An IFPI-affiliated anti-piracy group has announced that it has gathered evidence on dozens of file-sharers and will shortly hand it to the police. The group says it will hand over the results of its investigation into large scale file-sharers to the authorities this month and warns that the law allows those convicted to be jailed for up to 4 years.
OpenBitTorrent is a non-commercial BitTorrent tracker that doesn’t host or link to torrent files. Despite this seemingly neutral setup, both Hollywood and the music industry have declared war against what they see as an illegal service. After Hollywood won its case against the former provider of OpenBitTorrent, IFPI is now going after its new host in Spain.
A recent copyright takedown notice from the UK’s BPI revealed that the music group has been demanding that Google take down links not just to precise URLs where music is hosted on cyberlockers, but rather more generally referencing the entire site. Now it appears that IFPI, the BPI’s big brother, is trying a similar strategy, this time with The Pirate Bay.
Following an inspection by Sweden’s Data Inspection board late last year, it has been announced that both the IFPI and Antipiratbyrån comply with all necessary regulations in their hunt for illicit file-sharers. Although they will continue with their activities, data will no longer be used to send warning letters to suspected file-sharers.
After failing in their case against The Pirate Bay, a music copyrights group has announced it will give up trying to get sites blocked and will leave file-sharers alone. Not forever though. They will instead put all their efforts into getting the law changed. The IFPI said yesterday that it wants to bring this same strategy to your country soon.
In 2008 a Danish court ruled in favor of the IFPI and ordered the ISP Tele2 to block all customer access to The Pirate Bay. The ISP appealed the decision and now the case will head over to Denmark’s Supreme Court in 2 months’ time. Will the recent Norwegian victory for the ISP Telenor be replicated over the water?
Following two unsuccessful attempts at forcing ISP Telenor to block The Pirate Bay in Norway, the IFPI and performing rights outfit TONO have abandoned their legal action. The case will not now head to the Supreme Court but instead the entertainment groups will pin their hopes on new legislation.
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