Most often these lawsuits are filed by porn companies, independent movie studios such as the one behind The Hurt Locker, and more recently book publishers such as Wiley. In almost all cases the aim is to identify users and get them to settle out of court, a strategy dumped by the major labels of the RIAA several years ago.

Now, however, there has been an interesting development in northern Europe. The case involves an album from a very young artist called Robin Packalen, a child sensation who appears to be Finland’s answer to Justin Bieber.

On 22nd February 2012, Packalen, who’s signed to Universal Music, released his first album. Unsurprisingly the official street date was beaten by two days thanks to an uploader on The Pirate Bay. This didn’t go unnoticed by his label.

After monitoring the swarm, IFPI and Teosto, the Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society, went to court to obtain the personal details of the individuals behind a total of 82 IP addresses.

IFPI and Teosto convinced the Helsinki District Court that the pre-release leak cost them significant sums of money. The Court subsequently ordered two ISPs, Telia Sonera and Elisa, to provide the names and addresses of the alleged infringers to the rightsholders as requested.

Telia Sonera, to which 34 of the IP addresses relate, said it would comply with the Court and had no further comment. Elisa (30 IP addresses) also indicated it would comply if it could, but it may not have the information being requested.

The news has spooked one individual who contacted TorrentFreak this afternoon. He told us that he was one of the file-sharers in the swarm when the album was released and after seeding for a long time he’s “99% certain” his IP address will have been tracked.

“It happened to be my little sister’s birthday and guess who is her idol? Yep, you guessed right. As I’m such a nice big brother, I decided to download for her Robin’s newest album as a birthday present,” he told us.

“Well, it now seems like that present is turning out to be quite expensive, should they decide to send me a letter asking for money. If they do, I guess I have no other option but to pay. I’m just a poor student that can’t afford an expensive legal adviser to help me out.”

The question now is what IFPI and Teosto (or perhaps Universal directly) will do with the identities once they have obtained them. According to Antti Kotilainen of anti-piracy group TTVK (the outfit that conducted the investigation), the responses will vary.

“Every case will be investigated separately. Consequences will vary from compensation to a criminal investigation,” he said.

But considering the artist in question here – none other than Finland’s Justin Bieber – the chances are that many children will be caught up in the sweep. What will happen to them?

“In those cases, we hope the families will have a serious conversation with their children about piracy,” Kotilainen added.

Jarkko Nordlund, CEO of Universal Music Finland, warned that more albums had been monitored and more action could follow.

“This is a constant fight against piracy. We want to make sure people know there are legal ways to buy music online. We will communicate with the TTVK and see if there are serious infringers that we want to take to court,” Nordlund concluded.

Update: Comment from Joonas Mäkinen, Pirate Party of Finland

Robin’s album has sold more than 80,000 thousand copies, and IFPI and the court handling the case see 82 downloads as notable financial losses? This is ridiculous. He can’t even get to the official top lists in the broken system because the album is low-priced in the first place. Simply the act of just going after these filesharers costs more money and time for the lawyers and courts than could be gained if those downloads were directly converted to physical album sales.

It’s now even in the official PR discourse that the millions of YouTube views of his music video are celebrated as a success. From the perspective of a fan and end-user, it often makes no difference if the musical pieces are available for listening on YouTube, streaming services or as downloaded files. 82 people thought the latter was a more convenient way for them. This is not a good enough reason to allow third party organization get their hands on private information of ISP customers.

Source: Court Gives IFPI Permission To Identify Pirate Bay Users

Two months ago the RIAA and IFPI accused Google of massively profiting from piracy and obstructing efforts of rightsholders to reduce the availability of illegal content.

Thus far, this row between Google and the entertainment industries has largely taken place behind closed doors, but a confidential document circulating among music industry executives shows that a lawsuit is also being considered.

“IFPI’s litigation team, in coordination with the RIAA, is continuing to negotiate with Google to obtain better anti-piracy cooperation in various areas,” the unpublished document obtained by Handelszeitung and partly shared with TorrentFreak explains. It is noted that Google provided recording labels with a special online search interface that allows for mass queries to be marked as infringing.

Using this interface, IFPI reported a massive 460,000 Google search results between August and December 2011. In addition, hundreds of Blogger sites were reported and shutdown upon request from the music industry group.

But IFPI claims this is still not enough, and is considering suing Google because the company fails to censor links to infringing content.

“Google continues to fail to prioritize legal music sites over illegal sites in search results, claiming that its algorithm for search results is based on the relevance of sites to consumers,” the document states.

“With a view to addressing this failure, IFPI obtained a highly confidential and preliminary legal opinion in July 2011 on the possibility of bringing a competition law complaint against Google for abuse of its dominant position, given the distortion of the market for legitimate online music that is likely to result from Google’s prioritizing of illegal sites.”

In other words, IFPI accuses Google of antitrust practices by failing to censor its search results in favor of the music industry. Strong words, and quite unprecedented if a lawsuit does indeed get filed.

A “Voluntary Code of Practice” suggested by the entertainment industries last month revealed that the IFPI and RIAA want all search engines to de-list popular file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay, and give higher ranking to ‘legal’ alternatives.

Today we learned that if Google doesn’t give in to these demands, an unprecedented lawsuit may follow.

Source: Music Industry Mulls Suing Google Over “Pirate” Search Results

Even today, when more music is being sold than ever before, the RIAA, IFPI and other music groups still lobby hard for draconian measures to curb piracy. Whether it’s SOPA, PIPA or similar legislation as currently being presented in Finland and Ireland, the music industry begs governments to help them out.

One of the countries where these lobbying efforts have paid off is France, where Internet users are now monitored by the state and disconnected if they are caught pirating three times. The big question is whether this law, which costs 11 million euros a year, has any effect at all.

Yes, says the music industry, backing up their claim with a non-peer reviewed academic study. Last week some of the results were already teased to the press, and yesterday they were presented to the public, coinciding with the publication of this year’s Digital Music Report published by IFPI.

We decided to take a look at the two reports, and the only reasonable conclusion we can make is that France’s three-strikes anti-piracy law is not having ANY affect at all. Let’s start off with how IFPI summarizes the results in their report.

“The analysis found that French iTunes sales saw a significant uplift at exactly the period when awareness of Hadopi was at its highest, in Spring 2009, when the law was being debated in the National Assembly.”

This is bogus. The researchers don’t conclude this at all. There is no uplift in sales reported. What the researchers found is that in France, compared to five other European countries, more music was sold through iTunes. Looking at the graph below (from the report), it’s clear that the “uplift” in France before Hadopi was introduced (March 2009) is actually much sharper than the two years after.

Another quote from the IFPI report:

“This effect was maintained throughout the period studied. French iTunes sales were 22.5 per cent higher for singles and 25 per cent higher for digital albums than they would have been, on average, in the absence of Hadopi.”

This is interesting, and indeed pretty much what the researchers conclude. However, as long-time followers of Hadopi and other anti-piracy laws, this conclusion doesn’t feel right. The huge increase in sales reported by the researchers is based on the alleged impact Hadopi had in the year and a half before it went into effect, not after

The following footnote from the researchers is also quite revealing.

“We also estimated the model for the 6 months before and after September 2010, as this was the first month that HADOPI began sending out first notices. In this case, the resulting coefficient was close to zero and statistically insignificant.”

Indeed, when the three-strikes warnings were actually sent out, there was no effect on iTunes sales compared to the control countries. This is unusual, because you would expect that the hundreds of thousands of warnings that went out would have had more of an impact than the ‘news’ that this could happen in the future.

In addition, if we look at the search trends for Hadopi and The Pirate Bay we don’t see a drop in interest for the latter, suggesting that the interest for pirated goods remained stable.

The researchers, however, are convinced that their findings are the result of the “potential implementation” of Hadopi. We find this strange. Could there be an alternative explanation? Let’s have a guess.

At the same time Hadopi was introduced (early 2009) there was a lot of buzz around Spotify in several of the countries that were used as a control group in this study. Could it be that Spotify resulted in relatively less iTunes sales in countries like UK and Spain than in France? This could potentially explain all of the findings reported in the study. And that’s probably just one of the many alternative explanations.

Whatever the case, concluding that expensive privacy-invading legislation such as the French Hadopi is boosting sales is going way too far.

Source: Anti-Piracy Warnings Have No Effect on iTunes Sales

One Year Later: Google’s Report Card on Making Copyright Work Better Online is the embarrassingly patronizing title of a new report from the IFPI detailing Google’s progress on copyright infringement issues over the past 12 months. Unsurprisingly the whole thing reads like a school report, with the IFPI setting out what Google should have achieved and then noting what ‘grade’ the search engine actually achieved in each task.

“While Google has taken some modest steps to deal with copyright infringement online, the promises made by Google remain unfulfilled,” the report begins.

“Despite its steps, the simple fact is that Google continues to both (i) receive financial benefits from sites and applications that engage in piracy and (ii) place artificial road blocks in rights holder efforts to protect their content online, contrary to the DMCA.”

The report notes that Google made a promise to act on reliable copyright takedown requests within 24 hours and is commended for exceeding that. Nevertheless, a company capable of returning search results “in nanoseconds” should be doing better, IFPI suggests. Furthermore, the music group states that Google has put a limit on the number of infringement reports that can be filed each day that “do not scale to the scope of piracy online.”

Google is also criticized for not adequately screening apps for compatibility with the music industry’s interests before allowing them onto the Android Marketplace, and then profiting from them in the period before they are taken down.

Surprisingly, given the recent and wrongful Mega Song takedown, IFPI criticizes Google for giving users the right to issue copyright claim counter notices without them “having a clear understanding” of the rights issues involved.

“We find it disturbing that Google admonishes rights holders to ensure their claim is valid and warns them about penalties for false claims, but fails to hold the average user to similar standards. Is that neutral, or is that tipping the scales in a manner that benefits Googles bottom line?” the report asks.

On the issue of censorship of its AutoComplete feature it’s noted that some progress has been made but, no surprise, Google needs to do better. “For example, when “lady gaga mp3″ is typed into the search bar, Autocomplete directs a user to choose “lady gaga mp3 free” or “lady gaga mp3 download,” results that lead to illegal sites,” IFPI complains.

Referencing Google’s AdSense program, IFPI says that Google should proactively screen all sites to which it serves ads to ensure they aren’t “pirate sites,” a truly massive and almost impossible task given that music licensing is IFPI members’ responsibility and area of specialty, not Google’s.

The search engine is also criticized for not prioritizing “authorized” over “unauthorized” sites in its search results. Google’s YouTube doesn’t avoid criticism either.

“Increasingly, music-oriented videos posted on YouTube include links to download the sound recording associated with the video illegally. This is in violation of YouTube’s own policies. In addition, YouTube hosts videos explaining how to game the Content ID system and how to rip the audio content to create an MP3 file from a music video,” the report notes.

Overall, Google is told that it must do better if it is to meet the standards required by the music industry. However, what is also clear from the language in the report is that improved results will only lead to demands for even greater “grades” next year.

The school report ends with Google getting admonished for its negative attitude in class.

“While professing to agree that copyright infringement is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, Google raises alarmist, self-serving criticism to any legislative proposal to deter or thwart rampant copyright infringement,” notes the report (pdf).

“Google should stop engaging in destructive rhetoric and come to the table with constructive proposals to address this problem,” it concludes.

There’s no doubt that Google has its faults, but treating the company as if it is the one engaging in rampant copyright infringement can’t be a sustainable tactic. Admonishing and patronizing it in public won’t help either.

Source: IFPI and RIAA Patronize Google With Anti-Piracy “Report Card”

“Once the police have verified the evidence, they notify MasterCard and Visa who require the acquiring bank providing the retailer with payment services to produce evidence of appropriate licenses to sell music or cease providing those services to the retailer,” IFPI explained.

It’s suggested by IFPI that the main targets of the action are Russian ‘AllofMP3′-style clones, sites that often operate legally under domestic legislation much to the disappointment of the international music industry.

However, the engagement of a new and powerful ally this week has the potential to affect many ‘private’ members-only BitTorrent sites, wherever they may be.

While the March announcement from MasterCard and Visa would have been of little concern to the majority of torrent sites, the news that online payment processor PayPal is now getting on board will be viewed very differently and will sound a cautionary warning for the future.

Admittedly the relationships between PayPal and torrent sites don’t always run smoothly (accounts and funds are often frozen or completely lost), but nevertheless PayPal remains the long-standing donation service of choice for dozens, maybe hundreds, of torrent sites. Very often donations are their only source of revenue.

