After a chain of events that reads like a Hollywood blockbuster script, the case is now on trial with husband and wife team Anton and Kelly Vickerman as the defendants.

As is often the case, the investigation into the alleged pirate site was not started by the police, but by Hollywood. In 2008 and working closely with the MPAA, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) hired former Dutch policeman Pascal Hetzschold to try and make contact with SurfTheChannel’s owner.

Using the cover “Roger Van Veen,” Hetzschold pretended to represent a venture capitalist who was interested in the site. After a few emails back forth, SurfTheChannel operator “Anton” agreed to meet with him in London.

During that meeting Anton opened up about the site according to Hetzschold. He allegedly explained that the site made $50,000 in revenue each month from an average of 400,000 visitors per day. Anton also admitted that he founded the site which he ran in collaboration with two other people.

After the meeting was over the two parted company. Or at least, that’s what Anton was led to believe. In reality, Hetzschold tailed the SurfTheChannel owner a distance of nearly 250 miles back to his home in Gateshead where he lived with his wife Kelly.

Now that the MPAA and FACT knew where the couple lived, they were ready to carry out the second part of their plan. In preparation for a possible police raid on the premises, they sent over private investigator Paul Varley as a prospective house buyer. Once he had gained access to the family home Varley took a series of pictures, with a special interest in computer equipment.

The MPAA/FACT undercover operation eventually resulted in a raid on the Vickerman’s home. During the raid it became apparent how closely the Hollywood group had been working together with the authorities. Not only were Hollywood representatives taking part in the questioning, they also brought along investigators who were allowed to examine the equipment.

After looking into the case for a few months, UK authorities decided not to start a criminal prosecution. However, that wasn’t the end of the SurfTheChannel case.

Determined to hold the site’s operators responsible for linking to third party streaming sites, the MPAA focused on a programmer from the United States. After teaming up with the US authorities, a criminal investigation was started against Boston resident Brendan DeBeasi in 2011.

DeBeasi had been hired to maintain and code for SurfTheChannel, for which he was paid the sum of $9,850. For his collaboration with the streaming links site he was charged with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, facing up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

However, DeBeasi wasn’t convicted in the United States. Instead, he worked out a deal with the authorities who agreed to dismiss the copyright infringement charge in exchange for a testimony in the UK Vickerman trial. In addition, the programmer agreed to pay the MPAA the $9,850 he made from his work at SurfTheChannel.

In other words, the US authorities agreed to drop copyright charges in the US in exchange for a testimony in a UK fraud case, which to our knowledge is unprecedented.

Possibly because of this fresh witness, the criminal prosecution against the Vickerman couple was started after all. In what Hollywood describes as the largest copyright related fraud case in UK history, their trial started last week at Newcastle Crown Court.

During the court hearings some of the above details were brought up, as the Sunday Times reports.

Prosecutor David Groome argued that SurfTheChannel facilitated mass copyright infringement resulting in massive losses for the movie industry. Defense lawyer David Walbank on the other hand noted that the site’s servers were located in Sweden, which means that the site might have not operated illegally under UK law.

The case is expected to last a month but which way it will go is hard to predict. Both are charged with two counts of conspiracy to defraud and pleaded not guilty.

In 2010, linking website TV-Links was deemed to be a ‘mere conduit’ of information and its admins were acquitted. From a functional viewpoint this site was similar to SurfTheChannel.

However, the TV-Links case was conducted on a question of copyright and the charges against the SurfTheChannel operators are for fraud. Nevertheless, a similar approach failed when tested against the former operator of OiNK, Alan Ellis.

Another interesting angle comes from the case against the operators of BitTorrent tracker FileSoup. They had their case dismissed last year after the court concluded that the criminal investigation was built on evidence solely provided by industry groups. As the cloak-and-dagger behavior detailed above illustrates, there can be little doubt that Hollywood was deeply involved in the criminal investigation against SurfTheChannel.

Update: We deleted the reference to a “lifetime” imprisonment which appeared in the Sunday Times. The maximum term in fraud cases is 10 years.

Source: Undercover MPAA Agents Expose Alleged Movie Pirates

The former congressman pointed out that the film industry was able to thrive because of intellectual property protections.

“The ability to give birth to an idea and convert it into economic success, whether it is the content of a film or the technology of the internet, depends on copyright and patent protection,” he said, referring to the history of US film.

We thought that was ironic. Why? Because Hollywood was founded by a group of independent filmmakers who “fled” from Edison’s patents, among other things. The full story (see Copyhype) is richer, but it’s a well-known fact that those who now rule Hollywood refused to obey the patents.

To emphasize the irony we described Hollywood’s founders as “thieves” and “pirates,” using quotation marks. Aside from these terms, the events described in our article are mostly undisputed. In no way did we say that this history justifies modern-day piracy, we simply pointed out that Dodd’s comments were unfortunate.

The MPAA, however, doesn’t like to be called pirates. In a recent blog post they refer to the Copyhype post, claiming that what we and others such as Lawrence Lessig wrote is all lies. We are thieves.

“If you ask the operators of The Pirate Bay and their apologists, they’ll say Hollywood was built by a band of pirates, fleeing stringent East Coast patent protections to a free and open land to create at will. This theory conveniently parallels their own existence, as they seek to justify profiting from digital theft.”

And these thieves are wrong, the MPAA claims.

Hollywood’s founders were no pirates, but freedom fighters who rebelled against a “copyright” monopoly.

“The patents at issue were held by the Motion Picture Patents Company, which, through restrictive tie-in agreements and licensing practices, severely impeded independent filmmakers from entering the market.”

Hmmm, that sounds familiar.

These independent filmmakers lost the first patent lawsuit, but eventually the court sided with them.

“The status quo was challenged, and shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court determined that MPPC’s licensing practices give it ‘a potential power for evil over’ movie producers which ‘would be gravely injurious to th[e] public interest.’ This 1917 ruling severely undermined MPPC’s unfair business practices.”

Fair enough, but the MPAA’s version of the truth doesn’t change anything about the fact that the founders of Hollywood were challenging existing patents. That they won in the end doesn’t mean that patents weren’t violated in the years before.

So Dodd’s comment that “the ability to give birth to an idea and convert it into economic success, whether it is the content of a film or the technology of the internet, depends on copyright and patent protection,” is still rather unfortunate.

Especially because Dodd specifically referenced a time where patents were infringed en masse.

Also, the MPAA’s response in their recent blog post is in itself unfortunate. The lobby group says that Hollywood’s freedom fighters beat Edison because the court agreed that the MPPC had “a potential power for evil over” movie producers which “would be gravely injurious to th[e] public interest.”

Interesting, because today the MPAA is also quite powerful. They are the moral judge who decides what films the public is allowed to see. Not just for the major studios they represent, but also films of independent studios who are NOT an MPAA member company.

Through its ratings system they can make or break films, a “potential power for evil” for sure. Just ask South Park creator Matt Stone or watch “This Film is Not Yet Rated” to get an idea of what’s going on behind the scenes.

Fin.

