“As the law is today, you can not have a media center without breaking the law,” he told TorrentFreak.

“When I think of a media center it is a place where you have all your movies, pictures and music together. You can only do that by having a digital copy of the movie.”

Henrik told us that he had taken this action to draw attention to laws which allow him to copy DVDs for his own personal use, but forbid him to remove the DRM in order to do so. In his confession he asked Antipiratgruppen for a response by December 1st, indicating if they are prepared to take action against him.

The group has announced that Henrik will indeed get a response, but didn’t tell him directly, instead preferring to comment via the press.

“It is a political matter, and we have sent it to the Association of Danish Videodistributors so they can consider it. But Henrik Andersen will get a reply by 1st December,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer Thomas Schlüter to Comon.

Schlüter went on to say that proving this type of infringement is usually impossible.

“Unless people confess, then it’s impossible to prove that they have broken copy protection. We can not break down the door to people’s homes and explore what they have available on their media server,” he said.

Poul Dylov, director for Warner Bros Denmark and chairman at the Association of Danish Videodistributors, said they will have a meeting next week to decide whether to report the matter to the police.

Dylov added they have not previously encountered a similar event, and consider the confession to be a media event, an assessment with which Henrik agrees.

“Of course, until now the film industry has not met the intentions of the law and as the culture minister will not force the film industry [to allow copying by removing DRM] by changing the law, then there must indeed be an awareness of the problem through the media,” he explains.

“But the whole problem lies in a sense with the Minster of Culture who does not follow its own interpretation of the law and the intentions of it. This gives the film industry an easy ride to the detriment of consumers,” he added.

All will be revealed here, on or before December 1st.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“It requires very strong and concrete evidence to have these people convicted. We simply could not lift the burden of proof,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer Mary Fredenslund when explaining the decision to Politiken.

In just a year, four cases against alleged pirates have come before the High Court in Denmark and the overall result for the copyright holders has been negative. Three of the defendants were acquitted due to insufficient evidence, and in the one case where a file-sharer was convicted, the defendant had confessed.

Defense attorney Per Overbeck says that in addition to these outcomes, cases against two of his clients have been dropped in recent years. “Antipiratgruppen has acknowledged that they can not get people convicted without either catching them in the act or threatening them to confess,” Overbeck said. “In practice, this means that without a confession there is no case,” he added.

Per Overbeck and Antipiratgruppen’s assessment that recent High Court rulings make it virtually impossible to get individuals convicted for illegal file sharing are supported by a recent Government report from the Ministry of Culture.

According to the report, IP-addresses can only be used to identify the person paying for the Internet subscription, not the person who actually downloaded the files. The courts have ruled several times that in terms of evidence, an IP-address alone is insufficient to prove guilt.

In one case a defendant walked free after arguing that that someone else must have accessed his wireless router to download copyright infringing material.

Despite these legal setbacks for copyright holders in Denmark, it is worth noting that Danish anti-piracy tracking company DtecNet remains the main partner of the RIAA and other music groups in countries where governments are looking to implement three-strikes policies to get alleged file-sharers disconnected from the Internet.

The evidence DtecNet gathers also consists of just an IP-address. Indeed, there is no known anti-piracy method to discover who is sitting at a particular keyboard, on any particular computer, at any given time.

In the on-going trial of AFACT v iiNet, DtecNet gathered the evidence used in the case. Under cross-examination a computer forensics investigator – who was previously a key witness in the 2004 KaZaA trial – admitted that any ISP account could have multiple users in the same household, and could have other unauthorized 3rd-party users if a wireless router was compromised.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

This week, however, the IFPI and Danish Antipiratgruppen achieved a small victory in the case of a middle-aged man from Aalborg who used Direct Connect (DC) to share around 13,000 music files in 2005.

According to a Comon.dk report, the IFPI/Antipiratgruppen tracked activity which it linked to an IP address registered to the man. Obviously – as in all such cases – it was not possible to positively identify the person at the keyboard simply via the IP address, but the man made some admissions in what appears to be a generally weak defense, and these seem to help seal his fate.

Having previously lost his case in the district court, the man appealed and the case went to the Vestre Landsret, one of Denmark’s highest courts.

