The draft, a response to a request by Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull for submissions on current anti-piracy proposals, shows a desire to apply extreme pressure to local ISPs.

The authors of the draft (obtained by Crikey, subscription, ) are headed up by the Australia Screen Association, the anti-piracy group previously known as AFACT. While local company Village Roadshow is placed front and center, members including the Motion Picture Association, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner make for a more familiar read.

Australian citizens – the world’s worst pirates

The companies begin with scathing criticism of the Australian public, branding them the world’s worst pirates, despite the ‘fact’ that content providers “have ensured the ready availability of online digital platforms and education of consumers on where they can acquire legitimate digital content.” It’s a bold claim that will anger many Australians, who even today feel like second-class consumers who have to wait longer and pay more for their content.

So what can be done about the piracy problem?

The draft makes it clear – litigation against individuals isn’t going to work and neither is legal action against “predominantly overseas” sites. The answer, Hollywood says, can be found in tighter control of what happens on the Internet.

Increased ISP liability

In a nutshell, the studios are still stinging over their loss to ISP iiNet in 2012. So now, with the help of the government, they hope to introduce amendments to copyright law in order to remove service providers’ safe harbor if they even suspect infringement is taking place on their networks but fail to take action.

“A new provision would deem authorization [of infringement] to occur where an ISP fails to take reasonable steps – which are also defined inclusively to include compliance with a Code or Regulations – in response to infringements of copyright it knows or reasonably suspects are taking place on its network,” the draft reads.

“A provision in this form would provide great clarity around the steps that an ISP would be required to take to avoid a finding of authorization and provide the very kind of incentive for the ISP to cooperate in the development of a Code.”

With “incentives” in place for them to take “reasonable steps”, ISPs would be expected to agree to various measures (outlined by a ‘Code’ or legislation) to “discourage or reduce” online copyright infringement in order to maintain their safe harbor. It will come as no surprise that subscriber warnings are on the table.

‘Voluntary’ Graduated Response

“These schemes, known as ‘graduated response schemes’, are based on a clear allocation of liability to ISPs that do not (by complying with the scheme) take steps to address copyright infringement by their users,” the studios explain.

“While this allocation of liability does not receive significant attention in most discussions of graduated response schemes, common sense dictates that the schemes would be unlikely to exist (much less be complied with by ISPs) in the absence of this basic incentive structure.”

While pointing out that such schemes are in place in eight countries worldwide, the movie and TV companies say that a number of them contain weaknesses, a trap that Australia must avoid.

“There are flaws in a number of these models, predominantly around the allocation of costs and lack of effective mitigation measures which, if mirrored in Australia, would make such a scheme ineffective and unlikely to be used,” the paper reads.

It appears that the studios believe that the US model, the Copyright Alerts System (CAS), is what Australia should aim for since it has “effective mitigation measures” and they don’t have to foot the entire bill.

“Copyright owners would pay their own costs of identifying the infringements and notifying these to the ISP, while ISPs would bear the costs of matching the IP addresses in the infringement notices to subscribers, issuing the notices and taking any necessary technical mitigation measures,” they explain.

In common with the CAS in the United States, providers would be allowed discretion on mitigation measures for persistent infringers. However, the studios also imply that ISPs’ ‘power to prevent’ piracy should extend to the use of customer contracts.

“[Power] to prevent piracy would include both direct and indirect power and definitions around the nature of the relationship which would recognize the significance of contractual relationships and the power that they provide to prevent or avoid online piracy,” they write.

Voluntary agreements, required by law, one way or another

The key is to make ISPs liable first, the studios argue, then negotiations on a “voluntary” scheme should fall into place.

“Once the authorization liability scheme is amended to make clear that ISPs will be liable for infringements of copyright by their subscribers which they know about but do not take reasonable steps to prevent or avoid, an industry code prescribing the content of those ‘reasonable steps’ is likely to be agreed between rightsholders and ISPs without excessively protracted negotiations.”

However, any failure by the ISPs to come to the table voluntarily should be met by legislative change.

“In the absence of any current intention of and incentive for ISPs in Australia to support such a scheme (and the strong opposition from some ISPs) legislative recognition of the reasonable steps involved in such a scheme is necessary,” they write.

Site blocking

Due to “weakness” in current Australian law in respect of ISP liability, site blocking has proved problematic. What the studios want is a “no-fault” injunction (similar to the model in Ireland) which requires ISPs to block sites like The Pirate Bay without having to target the ISPs themselves.