Source: MPAA: We’re No Pirates! You Are Thieves! Or?

Pirates are ruining the industry and are the direct reason for the loss of thousands of jobs, they say. Better copyright protections are the solution, they conclude.

A recent example of this reasoning was displayed by MPAA boss Chris Dodd earlier this week at the CinemaCon meeting in Las Vegas. Dodd told the audience that copyright protection has always been vital to the US movie industry, and it’s copyright that has allowed Hollywood to thrive .

The MPAA used this to emphasize that the movie industry and the tech sector have a mutual interest in strong copyright legislation. Or put in his words:

The truth is that neither the content nor the technology industries could survive without strong protections for intellectual property.

Many of you are familiar with how the name Hollywood became synonymous with the birth of the American film industry. It was in Jacob Stern’s horse barn, at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, the story goes, that Cecil B. DeMille screened the first full length feature film 100 years ago.

Well, when it comes to the tech sector, replace “Jacob Stern’s horse barn” with “Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room” at Harvard, and you have almost the same story with the birth of Facebook.

In these and countless other examples throughout our history, the ability to give birth to an idea and convert it into economic success, whether it is the content of a film or the technology of the internet, depends on copyright and patent protection

An interesting argument, but also an unfortunate one. Not only because Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of stealing the Facebook idea himself, which Hollywood turned into a movie recently. But also because it’s easy to argue that the American movie industry was built by copyright “thieves.”

In fact, Hollywood wouldn’t be what it is today if a bunch of rogue filmmakers hadn’t fled New York early last century. This “pirate” version of the movie industry history starts with one of America’s greatest innovators, Thomas Edison.

Little over a century ago Edison stood at the cradle of the filmmaking industry. He was the first to invent a device through which people could project film and obtained many movie related patents. To make money from his hard work he asked a licensing fee from those who were making movies with his technology.

This licensing requirement motivated a group of rogue filmmaking pirates to flee New York, including a man named William. They left for the then still wild West, where they recorded many films without a license until Edison’s patents expired. These pirates continue to do business there today in a place they named Hollywood. William’s last name? Fox.

So Edison got no money from these Hollywood pirates. While today’s Hollywood would be up in arms about this gross circumvention of intellectual property rights, we should mention that Edison himself wasn’t squeaky clean either.

In fact, in 1902 Thomas Edison himself copied “A Trip to the Moon,” a movie from Georges Méliès, without permission to show it in US theaters. This overt act of piracy eventually resulted in the bankruptcy of the French filmmaker.

The above shows that it’s not a stretch to argue that the movie industry was built by pirates. Or to put it in other words, if early 1900 filmmakers would have paid for their licenses, Hollywood would probably have never been built.

But you won’t hear that from the MPAA of course…

Source: MPAA Boss ‘Forgets’ Hollywood’s Pirate History

A sample of the major anti-piracy companies working with the MPAA can be found on the movie outfit’s ‘Around The World‘ page.

There are many famous outfits listed including BREIN, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and Sweden’s Antipiratbyrån.

INFACT, the Irish National Federation Against Copyright Theft, is also present on the list and has been working away on the film industry’s behalf for many years both on- and offline. Back in 1999 INFACT was listed in court papers as a non-profit subsidiary of the Motion Picture Industry Association.

During 2010 INFACT was targeted by Anonymous’ Operation Payback and as recently as January this year the group was reported as having assisted with the investigation which led to the closure of Library.nu, a site dedicated to indexing ebooks. Indeed, whenever the anti-piracy drum has needed beating in Ireland, INFACT has been there.

Then a few weeks ago TorrentFreak had a tip from a source that has proven reliable in the past. Word on the street was that INFACT would soon close down and there would be an ‘interesting’ reason if we could get someone to speak.

So we contacted INFACT and asked them if there was any truth in the rumor but we received no response. This week we tried to follow up the lead and press INFACT for an answer but to no avail.

It appears that INFACT – the MPAA’s eyes and ears in Ireland – has simply disappeared. There has been no announcement as to its fate and its website, INFACT.ie, has completely gone.

We contacted the MPAA and asked them for information but haven’t heard anything back from them either. Emails to former employees of INFACT also remain unanswered.

So what has happened to INFACT remains a mystery. Maybe they did such a good job in tackling piracy in Ireland they’re just not needed anymore, or maybe the reverse is true. If you know, drop us a line at the usual address…..

Source: MPAA-Affiliated Anti-Piracy Group Mysteriously Disappears

It has become so important that some of the world’s leading Internet companies such as Google and Facebook, rights groups such as the EFF and Public Knowledge, and the biggest entertainment companies through the MPAA, have all become involved in the case.

First a little background. Marques Gunter owns a site called myVidster, a site designed for users to upload links and embed videos hosted on 3rd party sites. In 2010, adult studio Flava Works filed a copyright complaint against myVidster and 26 Doe users of its service.

Flava Works alleged that Gunter had failed to correctly police his site for infringement. Although Flava did not deny that Gunter had responded to specific takedown requests, the company said that despite being made aware of them, Gunter had done nothing to stop a sample of 26 repeat infringers who continually reposted links to infringing material on the myVidster site.

In July 2011, a contributory infringement claim was upheld and a preliminary injunction awarded against myVidster. The company was denied a DMCA safe harbor defense after it was said to have not done enough to deal with repeat infringement.

“[Gunter] removes videos from myVidster that are listed in DMCA notices, but goes no further. Beyond his mechanical response to the notices, Gunter refuses to concern himself with copyright protection,” Judge John F. Grady wrote.

“It is true that service providers are not required to police their sites for infringement, but they are required to investigate and respond to notices of infringement—with respect to content and repeat infringers,” Grady added.

Noting the importance of the case, late November 2011 the EFF and Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief. The pair said that Grady had gone too far with his interpretation of the DMCA and noted that the law “….does not say when and how service providers must terminate the accounts of ‘repeat infringers,’ nor does it define ‘repeat infringer’.'”

Also in November, Internet giants Google and Facebook signaled their interest in the case and their desire to have the original decision overruled. Their submission is complex, but boils down to a common theme.

“Lack of certainty not only harms established businesses like Google and Facebook, but may prevent investment in and development of the next Google or the next Facebook. A [recent study] found that imposing greater liability on Internet intermediaries for the actions of their users would have a devastating effect on investment in early-stage Internet companies,” the pair wrote in a joint amicus brief.

With such important issues at stake, and with their interests leaning more towards holding service providers liable wherever they can, on April 4th the MPAA added their amicus brief to the mix. The MPAA wants Judge Grady’s 2011 ruling upheld.

“Contrary to the assertions of myVidster and amici Google and Facebook, search engines and social networking sites are not the only businesses that desire certainty in a challenging online marketplace,” MPAA wrote. “MPAA member companies and other producers of creative works also need a predictable legal landscape in which to operate.”

“By advertising infringing material, refusing to terminate any of its users’ accounts, and failing to identify and stop infringers who repeatedly embedded links to unauthorized video streams and displays, myVidster did not qualify for safe-harbor protection,” the MPAA continued.

