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

Wearing “Piracy is Illegal” T-shirts and carrying several boxes of complaints against file-sharers, a group of movie industry representatives showed up at the Attorney General’s Office doorstep in Portugal this week. By clogging the judicial system they hope to raise awareness of widespread online movie piracy. However, this ideal may backfire as the local Pirate Party believes that the actions of anti-piracy activists may very well be illegal.

ACAPOR is without doubt the most active anti-piracy outfit in Portugal. Last year the movie industry representatives made the news when they filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay with the General Inspection of Cultural Activities, a department of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture.

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.

ACAPOR delivering the complaints

acapor

“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.

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  • Arb

    first

    if true it would be funny as hell

  • 2

    second

    yeah they would have broken the law for 970 times if its true :P

  • Anonymous

    They should stop the distributers not the consumers…

  • SL

    I dont see the point of this, at best, they will piss off the judges.

    At worst, they will have committed multiple illegal acts, its a no win situation.

  • Grok

    Why is it that anti-piracy organizations and people tend to resort to illegal actions? Are they for some inexplicable reason drawn to irony?

    It reminds me of South Park’s caricature of the music industry boss who constantly claims that he is above the law.

  • Anonymous

    Join Anonymous at irc.anonops.ru #OperationPayback http://www.anonops.ru/

  • Anonymous

    i thought ACAPOR was something that comes out of someone’s asshole

  • Its me

    is this a denial of service attack, against the legal system? just because the legal system is not giving the anti-pirates what they want?

  • anon

    lol look at the tard that poste #8.
    Guy is actually trying to look like as if he made a nice comparison.. to bad torrent freak made it already

  • Béte Noire

    Funnily enough, Acapor is a Videoclub Owners association – they don’t even own the copyrights they are so determined to defend.

    However, for some reason, they blame Pirate Bay for the dwindling sales (right, because they’re surprised that between getting out of the house to rent a movie for 3 Euro, and staying at home and renting it for the same price from PayPerView, people would rather do the lazy thing and not walk).

    Oh, and even more funnily, ACAPOR is a lesser association, containing about 2% of the Videoclub owners in the country.

    This is clearly a proof of people finding a comfortable scapegoat instead of trying to keep up with times.

  • me

    #9 you must be Keith Stone, because you are so smooth.

  • popy

    ACAPOR isn’t movie industry representatives. They’re an association of MOVIE RENTAL STORES. And they claim piracy is responsible for hundrends of movie rental stores closing down. What they forget is that, via cable or satelite, we have dozens of movie channels, and the big cable companies offer to they’re costumers MOVIE RENTALS by a touch of a remote control.

    Do you know how they colected the IP’s? Easy, when we share on torrents and emule we can see them. So they also have been downloading and sharing movies. And will continue because they claim that every month, they will be delivering 1000 IP’s.

    Also in the portuguese tv news we can see that they were carrying empty boxes.

  • Jambaali

    Lol they are a bunch of noones here… How did this even made the news?

  • Anan

    Isn’t it quite telling that the men in the picture have gray hair? Get with the times or quit altogether. You are so obsolete, really.

  • TerribleTony

    @14 Not defending ACAPOR but you do realise that many people have a full head of grey hair from the age of 21 (sometimes even younger). Let’s keep hair-colourism out of this movement please.

  • me (the real me)

    what would be funny is if the government responded by legalising non-commercial file sharing

  • Peng Reets

    LOL, you have to admit, its pretty funny when you think about it.

    anon-tools.it.tc

  • geez

    this r fail

  • Pingback: Pirate Party Slams Anti-Piracy Outfit for Filing ‘Illegal’ Complaints | Systema

  • hotdog

    We need pirate parties here in the US also BIG TIME!! I would even run it. I mean would the many ways the mafiaa are suing innocent people entraping people to share download movies and then call those pirates thieves whose the criminal then?Let’s not forget bribery in the government to make unconstitutional laws violate individual rights.Which is also covered by fair use act which if you ever get sued mention “free speech and you have no intent to sell redistribute copies of work and is for your own personal use.”
    Which I believe many people have no intent to.And how about suing innocent kids that don’t know about copyright laws, and just want to here music.If they like it they buy it. If not in the trash bin.mpaa and riaa and any other association or whatever false name you call yourselves need to wake up get with technology and stop thinking people buy cd’s/dvd’s those are outdated technologies.Unless ofcourse you are a dj and collect music use double layer dvd’/cd’s.Oh believe me I’m just getting started and getting boiled up with anger just thinking of what I would do to get the real criminals in jail prison,fined get take them out of business or make them straighten their business practices.And stop suing the consumers/customers/fans etc.

    Enjoy your weekend!! ;)

  • We Are Legion

    My t-shirt says ‘Speculative invoicing is racketeering!’ and I bet I could come up with a thousand times the number of boxes these douche bags have. There are far more of us than there are of them and we need to make sure our respective judiciary systems know this.

  • maria

    I’m Portuguese and I’m ashamed. This could only happen in this country. They are not worried about copyrights. They’re problem is they are losing money because they represent movie rentals. Oh but wait, when Blockbusters closed they didn’t mind… Like somebody said, it’s an scapegoat. I’m in Law School so I have to say this. The means they used to obtain IP adresses violate privacy laws. It’s been said that they are under the protection of cybercrime Law but they are not as that Law only applies to hackers. Because they are not authorized by the National Data Protection Authority to collect IP adresses it constitutes a violation of privacy and because it is a semi public crime anybody who feels injured in their rights can press charges so… Go get them Portuguese Pirate Party!

