The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) uses a variety of measures to achieve its goals. This includes sending requests to registrars requesting the suspension of allegedly infringing domain names.

The sports streaming site Fromhot, also known as Sportlemon and Frombar, was one of the most recent targets of the latter strategy. The “franchise” has well over a million visitors per month but some of these went missing after the Frombar.com domain was suspended.

The streaming site does remain operational from several alternative domain names, which now point to Fromhot.com, but interestingly enough the site can no longer be accessed from the UK.

A few days after its main domain was suspended the sport streaming site decided to block all visitors from the UK. It appears that this measure was taken in the hope of avoiding further actions from PIPCU.

TorrentFreak contacted the people behind the site for a comment on the unusual measure, but we have yet to hear back.

Frombar is not the first sports streaming site to be targeted by PIPCU. In May, PIPCU had the domain of the Cricfree.tv streaming portal suspended but its operator was able to bring the site back under a new domain.

In addition to the domain suspensions PIPCU also had several sports streaming site operators arrested. TorrentFreak previously revealed that the operator of BoxingGuru.co.uk, boxingguru.eu, boxingguru.tv and nutjob.eu was arrested during April.

This was followed by the arrest last month of 27-year old Zain Parvez, who allegedly operated CoolSport.se, CoolSport.tv and KiwiSportz.tv. Parvez was described as the head of an “industrial scale” sports streaming operation but all charges against him were dropped earlier this week.

Whether the blockade of UK traffic will keep PIPCU at bay has yet to be seen. The notice posted on the seized Frombar.com still notes that the site is “under criminal investigation.”

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

The sessions this week, on October 7 and 10, were used for summing up by the prosecution and defense. Danish language publication DR.dk, which has provided good coverage of the whole trial, reports that deputy prosecutor Anders Riisager used an analogy to describe their position on Gottfrid.

Prosecution: Hands in the cookie jar

“If there is a cookie jar on the table with the lid removed, and your son is sitting on the sofa with cookie crumbs on his mouth, it is only reasonable to assume that it is he who has had his paws in the cookie jar,” he said.

“This, even though he claims it is four of his friends who have put the cookies into his mouth. And especially when the son will not reveal who his friends are, or how it happened.”

Riisager was referring to the evidence presented by the prosecution that Gottfrid and his co-defendant were the people behind hacker attacks on IT company CSC which began in 2012.

The Swede insists that while the attack may have been carried out from his computer, the computer itself was used remotely by other individuals, any of whom could have carried out the attacks. Leads and names provided by Gottfrid apparently led the investigation nowhere useful.

Remote access unlikely

That third-parties accessed Gottfrid’s computer without his knowledge is a notion rejected by the prosecution. Noting that the Pirate Bay founder is a computer genius, senior prosecutor Maria Cingari said that maintaining secret access to his machine over extended periods would not have been possible.

“It is not likely that others have used [Gottfrid's] computer to hack CSC without him discovering something. At the same time the hack occurred over such a long time that remote control is unlikely,” she said.

And, Cingari noted, it was no coincidence that chatlogs found on Gottfrid’s computer related to so-called “zero-day” vulnerabilities and the type of computer systems used by CSC.

Dane and Swede working together

In respect of Gottfrid’s co-defendant, the prosecution said that the 21-year-old Dane knew that when he was speaking online with a user known as My Evil Twin (allegedly Gottfrid), the plan was a hacker attack on CSC.

Supporting their allegations of collusion, the prosecution noted that the Dane had been living in Cambodia when the attacks on CSC began and while a hacker attack against Logica, a crime for which Gottfrid was previously sentenced, was also underway. The Dane spent time in a café situated directly under Gottfrid’s apartment, the prosecution said.

Why not hand over the encryption keys?