Again, the brief submitted by the MPAA is highly complex, but it too can be boiled down to a simple interest.

“Given the massive and often anonymous infringement on the internet, the ability of copyright holders to hold gateways like myVidster liable for secondary infringement is crucial in preventing piracy,” the MPAA states.

In keeping with that theme and according to a statement from Flava Works CEO Phillip Bleicher seen by AVN, Flava Works are also suing the web hosts of myVidster.

US-based Voxel.net and Netherlands-based LeaseWeb.com are said to be on the hook “…for failing to remove MyVidster.com from its servers despite dozens of DMCA notices alerting Voxel.net and LeaseWeb.com that Gunter was a repeat infringer. Under DMCA, safe harbor no longer applies to sites that fail to remove repeat infringers.”

Flava Works, Inc v. Gunter, currently up before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, is one of the most important copyright-related cases around and definitely one to keep an eye on.

Source: MPAA Joins Google, Facebook, EFF In Repeat Infringer Copyright Battle

The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the US.

“I find it absurd that we are required to keyword filter which ironically all search engines in countries like China are required to do due to political censorship, but isoHunt would be the only search engine serving traffic to US users required to do similar filtering,” isoHunt owner Gary Fung wrote to the court in a response.

Hoping to get the decision overturned isoHunt filed an appeal, which is still ongoing, but in the meantime it saw no other option than to comply. The filter was implemented and has since prevented a list of film-related phrases from showing up in the search results. But not without collateral damage.

Besides blocking links to Hollywood blockbusters, the MPAA’s filter is also preventing public domain works and authorized content from being accessed.

Filmmaker Brian Taylor is one of the independent artists whose work is falsely censored by the MPAA filter. Last week his small film production firm En Queue Film released a 18 minute horror short titled “the Bite.” In addition to putting it on video streaming sites Taylor also thought it would be a good idea to put it on isoHunt.

“I got it going, had downloads start from the US and Europe almost immediately, which made me a very happy guy,” Taylor told TorrentFreak.

However, this enthusiasm faded quickly when he tried to access the torrent from a US connection a day later. Instead of a link to the torrent file the filmmaker was welcomed with the following message. “Torrent has been censored, as required by US court.”

Needless to say Taylor was shocked to see the work that he owns 100% being censored. The whole idea was to share it with a wide audience, including people from the US.

“Some of us aren’t stealing movies from torrent sites, some of us are offering original material,” Taylor told TorrentFreak.

“My original material being blocked in the US hurts my chances of: being discovered, making money, making more art. Not to mention the fact that Americans miss out on “the Bite,” the most original realistic short horror film ever made.”

Unfortunately, this takedown is not an isolated incident.

Another good example is this torrent with thousands of songs from the 1930′s, that are all believed to be in the public domain. While the content is completely unrelated to any motion pictures, the MPAA filter prevents US visitors form accessing it.

We asked isoHunt to look into the issue and we were told that an unfortunate combination of keywords in the file names is to blame.

“We’ve found that it was a TV title that censored it,” Gary Fung told TorrentFreak, adding that these false positives are quite common.

“There are thousands of titles the MPAA sent that we are forced by the US court injunction to censor our index against, and these are but two tangible examples of non-infringing content that is falsely censored,” he added.

As isoHunt has pointed out to the court before, this false censorship based on a filter which includes many dictionary words, is clearly hindering freedom of speech. This is one of the main reasons why the BitTorrent search engine continues to fight the filter requirement in court.

The Ninth Circuit Appeal Court now has to decide whether the permanent injunction will stay in place or not. This decision will be a crucial one to the future of isoHunt, and possibly many other search engines including Google.

Source: MPAA Filter Censors Legit Torrent Files on isoHunt

The exec identified Fileserve, MediaFire, Wupload, Putlocker and Depositfiles as targets that might be referred to the US Government next, describing these businesses as “rogue sites.” The announcement clearly came as quite a shock to these major players. After Putlocker refuted the claims earlier, today MediaFire responds to the allegations.

“It was both shocking and disappointing that Mr. Perry referenced us as a ‘rogue’ website,” MediaFire co-founder Tom Langridge told TorrentFreak.

“It’s my opinion that the inclusion of MediaFire was most likely the result of misinformation. We have already received very positive responses from people supporting us, both in and outside of the copyright industry, and we hope that the public and press will continue to challenge Mr. Perry’s assertions.”

Langridge goes on to explain that MediaFire is a storage and backup service that doesn’t promote or encourage copyright infringements in any way. The site has never paid users to upload content, and it doesn’t have download limitations to encourage people to convert to paid subscriptions either.

But mistake or not, being featured on a Hollywood hit-list these days is bad PR, and thus far the movie studio stands by its assessment. It even went as far as to include MediaFire on a poster of rogue cyberlockers.

In their response, MediaFire stays classy. The company doesn’t see any point in throwing mud back at Hollywood and instead explains that they operate a perfectly transparent US company. A business that has proven to be useful to many legitimate customers.

“MediaFire is a US based company with a highly transparent business model and management team. MediaFire was founded by a group of reputable entrepreneurs with diverse backgrounds who have a history of building innovative and valuable websites and technologies,” Langridge told us.

“Over the past several years, we have been focused on releasing numerous updates to MediaFire’s professional and business services. Just in the last month, we launched our document viewing system (in beta) and rebuilt our image system – not the kind of features that incentivize illegal activity.”

Of course MediaFire, like any other file-hosting service, can’t prevent copyrighted material from ending up on its website occasionally. However, the company has all the legally required tools in place for copyright holders to address these violations.

“MediaFire continues to cooperate fully with the MPAA, RIAA, and various other organizations who work to identify and prohibit the distribution of copyrighted content. We have a variety of advanced automated systems designed to detect violations of our Terms of Service and automatically warn and terminate users.”

“In fact, these systems have received rave reviews from organizations monitoring copyrighted content,” Langridge.

Unfortunately, this is no guarantee for escaping legal action. Both Hotfile and Megaupload were praised for their takedown policies on several occasions as well, but both later ended up in court.

MediaFire’s Langridge nonetheless believes that Hollywood’s allegations are “most likely an inadvertent result of misinformation.” While this sounds plausible after reading the above, we doubt that Paramount Pictures will retract their statements, let alone offer an apology.

Source: MediaFire Shocked By Hollywood Smear Campaign

The site’s popularity is “a direct result of the massive digital theft that Hotfile promotes,” the movie industry group said.

In an effort to back up this claim, the movie studios hired statistician Richard Waterman to discover what percentage of the downloads that occur on the file-hoster are copyright-infringing. Waterman previously conducted similar studies for the RIAA’s lawsuit against LimeWire and that of the MPAA against isoHunt.

Dr. Waterman’s report ultimately concluded that 90.2% of all daily downloads on Hotfile are infringing, opposed to 5.3% that are clearly non-infringing.

Hotfile, however, felt that this report painted an inaccurate description of their daily activities and went on to hire an expert of their own to look into the validity of the report.

