It’s almost as if someone’s been reading our articles…. (such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 etc.)

The consultation closes March 21st 2012, and can be found here.

Source: UK Copyright Consultation Wants Facts Not Fiction

The Party quickly gained the interest of the mainstream media and at the Swedish general elections in the same year it became the third largest party outside parliament. Inspired by this success, Pirate parties were founded in dozens of other countries.

Earlier this year, Falkvinge stepped down as party leader to focus more on promoting the Pirate position internationally. Aside from sharing his thoughts on conferences and his blog, he also spreads his ideas on copyright in bi-weekly columns on TorrentFreak.

No longer bound by political shackles, resignation allowed Falkvinge to spread the word on a global podium. And not without result.

Today Falkvinge was honored by the high-level politics magazine Foreign Policy by earning a spot in their prestigious list of Top 100 Global Thinkers. Alongside familiar names such as Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Clay Shirky, Ron Paul and Hilary Clinton, the Pirate Party founder was recognized for inspiring millions of people worldwide.

“Indeed, 2011 may be remembered as the year Falkvinge’s big idea broke through into the public consciousness,” Foreign Policy writes. “His Pirates still aren’t exactly mainstream, but the issues they focus on — government transparency, Internet privacy, and copyright law — are very much in the zeitgeist, and their ranks are growing.”

“The Swedish and Swiss Pirate parties have aided WikiLeaks, offering the controversial site server space and web hosting; a self-described Pirate Party activist was named secretary of youth and sports in Tunisia’s revolutionary cabinet; and in September, the Pirates won a shocking 8.9 percent of the vote in Berlin’s state elections,” it adds.

Needless to say, Falkvinge is honored with his spot in Foreign Policy’s prestigious list, something he certainly didn’t expect when he founded the first Pirate Party in 2006.

“I never thought the ideas would gain ground this quickly,” Falkvinge tells TorrentFreak in a comment.

“I had expected a Pirate Party success in Sweden to be necessary just for the second Pirate Party to form in another country. Instead, we are seeing them grow like wildfire, and now, be recognized at the highest levels,” he adds.

Indeed, Pirate Parties all over the world are gaining momentum. In the European Parliament Amelia Andersdotter is about to become the second Pirate MEP, and in Germany the party is riding the wave of success after it earned 15 seats in the Berlin State Parliament elections.

Quite an accomplishment for such a young movement that was built by a group of volunteers who shared the same ideals, and it might be just the beginning.

Source: Pirate Party Founder In Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers

The treaty eventually passed a few months later, but due to the slow bureaucratic process it would take another two years before this seat could be filled. All this time Amelia Andersdotter had to wait patiently to enter parliament and represent the people who voted her in.

However, now that all member states have signed off on it, Andersdotter and 17 other new members are expected to take their seats next month.

Representing one of the youngest parties in Europe, the second Pirate MEP is about to set a fitting record. When elected Andersdotter was only 21, but the now 24-year-old will still be the youngest member to hold a seat in the current parliament.

“Not having to answer more questions about when I will finally get to fill my seat is what I’m looking forward to most,” Andersdotter tells TorrentFreak. “It feels really good that the when-question is over.”

Andersdotter is a supporter of a united Europe, and hopes that the Pirate Party can help to shape policy in which culture, creativity and innovation will flourish.

“I kind of buy into this idea that the European Union is a good thing, and that closer connections between European nations both political and social are advantageous not only on the level of the prices of groceries, but perhaps even more, culturally.”

“It’s nice to be able to say democratisation of EU governance is moving forward, that individual member states aren’t stalling that democratisation for their own nationalist purposes any more,” Andersdotter tells us.

The unitedness is also one of the downsides. As her delayed appointment illustrates, it can be very hard sometimes to actually get things done in Europe.

“What I’m not looking forward to as much is perhaps the fear that I will realise most of EU governance is actually a battle between various national interests, rather than one interest in having a good, strong European Union. But it’s difficult of course. ”

“The EU is a big place, and one reason people feel closest to ‘their’ member state is because they know most things about it. I remember the first time I was in Belgium a few years ago and the prime minister resigned and I thought ‘oh no!’ but another Belgian just said to me ‘again?’ with a deep sigh.”

For the remainder of her term as MEP, which end in 2014, Andersdotter will focus on issues like competition in the telecommunication area.

“European approaches to competition law need to be changed, at least a bit. Better sector adaptation, for instance. The lack of real control over vertical integration creates the situation where telcos (or media enterprises) own everything from the backbone cables to the music streaming service – that’s not good. One would at least expect some obligation to keep the different tiers apart,” Andersdotter says.

“Currently this type of bundling is, more worryingly, encouraged rather than regulated and it creates a very unfair balance between the infrastructure owners (in this case) and users. Competition law just now deals mostly with horizontal integration, which would be say, if one company owns all of the cable in northern Belgium (Telenet).”

Andersdotter points out that the telecommunications sector has some good sector specific laws already, the net neutrality law in the Netherlands being a prime example. The problem is, however, to get all member stats to adopt these regulations.

“Maybe European Parliament or the European institutions need better tools to make sure member states follow their community obligations,” Andersdotter notes.

Aside from defending the public from unfair competition, the future Member of Parliament will also tackle the various rights issues that are so dear to the Pirate Party.

“I’m also very interested in industrial rights, like, patent rights or design rights, trademarks. There’s an abundance of kind of side-initiatives, data exclusivity in the pharmaceutical industry being a good example, that also reinforce the ‘non-material’ economic position of companies in a way that is not always good for society,” she says.

“One issue that I know the EU deals with a lot in all areas, and that we don’t really think much about at all in terms of industrial property, is certification – what is a certification worth, how are they generated (produced) and traded, by whom? Between whom?”

Andersdotter further hopes that the Pirate Party presence in the European Parliament will be followed by strong representation in national parliaments.

“It’s important for the PP to be represented everywhere, I guess. One of my hopes for the future is that the PP will be represented in all the national parliaments of member states so that we can hold member states kind of accountable more for what happens in the EU.”

“I find it antagonizing that member states and their politicians try to avoid responsibility for their own failures by blaming the EU, but mostly how successful they are in doing so,” Andersdotter tells us.

“When national parliaments have been saying that they can’t do anything about ACTA, activists and media just kind of happily accept. What national parliaments could do, and should do, is obviously tell their national governments not to sign the agreements. That is and would be within their power,” she adds.

Thus far none of the Pirate parties has managed to score a seat in the national parliament through elections, but the recent outcome of the German State elections shows that the possibilities are there. Political change is slow, but things are moving in the right direction for the Pirate Party.

In the European Parliament the seat of Amelia Andersdotter will double the representation of the Pirate Party in Europe’s highest political arena, something the 5-years-young party can be proud of.

Source: Pirate To Join European Parliament As Youngest Member

One group that will not be there, however, are the Swedish Pirate Party.

“The Pirate Party would have been in place inside the show, but now we will not be,” says Pirate Party leader Anna Troberg. “We are simply no longer welcome.”

Troberg says that after the sales people from the exhibition pursued the party for months to participate, they decided to book and pay for a booth. Not only that, the party also agreed to a package of advertising and hotel rooms.

As can be seen from the photograph below of pre-event billboard advertising, everything was in place for the party to participate.

But earlier this week, just before the event was due to start, the Pirate Party received some surprise news.

“On Tuesday afternoon, I called a representative of the show with a few simple practical questions, but she seemed generally stressed out and said something vague about the show and not wanting any problems before she hung up,” says Troberg.

“I thought it was a bit strange, but in the afternoon, the pieces fell into place when the fair manager, Bear Wengse, phoned me and kindly, but firmly, announced that the Pirate Party was no longer welcome at the fair.”

Wengse informed Troberg that the exhibition is a meeting place and not a venue for political conflict and the party’s presence could cause problems, particularly since some of their work “could be perceived as criminal.”

Troberg countered that as a political party they only want to change certain laws democratically, and that can not be considered a crime. Nevertheless, the ban stood.

There isn’t a complete ban on politics at the event, though. The Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU) are being allowed to appear – even though they too support the decriminalization of non-commercial file sharing.

However, the SSU probably fly a little more easily under the radars of some of the more prominent entertainment industry exhibitors at Gamex – Warner, Sony and Disney as prime examples. There’s no proof that these companies objected to the Pirate Party’s presence, but the party’s support for their arch-enemy – The Pirate Bay – won’t have gone unnoticed.

Nevertheless, Troberg is upbeat. She extended thanks to the forces behind the party’s exclusion, the net result of which was more exposure for the party than they would have otherwise achieved at the exhibition, and at much less expense.

Visitors to the show wanting to show their support for the party weren’t disappointed, though. Yesterday the party’s Young Pirate division were outside the event, handing out free T-shirts to be worn inside.

“I find it absolutely hilarious that a gaming fair banned the Pirate Party on the official pretext that ‘our culture is harmful to gaming’,” Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, told TorrentFreak.

“A decade down the road, people will just shake their heads at that. What else can you do, really?”

Source: Too Controversial: Pirate Party Banned From Gaming Exhibition

The printing press.

To deal with the challenges at hand, Sir Thomas Talfourd drafted a new bill under which the copyright term for books would be extended to sixty years after the author’s death.

For years the bill was heavily debated in the House of Commons, and after it failed to pass in 1837, 1838, 1839 and 1840, it was once again brought up for a vote in 1841. That year the House witnessed one of the most intriguing standoffs in copyright history, and one that is still very relevant today.

On the one side there was Sir Thomas Talfourd calling for a lengthy extension, and on the other was Baron Thomas Macaulay arguing that this would be a dramatic mistake. On February 5th 1841 the House of Commons gathered to vote on the bill, but not before Macaulay gave a final speech.

Below we will accentuate a few critical paragraphs from that historic but forgotten speech, most of which are still very relevant today.

“It is painful to me to take a course which may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary men. It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my honourable and learned friend on a question which he has taken up from the purest motives, and which he regards with a parental interest.”

“These feelings have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copyright has been under discussion. But as I am, on full consideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it.”

Above is how Macaulay started his argument, addressing the House of Commons, and his “honourable friend” Sir Talfourd in particular.

“I believe, Sir, that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with equal safety challenge my honourable friend to find out any distinction between copyright and other privileges of the same kind; any reason why a monopoly of books should produce an effect directly the reverse of that which was produced by the East India Company’s monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essex’s monopoly of sweet wines.”

“Thus, then, stands the case. It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.”

Macaulay argued that copyright is a monopoly by definition, and that while authors should be compensated for their works, a copyright term of sixty years after the author’s death would do more harm than good.

“Now, I will not affirm that the existing law is perfect, that it exactly hits the point at which the monopoly ought to cease; but this I confidently say, that the existing law is very much nearer that point than the law proposed by my honourable and learned friend. For consider this; the evil effects of the monopoly are proportioned to the length of its duration. But the good effects for the sake of which we bear with the evil effects are by no means proportioned to the length of its duration.”

“A monopoly of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible.”

Baron Macaulay then went on to argue that the extension would offer very few advantages for the authors themselves. On the other hand, he explained that these restrictions would do harm to the public’s access to classic works.

After giving various examples of the extension’s potentially negative effects, Macaulay closes with the theory that the Act would in fact change the meaning of copyright to the general public.

“I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind.”

“Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains.”

“No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot.”

It could even make piracy morally acceptable.

“On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim’s Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress?”

“Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions.”

“The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.”

Fast forward 170 years and politicians are still debating over the same topics.

The language is different, the players have changed and so has technology, but in essence they deal with the very same issues. To a certain degree Macaulay predicted how the public’s opinion towards piracy would be hindered when more restrictions are put into place. This is something we still witness today.

In 1841, Macaulay’s speech made quite an impression in the House of Commons. The Copyright bill was rejected by 45 votes to 38, and a year later it finally passed as the Copyright Act 1842, without the sixty year extension he argued against.

Baron Macaulay’s critique on the lengthy copyright extension was at the foundation of copyright law in the U.K. and U.S. for decades, until Walt Disney came along.

Source: Piracy and Copyright Challenges in 1841 Mirror Those of Today

Recent polls for the federal elections show that the Pirate Party is now polling double digits across the country. With 10 percent of the total vote, the Pirates would become the third largest party in the country if federal elections were being held this week.

This means that the good run in Berlin, where nearly 9 percent of the people voted for The Pirate Party, hasn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the country. On the contrary, support for the Pirates only increased.

Perhaps even more impressively, it also shows that the party nearly quintupled their voter base since the last federal elections two years ago. With 845,904 votes at the 2009 federal elections, the Pirate Party got stuck at 2 percent of the vote, where 5 percent was needed to enter the Bundestag.

“This is a landmark event,” godfather and founder of Pirate Party movement Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak commenting on the news. “Getting to mainstream awareness takes metric tons of work. Getting to 10% in a poll is an achievement that only some five parties achieve per country in an entire century.”

In common with all other Pirate Parties across the world, the German Pirate Party’s policy focuses around three pillars; shared culture, free knowledge, and fundamental privacy. Based on the recent election and poll results, these key points appeal to a wide audience.

Although the results of the polls are promising, there is still a long way to go before new federal elections are held in Germany. The difficult task for the Pirates is to keep the momentum going. However, Rick Falkvinge thinks that this week’s poll results are a clear sign that they are on course.

“This isn’t an election result, but it is still something that starts to shift policy making away from neomercantilistic monopolies and toward the free exchange of TICKS (tools, ideas, culture, knowledge, and sentiments) that build the next generation of industries. That’s good for every country and for the youth in particular.”

Despite being just five years young, the German Pirate Party has already booked several successes. The party currently has more than 150 members in elected offices across Germany and with their recent surge in popularity this appears to be just the beginning.

Source: German Pirate Party Riding the Wave of Success

This week the Greens released a position paper with their view on copyright in the digital era, which mimics the Pirate Party agenda. The paper goes directly against the current trend of increasing control over copyright, and calls for a society that secures the interests of the public instead of a few multi-million dollar companies.

One of the key proposals is to legalize file-sharing for personal use. “Non commercial sharing between individuals should be allowed, for instance by widening the scope of the existing private copying exception,” the Greens write.

