In what appears to be the first action of its type since the RIAA abandoned its controversial anti-filesharing campaign, Internet users sharing music are again being targeted in the United States. In a lawsuit filed in Florida the identities of 80 individuals are being sought with one aim in mind – to threaten them with $150,000 damages awards in order to force settlement of a few thousand dollars.
Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom and the Pirate movement’s founder Rick Falkvinge presented their views on copyright reform to the European Parliament this week. The Pirates want to bust the myth that their ideas only center around legalizing file-sharing and offer what they see as sensible alternatives to draconian legislation such as ACTA and SOPA.
Pirates across the globe are working on an attempt to raid the music single charts, and with help from the most notorious BitTorrent site these efforts are paying off. Embracing Pirate Bay’s mantra, Dan Bull’s track “Sharing is Caring” now appears in a variety of daily download lists, setting course for a spot in the official weekly music charts around the globe this weekend.
After being busted last year following an ICE Homeland Security investigation, four alleged members of the movie release group IMAGiNE have now been indicted. The defendants, all US residents aged between 27 and 57 years old, face up to five years in prison for criminal copyright infringement. Rumors persist that they were led to the slaughter by a rival release group with a grudge.
The elimination of camcorder movie piracy has been high on the agenda of movie studios for many years, particularly so during the last decade. Many approaches have been tried and there are signs that in the past 5 years the problem has significantly reduced. The latest anti-cam system claims to be the most unobtrusive yet, negating the need for bag searches, cell phone confiscations or the employment of security guards.
The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) in the European Parliament have just confirmed that they will reject ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Leader of the Alliance, Guy Verhofstadt, said that while supporting the protection of intellectual property rights, ALDE believes that ACTA falls short on a number of counts.
The Hollywood-backed anti-piracy outfit BREIN is going all out to make The Pirate Bay inaccessible to the Dutch public. After successfully blocking The Pirate Bay through court, and then censoring proxy sites that linked to it, they are now demanding that the Pirate Party should be banned from “discussing” how easily Internet censorship can be circumvented. The political party is baffled by the proposed gag-order and has asked the court to lift all censorship efforts.
Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.
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