The file-hoster commissioned Daniel Levy, Managing Director and founder of Advanced Analytical Consulting Group. His job was to evaluate how representative the MPAA-funded report is for the alleged infringements on Hotfile from the site’s inception up to the start of the lawsuit in January 2011.

TorrentFreak managed to obtain a copy of this confidential report which tears the MPAA-funded study apart. The main conclusion of Dr. Levy is that the Waterman report gives “no scientifically reliable estimate of the incidence of allegedly infringing behavior through the Hotfile website.”

According to Levy the 90.2% is based on a sample of downloads that is not representative for the total number of downloads that occur at Hotfile.

Among other things the Waterman report excludes downloads from nearly half of the world’s Internet users. Downloads via so-called Hotlinks are also omitted, and downloads of files that were submitted by anonymous users were not counted either.

“Dr. Waterman has provided no reliable scientific evidence about the overall population of downloads from the Hotfile website during any time period,” is Levy’s conclusion.

Aside from the claim that the evidence is unreliable, Levy also notes that the Waterman report overlooks the fact that Hotfile is also used for purposes other than downloading alone. As is common for all storage services, a large percentage of files are used for backup and are never downloaded by the public.

“Dr. Waterman has investigated only one aspect of how users employ Hotfile. He has not investigated the storage, file security and backup or single users’ file transfer across locations or devices for self use. Dr. Waterman has not investigated the alleged infringement behavior across the uses of Hotfile,” Levy writes.

Based on the same downloads source as the MPAA used, 54 percent of all files uploaded to Hotfile are never downloaded at all. This is indeed an important distinction to make, but not a flaw in Dr. Waterman’s report as that only looked into actual downloads.

In sum, the Hotfile funded report clearly reveals some issues in the MPAA study which may overestimate the actual infringement on Hotfile. However, whether the “real” percentage of infringing downloads will be lower is impossible to tell.

The MPAA and Dr. Waterman have let the court know that they still stand behind the report, and it’s now up to the judge to decide how to use it.

To be continued.

Source: Hotfile Researcher Discredits MPAA-Funded Piracy Study

On the contrary, the MPAA is often disliked for their aggressive censorship regime. Not SOPA-style Internet censorship but film censorship, allegedly used to protect the interests of the major studios.

Aside from leading the war on piracy, the MPAA is also the moral judge who decides what films the public is allowed to see. Through its ratings system they can make or break films. Just ask South Park creator Matt Stone or watch “This Film is Not Yet Rated” to get an idea of what’s going on behind the scenes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Another filmmaker who came out against the MPAA recently is small-time film director Heather Ferreira who wrote a flaming rant directed at the MPAA on Quora. According to her, pirates are not the threat – it’s the MPAA that’s killing creative filmmaking through its censorship regime.

“What I see when I examine the MPAA is not a friendly guardian of feature film directors’ rights, even at the studio level. Instead, I see a very large lobby that began as a Christian right-wing organization instituted to keep minorities off motion picture screens, promote racism and homophobia, and restrict creative freedom in America,” she writes.

Ferreira feels left out in the cold by the movie group, and gives several examples of trivial censorship rules filmmakers have to abide by today.

“The Motion Picture Association of America has never written me a paycheck for anything. They’re not backing my picture. These are not nice guys. They are not in this business to help filmmakers at all.”

“They’re censors waiting to pounce my film and yours with an NC-17 rating for violence or for showing two consenting adults laughing while enjoying sex (rape however is okay), while curiously no one censors the news media for showing [..] eight-year-olds Paris Hilton’s latest upskirt with very little pixellated out,” she writes.

“Isn’t that pauseworthy? If there’s no censors for the news, why for dramatic movies and television?”

Eventually, Ferreira gets to answering the original question and then it becomes evident that she dislikes the MPAA much more than those who download her work. “Thanks. I hope you enjoyed it,” would be her response to pirates who download her work.

“What the MAFIAA fails to realize is p2p is not a black and white issue of ‘piracy is wrong; all of it; and if you didn’t pay us, you’re a criminal’,” she writes.

Ferreira then goes on to note that the MPAA could better address piracy by stopping killing the creativity of filmmakers, and offer reasonably priced and top quality films. After all, pirates are potential customers.

“They’re a potential paying future audience member. The technology has changed. The playing field is different now. We need to adapt to it, not it to us,” she ends.

Although the above is just a single example of a filmmaker’s disappointment with the MPAA, a rather extreme one too, Ferreira is not alone. The lobby group represents the major studios who themselves are also guilty of crushing the creative dreams of independent filmmakers.

Just last week a former film student detailed how his career was ruined by a major movie studio. In 2001, the student found inspiration for his thesis in a short story from Isaac Asimov’s that was part of the book “I Robot.” But even though he had consent from the Asimov estate, a major studio threatened to take him down if he dared to bring it out. Turns out that studio was working on a film titled “I Robot.”

This week another major studio sued the Corleone estate because they want to publish a “Godfather” sequel. The studio claims that it’s to “protect the integrity and reputation of The Godfather trilogy.”

It would be kind of weak to say that the questionable censorship practices described above are an excuse to go and pirate movies. However, they are examples of how common protectionism and censorship is among the biggest players in Hollywood, and that this may be more detrimental to creativity than piracy will ever be.

Source: Filmmaker: MPAA Is a Censorship Group, Go Torrent!

“In less than two years, Hotfile has become one of the 100 most trafficked sites in the world. That is a direct result of the massive digital theft that Hotfile promotes,” the movie industry group said.

Since then there have been dozens of court filings and Hotfile even sued MPAA member Warner Bros. right back for allegedly abusing its copyright takedown tools.

The MPAA wants to prove that Hotfile had a business model centered around piracy and one in which the file-hoster encouraged users of its service to upload copyrighted motion pictures and TV shows to Hotfile servers and then link back to them using third-party sites.

In recent weeks, more and more court filings in the case have been marked restricted/sealed but this week an interesting one was made available. According to Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Columbia and Warner, an urgent discovery hearing is required to cut through what is described by them as “a procedural morass that is prejudicing Plaintiffs’ ability to complete important discovery in this matter.”

The problem has its roots in August 2011 when Hotfile was ordered to hand the MPAA mountains of data including information it holds on the files it hosts, the company’s users and its many affiliates.

But the MPAA didn’t receive all of the data it was expecting. While Hotfile said it had no objection to producing any of the data it holds, it claimed that handing over everything requested was impossible since it did not carry some of the information.

Determined to obtain the data anyway, on December 6th 2011 the MPAA served a subpoena on Google to obtain access to Hotfile’s Google Analytics account which can show the sites driving traffic to Hotfile and the host’s most popular pages.

But Google said that absent Hotfile’s consent, it would not supply the data to the MPAA. In turn, Hotfile refused to give consent or hand over the data now since the discovery date deadline, December 23rd 2011, has now passed.

The MPAA insists that the information could be made available via a simple “push of a button” and is now asking the court to order Hotfile to either produce it, or authorize Google to do so urgently. The MPAA are in a rush because at the end of next week they will file for summary judgment against Hotfile and to do that effectively they need the traffic data in advance.