“Not being the target of a finding against it, an ISP is unlikely to oppose the injunction – as long as the procedural requirements for the injunction are met. Once made, a blocking injunction would immediately prevent Australian internet users from being tempted to or accessing the blocked sites,” the studios explain.

Despite The Pirate Bay doubling its traffic in the face of extensive blocking across Europe, the movie companies believe that not blocking in Australia is part of the problem.

“The absence of a no-fault procedure may explain the very high rates of film and TV piracy in Australia when compared with European countries
that have such a procedure,” they write.

Unsurprisingly, the studios want to keep the bar low when it comes to such injunctions.

“The extended injunctive relief provision should not require the Court to be satisfied that the dominant purpose of the website is to infringe copyright,” they urge.

“Raising the level of proof in this way would severely compromise the effectiveness of the new provision in that it would become significantly more difficult for rightsholders to obtain an injunction under the scheme: allegedly non-infringing content would be pointed to in each case, not for reasons of freedom of access to information on the internet, but purely as a basis to defeat the order.”

The studios also want the ISPs to pick up the bill on site-blocking.

“[Courts in Europe] have ordered the costs of site blocking injunctions be borne by the ISP. The Australian Film/TV Bodies submit that the same position should be adopted in Australia, especially as it is not likely that the evidence would be any different on a similar application here,” they add.

Conclusion

If the studios get everything they’ve asked for in Australia, the ensuing framework could become the benchmark for models of the future. There’s a still a long way to go, however, and some ISPs – iiNet in particular – won’t be an easy nut to crack.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The case had unusual hallmarks from the start, not least since SAFACT admitted it had engaged the services of a “certified ethical hacker” to identify, profile and trace the uploader. Adding to the intrigue, SAFACT also refused to name the uploaded movie, although it was later revealed to be Four Corners, a local gangland film that was yet to be officially released.

Initially, the identity of the uploader was also shrouded in mystery but he was later revealed to be 29-year-old Majedien Norton. The IT engineer was reported to have uploaded the movie on November 21, 2013, although there is no sign of it now, which suggests that the father of two later deleted the file. Norton later admitted to buying a ‘screener’ copy of the movie off the streets and uploading it to Pirate Bay.

As in many countries, relatively minor and non-commercial instances of copyright infringement are dealt with via the civil courts in South Africa, but from fairly early on it was clear that this case would be different. The overall anti-piracy tone was that an example needed to be made and a precedent set for those tempted to make the same kind of mistake in future.

Today the case concluded in the Commercial Crimes Court in Cape Town and it seems that SAFACT largely achieved its aims. After being arrested under the Counterfeit Goods Act and facing a fine plus up to three years in jail, Norton came to an arrangement with the state, pleaded guilty, and was handed a five-year suspended jail sentence.

“It’s a huge relief for me and my wife,” Norton told local news outlet htxt.africa. “I’m just glad we can put this behind us now and move on.”

But while SAFACT and the rest of the anti-piracy lobby will be pleased with the harsh albeit suspended sentence, in a recent interview the director of Four Corners was philosophical over the piracy of his movie.

“I think the way people think now ­ digitally ­they don’t see piracy as piracy any more. They see it as sharing. We will definitely not get as many people to the cinemas as we would have if the film were not pirated,” Ian Gabriel said.

“At the same time, there are people who have seen the film who would never have got to the cinema. I’m pleased the film is reaching those people because there’s a message of pride and self recognition and of choice for ordinary people that the film is delivering and its important that message be heard.”

And while SAFACT clearly believe that the threat of criminal punishments will help solve the piracy problem, Gabriel sees things from a different angle. Noting that movies cannot exist without money, the director says a more considered approach to piracy is required.

“I suggest in order to continue to enhance our quality of life, creative rights of origination need to be secured on some consensual level, probably not through aggressive policing, but rather through a common sense approach to the protection of creative endeavour for the benefit of all,” the director concludes.

SAFACT are yet to comment on the conclusion of the case.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The Southern African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT) clearly appreciated the significance of the development, with their CEO Corné Guldenpfennig explaining they had caught the man by employing a hacker. The group further clarified via a piece on their own website.