While in connection with this scheme IFPI specifically refer to the ‘sale’ of illicit music (something which the vast majority of torrent sites don’t directly engage in), previous anti-piracy cases have framed torrent site user donations as “subscriptions” or “paid memberships.” To the UK police, who have already been happy to arrest the admins of several torrent and other file-sharing sites, the difference may be academic.

“Today’s announcement shows that PayPal is very serious about fighting music piracy,” said Carl Scheible, PayPal UK’s managing director.

“We’ve always banned PayPal’s use for the sale of content that infringes copyright, and the new system will make life even harder for illegal operators. Our partnership with the music industry helps rights holders make money from their own content while stopping the pirates in their tracks.”

As highlighted in our earlier article, it is perfectly possible to run a few-hundred-thousand-peer private tracker for a fairly modest monthly outlay but with rising costs associated with topsite access (for obtaining new content quickly) and site-run seedboxes, outlay can begin to spiral out of control.

If the music industry does indeed pressure PayPal to take action against torrent site donations as well as sites directly selling unauthorized music, administrators will be forced to reconsider their positions. Some will undoubtedly call it a day.

Source: PayPal, IFPI and Police Collaborate To Strangle Pirate Music Sites

The pair would not be paid by the IFPI, but by a company called IPGate. This company was originally set up to exploit the intellectual property rights of a German inventor family but it also did a lot of work for IFPI. The Zurich-based boss of IPGate and the CEO of IFPI had something in common – they were the same man, Beat Högger.

The secretarial appointments went ahead as planned, but why would IFPI want to have their employees working for another company? According to a reference in its own documents, the aim was “tax optimization”.

In Germany during mid-April 2010, IPGate applied for “exemption from domestic income tax deduction” but in order to achieve this status it would need to prove that it was active in Switzerland. By having a couple of employees on board, let’s say a couple of secretaries for example, that requirement would be more easily fulfilled.

According to journalist Christian Bütikofer, who uncovered this developing story earlier in the year, in October 2010 the Federal Central Tax Office in Bonn, Germany, subsequently granted IPGate a tax deduction of 316,500 euros.

IPGate had been doing significant amounts of work for IFPI. They managed performing rights revenue through SwissPeform, a company that also connected it IFPI chief Beat Högger.

IPGate also regulated the Swiss music charts and handled the annual Swiss Music Awards. IFPI now claim that Beat Högger arranged this business without their permission.

Högger has now resigned his position at IFPI Switzerland and his board members are trying to distance themselves from his actions, but according to journalist Christian Bütikofer, that probably won’t be possible.

When Högger wanted to employ the pair of secretaries in 2009 he necessarily sought the permission of his fellow board members. Those discussions took place during a conference call between Högger, Ivo Sacchi of Universal, Julie Born of Sony, Ueli Bracher of Music Sales, Stefan Grulert of EMI and Martin Schiess of K-Tel and Victor Waldburger of Phonag.

The proposal gained approval with two exceptions. Victor Waldburger disapproved of the appointments while Ivo Sacchi abstained from the vote, but whatever the outcome IFPI knew that the secretaries would be working at IPGate.

Through a spokesman IFPI say they were unaware “that IPGate may have had the intention to act illegally against the German tax authorities” but they are also denying that the board agreed to contract IPGate to carry out the other responsibilities outlined above.

According to IFPI the agreement was “signed by the CEO [Beat Högger] alone and without the knowledge of the Board.”

All agreements between IPGate and IFPI have now been terminated but the tax investigation continues.

Source: IFPI Boss Quits Following Tax Fraud Allegations

Not that the IFPI and their major label members are strangers to the torrent scene though. Dealing with The Pirate Bay has naturally taken up quite a lot of their time but it’s questionable whether that time has been well spent. The same cannot be said about LimeWire, who they utterly destroyed in the United States.

So having strangled Mark Gorton’s baby, where now for IFPI? The answer, it seems, is LimeWire’s namesake, LimeTorrents.

A relative newcomer to the BitTorrent scene, LimeTorrents has made rapid progress. Overall it was the best newcomer of 2010 in terms of traffic, even though it only appeared halfway through the year. It ended 2010 as the 10th largest torrent site in the world, a huge achievement.

Then, on April 5th and with no warning, LimeTorrents went offline. TorrentFreak learned that LimeTorrents had been ‘raided’ but unusually there was no announcement by the Swedish police, who are usually keen to publicize such events. So what happened?

The root of the story goes back to October 2010. IFPI wrote to Itstaden/ServerConnect, the host of not only LimeTorrents but several other major sites including KickassTorrents. In an attempt to pressure the host, IFPI were waving The Pirate Bay verdict around.

Specifically, they drew attention to the decision of the Svea Court of Appeal, which said that The Pirate Bay’s former host, Black Internet, could be held liable for TPB’s activities.

Following this IFPI contact some of the sites at ServerConnect relocated to new hosts abroad, but KickassTorrents, TorrentDownloads and LimeTorrents all remained in Sweden. This prompted further communication from IFPI in March 2011, advising ServerConnect that among other things they could be guilty of “receiving payment from criminal activities”.

So, paraphrasing IFPI: “You’re hosting torrent sites, you know what they’re doing, shut them down, or we’ll get the courts to do it for you.”

But courts have expensive and long-winded processes and, as can be seen from The Pirate Bay’s case, they don’t necessarily have much effect. So IFPI tried a tactic previously employed by Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

Without a court ruling or assistance from the police or any official authority, IFPI simply asked ServerConnect for LimeTorrent’s hard drives. And, under threat of legal action similar to that used against Black Internet, ServerConnect handed them over, taking LimeTorrents completely offline. LimeTorrents’ owner received no warning and was given no chance to make a backup.

ServerConnect were told by IFPI that the drives and data would be returned, but that has not happened. The owner of LimeTorrents was forced to restore the site from a 2 month old backup and return with a new ISP, but not before being ‘punished’ by Google for the unexpected downtime. He is now trying to rebuild the site.

This morning, TorrentFreak asked IFPI why they were so interested in LimeTorrents and what they were hoping to find on their servers, but perhaps unsurprisingly we are yet to receive a response. But let’s hazard a guess.

Could to be that IFPI is hoping to build a case against LimeTorrents on the basis that it has a similar name and logo to LimeWire, and thus hoped to attract users from that “illegal service”? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time that the major labels had tried that. A similar strategy worked against LimeWire itself when they were shown to have targeted users of Napster, another service which was deemed illegal.

Source: IFPI Seizes Control of LimeTorrents Hard Drives

Today we bring another example, one that’s perhaps even more worrisome.

Those who read TorrentFreak regularly will be familiar with music industry lobby group IFPI. Crowned as the most active DMCA sender of 2010, IFPI are known for their aggressive anti-piracy tactics. Among other legal efforts, they were one of the driving forces behind the Pirate Bay trial.

At the same time IFPI has been lobbying in the political arena for more tools to combat online piracy, with varying results. However, due to a new appointment at the copyright and enforcement unit of the European Commission, it appears that IFPI’s influence might increase significantly.

Maria Martin-Prat, who was formerly employed as Director of Legal Policy and Regulatory Affairs at IFPI, has now been selected to lead the EU unit that deals with copyright and enforcement issues. Among other things, she will be in charge of trying to get the controversial ACTA anti-piracy agreement accepted.

This means that Martin-Prat, whose previous job was to convince politicians that more restrictive copyright legislation is needed to deal with online piracy, is now responsible for shaping future copyright laws at the European Commission. Needless to say, it’s likely that her view on copyright won’t be the most objective one.

Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom is not happy with the appointment, to say the least. However, knowing the ins and outs of the European Commission and the dominance of lobby groups, it comes as no surprise.

“Welcome to the European Union, where the big business lobby organizations are calling most of the shots at the Commission, and where citizens are just seen as a nuisance to be ignored. I guess the only real news is that they don’t even bother to try to hide it any more,” he said in response to the announcement.

With the appointment of Martin-Prat, Europeans should brace themselves for more restrictive copyright legislation, and more effective enforcement of current laws. Meanwhile, IFPI members will be cracking open bottles of Champagne and dancing with excitement in their offices.

Source: Music Industry Lobbyist Becomes Europe’s Copyright Boss

The 6 year-old case has now been concluded and although the rightsholder plaintiffs in the case won their battle – albeit in a much smaller way than anticipated – the Court’s ruling is set to prove a huge setback to their overall war.

The case against the now 57-year-old was brought by APG on behalf of many IFPI-linked record labels and artists. As is so often in these cases, they had hoped for a punishing outcome in order to deter others. The rightsholders had originally demanded 440,000 kroner ($83,400) in compensation but that claimed amount was ultimately reduced to 200,000 ($37,900).

However, yesterday the Supreme Court decided that the defendant should pay only 10,000 kroner ($1,900), a major setback for the rightsholders who had hoped for a much higher precedent-setting amount on which to model future cases.

The compensation-limiting factor problem proved to be the reach of the evidence relied on by Antipiratgruppen. APG used techniques which scraped the index of the files said to be being made available by the defendant and then linked them back to his IP address, a method which has been acceptable in the past. But while the Court accepted that some sharing had occurred due to the defendant’s confession, it wasn’t satisfied that the index was an accurate representation of the files physically present on the defendant’s computer.

Per Overbeck, lawyer for the defendant, said that the lowered compensation award shows that it’s worth fighting back.

“The ruling demonstrates that it pays to be critical of Antipiratgruppen’s claims,” he said.

Speaking with Politiken, IFPI lawyer Johan Schlüter said that the Supreme Court decision to tighten the standard of proof in these cases could mean that Antipiratgruppen has to seize and investigate the defendant’s computer in any forthcoming cases, an expensive process that would require a bailiff, IT experts, and in some cases a locksmith.

“I will not directly say that we can not afford it, but it could be so expensive that it could mean we cannot pursue such matters,” said Schlüter. “We can not accept that we have become completely neutered, so we’ll now sit down with some IT people and think through what we can do to provide better documentation.”

Schlüter commented that the industry is in somewhat of a “cultural battle” with illegal copying and he could have a point. A recent moral standards study in Denmark found that a high percentage of the public found illicit downloading socially acceptable.

Source: Supreme Court Ruling Makes Chasing File-Sharers Hugely Expensive

Last week a Swedish court held a file-sharing copyright infringement case of their own against a 26 year-old man. In 2010 he had been tracked by the IFPI sharing 44 music tracks on the Internet – 20 more than the 24 shared by Thomas-Rasset and 13 more than the 31 shared by Tenenbaum.

In the event the man from Uppsala – which lies 43 miles north of the capital Stockholm – was found guilty of copyright infringement offenses but his punishment will not please the music industry.

While Thomas-Rasset and Tenenbaum currently face damages of $62,500 and $2,177 per track respectively, the outcome for the Swedish 26 year-old is somewhat more realistic. Although the judge had originally requested an amount equivalent to around $45 per track, in the end that amount was reduced to just $7.

Total payable for sharing 44 tracks – $311.

“Swedish courts may be slowly coming to their senses regarding non-commercial violations of the copyright monopoly,” said Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge commenting on the decision.

“The verdict is in stark contrast to the political verdict in the Pirate Bay trial, where four people were sentenced to long prison sentences and paying €3,500,000 for merely aiding in possibly sharing 33 works.”

The decision in the case could prove to be an important one, as it sets guidelines for financial penalties in future cases.

Source: File-Sharer Can’t Believe His Luck With $7 Per Track Fine

The hub, which in very basic terms operated a little like a BitTorrent tracker, directing traffic between other members of the network, was known as Sarah’s Secret Chamber. It had around 1,600 users and most of them were sharing large amounts of copyrighted material.

In normal circumstances, most members of this type of network will bring some of their own content to the party, pooling resources so that the hub has a library of material. Very often bringing large amount of content is a requirement for membership. Sarah’s Secret Chamber had a fairly large capacity – around 50 terabytes.

For the purposes of a trial the IFPI converted 50TB to “750,000 illegal albums” and to compensate for this ill-gotten booty, copyright holders demanded some $2.7 million in compensation.

Yesterday, in a district court in Tammisaari west of the capital Helsinki, two of the site’s admins were sentenced. Rejecting their claims that the hub was set up for the purposes of discussion, the court ruled that the pair would have been fully aware of what was happening with their users and that copyright violations were taking place.