In addition, restrictive technologies such as DRM should be banned entirely, or at least decriminalized.

“It must always be legal to circumvent DRM restrictions, and we should consider introducing a ban in the consumer rights legislation on DRM technologies that restrict legal uses of a work,” the paper reads.

“There is no point in having our parliaments introduce a balanced and reasonable copyright legislation, if at the same time we allow the big multinational corporations to write their own laws, and enforce them through technical means,” it adds.

The Greens also want to reduce the copyright term from 70 to 5 years, with an option for copyright holders to extend it to a maximum of 20 years. The Greens call the current situation “absurd” and argue that society will greatly benefit from a more reasonable copyright term.

“Today’s protection times — life plus 70 years — are absurd. No investor would even look at a business case where the time to pay-back was that long,” they write.

Overall the paper suggests a reduction in the current stranglehold on creativity and a boost for the Internet to allow it to show its full potential. According to the Greens this also means that Net Neutrality should be guaranteed, and that remixes and mashups of copyrighted works for commercial use should be allowed.

Talking to TorrentFreak, Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom says that the Greens proposal perfectly resembles what the Pirate Party has been fighting for in recent years.

“I think it’s great,” Engstrom says. “The paper starts off by first going through what the situation is and what the goals are from a Green perspective, and then ends up in the same proposal for copyright reform that the Pirate Party advocates. This makes perfect sense.”

“The idea of copyright reform has existed among Greens before the Pirate Party got involved, but we have helped giving the Greens a push to really put it on the agenda,” he adds.

For Engstrom and all the other Pirate Party employees in Brussels this confirms that they can make a difference, and that the support the Pirate Party got in the 2009 elections was justified.

“I was sent to Brussels by 225,000 Swedish voters who voted for the Pirate Party, with the task to spread the Pirate ideas in the parliament, so that we can one day get the majority for the ideas that we need. This is of course a very big job, but this is a first milestone. It shows that the Pirates can deliver when they get the chance,” Engstrom concludes.

The enthusiasm of the copyright reform paper isn’t limited to Brussels either. Many pirate party members and volunteers will see it as a sign that they can make a difference.

“We know that our ideas are sound for the future, says Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party.

“It is great to see that they are getting larger and larger support. To see one of the seven party groups in the European Parliament adopt our entire perspective as its own is a gigantic leap forward for the civil liberties of the next generation.

“Just like the Green perspective took some time to be fully understood 40 years ago, so will ours. But understanding and endorsement of the pirate perspective keeps growing, and I expect it continue doing so until it is as common sense as acting sustainably,” Falkvinge adds.

The position paper of the Greens can be called revolutionary. However, the group is only a minority in the European Parliament, so there’s a long way to go before it will become law. It’s nonetheless a clear sign that copyright reform is gaining broader acceptance.

Source: European Greens Want to Legalize File-Sharing, Ban DRM

Founded in September 2006, the German Pirate Party has already booked several successes in its relatively short existence. Before today, the party had over 50 members in elected offices across Germany, which is more than in all other countries combined. However, today’s election win trumps all previous ones.

Never before has a Pirate Party been elected into a state or federal parliament. And with the 5 percent floor that was required to enter, the achievement at the Berlin elections is all the more impressive.

The initial results show that the Pirates received the most support from younger voters. 15 percent of people under 30 voted for the Pirate Party, but even among voters aged 60 years and up, a few percent voted for the Pirates.

Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg was the first region to finish counting, and the Pirate Party got 14.7 percent of all votes there. With all votes counted in the state the Pirates are at 8.9 percent.

TorrentFreak asked Sebastian Nerz, Chairman of the German Pirate Party, what this success means for the party. He told us that due to an increase in funds and influence the Pirate Party will have a greater chance to make its mark.

“At the moment the Pirate Party of Germany does not have any paid employees,” Nerz says. “Everyone working for the party – including myself – is working in an honorary capacity. In contrast, Members of Parliament are paid for their work. In addition they receive state money to pay for assistents and co-workers. This will enable those Pirates to work full-time for the party, thus giving us much more work force.”

“Another very important benefit is, that citizens and media are taking parties with access to the parliament much more seriously. A number of times i’ve heard, “Your party is not relevant because it does not have members of parliament.” Following this weekend’s successes, in this respect the party’s position will be greatly improved.

In addition the Pirate Party expects that their heightened profile will lead to an increase in members and more people working for the party. As for the party’s ideals, they want to be as transparent as possible, secure the privacy of citizens, abolish patents and limit the ever growing control of copyright exploiting organizations.

“We are going to demonstrate that it is possible to conduct a transparent approach to politics. Traditionally politics are a secret ‘no trespassing’ area. Meetings are held behind closed doors, agendas and protocols are closed, treaties are not being published,” Nerz told TorrentFreak.

“We will demonstrate that it is possible to openly and truthfully inform the citizens what is going on, what alternatives are possible and why a certain path has been chosen. We will demonstrate that citizens can be integrated into the fact-finding and path-choosing methods. Why not ask citizens about their opinion before you decide? Its well worth a try!”

One thing’s for certain. The German Pirate Party scored a sensational win today. As a result, the Berlin state parliament will undoubtedly notice the fresh wind coming from the most technology-friendly and privacy preserving party out there. All the Berlin candidates are ready and eager to start according to the chairman.

“In short: We are going to demonstrate that politics can be reformed,” Nerz says.

The election win is currently being celebrated by hundreds of Pirate Party enthusiasts in Berlin, including the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party Rick Falkvinge. Rick already predicted the massive win yesterday and shared a picture of the festivities with TorrentFreak.

“Pirates of Berlin, thank you for your fantastic work in making tonight happen. We all stand shoulder to shoulder in fighting for the next generation — one of succeeding is all of us succeeding. Tomorrow, people will look to your success, and the movement will grow yet more. You are the source of inspiration for the next wave of civil liberties activists,” Falkvinge adds in a blog post.

Source: Pirate Party Enters Berlin Parliament After Historic Election Win

In the hope of correcting this and other misconceptions surrounding their operations, RapidShare then took the unprecedented step of hiring the lobbying firm Dutko Worldwide, who also work for Google.

Initially, little was known about the priorities of RapidShare in Washington, but the most recent lobbying report filed by Dutko reveals that the PROTECT IP Act is high up the list. For good reason, because if the bill becomes law RapidShare could be one of the first to be put out of business, in the United States at least.

Under the PROTECT IP Act, authorities (and copyright holders) will have a broad range of tools to censor sites they deem to be facilitating copyright infringement, starting with domain seizures.

In case a domain is not registered or controlled by a U.S. company, authorities can order search engines to remove the website from their search results and order ISPs to block the website.

Although the above measures are already quite far-reaching, the bill also allows for private copyright holders to use some of the same tools as the Government. Without due process, copyright holders can obtain a court order to prevent payment providers and ad-networks from doing business with sites that allegedly facilitate copyright infringement.

One of the many problems of such a law is who gets to decide what the definition of a “rogue website” is. In common with other file-sharing platforms, RapidShare is often labeled as seriously problematic, despite the fact that they’ve been found to operate legally by a U.S. federal court. This could lead to a situation where hundreds of legitimate businesses are virtually shut down because the entertainment industry sees them as a threat.

To make lawmakers aware of these threats and to improve their image in Washington, RapidShare has already spent $260,000 in lobbying efforts during the first half of 2011.

The PROTECT IP Act, currently placed on hold by Senator Ron Wyden, is crucial in this regard as the RIAA and MPAA have already labeled RapidShare as a rogue website. This means that when the bill is signed into law the file-hoster could be one of the first companies to be targeted.

Whether RapidShare’s lobbying efforts in Washington will pay off is yet to be seen. It is no secret that entertainment industry groups are lobbying extensively in favor of the PROTECT IP Act, with much bigger budgets. That said, it’s certainly better than standing idly by.

In the coming months RapidShare is expected to continue their lobbying efforts at the White House Office, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Not only against the PROTECT IP Act, but to improve the image of their company and protect their rights and those of other file-hosting services.

Source: RapidShare Lobbies Lawmakers Against PROTECT IP Act

However, thus far the Pirate Party hasn’t managed to get a member elected in a state or federal parliament. With 845,904 votes during the 2009 federal elections, the party got stuck at 2 percent of the vote, where 5 was needed to enter the Bundestag.

But this year the local success of the Pirate Party may finally translate into a success at the state elections. With only four weeks to go until the Berlin state parliament election, the Pirate Party is predicted to gain 4.5 percent of the total vote.

If this upward trend continues and the 5 percent floor is met, the German Pirates will be the first Pirate Party worldwide to gain seats in a state or national parliament. The party’s leaders are cautiously optimistic about the promising outlook, but also warn that there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“We are delighted that our demands for more transparency, participation and democracy for the people of Berlin are shared by the public. The Berlin people want change, and they recognize that a vote for the Pirate Party is not wasted,” Pirate Party’s Gerhard Anger said.

“With this poll result we are not in the state parliament yet. However, it is an important step in the right direction. We have to work hard in the next four weeks. In order to see the results of this poll reflected in actual votes on election day, we still have to keep on going,” Anger adds.

Previously the German Pirate Party already held a seat in the national parliament when Jörg Tauss left the Social Democrats to join the pirates. However, having people voted into parliament through an election would be an even bigger accomplishment.

Rick Falkvinge, the Swedish founder of the Pirate Party movement compares the current standing of the German pirates to that of the Swedish Pirate Party in 2009. They were also labeled as a likely sensation by the press, and this eventually paid off as they got more than 7% of the total vote.

“Newspapers are now describing the Pirate Party as ‘the likely surprise of this election’. There are positive articles everywhere describing it as just short of a done deal, and I predict this will have an immense effect in the polls in the four remaining weeks,” Falkvinge says.

Whether the German pirates can copy this success will become clear on September 18, when the results of the Berlin state elections come in.

Source: German Pirate Party On Course to Election Win

Pirate Party Canada’s Travis McCrea, who holds both an American and a Canadian passport, definitely falls into the latter category.

As part of the “war for digital sovereignty,” as McCrea describes it, he has launched Tormovies, a site dedicated to providing movie torrents. A look at the site’s front page reveals that all the latest Hollywood blockbusters are showcased.

This is a bold move considering the current political climate, especially since the site is hosted in the United States. However, that’s exactly the plan according to the Pirate Party candidate.

“TorMovies.org is hosted in the United States (for now) as a stance that they can try to extradite my friends and shut down free speech but new sites, new technologies, and new people will always be right around the corner,” McCrea told TorrentFreak.

Despite its current hosting arrangement, Tormovies is unlikely to stay in the United States for long. Instead it will be hosted in a redundant setup with many servers scattered around the world as backups.

“Just because the United States hates sharing culture, doesn’t mean that we are going to back down,” McCrea explained.

“I have full intentions on not backing down and making it clear that my site is not a tool for piracy, it is a tool for discovering movies and sharing culture. It spiders the web like Google does and sometimes it finds torrent files, but the heart of our site is to showcase the art of movies.”

The plan of the Canadian Pirate Party candidate is very similar to that of his Czech counterparts who launched two movie download portals last month. Using the slogan “linking is not a crime,” the Czech Pirate Party said their initiative was a declaration of war against the local anti-piracy lobby.

How long Tormovies will last remains to be seen. There will undoubtedly be a response from various copyright holders, and it wouldn’t be the first time that a Canadian torrent site has been dragged to court. McCrea, however, believes the project is one of the many battles that has to be fought to secure people’s right to share digital information, copyrighted or not.

“We are in a war for digital sovereignty and we are patriots of this digital revolution,” he says.

Source: Canadian Politician Starts Movie Torrent Site

The 16-year-old from Liberec was accused by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union of posting links to infringing material on his website, acts which the Union claim have caused damages of more than 5 million euros.

“By bullying young people, the Czech Anti-Piracy Union, with the help of the state, is attempting in vain to salvage the old business model which has ceased to function in the age of the Internet,” say the Czech Pirate Party.

Although the party believes that under Czech law the acts of the teenager do not constitute an offense, the issue is yet to be tested properly in court. So, in true pirate style, the party has embarked upon a huge provocation to draw attention to both the teenager’s plight and the legal situation.

Under the slogan “linking is not a crime” the Czech Pirate Party and project coordinator Zdenek Slezak have launched movie download site Tipnafilm.cz. The site has an attractive layout with movie covers, links to reviews on sites such as iMDb and embedded trailers.

It also provides – crucially – links to where the movies can be downloaded, all sorted by quality and download portal.

The project, which is strictly non-commercial, is the second such venture by the Czech Pirates. Earlier this month they launched Piratskefilmy.cz, a site which carries 20,000 links to more than 5,800 movies.

According to the party’s Vice-President Mikuláš Ferjencik, both acts are deliberately provocative.

“Yes, we unequivocally declare open war on the Anti-Piracy Union. Bullying ordinary people from their side must stop. The Czech Anti-Piracy Union claimed a huge success when it caught the ‘greatest pirate in the country’. But that is absurd, in fact he was just a small fish.

“For this student we have built and launched a similar site. The difference is that there are ten times more links on our site,” Ferjencik told TorrentFreak this morning.

“We denounce that the police should be run by the propaganda of the Anti-Piracy Union and that it should harass anybody who puts a video on his/her web page or Facebook page,” said chairman of the Czech Pirates Ivan Bartoš.

“We challenge the Anti-Piracy Union to stop bullying the under-aged and to aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party.”

Mikuláš Ferjencik told us that he finds it interesting that thus far the Czech Anti-Piracy Union have not yet made a formal statement about the launch of either site, noting only that they “do not want to reveal [their] strategy going forward.”

Source: Pirate Party Launches Movie Download Sites As “Declaration of War”

The obvious intent was clear – to prevent groups which have the promotion of criminal acts at their core, such as the Pedophile Party, the Kill-all-Jews Collective, or Kidnappers Anonymous – but these are unambiguous terms.

When it comes to the term “Pirate” then there are increasingly two meanings. The first is that of the ‘classic buccaneer’ as famously portrayed by Johnny Depp, and often found acting off the east coast of Africa.