“The senior investigator on the E-Task Team is an internationally accredited CEH, or certified ethical hacker. This team was able to identify, profile, and trace the uploader based on their investigation on the Internet,” SAFACT wrote, adding:

“When asked about the significance of the case, Guldenpfennig said that it is a first for South Africa and that they made extremely certain of all the rights issues around this situation.”

Unfortunately, making sure “of all the rights issues” wasn’t something carried out by SAFACT in respect of their own website. Let’s take a look at an excerpt from the SAFACT announcement currently displayed on their site, with the focus on the last few lines.

Funnily enough, it turns out that the much of the SAFACT article, minus a few alterations that would identify the source, was lifted from an article written by Jan Vermeulen for MyBroadband.co.nz.

But lifting the text from a news outlet and passing it off as their own work wasn’t the end of the matter for SAFACT. HTXT.africa has noticed some other issues which for a major pro-copyright group should be a major source of embarrassment.

The problem relates to the image the anti-piracy outfit published alongside their ‘version’ of the MyBroadband piece. Courtesy of Google cache, here it is:

As can be seen from this Google reverse image search, the center photograph is actually related to the arrest of a LulzSec member carried out by the Australian police and published without the necessary Reuters credit.

The fact that the police were Australian was hidden, however, after someone working for SAFACT took the image (from a video shown on The Guardian) and Photoshopped out “Australian Federal” from the officer’s coat leaving just “police” behind. (Original below)

In an email to htxt.co.za, SAFACT CEO Corné Guldenpfennig laid the blame for the image (not the article) at the feet of their web design company.

“I wish to confirm that SAFACT would never intentionally infringe on any individual or company’s intellectual property rights as it is the mission of SAFACT to protect and enforce IPR,” Guldenpfennig said.

But things really take a turn for the weird when one notes that although SAFACT later removed the unlicensed image and replaced it with the image here, they have since taken that down and replaced it with a new version of the unlicensed Reuters image.

Quite bizarrely SAFACT has animated the graphic in a way that only highlights the fact that they ‘shopped the original image. You can see it here, but we’ve included it below for reference.

Quite possibly the most bizarre response to a copyright issue this year.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It’s fairly ironic then, that in the early moments of his speech to the Australian Digital Alliance forum in Canberra this morning, Attorney-General George Brandis cited the piracy difficulties encountered by Charles Dickens.

“One of Charles Dickens’s reasons for travelling to the United States …in 1842, was to advocate for copyright law reform. Dickens was acutely aware of how much money he was losing because his works were being pirated, at the time legally, under American copyright law which permitted publishers to reprint British books at will,” Brandis said, underlining his point that creators should be paid for their work.

Of course, times have changed, and in the 21st century the United States is now keen for all other countries to adopt a specific set of copyright-protecting legal mechanisms, even though it has yet to formally bake any of them into its own legal system. This morning Brandis gave clearest indication yet of what Australians have to look forward to.

“I believe in strong protections and enforcement mechanisms in support of Australia’s creative industries, but, as I indicated, I am also keen, as one of the achievements in the first – term of the Abbott Government, to modernize, reform and contemporize the Copyright Act,” Brandis said.

First up, Section 101 of the Act, which states that an entity which authorizes the copyright infringing activities of others can be held liable for those infringements. The famous Hollywood vs iiNet case, in which the studios tried and failed to hold the ISP liable for the infringements of its subscribers, showed that the law couldn’t be stretched as far as the studios would’ve liked. According to Brandis though, things will change.

“The government will be considering possible mechanisms to provide a ‘legal incentive’ for an Internet service provider to cooperate with copyright owners in preventing infringement on their systems and networks,” he said.

“This may include looking carefully at the merits of a scheme whereby ISPs are required to issue graduated warnings to consumers who are using websites to facilitate piracy.”

While Hollywood successfully implemented its “six strikes” system in the United States, none of that was forced upon ISPs by law. And here’s another US ideal (that hasn’t been implemented locally) that the Aussies appear keen to take on board – site blocking.

“Another option that some stakeholders have raised with me is to provide the Federal Court with explicit powers to provide for third party injunctions against ISPs, which will ultimately require ISPs to ‘take down’ websites hosting infringing content,” Brandis said.

But while the Attorney General referred to legal options for three strikes, disconnections and website blocking, he noted that his preference “would be to facilitate industry self-regulation, as opposed to active and continuing government regulation.”

That, however, hasn’t worked to date, with discussions between Hollywood and the ISPs failing to reach any workable agreement, with the former wanting the reluctant latter to pick up the bill for enforcement.

