TorrentFreak

Earlier this year U.S. lawmakers proposed a draconian anti-piracy legislation known as the PROTECT IP Act. When the proposal becomes law, U.S. authorities and copyright holders will have the power to seize domains, block websites and censor search engines to prevent copyright infringements. But file-hosting service RapidShare have a lot to lose by its introduction and are now spending a great deal of money countering the views of pro-copyright lobbyists.

With the elections for the Berlin state parliament just four weeks away, the German Pirate Party is on course to an impressive election win. A recent poll shows that support for the Pirate Party is growing, and with 4.5 percent of the votes the pirates are getting close to the minimum 5 percent needed to enter parliament with several seats.

A few months ago 21-year old Travis McCrea participated in the Canadian federal elections as candidate for the Pirate Party in Vancouver Centre. Aside from his political ambitions, McCrea also described himself as an entrepreneur. As with his political views, his business ventures are also focused on file-sharing related ideas, and most recently he started a torrent site to promote the distribution of movies.

In a deliberately provocative move the Czech Pirate Party has launched not one but two movie download portals. The sites, which offer links but don’t host any infringing material themselves, are being launched to protest the plight of a high school student facing a 5 million euro damages claim for linking to copyright works.

Back in March the Russian Justice Ministry turned down the Pirate Party’s attempt to officially register. The decision was made because the authorities feel that the word ‘pirate’ could be connected with criminal acts. Now a Moscow judge has backed that decision, leading the party to decide on a new name.

Since 2010 a group of self-confessed pirates have attempted to get their newly-founded religion accepted by the authorities. The Church of Kopimism, which currently has close to 1,000 members, hope that official recognition of their values would make them immune from prosecution. However, the Swedish authorities have denied the request for the second time in succession.

According to a disclosure report, the MPAA spent $400,000 lobbying a wide range of US government departments in the first quarter of 2011 including the FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, ICE and the Vice President’s Office. Issues on the table include so-called “rogue sites” including RapidShare, streaming, graduated response (3 strikes) and domain seizures.