The second is a label more often thrown at someone accused (often wrongly) of sharing a data file.

However, the Russian Government clearly hasn’t heard of the second definition, which is odd when you consider that events surrounding sites like Allofmp3.com became an international issue for them a few years back.

As a result of this name misconception, the name Pirate Party was rejected. Furthermore, the party didn’t get all the formal notices from the Justice Ministry which would enable them to deal with the rest of the paperwork. So, in an attempt to move things on, they sued, and earlier this month, according to the Russian Pirate Party, the Judge ruled that the March rejection counts as the missing paperwork, and they should find another name.

The current frontrunner is Bez nazvaniya (“unnamed”) but other options include “Pirrate Party of Russia” and “Pira7e Party of Russia” according to a blog post by chairman Pavel Rassudov, which ends with the following plea:

I would like to conclude with stating that our principles, ideas and our website remain unchanged. I ask the public, journalists and all reasonable people to continue calling us “Pirate Party of Russia”

Fine by us, Pavel….

Source: Judge: Pirate Party Name-Ban Decision Stands

Philosophy student Isak Gerson is such a religious file-sharer, and in an attempt to protect this unique belief system he founded The Missionary Church of Kopimism last year. In the hope that they could help prevent persecution for their beliefs, the church then filed a request to be officially accepted by the authorities.

In practice this was easier said than done.

“The application was rejected in early April this year,” Isak Gerson told TorrentFreak. “It was rejected because Swedish law requires a religious communion to have a formalized way of praying or meditation. Our formalized traditions were specified at the time.”

Despite this early setback, the Missionary Church of Kopimism wasn’t going to give up. For a church that holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols, filing a new application wasn’t too hard. This time, however, they formalized their official rituals, including meditation over shared information and the act of copying.

In the months that followed the Church of Kopimism grew to nearly 1000 members, who all prayed that their religion would be accepted by the Swedish authorities. This week, however, more bad news arrived informing the group that once again they had been denied the right to start a church in Sweden.

“This time, we can’t really see any real reason for our denial. We adjusted our application just the way the Swedish authorities needed, and they still denied us the right to form a church,” founder Isak Gerson told us.

Gerson further told TorrentFreak that they are not sure whether they want to continue with their quest to be officially recognized by the authorities. Nevertheless, even without this official status the church and its members will continue to practice their sacred beliefs.

“One thing is certain though. We will continue meeting, believing in copying, deepen our faith and church, and fight politically for a world where copying is not only accepted by encouraged. We know that this is not only our dream and cause, but our calling,” Gerson concluded.

Prospective followers who embrace the same calling are of course still welcome to join the movement.

Source: File-Sharers Denied Official Religion Status in Sweden

While the debate over whether corporations should be allowed to lobby crime-fighting organizations such as the police and FBI will rage on, at least there is an enforced level of transparency which allows the public to see where lobbyists are spending their money.

The MPAA have just made their mandatory disclosure for the first quarter of 2011 and it makes interesting reading.

In total the member companies of the MPAA – Disney, Sony, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Universal – spent $400,000 in the first three months of the year lobbying influential government departments. These included the office of Vice-President Joe Biden, a valuable MPAA ally in 2010 with his mantra of “Piracy Is Theft, Clean and Simple.”

In the filing, which covers the period from January 1st to March 31st, several government departments are listed repeatedly including the U.S Senate, House of Representatives, Homeland Security, Dept. of Justice, FBI, ICE, U.S. Copyright Office and U.S. Trade Representative.

On the back of moves to turn the activity into a felony, it’s no surprise that streaming illegal content featured heavily in the MPAA’s 1st quarter lobbying. Considering the huge effort already underway with domain seizures, many of them streaming-related, Operation in Our Sites remained firmly on the agenda.

Also listed is the issue of “Pay processors role in IP enforcement”, a reference to the developing strategy of strangling the revenue to sites that the MPAA believe are generating income from infringement.

In November 2010, file-hosting service RapidShare was among the first Internet services to be labelled by both the MPAA and RIAA as a so-called “Rogue Site”, a move which forced the cyberlocker service to initiate lobbying of its own.

In 2011 it is evident that Hollywood is continuing to pressure on the Swiss-based company. RapidShare is mentioned several times in the MPAA disclosure report under several headings, not least ‘Rogue Site Legislation’ and ‘Law Enforcement/Crime and Criminal Justice’.

Interestingly, ‘Graduated Response’ is also listed as a lobbying subject, although the U.S. appeared to rule out so-called “3 strikes” regimes earlier this month in response to a United Nations report.

On the educational front, the MPAA is keen to drive home the anti-P2P message to the country’s schools and universities. Equally it is pushing for anti-camcording activities in the Asia-Pacific region plus awareness of counterfeit movie usage at US military bases, a subject we’ve touched on previously.

The MPAA also discussed the anti-piracy company MiMTiD. A DMCA-related controversy connected to that company was covered by TechDirt in February.

The $400,000 spent by the MPAA in the first 3 months of 2011 represents a $30,000 uplift on the same period last year and a $60,000 increase on its spend during the final quarter of 2010.

Source: MPAA Anti-Piracy Lobbying Targets FBI, DOJ, ICE, DHS and Biden

The Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression details concern for measures being put in place by various governments to punish online copyright infringement. In many cases those measures include the draconian step of denying citizens’ Internet access.

“While blocking and filtering measures deny users access to specific content on the Internet, States have also taken measures to cut off access to the Internet entirely,” says the report.

“The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from Internet access, regardless of
the justification provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

The report highlights the legislation adopted by France and the UK, noting that the author of the report, Frank La Rue, is “alarmed” by proposals to severely punish Internet users if they violate intellectual property rights.

“This also includes legislation based on the concept of ‘graduated response’, which imposes a series of penalties on copyright infringers that could lead to suspension of Internet service, such as the so-called “three-strikes-law” in France and the Digital Economy Act 2010 of the United Kingdom,” notes the report.

In addition to calling on governments to maintain Internet access “during times of political unrest,” the report goes on to urge States to change copyright laws, not in favor of the music and movie industries as has been the recent trend, but in keeping with citizens’ rights.

“In particular, the Special Rapporteur urges States to repeal or amend existing intellectual copyright laws which permit users to be disconnected from Internet access, and to refrain from adopting such laws,” the report adds.

Whether or not the report will carry any influence with these so-far stubborn governments remains to be seen, but the Open Rights Group are keeping up the pressure on UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. ORG have written to Hunt asking for his reaction to the Special Rapporteur’s report and his recommendation that the Digital Economy Act’s disconnection provisions should be repealed.

Source: UN: Disconnecting File-Sharers Breaches Human Rights

The reason for the raid is unclear at this point, but the Pirate Party believes that it’s unrelated to the party’s activities. The board of the Pirate Party has promised full transparency to assist with the investigation.

“At the moment, the Board does not expect delinquency on behalf of the Pirate Party. The investigation is not directed against the party or any of its subsidiaries, they are only involved as the server’s operators. The results are awaited with curiosity,” the Party said in a statement.

The information which the authorities provided to the Pirate Party suggests that the police were targeting a public service on a virtual server. The service has not been named, but there are concerns that the action to take the party’s entire server network down was disproportionate.

The timing of the raid is also unfortunate, as it happens just two days before the Bremen elections.

“The disconnection of all servers is a massive intrusion into the communications infrastructure of the sixth largest party in Germany. Considering the state elections taking place in Bremen in two days, this caused severe political damage, which the Board condemns decisively,” the Party continued.

“In relation to the ongoing investigations, it will have to be verified whether the issued search warrant was actually appropriate, especially whether the principle of proportionality was followed. After all, this action has led to a large-scale breakdown of the technical infrastructure of Pirate Party Germany.”

Although we can only speculate at this point, a plausible target of the raid could be the Piratepad service. Piratepad allows people to collaboratively draft documents, and unconfirmed rumors suggest that it was used to plan a DDoS attack against a French company.

Thus far, however, no official information has been provided about the nature of the French investigation. We will update this post accordingly as more information comes in.

Update: The Pirate Part released some additional information.

The servers were raided this morning 9:15 am following a warrant ordered by the Darmstadt prosecutor.

The investigation is not directed at the Pirate Party, but at unknown users of the Piratepad service who published an SSH Key which was allegedly used to attack a server of the French energy group EDF.

The Pirate Party stresses that the damage to their organization is enormous. Two days before the election their entire communication system was wiped out, and although the main page was brought back up, most services are still interrupted.

The Pirate Party further distances itself from the attacks on the websites of the German police, which started after the raid.

Source: Pirate Party Servers Raided by German Police

Although organizations such as the MPA(A), IFPI and the BSA announce press releases in public on a regular basis, much of the hardcore lobbying occurs behind closed doors. Today we present one of these backroom lobbying letters that the groups would rather keep to themselves.

The letter in question was sent to Jerzy Buzek, the President of the European Parliament, and deals with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). In summary, ACTA paves the way for draconian anti-piracy measures to be introduced globally. The ACTA text was finalized last year, but the EU has yet to sign the agreement.

To fully understand the implications of ACTA, and to ask whether it is compatible with other European treaties, the European Parliament indicated that it would like to hear the opinion of the European Court of Justice.

However, this is not appreciated by the pro-copyright lobby, who want to see the agreement signed as soon as possible. In their letter they therefore urge the Parliament to skip the legal review and sign the agreement without asking further questions.

“We support ACTA and believe that this Treaty is important to protect Europe’s innovative and creative industries from unfair competition and consumers from fake and pirated goods in a globalised marketplace,” the letter starts.

But after the obligatory introduction it quickly moves on to the core message:

“While we welcome the prerogatives in IP and trade matters conferred to the European Parliament under the new Treaty, we are concerned that the procedure of seeking an Opinion from the ECJ will substantially delay the final adoption and implementation of ACTA and weaken the position of the EU vis-à-vis its international trading partners as a leader in proposing and supporting effective enforcement of intellectual property rights globally,” it continues.

In short, the pro-copyright groups argue that asking for a legal review at the European Court of Justice could hurt the EU because international partners (US, Japan, Australia etc.) would no longer see them as leaders in intellectual property enforcement. They advise the EU to leave the Court of Justice out of the process and simply sign immediately.

“Given the Parliament’s signal that it supports strong enforcement of IP provisions in the EU’s trade agreements, we hope that the European Parliament will give its consent to ACTA with no further delays,” the letter concludes.

The above is quite a bold request of course, and the 21 outfits that signed the letter are fully aware that it’s not something the public would like to hear about. This is probably the reason why none of the pro-lobby groups included or even referenced the letter in their frequent press releases. When trying to maintain a certain image, it seems that some things are better left behind closed doors.

TorrentFreak obtained a full copy of the letter (embedded below) of which excerpts appeared on IPtegrity earlier this week. According to the document’s metadata, the letter was not written by any of the pro-copyright groups but by Joanne Scobie of the lobby firm Policy Action, which is by itself telling.

Source: Leaked “ACTA” Lobby Letter Reveals Hollywood Pressure On EU

Make no mistake, if the entertainment industries were God passing their sacred rulings to Moses, there would have almost certainly been one more – Thou Shalt Not Copy. But for the followers of a brand new religion in Sweden, this commandment would be against everything they believe in.

The congregation at Missionary Kopimistsamfundet – The Missionary Church of Kopimism – believe that copying is to be embraced by religion and they hope that very shortly this way of life will be officially accepted by the authorities.

Founded by 19-year-old philosophy student, Isaac Gerson, this brand new church believes that copying and the sharing of information is the most beautiful thing in the world. To have your information copied is a token of appreciation, say the church, a sure sign that people think you have done something good.

For those thinking this is some kind of late April Fool’s joke, think again.

In late 2010 the church applied to the authorities to be accepted as an official religion. That application was denied at the end of March on the basis that although the church is indeed a community, its meetings did not constitute ‘worship’. Undeterred, the church founders have requested a meeting to find out what is required in order to gain official acceptance. They certainly aren’t giving in.

“Throughout history, various groups around the world have been persecuted by oppressors. They have since taken refuge in religion with a desire for a peaceful coexistence. Without threats and harassment,” the church explain.

“In our belief, communication is sacred. Communication needs to be respected. It is a direct sin to monitor and eavesdrop on people. Absolute secrecy is holy in the Church of Kopimism.”

The church has its own set of axioms, most of which revolve around free access to knowledge and the sharing of information. They include:

# Reproduction of information is ethically right.
# The flow of information is ethically right.
# Remix Spirit is a sacred kind of copying.
# Copying or remixing information conveyed by another person is an act of respect.

The church is also acutely against DRM and other methods of protecting or hiding code.

“To appropriate software (to keep source code hidden from others), is comparable to slavery, and should be banned,” they declare.

Perhaps predictably the church use the ‘Kopimi’ logo (a pyramid with the letter K inside) as their official symbol and hold CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred.

Joining the church seems fairly easy too. All you have to do is agree that everything should be copied and information should be free in line with the axioms above, then load the church’s website so that the ‘kopimi’ logo refreshes (or indeed draw it, or copy it in any way) and you’re in. Potential followers can request more information by using the online form here.

In common with many other religions around the world, expect the followers of the Missionary Church of Kopimism to be widely persecuted for their beliefs. Praying they don’t get caught while practising them will offer little protection. After all, even the Pope backs up his faith with bullet-proof glass.

Source: File-Sharers Await Official Recognition of New Religion

The downtime caused widespread concern, particularly among those fearful that The World’s Most Resilient BitTorrent Site might have finally succumbed to endless entertainment industry pressures. Adding to the worries, simultaneously the Pirate Party’s websites also disappeared, which resulted in the stalling of online pirate activities in more ways than one.

“All the Pirate Party Internet services are currently down,” said Party leader Anna Troberg on the situation. “Due to a sudden situation that has arisen, I have, in consultation with the party’s IT manager decided to immediately move our servers to a new location.”

The Pirate Party had been hosted with Bahnhof, a privacy conscious ISP in Sweden. It appears that it was Bahnhof themselves who alerted the Party to a problem with their server utilization.