While it remains to be seen whether change is arrived at through voluntary agreement or legislation, the Australian government keen to deal with the online piracy issue once and for all, despite the effectiveness of three strikes and site blocking regimes being continually called into doubt.

_{Photo: Dan Zen}

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Much of the work carried out is for information gathering purposes. That data can be put to many uses by movie and music companies, including the development of marketing and lobbying strategies.

Needless to say, some of the harvested data is used to generate copyright takedowns and, on the more aggressive side of the business, to hunt down individuals engaged in piracy so that law enforcement can make an example of them.

After a week in the headlines due to the passing of Nelson Mandela, South Africa now has a brand new anti-piracy achievement to report. According to the Southern African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT), authorities have just arrested their first ever Internet pirate.

The individual, said to have been detained in Cape Town, stands accused of uploading to The Pirate Bay. SAFACT CEO Corné Guldenpfennig told MyBroadband that his investigation team, led by a “certified ethical hacker”, were able to identify, profile and trace the uploader. This in itself is an interesting development as up until recently ISPs have refused to play ball.

“Downloaders think they can hide on the Internet. Uploaders think they can hide, but they can’t no matter how smart they think they are,” Guldenpfennig said.

As it features the first ever arrest of an online pirate in South Africa the case is interesting enough, but curiosity is only being aroused further by SAFACT’s refusal to identify the movie in question. Perhaps understandably there is speculation that for such an important case there can only be one candidate, the Nelson Mandela chronicle ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, a movie set to be launched in the U.S. on Christmas Day but already a box office sensation in South Africa.

But could that really be the case?

To find out, TorrentFreak scoured The Pirate Bay for the movie, later moving on to several other torrent indexes and scene resources for good measure. Unfortunately, searches for the movie title in both English and Afrikaans produced similarly poor results. We also searched for other top South African-produced movies released in 2013 but drew a blank there as well.

The only thing that appeared were torrents for the Mandela autobiography and audio books of the same name, items that copyright holders have been trying to take down for some time.

Interestingly the only ‘hits’ we could find for the movie were fake uploads designed to trick users into downloading malware. But while the targets here are the inexperienced, anti-piracy company IP Echelon working on behalf of Sony can’t seem to tell the difference either. Despite no sign of the movie online, they are issuing regular takedowns for fake files.

Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN are the most ‘impressive’, however, taking down more than 50 fake Long Walk to Freedom torrents in one notice and 40 in another.

The suspect in the case is due to appear in court later today, where presumably all will be revealed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Pushed along by the Attorney General’s Department, discussions between rightsholders and ISPs took place during late 2011 and 2012 in the hope that a mutual agreement could be reached. That proved impossible. Frustrated at what one ISP said was a failure to get to the root of the problem – a reluctance to provide Australians with desirable content in a timely manner and at a fair price – iiNet walked out.

Now close to a year later it seems that the whole debate is set for a reboot, with the new Coalition Federal Government putting its weight behind both entertainment companies and Internet service providers in the hope of finding an urgent solution.

According to The Australian, the Attorney-General’s Department has sent out letters to Australia’s leading ISPs and content creators requesting their participation in a series of roundtable meetings. New Attorney-General George Brandis is reported to be treating copyright infringement as a priority issue.

So what will be on the agenda? Details are scarce, but traditionally there are at least a couple of areas where ISPs can help rightsholders.

The first is by the implementation of a three or six-strike style scheme, where subscribers are monitored by anti-piracy companies and issued with warnings that are passed on by their ISP. While these can be purely educational, rightsholders do like a punishment element for the most persistent of pirates. However, iiNet will not go along with that.

“iiNet won’t support any scheme that forces ISPs to retain data in order to allow for the tracking of customer behavior and the status of any alleged infringements against them,” said iiNet Chief Regulatory Officer Steve Dalby. “Collecting and retaining additional customer data at this level is inappropriate, expensive and most importantly, not our responsibility.”

Since any agreement would have to implemented equally across the country’s main ISPs, a strike scheme with punishments seems to be dead in the water, without fresh legislation at least. So, the suggestion is that ISPs could be asked to do what many others are currently doing around the world – implement blocking of file-sharing sites. The notion has drawn the ire of the local Pirate Party who say they condemn any kind of censorship regime.