When police raided the Dane they obtained a laptop, the contents of which still remain a secret due to the presence of heavy encryption. The police found a hollowed-out chess piece containing the computer’s SDcard key, but that didn’t help them gain access. Despite several requests, the 21-year-old has refused to provide keys to unlock the data on the Qubes OS device, arguing there is nothing on there of significance. According to the prosecution, this is a sign of guilt.

“It is very striking that one chooses to sit in prison for a year and more, instead of just helping the police with access to the laptop so they can see that it contains nothing,” senior prosecutor Maria Cingari said.

Cingari also pointed the finger at the Dane for focusing Gottfrid’s attention on CSC.

“You can see that [the Dane] has very much helped [Gottfrid] with obtaining access to CSC’s mainframe. It is not even clear that he would have set his sights on CSC, if it had not been for [the Dane],” she said.

Defense: No objectivity

On Friday, defense lawyer Luise Høj began her closing arguments with fierce criticism of a Danish prosecution that uncritically accepted evidence provided by Swedish police and failed to conduct an objective inquiry.

“They took a plane to Stockholm and were given some material. It was placed in a bag and they took the plane back home. From there they went to CSC and asked them to look for clues. This shows a lack of an independent approach to the evidence,” she said.

Furthermore, the mere fact that CSC had been investigating itself under direction of the police was also problematic.

“The victim should not investigate itself. CSC is at risk of being fired as the state’s IT provider,” Høj noted.

Technical doubt

Computer technicians presented by both sides, including famous security expert Jacob Appelbaum, failed to agree on whether remote access had been a possibility, but this in itself should sway the court to acquit, Høj said.

“It must be really difficult for the court to decide whether the computer was controlled remotely or not, when even engineers disagree on what has happened,” she noted.

Why not take time to investigate properly?

Høj also took aim at the police who she said had failed to properly investigate the people Gottfrid had previously indicated might be responsible for the hacker attacks.

“My client has in good faith attempted to come up with some suggestions as to how his computer was remotely controlled. Of course he did not provide a complete explanation of how it happened, as he did not know what had happened and he has not had the opportunity to examine his computer,” she said.

Additionally, clues that could’ve led somewhere were overlooked, the defense lawyer argued. For instance, an IP address found in CSC’s logs was traced back to a famous Swedish hacker known as ‘MG’.

“The investigation was not objective. I do not understand why it’s not possible to investigate clues that don’t take much effort to be investigated,” Høj said. “The willingness to investigate clues that do not speak in favor of the police case has been minimal.”

A decision in the case is expected at the end of the month. If found guilty, Gottfrid faces up to four years in jail.

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

In what’s being described as the largest case of its kind ever seen in the Scandinavian country, both stand accused of hacking computer mainframes operated by US IT giant CSC. This week various IT experts have been taking the stand.

On Tuesday, IT investigator Flemming Grønnemose appeared for the third time and stated that during the summer and fall of 2012, Swedish police had tipped off Danish police about possible hacker attacks against CSC.

According to DR.dk, as part of Grønnemose’s questioning Gottfrid’s lawyer Luise Høj raised concerns over a number of changes that had taken place on her client’s computer since it had been taken into police custody.

Grønnemose admitted that when police installed programs of their own onto the device, security holes which could have been exploited for remote control access could have been closed. However, it appears police also have an exact copy of the machine in an unmodified state.

Further evidence centered around the IP addresses that were traced during the attacks. IP addresses from several countries were utilized by the attackers including those in Cambodia, Germany, Iran, Spain and the United States. German police apparently investigated the local IP address and found that it belonged to a hacked server in a hosting facility.

The server had not been rented out for long, but was still on and had been taken over by hackers, Grønnemose said. According to the prosecution, the same server also featured in last year’s Logica case in Sweden. Gottfrid was found guilty in that case and sentenced to a year in jail.

Another IT expert called to give evidence on the same day was Allan Lund Hansen who had examined the files found on Gottfrid’s computer. Those files, garnered from the CSC hack, contained thousands of names, addresses and social security numbers of Danish citizens. Since the files were in an encrypted folder along with data from earlier attacks on IT company Logica and the Nordea bank, the prosecution are linking the files to Gottfrid.

