The changes, which allow citizens to put forward legislative proposals for Parliament to vote on, came at a time when restrictive copyright was already under the spotlight.

As a result the citizen-drafted ‘Common Sense for Copyright’ initiative quickly gathered momentum. It was hoped that the proposals would influence updates to copyright law being prepared by Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture.

The draft, the brainchild of the Open Ministry nonprofit, calls for reduced penalties for copyright infringement and current penalties to be applied only in cases of a commercial scale. Fair Use provisions would also be expanded, alongside exemptions for those wishing to backup purchased media and time-shift commercial content.

In July 2013 the initiative made history after reaching the required 50,000 signatures. It was submitted to Parliament in November 2013 but now the future of the proposal is in serious doubt.

Much to the disappointment of its backers, the Finnish Parliament’s Education and Culture Committee is recommending that Common Sense For Copyright should be rejected.

European Digital Rights (EDRi), a group which defends civil rights in the information society, reports that the Committee concluded its handling of the initiative yesterday as expected.

“In its report, the Committee notes that the initiative suggests several ambitious amendments, but that it considers it impossible to propose, based on the initiative, even partial changes to the existing copyright law,” EDRi notes.

“The report states that the initiative includes internal contradictions and that many of the amendments it suggests are too significantly incompatible with the current legislation.”

As late as last week, Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi), the Finnish Pirate Party and the Open Ministry submitted complaints to the Chancellor of Justice over the way the Education and Culture Committee has been handling changes to copyright law.

The complaints allege that drafting has been carried out in secret, contrary to the Committee’s obligations under the Finnish Freedom of Information Act. Furthermore, the criteria to be applied in web-blocking cases had not been made available.

Parliament is expected to vote on the citizens’ initiative next week but after the Education and Culture Committee’s recommendations the odds are stacked against it.

Any rejection of the key points will come as a big disappointment to the 50,000+ citizens who supported the initiative. Many had signed following widespread outrage provoked by a police raid on the home of a then 9-year-old girl whose Winnie the Pooh laptop was confiscated after an allegation of file-sharing. The case was later settled for 300 euros.

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

The company has not been very active on this front in the United States, but more so in Europe. In Finland for example Hustler is sending out settlement demands for hundreds of euros to alleged pirates.

A few days ago one of these letters arrived at the doorstep of Sebastian Mäki, identifying the IP-address through which he offers a Tor exit-node. According to Hustler the IP-address had allegedly transferred a copy of Hustler’s “This Ain’t Game Of Thrones XXX.”

The letter is sent by lawfirm Hedman Partners who urge Mäki to pay 600 euros ($800) in damages or face worse.

However, Mäki has no intention to pay up. Besides running a Tor exit-node and an open wireless network through the connection, he also happens to be Vice-President of a local Pirate Party branch. As such, he has a decent knowledge of how to counter these threats.

“All we can do at the moment is fight against these trolls, and they are preying on easy victims, who have no time nor energy to fight and often are afraid of the embarrassment that could follow, because apparently porn is still a taboo somewhere,” Mäki tells TorrentFreak.

So instead of paying up, the Tor exit-node operator launched a counter attack. He wrote a lengthy reply to Hustler’s lawyers accusing them of blackmail.

“According to Finnish law, wrongfully forcing someone to dispose of their financial interests is known as blackmail. Threatening to make known one’s porn watching habits unless someone coughs up money sounds to me like activities for which you can get a sentence.”

Mäki explains that an IP-address is not necessarily a person and that Hustler’s copyright trolling is likely to affect innocent Internet users. Because of this, he has decided to report these dubious practices to the police.

“I am also concerned that other innocent citizens might not have as much time, energy, or wealth to fight back. Because your actions have the potential to cause so much damage to innocent bystanders, I find it morally questionable and made a police report.”

Whether the police will follow up on the complaint remains to be seen, but Hustler will have to take its hustling elsewhere for now. They clearly targeted the wrong person here, in more ways than one.