The 35 year-old woman and a 21 year-old man received suspended jail sentences of four and three months respectively. The court ordered the pair to pay compensation to rightsholders of 800,000 euros ($1.08 million), the bulk of it going to the IFPI.

“It is a shame to see how a private organization has the power to chase after people and can not even show any significant loss of income or any other harm to anyone,” said Finnish Pirate Party chairman Pasi Palmulehto in a statement. “Even real crimes do not normally result in such large sums of compensation.”

The fine even exceeds that handed down to seven operators of the Finnish BitTorrent site Finreactor. Last year they were ordered to pay a total of 680,000 euros in damages to copyright holders.

Source: File-Sharing Operators Hit With Big Fines, Jail Sentences

Unfortunately it’s gotten to a point where we choose to ignore most updates. Not because we don’t want to voice the concerns of the music industry, but simply because there’s rarely anything new to report. We’re hearing the same tired set of complaints year after year and every bit of progress is framed as being insignificant compared to the rampant piracy underway.

In this year’s Digital Music Report published by IFPI, the position is no different.

“The overall impact of digital piracy has been to contribute substantially to the dramatic erosion in industry revenues in recent years. Despite the surge by more than 1000 per cent in the digital music market from 2004 to 2010 to an estimated value of US$4.6 billion, global recorded music revenues declined by 31 per cent over the same period,” we read.

“The two figures powerfully illustrate how, in the face of piracy, even the most progressive strategy of licensing hundreds of digital music services has been unable to prevent the steady decline in the overall legitimate music market and that decline will continue unless action is taken,” IFPI adds.

The industry representatives conveniently ignore the massive format shift that’s happening, and simply blame piracy for the fact that overall revenue is down. We’ve pointed out before that this scapegoating is unjust, but the music labels stick to their mantra and even ‘dare’ to quote one of the worst pieces of BitTorrent research ever to make their case.

Hoping to convince governments to implement harsh anti-piracy laws, the report lists several studies that show how ‘illegal’ file-sharing services are killing the music business. Among the studies cited is the one one conducted by the University of Ballarat’s Internet Commerce Security Laboratory.

Yes, these are the researchers that managed to make extremely inaccurate claims about the BitTorrent landscape, not once, but twice. The part that’s quoted by IFPI claims that 89% of all torrents “from a sample” link to copyrighted material, but as we pointed out before this sample is not really representative of the content that’s available on BitTorrent.

Of course we’re not going to argue here what the accurate percentage should be, it may be much lower, or even higher. But the sad part is that IFPI is once again cherry-picking studies in an effort to influence the opinions of politicians while ignoring all studies and statistics that show opposite effects.

Those who take the time to read it will notice that the entire Digital Music Report is one big rant against piracy, and a twisted one at that. For example, aside from citing doubtful studies, IFPI claims that album sales of starting artists fell 77% between 2003 and 2010 due to piracy. That’s pretty bad, right?

What they leave out is that all album sales fell dramatically, and that the sale of singles increased by more than 1000% in the same time. The latter is a quite spectacular figure, but also one that’s totally ignored in the report. Perhaps there’s an alternative explanation?

The sad part is that even with stricter anti-piracy laws there’s probably not going to be much change. We’ve seen this in France where Hadopi was introduced last year and we’ll probably see this in other countries as well. Piracy will always exist, the trick is to make it obsolete.

And this can be done to a certain extent.

Take the European music streaming application Spotify for example. They’ve signed up 750,000 users in the first year and have already become the second largest source of digital revenue for the record labels in Europe. Also, note that these people don’t have to pirate anything, but they don’t have to buy any albums or singles either.

Indeed, why doesn’t the report mention Spotify as a reason that album sales are down?

The only way the music industry can save itself is when it acknowledges that music consumption is drastically changing, and that it has to seize opportunities instead of focusing on a threat that exists mostly in their imagination.

Source: Piracy Horrors and The Music Industry’s Twisted Reality

The ruling, which is final and cannot be appealed, made clear that it is illegal to collect IP addresses in Switzerland with the aim of later filing a lawsuit. While Logistep said that this would make the country a safe-haven for pirates, things may not be quite as safe as some people imagine.

While obtaining evidence for civil lawsuits will be hugely problematic for private companies, the state can still take action against file-sharers. The police in Europe are only usually interested in file-sharers if they are deemed to be pirating media on a commercial scale or are committing other criminal offenses, and Switzerland is no different.

Just this week, Swiss police closed in on a woman who made available thousands of music tracks on the Internet. The 21 year-old is suspected of sharing more than 3,100 music tracks without the permission of copyright holders.

According to the police, the woman said that she had no commercial intentions and only downloaded the songs for her own personal use. However, the woman did not know that as well as just downloading music, by default her (unnamed) file-sharing software was also making the tracks available for upload.

As we’ve seen in recent cases in Sweden, sharing a few thousand tracks is certainly enough to get the authorities to take action – if, of course, they are pushed in the right direction by the likes of the IFPI in the first place.

Yet again, and in common with similar Swedish cases, this woman will have been using a ‘shared folder’ type application, possibly Direct Connect but more likely something like LimeWire or Bearshare. As we’ve pointed out here a dozen times on TorrentFreak, people using this type of software to share large quantities of music are a sitting duck for file-sharing investigators.

In the music sector piracy investigators aren’t interested in petty file-sharers, they want to be able to prove to the police that their target is big-time and worth pursuing with state resources. By sharing their entire music collections in these type of programs – often many thousands of tracks at a time – people are playing with fire.

People are drawn to ‘shared-folder’ P2P programs like LimeWire because they are easy to operate, but as illustrated above, that ease of use can come at a price. On the other hand (and as pointed out earlier by frustrated Swedish authorities), proving large scale infringement against a regular BitTorrent user is a much more complicated task, so much so that there have been no arrests to date. BitTorrent may have a steeper learning curve, but many will consider it to be worth it.

As anti-piracy groups digest what has happened in Switzerland this week, the focus may well shift away from private cases but anti-piracy actions won’t go away. Groups such as IFPI will not give in, but instead change the way they operate. Rather than chase file-sharers through the courts themselves, they will probably identify large scale infringers and get the police to do their work for them.

Source: Privacy Ruling Won’t Save Large Scale File-Sharers

One of those methods is known as Direct Connect, a hub-based ‘shared folder’ type system. Direct Connect hubs are more difficult to access than regular torrent sites but once in, users tend to share their entire collections, be they music or movie based. The index of all this material is shared between the users of the hub to show what is available and files can be accessed whenever the ‘owner’ of them is online. They can prove an absolute gold mine of data.

Unfortunately, as some users of Direct Connect in Sweden have discovered in recent months, proving large scale infringement against them is much easier than with BitTorrent. This has led to a number of arrests.

While Sweden has long been considered a relative hotbed for Direct Connect hubs, according to AIMR (Asociatia Industriei Muzicale din Romania) – Romania’s answer to the RIAA – their country is leading the world when it comes to Direct Connect.

According to information just released, this month parent group IFPI monitored a total of 913 active active hubs in Romania. In second place came Italy with 526, ahead of France, Russia, Hungary, Sweden, Finland and Poland. The United States came in at 10th place with just 143.

AIMR says that Romanian Direct Connect hubs have around 75,000 users at any one time, peaking to around 100,000 in the evenings and at the weekends. While these numbers may seems fairly low, the amounts being shared aren’t, with AIMR reporting that around 17,000 TB of data is being made available.

Since users generally only get hub access if they are prepared to offer media to the pool themselves, it means that nearly everyone is a significant provider of music and movies and therefore quite a big target for anti-piracy groups, especially when compared to BitTorrent users.

To this end, following an investigation in June, AIMR said it collected evidence against 40 ‘large scale’ users of Direct Connect hubs. In AIMR terms, this means people sharing more than 5,000 music tracks.

“In general, this means those who have shared more than 20 gigabytes of music, who have a constant presence online and are repeat users,” said AIMR’s Valeria Constantine in a statement.

“We identify them by IP address and then go to the police and each ISP to trace them to their homes. If it is proven that they uploaded music illegally then court proceedings can be initiated,” she added. “The whole process can take over a year.”

AIMR says it will send its evidence to the Fraud Investigation Service divisions of several police departments during July.

For those convicted of breaches of Art. 139, Legea Nr. 8/ 1996 (Article 139, Law no. 8 of 1996), there is a potential for harsh penalties – a maximum of 4 years in jail – but it’s unlikely anyone will be punished to that extent.

Last year saw the first case against a Romanian music file-sharer ending in the accused having to pay compensation of around $3,000 to AIMR. A second case this year ended in a similar manner.

AIMR hasn’t always successfully followed up on its anti-piracy warnings though. Following fears that The Pirate Bay might disappear after being bought by Hans Pandeya’s Global Gaming Factory, a complete copy of the site’s databases appeared online. BTArena created a clone of The Pirate Bay and was immediately threatened by AIMR with legal action. That site remains online today.

Source: Police To Receive Evidence Against ‘Large Scale’ File-Sharers

Under Spanish law torrent sites and BitTorrent trackers deemed legal even though some of its users may be using it to download copyright infringing content. This might be one of the reasons why the OpenBitTorrent tracker moved to a Spanish host after Hollywood managed to get a court decision in their favor against its Swedish hosting provider.

The OpenBitTorrent tracker, which doesn’t link to or host any torrent files and is not linked to any torrent search engine, merely serves as a facilitator of the communication between torrent users, much like BitTorrent clients do. This means that the site is not breaking any laws in Spain.

“According to all Spanish legal resolutions, a link does not communicate nor reproduces the work under intellectual property,” copyright expert and lawyer Javier de la Cueva told TorrentFreak. “So, linking is not a violation, hosting without the rights holders permission is.”

Despite this seemingly safe legal environment, music industry lobby group IFPI decided to go after OpenBitTorrent’s new hosting company in Spain. A few days after OpenBitTorrent moved to SoloGigabit, its owners received a threatening letter stating that the hosting company could be “liable for aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringements and receiving payments from criminal activity.”

In their communication with SoloGigabit, IFPI argues that OpenBitTorrent is facilitating copyright infringements because users of The Pirate Bay may be using the tracker. “The tracker performs a key function for the BitTorrent file sharing service provided by The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay service has been judged illegal in several countries,” IFPI writes, referring to the Swedish criminal trial that’s currently under appeal.

“The OpenBitTorrent tracker does not itself host any copyright protected works, but enables the infringement of sound recordings and other copyright works to take place by its role in The Pirate Bay file sharing service. The copyright works are made available and infringed by users of OpenBitTorrent and The Pirate Bay,” IFPI explains.

Feeling threatened by IFPI’s letter, the owner of the hosting company decided to inform OpenBitTorrent’s operator that they have to find a new bandwidth provider by the end of July. This means that, again, OpenBitTorrent has to move to a new location, this time as the result of mere threats.

TorrentFreak contacted the owner of SoloGigabit who told us that he was not sure what to do with IFPI’s complaints. After we informed the owner about the legality of BitTorrent trackers in Spain he doubted whether he had taken the right decision. However, successful or not, a lengthy battle in court is a huge burden for a small hosting company. Even though SoloGigabit might have the law on their site it is understandable that the owner is hesitant to fight IFPI.

Whatever happens, OpenBitTorrent is determined to stay online. The tracker’s operators told TorrentFreak that they are prepared to move to a new location again. This time, they hope to find a company that is less prone to threats from the music industry.

Source: Music Industry Threatens OpenBitTorrent’s New Hosting Provider

Yesterday Techdirt asked the question: Is BPI Trying To Setup Google For Copyright Infringement Lawsuit?

The article centered around a June 11, 2010 takedown notice sent to Google from the UK’s BPI. Groups such as the BPI, IFPI and MPAA send these notices on a regular basis and in a normal set of circumstances they’re so prevalent that they would hardly make news. However, Techdirt noted an interesting angle to this particular takedown demand.

Rather than supplying very specific URLs where infringing material could be located as is the norm with these type of requests, the BPI provided whole site URLs such as http://megaupload.com, http://sendspace.com and http://hotfile.com.

“My guess is that this is trying to set up Google, so that Google is officially ‘on notice’ that these nine sites host infringing content, and while Google will almost certainly take down the links to the specific files listed, it’s quite likely that similar files will quickly be found elsewhere on those sites — and BPI may then try to claim that Google should automatically know how to block those other files,” wrote Masnick.