The defendant claimed that he couldn’t figure out how to use Direct Connect but admitted visiting the software’s homepage, albeit on an old PC which dated back to the mid 1990’s. It was also made clear in court that the man did not operate any type of wireless network, eliminating a defense which proved successful in other cases.

The ruling from the Vestre Landsret which was announced yesterday morning, stated that the man was guilty of copyright infringement. “The Court held that no person other than him [the defendant] could have used the IP address, and therefore he was sentenced,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer, Maria Fred Lund.

The defendant was ordered to pay 160,000 kroner ($24,400) in damages, which was substantially less than the 440,000 kroner ($67,200) the anti-pirates wanted. He was also ordered to delete the music files he had obtained illegally.

Although the damages are less than the IFPI would’ve liked, the defendant’s lawyer, Per OverBech, says they could appeal to get the damages reduced. The court calculated the damages based on the losses estimated to have been suffered following the breach of copyright. The Vestre Landsret set an amount of 80,000 kroner ($12,200) and used the principle of ‘double-up’ to reach a final figure of 160,000 kroner ($24,400).

The ‘double up’ provision in Danish law is comprised of two parts. The first part covers the losses estimated to have been suffered following the breach of copyright. The court then doubles this amount to cover the actual losses and the documenting of such losses, which Antipiratgruppen and IFPI did not do.

“It is worth noting that it certainly pays to deal critically with the requirements of Antipiratgruppen,” said Per OverBech. “But in this case, the Vestre Landsret applied the principle of double-up, and I do not think there is reason for this,” noting that Antipiratgruppen provided no evidence to prove that sales had declined due to the alleged file-sharing activities of his client.

OverBech admits that it is unlikely that he will achieve an acquittal for his client but could go to the Supreme Court to contest the ‘double up’ principle applied by Vestre Landsret.

Thanks Peter_Pan

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The cases went to court and were heard this Friday, and to the file-sharing masses of Denmark, it turned out to be a very important day. The women did not deny the claims that unauthorized file-sharing had taken place on their Internet connections but stated clearly that they were not the ones carrying it out.

They claimed that their Wi-Fi had been piggybacked by persons unknown but the music industry didn’t care. Rather like the lawyers chasing the UK’s alleged pinball pirates, they asserted that an Internet subscriber is responsible for what others do on their connection, and it was up to the women to prove that they had not shared music with others. The court didn’t agree and acquitted the women of all charges.

Lawyer Per Overbeck told Ritzau: “It is an unusually clear and precise judgement. It is the plaintiff, who has the burden of proof. Many who have received letters with claims have been given the impression that they were required to pay. But we now have the court’s word for that, they do not [have to pay]. It is not enough to say that you are guilty of piracy due to owning a particular Internet access point.”

Piratgruppen, a pro-sharing group and antithesis of Antipiratgruppen, was delighted with the verdict, with spokesman Sebastian Gjerding inviting the anti-piracy outfit to drop all claims of compensation against file-sharers.

“They can not continue to send these demands to people. Antipiratgruppen and the IFPI should send an apology instead. It is an absurd claim that an Internet subsciber must take responsibility for the actions of others. Many networks can be attacked and abused.”

Antipiratgruppen, on the other hand, thinks this is a bad decision by the court and refuses to send out apologies. Their lawyer, Torben Steffensen, says this is a matter for the Supreme Court to decide. “We do not believe that this law is appropriate and we disagree with this decision,” he said. “There should be a law that protects artists from losing income due to piracy. Therefore we would like to have the Supreme Court deal with the issue.”

However, lawyers for the two women doubt the case will end up in the Supreme Court, since a lower court and now the High Court has ruled in the same way – it is the plaintiff who has the burden of proof.

There was a similar decision in Germany recently, and if Topware Interactive and Davenport Lyons have the guts to take on a defendant in the UK who actually fights back with a ‘wireless defense‘, there could be one there too:

“The onus is on the party bringing the action to convince the court on a balance of probabilities that the person being sued is responsible for the infringement,” says Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with prominent law firm Pinsent Masons. “The legal wrong isn’t that you left your network open, it’s the file-sharing.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.