They arrested a then 31 year-old man, known online as SilentNinja, and seized all his computers, mobile phones, cameras, memory cards and hundreds of DVD backups. The raid was the result of an investigation carried out in the months before.

The investigators found several of SilentNinja’s releases on The Pirate Bay, but it was CCTV footage of the local movie theater that eventually led to the arrest. Aside from improving releases from other groups, SilentNinja also camcorded several movies on his own, and copies of those eventually ended up online.

After his arrest SilentNinja was taken to a police station where he was interviewed and released some 12 hours later. In the months that followed the police searched the seized equipment for further evidence and the Salisbury man was eventually charged with several copyright-related offenses.

Last Friday, during a hearing at the Salisbury court, SilentNinja plead guilty to distributing and selling several copyrighted movies.

For three movies – Repo Man, I Love You Phillip Morris and Ninja Assassin – he made adjustments to existing pirated movies which were then uploaded to The Pirate Bay by others. Four other movies – Resident Evil 3D, Devil, Going The Distance and Piranha 3D – he cammed himself at a local cinema and sold the copies to interested parties. These cams didn’t appear online, as far as the defense was aware.

Talking to TorrentFreak, SilentNinja said that financial and mental health issues drove him to sell pirated movies for profit.

“I only did the camming myself for financial gain, due to personal circumstances at the time. If the situation wasn’t as bad as it was, I would have never sold content as we are here to share and not profit. This is the main regret of the whole thing because of my mental state, I went against what it’s all about and that’s what pisses me off,” he says.

The arrest and the investigation that followed led to some dark months for SilentNinja, full of mixed feelings. During talks with TorrentFreak it became apparent that he still feels a strong connection to his old habit, and we were told that he plans to release some guides on how people can put the video editing skills he learned to use for legal purposes.

In the coming weeks SilentNinja will meet with the probation service to discuss his personal health issues, and they will send a letter of notification to the courts along with sentencing proposals. SilentNinja is then expected to receive his sentencing in four weeks.

Although rare, this is not the first time that someone from the UK will be sentenced for camcording and subsequently distributing movies.

Earlier this year 25-year-old Christopher Clarke from Scotland was sentenced to 160 hours of community service for camming and uploading several movies. And September 2010, then 22-year-old Englishman Emmanuel Nimley was sentenced to 6 months in jail for a similar offense.

Source: UK Movie Cammer ‘SilentNinja’ Pleads Guilty

This has resulted in the arrests of several site admins including those from TV-Links and BitTorrent site FileSoup.

A few days ago a FACT investigation led to another arrest. A 26-year old man was arrested Wednesday with police reportedly seizing £83,000 and computer equipment following a raid in Derry, Northern Ireland.

After being questioned the man was released on bail, a very similar situation to other FACT-assisted arrests we’ve seen over the years. Other than that, the police haven’t released any information on the site in question or the exact nature of any alleged offenses.

However, after some digging TorrentFreak can with near certainty conclude that the man in question is connected to the video streaming website “Fast Pass TV”. The site’s Twitter account – which was recently deleted – an associated email address and various other trails all point to a man (P. M.) in Derry, Northern Ireland.

Another source later confirmed that the man from Derry is indeed the operator of “Fast Pass TV.”

The website in question did not store any video material but merely linked to third party sites. “Fast Pass TV does not host, store, or distribute any of the videos listed on the site and only link to user submitted content that is freely available on the Internet,” it stated on the website.

Fastpasstv.eu went offline around the time of the arrest leaving 68,287 registered members and hundreds of thousands of daily visitors in the dark. Without official confirmation from the authorities we can’t conclude that Fastpasstv.eu was the primary site FACT was after, but all signs point in that direction.

The arrest and the involvement of FACT are interesting, since the UK police have failed to convict any of the previously arrested operators of file-sharing or streaming sites. Most relevant to this case is the previous action against TV-Links.co.uk, a site which operated a service comparable to that offered by Fastpasstv.eu.