  • frostygotchilled

    @ hotdog. You have it so right. I think the volume of physical media will continue to diminish along with those out-dated organizations trying to control the way we spend our money.
    Any fool knows, that most media can be obtained digitaly over the net, whether its p2p. netflix, streaming, and a wide variety of formats.

    Where I live, all the good record stores have gone so we only have a limited selected selection of what we can buy. The music stores with their snooty sales people have no knowledge of what music is. I’m really getting tired of having to return open previously open copies of movies(Staff will open and watch and return to the shelf)and already scratched discs and defects. TPB and other sites help to bring cultural awareness to the world and that’s not a bad thing, is it now? I was always taught at a young age, that sharing was the right thing to do. I enriches peoples lives and gives them greater understanding of the world around them.
    So again, thanks to all the artists and those who share.

  • I might be Chronoss

    Have you noticed the typo on their T-Shirts?

    Surely they shouldn’t read “Piracy is Illegal”, they should read “Piracy is Unlawful” given that it’s not a criminal offence, but a civil one.

  • popy
  • frostygotchilled

    @ hotdog. You have it so right. I think the volume of physical media will continue to diminish along with those out-dated organizations trying to control the way we spend our money.
    Any fool knows, that most media can be obtained digitaly over the net, whether its p2p. netflix, streaming, and a wide variety of formats.

    Where I live, all the good record stores have gone so we only have a limited selected selection of what we can buy. The music stores with their snooty sales people have no knowledge of what music is. I’m really getting tired of having to return open previously open copies of movies(Staff will open and watch and return to the shelf)and already scratched discs and defects. TPB and other sites help to bring cultural awareness to the world and that’s not a bad thing, is it now? I was always taught at a young age, that sharing was the right thing to do. It enriches peoples lives and gives them greater understanding of the world around them.
    So again, thanks to all the artists and those who share.

  • Anonymous

    Piracy is Illegal suck my dick

  • Bart

    is it not a principle of universal law that a third party cannot volunteer legal action on behalf of another?

    for example, if i perceive a wrong i cannot assume for myself the privileges and rights of the wronged party and seek remedy in law

    ACAPOR is a publicity organisation clearly acting to justify some big pay-check from somewhere. anti-p2p is big business

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  • NoTownKasper

    @26 Enough balls to spout anti-pirate garbage on a torrent-news article…but not enough to give us a name to link your drivel to? Oh-so-typical of the anti-piracy cowards.

    Bend over and let the man stick it in a little further…eventually it will hurt even your fairly loose orifice and maybe you’ll see where we’re coming from.

  • Mr.Cringle

    “We are doing anything we can to alert the government for the very serious situation in the entertainment industry,” ACAPOR commented

    To which the appropriate response should be:

    “Sorry, but since the entertainment industry is composed mostly from a bunch of for-profit private companies that’s not our concern. After all, the mining industry is also in a very serious situation, but we weren’t elected to illegally defend profits of corporate entities”

  • Anonymous

    @ 28 NoTownKasper

    Bend over and let the man stick it in a little further…eventually it will hurt even your fairly loose orifice and maybe you’ll see where we’re coming from.

    I’m afraid “fairly loose orifice” is being a little too over generous with these anti-filesharing types. And I believe that “eventually it will hurt” will not apply in these cases. In their eagerness to brown-nose and bend over for authority figures all their lives, they have left themselves… well, we all remember goatse. You have to feel sorry for them really, they just don’t know what “the man” is doing to them any more.

  • Watchdog

    I did my own investigation of the illegal P2P activities that go on in cyberspace.

    I have a list of ALL IP addresses which take part in illegal P2P.

    The complete list:

    IP addresses starting with 0.0.0.0 and ending with 255.255.255.255

    A grand total of 4,228,250,625 addresses.

    Case closed!

  • Anonymous

    Good job Watchdog, better pass that data on to the copyright lawyers, looks like lots of money to be made :)

  • hrrm

    project mayhem anyone?
    seriously get a mob and go after these twits show them whom the majority is and beat the snot out of them…when they start to realize that what they are doing is starting to lead to violence a lot fewer of them will show up

    seriously if 1,000,000 angry people show up with baseball bats, what you think the legislature is gonna do listen to the 100 jerks?

  • meh

    After two sentences, I already knew what I was going to comment:

    Clogging up the judicial system will do the exact opposite of raising awareness. On the contrary, it’ll lead some to believe it’s an unjust/immoral law. Martin Luther King and Ghandi were the two biggest pioneers on this concept, these dingbats need to open a history book once in a while!

    Want an example? Marijuana law and reputation follows this exact same principle. Although classified a Schedule-1 drug here in the states, (Which makes it more illegal and dangerous then Crystal Meth and Angel Dust – Those two drugs are Schedule-2, approved for medical use..Hows that for your tax dollars well spent?) because of the record number of protests and arrests of innocent people, its making us re-examine our priorities and consider that maybe this was a mistake after all.

    I know Im starting to get off-topic, but my point is that “Clogging up” the courts is Not the legitimate way to address an issue.

  • DRuNKeN MaSTeR

    What a waste of trees and perfectly good paper… It’s a shame :(

  • Ninja

    I do rent movies. Even if I download them. O wait, where have I heard that before? [/doh]

  • Anonymous

    Looks somewhat like a DOS attack…

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  • Ross

    How many trees did it take to make the contents of those boxes?

    Antipiracy = Deforestation?

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