A 32-year-old man from Salisbury, England, pleaded guilty to several movie piracy related charges last Friday. The man, going by the nickname SilentNinja, admitted to camming several movies at a local cinema as well as distributing films that ended up on The Pirate Bay.
The popular video streaming site “Fast Pass TV” shut down earlier this week following the arrest of one of the site’s alleged operators. The site itself didn’t host any copyrighted content but indexed videos hosted on third-party sites. The operator has been released on bail pending inquiries.
In the dying days of November 2009, a shockwave rippled through the private BitTorrent tracker community. One of the scene’s most successful sites, SceneTorrents, was shutting down for good, with the site’s operators citing “legal issues”. Now, 18 months later, here is the full story of raids and arrests, followed up by an all-too-familiar deafening silence.
Last month the second case against a UK-based BitTorrent site came to an end. Two administrators of FileSoup – the longest standing BitTorrent community – had their case dropped by the authorities and were free men once again. This week, personal belongings that were seized during the house raids were released and returned, but what should have been a celebration turned out to be a great disappointment.
In 2007, while attention was focused on the OiNK bust, TV-Links, a site which embedded videos from YouTube-like sites, was targeted by the police and the MPAA-funded FACT anti-piracy group. Not only was OiNK admin Alan Ellis recently acquitted, but in a landmark ruling both TV-Links defendants have also won their case.
Cineworld, the UK’s second largest multiplex cinema chain, says it provides an environment that makes cinema going a pleasurable experience, “which in turn encourages frequent return visits.” However, they have just alienated an award winning TV and radio broadcaster by refusing him entry because he had his laptop with him.
As New Zealand mulls its options for dealing with alleged pirates under its proposed Section 92A legislation, FACT, a division of the MPAA, says it’s not happy with the current proposals of giving those wrongly accused a chance to go to arbitration since it would be too time consuming.
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Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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