Legal action was taken against TV-Links.co.uk but eventually its operators won their lengthy trial. This set a precedent at least in the UK/European Union that under certain conditions these website owners do not do anything illegal. According to Section 17 of the European Commerce Directive, TV-Links was seen as a conduit of information and was afforded a complete defense in criminal proceedings for linking to other websites.

Whether the police are going to walk down the same path again, or whether the site operator was arrested for an unrelated crime is something the future will tell. However, it appears that Fastpasstv.eu has already made a comeback as fastpasstv.ms, where the recent seizures are also referenced. TorrentFreak could not verify the validity of the new site.

Source: Fastpasstv Shuts Down After U.K. Arrest

These sites usually require an invitation to become a part of and tend to be much more organized than their public counterparts. Not that public sites are disorganized as such, but with limited resources and means of generating funds for survival, admins on private sites tend to keep a relatively tight leash on members and content availability in order to keep their sites healthy.

One such site, SceneTorrents (ScT), had been working the private scene for nearly 4.5 years but on 27th November 2009, it all came crashing down. Filling an initial information vacuum in which rumor spread like wildfire, staff eventually said that the site would close forever, citing “pending legal issues.”

“Well ScT started in 2005 and apart from the odd take down request by Warner and a few others, things were plain sailing!” ex-owner of ScT ‘Feeling’ told TorrentFreak.

“Roll on 27th November 2009, the police turn up at my door at 6am – two detectives, a few police and a Proceeds of Crime officer.”

Of course, for those growing ever more familiar with anti-piracy enforcement in the UK – particularly those following the failed legal actions against TV-Links and FileSoup – the police were not on their own.

Along with the police came two investigators from FACT – the Hollywood-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft.

“The police handcuffed me and arrested me for copyright theft and money laundering,” Feeling told us.

“They then asked me to show them every room in the house before leading me off down my driveway and then into the back of a police van. In the mean time I see more FACT officers enter my home to search it while I was in the back of the van. At 6am in winter it is mighty cold, I can tell you that!”

Feeling was then driven a few miles to the nearest big police station where he was taken into custody and held in a cell. Several hours later his questioning began.

Led by a Detective Chief Inspector and joined by a Proceeds of Crime officer and one investigator from FACT, Feeling was accompanied by a duty solicitor.

“The police started off asking me about ScT, how long it had been running, my part in it and my knowledge of what was going on. They also questioned me about other sites I had no part in but they thought I did,” Feeling explained.

“The FACT guy sat there most of the time just listening, and he would chirp in now and then with his limited knowledge of BitTorrent and P2P.”

While Feeling notes that FACT had limited knowledge of what they were investigating, the police had even less idea.

“The police did not know a single thing about BitTorrent, P2P or anything else like that,” he explains. “I found it quiet disappointing that FACT had told the police that I was a major criminal to get them to arrest me and search my house.”

Convincing the police that file-sharing site operators are major criminals is a speciality of FACT – they have managed that in many cases already including TV-Links, FileSoup, SurfTheChannel and AradiTracker, to name a few.

The FACT officer present had a file in his possession which contained photographs of Feeling, but quite how they tracked Feeling down to his home address has never been revealed – he didn’t have his name or address on the site’s server bills or PayPal account.

However, TorrentFreak put it to Feeling that enemies of SceneTorrents were perhaps not to be found exclusively at the MPAA, but also in another ‘group’ a lot closer to home. From 2006 to 2009, the Warez Scene had waged an on/off campaign to compromise SceneTorrents and its staff. The information revealed by them, although it wouldn’t stand up in court as-is, would certainly have been welcomed by FACT. Some of it was incredibly sensitive.

“At the time of the arrest I thought it was the police that were running the whole thing, but I have later learned through the police telling me that it is FACT that are running the show and it is them who have my stuff up in Scotland,” Feeling explained.

At one point FACT, a private company, actually got involved in the interview.

“The FACT officer asked if I downloaded TV shows and if so, which ones?” Feeling told us. “I replied with ‘one or two’, and named Top Gear. He then went into a rant about stopping a DVD sale.”