On Thursday, DR.dk reported that the debate over Gottfrid’s computer being remotely controlled continued. Previously Jacob Appelbaum argued that an outside attacker could have used the machine to carry out the attacks but defense experts from the Center for Cyber ​​Security disputed that.

This week Thomas Krismar from the Center said that Python scripts found on Gottfrid’s computer were able to carry out automated tasks but in this case remote control was unlikely to be one of them.

“There are two characteristics we always look for when we try to discover remote control features. The first is one that starts automatically when you turn on your computer since the attacker will always try to maintain their footing on the computer. The second is one that ‘phones home’ to indicate that it is ready to receive commands,” Krismar said.

The script in question on Gottfrid’s machine needed to be started manually and did not attempt to make contact with anything on the web, the expert said.

Also appearing Thursday were further witnesses including Joachim Persson of Stockholm police who investigated Gottfrid’s computers after his arrest in Cambodia.

Persson said he found a tool known as Hercules, a sophisticated piece of software that emulates the kind of systems that were hacked at CSC. Persson did note, however, that such tools have legitimate uses for those learning how to operate similar systems.

The trial continues.

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

The man, whose identity is being protected, told the Court that while he’s had no formal IT training, he is indeed a computer security expert who had been involved in testing computer systems to see how they hold up to external threats. He admitted working for American, Australian and Danish companies.

The 21-year-old Dane refused to say whether he knows Gottfrid on the grounds that he could be attacked in prison. He did admit to having previously heard about Gottfrid, however.

“Most people in the IT sector have heard of him,” he said.

The Dane also admitted to traveling to Cambodia to visit friends and smoke cannabis, but denied that he went there to meet Gottfrid at his apartment.

The prosecution also presented some emails in which the man said that CSC, the IT company involved in the hack, was owned by the CIA, but he dismissed that comment as a joke.

Discussion also returned to the IRC conversations referenced in the first week of the trial which reportedly took place between ‘My Evil Twin’ (allegedly Gottfrid) and ‘Advanced Persistent Terrorist Threat’ (allegedly the 21-year-old).

Much was made in week one of potentially altered Internet Relay Chat (IRC) logs presented by the prosecution. This week the Dane admitted that he had been involved in some conversations and had actually met ‘My Evil Twin’. That person was not Gottfrid, he said.

In respect of the content of some chats, the Dane said the topic had indeed centered around the security of IT systems but he insisted that there we no plans to hack CSC or any other companies’ computers. Usernames and passwords of CSC systems that were allegedly exchanged during the IRC chats had been found using Google, he added.

Also of note during the day’s proceedings was the Dane’s continued refusal to provide police with encryption keys to examine the contents of his laptop.

“There is no material on my computer. I can not see how it would make this a better situation,” he told the court.

However, DR.dk reported that during the day, due to the nature of the evidence being presented, it became clear that police had managed to retrieve some information without access to the keys.

After a day’s break in proceedings, on Friday renowned activist and security expert Jacob Appelbaum appeared as an expert witness for the defense. Appelbaum also appeared in Gottfrid’s Swedish trial, a case in which he was partly acquitted.

The prosecution previously complained that Appelbaum knows Gottfrid personally, so was unsuitable as an expert witness. The American denied that was the case.

“I’ve only talked a little with Gottfrid as he is not known as a sociable guy. He is not easy to approach and the times that I’ve seen him in social situations it has always been about computer security,” Appelbaum said.

Echoing his testimony in the Swedish case, Appelbaum told the Court that it certainly would have been possible for outsiders to have controlled Gottfrid’s computer to carry out the hack of CSC.

It’s unclear for how long the trial will continue but hearings have been allocated until the end of October.