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

It’s a system that first started in Europe with

The aim for copyright holders is to avoid litigation while generating revenue. Their evidence is often questionable and as a result those that fight back often have their cases dropped – trolls tend to prefer the escape option over the consequences of an adverse verdict.

After moving to the U.S., settlement programs gained prominence through the actions of entities including Prenda and X-Art. These schemes have come under increasing fire in U.S. courts, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a new country is now on the agenda.

Citizens of Finland are now being subjecting to pay-up-or-else letters, but the decision to target this Nordic country isn’t the most obvious one, thanks to less favorable laws than those in the US.

Letters that have recently gone out to some Finnish Internet subscribers (translated example below, from a DNA customer)  accuse them of downloading porn using BitTorrent and include an offer to settle for ‘only 600 euros’ (about US$825). A vague reference to the police is also included,  ratcheting up the pressure to comply.

According to Ville Oksanen, vice chair of the EFFi and Post-doc researcher at Aalto University, under Finnish law the account holder is presumed to be the infringer by the courts, unless the or she can show that someone may have used the account.

In addition, the loser of a case pays the costs, unlike in the U.S. where each side pays its own costs with a few exceptions (such as a baseless case). More and more courts around the world are starting to look closely into these kinds of cases, and in some instances throwing them out. That’s not so good if you’re liable for the substantial cost of defense.

TorrentFreak has been able to confirm that the letters relate to content from the Hustler stable, who committed to “turning piracy into profit”, presumably through these troll tactics, as far back as 2009.

Why this scheme is starting in Finland now is unknown, although the crowdsourced copyright law may make it less profitable in the future. According to Oksanen, the law as written would remove some sections of copyright law, making account-holder identification much harder.

The lawfirm behind this letter, Hedman Partners, did not respond to requests at the time of publication.

With thanks to rehanna, vhautaka and mikachu

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

This also happened to a crowdsourced draft for a “fairer” copyright law which reached the required threshold last summer.

Termed “The Common Sense in Copyright Act,” the proposal aims to reduce penalties for copyright infringement, increase fair use, ban unfair clauses in recording contracts, and ease the ability for people to make copies of items they already own for backup and time-shifting purposes.

Last month the proposal was first presented in the Finnish Parliament. This piqued the interest of copyright lobby groups, who handed over a memo to Members of Parliament before the hearing, to inform them on their stance. Needless to say, the entertainment and media companies were rather critical of the public proposal.

What was more surprising though, is that many MPs repeated the rhetoric that was put forward in the pamphlet. Member of Parliament Kauko Tuuppainen went as far as parroting from the memo word-for-word, which was noticed by fellow MP Oras Tynkkynen, and later picked up by the Finnish press.

Below is a translation of Tuuppainen’s address in Parliament:

“The proposal could make Finland into a safe harbor for international piracy. Why? Because it encourages copyright infringement in many ways. One would be free to copy illegal content from the internet according to the proposal.” – MP Kauko Tuupainen in the initial hearing in Parliament.

Now compare this to the language used by the copyright groups in their memo:

“The proposal would make Finland into a safe harbor for international piracy. The proposal encourages copyright infringement in many ways. One would be free to copy illegal content from the internet according to the proposal.” – Joint announcement by the content and media industry organizations.

The two descriptions of the law are nearly identical, with several phrases being read word-for-word directly from the memo.

Open Ministry, the organization that coordinates the public law proposals, is not happy with the display of lobbyists’ influence. The whole idea of the public proposals is to hear the voice of the public and experts, but some MPs would rather parrot lobbyists’ opinions.

“Since copyright issues can be complex, we asked MPs to first hear what the experts have to say on the suggested changes, before shooting them down based on industry lobbyists objections and exaggerated propaganda. They did not,” Open Ministry Chairman Joonas Pekkanen says.

“The suggested changes are not that radical, since there is national room to maneuver within the boundaries set by the EU Copyright legislation,” he adds.

The above shows that the copyright lobby has a strong influence on lawmaking, and that in some cases the voice of the public can be easily countered by a handful of lobbyists. While it doesn’t leak out in public very often, it’s not a big secret that industry groups have a strong say in the laws that are enacted worldwide.