“Bahnhof drew to my attention earlier today that a small part of the party’s IT resources were being used for commercial purposes,” Troberg explained.

“I and the rest of the party leadership are extremely concerned about the incident because it is hitting the Pirate Party and the young pirate activities.”

Although yet to be officially confirmed, the problem appears to relate to allocation of Party network resources. As a strictly non-profit organization, the Pirate Party receives preferential rates for its hosting from Bahnhof. However, it’s understood that the Pirate Party-linked ‘Pirate ISP’ – which was launched last year – had been allocated resources which should have been for the exclusive use of the Party.

“Pirate Party IT resources will be used to deliver the party’s message and to support our internal systems. They should under no circumstances be used for commercial purposes in the manner that occurred,” Troberg said. “Such use is contrary to what the Pirate Party stands for. Neither the Board or the party leadership has sanctioned any ‘loans’ of the Pirate Party IT resources.”

A thorough investigation is said to have been launched with the aim of discovering how the problem occurred and how to prevent a repeat in the future.

Source: Pirate Bay Back Up, Pirate Party Shut Themselves Down Over Server ‘Abuse’

The Russian Justice Ministry has turned down the Russian Pirate Party for registration because it says “piracy is an attack on sea of river craft, which is a criminal offense,” according to the Moscow Times. The Ministry also says that the name implies that members are all criminals serving prison sentences thus violating Federal law

While that accusation has been leveled before (by a UK member of the Commons, during the Digital Economy Bill debate), then it was only at Rick Falkvinge, then party chairman and now occasional TorrentFreak columnist, also the founder of the Pirate Party movement back in 2006.

Understandably, the Pirate Party is upset, and has filed a protest at Zamoskvoretsky court in Moscow. ”Refusal to register a ‘Pirate Party of Russia’ offends 15,000 of the party members whom the Russian Ministry of Justice has called criminals. We are going to appeal the Justice Ministry’s decision in court,” says party chairman Paul Rassudov.

Lola Voronina, the Chief Administrative officer of PPI, and also a PP-Ru member told TorrentFreak: “The government doesn’t want any new parties to be registered – there isn’t much time left until the elections. So they are trying to find some reasons like this to decline registration.” When asked about the prospects of the challenge, Voronina told us: “We don’t know. But we definitely need to try!”

“The Russian Ministry of Justice made a curious mistake,” she continues. “The name, ‘Pirate Party of Russia’ reflects an ideology accepted worldwide. We are not a party of pirates attacking sea or river vessels for the appropriation of other people’s property. Could they regard two European deputies from Sweden’s Pirate Party and many other pirate parties across the globe as criminals?”

Of course, democracy in Russia is contentious. Back in October, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned of problems in Russia’s democracy, accusing Prime Minister Putin of attempts to stay in power. Meanwhile the Democracy Index has them at 107, almost in the “Authoritarian regime” grouping.

Source: Russia Refuses to Recognize Pirate Party, Because of Its Name

Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.

Among the list of forbidden keywords are “uTorrent”, a hugely popular piece of entirely legal software and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and the name of San Fransisco based company BitTorrent Inc. As of today, these keywords will no longer be suggested by Google when you type in the first letter, nor will they show up in Google Instant.

All combinations of the word “torrent” are also completely banned. This means that “Ubuntu torrent” will not be suggested as a user types in Ubuntu, and the same happens to every other combination ending in the word torrent. This of course includes the titles of popular films and music albums, which is the purpose of Google’s banlist.

TorrentFreak contacted BitTorrent Inc. for a reaction, and Simon Morris told TorrentFreak that he believes the scope of this filter is too broad.

“We respect Google’s right to determine algorithms to deliver appropriate search results to user requests. That being said, our company’s trademarked name is fairly unique, and we’re pretty confident that anyone typing the first six or seven letters deserves the same easy access to results as with any other company search,” Morris said.

“A quick search for ‘BitTorrent’ currently returns a variety of legitimate and useful links, including company information, our software, our open-source protocol, and more. What Google may not realize is that our technology is used for many purposes that provide significant value to the technology industry, companies, artists and consumers at large,” he added.

What is most surprising about the new filter is that the keywords appear to be picked arbitrarily. It includes BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent and Xunlei, but not BitComet and Vuze. While cyberlockers such as RapidShare and Megaupload are banned, prominent sites such as 4shared, HotFile and MediaFire are not.

In addition, all the names of popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay are not included in Google’s banlist either. BitTorrent’s Simon Morris agrees that this is odd, to say the least.

“There’s no reason for Google to throttle search results for our trademarks, including BitTorrent, µTorrent and torrent. Indeed, they do still enable autocomplete for many third-party clients that use the BitTorrent protocol, including BitComet, BitLord, and even sites like The Pirate Bay and Isohunt.”

Morris further points out that the inclusion of Xunlei is a little hypocritical since Google is one of the investors in the Chinese BitTorrent client.

“We’d also like to point out that while Google doesn’t enable autocomplete for Xunlei (China’s largest software client that uses the BitTorrent protocol) Google did invest $5 million in the company in 2006, according to reports,” Morris says, adding, “We sincerely hope Google will recognize the value of BitTorrent and reevaluate this decision expeditiously.”

RapidShare is not pleased with Google’s new filter either, at least not with its current scope in today’s roll-out.

“We knew about Google’s plans for quite a few weeks now. We embrace that certain search suggestions will not put a wrong complexion on RapidShare anymore, but we are concerned that at the same time the legitimate interests of our users will also be affected. We believe it was the wrong decision to remove the term ‘RapidShare’ from the search suggestions,” RapidShare told TorrentFreak.

“RapidShare is one of the most popular websites worldwide. Every day hundreds of thousands of users rely on our services to pursue their perfectly legitimate interests. That is why Google has obviously gone too far with censoring the results of its suggest algorithm. A search engine’s results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody else’s,” the company added.

Indeed, RapidShare has certainly touched a nerve here. It is clear that this filter is the result of pressure from the entertainment industries, which is not at all in the interests of users. Now that Google has begun proactively censoring their services for commercial reasons, more companies will demand the same. At the same time, the entertainment industries will continue to pressure Google to go even further, and censor the actual search results.

Apparently Google has decided that its users should not be searching for the keyword BitTorrent, so why list any results then? It’s the beginning of the end.

Jamie King, the founder of Vodo – a platform where artists can share their work with million of people at no cost – agrees with this assessment. Searching for one of their perfectly legal releases on Google used to suggest the word “torrent” with a link to the download page, but not anymore.

“Google already showed it will censor for the highest bidder — China Inc. springs to mind. Now it’s doing it for MPAA & Co.,” King told TorrentFreak.

“I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of Big Media in its death throes.”

Indeed, Google is going down the wrong path by willingly and broadly censoring its services to please a few big companies. This is not the way to get rid of piracy, it’s the way to a corporate controlled Internet. Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide.

Source: Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

The protests reached their height a week ago, and in the process several Pirate Party members and other activists were arrested. Last Friday former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali eventually caved in, signed his resignation and quickly fled the country.

Tunisia soon went on to form a transitional government to be led by Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi. Today, several significant changes were announced, including the release of all political prisoners, political freedom and the abolishment of the Government’s information ministry.

Ghannouchi also named the members of his transitional government, which includes Slim Amamou, one of the Pirate Pary members arrested only a few days ago. Amamou is a well-known blogger and activist in Tunisia and played an important role in the ‘online’ revolt against the former government.

Amamou has been appointed as State Secretary for Sports and Youth, and his appointment is most likely the result of his good reputation in the online community, which played an important role in the revolution that unfolded in Tunisia.

On Twitter Amamou, who runs a team of software developers at his company Alixys, describes himself as “against censorship, against the intellectual property rights, for net neutrality,” all topics that are dear to Pirate Parties worldwide.

TorrentFreak has been briefly in touch with Amamou, who is understandably very excited about this appointment, and we will conduct an exclusive feature interview with him in the days to come. Meanwhile, we congratulate all the Tunisians who stood up for their rights, both on- and offline, and hope that their strength leads to a better future.

Update: There is some confusion about the State Secretary / Minister title in Tunisia. Formerly Tunisia had no State Secretary of Youth and Sports, only a minister. However, there are reports that Amamou is a junior/deputy minister rather than a full minister. As the dust settles this will hopefully be cleared up. For now we chose the safe option and opted for State Secretary. Excuse the confusion.

Source: Arrested Pirate Party Member Becomes Tunisian State Secretary

Calls from the public to allow freedom of speech for Tunisian citizens, however, have resulted in quite the opposite reaction from the authorities. Both online and offline protesters are quickly and sometimes violently silenced. A well documented article by Al-Jazeera earlier this week reports of hacked Facebook and Gmail accounts, presumably by the Tunisian Government.

Last weekend the secure https protocol became unavailable in the country and in the days that followed many bloggers and net activists were locked out of their personal accounts. Sofiene Chourabi, blogger and journalist for Al-Tariq al-Jadid magazine was one of the first to notice the ‘hack’ attempts last week.

“My personal account on the Facebook, including around 4200 friends, was exposed to failed hacking attempt last Friday, but I quickly recovered it after an unidentified person had taken control of it,” he told Al Jazeera. This first attempt failed, but a second last Monday was successful as Chourabi lost access to both his Gmail and Facebook accounts.

Another activist and critic of the Government who suffered the same fate is Azyz Amami, a member of the local Pirate Party. Amami had used a secondary email address to register at Gmail and Facebook which allowed him to regain access, but not before the authorities found the login information to his four blogs and deleted all content.

Amami said he thinks that the Government’s hacking and phishing attempts are more widespread, and that those reported thus far represent just the tip of the iceberg since many people fear repercussions from the Government. Only hours after stating his concerns in public on Thursday he was arrested, and he wasn’t the only one.

Slim Amamou and Slah Eddine Kchouk, both graduate students and members of the Pirate Party of Tunisia like Amami, were also arrested by the authorities. In addition several other activists and bloggers were arrested and taken in for questioning, without any specifics being released on the reasons of their arrests.

The arrests are a sign that the call for more freedom of speech on the Internet is backfiring. The more vocal people get the harder the Government is reacting. But the public is not giving up without a fight. Last weekend ‘Anonymous’ activists successfully took down several Government websites, but thus far this has only resulted in more censorship and less openness.

The Tunisian Pirate Party is outraged by the arrests of its members and has posted an appeal for more attention to the growing repression. According to the Party the three members were “kidnapped” by the political police without a warrant, and all three also had their computers confiscated.

“Tunisia is a country where torture while in detention or in prison is very common as reported and documented by Red Cross, Amnesty, HRW and other NGO’s. Pirate Party Tunisia severely condemns the dictatorship of Ben Ali and will engage every possible action to free its members and to seek international legal course in case of torture and inhumane treatment on its members,” the Party announced.

A few hours ago the international umbrella organization for Pirate Parties – Pirate Parties International – also released a public statement condemning the unjust arrests of Pirate Party members and free speech activists.

“Pirate Parties around the World condemn these acts against freedom of expression, human rights and democracy, and call upon governments take firm action against Tunisia for these recent events. Party members are advised to refrain from visiting Tunisia until the human rights situation has improved,” the statement says.

Despite the harsh actions from the police and the ever increasing censorship, many Tunisians are continuing their protests online and offline. Increasingly Twitter is being used to propagate the message they feel the world should know, as it is less prone to censorship than Facebook.

Posting a video, blog post or Facebook status update has become a challenge and a threat at the same time for many young Tunisians. The current situation brings freedom of speech issues closer to ‘home’ than ever before for many Internet users.

Source: Pirate Party Members Arrested in Tunisian Censorship Revolt

The group asked for The Pirate Bay to be censored in Portugal through an Internet filter, but instead their actions led to the uncensoring of their internal communications. As part of Anonymous’ Operation Payback, ACAPOR was shamed when their website was hacked, revealing hundreds of personal email messages in the process.

Despite this setback ACAPOR is continuing their quest undeterred. Two weeks ago the group announced that it would overload the judicial system with complaints against file-sharers in an attempt to raise awareness of the devastating effect they claim piracy has on their industry. And so it happened.

This week the group personally delivered several boxes of complaints to the Attorney General’s Office, wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Piracy is Illegal.” The movie industry group claims to have gathered 970 IP-addresses of ‘illegal’ file-sharers and is demanding action from the authorities.

In addition, 30 complaints were ‘filed’ containing the IP-addresses that republished the emails that leaked after the Operation Payback hack.

“We are doing anything we can to alert the government for the very serious situation in the entertainment industry,” ACAPOR commented on their actions, adding that “1000 complaints a month should be enough to embarrass the judiciary system.”

However, as with their previous revolt against The Pirate Bay, it may be that ACAPOR are the ones that will be embarrassed. Shortly after the group delivered the boxes to the Attorney General’s Office, Portugal’s Pirate Party came out with a statement claiming that ACAPOR’s actions are illegal.

The Pirate Party says that ACAPOR is not authorized by the National Data Protection Authority to collect IP-addresses as evidence, and has decided to file several individual complaints. In addition the Pirates have filed a criminal complaint for gaining improper access to the Attorney General’s Office.

The Pirate Party argues that ACAPOR’s actions violated the privacy of 1000 ordinary Portuguese citizens and hopes that the responsible authorities will take the necessary actions to prevent this from happening again in the future. ACAPOR was quick to deny the allegations and its President believes that no laws were broken.

Time will tell who’s right.

Source: Pirate Party Slams Anti-Piracy Outfit for Filing ‘Illegal’ Complaints

The Party gained interest from the mainstream media and at the Swedish general elections in the same year it became the third largest party outside parliament. Inspired by the small successes the Party booked in the first year, Pirate Parties were founded in dozens of other countries as well.

Fast forward three years and the Swedish Pirate Party peaked at over 50,000 members just before the European elections of 2009. In these elections the Pirate Party got more than 7% of the total votes earning them two seats in the European Parliament, a major victory.

Today the Pirate Party looks back on its short history as it celebrates its fifth anniversary. However, this festive day also brings a surprise that nobody saw coming. Rick Falkvinge, Pirate Party icon, founder and leader announced today that he is stepping down as leader. Effective immediately he will be replaced by his deputy, Anna Troberg.