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

Surprise

The trial began on Tuesday but after less than 25 minutes proceedings had to be halted after the prosecution submitted a 27-page document and 92 slides that the defense claimed not to have seen before. Michael Juul Eriksen, defending the 21-year-old, complained but deputy public prosecutor Anders Riisager said there was no obligation to provide all documents up front.

On top of the surprise documentation, the prosecution also provided a never-seen-before video recorded by police when Gottfrid was arrested in Cambodia during 2012. It reportedly showed the Swede’s apartment messy and turned upside down. Gottfrid’s defense lawyer Luise Høj branded the video as “irrelevant” and this start to proceedings didn’t impress Gottfrid’s mother Kristina either.

“Such efforts to disorder the defense and affect the jury are, in my opinion, unworthy of a civilized court process,” Kristina told TF.

“I guess I am very naive in this, but I think that representatives of the community should behave better than that – justice should be considered more important and be paid more respect to than in the way that the prosecutor behaved to begin with that first day. But maybe Denmark has its own ethics in this respect.”

Chat logs

In presenting the case, senior prosecutor Maria Cingali referred to chat logs that took place between two hackers – one allegedly Gottfrid (My Evil Twin) and the other the 21-year-old (Advanced Persistent Terrorist Threat). A report in The Local said the logs not only contained chats discussing the hacking of CSC’s database, but also personal details that correspond with those of the 21-year-old.

Remote access

Speaking to the court on Wednesday, Gottfrid continued with the same defense strategy employed in his Swedish case – that third parties had access to his computer and carried out the hacking from there. The 29-year-old also revealed that he’d previously given the police four other nicknames of individuals who had access to his computer. Eraser, Nohyb, RBL and Ripley were reportedly known online as The Lattice Team but Anders Riisager wanted their real names – Gottfrid refused.

“I do not want be called a traitor or a snitch,” he said, going on to criticize the efforts of the prosecution in finding the potential culprits.

“The motivation to investigate has been equal to zero,” he added, pointing out that the Danish authorities had been in possession of these names since 2013.

“There has been every opportunity to find out their names. You have had more than a year to do so,” Gottfrid noted.

“Smear” campaign

In his cross-examination, Riisager invited Gottfrid to comment on an article published on Cambodian forum Khmer440 in 2012 which claimed that the Swede was “messed up on drugs” and “a total recluse” who made contact only with “his dealers and landlord.”

The Swede reacted unfavorably, accusing the prosecution of trying to “smear” him. Someone who shares opposition to these allegations is ‘John’, Gottfrid’s former business partner as revealed in our earlier article. He’s outraged that the prosecution has used information penned by someone with “a grudge” against Gottfrid.

“I should inform you that Khmer440 has accepted that many of the allegations posted about me and Gottfrid were false and defamatory. I have it in writing (the term they used was ‘scurrilous’,” John wrote in an email yesterday to Jens Jorgensen of the Danish police.

“The fact that you have quoted these libelous, provably false accusations written by a man who you know to have a grudge against Gottfrid (and I know that you know, because I personally told you about it during our meeting, and watched you take notes) is absolutely sickening. I can’t imagine what on earth possessed you to do such a thing.”

Did the prosecution edit evidence?

Something else bothering the defense is the authenticity of chat logs provided to the court. The names “Advanced Persistent Terrorist Threat” and “My Evil Twin” were seen in chat logs provided by the prosecution yet on Internet Relay Chat, where the chats allegedly took place, names with spaces are truncated. This, the defense says, indicates the logs had been modified.

“The prosecution makes much of the two names. But if you log into this kind of IRC chat with the name ‘Advanced Persistent Terrorist Threat,’ you will just be called ‘Advanced,’ because you cannot include spaces. It simply cannot be done to be called ‘Advanced Persistent Terrorist Threat,’ so it’s been changed subsequently,” Michael Juul Eriksen argued.