Just a few months ago it was revealed that 150 amendments to the EU data protection bill, submitted by Belgian Member of European Parliament Louis Michel, were copy-pasted from lobbyist paperwork.

For the Finnish “fairer” copyright law there is still hope though, but full transparency will be required. The next hearings are scheduled to be behind closed doors, but Open Ministry hopes that will change considering the recent events.

“There is hope that the committee chair, MP Raija Vahasalo, has the character to heed the request from professors and experts for full transparency and open this up for public hearings, workshops and debate – like the other citizen initiatives currently in Parliament,” Open Ministry’s Pekkanen says.

The proposal has now been referred to the Culture Committee, who will advise on whether to accept it later this year.

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

The UK has the Internet Watch Foundation and in New Zealand there is the Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, for example. These initiatives are not widely discussed, but occasionally they make the headlines when a legal site ends up in the filter.

In Finland the National Bureau of Investigation is in charge of maintaining a local blocklist, targeting foreign sites that distribute child pornography.

While nearly everyone agrees that child abuse is something that should be rooted out, not everyone believes that these secret blocking initiatives are the best solution. Internet activist Matti Nikki belongs to the latter group, and to express his opinions he started lapsiporno.info, which translates to “child porn dot info.”

“I started the site back in december 2005 with only one article online, outlining what I knew about Internet censorship and [that] it would and wouldn’t apply to child porn distribution,” Matti explains.

“It has been my belief that censorship isn’t any kind of solution to child porn, and I actually believe it’ll only worsen the situation as it’ll give a reason for the people involved to tighten their security and anonymity.”

In addition to writing opinion articles and pointing out that many websites are being censored by mistake, Matti also posted a list of hundreds of URLs that are blocked under the filter. And this is where things took a turn for the worse.

The National Bureau of Investigation decided to add lapsiporno.info to the filter because it exposed the blocked links, a decision Matti challenged in court. In 2011 a Helsinki court sided with Matti, ruling that his site should not be blocked, but this has now been overturned by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court decided today that, even though the site itself isn’t linking to or hosting illegal material, the need to protect children from harm outweighs freedom of speech in this case.

The Court noted that if lapsiporno.info is allowed to stay accessible then other sites could circumvent the blockade as well by adding legal content to their websites. The Court waved away the argument that the site is not covered by the blocking legislation, which applies to foreign sites only, since it lists domains of foreign sites.

The ruling means that the website in question remains blocked by most ISPs in Finland. The ironic situation is, however, that lapsiporno.info still accessible to the rest of the world, hosted on a Finnish server.

The Finnish case opens up the debate where the censorship line should be drawn. While this case resolves around child pornography, copyright holders could be inclined to make the same claim for sites that link to The Pirate Bay.

And what about news sites who cover this issue and mention lapsiporno.info?

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

A recent modification of the national Constitution allows citizens to make legislative proposals for Parliament to vote on, providing they get 50,000 supporters within six months.

One of the submitted proposals, which calls for a fairer copyright law, just reached its goal one day before the voting deadline. This makes Finland the first country in the world in which legislators will vote on a copyright law that was drafted by citizens.

Termed “The Common Sense in Copyright Act,” the proposal wants to reduce penalties for copyright infringement, increase fair use, ban unfair clauses in recording contracts, and ease the ability for people to make copies of items they already own for backup and time-shifting purposes.

The decriminalization of file-sharing will also put a stop to house searches and online surveillance of suspected copyright infringers, not uncommon events in Finland.

Last year a house search resulted in international outrage when it was revealed that a police unit raided a 9-year-old girl and confiscated her Winnie the Pooh laptop after an allegation of sharing.

Now that the goal of 50,000 votes has been reached the copyright law proposal will be put to the vote in the Finnish Parliament. This is likely to take place early next year.

In the meantime, street artist Sampsa, who pushed the proposal forward together with the Finnish Electronic Frontier Foundation (Effi), continues to gather political support for the law, not just in Finland, but also in Europe and throughout the rest of the world.