Now, in a June 10 takedown request sent to Google, it seems the IFPI could be trying a similar tactic with the search giant, but being rather more clear about it, this time in connection with The Pirate Bay.

In a fairly lengthy preamble, the IFPI describes The Pirate Bay as “an internet-based service that facilitates copyright infringement on a massive scale” and one which provides access to “several hundred thousand infringing content files, including movies, games and software as well as copyright sound recordings owned by IFPI.” It also describes the guilty verdict handed down to the four Pirate Bay individuals in their 2009 criminal trial and references legal action to have the site blocked in Denmark and Italy.

A huge list of specific URLs which link to torrents is attached to the request and Google is asked to remove these from their search results – but IFPI goes further.

In light of the serious violations of copyright facilitated by The Pirate Bay service, and in accordance with Google’s policies (see http://www.google.com/dmca.html andhttps://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=58&ctx=sibling) we are asking for your immediate assistance in removing from your index, or otherwise disabling access to via your search engine, URLs linking to the website for The Pirate Bay including but not limited to the URLs specified in the attachment to this notice. [emphasis ours]

IFPI continues with:

In sending this letter we are seeking to ensure that infringing content is made inaccessible or removed from the Internet as quickly as possible through your cooperation. However, please note that we do not admit that we or the IFPI Represented Companies are responsible for detecting infringing material and notifying you of it.

Could this be similar situation to the one Mike Masnick referred to in his BPI article, but this time laying the ground for The Pirate Bay?

“Part of the DMCA safe harbors is that you need to remove content if you have ‘specific knowledge’ of the content,” he wrote. “This is at the center of the Google-Viacom lawsuit. Google claims it needs to know the specific files that are infringing, while Viacom claims that once Google knows that ‘content x on YouTube’ is infringing, it should be required to find and block all such content x’s, even if Viacom has not informed Google where they are.”

It remains to be seen how Google responds to this request but since attempts to take down The Pirate Bay have been an almost complete failure, removing it from the world’s most important search engine could be the next best step.

Source: Music Biz Wants Google To Stop Linking To The Pirate Bay

To ensure that this is indeed the case, last December two lawyers and an IT security expert conducted an audit at Antipiratbyrån’s offices. Although IFPI would also face a visit, the group said that it held no data, instead choosing to outsource their harvesting work to companies outside the country.

The results of those audits have now been made public. According to the Data Inspection Board, both Antipiratbyrån and IFPI conform to all necessary regulations when collecting information on Internet users they suspect are sharing copyright works.

According to Jonas Agnvall from the Data Inspection Board, although many IP addresses are gathered, most are discarded and there are now just 100 to 200 IP addresses currently held on record.

Previously data had been used to send out warning letters to suspected infringers, but it now seems that practice will completely cease.

“The reason is that the ISPs refused to send letters to subscribers,” notes a statement from Antipiratbyrån.

There had been criticism of the Data Inspection Board after they gave both Antipiratbyrån and IFPI advance notice that they would conduct audits. Some felt that this would give them time to adjust suspect operating practices. Jonas Agnvall said that unannounced visits do happen, but only in extremely rare circumstances.

Source: IFPI and Antipiratbyrån Given Pirate-Chasing Bill Of Health

Largely the effort has been to convince the courts that current laws are applicable to the cases in question, from the shutting down of Napster in 2001 through to the most recent criminal case in Sweden involving The Pirate Bay. The utilization of existing law brings quicker results, but only in the short term and at significant expense.

New laws, created and based on the desires of the music industry, are a much better solution for them in the longer term, providing faster routes to site closures and more cost-effective solutions to deal with individuals.

With this in mind, lobbying by the music and movie industries has continued apace, even in countries where existing law still yields results.

For example, in the UK existing copyright law was used effectively against Usenet-indexer Newzbin recently, and it is used regularly to reveal the identities of tens of thousands of alleged file-sharers so they can be pursued for settlements. But why spend millions suing sites or individuals out of existence (along with all the bad publicity that brings) when one can get the government to block them at hugely reduced cost?

One only has to look at the UK’s Digital Economy Bill for a clear example where lobbying has been used to massively cut the cost and possibly even the need for future litigation. Don’t like a site like Newzbin in the future? Forget costly injunctions. Write a couple of letters to the right people and it’ll be blocked. Don’t like The Pirate Bay or Rapidshare? Same applies.

Sometimes, however, current law simply isn’t up to the requirements of the mainstream entertainment industries at all and yields zero results.

The IFPI and music rights outfit TONO discovered this recently after their second attempt at forcing the ISP Telenor to block The Pirate Bay ended in failure. They could have taken the case on to the Supreme Court but clearly they know the law isn’t on their side and have announced they have given up on the current legal action.

“We have no plans to try more file sharing cases in court before we are confident that we have a basis in Norwegian law,” said TONO’s Cato Power this week.

TONO haven’t given up on lobbying though. If the law is no good, they say, it’s time to get it changed, and that could be soon.

Norway’s Ministry of Culture is gathering together a group including the Norwegian Publishers Association, the Consumer Council, Gramo (music rights group), and ISPs Telenor and NextGenTel. Their job will be to provide solutions to restrict illicit file-sharing and encourage an increased usage of legal services by June 1st 2010.

Of course, TONO will take the opportunity to champion a 3 strikes-style solution similar to that present in the heavily lobbied-for Hadopi law currently lying in wait in France, or the newly-passed Digital Economy Bill in the UK.

Furthermore, all the signs are that in the coming years the music industry will maintain its aggressive lobbying until it gets this type of mechanism implemented in all its major markets.

“The passing of the Digital Economy Act in the UK recognises that if a country is to have world-class creative industries, then it also needs laws that will effectively protect their rights from the crippling problem of digital piracy,” said IFPI chairman John Kennedy yesterday.

“The move by the UK creates momentum for the graduated response approach to tackling piracy internationally,” he noted, adding, “We hope this will prompt more focus and urgency for similar measures in other countries where debate is underway.”

For those readers who are still unsure what “similar measures” are – site blocking, warning letters sent to file-sharers and if they don’t work, Internet disconnections. New laws coming to you soon.

Source: File-Sharers Safe Until Music Biz Change Laws

Sebastian Gjerding, spokesperson for Piratgruppen, a pro-piracy lobby whose goals include the reformation of copyright law, was outraged by the news.

“The verdict is absurd. It will block access for Danish users to the world’s largest distributor of culture and knowledge – copyrighted or not,” he told TorrentFreak. “It’s true that you can access copyrighted material through The Pirate Bay, as you can with Google or Rapidshare. Should they be blocked as well?”

Very quickly controversy hit the ruling when it was revealed that Kristian Løkkegaard, the only expert witness in the case, was previously employed by the Johan Schlüter Law Firm who worked with the IFPI on anti-piracy cases.

Nevertheless, later in 2008 the Eastern High Court upheld the ruling. Tele2 said they would fight on and in April 2009 a Danish appeals body accepted a petition from Telenor to take the case to the Supreme Court.

“We are pleased that we now have the opportunity to find out whether it is Internet Service Providers’ responsibility to ensure the closure of a website,” said Telenor’s regulatory chief Nicholai Kramer Pfeiffer.

The same question has just been clarified to the north of Denmark in Norway, where the courts gave two clear decisions that there is no legal basis under Norwegian law for ISPs to block The Pirate Bay.

The answer to the Danish question is not far away now, as a date has just been tabled for the Supreme Court hearing. Three hours have been set aside to hear the case on 20 May 2010 starting at 9:00am.

Unusually for this type of hearing both sides will be present in person and the public will be allowed to view proceedings although seating is limited.

A final decision is expected to be handed down around a week later.

Source: Danish Pirate Bay ISP Block Gets Supreme Court Date

Telenor refused to comply and was taken to court. In November 2009 the verdict was handed down – the courts decided that the ISP had no obligation to block the world’s most infamous torrent site.

The IFPI wasn’t about to give in so easily, with CEO Marte Thorsby insisting the court had ruled incorrectly. Music performing rights outfit, TONO, confirmed the case would go to an appeal.

In early February the Borgarting Court of Appeal announced that the appeal had been rejected as there was no basis under Norwegian law for the claim. IFPI and TONO said they would consider their options, i.e make a decision as to whether or not they would take the case to the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, in a surprise announcement – it’s not like the entertainment industries to give in so easily – IFPI and TONO said they will not take their appeal to Norway’s highest court.

“We wanted to get a legal clarification on whether under Norwegian law it is possible to order ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay,” said TONO in a statement. “Now we have two clear decisions that there is no legal authority under Norwegian law for such blocking requirements.”

Following the November ruling, TONO said that it was possible that the authorities had not implemented the EU Copyright Directive properly in 2005, a line they continue to stand by.

“We interpret both [court] decisions as suggesting that questions have been raised about whether the EU Copyright Directive was adequately implemented in Norwegian law,” TONO added.

Marte Thorsby of the IFPI said that continuing with legal action would be a waste of time and money, and joined TONO in their calls for clearer legislation.

“The Court of Appeal wrote in its ruling that the limits of complicit liability are unclear, and we expect that the ongoing revision of the Copyright Act will close this legal ‘hole’,” said Thorsby.

Source: IFPI Gives Up Trying To Force ISP to Block The Pirate Bay

Five different locations including Gothenburg, Docksta, Handen and Upplands Väsby were targeted, resulting in the arrest of a 28 year-old man believed to be a Direct Connect hub operator. Several others, all accused of copyright infringement offenses carried out via the hub, were questioned and had their equipment confiscated.

At the end of last week the police conducted more raids, targeting the alleged operator of a Direct Connect hub in Motala and a user in Örebro who reportedly later admitted making available 6,500 tracks via the hub.

Two days ago the police struck again, this time against an individual in Ronneby suspected of sharing around 6,000 tracks via a hub. According to the police, there is now an investigation underway against a university network.

Yesterday saw continued action with the ninth raid in little over a week. This time the location was Kista where the police seized a computer and questioned an individual who allegedly admitted making available around 7,500 files.

These raids throw up an interesting question.

While BitTorrent users could be sharing a limited amount of material with tens of thousands of others in a very public and open setting, the relatively reclusive DC user is admittedly often sharing a lot but within a very much user-limited environment. One could argue that the average DC user contributes far less when it comes to the spreading of copyright material.

But as we have learned, unlike their BitTorrent counterparts they are much more at risk of receiving a visit from the police. So why is that?

File-sharing researcher Daniel Westman told NT that proving mass infringement in order to get the police involved is difficult with BitTorrent, but with Direct Connect it’s a much more simple affair.

“The DC technology allows the police to see everything that the user makes available and there may be thousands of files,” he explains.

Furthermore, for prosecutors to be interested in these cases there will need to be hard evidence available. Unlike in some civil cases, an IP-address and a few spreadsheets isn’t going to be enough.

“The judgments we’ve seen so far also show that it is not enough to simply track a particular subscriber, but you will probably have to also do a search and examination of his computer,” says Westman.

“Conducting a search requires a certain seriousness of crime and that severity can be difficult to prove with BitTorrent,” he concludes.

Thus far, no Swedish BitTorrent user has attracted the attention of the police but although IFPI lawyer Magnus Mårtensson accepts that getting evidence against BitTorrent users is more complicated, he says it’s not impossible.

“We will act even against users of BitTorrent in the future. We are looking right now on how best to collect evidence against BitTorrent users,” he explained.

In the meantime, actions against DC users are likely to continue, with Henrik Rasmusson at the Prosecutors Office promising more raids in “winter and spring.”

Ex-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde says that some good will come out of these raids, as people become more interested in sharing mechanisms that move away from small private groups, and on to those enabling sharing with everyone on the Internet.

“They do not realize it, but they are only driving more people to The Pirate Bay,” he concludes.

Source: Police Skip Millions Of BitTorrent Users On Evidence Issues

Their demands were simple enough – stop your customers from accessing The Pirate Bay voluntarily or we will make you do it by force.

Telenor boss Ragnar Kårhus refused to comply and the entertainment groups made good on their promise and took the ISP to court. In November the verdict was handed down. Although initially things looked promising for the studios, in the end it didn’t go well.

The Asker and Bærum District Court clearly stated that Telenor was contributing to copyright infringement by providing infrastructure which allowed customers to access The Pirate Bay, and that it was also passively contributing due to its refusal to act when its services were used for illicit file-sharing.