Lost in translation

Speaking with TF yesterday, Kristina said that while Gottfrid is in good spirits, earlier in the week her son “lost his temper” with his interpreter over technical terms not being relayed correctly.

“Gottfrid and his lawyer have complained about this earlier in court, several months ago – and now this happens again,” Kristina said. “Denmark should use its best interpreters in a task like this – and the interpreters themselves should refrain from accepting to do the job it if they feel that they can’t do it well.”

By Friday morning, however, things had improved.

“I just saw a report that Gottfrid and [his new interpreter] smiled at each other when she tried to translate some technical terms,” a good sign, Kristina believes.

The week ends in more drama

The cross-examination of Gottfrid’s co-defendant had been due to begin Friday afternoon, a highly anticipated event since to date the 21-year-old has refused to give any comment to the police. But thanks to the prosecution producing yet more evidence that had not previously been shared with the defense, the court would have to wait.

Defending the 21-year-old, lawyer Michael Juul Eriksen said he couldn’t let the questioning go ahead until the information had been read by the defense.

The trial continues next week.

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

After being extradited to Denmark from Sweden in 2013, next month he will go to trial.

In recent weeks Danish authorities have been attempting to round up witnesses to ensure they attend the Frederiksberg court during September. It’s unclear how many there are, but TorrentFreak has learned at least one won’t be attending.

John, who has asked us not to use his real name, is a former colleague of Gottfrid who lives and works in Cambodia. TorrentFreak previously confirmed his identity and the fact that he and Gottfrid did business together. In April he received a surprise telephone call which led to an unsettling series of events involving Danish police.

Several months later and John is again being put under pressure. Following suspicions he was being watched, John received an anonymous tipoff that he had been placed on the prosecution’s witness list against Gottfrid. Sure enough, on Wednesday Jens Jorgensen from the Danish police, one of the people who traveled to Cambodia to question John, telephoned John to register him as a witness.

John and Jorgensen then exchanged emails in which the former expressed bemusement at why the prosecution would want to use his evidence when it actually supports the position of Gottfrid Svartholm.

“I fail to see how anything I previously said to you could be used in this case against [Gottfrid]. As I told you, lots of people had access to [Gottfrid's] computer,” John wrote.

“Why on earth would you want me to testify against him when you know full well that I don’t believe he committed this crime based on what little information I have?”

In his early days of detention Gottfrid was kept in solitary confinement, something which enraged Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and prompted complaints from Gottfrid’s mother Kristina to Amnesty. This treatment is also a big issue with John.

“Gottfrid’s previous prolonged, extrajudicial solitary confinement in your country very clearly meets the United Nations definition of torture, and I find it utterly troubling,” John told Jorgensen.

“With that in mind, I am deeply concerned about the prospect of being a part of something that is so clearly unethical if not outright illegal. Is there some sort of legal equivalent of being a conscientious objector to trials? If so, I would consider myself a conscientious objector to this one, the whole thing disgusts me whether he committed the crime or not.”

Clearly, traveling half way around the world to assist the prosecution in a high profile trial against someone you believe is innocent is problematic enough, but John also has serious concerns about the legal issues involved.

“Will I be offered access to a lawyer at any point during all of this? he asked Jorgensen.

“So far I’ve been threatened with force by a man claiming to be a Swedish policeman, made to answer a bunch of questions, and now I’m being asked to make a decision about legal matters. I’d really like access to a lawyer so I can make informed decisions about this, but I can’t afford one as I got fired from my job the day after you came to see me.”

In addition to visiting John, Danish police also visited John’s employer when they visited Cambodia earlier this year. He was fired less than 24 hours later but was fortunate to find new employment.

In his response, Jorgensen confirmed that attending the trial is a voluntary act and no one will force John to attend. He also informed John that if he needs legal advice, he’ll have to pay for it himself. Nevertheless, the summons was issued.

