More recent and notable successes for the entertainment industries include the blocks against major torrent sites in the UK, and in Italy where a total of 27 domains were blocked last month.

In addition to sundry other countries already initiating court-ordered blockades, action can be expected from other major regions in the months to come. Spain has been allowed off the United States’ naughty step after agreeing to bring in tough new measures, France has its eye on future domain blocking, and just this week Norway moved a major step towards infringing site censorship.

Today we can report that yet another entertainment industry anti-piracy group has gone to court to have someone of the world’s largest torrent sites blocked by ISPs. According to court papers filed at the end of last month, The Greek Society for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AEPI) is targeting a total of ten sites.

The list of domains includes KickAssTorrents, isoHunt, 1337x and H33T, plus several local sites – Greek.to, Greek-Team.cc, P2Plaent.net, Tsibato.info, GreekDDL.eu and Greek-Best.com

On April 30 AEPI’s demands were heard by the Athens Court (court papers, Greek PDF). The anti-piracy group initially requested a temporary injunction against several ISPs including OTE, Wind, Vodafone, Forthnet, Hellas Online, On Telecoms and the academic GRNET, to force them to block the above sites by IP and DNS.

AEPI argued that an immediate injunction is required to stop the sites further damaging their members’ businesses but the ISPs countered by informing the court that the sites have been open for years so urgency is not an issue.

“It should be noted that this is the first time a case of this magnitude and importance has appeared before a [local]court, even for temporary measures,” Greek news outlet ADSLGR told TorrentFreak in a comment.

“The option to block access to sites raises serious questions on the issue of the protection of Net Neutrality. The decision is expected within the next few days and will take effect until there is a ruling about the injunction measures asked by AEPI. Even if there is no concept of ‘legal precedent’ in the Greek Law System, it is believed that a ruling favoring AEPI may influence future cases in Greece.”

TorrentFreak sources have confirmed that later this month The Pirate Bay will also be targeted by AEPI. The anti-piracy group did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

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

LiveMovies.gr is a site dedicated to listings of TV shows and movies. While many sites may provide links to torrents or other methods of acquiring content from unauthorized sources, LiveMovies provides a database of information and links to shows being streamed by their official and legitimate providers.

According to the operators of LiveMovies, AEPI is now suing them for “illegally making available” content that they do not have the right to.

“We’ve explained to AEPI in every way possible that livemovies.gr doesn’t ‘present works to the public’ but instead transmits information about the works,” the admins explain. “AEPI sued us, and considers that it has suffered damages worth 10,000 Euros for ‘each illegal act’. The result was the launching of a preliminary felony process against us!”

The admins of LiveMovies say that by means of an extra-judicial statement, they have explained to AEPI that in accordance with both international and local law, “providing links to the official site of a TV station isn’t ‘presenting works to the public’ but transmitting information relevant to said work.”

But the pleas of the site’s operators are falling on deaf ears. They say that AEPI have responded and insist that any LiveMovies user who ‘uploads’ a link to an official TV site can only do so with the explicit authorization of AEPI.

“It’s worth noting that AEPI doesn’t provide a single judicial decision supporting what it invalidly claims, but speaks in general and vague terms of ‘EU Court of Justice case-law‘, obviously referring to the irrelevant decision regarding the hotels’ obligation with regards to the TV sets installed in clients’ rooms,” they add.

It’s clear that LiveMovies are taking this attack very seriously. In response they are now pressing a number of charges against AEPI including fraud and perjury. They have also gone to the very top by reporting the case to the government.

“We have also denounced the case to the Ministry of Culture, which, under law, supervises AEPI and whom we call to assume its duties against this unprecedented and unfair attack against the very concept and function of the Internet,” LiveMovies admin report.

“We also ask for the solidarity of public opinion, so that AEPI finally realizes that we live in an Information society where Intellectual property coexists with other fundamental rights, and sticks to what’s under its jurisdiction, as defined by the law and its statute,” they conclude.

We were going to publish this story yesterday, April 1st, but we were worried that everyone would think it was a hoax. It’s absolutely real.

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

On Tuesday, virtually every site offering user-generated Greek subtitles (fansubs) for English language movies and TV shows received legal threats from EPOE. Within a very short time, all sites including greektvsubs.gr, subtitles.gr, greeksubs, subs4u.gr and apsubs.com had either closed down or removed all subtitles. A sample of the translated complaint issued to greektvsubs is shown below:

According to our information and evidence, in your capacity as owner and manager of the website under the name www.greektvsubs.gr, without right and in violation of the provisions of Law 2121/93, without the required prior written permission of the legitimate beneficiaries of copyright and related rights of our member-companies, are engaged in a totally illegal activity, which consists of right without translation in the English language texts / dialogues and subtitles creation of films or television series, the royalties of which belong to our member companies, which you have then illegally and without right, distributed via the Internet.

So why are the Greeks file-sharers so upset? Yiannis, a user close to the subtitling sites explained to TorrentFreak: “Greek TV networks are most of the times very slow in airing the popular shows (one or two years is common), not showing them at all or the worst, or show a season or two and then forget about them, leaving the fans looking desperately for solutions. DVD distribution companies are no better. Some popular shows do not even exist in a translated form.”

“A couple of years ago dedicated fans started working to translate and create subtitles of their favorite shows and they teamed up to create a few web sites to share them with the rest of the fans,” Yiannis said “One of the biggest was greektvsubs.gr. These people managed to do with hard work, love and dedication what the TV industry failed: translate TV show episodes hours after they were aired and offer the subtitles for Greek speaking people to be able to watch their favorite show.”

There is currently a fierce debate surrounding the legality of such fan-subtitling sites. The Greek subtitles (in common with user-generated subtitles in other locales) are the result of hours of really hard work, listening to the TV show or movie in its native English and then translating by hand into Greek. The ‘subbers’ don’t have access to the original scripts, everything is created from scratch since the movie or TV show isn’t even available in Greek, so on this basis some believe the sites operate legally. However, some are suggesting that under Greek copyright law, a translation could be considered as a ‘derivative work’ and as such requires permission from the original copyright holder.

Whatever the truth – and this is echoed in the emails we’ve received here at TorrentFreak from the fans – there is obviously a really healthy demand for these products in Greek language (not to mention from deaf people who absolutely rely on subtitles), yet the media companies spend their money on litigation, instead of addressing the core issue of giving the fans what they want.

In the meantime, while EPOE throws its considerable weight around, the show goes on for Greek subtitling fans as they head to their new home at gr.tvsubtitles.net.

Thanks to Yiannis and fakeb0us

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