“We’ve begun working closely with European Digital Rights members globally to ensure that when the vote hits the floor in 2014, the pressure is still on so copyright law will be changed forever,” Sampsa told TorrentFreak.

Open Ministry, the organization that coordinates the public proposals, notes that today’s success breaks with an old tradition where lobbyists draft copyright law. This counter-proposal is needed to restore the balance, they argue.

“Members of Parliament are quite open about the fact, that Copyright Laws are handed down to them from the international lobbyists. If we do not push back, they will keep on rubber-stamping harsh legislation and infringing on consumer rights,” Joonas Pekkanen, Chairman of Open Ministry, informs TorrentFreak.

Of course, even if the proposal reaches the goal, there’s no guarantee that the Parliament will sign it into law in its current form. However, for a country that has a voting population of just over four million, a proposal with direct support from 50,000 citizens can’t be easily ignored.

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

Following an undercover investigation, in 2007 rightsholders filed an official complaint and two months later the site was raided by authorities in Oulu, Finland. A total of 15 servers were discovered containing a range of copyrighted material including music, movies, TV shows, video games and software.

Represented by anti-piracy group CIAPC (known locally as TTVK), rightsholders said that the individuals running the Angel Falls topsite had caused damages to their businesses totaling six million euros. The developing copyright case was to be the largest in Finland’s history.

Earlier this month the trial concluded. Four men were found guilty and two were cleared as per our earlier report. However, according to Herkko Hietanen, a defense lawyer in the case from the Turre Legal lawfirm, the case had a somewhat interesting feature.

During the trial an IFPI investigator was called upon as a witness, but during his testimony something unusual came to light.

“After his presentation the defense counsels pointed out how the information shown on the video of his investigations did not match with the printed log files,” Hietanen informs TorrentFreak.

The video, a screencast of the investigation, showed a particular username accessing an Angel Falls FTP server. However, the corresponding text log for the same event showed a completely different username.

“When the IFPI investigator was asked about this he acknowledged that the names did not match. He said that the Finnish anti-piracy people and IFPI had collected the information together, but there was also an MPAA executive in the room while the evidence gathering took place,” Hietanen explains.

The IFPI investigator was then asked to reveal the name of the MPAA executive. He declined, but did offer an explanation for the inconsistencies in the evidence.

In an apparent attempt to hide the identity of one of their spies, the MPAA executive edited the evidence gathered during the session.

“The IFPI investigator handed over the evidence material to the MPAA senior executive who then changed the text file before the anti-piracy organization handed over the evidence to the Finnish police,” Hietanen says.

No one from the MPAA informed the defense that the edits had been made and the tampering was revealed at the worst possible time – during the trial. This resulted in the prosecutor ordering a police investigation into the changes that had been made.

“Police then proceeded by comparing the ‘work copy’ that the IFPI investigator produced with the material that police and the defending counsels had received. Police found out that the material had differences in over 10 files,” Hietanen reveals.

Considering the effort that had gone into the case, the outcome was somewhat of a disappointment. Two men were completely cleared and the four who were found guilty escaped with suspended jail sentences. The six million euros in damages claimed by the rightsholders was reduced to just 45,000 euros.

The fate of the MPAA investigator is unclear, but since his username was revealed in court it seems likely that if he used the same one on other sites, that will no longer be possible.

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

A recent modification of the national Constitution allows for citizens to make legislative proposals for the Parliament to vote on, providing it gets 50,000 supporters within 6 months.

One of the proposals that has submitted since calls for a fairer copyright law.

Termed ‘To Make Sense of the Copyright Act’, the proposal wants to reduce penalties for copyright infringement, increase fair use, and ease the ability for people to make copies of items they already own (for format shifting, or backups).

During the first three months little over 27,000 people have supported the initiative, and to get more people to sign up several websites are participating in a SOPA-style Internet blackout today.