The summons states that traveling expenses will be reimbursed and if necessary John will be provided with a hotel room in Denmark. He is also offered DKK 40 for every two hours he’s away from home or work – that’s roughly $3.50 per hour. If that isn’t enough the police say that more money may be available, but in John’s case that probably won’t be needed.

“I respectfully refuse your invitation and can confirm that I have no intention of appearing in court, at least until you clarify your motives for requesting me to do so, and until you provide access to appropriate legal advice so that I can make an informed decision,” John concludes.

A copy of the summons can be found below – note that while Gottfrid Svartholm is accused of only “white collar” offenses, the contact address is the Public Prosecutor’s Department of Violent Crime.

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

Many of the big ‘pirate’ sites – The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, for example – have been blocked for years but now the country seems intent on blacking out sites that are definitely not in the piracy business.

As reported here on Saturday, last week a judge sitting in the Court of Rome ordered local ISPs to block a total of 24 websites including Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz and Russia’s largest email provider, Mail.ru.

The size and importance of Mail.ru in its home country and further afield is noteworthy. It’s the fifth most-visited domain in Russia behind only Yandex, Google and social networking giant vKontakte, of which it owns 51.99%. It’s the 39th busiest site worldwide according to Alexa, servicing in excess of 27 million users per day.

In a statement this morning Mail.ru said it has still not been able to establish the specifics that lead to it being blocked in Italy. Eyemoon Pictures, the complainant in the case, made no attempt to discuss any issues with Mail.ru before heading off to court, the email giant said.

“[Eyemoon Pictures] made no attempt to resolve the situation pretrial,” the company said in a statement.

“No notification of illegal content or requirements to remove copies of [Eyemoon's] films has been addressed to Mail.Ru Group from law enforcement agencies and Italy.”

The company only realized there was a problem when users began complaining of accessibility issues on July 17.

“We learned of the court’s decision from our users, as well as publications in the public domain,” Mail.ru added.

Criticizing the effects of the blockade on its userbase, this morning Mail.ru hit out at Italy for taking action without due consideration.

“We believe that this situation is detrimental to the interests of our users, and clearly illustrates the fact that some national laws in this area does not consider the specifics of the Internet companies and do not provide a clear, transparent process for resolving such conflicts,” the company said.

“There needs to be an active dialogue on the development of international pre-trial procedures for resolving disputes between copyright holders and Internet service providers. Their introduction will improve the position of all parties, including users worldwide,” Mail.ru concludes.

At the time of writing, Mail.ru is still inaccessible in Italy with the company having made no progress towards having the censorship lifted.

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

This week the American Bar Association joined the discussion with a 113-page white paper. With their “call for action” the lawyers encourage Congress to draft new anti-piracy legislation and promote voluntary agreements between stakeholders.

Among the options on the table is the filing of lawsuits against individual file-sharers, something the RIAA did extensively in the past. Interestingly, the lawyers advise against this option as it’s unlikely to have an impact on current piracy rates.

According to the lawyers these type of lawsuits are also financially ineffective, oftentimes costing more than they bring in. In addition, they can create bad PR for the copyright holders involved.

“While it is technically possible for trademark and copyright owners to proceed with civil litigation against the consuming public who [...] engage in illegal file sharing, campaigns like this have been expensive, do not yield significant financial returns, and can cause a public relations problem for the plaintiff in addressing its consuming public,” the lawyers write.

“The [American Bar Association] does not believe that legislative action directly targeting consumers would prove effective in reducing piracy or counterfeiting at this time,” the white paper adds.

While the above may be true for any of the cases that go to trial, various copyright trolls might tend to disagree as they have shown that targeting file-sharers can be quite lucrative.

Pirates shouldn’t be too quick to cheer on the lawyers though, as the white paper also contains some pretty draconian suggestions.

The American Bar Association says that future legislation should target infringing websites, and it names The Pirate Bay as an example. Since site owners are often unknown and therefore hard to prosecute in America, they advise a series of more indirect tactics.