According to Falkvinge, new leadership is what could take the Party to the next level.

“Anna has a cultural background which is precisely what the Pirate Party in Sweden needs at this point,” Falkvinge exclusively told TorrentFreak. “We are well established within the box of technical people, but need to break out of it. To do that, we need a leader who can explain why these issues are important in nontechnical terms. Anna is the perfect fit.”

However, the former Party leader isn’t hanging up his Pirate hat just yet. He stays on as the Party’s chairman while he broadens his scope. Freed from the political shackles, he will continue to fight for the same issues he’s championed for the last five years, but now more internationally oriented than before.

In the coming year Falkvinge intends to work as an ‘international evangelist’ for the Pirate movement and focus on Information Politics. Part of that will include a guest column here on TorrentFreak, as well as a new English-language blog at Falkvinge.net.

Looking back on the last five years it is impressive to see what the ‘Pirate’ movement started by Falkvinge has accomplished. There are now Pirate Parties in forty countries around the world, with city Councillors in Germany, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic and formerly a member in the German Parliament.

It will be interesting to see how the Parties fare in the coming half-decade, where privacy and technology issues are becoming more relevant than ever before. Meanwhile we congratulate Anna Troberg on her new position and wish her all the best. Rick Falkvinge – the man who made Pirates Political – is saluted for a half-decade of hard work as the Swedish Pirate Party leader.

Source: Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge Resigns on 5th Anniversary

Between the DDoS attacks and the DNS-server bans, it almost went unnoticed that a leaked cable from the Spanish embassy showed that the United States wrote Spain’s proposed copyright law. An interesting revelation to say the least.

It is expected that future cables will reveal more about how deeply the copyright lobby is being played out at the highest political levels, including more details on the ACTA lobby. But, this of course requires that the public has access to the released materials. Here, Pirate Parties worldwide are lending a hand.

Just a few days ago Wikileaks was ‘saved‘ by the Swiss Pirate Party, who helped the whistleblower site after they were kicked out by their nameserver provider. Today, a coalition of Pirate Parties is stepping up to host a worldwide network of mirror sites for Wikileaks, making it virtually impossible to shut the operation down.

“Pirate Parties from around the world, including the Pirate Party UK, today reaffirmed their commitment to whistleblowing worldwide. Concerned about freedom of information, opinion and press, the Pirate Parties have decided in a joint resolution to make Wikileaks available on a worldwide mirroring infrastructure,” the UK Pirate Party just announced.

“The mirrors will guarantee that the release of US diplomatic cables can continue and previous publications will stay online,” the Pirates add, explaining that the new solution is not just redirecting people to one central server, but actually hosting files on different servers scattered around the globe.

The initiative is supported by the Pirate Parties of the Czech Republic, Austria, Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Russia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. With the added mirrors they hope to keep Wikileaks online and fight the political and technological pressure the US Government has put on the hosting providers of site.

Over the last week many hosts have abandoned Wikileaks due to the controversial nature of the site and the continued DDoS attacks.

Interestingly enough, the US Government hasn’t gone after the Wikileaks domain yet. This should be an easy job considering the seizure of Torrent-Finder last week, and the fact that the US Government is the copyright holder of the leaked cables.

Even if the .org domain is seized, Wikileaks is not going away since there are still plenty of backup domains around which can be used.

In a way, this cat-and-mouse game is reminiscent of the anti-piracy efforts against torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay that we’ve witnessed over the years. Every time a hosting provider cuts off access, the site reappears somewhere else unharmed. If a domain is seized, a new one is registered in a matter of seconds and the game continues.

Source: Pirate Parties Supply Wikileaks With Much Needed Servers

Stepping away from the massive show of force which had brought down countless websites, Operation Payback adopted a new strategy designed to regain the focus of attention.

The operation’s committee made a list of demands for governments worldwide with the ultimate aim of getting involved in political discussion. They argued that copyright laws need to change and called for an end to anti-piracy lawsuits and censorship.

“What we are now trying to do, is to straighten out ideals, and trying to make them both heard and accepted,” a spokesman for Operation Payback told TorrentFreak.

“Nobody would listen to us if we said piracy should be legal, but when we ask for copyright lifespan to be reduced to ‘fair’ lengths, that would sound a lot more reasonable.”

It didn’t go unnoticed that this switch to a more publicly acceptable path has more in common with the direction chosen by the the UK and US Pirate Party. Indeed, Operation Payback has certainly caught the eyes of the Pirates during their 2 month campaign and today, after a huge amount of hostility in recent weeks, Pirate parties have joined their voices in a plea for peace.

“We, the undersigned, call upon you to immediately cease the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and to instead seek out a legal method to express your frustration and disquiet with the copyright industry, and their perversions of copyright law for personal gain,” write the Pirates today in a letter to the leaders of Operation Payback.

The letter goes on to express understanding of shared frustrations within the current debate but warns that Operation Payback, with its chosen path of aggression and hostility, runs the risk of playing into the hands of their enemy and hinder those who seek to promote copyright reform.

“By continuing Operation:Payback attacks, you will hamper those who promote copyright reform and curtailment of abuses of copyright, but who do so within the bounds of the law,” says the letter.

“Instead of being able to argue for legislative reform of copyright on its own merits, they will be accused of defending criminals and promoting lawlessness. It will be easier for legislators and the media to ignore the clear benefits of fair copyrights and free speech, in favour of clamouring for harsher legislation to ‘stop those pirates and hackers’.”

The letter from the Pirate concludes with a final plea.

“Please help those of us who care about your freedoms, your rights and your liberty, and choose a more moderate and legal way.”

The big question now is whether Operation Payback will respond positively. Despite its anarchic structure and the potential for action by dissenting splinter groups, the early signs are very good for a negotiated and lasting peace.

Anonymous’ spokesperson told TorrentFreak that they plan to adhere to the Pirate Party’s request and “cease activities immediately.” A full statement is expected to be released in the following hours and we will update this article as soon as it comes in.

Source: Pirate Parties Use Influence To Halt Anonymous’ Operation Payback

“The Motion Picture Association of America submits the following response to the request for written submissions issued October 1, 2010, by the Office of the US Trade Representative, inviting submissions from the public on notorious markets outside of the United States,” wrote Interim CEO and President of the MPAA, Bob Pisano.

Following a preamble describing the importance of the movie industry to the U.S. economy, Pisano stresses the influence MPAA member companies products wield internationally and the need to protect their business outside US borders.

“The industry distributes its films to over 150 countries and in 2007, 46 percent of MPAA’s member companies’ revenue came from overseas,” he wrote.

“MPAA has a strong interest in the health and sustainability of these international markets and appreciates USTR’s interest in identifying notorious markets that threaten legitimate commerce, impair legitimate markets’ viability and curb U.S. competitiveness and hurt our overall economic strength. It is critical that our trading partners protect and enforce intellectual property rights.”

It will come as no surprise to learn that Pisano’s list of “notorious markets” is headed by some of the world’s biggest torrent sites. Below, we list the sites being targeted and the description of each that the MPAA gave to the U.S. Government, errors (such as TPB having a tracker) intact.

BTjunkie.org – Sweden

This BitTorrent indexer with an Alexa ranking of 385 aggregates content “torrents”, which are executable instructions that initiate the download process. Btjunkie offers nearly 100,000 active torrents that are identified as copyrighted movie or television files. Unique to btjunkie.org is its ability to make available both public and non-public infringing content. With most release groups posting new content to non-public torrent websites, this indexing capability is particularly challenging for rightsholders. The site is currently hosted by Sweden’s NetworkSpiration.

Demonoid.com – Ukraine

Demonoid is a very active, semi-private BitTorrent tracker and website with servers located in the Ukraine. Individuals can view what is available but downloading the torrent metadata requires the user to log in. A review of the accessible content on the site lists nearly 100,000 copyrighted movies and television files. Demonoid’s Alexa ranking is 516 which is extremely high for a semi-private environment

IsoHunt – Canada

This is the most popular BitTorrent site in the world after The Pirate Bay. IsoHunt boasts of having 12.51 million peers and 3,743,581 active torrents and has an Alexa rank of 227. A U.S. Court issued a permanent injunction against IsoHunt after finding that over 90% of the downloads made using IsoHunt’s services related to infringing content and that the defendants were liable for inducing infringement. Yet, its Canadian operator continues to run the site with impunity. The site’s operator has commenced an action in Canada seeking a declaration that its operations do not violate Canadian law. IsoHunt can be found at 208.71.112.30. Its corporate address is IsoHunt Web Technologies, Inc., 820 Broadway West, Vancouver, BC V8Q 4K1.

Kickasstorrents.com – Sweden

This BitTorrent portal has a commercial look and feel that could deceive users into thinking it is legitimate. It has been gaining popularity since 2009. The site is hosted by Sweden’s Dedicated Network, Luxembourg’s Root, and France’s OVH. This infrastructure creates redundancy to defend against successful litigation, raids or other actions that may threaten the service. Its current Alexa ranking is 457 and it appears to offer access to 8.1 million torrent files.

Rutracker.org – Russia

This BitTorrent portal is the clone to Torrents.ru, which was taken down by the Russian criminal authorities. It is an indexing site that serves four million users and it has over one million active torrents. It has a global Alexa ranking of 297 and a shockingly high local ranking – 15. Torrent.ru had its domain name suspended by RU-Center, the nation’s largest registrar and web-host, but for now the site is back up at Rutracker.org and it remains to be seen whether the new domain will be taken down by the authorities. Its IP address is 195.82.146.114 and it is hosted by AvtomatizatsiyaBusiness Consulting.

ThePirateBay.org – Sweden/Netherlands

This BitTorrent portal has servers in both Sweden and the Netherlands. The Pirate Bay (TPB) comprises a BitTorrent tracker and websites which facilitate the exchange of vast amounts of infringing content. The Pirate Bay operators proudly claim that it is the biggest tracker of its kind in the world, with over one million users. Since its establishment in 2004, the website has grown exponentially and is now accessible in some 39 separate languages. It has facilitated the illegal exchange of untold millions of protected copyright works. Rightsholders, their trade associations and collecting societies have made countless complaints about the TPB’s activities. The Pirate Bay contains significant and lucrative third-party advertising, much of it promoting the porn industry and US green cards. Advertising revenue is typically a function of number of unique site visits per day. With more than one million hits per day – the Pirate Bay takes in an estimated $60,000 per month from advertisers in addition to thousands of dollars collected from user “donations.” In May 2006, the Swedish Police executed search warrants at 10 separate locations and seized 17 computer servers and made three arrests, closing down the site for a brief period. Although the site operators were ultimately convicted by a Stockholm court, the site has not been shut down. Only the Italian government has taken such action vis à vis Italy. This site has also sparked numerous civil proceedings.

Cyberlockers/File-hosters

From torrent sites, the MPAA then moves to their next biggest target – file-hoster/cyberlocker services.

“It is very common for links to illegal copies of movies and television shows stored on cyberlockers to be widely disseminated across the Internet via linking websites, forums, blogs or email,” says Pisano.

“Some cyberlockers offer both legitimate and infringing content. The cyberlockers listed below were identified because traffic to their sites is driven by the vast amounts of infringing premium content available to users.”

The MPAA goes on to list several hosting services including Megaupload.com, Megavideo.com, RapidShare.com, Webhards (Korea) and Ba-k.com (Mexico).

The linking site Kino.to, which appeared in our recent article, is also listed as problematic.

Not even the newsgroups escape scrutiny, with famous Usenet service UseNext making the list. The MPAA’s description can be seen below:

UseNext.de – Germany/Netherlands.

This Usenet service markets to mainstream P2P users much more heavily and directly than do traditional subscription Usenet services. UseNext claims that over 1.2 million videos are available and proclaims “There is nothing you won’t find here.” High-quality Blu-ray rips of MPAA members’ content can be found on UseNext. UseNext has approximately 200,000 regular users. UseNext provides a free trial period to users and then subscription plans start at approximately $10 USD a month and go up based on the quantity of content users wish to download. It is estimated that UseNext clears around 100,000 EUR a month. UseNext is a German operation with indexing servers in the Netherlands. Its Alexa rank is 5,845 and its German rank is 2,811.

The rest of Pisano’s letter is dedicated to both online services selling counterfeit physical products and real-life physical locations around the world selling the same, including markets in such diverse locations such as Ukraine, Czech Republic, Canada, Indonesia, Ireland, India, various South American countries and China.

“MPAA supports USTR’s efforts to identify foreign notorious markets. These markets are an immediate threat to legitimate commerce, impairing legitimate markets’ viability and curbing U.S. competitiveness. We strongly support efforts by the US government to work with trading partners to protect and enforce intellectual property rights and, in so doing, protect U.S. jobs,” Pisano concludes.

Source: MPAA Lists Major Torrent, Usenet and Hosting Sites In Submission To U.S. Government

Under France’s new Hadopi law, alleged copyright infringers will be hunted down systematically in an attempt to decrease piracy. Alleged offenders have to be identified by their Internet providers and they will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings, of which the first were sent out recently.

Now that Sarkozy has got his way in France, the President is eager to conquer the rest of Europe with his draconian anti-piracy measures. To do so, he goes as far as hijacking an upcoming conference aimed at drafting clear rules against censorship and for freedom of expression on the Internet.

In a leaked letter that was exposed by the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, Sarkozy makes it clear that he has other plans for the conference that was initiated by the French and Dutch governments. The letter was sent by Sarkozy to the French Minister of Foreign affairs, and details how the conference can be used to promote France’s anti-piracy agenda.

According to Sarkozy, the October 29 conference offers an “opportunity to promote the balanced regulatory initiatives carried on by France during these past three years, and in particular the HADOPI law in the field of copyright, which has recently been supported by the European Parliament, as well as the measures taken to fight the new cybercrime phenomena.”

Not only does this letter show how far the French President is willing to go to spread his ideals, Sarkozy is also twisting the facts while doing so. The European Parliament has never openly supported Hadopi. Sarkozy is most likely referring to the recently passed Gallo report, but although that allows for more strict anti-piracy measures, it does not explicitly endorse three-strikes legislation.