“The idea is to follow the model that was in use in the US where companies take part in campaigning when there is an injustice. So the blackout day is a chance for Finnish companies to speak out against this far-reaching copyright law,” Joonas Pekkanen of the Open Ministry said in a comment.

Among the participating websites are Afterdawn, FinDance and ja Ylilauta and many others. Finnish citizens can support the proposal here.

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

These sites often develop into a source from where all kinds of unauthorized digital media cascade down into the public Internet and file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent.

Complaints were filed in September 2007 by rightsholders of a wide range of content and two months later the site was busted by authorities in Oulu, Finland. They discovered a network of 15 servers containing large quantities of movies, music (170,000 tracks on one server alone), TV shows, video games and software, plus books and other content.

More than 5.5 years later and six men were on trial for their alleged activities on the topsite between January 2006 and November 2007. It was to be the largest case of its type in Finland’s history.

Rightsholders, represented by Pirate Bay-nemesis anti-piracy group CIAPC (known locally as TTVK), said that the individuals running the Angel Falls topsite had caused immense damage to their business. They entered claims for damages totaling 6 million euros, of which 900,000 euros was submitted by Microsoft alone.

The Oulu District Court heard that the topsite was well-organized, with tasks spread between the defendants in order to create an efficient file-sharing system. In addition to international material, Angel Falls was said to have specialized in local content and during 2006 carried copies of nearly all domestically produced movies and artist discographies.

Yesterday the Court handed down its ruling. A 32-year-old man, said to be the founder of the topsite, was handed a six month suspended prison sentence. Two others, also in their early thirties, we given four month suspended sentences. A third received a sentence of 50 days. Two others were found not guilty.

Although the rightsholders involved in the case are pleased that convictions were achieved, they appear somewhat disappointed with the damages award handed down by the Court. Their collective claims amounted to around six million euros but the Court felt that 45,000 euros was an appropriate amount.

“We are pleased the court held clear criminal activity had taken place,” says CIAPC Assistant Director Jaana Pihkala.

Hinting at an appeal, Pihkala said that considering the scope of the defendants’ activities and the damage caused, the anti-piracy group expected a higher compensation award.

“We are now looking carefully look at the judgment and possible ways forward,” Pihkala concludes.

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

The group copied The Pirate Bay’s design for their campaign site, including the CSS stylesheet, and replaced the logo with one of a sinking ship.

Of course the site doesn’t host any torrents. Instead, all links point to a page which informs visitors that there are plenty of legal alternatives to The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay, generally quite supportive of copy-pasting, is not happy with CIAPC’s apparent infringement and plans to take legal steps against the anti-piracy group.

“We are outraged by this behavior. People must understand what is right and wrong. Stealing material like this on the internet is a threat to economies worldwide,” a Pirate Bay spokesman told TorrentFreak.

“We feel that we must make a statement and therefore we will sue them for copyright infringement,” the spokesman adds.

“If not even IFPI and their friends can respect copyright, perhaps it’s time to move on?”

CIAPC takes part in the anti-piracy program of the music lobby group IFPI, who coincidentally sued the Pirate Bay admins in Finland two years ago.

The screenshot above shows that CIAPC effectively copied The Pirate Bay CSS stylesheet. This is a violation of The Pirate Bay’s usage policy, which specifically prohibits the use of any site material without permission.

“Our site (and all of its contents) is free of charge for anyone for personal usage. Organizations (for instance, but not limited to, non-profit or companies) may use the system if they clear this with the system operators first,” the policy reads.

“We reserve the rights to charge for usage of the site in case this policy is violated. The charge will consist of a basic fee of EUR 5,000 plus bandwidth and other costs that may arise due to the violation,” it adds.

It is doubtful that CIAPC will voluntarily pay the fee, so The Pirate Bay believes it has no other option than to take the group to court and demand compensation. After all, they have to protect their copyrights.

How serious this threat is has yet to be seen.

With regard to CIAPC, it’s worth noting that they managed to copy the Pirate Bay website despite the fact that most Finnish ISPs have been ordered to block the website.

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