But this wasn’t enough. Since these contributory acts were not directed at specific customers or their actions, or the actions of the Pirate Bay itself, the court ruled that Telenor operated consistently, treating both legal and illegal use of their network in the same manner. This meant that Telenor acted within the law and the court refused to force the ISP to block The Pirate Bay.

Marte Thorsby of the IFPI insisted that Telenor was acting unlawfully and believing that the court had ruled incorrectly, Cato Power from music performing rights outfit, TONO, said they would take the case to appeal.

The Borgarting Court of Appeal has just announced it has rejected their appeal, as there is no basis under Norwegian law for the claim.

After the November ruling, Power said that it was possible that the Norwegian authorities had not implemented the EU Copyright Directive properly in 2005. This rejection by the Court of Appeal appears to confirm his fears.

“The Court of Appeal’s decision confirms what we have previously stated, that the licensees in Norway are right to address this area,” he said in a statement.

Marte Thorsby for the IFPI said there is a need for clarification.

“The Court of Appeal wrote in its ruling that the limits for contributory responsibility are unclear and that the Culture Ministry must clarify this when they go through the copyright law again,” she said in a statement.

“This is, in other words, is a ‘no man’s land’ in current law, and that means people are free to facilitate illegal activities in the Norwegian [ISP] network,” she added.

The Ministry of Culture has already announced a review of the Copyright Act and there are suggestions that this current gray area will be clarified then.

In the meantime, although they insist they are currently examining their options, it is expected that the studios will take the case to the Supreme Court.

Source: Court Rejects IFPI Appeal For ISP To Block The Pirate Bay

Speaking with Swedish Radio, Lars Gustafsson, chief executive of IFPI Sweden, said that recently his group had made 20 complaints against illicit file-sharers, but only five were considered to be on a large enough scale to warrant the police taking action.

The alleged large-scale file-sharers, suspected of making available between 9,000 and 17,000 music tracks each, were raided by police yesterday.

Five different locations including Gothenburg, Docksta, Handen and Upplands Väsby were targeted, resulting in the arrest of a 28 year-old man believed to be the hub owner. According to prosecutor Frederick Ingblad, the man accepted some responsibility but denied the charges.

The others, all accused of copyright infringement offenses, had their equipment confiscated. Ingblad reports that thus far, two have admitted making music available through the hub.

“This business is still too large. There are so many new and good options there is really no reason anymore for people to steal music,” IFPI’s Lars Gustafsson told DN.

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Party, was critical of the raids, and of the IPRED legislation which made them possible.

“When the police go in and take people’s private computers because they have shared music, it’s completely wrong,” he said.

“Record companies are running with the same argument that publishers did when libraries came into being. They warned that no one would continue to write books if it was possible to borrow them for free.”

Sweden continues to be one of the most popular countries in the world when it comes to sharing via Direct Connect. Its users are a perfect target for the IFPI, since individuals tend to share their entire music collection in one place, which makes proving large-scale infringement a breeze.

Source: Police Arrest Several In File-Sharing Swoop

Baidu has become increasingly popular with the Chinese population for its MP3 indexing abilities. While its “MP3 Search” provides algorithm-generated links to millions of undoubtedly illicit copyright tracks hosted by others (so-called “deep-linking”), Baidu has always insisted that the provision of such links alone is entirely legal. Needless to say, IFPI, the global music group, disagrees strongly with this assertion.

“The music industry in China wants partnership with the technology companies – but you cannot build partnership on the basis of systemic theft of copyrighted music and that is why we have been forced to take further actions,” said John Kennedy, Chairman and Chief Executive of IFPI, in a February 2008 statement.

Bolstered by an earlier ruling against Yahoo China, by further actions Kennedy unsurprisingly meant “legal actions.” In early 2008, IFPI (Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music) sued Baidu.com for $9m. Today the result of that case has been made public.

Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court has cleared Baidu on accusations of copyright infringement, with a court statement showing that simply providing search results does not breach Chinese copyright law. According to lawyer Sun Yan, the case against the search giant fell because IFPI failed to identify the actual sites hosting the illegal music downloads.

IFPI has challenged Baidu – and lost – in the Beijing No.1 Intermediate Court before. In September 2005, IFPI filed claims regarding nearly 200 music tracks it claimed were made available via Baidu. In 2006, the Court ruled Baidu was not infringing copyright. IFPI appealed to the Beijing Higher People’s Court which upheld the earlier ruling.

Source: IFPI Loses “Deep-Linking” Case Against Baidu

Yesterday the music industry lobby group IFPI presented its 2009 figures, again putting the blame for decreased physical sales on file-sharers. Unfortunately, most mainstream media outlets simply reposted the IFPI press release and their flawed analysis. In general, no effort is made to actually balance out or check the message being sent out to millions of readers.

In their annual Digital Music Report, IFPI states that file-sharers are half as likely to buy physical CDs than the average music buyer. Although the report is about digital music, they carefully avoid saying anything about file-sharers and digital sales. That would actually show a completely different picture as we will explain below.

The music group made this statement based on an IFPI-commissioned study that was executed by Jupiter research. Although IFPI refused to share the entire research report with TorrentFreak, we can conclude the following from the two pages that were published online.

Compared to music buyers, music sharers (pirates) are…

* 31% more likely to buy single tracks online.
* 33% more likely to buy music albums online.
* 100% more likely to pay for music subscription services.
* 60% more likely to pay for music on mobile phone.

These figures (as reported by the music industry) clearly show that file-sharers buy more digital music than the average music buyer. In fact, the group that makes up the music buyers category actually includes the buying file-sharers, so the difference between music sharers and non-sharing music buyers would be even more pronounced.

How can this be true and why was there no mention of this in the Digital Music Report? They must be spending less on digital music then, right? But again, this is not the case at all. On average, file-sharers actually spend more than non-sharing music buyers. At least that’s what Mark Mulligan, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester Research who conducted the study for IFPI told us.

Mulligan has his hands tied and couldn’t say much about the findings without IFPI’s approval, but we managed to get confirmation that paying file-sharers are the music industry’s best customers. “A significant share of music buyers are file sharers also. These music buyers tend to be higher spending music buyers,” Mulligan told TorrentFreak.

So why do file-sharers download music without paying? According to the annual IFPI report, one of the main reasons people share music is because it’s free. This leads the music industry group to conclude that they are cheapskates and not willing to pay for music at all. But, as the above clearly shows, they are misinterpreting this finding, and we’d like to explain why.

In the digital age, people’s demand for music has changed significantly, but their budgets are still limited. The average file-sharer is currently spending $100 a year on music according to IFPI’s own research, not really a group that can be classified as freeloaders. However, their demand for music simply exceeds their budget and that’s where they start downloading music on file-sharing sites, because it’s free.

Just to be clear on our motivation to balance the ‘facts’ as reported by IFPI. We are not advocating that all music should be free and neither do most of the music lovers who share files online. However, the music industry continues to ignore that file-sharing is much more of a signal from the market that it is the increased demand for music that fuels piracy.

The solution to the problem is relatively easy. Start offering more unlimited and unrestricted music services and piracy will go into a free-fall. File-sharers are already paying for digital music, and they pay more than the average music consumer. File-sharing is simply a market signal showing that there is a need to compensate for the lack of high quality and affordable subscription services.

If anything, the music industry should have more respect for file-sharers, as they are their most valuable consumers. They are ahead of the curve and actually leading the way for the future of digital music, buying more digital music than anyone else. It’s the music industry that has to change, not the other way around.

Source: Pirates Are The Music Industry’s Most Valuable Customers

The jury at Teesside Crown Court took just a couple of hours to return a unanimous verdict of “Not Guilty” – Ellis walked away a free man.

Ellis kept a low profile as he left court, refusing to comment to waiting reporters. The recording industry, fronted by the BPI, didn’t hide their feelings.

“This is a hugely disappointing verdict which is out of line with decisions made in similar cases around the world,” the group said in a statement.

“The defendant made nearly £200,000 by exploiting other people’s work without permission. The case shows that artists and music companies need better protection.”

Behind the scenes, some observers felt that while this defeat for the music industry was welcome, there were still concerns that things wouldn’t end with Ellis’s acquittal. And they appear to have been right.

Speaking at a press conference to launch the annual Digital Music Report, IFPI spokesman John Kennedy said that the ‘not guilty’ verdict was not the end of the road. The recording industry would “find other ways” to punish Ellis, and is now seriously considering taking action against him through the civil courts.

Kennedy said there is a commitment by the industry to retrieve the money the users of OiNK donated to the site, and give it to the artists whose music was shared there.

He also attacked the decision to charge Ellis with fraud instead of copyright infringement, and criticized UK legislation for being out of date.

Ellis confirmed earlier that his acquittal did not mean that OiNK was set for a revival. “Absolutely not,” he said, while adding that he would just like to get on with his life now.

It seems that IFPI have other plans.

Source: Music Industry Set For Civil Action Against OiNK

He rose to fame in the wider BitTorrent community when in early 2008 a Danish court ordered the ISP Tele2 to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay.

In response, the Pirate Bay team created a site in his name, TheJesperBay, which contained information and code allowing Tele2 users to evade the block.

Not only did Bay have a site named after him, Copenhagen’s ‘Pirate Cinema‘ even briefly changed their name in his honor.

But after many cat and mouse games with his opponents, Jesper Bay has just announced he will quit as IFPI Denmark’s director and spokesman at the end of January.

“I’ve been here six and a half years and think that maybe it’s time to try something else,” he told Computerworld.

Although Bay’s job has been very demanding with an understandably high workload and lots of pressure, he says that’s not the reason for his departure – he just feels he’s been in the position long enough. Bay admits that at times, things have been tough.

“Sometimes it may have been frustrating to be in a role where you know you have right on your side, but it is very difficult to penetrate with the message, because there are so many other interests at stake in the ongoing debate,” he conceded.

Bay went on to criticize the media’s coverage of the battle between online pirates and the recording industry.

“We are continuing to experience relatively sensible people at relatively reasonable media outlets, writing completely what suits them. And very often very poorly researched,” he said.

Noting that the issue of piracy and copyright is a hot one at the moment, largely due to the fact that there is so much at stake for the many parties involved, he accepts that while the industry has not won the war, they have won several battles.

Conceding in late 2008 that Denmark would not see the introduction of “3 strikes” for music file-sharers must have been one of the more bitter pills to swallow.

Bay explained that part of his job has been to refine the debate surrounding these issues, and extend it beyond combating piracy to include discussion of new business models and the way forward in a digital world.

But despite his upcoming departure, Bay says he has nothing lined up and will just take some time off to assess his future. He insists, however, that he has not received a better offer of employment from the pirates.

Source: IFPI Spokesman Jesper Bay Calls It Quits

So maybe it comes as a surprise to learn that, according to new figures released by the IFPI in Sweden, music sales were up 10.2% in 2009. According to the group, this represents the first increase in revenue since 2000.

While physical CD albums sales managed a 1.9% increase over the previous year and still accounted for 80% of total industry revenues, the digital realm provided all the excitement.

The digital market place provided 16.3% of total sales in 2009, an increase of 98.6% over the previous year. 46.1% of digital sales came from streaming services such as Spotify, up from 17% in 2008, with the remaining 53.9% coming from other Internet sources.

According to IFPI, the main factor influencing these good results is a better offering to the public.

“I think the main reason for the increase in revenue is the availability of better legal services,” said chairman Ludvig Werner.

Indeed, increased availability has to help. The digital market has been resisted by the industry for such a long time, arguably enabling illicit file-sharing services to gain traction. Now that some effort is being made to compete with these unauthorized sources, the benefits can be seen.

Arguably it was the very existence of unauthorized music sources that prompted the industry to sit up and take notice of the digital market place in the first instance, but IFPI warns that these newer official outlets can only operate successfully in a market free from competing illegal file-sharing.

While Werner says that he feels that the introduction of the anti-filesharing IPRED legislation back in April 2009 had helped sales, Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law Lund University, advises to proceed with caution.

“I do not think we should exaggerate the effect. In our studies, we see that there are many who still share files. But it mostly affects the sales of physical copies where there has been a very small increase,” he told Metro.

“The increase in digital sales over the net, I think we can see continuing in parallel with file-sharing. I believe the growth would have been there even without IPRED,” he added.

Daniel Johansson, a researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, believes that the availability of streaming services may have affected the habits of younger people – the biggest music sharing group.

“There have been a lot of surveys over the last year and an important factor is a change in music behavior in the younger groups who are the biggest file-sharers,” he said.