The letter makes it apparent that Sarkozy is indifferent to the massive critique of his plans, and that’s he’s bold enough to use a conference that should strengthen freedom of expression online, to push his own agenda. A dangerous development according to his opposition.

“This international conference on freedom of expression could become the Trojan horse of Sarkozy and his friends’ repressive and obsolete vision of the Internet,” Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson for La Quadrature du Net said.

“This coarse manipulation of French diplomacy, disregarding our most fundamental values, is one more example of the alliance between the entertainment industries and a few politicians, who seek to control the public space to remain in power. There is now a huge risk that this repressive vision of the Internet spreads out to the rest of the world”, Zimmermann concluded.

Indeed, there is no doubt that the French President would rather protect the interests of the entertainment industry than the rights of European citizens. And he’s determined to succeed, whatever it takes.

Source: Leaked Letter Exposes Sarkozy’s Repressive Anti-Piracy Agenda

Many of the measures that were on the wish list of the RIAA and the U.S. Government have been scrapped along the way. What’s left is a treaty that enables governments to implement all kinds of anti-piracy measures, but forces none of the participating countries to do so.

One of the more controversial paragraphs, where countries would be obliged to impose secondary liability on Internet Service Providers for copyright infringements carried out by their customers, was removed earlier last month and didn’t return in the final draft. Previously, ISPs would be held liable when they failed to respond swiftly to ‘notice and takedown’ requests from copyright holders.

With regard to file-sharing, ACTA is not going to bring any immediate change to the laws that are already in place in most countries. Even camcording in movie theaters is not going to be criminalized, as it was in previous ACTA drafts.

None of the RIAA’s wild suggestions for ACTA have been implemented either. The music industry pushed hard for a mandatory three-strikes policy to disconnect pirates, but this suggestion never made it into the ACTA drafts. That said, individual countries are free to implement this and other measures on their own.

Many of the other paragraphs, including those related to DRM and border measures, are not as draconian as feared either, leaving room for fair use and other exceptions.

“Taken together, the Internet chapter must be seen as failure by the U.S., which clearly envisioned using ACTA to export its DMCA-style approach,” prof. Michael Geist writes in a brief analysis of the text. “Instead, the treaty leaves much the same flexibility as exists under the WIPO Internet treaties and opens the door to Canadian reforms to the digital lock provisions in Bill C-32.”

Despite ACTA being softer than expected, not all of the participating countries are happy with the final draft. The Mexican senate just voted in favor of pulling out, and the EU parliament remains skeptical.

Source: ACTA Anti-Piracy Treaty Not As Horrible as Feared

Today the Swedes voted for their national Parliament. If the turnout equalled that of last year, the Party would secure more than a dozen seats as the threshold for entering the Parliament in Sweden is 4 percent. However, this was easier said than done.

With 95 percent of the votes counted it is clear that the Pirate Party will not enter the Swedish Parliament. The Party is currently stuck at about 1 percent of the total vote, nowhere near the 4 percent threshold it needs.

This means that Wikileaks nor The Pirate Bay will be hosted under Parliamentary immunity. Even more so, the Party wont get the chance to legalize non-commercial file-sharing or criminalize “copyright abuse” as they planned.

Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that the party is disappointed with the outcome, but that they gave it all they got.

“The Swedish Pirate Party did its best election campaign ever. We had more media, more articles, more debates, more handed-out flyers than ever. Unfortunately, the wind was not in our sails this time, as it was with the European elections,” Falkvinge said.

One of the reasons for the lack of votes is the disregard in the debates of all the issues that are so dear to the Pirate Party, Falkvinge told TorrentFreak.

“The other parties had put a collective blanket over the privacy, culture and knowledge issues, as they had absolutely nothing to gain by even mentioning the issues.”

“If the wind is not in your sails, the sweat on your brow will still not steer the ship. I guess the most obvious example is how the appellate trial of The Pirate Bay will begin just nine days after the election,” Falkvinge added.

Despite the huge disappointment among Party members, today’s result was not totally unexpected. For months on end the polls showed the Pirate Party behind. A miracle was needed to come even close to the threshold.

Falkvinge and the other Party members will now have to wait four more years before they have another shot at conquering the Swedish Parliament. For now they have to settle for their two seats in Europe.

“Each generation must reconquer democracy. Nobody said it was going to be an easy fight,” Falkvinge says.

Source: Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament

Nowhere else was that more apparent than in the June 2009 EU elections, when they carried a surprise 7.3% of the vote. This election result gave them one seat in the European Parliament.

The seat was taken by Christian Engstrom, (who also happens to have been the most popular MEP) with the potential for an additional seat if the Lisbon Treaty went through. The treaty passed in November 2009 and came into force as of December 1st 2009. The Piratpartiet were confirmed to have gained a second seat, which went to 22 year old Amelia Andersdotter, but several months later she still had not been able to take her seat.

Fast forward to August 2010 – almost 15 months after the election and 9 months after the ratification of the treaty – the EU is finally realizing that there are a number of Parliament Members that were elected, but never seated (Ghost MEPs). That may be about to change.

Ms. Andersdotter notes on her blog that she may soon be able to start representing her country, as she was elected to do. She just needs an ‘aye’ from the Council of Presidents (funnily enough, headed by the EU President, a position created by the same Treaty as Ms Andersdotter’s seat, but filled without either election or delay) to gain observer status, meaning they can do everything but vote. They get that ability when all nations approve the ‘transition protocols’. While the first vote could take place within 2 weeks time, the latter will probably take longer, especially as some countries (France) still haven’t assigned their extra MEPs.

A report in yesterday’s Times of Malta has put some doubt on the process though, as the EU is apparently strapped for cash and unable to afford the extra MEPs.

An EU parliamentary official told the Times, “Unfortunately, it seems the new MEPs, including the one from Malta, will not be able to join as observers this year because the EP has not allocated funds for this purpose in this year’s budget,” adding there may be some money to pay for the Ghost MEPs in the 2011 budget, but that it’s not been decided to invite them even then, so it’s not been allocated yet.

Then again, this is a body that was unable to pass a law banning 3-strikes laws, despite 88% support, so anything is possible.

Source: Sweden to Finally Get a Second Pirate MEP?

One of the political parties that has shown interest in helping Wikileaks is the Swedish Pirate Party. Two weeks ago they offered to host the whistleblower site, and during a visit to Sweden Wikileaks’ Julian Assange accepted this offer and signed a deal.

“I’m delighted that we’re able to help WikiLeaks,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak in a response to the news that was made public today.

“I love opportunities to demonstrate that one of the biggest differences between us and the other parties is that we positively leap at any and all changes to take real responsibility for changing the world, rather than just commission reports and avoiding blame like the archetypal politician,” Falkvinge added.

For Wikileaks, support from the Swedish Pirate Party is a significant win. If the Party is voted into Parliament next month it could use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Government, making it impossible to take it offline through legal procedures.

“We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party,” Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange said commenting on the agreement. “Our organisations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world.”

Aside from hosting, Assange also hopes that the new Swedish Parliament will assist the site in other ways. Passing legislation that guarantees press freedom so Wikileaks and similar operations can do their work freely, is high on his wish list.

“We hope that the new Parliament will give serious consideration to further strengthening Sweden’s press protection legislation. Western democracies are not always as free as one might think, and freedom of the press needs constant vigilance,” Assange said.

“In particular, we would welcome Sweden copying Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative, something that the Pirate Party also desires.”

Pirate Party leader Falkvinge further stressed the importance of Wikileaks’ work, which has been sabotaged by corrupt or abusive organizations that try to conceal the truth from the public. “We desire to contribute to any effort that increases transparency and accountability of power in the world,” he said.

Assange on his turn recognized that his organization is fighting for much of the same ideals as the Pirate Party, and said that there might be more joint projects between the two outfits in the future. “We see more opportunities down the road in cooperating with the Pirate Party and look forward to exploring those options,” Assange noted.

Source: Pirate Party Strikes Hosting Deal With Wikileaks

In May 2006, a few months after the Pirate Party was founded, it saw a sharp increase in members after Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay’s servers. As a result the Party gained interest from the mainstream media and at the general elections in the same year it became the third largest party outside parliament.

With three years more experience, the Pirate Party participated in the elections for the European Parliament in Sweden in 2009. These elections came a few weeks after four people associated with The Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison, something that was brought up repeatedly during the campaign. As a result, the Pirate Party got more than 7% of the total votes earning them two seats in the European Parliament.

For the upcoming election, The Pirate Bay will also be a central theme in the election campaign. In May the Pirate Party volunteered to provide bandwidth to The Pirate Bay after previous hosts got into legal trouble. Two months later, the Party surprised again by stating that it would use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Parliament.

In the upcoming elections this September the Party hopes to equal the success it achieved in the European elections last year. Today the Party released its manifesto, which has grown from 7 pages back in 2006 to 27 today. The manifesto is divided into three parts, which are the core elements the Party is focusing on – privacy, culture and knowledge.

As expected, the Pirate Party stays true to their well-known principles regarding copyright and file-sharing. The Party believes that non-commercial file-sharing should be legalized. On the other side of the coin, they are proposing charges for those attempting to sue individuals for non-commercial copying. Inhibiting the spread of culture and “copyright abuse” would potentially carry a jail sentence of up to 2 years.

Although they are often portrayed as a one issue party, file-sharing related paragraphs are actually in the minority. Securing offline privacy is also a major issue, such as the ability to travel freely within the country without having to submit to identity checks. The Party further believes that medical, biological and software patents should be abolished, even though they are no longer calling for the abolition of patents in general.

“We’re aiming for entry into Parliament,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “Just like in the European elections, anything above four point zero zero percent is a political achievement that will send shockwaves worldwide. At present, we’re polling between one and two percent, mostly because the election campaigns haven’t started yet.”

“We still need some kind of key symbol issue, but then again, we’re much better off today than we were equally long before the European elections last year. We were invisible in the polls until 38 days before that election. We know that we can sprint like no other, and that we have the activists to carry our weight. It’s going to be a tough race right until the vote counts are coming in on election night,” Falkvinge told us.

Based on the current standings in the polls a sprint is indeed needed, but the Party may once again get some help from outside to achieve this. Coincidentally, the elections are held just a few days before the appeal of the Pirate Bay four begins. Because of this, the issues so dear to the Pirate Bay and its supporters may play an important role in the political debates.

“TorrentFreak readers should vote for the Pirate Party because a Pirate entry into the Swedish Parliament is going to make a tremendously larger impact than keeping or switching prime ministers. It’s going to save the Internet from censorship, wiretapping and encroachment.”

An invasion of pirates into the political system is what Sweden really needs in order to save the Internet, according to Falkvinge. “It’s going to liberate our common culture. It’s going to change not just Sweden but the world. Be a part of that change and tell it to your grandchildren.”

Source: Pirate Party Ramps Up To Invade Swedish Politics

In 2009 The Yes Men hijacked a United States Chamber of Commerce press conference, declaring a U-turn on their climate change policy. In a response to this “identity correction” the Chamber filed a lawsuit against the duo, claiming that they misled the public. Due to this legal battle no TV-station wants to take the risk to run some of the most controversial material, so The Yes Men took matters into their own hands by releasing an updated P2P-edition of their latest film today.

In addition to avoiding censorship, The Yes Men are looking for donations to fund their upcoming projects. This is where the BitTorrent-powered distribution platform VODO comes in. With free promotion from uTorrent, Limewire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and EZTV, this release will instantly have an audience of millions of downloaders.

To find out more about their motivation to get the film out on BitTorrent and to find out whether they were also this excited about BitTorrent when their first film was pirated by more than a million people, we caught up with Mike Bonanno, one half of The Yes Men.

“There are a few reasons why we chose BitTorrent. First off, it’s a way to avoid censorship,” Mike Bonanno told TorrentFreak. “This version includes video of an action against the US Chamber of Commerce that we are being sued for. No commercial outlets will touch it. We had a TV show scheduled on Planet Green and their lawyers nearly wet themselves when they heard we wanted to use footage of us making political mince-meant out of the largest lobbying organization in the world.”

“It’s unlikely that anyone would distribute this material before we get out of court,” Bonanno continued. “But we don’t want them to win a de-facto censorship case, so P2P is a great workaround. Another reason we are doing this is because this is the way people see movies these days, and we made this movie for people to see it. We would love it if people bought our DVD, but we also want people who don’t do that to see it. And last of all: we do hope to generate some donations: we are broke and there are not so many funders for our new project, especially given that they are all spooked by lawsuits, no matter how stupid!”

Although the benefits of BitTorrent are clear in this case, The Yes Men’s previous film was also pirated by more than a million people. When we asked Mike Bonanno how he felt about this we found out that he’s more upset about the stranglehold that the ‘copyright mafia’ puts on indie productions than the people who grab a copy of their movie on BitTorrent.

“It’s great that people are watching our films! We are very happy that they are getting seen. But that having been said, we do wish that a few more people were paying for it. We borrowed a shit-load of money from friends to make our latest movie and we still can’t pay them back. Also, the way the industry is set up, if you want your stuff on TV or delivered through any official channels you have to spend a massive amount of money clearing rights and paying for legal stuff and that is just silly.”

“For us to get our ‘errors and omissions insurance’ required for any distributor to take it, we had to clear the rights on all sorts of stuff we should not really have had to… including music written in the 17th century, which apparently because of some kind of law in Austria was not public domain according to the interpretation of insurance industry lawyers! Anyway, that’s just one example… so what happens as a film maker – especially a documentary maker – is that in today’s market we are fucked.”

“Because to get it on TV we still need to act like we have deep pockets and can pay for rights for all sorts of shit, but then with the collapse of the indy film market distributors won’t pay for it. And of course most people file-share it rather than pay for it. So yeah, we are happy that people are watching it but not so happy that we are financially screwed! But we also see that it’s the system that is screwing us: we are not blaming the pirates, we are blaming casino capitalism!”

