TorrentFreak

A mysterious company using the name “Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency” is sending letters to home addresses of alleged BitTorrent users, asking them to pay a settlement fee of hundreds of dollars or face jail time. The outfit claims to work with law enforcement and says it protects the rights of popular artists such as Skrillex and Cee Lo Green . The sophisticated scam goes beyond what we’ve ever seen before, and suggests that there may be people at the ISP level involved.

Despite intervention by the Open Rights Group, an adult movie company in the UK has been given the green light to hugely expand its anti-piracy operations in the UK. The Court of Appeal told Golden Eye, a company connected with the Ben Dover porn brand, that it can start sending out thousands of cash demands to individuals suspected of sharing not only their works online, but those that belong to third party righsholders. Already the company has indicated it intends to expand its project.

Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits continue to sweep across the United States and for the first time a software company has joined in on the action. Canadian company reFX Software has sued nearly 200 alleged BitTorrent users for distributing their audio software. The defendants include consumers on residential connections as well as students or employees of Webster University and the University of Central Missouri.

A landmark order by a Pennsylvania District Court judge may become the turning point for the many mass-BitTorrent lawsuits that are sweeping through the United States. For the first time in these cases a copyright holder has been ordered to go to trial, instead of settling with the alleged file-sharers for a few thousand dollars. This will be the first time that BitTorrent-related evidence will be tested in a U.S. court.

A German law firm will hit a new low next week, even for companies engaged in the file-sharing settlement letter business. The company says that from September 1st it will begin publishing the details of individuals it claims have infringed their clients’ copyrights by sharing hardcore pornography online. To make matters worse, they’re threatening to target churches, police stations and Arabs first. Neither the Pirate Party nor Anonymous are happy and now the latter are threatening action of their own.

Police in Sweden are warning Internet users not to send money to criminals trying to extort money from alleged file-sharers. The sophisticated scam began when unsuspecting cell phone users browsed an infected website which somehow extracted information from their devices. This was followed up by a mailed allegation of copyright infringement and a cash demand for between 90 and 195 euros to be paid into a foreign bank account. Swedish Antipiratbyran say the scheme is nothing to do with them.

Porn companies attempting to track down alleged file-sharers with the aim of extracting cash settlements have managed to incur the wrath of judges in both New York and Columbia. In separate ongoing cases, adult studio plaintiffs ordered Comcast and Cablevision to provide them with the identities of alleged BitTorrent users against instructions issued by the court, which in one case were put in place specifically to protect defendants’ rights.