According to court documents, a mediation meeting that took place January 11th 2012 between the studios and Hotfile’s owners ended without the parties reaching settlement.

Source: MPAA Demands Hotfile Data From Google, Search Engine Refuses

First, MPAA CEO Chris Dodd described the blackouts of Wikipedia, Reddit and others as corporate PR stunts which manipulated and exploited the sites’ users.

“Some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns,” Dodd said.

Then, a few days later when many lawmakers had already dropped their support for the anti-piracy bills, the MPAA’s comments turned even more grim. Talking to Fox News, the MPAA’s boss threatened to stop contributing to politicians who don’t back legislation designed to protect Hollywood.

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,” Dodd said.

Although it’s no secret that the movie industry has a powerful lobby in Washington, explicitly admitting that bribery is one of the tactics the MPAA uses to have their way wasn’t well received by the public. A few hours ago a White house petition was started to investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for alleged bribery.

“This is an open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting of the ‘above the law’ status people of Dodd’s position and wealth enjoy,” the petition reads.

“We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.”

In just a few hours the petition amassed more than 5,000 votes and this number is increasing rapidly. As a former Senator, Chris Dodd has many friends in Washington so it’s unclear whether the petition will accomplish anything, but if the numbers grow big enough the White House won’t be able to ignore it either.

The MPAA’s response to the PIPA and SOPA opposition this week is a sign that they might be losing control in Washington. At the very least, they are starting to lose their patience and become frustrated, which may not help their cause at this point.

Source: White House Petitioned to Investigate MPAA Bribery

It all started in 2007 when a jury hit Thomas with a $222,000 verdict when she was found guilty of sharing 24 songs using the file-sharing client Kazaa. In 2008 Thomas appealed this verdict and a mistrial was declared, with the judge ruling that the fines were “disproportionate to the damages suffered.”

The case went up for re-trial before a new jury in 2009 where Thomas lost and was ordered to pay $1.92 million in fines. She then filed for a re-trial and in November 2010 a jury again found her guilty and awarded a total sum of $1.5 million .

Last year the case moved in another direction. Describing the massive damages as “monstrous and shocking” U.S. District Judge Michael Davis significantly reduced the earlier fine. Instead of $1.5 million, the judge ruled that $2,250 per song, for a total award of $54,000, is the maximum consistent with due process.

“The Court concludes that an award of $1.5 million for stealing and distributing 24 songs for personal use is appalling. Such an award is so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable,” Judge Davis wrote.

The RIAA was disappointed by the verdict of the federal court, and is now hoping to reinstate the initial $222,000 damages award through an appeal. This week the music lobby group filed a brief in which they claim that this amount is not “monstrous and shocking,” and neither was the $1.5 million fine.

“Neither the first jury’s $9,250-per-work award nor the third jury’s $62,500-per-work award is more substantial than the Constitution allows,” the RIAA concludes.

The RIAA further criticizes Judge Davis’ ruling that any fine higher than $2,250 per infringed song requires some proof of actual damages. In other words, the RIAA would have to show that there is “some” relation with actual damages suffered by the copyright holder. According to the RIAA, neither the copyright act nor the due process clause requires this.

“Neither its legal analysis nor its factual analysis supports the court’s holding that the relationship between actual and statutory damages renders any award greater than $2,250 per work unconstitutional,” writes the RIAA.

The RIAA is not alone in their assessment, as they are now joined by the MPAA who this week filed an amicus brief in the case.

“That ruling improperly would require copyright owners who elect statutory damages to present proof of actual damages. Requiring such proof would significantly alter well-established ground rules for copyright litigation, add substantial practical burdens and unreasonably increase the costs of pursuing such litigation,” the MPAA writes.

In addition, the RIAA argues that Judge Davis made a mistake by ruling that “making a work available” is not part of the distribution right protected by the Copyright Act.

“The District Court erred in rejecting the first jury’s verdict on the mistaken ground that the Copyright Act does not protect the copyright holder’s long-established exclusive right to control the terms on which a work is ‘made available’ to the public,” the RIAA writes.

Again, the MPAA sides with the RIAA in its writing to the court.

“That right is, in fact, an international copyright norm. The right has particular importance in a digital age where unauthorized third parties routinely make available valuable copyrighted works for instantaneous dissemination to millions of Internet users around the globe,” they write.

It is now up to the court to decide if the arguments provided by the billion dollar entertainment companies hold any ground.

To be continued, indefinitely.

Source: MPAA Joins RIAA in “Monstrous” Jammie Thomas Appeal

Luckily for Hollywood, many Americans choose to consume their online media through legal services such as Netflix. In fact, there are now so many that the total Internet traffic generated by Netflix has outgrown that of BitTorrent.

This made us wonder – what would happen if all movie-downloading BitTorrent users made the switch to Netflix? What if movie piracy via BitTorrent disappeared?

Before we crunch some numbers we have to say that the model we use relies on a lot of assumptions. However, we try to keep these in favor of the movie industry to maximize their potential ‘profits’. We obviously chose Netflix as a BitTorrent replacement because it comes closest to what ‘pirates’ want.

What’s the ‘value’ of BitTorrent piracy?

What we’re going to do is determine the amount of Internet traffic movie and TV related BitTorrent downloads generate in the US. Since the file-sizes of Netflix and BitTorrent downloads are about the same, we then compare this traffic to what Netflix is generating now. Assuming a linear relation between revenue and traffic we can then “guess” how much extra money would come in if all BitTorrent users switched – and paid.

Step 1: How much BitTorrent traffic is movie/tv related?

The first assumption we’re going to make is that all BitTorrent traffic is unauthorized. This is of course not the case, but we’ll leave that debate for another time.

If we then take a look at one of the more recent reports on the BitTorrent ecosystem, often cited by the MPAA, we see that 35.2% of all torrents are movie related. Another 12.7% are TV-related. For the purpose of this thought experiment we are going to forget about Hulu and other free services and add TV to the ‘pirate traffic’ mix.

The total percentage of video torrents is then 47.9%.

Since we’re comparing traffic we have to adjust for the file-size of videos compared to all other content on BitTorrent and the actual popularity of the files. This is nearly impossible to estimate precisely , but several reports show that movie and video are downloaded the most by far. So we’re going to set the total amount of infringing BitTorrent video traffic at 85%, which is probably on the high end.

Step 2: How does BitTorrent traffic compare to Netflix traffic?

The next step is to see how much of total Internet traffic 85% of all BitTorrent traffic actually is.

A recent report from the Canadian company Sandvine shows that in the US 16.5% of total Internet traffic on an average day comes from BitTorrent. Since BitTorrent traffic goes both ways (upload and download), 8.75% of this is downstream traffic. This means that a little under 7.5% (85% of 8.75) of all Internet traffic in the US is video downloads over BitTorrent.

The same Sandvine report shows that 23.3% of total Internet traffic an average day comes from Netflix. More than 95% of this traffic is downstream, so we can set Netflix downloads at approximately 22.5% of all US Internet traffic, which is three times as much as BitTorrent’s video download traffic.