This comment from Bonanno led us to ask the question whether The Yes Men would ever consider exposing the ‘copyright mafia’ and anti-piracy groups. These outfits have turned copyright into a cash cow while pretending to protect the rights of artists, something we address here on TorrentFreak every week. As it turns out, The Yes Men are siding with us in this regard.

“I think in some ways most of our work is about targeting ideas about the rule of private property… so this is related,” Bonanno said. “Our first four years as The Yes Men was dedicated to attacking the World Trade Organization, which has historically supported the idea of proprietary media. Overall, I think that in some ways everything today, every major issue facing us can be seen through the lens of what role it plays in the commons… or lack thereof, as many a government and corporation would have it.”

“If copyright was actually working the way it was supposed to, and protecting the authors that would be great. But that’s not how it works anymore – it just protects money; whoever has the most of it. And usually that means that the authors are fucked anyway!”

The Peer-to-Peer edition of The Yes Men Fix The World is now available for free on VODO. To spread their knowledge The Yes Men have started The Yes Lab, which is also worth checking out. Lastly, don’t forget to donate a few bucks if you like what you see.

Source: ‘Yes Men’ Use BitTorrent To Avoid Censorship

Now the Party have made another interesting announcement. Together with technology partners, they will enter the broadband market with Pirate ISP, a new service designed to deliver consumer Internet in line with the Pirate Party’s ideals.

Gustav Nipe, student of economics, long-standing Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP told TorrentFreak that Pirate ISP is based on the hacker ontology. “If you see something and you think it’s broken you build a patch and fix it. With that as a reference point we are launching an ISP. This is one way to tackle the big brother society.”

“The Pirate ISP is needed in different ways. One is to compete with other ISPs, let them fight more for our internet. If they don’t behave there will always be someone else taking their share,” Nipe added.

Aside from the competition angle, Gustav Nipe told TorrentFreak that the Pirate ISP will maximize privacy for all its customers. Operated by ViaEuropa – the company behind the iPredator anonymity service – Pirate ISP users will remain anonymous.

The service began beta testing in the city of Lund yesterday with around 100 residents of LKF, a housing organization whose aim is to provide quality accommodations at a reasonable cost.

After the first two weeks of testing, the initial expansion aim is to take 5% of the market in Lund and then set up in further locations around Sweden. This is a reasonable aim according to Nipe, who told TorrentFreak that they start small so they can assure quality service to all their customers.

At the Hacknight conference in Malmö, Nipe told Shane Murray from nrli.tv that they will not allow the Swedish Government to monitor Pirate ISP users and will refuse to retain logs. He warned that any attempt to force it to do otherwise will result in a constitutional issue.

Nipe was also clear on how Pirate ISP would respond to outside interference, in particular that from the United States.

“They can bring on whatever they have, we will refuse to follow there. We don’t agree with what they are saying and we don’t agree with the laws they are making so if they have an issue with us, then we will have an issue – but that’s it.”

For most potential Pirate ISP customers who intend to use the service to file-share, the immediate threats will come from closer to home, primarily from Henrik Pontén at Svenska Antipiratbyrån, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. Nipe said they are prepared to deal with this challenge.

“It would be a pity to reveal all the tricks that we have, so we will save those for later. But we have ways to ensure that no customer should have to get a sad letter home from Henrik Pontén.”

For his part, yesterday Pontén seemed unimpressed.

“Our investigations have focused on people with much higher safety. The question has been asked a thousand times before,” he said. “When the police come calling, they must disclose the information.”

It seems that the wider Swedish public won’t have long to wait to discover if Pirate ISP can live up to its promises. According to Nipe they will roll out big in Sweden at the end of this summer.

Source: World’s First Pirate ISP Launches In Sweden

This April, nearly two years after the first ACTA draft leaked out, the negotiators caved in and decided to release a redacted draft to the public. The draft itself didn’t bring much news, as nearly all information had been revealed via the leaked documents. However, some had hoped that the negotiators would be more open about the results of future meetings.

Unfortunately, this hope was soon shattered as the ACTA negotiations continued outside of the public eye. Yesterday, it became clear that even elected representatives at the European Parliament are not allowed to share ACTA-related information with their voters.

Following the latest round of ACTA negotiations in Lucerne, Switzerland, the Commission’s negotiators came to the European Parliament to give an update on ACTA’s progress. True to the secrecy surrounding most ACTA meetings, the gathering was closed to the public.

Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom was also invited to join, and at the meeting he asked if this secret setup also meant that he wasn’t allowed to share any of the information with the public.

“At first the Commission seemed unwilling to answer this question with a straight yes or no, but after I had repeated the question a number of times, they finally came out and said that I would not be allowed to spread the information given,” Engstrom explains.

Since there is little value in being informed on something you can’t share with others, Engstrom saw himself forced to leave the room. “I then left the meeting, since I am not prepared to accept information given under such conditions in this particular case.”

Like many others, Engstrom fails to see the benefit of keeping information from the public. “There is no sensible reason why the ACTA negotiations should be carried out in secret, or why Members of the European Parliament should not be allowed to discuss information about ACTA with their constituents,” he said.

“In a democracy, new laws should be made by the elected representatives after an open public debate. They should not be negotiated behind closed doors by unelected officials at the Commission, in an attempt to keep the citizens out of the process until it is too late.”

Even worse, according to Engstrom the secret ACTA meeting violates the Lisbon Treaty which states that the Commission should fully inform the European Parliament. With a secret oral meeting without any documents being handed out, this is certainly not the case, the Pirate Party MEP argues.

“That is disgraceful,” Engstrom concludes.

Source: Pirate Party MEP Forced To Leave ACTA Meeting

The Pirate Parties around the world are best known for copyright activism and are often seen as a ‘one-issue party’. While they also focus on privacy, government transparency, free speech, and patent reform, it is copyright that people’s minds spring to. So, with an election coming up, the Swedish Pirate Party has decided to play to their strength.

The party has announced today that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate. They intend to push the non-commercial sharing part of their manifesto, by running The Pirate Bay from ‘inside’ the Parliament, by Members of Parliament.

This move will certainly push the site to center-stage in Sweden. It will ensure a huge amount of scrutiny in any and all decisions made regarding the site, which is undoubtedly the intent.

“Sweden has long been a nation at the forefront of IT. But we have fallen in the rankings, largely because today’s politicians do not see the connection between file-sharing culture and future industry skills. We have now moved from place three to eight in available household bandwidth,” the Pirate Party informed TorrentFreak in a statement.

“There is no reason for us to accept this development – there are no technical reasons for this, only political.”

“Therefore, we can never accept the copyright industry’s way of systematically and legally harassing anyone who tries to build next-generation industries. The approach is criminal in the world and should be criminal in Sweden also, professional saboteurs are professional criminals, whoever they get their money from,” the Party added.

Aside from hosting The Pirate Bay in Parliament, the Pirate Party also plans to criminalize copyright lawsuits against noncommercial file-sharers and websites, as well as lawsuits against ISPs for linking to copyrighted material.

“The Lobby is used to using dirty tricks. Let’s see them take on legislators under constitutional protection who aim to criminalize their entire bag of dirty tricks,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told us.

Of course, the plan can only take place if the Party wins some seats in the September 19^th Elections, where there is a 4% barrier to overcome. However, last June they did manage 7% in the European Parliament elections, so it’s not an impossible goal by any means. We will have to wait and see what September brings.

If The Pirate Party succeeds it will add some more controversy to the upcoming appeal of the ‘Pirate Bay Four’, which is currently scheduled to take place a month after the general elections.

Source: Pirate Party to Run Pirate Bay from Swedish Parliament

Internationally, Piratbyrån is mostly known for launching The Pirate Bay in the fall of 2003, just a few months after the group itself was founded. Since there were no Swedish BitTorrent sites at the time, Piratbyrån decided to launch the first Scandinavian BitTorrent community, using the then relatively new BitTorrent protocol.

By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was already tracking a million peers and more than 60,000 torrent files. Around the same time the founders also became aware that it wasn’t just Scandinavians showing an interest in their site.

Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages from then on. Around the same time The Pirate Bay became separated from Piratbyrån, with the latter focusing more on other ‘copyfights’ that had to be won.

In the years that followed Piratbyrån engaged in discussions about the role of intellectual property in the digital age, giving a voice to millions of file-sharers who believed that copying is not a crime. Now, nearly 7 years after it was founded, Piratbyrån’s role has been played out and the group has decided to disband.

The discussions about file-sharing that Piratbyrån wanted to have, are already won,” former Pirate Bay spokesperson and Piratbyrån member Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. “The projects that needed to start have already been finalized. Piratbyrån was a temporary group for a temporary reason.”

The final decision to disband the group came after Ibi Kopimi Botani, a prominent member and co-founder of the group, passed away. Without one of its greatest minds, the group would never be the same again, Piratbyrån’s member felt.

“The discussions about abolishing Piratbyrån have been going on for years already, but this weekend a beloved friend and member died, and we decided it was time to move on for real, since the group could not be the same without him anyhow. It felt like a good time for passing this part of life,” Peter told TorrentFreak, who added that the group was about much more than being the founders of The Pirate Bay.

“Without Piratbyrån there would have been no Pirate Bay of course, but Piratbyrån has accomplished so much more than just that,” he said, a position shared by all of the group’s members. Marcin de Kaminski, who announced the end of Piratbyrån in a blog post, is proud of what they’ve accomplished in all those years.

“The most longlived project which has originated from Piratbyrån is obviously The Pirate Bay, but when it comes to great accomplishments I would like to point out how Piratbyrån were forerunners in one of the most obvious clinches of our time,” Marcin told TorrentFreak.

“By proudly standing up for the ideas of a whole generation of internauts and taking the fights no one else did, Piratbyrån worked as catalyzers when it came to understanding the current evolution of culture, clusters and chaos,” Marcin said. “While other actors have been trying to deliver answers, Piratbyrån has been very focused on targeting problems of the present by searching for the right questions.”

All the right questions have been asked now, and the group believes it has served its purpose. File-sharers are more vocal than ever before, they can stand up for themselves now and continue to challenge the corporations that promote intellectual property abuse.

Just copy what Piratbyrån did and evolve.

Source: Pirate Bay’s Founding Group ‘Piratbyrån’ Disbands

At a hearing on the topic yesterday, many of the witnesses were sceptical of the claims and assumptions made by the affected US industries, including the MPAA and RIAA-commissioned reports. Harvard Business School Professor Fritz Foley called the basic assumption behind the industry loss figures into doubt.

“It seems a bit crazy to me,” PC World quotes him telling the Commission on the first day of the hearing. “To assume that someone who would pay some low amount for a pirated product would be the type of customer who’d pay some amount that’s six or 10 [times] that amount for a real one.” While some companies, such as EA (at times), don’t follow this ‘a copy equals a lost sale’ system, the majority do.

“Be careful about using information the multinational [companies] provide you,” cautioned Foley. “I would imagine they have an incentive to make the losses seem very, very large.”

Professor Foley’s comments reiterate what the Government Accountability Office told US congress earlier this year. There is virtually no evidence for the claimed million dollar losses. “Lack of data hinders efforts to quantify impacts of counterfeiting and piracy,” was one of the main conclusions from their report. In fact, copyright infringements may also benefit the entertainment industries and third parties, it argued.

An Intellectual Properly law professor at Drake University had another perspective. Pointing out there are two sides to economics, Professor Peter Yu noted that companies counterfeiting products in China may employ US workers, and consume US-sourced raw materials, so it’s not a straight loss. It’s similar to how VHS tapes were not the straight loss the movie industry predicted and claimed in the late 70s and early 80s. Yu also noted that it’s useful in spreading Western ideas to China, although how well lobbying will go down is anyone’s guess.

One of the best suggestions so far, however, came from Ohio State University law professor Daniel Chow. When asked how the size of the problem can be identified and quantified, he suggested that the agency should push the affected industries for more data, presumably data that backs up their claims (there is little-to-none available at present).

Professor Chow also noted that current enforcement efforts are not working (as we have previously reported), and that companies should start thinking about the long-term. It’s advice that the industries would be wise to follow, as every past copyright conflict has, despite a short-term loss, provided massive long-term benefits and growth for the affected industries.

Source: US Government Told Piracy Losses Are Exaggerated

The verdict was welcomed by local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, but several copyright lawyers and opponents at the other end of the copyright spectrum have heavily criticized it. The ruling sets a dangerous precedent for future cases and may very well lead to more control and censorship by the pro-copyright lobby at the expense of people’s freedoms, they argued.

Aside from the critique on the decision itself, the integrity of the judge who handed out the verdict has also been called into question. Immediately after the verdict people involved with the Dutch Pirate Party, which is on the ballot of tomorrow’s elections, pointed out that the judge might not be as objective as he could be.

It turns out that the movie company lawyer Dirk Visser, the same person who also scored a victory for BREIN against Mininova, has been organizing a course for copyright specialists where Judge Hensen was once of the teachers. This prompted the Pirate Party politicians to doubt the objectiveness of the judge. Sweden’s Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge, who’s currently supporting his Dutch colleagues in the election run, has been the most vocal about the issue.

“It’s stories like this that show why today’s politicians simply must be kicked from office,” Falkvinge told TorrentFreak in a comment. “If they don’t see a problem with this — and apparently, they don’t — then it’s absolutely critical to the integrity of society and faith in the justice system that, quite frankly, some heads roll in tomorrow’s elections in favor of the Dutch Pirate Party.”

“Every time something like this happens, you think the copyright lobby has fallen to a moral rock bottom. Then as soon as you turn your back, they take out a jackhammer and start digging.” Falkvinge added. “I expect this will boost support for the Dutch Piratenpartij, and for good reason. Today’s politicians need to learn that their seats aren’t taken for granted,” Falkvinge added.

In the current polls the Dutch Pirate Party is still lacking enough support to be able to scoop a seat at the local parliament, but there’s still a day to go for them. Undoubtedly, stories about conspiring copyright lobbyists and possible biased judges may help to give that final push.

Despite the election outcome, FTD announced today that it will appeal the verdict of the case. They don’t intend to follow up the bias claims, FTD’s lawyer told TorrentFreak.