The lawyers are in favor of a “follow the money” principle where anti-piracy measures are targeted at strangling the finances of pirate sites. They call for legislation that makes it easier to cut off advertising, and to seize funds through banks or payment processors.

In addition, the white paper calls for new legislation that would allow copyright holders to obtain injunctions against the hosting companies of pirate sites. The American Bar Association also considered similar injunctions against domain registrars and search engines, but it couldn’t reach agreement on these issues.

Overall copyright holders will be pleased to see the recommendations put forward in the white paper, but it’s doubtful whether lawmakers will be quick pick them up.

Several of the suggestions were previously listed in the SOPA and PIPA bills, so if these are ever drafted into legislation Congress can expect a lot of public backlash.

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

At the start of this weekend the torrent site decided to feature something a little more personal. The site currently displays a banner asking visitors to send their support to two of the site’s original founders.

Gottfrid Svartholm and Peter Sunde are both in prison at the moment and could use an uplifting note or two, the message suggests.

“Show your support by sending them some encouraging mail! Gottfrid is only allowed to receive letters while Peter gladly received books, letter and vegan candy,” the TPB team writes.

Peter Sunde is serving the sentence he received for his involvement with The Pirate Bay. He’s being held in a high security prison in Västervik and recently requested a transfer to a lower safety class unit.

Gottfrid Svartholm has already served his Pirate Bay sentence but currently stands accused in Denmark of hacking into the mainframe computers of IT company CSC. He faces up to five years in prison and his trial will start in two months.

When Gottfrid served his Pirate Bay sentence in Sweden he also received numerous letters and cards. He later sent a video out to thank everyone for the support he received.

“I would like to thank everyone who has supported me in any way, very much, it has meant a lot to me,” Gottfrid said at the time.

“I don’t have the time or the possibility to answer many of the letters but you should know that I read each and every one of them and it has really helped me a lot.”

—

For those who can’t read the image above, the addresses for Gottfrid and Peter are as follows.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg
c/o Jens H. Jorgensen
Politigarden, 1567, Copenhagen
Denmark

Peter Sunde
Box 248
593 23 Västervik
Sweden

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

On the heels of those multiple actions spanning several years comes news today that Argentina has become the first Latin American country to block The Pirate Bay on copyright grounds.

The action against the site was initiated by Cámara Argentina de Productores de Fonogramas (CAPIF), an Argentinian music industry group. A local member of the IFPI, CAPIF represents both leading and independent labels. In its application to the court the group said it wanted to do something about the rampant copyright infringement being enabled by The Pirate Bay.

The 67th District Federal Court looked favorably upon the labels’ plight and last month issued an order to have local ISPs block The Pirate Bay. Details of the case and court order, obtained by Acceso-Directo, only leaked out a few hours ago. Here are the key points.

In a directive stamped May 28 and June 26, the National Communications Commission, an organization that regulates and supervises telecommunications and the post office in Argentina, ordered ISPs to take action against a range of domain names and IP addresses associated with the site.

As can be seen from the image below, the ISPs – Arnet, Speedy, Fibertel, Claro, Personal, Movistar, Prima, Telecentro, Iplan, Metrotel and Sion – are now required to block 12 Pirate Bay domains and a total of 256 IP address.

According to local sources, the ISPs Arnet, Fibertel, Telecentro, Iplan and Metrotel are already blocking the site.

An interesting side-effect of the Argentinian blockade was reported to TorrentFreak by a reader in Paraguay. Internet services in the landlocked country are supplied jointly by Argentina and Brazil. This means that anytime now much of Paraguay will also be blocked from accessing The Pirate Bay, even though no court order was issued in that country.

The blocking injunction in Argentina is preliminary, so will take effect pending the outcome of a full trial.

Update: Hackers started a Pirate Bay proxy on a CAPIF’s subdomain.

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