Feeling asked the FACT guy about the free availability of these shows on the BBC iPlayer and how they may or may not affect DVD sales. “He didn’t say much after that,” he said.

Once the interview process was completed, Feeling was required to give a DNA sample and have his picture taken. He was then released on bail and given a date in February 2010 to return.

At home he discovered items had been taken by FACT – two Xboxes, a PC, portable hard drives, a phone, and even cash. Later that evening the phone and money were returned but Feeling was required to sign documents granting access to his bank accounts.

“After they had left I logged onto MSN on a friend’s PC and told djgrrr [a trusted staff member] to shut SceneTorrents all down,” Feeling explained.

As in the FileSoup case, Feeling was not ordered by the police to close SceneTorrents. This enabled staff to post up a message and leave the forums open to give the members some information and allow them time to find new homes.

However, the fact that the site had remained up, at least partially, caused issues among some site members. ScT had just completed a donation drive to get money for new hardware and some felt that having successfully pulled in money, shutting down had always been the plan. Of course, Feeling would’ve liked to have set the record straight, but due to his serious legal position, he couldn’t do that at the time.

While Feeling was getting arrested, another ScT staff member was also suffering the same fate. Discussions between the pair ended in a shared conclusion – no more torrent sites. “It just wasn’t worth it anymore,” Feeling told us.

Then in February, just two days before Feeling was due to answer his bail, the Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) handling the case contacted him. The police were still waiting for a response from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on how to proceed and a new bail date was set for May 2010.

In May the same thing happened again, and a new date was fixed for July. But while July duly arrived, the same could not be said about a decision from the CPS. No new date was set and several months later Feeling was wondering what on earth was going on.

“Christmas 2010 came and I called the DCI to find out what is going on and what was taking so long,” he explained. “They told me they were waiting on advice from the CPS but it was nearly resolved and we would find out more information in the New Year.”

But then in March 2011, Feeling read an article on TorrentFreak about the mess surrounding the now-failed case against FileSoup, again with FACT at the helm.

With cases failing all around them, FACT don’t have a good record when it comes to successful file-sharing site prosecutions so Feeling’s lawyers are now pressing the police to get something done about these continuing delays.

TorrentFreak has learned that admins of another UK-based torrent site are in the same position as Feeling. We have a hunch who that could be, although we could not get that confirmed at this stage. When we have the news of the outcomes in both cases, we’ll post an update.

As reported briefly yesterday, FACT continue with their drive to close down UK-based file-sharing sites with the assistance of the police, but without a successful prosecution to their name despite many arrests, one wonders for how long this can continue.

Source: SceneTorrents: The Untold Story of Raids and Arrests

“I got back home just before 8pm to find my belongings had been turned upside down, the dining room was a like a whirlwind had gone through..[]..they’d turfed out all the drawers of the desk, chucked back what was of no interest to them, left a pile of paperwork scattered across my desk and table with wires everywhere, talk about a nightmare!”

The police officers and ‘agents’ of the MPAA-funded FACT tagged everything with a chip in it, and bagged them as evidence. In the following weeks some items were returned, including a mobile phone, sat nav and video camera, but most of the hardware was kept under lock and key.

As Geeker and fellow FileSoup administrator Snookered were released from all charges by the Crown Prosecution Service last month, their belongings were finally returned this week. This final step in the dreadful legal proceedings should have been a day to celebrate, but the police once again trashed the party.

From the looks of it the police and FACT did not return all of the seized property, and the hardware that was given back appears to be completely trashed.

“Initially it looks like only a couple of things such as power supply units might be missing, but, as you will no doubt appreciate, there is a heck of a lot of stuff to check, it’s going to take me some time to go through it all,” Geeker explains.

“What concerns me the most about my property, is the condition it is now in… the way it was seized and bagged and how it was probably handled and transported to goodness knows where, the thought just horrifies me,” he adds.

The pictures below document the disaster. A 40 minute audio clip of the agents returning Geeker’s property is available here.