“Yet again we are faced with a government that is an enemy of the Internet,” said Simon Frew, President of Pirate Party Australia. “Previous Attorney-Generals organized secret meetings between ISPs and the copyright lobby, deliberately excluding consumers, and now history repeats. We demand that any consultation about the future of the Internet be conducted transparently and include competent and trusted representatives of the community, not just vested interests.”

It’s no surprise that online piracy has again become a political issue in Australia. This past year the country has been in the news several times due to infringement issues, including a public admonishment by the U.S. Ambassador to Australia which referred to Aussie TV fans as “some of the worst offenders” in the world when it comes to downloading TV shows such as Game of Thrones.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

India-based AiPlex Software said that when faced with uncooperative torrent sites they “flood the website with requests, which results in database error.” The admission, that the company engaged in what amounts to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, started off a momentous chain of events.

The confession irked the masses on the chat board 4Chan and many of its members, known as Anons (collectively ‘Anonymous’), plotted their revenge. Firing up their LOICs, they DDoS’d AiPlex in return, taking the site offline.

But despite letting off steam the rage did not subside and soon the MPAA and RIAA were being overwhelmed with traffic, along with the Bank of America, Visa and Mastercard who had cut off payments to Wikileaks. Operation Payback was underway and it would spread around the world.

In the three years that have since passed, authorities in various countries have rounded up some of those who coordinated and participated in the attacks. A few hours ago came the news that United States authorities have scheduled some payback of their own for more than a dozen Operation Payback participants.

A federal grand jury has indicted 13 alleged members of Anonymous on claims that they “did knowingly cause the transmission of a program, information, code, and command, and, as a result of such conduct, intentionally cause damage, and attempt to cause damage, without authorization, to a protected computer,” including those operated by the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Copyright Office.

The indictment states that 13 men coordinated attacks by collectively deciding on targets and publishing their names and IP addresses along with proposed times and dates for the attacks. Via online postings and fliers, plus through the IRC channels #saveTPB, #savethepiratebay, and #operationpayback, the men allegedly recruited more individuals to the collective.

Interestingly, the indictment makes no specific mention of AiPlex’s illegal DDoS attacks on torrent sites, merely stating that Anonymous launched Operation Payback to retaliate “against the discontinuation of ‘The Pirate Bay’.”

In addition to United States-based targets including Warner Bros., the indictment lists attacks on the IFPI, BPI, ACS:Law, Davenport Lyons and Ministry of Sounds websites in the UK, against anti-piracy group BREIN in the Netherlands, one launched in Australia targeting the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), and another against French anti-piracy outfit Trident Media Guard.

Overall the indictment tries to paint a very bleak picture of the defendants engaging in a deliberate campaign of destruction during the course of Operation Payback. It often cites comments made by each individual as they allegedly went about arranging and motivating others to carry out attacks against high-profile targets.

“We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us,” is the Anonymous battle cry. United States authorities appear to operate with a similar philosophy.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Considering the above, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that a new study found that one in four Australians pirates movies and TV-shows.

The research in question was commissioned the local Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF), a movie industry outfit which also lists the MPA(A) and the Hollywood-funded AFACT on its board.

IPAF uses the results to conclude that “pirating is not the social norm.” What they mean to say is that not 100% of the population pirates, but then again, not everyone is interested in movies or TV-shows to begin with.

Teens between the ages of 16 and 17 pirate the most (31%) and nearly twice as much as those between 12-13 years old (17%). A quarter of all adults also admit to pirating a movie or TV-show at least once per month, and 11% downloads or streams illegal content at least once a week.

In addition to showing how prevalent piracy is in Australia, the research also asked respondents about the advertisements they see on pirate sites. The results reveal that most pirates recall gambling (51%) and sex related (44%) ads.

This leads IPAF to conclude that pirate sites “provide a store front for the gambling and sex industries.” Teens are exposed to these ads as well and the group warns parents of the hazardous effects these banners can have on their children.

“Parents need to be aware that children who access illegal sites to download unauthorized movies and TV shows may be exposed to graphic pornographic advertisements, unregulated gambling sites, scams and viruses,” the report reads.

The report further finds that more than half of all Australians (55%) supports blocking access to pirate websites. Even among persistent pirates, 44% are in favor of website blocking, a result that will obviously be used in ongoing lobbying efforts to block pirate sites Down Under.

Finally, the report suggests that the majority of all pirates are immoral cheapskates. When given the choice between a legal alternative and piracy, pirates often choose the latter.