Step 3: How much revenue would these pirates generate on Netflix?

Here comes the interesting part. What would it mean in terms of revenue if ALL BitTorrent traffic moved to Netflix?

If we assume that BitTorrent and Netflix users consume roughly the same amount of content (again an assumption favoring the movie studios), then this is an easy calculation. Netflix would generate a third more revenue. Based on the shareholders report of the last quarter of 2010 (where most of the torrent stats in this article are based on) this translates into $198 million additional revenue for Netflix.

Based on more recent stats contained in Netflix’s third quarter filing of this year, the increase in revenue would be $266 million for that quarter.

Step 4: How rich would Hollywood become?

It’s clear that according to our (very unrealistic) calculations Netflix would greatly benefit from the sudden disappearance of BitTorrent piracy. The next step is to see how Hollywood would be impacted. Since most licensing deals are fixed and not based on usage, one could argue that the movie studios wouldn’t benefit at all. However, that’s not much fun.

So let’s look at the licensing deals that were in place already and determine Hollywood’s added profits based on that, assuming they would be more flexible.

In the whole of 2010, Netflix paid the movie studios $181 million in licensing fees according to the shareholder reports. If we add a third to that, Hollywood would have “made” roughly $60 million extra. Salient detail, the yearly budget of the MPAA is higher than that.

In recent months the movie studios have exponentially increased Netflix’s licensing costs, but still the added profits for the movie studios will be nowhere near a billion dollars. No, getting rid of ALL BitTorrent movie and TV piracy appears to have a ‘relatively’ small effect, even if all pirating BitTorrent users signed up for a Netflix account.

What does this mean?

Nothing. It’s a simplistic attempt to put a number on BitTorrent piracy in the US.

It shows that even when you assume that 90% of all US BitTorrent traffic is dedicated to video piracy, the added revenue for Hollywood in 2010 would have been less than the amount they paid to the MPAA. That is, if all BitTorrent users switched to Netflix.

The real added revenue if BitTorrent disappeared would of course be a fraction of this, as not everyone would start paying.

We don’t want to draw too many conclusions on this simple thought experiment, but it’s something to consider, especially when ISPs are expected to dedicate millions of dollars in resources to send BitTorrent users warning letters early next year. Not to mention the negative effect of the censorship bills that have been proposed recently.

Is it really worth all that?

Source: MPAA Costs Hollywood More Than US BitTorrent Piracy

Over the past months, fears that SOPA will “break the Internet” have been repeated dozens, if not hundreds of times. But both the MPAA and RIAA feel that people are blowing things out of proportion, forecasting an Internet doomsday where none exists.

In his article “Predictions of Internet’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”, the MPAA’s Paul Hortenstine points out the inconsistencies between the historical predictions concerning the consequences of 2005′s “Grokster Decision” and the actual effect the ruling had.

The next day Hortenstine was back again, this time with a post titled “Critics of Current Legislation Have Been Wrong in the Past about Content Protection Law.”

The piece begins by highlighting an article by Variety which chronicles anti-Protect IP and Stop Online Piracy Act comments made by Consumer Electronics Association CEO Gary Shapiro, noting that he was wrong not only about the predicted chilling effect of the Grokster ruling, but also that of 1998′s DMCA. The implication is that since Shapiro was “wrong” then, he must be wrong now.

But powerful people like the MPAA need outspoken opponents to bring them into line and with SOPA they certainly have them. When tech giants such as Google and Yahoo are prepared to leave the US Chamber of Commerce over its support for this proposed legislation, something is seriously amiss.

Later in his article Hortenstine goes on to call Shapiro out again, this time over his claims that passing the DMCA had been “a huge mistake,” going on to state that eventually the DMCA was recognized by Wired as the “law that saved the web.”

“So when you hear Gary Shapiro and others proclaiming that the current legislation will be the end of the internet just remember that they’ve been wrong before and they’re wrong again this time,” concludes Hortenstine.

As Wired noted in their comprehensive article, “….it was the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown provision [that] has proven even more crucial to the growth of the internet. The provision grants immunity to so-called ‘intermediaries’ — ISPs, for example.”

So when we read  via a CNET report, that the RIAA are now saying that the DMCA isn’t working, one won’t be surprised to hear what is coming next.

“I think Congress got it right, but I think the courts are getting it wrong,” RIAA lawyer Jennifer Pariser said during a panel discussion at the NY Entertainment & Technology Law Conference. “I think the courts are interpreting Congress’ statute in a manner that is entirely too restrictive of content owners’ rights and too open to [Internet] service providers.

“We might need to go to Congress at some point for a fix,” Pariser added. “Not because the statute was badly drafted but because the interpretation has been so hamstrung by court decisions.”

Essentially, since courts have ruled time and again that the burden of policing infringement is the responsibility of the content owner and not the service provider, the RIAA want that revisited, reworded or otherwise changed.

One of the court decisions that “went against” the RIAA’s interests was in the case of Viacom versus YouTube. Viacom is now asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn last year’s ruling which deemed that YouTube is not liable for copyright-infringing Viacom material uploaded to the site. Viacom argued that YouTube should not have safe harbor under the DMCA.

Nevertheless, despite lacking this protection, Viacom chief Philippe P. Dauman collected a raise of nearly 149% last year, a renumeration of $84.5 million. This is not an enterprise in trouble from infringement, clearly.

But in addition to Viacom and indeed the RIAA wanting to tighten up or reinterpret the DMCA to hold the likes of YouTube more responsible, for good measure they also want PROTECT IP / SOPA.

So when “opponents of content protection legislation” (as Hortenstine describes them) make predictions that don’t immediately come catastrophically true, they aren’t necessarily guilty of getting their predictions wrong, only of not putting an accurate enough date on the impending doomsday.

The Internet may not break tomorrow or even next year, but there are people out there that really care, people that simply don’t want to risk it all for an ill-conceived attempt at stopping illicit downloads.

Because, as these “nay sayers” know and as history has shown, once one set of legislation is sent through the MPAA and RIAA only come back for yet more. And when those don’t go as planned they come back for an adjustment here, and a tweak there.

It is this environment of much-wants-more that leaves the likes of Gary Shapiro, Google, Yahoo and everyone else concerned that although the Internet isn’t broken now, there’s a real danger that in the name of copyright protection these corporations will keep fixing it until it is.

So-called “opponents of content protection legislation” can see the end game, and fighting that starts now.

Source: Internet Doomsday: Wrongs and Rights of Copyright Fortune Telling

Aside from naming many of the larger BitTorrent sites, the MPAA’s list also included several so-called cyberlockers. In recent years these file-hosting sites have overtaken BitTorrent in popularity, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed by Hollywood.

The problem with outing these sites as piracy havens is that there’s no clear definition of when a site is “rogue” or not. Last year the file-hosting site RapidShare was branded rogue by the MPAA, but this year they were excluded without explanation. However, an internal MPAA fact sheet that landed on TorrentFreak’s desk may shed some light on their definition of rogue.