To say that the evidence was not properly stored and shipped would be a huge understatement. It looks like the computers have been taken apart, dragged through the mud, with no real attempt to reassemble them or clean things up.

According to Geeker none of his systems will boot up, which may not come as a big surprise considering the photos. The big question is why?

It almost appears as if a frustrated FACT employee trashed the hardware on purpose before it was sent back. How else could it turn into such a mess, and why take the computers apart piece by piece in the first place? What were they looking for? Warez?

Geeker is clearly not happy with how his property was handled, and he encourages everyone to help him get the story out.

“Please do me a favour everyone… tell everybody you know about this, blog about it, tweet about it, facebook and myspace or wherever else you feel it might do some good, let the whole bloody world know exactly what these evil gits have done …and will probably keep on doing if something isn’t done to stop this kind of crap from happening and people and their property being treated like this!,” he said.

Geeker has contacted his lawyer to see what the best response to this mess is.

Source: Police Return Seized Hardware to Victorious BitTorrent Admin, Trashed

This major detail wasn’t of much concern to the UK’s Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), whose investigation along with Trading Standards later came to involve the police.

Rather than go after giants like YouTube, Google Video, Veoh and DailyMotion who actually hosted the content, FACT built a case against the operators of TV-Links, David Rock – aka ‘Sin’ – and site partner David Overton who was raided 5 months later.

Dave Rock later explained that it would’ve been an easy task for FACT to track him down, since he never made any attempts at secrecy.

“To be honest I didn’t really attempt to hide my ID, as under UK Law linking to another site isn’t illegal, so I didn’t see the need,” he told TorrentFreak in a November 2008 interview.

There was confusion as to the basis for the initial raid, with FACT citing “offenses relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet” – an offense that doesn’t even exist under UK law – with Trading Standards and the police referring to “supplying property with a registered trade mark without permission.”

After a long wait the official allegations became Conspiracy to Defraud and breaches of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act. Similar fraud allegations were leveled at Alan Ellis, the ex-admin of OiNK.

More than 2 years of waiting later, in January 2010 the TV-Links case went to court. On the 19th January 2010 the operators of TV-Links – represented by Morgan Rose Solicitors, counsel William Clegg QC and Alex Stein for David Rock, and Ian Bridge for David Overton – raised preliminary points of law and asked for the proceedings to be dismissed.

This week Judge Ticehurst gave his judgment, announcing that TV-Links had won their case. He ruled in detail for the first time in a Crown Court in relation to Section 17 of the European Commerce Directive 2000, stating that Section 17 indeed applied and afforded TV-Links a complete defense in criminal proceedings in England and Wales for their linking to other web sites. In a nutshell and to coin a familiar phrase, the site was deemed a mere conduit of information.

The Judge also ruled that the allegations under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act failed because there was no evidence that TV-Links made available to the public the films and shows they linked to. There is no appeal available to FACT against this ruling.

The Judge noted that FACT had not applied the Attorney General’s guidelines when deciding to prosecute the defendants with Conspiracy to Defraud.

Morgan Rose Solicitors also represented OiNK owner Alan Ellis in January 2010, successfully defending a Conspiracy to Defraud charge. In OiNK’s case there was no ruling on the e-commerce directive, but Mr Ellis was unanimously acquitted, the jury finding him not guilty.

Both cases cost the public purse a large amount of money and even though FACT ran a private prosecution, it is the tax payer which picks up the bill for both the defense and prosecution costs.

The Court of Appeal has twice stated in games console mod-chip cases (R v Gilham and R v Higgs) that cases involving complicated issues of copyright law ought not to be tried before a jury but should instead be dealt with in Chancery where specialist judges can try these cases more efficiently and grant an injunction if required.

Although TV-Links triumphed in the end, there were many obstacles to overcome. In late 2008 after Dave’s TorrentFreak interview, the defendants were served with a financial restraining order under Proceeds of Crime legislation. This meant that the necessary funds required to mount a full defense against the MPAA-funded FACT were simply unavailable. But things came good in the end.