“The primary motivator for Australians of all ages pirating movies and TV shows is that it is free. The argument for free content overshadows their moral and ethical concerns,” the report reads.

Interestingly, this is a biased interpretation of what the data shows.

As can be seen above, respondents were asked what they would do if their favorite TV-show was available for $2.99. More than half (54%) of the persistent pirates answered that they would still pirate it while 28% said they would pay.

It’s clear that many people would indeed continue to pirate, but the research didn’t actually ask why.

Perhaps the results would have been different if the TV-show was covered by an $8 monthly subscription or if it was more competitively priced? Adding to that, money is not the only factor – it was previously revealed that many people continue to pirate even after they pay for a Netflix subscription.

The questioning is misleading in this case, to say the least, and the other responses clearly illustrate this. Why else would 22% of the lapsed downloaders and 5% of the non-downloaders suddenly start pirating when a legal option becomes available?

Nevertheless, spearheaded by Hollywood, Australia can prepare itself for yet another push for stricter legislation to deal with these freeloading pirates.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

When three years of discussions yielded no results, in November 2008 Hollywood movie studios under the banner of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) sued local ISP iiNet. AFACT hoped that through legal action all ISPs could be held responsible for copyright infringements carried out by their customers.

In April 2012 the case came to a close, Hollywood lost, and it was back to the drawing board alongside fresh hopes for peaceful settlement.

Ever since, intermittent negotiations have continued between the ISPs and rightsholders, in the hope that the former would agree to implement some kind of graduated response/warning system on behalf of the latter in order to positively influence the behavior of pirating customers.

Last December, iiNet withdrew from the talks, declaring they’d had enough of dealing with rightsholders who refuse to make official content available at a reasonable price.

And now, six months later, with no further talks having taken place since, it seems the whole initiative has ground to a halt. David Epstein, chief of ISP Optus, told The Australian that his company could now back iiNet’s stance.

“We support a co-operative resolution to the issue but this requires general consensus among players and like treatment of any participant in a trial. We have not yet seen a model that enables this,” he said.

Despite voices to the contrary, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) said that the talks hadn’t been abandoned and hope remains that an agreement can be reached. After suing iiNet and failing, they have few options left.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In an attempt to right this wrong, the largest file-sharing site in the universe has teamed up with the only free nation left, the United States of America.

“Many of you rightfully bashed us for siding with a dictatorship,” begins The Pirate Bay’s announcement today.

“We want you to know that we have listened to your critique. So without further due, we hereby announce that we have moved our servers from the evil North Korea to the greatest fuckin nation in the entire world.”

According to The Pirate Bay, the U.S. Government helped them to secure their cloud hosting setup against any attacks from outside, North Korea in particular.

“We have worked closely with the awesome American Government to establish a strong military graded server park that will endure any nuclear attacks that Kim Jong Un and his evil allies will send at us.”

Of course The Freedom Bay will guarantee that people from non-free regimes can’t steer innocents in the wrong direction. To promote freedom the site will therefore remove all files uploaded from hostile territories, including France. American torrents on their turn will enjoy a speed boost.

“Along with this move to the greatest country in the universe, we will soon remove all torrents from North Korea, China, Iran, France and Islamistan. American torrents will be seeded with extra power, to ensure that you’ll get your American dose extra fast,” the Bay writes.

TorrentFreak has spoken to several people in the U.S. who are all reporting a significant speed increase, but The Pirate Bay informed us that the best is yet to come.

Sadly, for South African BitTorrent users some bad news just came in. Coinciding with The Pirate Bay’s move to the United States, TPB and several other BitTorrent sites are set to be blocked in the country.

MyBroadband reports that The South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT) have convinced the authorities to implement a new policy directive which will outlaw the BitTorrent protocol, and require ISPs to block access to torrent sites.

In related freedom fighter news, the Aussie Pirate Party has received a takedown request after it issued a poster design that parodied YouTube’s “this video is no longer available due to a copyright claim” notification.

“We were under the impression that parody and satire would be respected, but rather than fight this we decided to comply,” Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer, Deputy Secretary of Pirate Party Australia comments on the action.

“This request is symptomatic of the absurdity of modern copyright maximalism. Time and time again copyright holders treat the public — which has generously allowed them to have these rights — with contempt.”

What a day…. and it’s not over yet.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.