Titled “It’s All About the Money: The ‘Business’ Model of Rogue Cyberlockers” the two page document gives an overview of the several affiliate programs some cyberlockers have in place. According to the MPAA these programs motivate users to share copyrighted material, thereby promoting piracy.

“Rogue cyberlockers aren’t just distribution hubs for stolen movies and TV shows – both the users who upload content and the operators who run the sites can earn money from doing so. As Internet video traffic grows, the threat from rogue cyberlockers that profit from stolen content is rising rapidly,” the MPAA writes.

The “fact sheet” continues with various examples of what the MPAA believes to be the clear promotion of copyright infringement. They thereby cite several of the descriptions of the affiliate programs that can be found on cyberlockers such as Putlocker, Fileserve, Bitshare and Uploading.com.

“Rogue cyberlockers feature ‘affiliate’ or ‘partner’ programs that pay uploaders cash for every thousand downloads of uploaded files. Putlocker.com exhorted users to ‘get paid for uploading good content that people want to see.’ Uploading.com promoted the ease of earning money by uploading files: ‘Now every time someone downloads your file you earn up to 2 cents. Relax and watch the money flow!’”

The MPAA further notes that some cyberlockers explicitly encourage their affiliates to share files with as many people, “even strangers,” and that the highest payouts are reserved for large files that are downloaded by users from English-speaking and Central Europe countries.

According to the MPAA it’s even suspected that cyberlockers in general encourage people to sign up for a premium account, a business model that is quite common for online services.

“Rogue cyberlockers induce users to subscribe to the site by restricting download speeds for ‘free’ accounts, as well as limiting the number of files users are able to download per day,” the MPAA writes.

“Rogue cyberlockers profit from selling ‘premium’ subscriptions that typically allow users to avoid restrictions on download speed, intrusive advertising, and artificially-imposed waiting times between downloads.”

The MPAA fact sheet strengthens the above arguments by giving several examples taken from the various cyberlocker sites, but doesn’t always specify why these should be considered as “rogue.” In some cases it raises even more questions than it answers.

We assume that the fact sheet is supposed to act as a bulletin of talking points for MPAA associates tasked with convincing the press, public and lawmakers that “rogue” cyberlockers are up to no good. It will come as no surprise when we hear more “official” MPAA statements on this very topic in the near future.

Source: MPAA Lashes Out Against Rogue Cyberlockers

The filing is particularly interesting since U.S. lawmakers have this week introduced a bill in the House that aims to neutralize these sites. The MPAA has been one of the most vocal proponents of the bill and the group is expected to call for action against the websites when it passes.

“The rogue overseas marketplaces highlighted in today’s filing are a direct threat to our community and the millions of hard-working Americans that rely on it for their livelihoods,” the MPAA writes in a statement.

“The MPAA commends and greatly appreciates the USTR’s recognition of the damage inflicted by these illicit markets on US global competitiveness and we applaud their work to protect American jobs.”

In their filing the MPAA lists a variety of websites, which they have organized in various categories. In addition to the location where the sites in question are hosted, the MPAA has also provided a short description for each of the sites.

Torrent and P2P Sites

The MPAA’s first category includes all the major torrent sites, which the group claims are facilitating mass copyright infringement. Also in this list is the Chinese BitTorrent-based application Xunlei, which is partly owned by Google.

File-hosting and streaming sites

The second category includes several file-hosting and streaming sites, but also the Russian Facebook equivalent VKontakte. The social networking site hosts a wide variety of music and video files uploaded by users. The MPAA describes VKontakte as a purposefully created hotbed of piracy.

“This result stems from the combination of site specific user upload and search functionality – including torrent functionality – designed to facilitate easy hosting and access to popular media files, together with the lack of any affirmative efforts by the sites’ operators to prevent copyright infringement,” they write.

• Megaupload.com/Megavideo.com
• Putlocker.com
• Wupload.com
• Simdisk.co.kr
• VKontakte

Linking sites

The third group covers so-called linking websites. These organize links to copyrighted material which can be streamed or downloaded from third-party sites. On the top of the list is Video2k.tv, a site that sprung up when the popular German-based linking site Kino.to was raided earlier this year.

• Video2k.tv
• Letmewatchthis.ch
• Movie2k.to
• Seriesyonkis.com
• 3000filmes.com

Newsgroups

The MPAA concludes their list of rogue websites with Usenet, but lists only one provider.

“This worldwide collection of servers is known as the Usenet, a high-speed direct download service offering access to a searchable global file exchange network. Today, illegal copies of movies and television shows are commonly posted in newsgroups for download by users around the world,” they write in their filing.

• Usenext.com

One notable absentee from the list is RapidShare. The file-hosting service was included in the MPAA submission last year but was left out this time, although nothing has changed in its business setup. This could be a strategic decision as RapidShare itself has hired lobbyists to represent their interest in Washington recently.

The problem with the MPAA’s submission is that it’s not clear what distinguishes a “rogue” from a legitimate site. Until there are distinct and quantifiable characteristics this means that thousands of sites could fall under this label, and have their businesses ruined if the U.S. Government decides to intervene.

TorrentFreak asked the MPAA whether they could give a clear description of a rogue site, but they chose not to reply. The sites above can only hope that judges will see through the MPAA’s subjective definition when they have to review a domain seizure request or ISP blockade in the future.

Source: MPAA Lists “Notorious” Pirate Sites To U.S. Government

Nevertheless, many reach for the antibiotics. But as more and more people are becoming aware, not only are they ineffective on a virus like the common cold, taking too many of them actually makes matters worse. Inappropriate overuse of these medications helps create resistant strains that require stronger and more powerful doses of antibiotics to treat.

And herein lies the problem. The mainstream music and movie industries are treating online piracy with the broad-spectrum antibiotics of three strikes regimes, site blocking and domain seizures. Initially, as we shall no doubt see from their reports, these digital medications will quickly reduce the levels of file-sharing bacteria on the Internet.

With these cosmetic successes will come larger and larger doses of the solutions, applied liberally wherever a problem surfaces. But underneath it’s already too late. The smart bacteria have begun to adapt and are disseminating their knowledge from cell to cell, from generation to generation.

The copyright enforcers will quickly learn that in common with the microscopic organisms present in us all, file-sharers have become resistant to even the most-powerful of anti-piracy antibiotics available today. The fightback has already begun, and the potions are being rendered useless.

Worse still, while the most aggressive anti-piracy solutions are still waiting in the wings, their recipes are already public knowledge. Sites like Newzbin2 have already adapted to the poison awaiting them, and it hasn’t even been administered yet.

And according to news just out this week, signs are that the most important pirates – the ones that provide much of the initial content – are becoming more and more difficult to find. According to Denmark’s RettighedsAlliancen, who are better known by their former name of Antipiratgruppen, adapting file-sharers are causing them huge issues.

“It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to trace these people,” said Maria Fredenslund, head of RettighedsAlliancen. “It’s a huge problem.”