“In the process of successfully obtaining a court order to discharge the Restraint Order against the defendants, a copy of the agreement came to light. Had the Restraint Order remained in place it would have severely hamstrung David Rock in presenting his defense – under legal aid Representation Order it would not have been possible to appoint Mr Clegg QC, who was outstanding,” TV-Links’ legal team told TorrentFreak.

“I’d just like to thank Simon Rose from Morgan Rose Solicitors, William Clegg QC, Alex Stein and Ian Bridge for the positive result,” Dave Rock told TorrentFreak, as he moves to put the last two traumatic years behind him.

Source: TV-Links Triumphs With Landmark E-Commerce Directive Ruling

However, for the paranoid movie industry the UK does provide somewhat of a unique worry. While the incidence of cams coming from Britain is particularly insignificant, there is no such thing as an “illegally cammed movie” in the country, because, believe it or not, camming a movie is not illegal.

Earlier this year, boss of Vue Cinemas Tim Richards wrote about his dilemma.

“We call the police and the police aren’t interested,” said Richards. “So we ask (the pirates) to leave and they leave typically with their cameras and sometimes with their film intact.”

With the law about as much use as a chocolate teapot, cinema chains are resorting to implementing their own “laws” to stop the virtually non-existent cammers and, just like enforced DRM, all they do is annoy paying customers.

Jeremy Nicholas describes himself as “an award winning TV and radio broadcaster, after dinner speaker, compere and media trainer.” Like many of us, he also enjoys a good movie.

After work on Wednesday this week, Jeremy went to watch the new Bruce Willis movie at a cinema belonging to Cineworld, the UK’s second largest multiplex chain. Like most people on his way home, Jeremy had items on his person that enable him to do his job – one of them was a Sony laptop, an item too expensive to risk leaving in the car, particularly since it contained his current work projects, “plus some half baked book ideas.”

Because he had his laptop with him, Cineworld refused him entry.

Jeremy pointed out that his laptop has no camera feature, or additional hardware to record movies. Then, as if it is any of their damn business, cinema staff then enquired why he had bought it to the cinema at all. He duly explained he was on his way home from work.

Cinema staff then conceded Jeremy could be let in, but only if they could take his laptop from him. However, the cinema offered no receipt for the hardware, so Jeremy declined.

“So despite them treating customers with suspicion, as though were are all bootleggers, we have to trust them to get our equipment back,” said Jeremy.

“I was looking forward to watching the new Bruce Willis film. I wondered what Bruce would do under pressure,” he continued. “I wasn’t wearing a white vest, but decided I wasn’t standing for any nonsense and called for the manager. After a short time a small boy appeared. Sorry I said, I want to see the manager.”

But the small boy was the manager, who told Jeremy that they were acting on new “guidelines” from FACT – the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft, which advised banning laptops.

Although the manager said Jeremy could go in with his laptop after all, a query was raised over his cellphone which did have the ability to record a movie. He could take it in, he was told, as long as he had no intentions to cam Bruce Willis with it.

“Not the most rigorous interrogation and one that a determined bootlegger probably could have passed,” said Jeremy.

And then, just to show how ridiculous this ban is, Jeremy said as he was being questioned, a number of suspects customers walked past with handbags and rucksacks, any of which could’ve contained recording equipment.

But Jeremy enjoyed the movie in the end.

“‘Surrogates’ is about a future world where people have been replaced by robots. Everything ran smoothly for a while, but in the end it all went wrong because the robots were efficient but lacked humanity. Cineworld should show this to their staff as a training movie. (As long as none of them try and record it),” Jeremy concludes.

Perhaps it’s time for Cineworld to remove the statement below from their website:

Founded in 1995, our philosophy has been to provide a modern, clean environment that makes “cinema going” a pleasurable experience, which in turn encourages frequent return visits.