Source: Music Sales Increase In Sweden For First Time Since 2000

Up until now, Swiss citizens – perhaps using sites such as that operated by Riesen – have had a fairly easy ride since it is considered legal for Internet users in the country to download copyright material without the permission of rights holders.

Uploading, on the other hand, is a different story.

Although Swiss law allows the sharing of copyright works between friends and family in a closed network, sharing the same on an open and public peer-to-peer network such as BitTorrent, eD2K or Gnutella is pushing it too far.

In recent years, many file-sharers have received the well-known ‘pay up or else’ letters, asking for payment of a few francs per track in order to avoid court. But now, in what is being touted as a groundbreaking case, an 18 year-old from Locarno, the largely Italian speaking area in the Swiss canton of Ticino, has not been so lucky.

According to Swiss news reports, the unnamed woman was tracked by the Swiss branch of IFPI, while sharing and making available 4,200 songs and 270 movies. The music group then forwarded the complaint to the public prosecutor in Ticino who took up the case.

The woman, who did not appeal, received an unspecified fine and a 2 year suspended jail sentence. If she does not pay the fine, it will convert to a 30 day jail sentence.

As in another recent case in Sweden, it seems likely that the woman was using a ‘shared folder’-style file-sharing program, such as Direct Connect or LimeWire, probably sharing her entire collection at once and making her a prime target to be made an example of.

According to the Berne-based Foundation for Consumer Protection, a group working for the last 44 years to promote consumer rights, the action taken by IFPI is excessive. The best method to prevent infringements, they say, is via awareness and prevention, rather than oppression.

Source: Suspended Sentence for 4,200 Song, 270 Movie File-Sharer

Although this activity is illegal in most countries around the world, the operators of hosting sites usually stay clear of trouble due to their ignorance of what resides on their own servers and complying with issued takedown notices, but many tread a very fine line in respect of the law.

Since music is becoming the most popular material shared via these type of sites, IFPI naturally keeps a close watch on this growing area of file-sharing. One company that attracted their eye is the Israel-based Dishi Group, whose websites hosted links to copyrighted material hosted on cyberlocker sites, mainly in The Netherlands.

IFPI took legal action against the owners of ten websites, all connected with Dishi Group. Now it appears a settlement agreement between the parties has been reached at the Petah Tikva District Court.

Niv Lilien, Technology Editor at Ynet, Israel’s largest news website, told TorrentFreak that not only will Dishi group have to pay $50,000 compensation to IFPI, but also hand over domains involved in the case (including dishi.info, ringme.be, ringme.co.il, dishimix.fm and pazz.co.il) to the music industry group.

IFPI described the scope of the settlement as “unprecedented” with the court issuing permanent injunctions preventing the defendants from “copying, distributing, linking or ripping onto MP3 or other formats any copyright infringing repertoire.”

As illustrated by the survey recently commissioned by the BPI, the international music industry clearly sees the cyberlocker issue – and sites that link to them – as a growing threat. Expect more IFPI action and associated rhetoric directed at these services in 2010.

Source: IFPI Settles With Cyberlocker Sites, Takes Over Domains

The reasons for this are fairly straightforward. When the police get involved with file-sharers they are usually interested in very large-scale cases of copyright infringement. While BitTorrent users may indeed be sharing many items at once, it’s not simply a case of browsing that user’s shared folder to see what else is on offer – BitTorrent has no ‘shared-folder’-type setup.

Direct Connect, however, does have such a setup and its users are likely to share their whole music collections at once in an easily identifiable way. Although Direct Connect hubs are more difficult to access than a regular torrent site, once in, investigators find gathering evidence trivial if the sharers make no effort to mask their identities.

While details are scarce at the moment and the use of Direct Connect has not yet been confirmed, it appears that another large-scale file-sharer has fallen foul of the law.

Acting on a tipoff, Swedish police carried out a raid in the Uppvidinge Municipality yesterday.

After a search on the home of a 25 year-old man, he was arrested on suspicion of copyright infringement and his computer was seized.

According to the police, during questioning the man later admitted to sharing 12,000 songs on the Internet, although they probably mean ‘making available’ – a subtle but important difference. He was later released.

Police said the investigation was led by the prosecutors office in Stockholm, who were acting on a tip from what they describe as a “music interests organization.” Although unconfirmed at the moment, this type of tip and raid bears all the hallmarks of IFPI.

Just over a week ago, IFPI submitted a request to the Stockholm District Court to force an ISP to hand over the personal details of another alleged large-scale file-sharer, confirmed to have used Direct Connect. The action marked the first time a request had been made by the organization under the IPRED legislation introduced in April.

It is unclear why yesterday’s arrest of an alleged 12,000 track file-sharer means that his case will be dealt with in a criminal court, yet the other detailed above involving a 10,000 track sharer is destined for IFPI civil action.

At the time of writing, TorrentFreak’s requests for more information from the Stockholm police remain unanswered.

Source: Swedish Police Arrest 12,000 Song File-Sharer

Telenor boss Ragnar Kårhus refused to comply and IFPI rolled out the lawyers and early November saw the delivery of the verdict in the case.

The Asker and Bærum District Court ruled that Telenor was indeed a contributor to infringement as it provides the infrastructure to access TPB, and that it was also a passive contributor due to the fact that it refused to act when its service was used in connection with illicit file-sharing.

However, since these contributory acts were not directed at specific customers or what they did on The Pirate Bay, or indeed the actions of the Pirate Bay itself, the court decided that Telenor operates in the same manner whether its systems are used for legal or illegal uses.

In a nutshell, although Telenor was “guilty” of contributory infringement, their actions were not unlawful. Furthermore, when making its decision the district court looked in depth at the possible repercussions if it decided that Telenor, and by extension other ISPs, had to police the Internet.

The court therefore refused to sanction the blocking of The Pirate Bay.

Of course, with this apparent ambiguity the copyright holders aren’t going to accept the court’s ruling, and have been making statements this week detailing their plans.

“We believe the ruling is incorrect and, therefore, we have appealed the decision in the High Court,” said Cato Power from music performing rights outfit, TONO.

“If it’s the case that the Norwegian authorities have not implemented the EU Copyright Directive properly, as the district court said, this is serious. For us this is a principled case that it is important to clarify law in a higher authority,” he added.

Commenting for the IFPI, Marte Thorsby insists that Telenor is acting unlawfully by providing customer access to The Pirate Bay.

“The court is crystal clear that Telenor contributes physically to make The Pirate Bay available for their customers,” she said in a statement.

“We believe, contrary to the court, that this participation is in conflict with Norwegian law. We see that ISPs in several European countries have been made responsible for providing access to illegal services, and believe that this also is the situation in Norway.”

Source: IFPI Takes Telenor Pirate Bay Blocking Case To High Court

However, months and months went by without any attempt by music industry group IFPI to gain the personal details of an alleged file-sharer. Then in September, IFPI chief executive Lars Gustafsson said that the group were simply biding their time, and offered assurances that IFPI cases would appear in the months that followed.

Now, months later in December, the wait is over.

Today IFPI submitted evidence of alleged file-sharing to the Stockholm District Court, asking it to force an ISP to hand over the details of an individual behind a single IP address.

“We believe that all parts of the music industry feel best served by a combination of good legal services and good legislation. IPRED is a law with good privacy protection for citizens, but of course we will use it to protect our members’ rights,” said Ludvig Werner, Chairman of IFPI Sweden, in a statement.

However, before panic sets in among Sweden’s file-sharers, the details of the request should be considered. Among other things, IPRED aims to increase penalties and ultimately criminalize large scale infringement, so it’s interesting that IFPI have chosen their first target carefully.

Rather than go after a BitTorrent user, where it becomes very difficult to prove that one user is sharing lots and lots of music at once in order to be categorized as a large-scale infringer, IFPI has targeted the user of a Direct Connect hub instead. In basic terms, Direct Connect has a ‘shared folder’ type structure, where users are likely to share their whole music collections at once, not single albums as is common with BitTorrent.

IFPI says that it has not decided what it will do once it identifies the individual. It may go for a lawsuit, or instead chose to issue a warning.

Last week, the Stockholm District court ruled on another IPRED case, ordering ISP TeliaSonera to hand over the identity of the Swetorrents BitTorrent tracker operator to anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, which is working on behalf of four movie studios.

This request by IFPI is the first brought under IPRED by the music industry, and the third overall.

Update: Telia has announced that it will appeal the decision.

Source: IFPI Use IPRED To Demand File-Sharer Info For The First Time

Taking the responsibility for ensuring this happens in Sweden is the Data Inspection Board, a public authority which can audit companies and organizations holding personal information.

The Board’s connections to file-sharing go back notably to 2005, when it ruled that the activities of the Swedish anti-piracy bureau (Antipiratbyrån) went against the Personal Data Act. It decided that since IP addresses can be tied to a specific person, only the government were allowed to store that type of information in criminal cases.

Since then Antipiratbyrån has appealed the decision twice and lost, but fortunately for them, an exception was made in the IPRED legislation which now allows organizations to collect data when it precedes a legal claim, i.e suing file-sharers.

However, while anti-piracy groups are allowed to collect data, they have to comply with a set of standards enforced by the Data Inspection Board. To this end, two lawyers and an IT security expert will today head to Antipiratbyrån’s offices in Stockholm to conduct an audit.

“We want to see how the records of suspected file sharers are being handled,” said Jonas Agnvall, a lawyer at the Data Inspection Board.

Part of the reason for the inspections is to check if the anti-piracy group has changed the way it handles information following the introduction of IPRED in April this year. The legislation was widely feared by Swedish file-sharers but thus far has only led to a single case, which was thrown out by the Appeal Court.

IFPI chief executive Lars Gustafsson offered assurances in September that law suits against suspected file-sharers were very close, but noted that his group were biding their time to see how the first IPRED case panned out. As you’ve just read, that case collapsed.

Although it has taken no action against file-sharers thus far, on Monday IFPI will get a similar Data Inspection Board audit, but according to comments made to SvD, the group says it holds no data, since it outsources the task to other organizations, most probably companies like Denmark’s DtecNet.

Source: IFPI and Antipiratbyrån Face File-Sharing Data Scrutiny

Without any legal basis, Telenor refused to comply.

“This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered,” said Telenor boss Ragnar Kårhus.

The verdict in the case was due to be delivered October 30th, but was delayed until today.

IFPI has lost the case and Telenor will not have to block The Pirate Bay.

The court ruled that Telenor is not contributing to any infringements of copyright law when its subscribers use The Pirate Bay, and therefore there is no legal basis for forcing the ISP to block access to the site.

“Obviously we are pleased that the District Court has arrived at this conclusion,” said Telenor’s Ragnar Kårhus in a statement.

“At the same time it is important for us to emphasize that this case is not about being in favor of or opposed to copyright, but about whether or not it is reasonable to saddle Internet service providers with a censorship role in respect of content on the Internet,” he added.

Kårhus went on to say that the most important way for IFPI and other rights holders to maintain healthy revenue streams, is to develop business models and services that render the use of sites like The Pirate Bay less attractive to Internet users.

In making its decision, the court also had to examine the repercussions if it ruled that Telenor and other ISPs had to block access to certain websites. This, it said, is usually the responsibility of the authorities and handing this task to private companies would be “unnatural”.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Source: IFPI Loses: Telenor Will Not Block The Pirate Bay

Now Di.se reports that music group IFPI has completed new research which it says reveals the extent of file-sharing penetration in this Scandinavian country of 9.2 million citizens.

The IFPI survey claims that some 40 percent of Swedes aged between 15 and 74 engage in illicit file-sharing every day, a statistic which IFPI chairman Louis Werner says is “a very high figure” but one which does not surprise him.

The 40 percent of this group equates to around 2.8 million people. The figure would be even higher, says IFPI, if it had also counted the under 15 year olds who regularly share files.

The higher-than-expected results are being put down to the method employed by IFPI to collect the data. It says that traditionally such surveys are carried out using the telephone, but this time the data was gathered via the web.

The results come nowhere near those revealed by the earlier research carried out by SIFO on behalf of TV operator Viasat – their conclusion was that only 11% of Swedes download copyright works using the Internet.

Currently Sweden had around 7.3 million Internet users in a population of over 9.2 million, a penetration of around 81%.

Source: IFPI: 2.8 Million File-Sharers Break Law Daily In Sweden

On April 1st the new law became active and immediately there was a dramatic drop in Internet traffic, which many observers put down to file-sharers retreating based on a fear of becoming identified.