Source: Bias Claims Overshadow Landmark Anti-Piracy Ruling

Today, the UK Treasury decided to publish several data sets detailing how the tax money of UK citizens was spent in the last two years. Thanks to the Internet it is easier for the Government to be transparent about such issues, and thanks to BitTorrent the public can help with distributing the files.

“For too long the previous Government acted as if the public had no right to know where their hard earned taxes were spent. Today we have lifted that veil of secrecy by releasing detailed spending figures dating back to 2008,” Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury commented.

Although the four torrent files that have been posted don’t link to huge files (between 32 and 78 MB uncompressed), it is good to see that the Government isn’t shying away from using BitTorrent. If anything, this move will boost BitTorrent’s image. This is much needed since all the press about lawsuits have made BitTorrent synonymous with piracy for the majority of the mainstream public.

The torrent files have been posted today on data.gov.uk and the public is welcome to share them on The Pirate Bay or other high profile torrent sites. As a tracker, Amazon’s S3 service has been added, which most likely means that there will be always some high speed seeds available for the files.

By using BitTorrent to share information with the public, the UK government is in good company. NASA too uses BitTorrent for their ‘Visible Earth’ project, a massive library of high resolution images of the earth. In addition, several Universities use BitTorrent powered systems to update their computers.

Perhaps it’s time for Hollywood to look into BitTorrent as well, it sure sounds like a great technology to share films on the Internet.

Source: UK Government Uses BitTorrent to Share Public Spending Data

Over the past few years, successive Canadian governments have tried to introduce new copyright bills which have been been repeatedly unpopular. Recently some lobbyists even accused TorrentFreak of abusing a consultation by manipulating a consultation on copyright. However, the dust has settled, and so now we have Bill C-32.

The text of the Bill is almost impenetrable, as usual – perhaps in a bid to disguise what is actually intended – but a few things are clear. This is almost everything the lobbyists wanted, and little that matched the wishes of the public. While there are provisions that are extremely pro-consumer, such as giving people the ability to format shift, it is mostly negated by restrictions placed upon it.

One of the strongest downsides to the Bill is the increased restriction on bypassing DRM. Even when a copy can be made, such as for format shifting, if it means bypassing DRM, it’s a no-no. All despite DRM being an abject failure at its intended purpose – preventing copying – it’s great at doing something else – inconveniencing legitimate customers.

“For the third time, the Canadian government has looked toward the deep pockets of the RIAA and MPAA for inspiration in dealing with copyright,” the Canadian Pirate Party told TorrentFreak. “Bill C-32 represents a gross disregard of consumers’ free will to control what they rightfully own, through banning the bypass of ‘DRM’ controls placed by big industry.”

There is also an apparent lack of indemnity associated with the Bill. Gary Fung of isoHunt shared concerns with TorrentFreak over the lack of immunity from liability when complying with the process in handling copyright notifications in the Bill. It could mean not only the end of sites like isoHunt, but also of Youtube and Facebook.

Of course, such double-standards become obvious when the very point behind the Bill is unclear. The Bill’s preamble, for instance, finishes with two contradictory paragraphs:

Whereas the Government of Canada is committed to enhancing the protection of copyright works or other subject-matter, including through the recognition of technological protection measures, in a manner that promotes culture and innovation, competition and investment in the Canadian economy;

And whereas Canada’s ability to participate in a knowledge economy driven by innovation and network connectivity is fostered by encouraging the use of digital technologies for research and education;

And there is clear evidence that the minsters behind C-32 have either not read it, or do not understand it. This is part of an email sent from the office of Tony Clement, the Minister of Industry, that was forwarded to TorrentFreak:

We are pleased to inform you that the Government of Canada has introduced legislation to modernize the Copyright Act, bringing it up to date with the advances of the digital age.

This legislation will bring Canada in line with international standards and promote homegrown innovation and creativity. It is a fair, balanced, and common-sense approach, respecting both the rights of creators and the interests of consumers in a modern marketplace.

The actual intent is made clear towards the end.

It gives creators and copyright owners the tools to protect their work and grow their business models.

In a nutshell, that’s what the Bill boils down to – protection for the copyright industries and their business models. On the positive side, perhaps the Bill will force the government to do something about the massive piracy the Canadian music industry has been undertaking for many years.

Source: Third Time the Charm? Canada Tries New Copyright Bill Again

Westminster Council’s Nigel Tonkin, who has been organizing elections for 35 years, has been commenting to the BBC on the do’s and don’t at the polling station. He confirmed that party insignia and emblems are not allowed, but that Pirate Party voters are free to show up in a pirate costume.

“There’s a candidate standing in Westminster as a pirate. And if he comes in to vote in a pirate costume as is likely, we won’t turn him away. The same goes for any supporters coming to vote as pirates.” Parrots and other pets are also welcome at the polling stations, Tonkin said.

In all seriousness, the UK Pirate Party is no joke. They stand for real issues that are dear to the hearts of voters but are often overlooked by other politicians. The passing of the Digital Economy Act is a prime example of where the public opinion differs from that of the lawmakers.

As with the Swedish party in last summer’s EU elections, not all the candidates are fresh faced youngsters. Quite a few are definitely middle-aged, including party leader Andrew Robinson (41) who’s confident that his party can make a difference if given the chance.

“Today we can strike fear into the hearts of our enemies, Andrew Robinson says. “Today we can show them that we will no longer sit idly by as they take away our rights, as they take away our privacy, as they force greater and greater burdens and costs on us while lining their own pockets.”

“Today, we show them what can be achieved by real men and women, scattered across the country, connected by technologies the other parties still struggle to understand,” Robinson added. The polling stations will close 10 PM local time, the first results are expected to come in later in the evening.

The Pirate Party candidates are:

• Andrew Robinson – Worcester
• Graeme Lambert – Bury North
• Alexander van Terheyden – Bethnal Green and Bow
• Tim Dobson – Manchester Gorton
• Luke Leighton – South West Surrey
• Shaun Dyer – Leicester West
• Finlay Archibald – Glasgow Central
• David Geraghty – Derby North
• Jack Nunn – Cities of London and Westminster

Source: UK Pirates Allowed to Vote in Costumes

Championed by Baron Mandelson after an entirely coincidental holiday meeting with Dreamworks co-founder David Geffin, the Bill has now taken another step in its rush to become law before the end of Parliament, despite all the protests and criticisms.

The Bill, which the UK Pirate Party say “will shape the future of technological and artistic progress” was not important to most MPs. Through the 5 hours of debates, only around 20 MPs were present, including just one from the Liberal Democrat party  - Don Foster (Lib-Dem, Bath) – who had pledged not to vote for the Bill.

The scene at 9:45pm after 5 hours of speeches

Debate was mostly back and forth over the contentious issue of disconnections, but industry figures and unverified estimates were again quoted as fact. Many (including Labour MPs) were outraged at the Government for having left it so late to try and rush through a Bill as complex and controversial as this. It did, however, get passed at this second reading and will be taken to a third tomorrow.

The low turnout didn’t stop the invective, however, or the silly comments, lies, inaccuracies and other miscellaneous statements, all of which were picked up on Twitter (over 16,000 tweets under the #DEB and #DEBill tags), and analyzed a great deal more thoroughly than by these MPs that had apparently read the Bill. Some of the most memorable points include:

• “The creative industries have grown at twice the rate of the economy as a whole over the past 10 years, and they should do so again over the next 10″. Ben Bradshaw MP
• [on Clause 43 - Orphan works] “Let me provide an example of where this is already going wrong. An image of none other than the great Lord Mandelson himself is apparently being used to market a Russian vodka, with the caption, “When only the best is good enough”. If ever we needed proof that captions to pirated images can be misleading, surely that is it.” Jeremy Hunt MP
• “The Government could have brought this Bill before Parliament ages ago, because these issues have been in the public domain for years. The Gowers review of intellectual property is so old it is practically out of copyright.” Jeremy Hunt MP
• “I cannot see how the Bill takes on India or China; I simply cannot see a single provision that does so. They are not going to settle for 2 megabytes; they are going to settle for 100 — and much, much more.” Derek Wyatt MP
• “Listen, if we want the smartest, most creative industry, we have to tackle intellectual property and copyright together. They cannot just be shunted in as a couple of paragraphs; they are so fundamental to the reason why people write music, sing or create whatever they do.” Derek Wyatt MP

And most amusingly:

• “People are not talking about co-operating and sharing their own thoughts and content, but are stealing someone else’s content and sharing that. There is an Armageddon, which has partially arrived in Sweden, where the Pirate Party, whose leader is in jail, won seats in the European Parliament on the basis that everybody’s work—including MP4’s—should be free.” Michael Connarty MP. Rick Falkvinge was quick to point out that he remains a free man.”Despite rumors to the contrary, it is still not illegal in Sweden to hold political opinions that would bring the country into the digital age,” he told TorrentFreak. “Such a  society would be atrocious and far out of line from all Human Rights Conventions. One might also wonder what other facts proponents of the Digital Economy Bill have gotten entirely wrong.”

The Bill passed despite extensive opposition from many MPs present, who had concerns over specific amendments and the breakneck pace the Bill is being forced through with virtually no debate. The sensible suggestion that it be left for the next Government to reintroduce was derided as it is “needed now”, despite the fact that those industries have not only survived, put prospered without the Bill for the last 10 years.

Meanwhile, the MPs were not so much concerned with the public outcry, as the sartorial comments on Twitter. The Bill now gets a total of two hours for Committee, Reports and its third reading later today, after which it will be (probably) passed.

The first two hours of debate can be watched on the BBC website and the transcripts are here. The third reading of the DEB is scheduled for tonight and if the bill passes it will head over to the Lords where it will be signed into law.

Source: Pirate Party Leader Imprisoned During DEB Debate?

In an attempt to change this situation, the Spanish Government has been working on new legislation under which sites offering links to copyright works could be taken offline within days of a complaint.

The change in law has been pushed for by the entertainment industries that claim to be hit hard by rampant piracy in Spain. The piracy rate has reached a level where movie companies are even considering putting a halt to selling DVDs in Spain, claiming that it’s just not worth the effort because piracy is baked into Spain’s culture.

Indeed, many Spaniards consider casual downloading of copyrighted music and movies as an acquired right and thus far they have had the law on their side. Even if the newly proposed anti-piracy legislation passes, it is highly doubtful that downloading habits will change. At the Ministry of Culture, where the new legislation is being prepared, employees are still downloading as if nothing is about to change.

Data gathered by the Spanish TV-channel VEO 7 revealed that at the Ministry of Culture, several employees have been downloading music and TV-series without consent from the copyright holders.

According to the report, the Ministries of Defense and Education are the most active file-sharers, with employees using file-sharing applications to download erotic calendars, music, movies and lots of other goods.

In other Government bodies staff members have also been caught red-handed while sharing copyrighted files, including the Presidency where a brain training game was downloaded without authorization.

The embarrassing revelations come from Angel Badia, a Houston based ‘hacker’ who decided to prove what many people suspected all along. Badia identified the ministries by the IP-addresses that are publicly displayed in most file-sharing applications.

Badia’s data shows that it will be hard to deter Spaniards from sharing files through new legislation. If even the people who are trying to get the new law implemented can’t break with their habit, how can they expect that the public will?

Source: Piracy Rampant Among Spanish Government Officials

This week, the Pirate Party UK, founded last summer, has announced their candidate list. The ten candidates come on the heels of the publication of their manifesto, and cover a broad swathe of the country, from London all the way to Scotland.

As with the Swedish party in last summer’s EU elections, not all the candidates are fresh faced youngsters. Quite a few are definitely middle-aged, including party leader Andrew Robinson (41). Despite characterizations such as ‘kids just out for something for free’, they, like all Pirate Parties, will focus on reforming copyright, privacy and patent laws, while preventing the spread of others.

The candidates are:

• Andrew Robinson – Worcester
• Graeme Lambert – Bury North
• Mark Sims – East Ham
• Alexander van Terheyden – Bethnal Green and Bow
• Tim Dobson – Manchester Gorton
• Luke Leighton – South West Surrey
• Shaun Dyer – Leicester West
• Finlay Archibald – Glasgow Central
• David Geraghty – Derby North
• Jack Nunn – constituency to be decided (London area)

TorrentFreak spoke with Bury North candidate Graeme Lambert, who at 18 is the youngest of the party’s candidates and just old enough to vote himself. Bury North’s current MP, Labour’s David Chaytor, made the news recently as he was charged with theft relating to last year’s expenses scandal, which Lambert has seized on in his campaign.

“The Pirate Party UK is a corruption-free political party which the constituents of Bury North deserve after the actions of David Chaytor,” he told us. Lambert is optimistic of a decent showing, although thinks it unlikely that he will win.

“I’m aiming to secure our deposit, which would require 2500 votes, which I am confident that I can achieve. My chances of winning the seat are relative to Ladbrokes odds of 250/1″.

Indeed, bookmakers Ladbrokes have given all the party’s candidates a 250/1 chance of winning, which is worse than most small parties such as the Green, UKIP and Liberal parties, but better than the 500/1 of long-time electoral jokers, the Monster Raving Loony Party.

Lambert is not the only one running for a seat which has strong resonances with the party manifesto. Mark Sims, a 37 year-old IT teacher, is running against Stephen Timms who is responsible for “Digital Britain”. Last year Timms gave the reason for the rushing of Digital Britain as  ”the plans as they stand could delay action, impacting unfairly upon rights holders”, certain to be a key feature of Sims’ campaign.

Of course, all this comes at a price, and the party is looking for donations and ways to raise money to help pay for the campaigns.

“We’d love to give as many people as possible the opportunity to ‘Vote Pirate’ in the election,” says Peter Brett, the Deputy Campaigns Officer. “Unfortunately, this means we need to raise just over £9000 in addition to the funds previously raised through member subscriptions. This will be just enough for all our candidates to pay their deposits and to have a reasonable amount for publicity materials.”

With the Digital Economy Bill about to be rammed through the Commons, despite protests, will this be enough?

Source: UK Pirate Party Announces 2010 Election Lineup

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