Source: Leading UK Cinema Implements MPAA Laptop Ban

ISPs wouldn’t be expected to play copyright cops, but instead decisions about disconnections under a 3 strikes regime would be made by the Copyright Tribunal, which would give those wrongly accused a chance to put their side of the story. This was generally accepted as a fairer way of going about the issue.

However, the Federation Against Copyright Theft has indicated that it is unhappy with the proposals and would prefer a “streamlined” process of justice, which would mean people could be disconnected without the full hearing in front of an independent body as suggested by the Economic Development Ministry.

FACT director Tony Eaton says that his organization doesn’t have a problem with judicial process – as long as it’s on their terms.

“The concern is that we send out 1000 infringement notices, and then someone says, `The way to stall this is let’s all go to arbitration’, and a year later we could still be going through that same process,” Eaton said.

“Do we get to the point where we have 1000 cases to be heard by the Copyright Tribunal? If everyone brings their lawyer, we will only do five in a day,” he added.

By anyone’s measurement, even given the lack of accuracy inherent in some anti-piracy evidence, 100% error rate and 100% appeals is a little pessimistic to say the least and to suggest everyone would bring a lawyer is absurd – the cost would be hugely prohibitive. Nevertheless, Mr Eaton said he would prefer to be able to present evidence in bulk to the tribunal – in search of corresponding disconnections in bulk, no doubt.

The discussion document for the amended Section 92a was open for submissions until August 7 and according to Ministry of Economic Development spokesman Joshua Herron, many of those submissions show opposition to disconnecting people from the Internet, period.

InternetNZ, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the Internet, said it is “absolutely opposed to the inclusion of termination of Internet accounts as a penalty for copyright infringement.”

Source: Movie Studios Want Own Version of Justice For 3 Strikes

Founded way back in 2003 – a light year in BitTorrent terms – UK based FileSoup is one of the original torrent sites and has built a solid reputation while keeping a surprisingly low profile, particularly considering its status. It has already outlived The Pirate Bay by around 9 months and is believed to be the oldest community still around today.

The search warrant for the owner of FileSoup was issued under Section 109 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 and authorized the gathering of any evidence related to the illegal distribution or file-sharing of copyright films. Notably, since 2005 FileSoup hasn’t operated a tracker but links to metadata which links to material hosted elsewhere. It has never hosted any copyrighted content.

Known online as TheGeeker, the owner of FileSoup was arrested and taken to his local police station. The charge: Suspicion of downloading copyrighted movies. He told TorrentFreak that his site had been under FACT investigation since February this year.

“I asked them [police] while still at home if I could contact a member of my family so that someone could come and make sure my dog was catered for, they said that I couldn’t. On the way to the police station I asked if they could contact someone to take care of the dog or if I could make a phone call, they again said I could not,” he recalls.

But the police’s lack of sympathy for Geeker’s pet was just the start. He says that before being put in a cell he was given a ‘Notice Of Entitlements’ sheet, a document explaining how a prisoner should be cared for. One section explained:

Keeping in touch: As well as talking to a solicitor and having a person told about your arrest you will usually be allowed to make one phone call. Ask the police if you would like to make a phone call. You can also ask for a pen and paper. You may be able to have visitors but the custody officer can refuse to allow that.

But Geeker soon discovered that things were different in his case. “I asked again as I was put in the cell, if I could contact someone or make a phone call, I was told no I couldn’t do that, I asked why and was told that the Inspector had put a block on any and all communication from me to anyone.”

Each time an officer called on Geekers cell, he asked permission to let someone know of his arrest. He also asked to contact his lawyer. Seven and a half hours later and both were effectively still being denied.

Around 4:45pm a policeman appeared in Geeker’s cell with a 12 page list of items seized from his house, and demanded a signature that would indicate that the items were his. Of course, it was impossible to say if the items they had in custody were indeed the ones on the list, so Geeker declined and the policeman stormed out of the cell.

“What do they take me for, a complete idiot!” says Geeker. “No one in their right mind would have signed to say any of these items were their property, especially if they’d not been there when it was seized!”