Indeed, Henrik Pontén from Antipiratbyrån – the Swedish anti-piracy office – said he was convinced. “The majority of all Internet traffic is file-sharing. Because of that, there’s no other explanation for the decrease in traffic than the IPRED law,” he stated.

Then at the end of April, two ISPs – Bahnhof and Tele2 – both announced they would stop logging Internet activity which would seriously hamper the effects of IPRED on their customers.

But despite the massive opposition to the legislation, despite the fear, the huge drop in Internet traffic, the action of ISPs to limit its effects (and The Pirate Bay team releasing iPredator to neutralize it), so far in the battle against music file-sharers, IPRED is a sleeping beast.

Although the music industry promised to use IPRED to go after pirates, it has been a full 6 months since the legislation was introduced and so far, not a single complaint has been made against a file-sharer.

So does this mean that the feared music industry onslaught against P2P users will amount to nothing? Unfortunately, almost certainly not – they are sitting patiently for the wheels to turn in another case.

Previously five book publishers handed a request to a local court demanding information about the owner of an FTP-server where audio books were stored. Although it was a private FTP and the books couldn’t have been made available to the public, the court ordered the ISP Ephone to hand over the personal details of the individual behind the IP-address. Ephone refused, with their CEO describing the evidence submitted as insufficient. The case is under appeal.

Yesterday IFPI chief executive Lars Gustafsson told DN.se that they are simply biding their time to see the outcome of this earlier IPRED action by the publishing industry before going after music sharers, and offered assurances that IFPI cases will come in the fall.

Although there will probably not be the one hundred case promised earlier, Gustafsson still refused to be pinned down on the exact number, instead promising that the complaints will be issued “on a broad front.”

Source: IFPI Prepares IPRED Complaints Against File-Sharers

Now, according to a report, the leak has been confirmed by Simon Cowell’s Syco, part of Sony BMG.

The report in Britain’s The Sun tabloid, says that ‘hackers’ targeted computers at Syco and lifted the track and later put it on the Internet, but the author seems a little confused over how these things work.

Sure, the assertion that there can be “huge kudos” to be gained by the ‘hackers’ in leaking a track like this is absolutely correct, but the article goes on to say that there is a huge financial motive too.

“Dodgy file-sharing websites pay hackers top dollar for stolen tracks as they try to attract more downloaders to the site so they can rake in more money from advertisers,” is the claim from the article.

But everyone familiar with these situations understand, as soon as a track is leaked onto the Internet word gets round very quickly. Soon everyone has a copy and the track is available from dozens of other sites, probably within minutes. It’s very difficult to imagine that paying a hacker “top dollar” would be a worthwhile investment for any site – their offering would be pirated in seconds.

A Syco spokesman confirmed that the label is working with IFPI, BPI and the police to track down the leakers. “We will certainly look to bring charges against those who are responsible. We cannot give any more details at this stage for operational reasons,” he said.

At this point it seems that Syco are doing a reasonable job of containing the leak of the mp3 itself – scanning various sites which have listed the track as available reveals that most have been subject of takedown notices from Sony. At this point it appears that the track didn’t leak via the Scene, as searches on the usual release databases reveal no sign of the song.

Despite the evil hackers and investigations by anti-piracy police and the real police, coupled with rantings by Cowell, anyone can listen to the leaked song on YouTube. Go figure.

Source: Hackers ‘Steal’ New Leona Lewis, Timberlake Track

Now FPM is claiming that a “major offensive” is underway against what it describes as “new forms of illegal file-sharing.” The group is claiming that it has successfully removed from the Internet more than 30,000 links to unauthorized music, which together generated 10 million illicit downloads.

Singling out Mininova as the single biggest host of links on its hitlist, FPM claims to have successfully ordered the torrent site to remove more than 20,000 torrents. Another 10,000 items were removed from online storage sites including Rapidshare and MegaUpload. FPM says that it will now work to have further infringing links removed on a daily basis.

In further action against file-sharing services, FPM claims to have shuttered a further 12 eD2K and Direct Connect servers although no further details have been made available.

Interestingly, Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer was not aware of FPM’s takedown bombardment. He told TorrentFreak that they haven’t received any emails from FPM. So, unless FPM was sending the requests from a different email address not associated with its domain, their claim might be a bit overstated.

Source: Anti-Piracy Group Claims Mass Mininova Torrent Deletion

IFPI and representatives from the movie industry argue that Telenor is willingly infringing copyright by allowing its customers to access the prominent BitTorrent tracker, but Telenor disagrees with this assessment. In a public announcement today Telenor explains why.

“If Telenor were considered complicit in any illegal activities online, we would have to block access to websites and customers on any suspicion of illegal activity. Telenor would then act as some sort of private police or private censorship authority, which would be very worrisome in light of important issues such as freedom of speech,” Telenor writes.

Blocking websites upon request from the entertainment industry is “unacceptable” according to Telenor. The ISP agrees that piracy is a problem and they don’t support customers who engage in these activities, but they are refusing to censor the Internet without a court order.

“Instead of demanding that Internet providers censor the Internet and monitor the content that’s transferred, Telenor believes that the best way to decrease illegal file sharing is to put more effort into making legally downloadable content available.”

The entertainment industries should find ways to monetize legal content in a way that satisfies both the copyright holders and customer. Blocking access to websites instead would “violate principles which constitute important prerequisites for any democracy”.

It is good to see that an ISP like Telenor is willing to go to court to protect their rights and those of their customers, instead of taking the easy route and giving to the wishes of the copyright lobby. Telenor rightfully emphasizes that the entertainment industry should focus on the source of the problem by developing legal alternatives that satisfy the need of their customers, a position also held by EU Commissioner Viviane Reding.

Even if IFPI wins in court, blocking The Pirate Bay is not going to be very effective. There are several ways to get around it and thousands of other BitTorrent sites. On top of that, the new owners of the site plan to get rid of all the copyrighted content indexed by the site.

Source: Pirate Bay Block Violates Democratic Principles, ISP Says

In a letter sent out to several web hosts IFPI argued that the site(s) hosted by the providers make “a large number of” copyright works available to the public, and that the users of the sites are infringing the copyrights of IFPI members. IFPI ended the letter by asking the web host to take necessary actions to make sure that this activity stops, or else “IFPI intends to take necessary measures.”

This tactic seemed to work, as many torrent sites operated by Swedes closed their doors or were shut out by their host. However, the Swedish provider Portlane is not planning to cave in to IFPI’s threats and have filed a complaint at the Swedish Market Court.

“My client feels IFPI’s letter is one sided, lacking in nuance and very threatening. Portlane does not believe it should be forced to break a contract with a client because of hearsay,” Portlane’s lawyer Jonas Forzelius told Dagens Nyheter.

Forzelius argues that IFPI is breaking the law because they send out the warning letters for financial gain, something not allowed under Sweden’s marketing law, regardless of the copyright issues that are at stake here.

“What IFPI says is ‘close these sites’, and what is the purpose of that? Of course scaring as many ISPs as possible to stop providing these services in order for IFPI to increase their own sales. Not everyone can afford to process against IFPI with its financial resources, even if they feel IFPI’s claims are wrong.”

In several earlier cases, the Market Court has made it clear that these warning letters must be written in a way that corresponds with marketing ethics. Since IFPI always claims that they are losing millions of dollars (or kroner) thanks to piracy, their warning letters would be unlawful.

Thus far, the Commercial Marketing Court had tried seven cases of warning letters, not related to file-sharing. In all cases except one they were found unlawful and the judges banned the letters with fines of half a million crowns if they were sent again. IFPI await the same fate, meaning that the threats will stop.

Source: Hosting Provider Protests Against Anti-Piracy Threats

Despite the fact that the Pirate Bay verdict is to be appealed, the decision is still being used as ammunition by the various anti-piracy outfits, and they have already taken out several trackers across Sweden. More recently, IFPI has discovered a new, more convenient and possibly more effective way to (try to) shut down the remaining torrent sites.

Instead of targeting the tracker owners, IFPI is going directly to the hosting providers with a request to take the sites offline. One of the providers that has received a letter from IFPI is DCP Networks, who rent servers to TorrentBytes – one of the larger BitTorrent trackers.

In their letter IFPI argues that the tracker they host is making “a large number of” copyright works available to the public, and that the users of the site are infringing the copyright of IFPI members. IFPI ends the letter by asking DCP Networks to take necessary actions to make sure that this activity stops, or else “IFPI intends to take necessary measures.”

IFPI lawyer Magnus Mårtensson told DN.se that the letter received by DCP Networks is not something strange or unusual. IFPI has contacted several other hosting providers and site owners Mårtensson said. What they aim to do here is extend the (yet to be appealed) verdict of “assisting copyright infringement” and apply it to hosting providers as well.

At the moment TorrentBytes seems to be (back) online, indicating that the hosting provider may have not yet given in to IFPI’s demands. Although the Pirate Bay verdict doesn’t apply to anyone but the convicted and their unique circumstances, it is likely that some hosting providers will agree to IFPI’s request, fearful of a costly legal procedure.

Source: IFPI Goes After Torrent Site Hosting Providers

But did The Pirate Bay Four receive a fair trial? Today, an event on Swedish national radio SR threw everything into doubt – and it’s barely believable, like something straight out of Hollywood.

The copyright industry likes to have the outcome of processes clear before engaging them so it’s perhaps unsurprising that SR today revealed that the judge Tomas Norström is in league with it on many fronts. The judge has several engagements – together with the prosecution lawyers for the movie and music industries.

Swedish Association of Copyright (SFU) – The judge Tomas Norström is a member of this discussion forum that holds seminars, debates and releases the Nordic Intellectual Property Law Review. Other members of this outfit? Henrik Pontén (Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau), Monique Wadsted (movie industry lawyer) and Peter Danowsky (IFPI) – the latter is also a member of the board of the association.

Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR) – The judge Tomas Norström sits on the board of this association that works for stronger copyright laws. Last year they held the Nordic Championships in Intellectual Property Rights Process Strategies.

.SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation) – Tomas Norström works for the foundation that oversees the .se name domain and advises on domain name disputes. His colleague at the foundation? Monique Wadsted. Wadsted says she’s never met Norström although they have worked together.

Commenting on the revelations, Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde brokep said, “Spectrial Cliffhanger in S01 with the verdict – S02 started with the judge being biased. Reality beats fiction yet again!”

There are several renowned lawyers and judicial commentators that are attacking Tomas Norström’s decision to take the case, in spite of having a clear conflict of interest.

“I wouldn’t have taken the case,” says former judicial ombudsman Rune Lavin.

Former Director of Public Prosecution Sven-Erik Alhem said, “You cannot hide controversial facts. The attention this gets only leads to unnecessary questioning of bias in Swedish courts. Of course the judge should have informed people of the situation prior to the process and thereby allowed the involved parties to decide if it was suitable or not.”

Lawyer Leif Silbersky made a comment all Pirate Bay supporters want to hear, “If the lawyers [for the defense] act on this immediately, this could mean a re-trial.”

Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin says he has already put in a request for a re-trial. “In my appeal, I will claim the court was biased and that the appeal court should cancel the verdict and re-submit the case to the district court,” he said.

And the judge himself? “Every time I accept a case I make an assessment on whether I am part of it or not. But I have not felt that I am biased because of those commitments,” he said.

During the trial it was the judge, Tomas Norström, that was responsible for ensuring that the trial was fair and that the lay judges did not act in their own interests.

Previously one of the original lay judges in the case had to step down when his involvement in a music rights group became known;

“Three lay judges were appointed,” said Judge Norström one week before the trial. “On a question from me to the lay judges on whether they had any involvement in copyright associations or similar, or if they are or have been artists one of them answered Yes.”

That lay judge was removed. It’s anyone’s guess why the judge didn’t think the same should apply to him.

Whether or not Tomas Norström allowed his personal interests to get in the way of a fair verdict is open for debate, but there can’t be an intelligent human being reading this news that doesn’t feel that it would’ve been better for everyone if he simply backed away from this case and let someone else take over. He has compromised the entire case and verdict.

Rick Falkvinge of Sweden’s Pirate Party said the revelations were indicative of “corruption on a completely unforgivable level.”

This is a breaking news story, check back for updates.

Thanks to Billy

Source: Pirate Bay Judge Accused of Bias, Calls for a Retrial

In February, when the Pirate Bay trial was in full swing, a group of hackers managed to deface the Swedish IFPI site. Today, the international IFPI site is the new target and is suffering from a DDoS attack. At the time of writing the website is completely inaccessible.