At 5pm Geeker was finally allowed legal representation, where he questioned that surely “downloading” was a civil issue, not a criminal one. However, the movie industry anti-piracy group FACT are known to frame things differently. In previous cases they have insisted that donations are profit and therefore constitute a criminal copyright offense. It is probable they have done the same thing at FileSoup and this could be why Geeker was arrested and not sued.

Geeker then had an interview with two police officers which was recorded on a machine which malfunctioned throughout the interview. In common with other FACT-run cases, the nature of BitTorrent proved difficult for law enforcement to grasp, with Geeker having to explain how everything worked – including what URLs and domain names are.

Upon leaving, Geeker was informed that in common with other cases in the UK such as that against TV Links, the private anti-piracy group FACT was in charge of his seized property, not the police.

Geeker was eventually released on police bail a little after 19:30 with his offense listed as “Distribute Article Infringing Copyright”. He must return to the police station in October.

Geeker says his home was a mess. “I got back home just before 8pm to find my belongings had been turned upside down, the dining room was a like a whirlwind had gone through..[]..they’d turfed out all the drawers of the desk, chucked back what was of no interest to them, left a pile of paperwork scattered across my desk and table with wires everywhere, talk about a nightmare!”

And Geeker’s dog was pretty upset too. “My dog was extremely traumatized, he’d been barking almost non-stop all day long the neighbour told my Dad when he went over at about 6:30pm to feed the dog as I hadn’t got back yet. My dog rarely barks at anything, now he barks at the least little thing, I am SO annoyed that they have done this to him!”

The FileSoup site remains open. Stay tuned.

Source: Oldest BitTorrent Site Targeted by Police, Owner Arrested

Nevertheless, following an investigation by UK Trading Standards, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the police, the admin was arrested. At the time, FACT claimed that he was detained due to “offenses relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet.” Except there was a problem.

There is no criminal offense of ‘facilitation of copyright infringement’ under English law. There would have been at least a civil offense if TV-Links had hosted the videos themselves, but they did not. Sites like YouTube and Dailymotion did, but the police or anti-piracy groups didn’t go after these giants. Indeed, the police themselves seemed to disagree with FACT’s reasoning for the raid, saying that the admin had been arrested for “supplying property with a registered trade mark without permission.”

…which raised another problem. The Trade Marks Act 1994 (specifically section 92) was designed to deal with physical, real-world counterfeit goods. Supplying links, if anything, could only be considered a service – definitely not a sale of physical goods. Getting a conviction on these grounds would be tricky, if not impossible. Considering the problems highlighted above, it’s no surprise that the TV-Links case has disappeared from the news radar.

TorrentFreak tracked down the now ex-admin of the site, 26 year-old Dave Rock, for the lowdown on this important case which seems to ask two questions: Can someone be held responsible when 3rd parties merely link to copyright works that are hosted by someone else, and furthermore, does this constitute a criminal offense under an act designed to protect physical goods?

It all starts on the morning of 18th October, just five days before the police raided OiNK. Dave had some unwanted visitors. At 06:20, two police officers, three FACT members, and around five Trading Standards officials descended on Dave’s home. Fortunately for him, in his case the media wasn’t tipped off, so there were no photographers and reporters outside his house. Alan Ellis of OiNK was not so lucky.

“The police and Trading Standards officers were always polite and professional, I wasn’t man handled like you see with the over acting police on the TV,” Dave told us. “I was arrested as soon as I opened the door, not cuffed and was allowed to grab a few bits, like my wallet and phone. They seized my laptop, my old PC and annoyingly, my girlfriends PC too, along with random CDs and four or five old hard drives, ranging between 8GB to 15gb.”

When we asked Dave what was on the search warrant, he said: “They ticked Video Recording Act 1984 – Section 16A and Trade Marks Act 1994 – Section 93. But, thinking about some of the questions during the interview I got the impression they were looking for DVD copying kit or they hoped to find this type of thing. FACT’s website always boasts about DVD pirate busts.”

The police officers then took Dave to the station where he was questioned. Not by the police, but by people from Trading Standards and FACT, a well known private anti-piracy company-come-lobby group. Quite why a private company is allowed to directly question someone in a criminal case that they may wish to prosecute privately is another question, and one that many people will find unpalatable.

It seemed that both outfits were disappointed, they must have expected more than just hyperlinks. In common with thousands of forums around the world, Dave didn’t know any of the TV-Links staff personally, and obviously didn’t know anything about the users. Almost 75% of the site’s visitors came from China, 10% from the US and next popular was the UK, at just 3.8%. Hardly a threat to Great Britain Ltd, but of course the implication was that Dave was making money. The reality was that he was receiving around $2 to $5 per day in donations from random site users, which he used to cover the server costs.

After six hours, Dave was released – without being charged and with no restrictions. Now, well over a year later, not much has changed. For the last 6 months or so, Dave has had no contact with the police and no contact through his lawyer with FACT or (Gloucester) Trading Standards. In fact, GTS has no further involvement in the case and has deferred to FACT, just in case they want to make a private prosecution. But, everything has gone very quiet.

TorrentFreak asked Dave if it had ever been raised that he was arrested under laws ill-placed to deal with the situation. He told us, “When it comes to law there isn’t really any point arguing after the point, you need to concentrate on identifying [in this case] how FACT will interpret the current law and, if/when this ends up in court, how they will use it to their advantage.”

Until then, it just seems like a waiting game. “I guess you could call it being in limbo, but recently I haven’t given it much thought, I’m just getting on with my life,” Dave told us. “The only thing that’s a little annoying is that FACT still have all the gear seized by GTS, apparently they’ve been given it for “forensic analysis”. Do I hear you cry ‘breach of Data Protection Act‘, for passing private data to a private company? Again this is something we are still looking into.”

So how on earth did TV-Links end up on the radar in the first place? Why was such significance put on the site and why did the response include a raid with so many people in attendance from the police, government trading standards and Hollywood-funded private company FACT?

“One thing I’d like to mention, Gloucester Trading Standards were always polite and professional,” said Dave. “In my eyes they were led up the garden path by FACT. My personal opinion is that Gloucester Trading Standards were lead to believe I was copying and selling DVDs. But, when they entered my home they only found crappy old PC gear, Laptop and no DVDs, and lost all interest – if they were ever interested in the first place.”

Despite the lack of interest and indeed grounds for a conviction, it doesn’t change the fact that TV-Links is gone as a result of the above actions. Why did it even find a place in people’s lives in the first instance? Dave believes it’s down to sheer lack of choice. “TV-Links and other linking sites are only around because the big media companies haven’t supplied the viewing public with any viable alternatives, at least until recently in the UK. The BBC iPlayer is very good, but it’s a shame it’s only 7 days of TV.”

So, with the authorities backing away, what are the chances of TV-Links making a comeback? “Running the site did take up all of my free time, it was good fun running it but I’m happy I now have my evenings and weekends free,” Dave told us. He has no intention of bringing the site back, particularly since a TV-Links.co.uk replacement site popped up many months ago at TV-Links.ws.

Finally, when sites are busted, many people are interested in exactly how the owners were tracked down by the authorities. With TV-Links, the techniques weren’t mysterious at all. They didn’t need to be. The reason why it was so easy is the very reason Dave felt free to run the site in the first place:

“To be honest I didn’t really attempt to hide my ID, as under UK Law linking to another site isn’t illegal, so I didn’t see the need.”

Source: The Inside Story of the TV-Links Bust

“This is the first time dogs have been used anywhere in the world to search for counterfeit DVDs and the results were amazing. With the cooperation and assistance of FedEx and Customs we were able to properly test the dogs in a live situation and prove that they can work in a busy working environment.”

Lucky and Flo

The MPAA is quite happy with their new “watchdogs”, and says the dogs are a “highly effective” tool.

“The MPAA is delighted with the immediate success of this initiative which has opened up a new and highly effective means of detection for counterfeit discs.”

Source: MPAA’s Anti-Piracy Dogs