The attacks are part of Operation Baylout which also encourages people to send black faxes to the MPAA’s anti-piracy office and movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted. Thus far, we have no confirmation that any fax machines have been taken down.

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak in a comment: “I feel peoples’ frustration. I hope they do something more permanent instead, like making sure the idiots that give power to the media industry lose their own power. We need to cut out the companies abusing copyright at the expense of society’s well-being. But this is not a permanent fix so it’s just pointless.”

Pointless or not, according to the Reg, some 250 hackers are gathering in AnonNet’s IRC channels to discuss their battle strategies and future plans.

Mooncup, one of the root administrators at AnonNet confirmed this and told TorrentFreak: “They seem to be doing it to demonstrate to the record industry that the Internet is our domain and they can keep the fuck out of our business or face the consequences,” he explained.

“They [IFPI] represent most of the record companies, therefore attacking them represents an attack on all of the people who try to stop websites like The Pirate Bay without really understanding what they are really about,” Mooncus added, noting that AnonNet itself is by no means involved in the attacks.

IFPI was contacted for a response, but we haven’t heard back from them at the time of publication.

Update: IFPI.se is also down.

Source: IFPI Site Under Attack by Pirate Bay Supporters

“It must be assumed that it is already in accordance with current Danish law that in principle it is possible to close an Internet connection that has been used to infringe copyrights,” says Peterson. “But the law does not take into account the very significant conflicting interests that will prevail in such a case,” he added.

The problem is the unbalanced approach to a potential disconnection. In Denmark an Internet user’s interests are not considered when making a decision to close a site or connection – they are not even involved in the process and therefore have no opportunity to defend themselves. Furthermore, should a connection or site be closed in error, there is little chance for claiming compensation. “It’s obvious that this runs counter to some basic legal principles,” says Petersen.

One of the problems lies in the way the Danes implemented the EU 2001 ‘Infosoc directive‘, which differs greatly from the manner in which other EU countries have handled it. Under Danish law, ISPs can be made responsible for the copyright violations of their subscribers, which is why ISPs can shut down a customers Internet connection or close a website so easily.

Now, according to Comon.dk, in the latest draft report from the Ministry of Culture Conference on piracy, having previously ignored the problems the Danish government has now included the concerns of Professor Petersen, as it tries to decide whether or not to introduce new legislation against users who share copyright material on the Internet.

The draft is also set to look at some of the demands being put forward by the IFPI and other similar groups, including their 3 strikes initiative. Another IFPI proposal is that individuals should be made responsible for whatever happens on their Internet connection, whether they carried out any infringements or not. This suggestion was put forward after legal action by IFPI against two women failed last year, with the pair successfully arguing a ‘wireless defense’. The women said they had no knowledge of the alleged infringements and therefore shouldn’t have to pay any damages. The court agreed and acquitted them of all charges.

To avoid this type of outcome in future cases, the IFPI wants to change the burden of proof so that instead of the rights holder having to prove that an individual engaged in piracy, it is up to the individual to prove that he didn’t and that the responsibility for infringement lies with a 3rd party.

The final version of the report will be published in the spring.

Source: Biased Anti-Piracy Laws Cause Problems in Denmark

Ragnar Kårhus of Telenor said that they follow the law, and not the demands of the music industry. He doesn’t see what law would require them to block sites. “This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered,” he says.

Previously, a Danish judge ruled last year that Tele2 had to block its users from accessing The Pirate Bay. IFPI argued that Tele2 was assisting in mass copyright infringement, and that access to the site therefore had to be blocked. IFPI is now using this decision in an attempt to force ISPs in other countries to do the same.

However, Kårhus points out that there is a huge difference between the situation in Norway and Denmark. There is no court ruling in Norway, he argued, and a letter from the rights holders is not sufficient. “It is important that these kind of decisions should be made after handling in the judicial system – namely the police and a court of law,” Kårhus said.

Interestingly, the Norwegian Minister of Education said recently that the music industry should embrace the Internet instead of fighting it. “All previous technology advances have led to fears that the older format would die. But TV did not kill radio, the Web did not kill the book, and the download is not going to kill music,” he said.

It is uncertain whether IFPI will follow though with their threats and go after Telenor in court. It wouldn’t be the first time that legal threats have been used as a mechanism for applying pressure.

Source: Telenor Wont Block The Pirate Bay

Some are showing support by getting up in the middle of the night and translating the case for others. Some have been outside the court in the cold, while others have released a documentary. Many millions have been following every development online and posting words of support feverishly to blog and forum.

A few individuals took more direct action yesterday, much to the dislike of The Pirate Bay. They attacked the website of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in Sweden yesterday, defacing it, and leaving a message there for the trial prosecutor;

Stop lying HÅKAN ROSWALL!:

The ruthless hunt conducted by the IFPI, Anti-Piracy Office, Warner Bros., and all the other companies with a pawn in the game has now resulted in a trial in which four innocent men are accused of copyright infringement. This is a declaration of war against anti-piracy outfits and the industry players behind them, and we urge the public to boycott and lynch those responsible. IFPI is just the beginning. To be Continued.

The New Generation

When the RIAA website was hacked last year, the news was met with glee by thousands. No doubt this news will be well received too but one person who isn’t particularly happy about it – at least in the context of the court case – is Peter Sunde, aka brokep.

“Our case is going quite well as most of you have noticed. In the light of that it feels very bad that people are hacking web sites which actually puts us in a worse light than we need to be in,” he said.

The defacement included a note saying “To be Continued..” and Peter reports that he has heard rumors that there could be further attacks against the international page of the IFPI and the domain previously owned by Peter, IFPI.com.

Indeed, at the time of writing, both sites are unavailable, in addition to the Swedish site. There are no messages (possibly indicating a DDoS) but they are both down.

While all this might be a great distraction for those who believe the music industry only gets what it deserves and deserves what it gets, Peter is calling for calm;

“If anyone involved in the acts going on is reading this – please stop, for our sake. We don’t need that kind of support.”

The IFPI site currently carries this message; “Welcome to the IFPI Svenska group. This page is temporarily taken out of service.”

Stay tuned today for our coverage of the trial’s Day 4.

Update: IFPI.se, .org and .com are back online.

Source: Pirate Bay Plea: Stop Hacking the Music Industry!

Per-Eirik Johansen has been in the music industry for many years, and was noted for his ability to develop some prominent artists. At one point elected as chairman of the IFPI, it was during Johansen’s time as a director at EMI that he bore the brunt of a backlash against the copy protection his company put on CDs.

In 2004, five thousand people lobbied EMI to remove this DRM, with news site nrk.no calling Johansen’s office 27 times over two broken interview promises on the issue. Eventually he conceded, “I have neither the desire nor the ability to give out discs without copy protection,” while indicating that only EMI London could make such a decision.

“We always listen to consumers,” he objected. “I can inform you that over the last five months, in EMI we have sold about 400,000 CDs with copy protection in Norway. In the same period we have received 28 complaints from consumers.”

“What we are talking about is a tiny, tiny little thing,” he said. But did he really believe that it was so insignificant?

No longer working for EMI, in an interview with Joakim from Norway’s Dagbladet, Johansen – unrestrained from the shackles of a forced corporate line – speaks freely, noting that while he took a salary from EMI he felt obliged to defend their stance.

He now believes the music industry’s fight against piracy has been useless and says he disagrees with the assertion that illicit file-sharing is the same as theft. Referring to an earlier EMI anti-piracy initiative, Johansen noted, “The message of that campaign is that there is a reason why we have copyright, and I agree.”

“But the main thing is that a whole generation already violates copyright, and the only thing we can do now is find better solutions,” he says pragmatically.

Now, as the 49 year-old manages his own label, Johansen looks back on some good times with EMI, particularly those where he discovered and developed new artists. But times have changed. “Now that companies’ earnings have gone down, and you cut down on people, people no longer have the resources to drive this work,” he said.

Johansen still has optimism for the industry, pointing out growth in the live concert market and showing enthusiasm for new models to make money from music. “I am extremely optimistic. There has been a revolution, and in the wake of this, it is very chaotic. Today there is an entrepreneurial spirit that is both healthy and exciting. We do not know how the industry will look in a year or two, but I am convinced that the future looks promising.”

Noting that as a whole the music industry hasn’t fallen in value, Johansen says it is the recording section that has suffered most after it did nothing for too long and failed to adapt their business model to the new era.

“No one has ever won a battle when fighting against new technology,” he said.

Time to embrace it then.

Source: Former EMI Boss: Fight Against Illicit P2P is “Useless”

Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak that they are seriously considering suing the IFPI for unfair competition. “They have had a monopoly on distribution and we’re breaking that monopoly, and in turn they sue people that allow access to our distribution method,” he said.

Meanwhile, all other BitTorrent sites are still accessible in Denmark, and thus far the IFPI hasn’t announced it will go after any of them. This, together with the fact that there are several tricks to get around the block, make their legal strategy look like a personal vendetta against The Pirate Bay instead of an effective measure against piracy.

Before The Pirate Bay takes action against the IFPI, they will first await the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal that the three ISPs – DC, Telia and Telenor – announced earlier this week. If the appeal is unsuccessful, and when they find the perfect lawyer to represent them, The Pirate Bay will sue IFPI.

The IFPI seems to be looking forward to yet another confrontation. “Peter Sunde is welcome to sue us,” Jesper Bay, the head of the Danish IFPI told Comon.dk in a response to the news. Ironically, one of the websites explaining how to get around the Danish blockade carries Jesper Bay’s name.

For now, the Pirate Bay team has another court case to focus on. In two weeks their trial in Sweden kicks off, where the IFPI will also be one of their opponents. To be continued.

Update: Initially we reported that all Danish ISPs have to block the Pirate Bay. This is not the case. The latest court decision is a preliminary injunction against DMT. This means that it is only binding against ISPs owned by DMT (thanks Ole).

Source: The Pirate Bay Plans to Sue IFPI

Thanks to Eircom entering into this entirely voluntary agreement, there is no need for them or the music industry to worry about any official intervention into the methods used for accusing and disconnecting subscribers. The music industry simply accuses alleged copyright infringers (via DtecNet, the RIAA and BPI anti-piracy partner), and the ISP simply disconnects them on an agreed Terms of Service violation.

A worrisome development, to say the least. The agreement bypasses the need for any legal ruling on the issue of a government-applied ’3 strikes regime’. So, although the government may decide against this type of action for the general public, Eircom just put it firmly on the table, completely voluntarily, for all of its subscribers.

There will be no need to take alleged copyright infringers to court. The music industry knows from the US model that doesn’t work anyway, because it involves all that messy ‘defense’ stuff that people who are wrongly accused usually have the right to. Rather than face the hell of a trial (which at least they have a chance of winning), customers will be presumed guilty rather than presumed innocent. The will be no due process on the way to the punishment disconnection.

There will likely be no easy legal challenge to a user’s disconnection. Eircom will simply change its Terms of Service to include new tougher clauses which allow them to terminate the service if the connection is ‘abused’, although arguably the old TOS allows for this already. The warnings it will hand to its customers leading up to this point will be considered enough notice, as per the new TOS.

Anyone who shares an Internet connection with friends or family, or any business that has file-sharing staff (or wireless piggy-backers etc) will mean that the entire line goes down if anyone infringes, even a child. In disconnections of this type it will mean that the bill payer is being made responsible for something which happens on his connection without his knowledge.

As a carrier, ISPs are not responsible for the activities of their subscribers. The music industry disagrees. Eircom were set to challenge this in court – but with this new agreement that opportunity has been lost. The Big Four labels also insisted that anti-piracy filtering technology could be installed at Eircom, and argued that it would work. The chance to dispel this myth has been lost too.

Perhaps even worse, this might just be the beginning. The IFPI will use the Eircom agreement to force other, smaller ISPs in Ireland to reach the same agreement with them. If they succeed, IFPI will have achieved a “3 strikes” regime in a country without need for the messy business of the government getting involved with regulation, which it would otherwise be reluctant to do.

In no way does this agreement stop the music industry from getting someone disconnected AND taking a civil legal action against them.

This agreement will do nothing to change the habits of those who wish to share files. It will, however, encourage people to find a way around the measures introduced by IFPI and Eircom so the never-ending cat and mouse game continues.

Source: Why the IFPI/Eircom Anti-Piracy Deal Sucks