Fredenslund says that that “increasingly hardcore” file-sharers are using VPN connections as a matter of course, but for Danish Piratgruppen chariman Troels Møller, the reaction is to be expected.

“When anti-piracy groups worldwide move so violently forward, it is clear that people have to protect themselves,” he explains.

But while solutions like VPNs and encrypted connections to sites like Newzbin2 are the preserve of today’s tech-savvy, the aggressive anti-piracy movement will ensure that they will soon become mainstream, just like the uptake of file-sharing itself before it.

And in common with the inappropriate overuse of conventional antibiotics that also kills the helpful bacteria that we all need to function effectively, restrictive blocking and censorship will claim endless victims with its collateral damage.

So, the only effective treatment is prevention via liberal doses of media, on demand, at a fair and friendly price. After all, history has shown that when the price of that treatment is too high or too difficult to obtain, the bacteria – quite literally – go viral.

Try treating that with antibiotics.

Source: Watch Out MAFIAA, Antibiotics Don’t Work On Viral Pirates

In the U.S. the MPAA was the outfit that tipped the authorities off on many of the ‘rogue’ sites that had their domain names seized in the last year. Similarly, in the U.K. the MPAA-funded group FACT carried out most of the investigative work in cases against the operators of the BitTorrent community FileSoup and the streaming site TV-Links.

Today we talk to Gavin “Tex” Warren, a private investigator who worked for the Hollywood backed group AFACT in Australia. While he mostly worked on offline piracy, his inside view allows us to learn more about how the anti-piracy agenda is sold to the outside world.

Warren became a private investigator in 2000, and prior to that he served as a detective in the Australian Federal Police for twelve years. From 2003 until 2008 he worked as an investigator, undercover operative handler and then lead investigator for AFACT. When AFACT moved their priorities from offline piracy to ISPs, they eventually let Warren go.

The Big Score

“Initially AFACT was called the Australasian Film and Video Security Office and was run out of Sydney by Mr Steve Howes,” Warren says, explaining how it all started for him in 2003. “The lead investigator here in Melbourne was another former AFP officer, Greg Hooper.”

“I had an undercover operative who worked for me (name withheld) that I shall refer to as “Short Round”. We were contracted to make purchases of DVDs and back then, VHS tapes of copyright infringing movies. In our first operation which lasted about six months, we had infiltrated a manufacturing “laboratory” and the dodgy sales team at the local trash and treasure market.”

Warren’s team then made so-called ‘trap purchases’ and all the evidence they gathered was then presented to the Victoria Police. The operation resulted in the execution of three simultaneous search warrants, netting about fifteen thousand exhibits, $30,000 cash and a dozen computer towers. It was a great success that was quickly communicated to the media.

“The press were informed and all was tied up in a neat bundle. Column inches were filled, sound bites were created and everyone was happy, except the pirates,” Warren recalls.

“This success ensured that Short Round and I had ongoing work. The AFVSO was subsumed by AFACT soon thereafter. Steve Howes was replaced by Neil Gane, a former British Hong Kong Police Inspector who had been working in Malaysia with the MPAA against piracy.”

Boosting Statistics

“At this time, Short Round and I were trotted out to meet Neil and to show him our equipment and discuss tactics. Mr Gane gave the impression of being very committed to stopping the evil scourge of piracy and was far more media savvy than his predecessor.”

“He was adamant that we needed to boost our statistics to make the media sit up and take notice and that the large numbers would make it easier to get the local Police interested. This was especially difficult to do as local police had no jurisdiction over copyright infringing product and the AFP were desperately short on manpower. We were encouraged to find links to drugs and stolen goods wherever possible.”

“We discussed the formula for extrapolating the potential street value earnings of ‘laboratories’ and we were instructed to count all blank discs in our seizure figures as they were potential product. Mr Gane also explained that the increased loss approximation figures were derived from all forms of impacts on decreasing cinema patronage right through to the farmer who grows the corn for popping.”

Gane understood that the media was an essential tool towards AFACT’s goal of getting tougher copyright legislation in place. And for this purpose, it was a good idea to bend the truth a bit. The results of this recalculation are quite amazing.

“2002 impact estimates were $100 million to today’s figure of $1.36 billion in nine years…. That’s a lot of extrapolating,” Warren says.

Courting the Police

Aside from influencing lawmakers with creative statistics, Warren and his colleagues also had to court the police on a regular basis. AFACT worked with both local law enforcement and the attorney general’s office where they delivered evidence and information to, based on their own investigations.

“Funded solely by MPAA, AFACT lobbies hard for changes to Australian law and enhance the sexiness of their case by making vague references to links to terrorism. Sometimes not so vague. I was instructed to tell police officers that the profit margins were greater than dealing heroin. It was bizarre. A twisted logic that AFACT spewed out with monotonous regularity,” Warren says.

One of the examples Warren gives is that they assumed that all burners and DVD replicators would run 24/7, making these operations appear very lucrative.

“Each burner cranking out ten discs an hour, multiplied by ten dollars per disc is potentially a hundred dollars an hour, multiplied by number of burners by hours in a year gives a yearly potential…. Very pumped up statistics.”

When the local police were convinced about the to need to follow-up on the case, Warren delivered them all the evidence they would need on a silver platter.

“In my time at AFACT we developed relationships with various police officers (detectives) and would work our cases up to a stage where we could present them with enough information, intelligence and evidence that most of the work was done. This is called a ‘walk up start’.”

“Police on the other hand would sometimes find large quantities of copyright infringing material whilst executing warrants, eg: drug warrant executions would invariably turn up some dodgy DVDs and I would get a call to come and identify the product and prepare a brief of evidence for prosecution.”

“It was a matter of educating the police officers what to look for. In this vein, I would regularly deliver half day seminars to police on their training days. It was a good system and had the effect of increasing their prosecutions and my investigations statistics. Collaboration had such a dark overtone. Cooperation is my preferred term,” Warren says.

Like many other private investigators Warren is a former police detective. And although the statistics may have been pumped a little, Warren was always careful to act within the boundaries of the law when it comes to his investigative work.

“The PI license is relatively difficult to obtain and easy to lose, therefore we tend to shy away from any activity that would jeopardize our livelihood. The key to efficient and effective investigations is to know all aspects of the various legislations that cover things such as Surveillance Devices, hidden cameras etc. At no time did I authorize or condone the breaking of any laws or rules.”

“Undercover operations, to be used in evidence, need to be squeaky clean. The last thing any investigator needs is to have evidence thrown out of court because of the breach of legislation, or compromise by way of entrapment,” Warren told TorrentFreak.

Bye Bye PI

At the end of 2007 Warren had a meeting with Neil Gane, who just returned to AFACT after serving as the Australasian Operations Manager for the MPAA for a brief while. Gane told Warren that AFACT would be focusing more on ISPs and online piracy instead of the street work Warren did.

Warren was still welcome to submit a tender for piecemeal work at an hourly rate, instead of daily. However, he later learned that his partner and former friend, Short Round, had undercut him, and was working on an as-needed basis for AFACT.

This ended Warren’s ‘career’ in the anti-piracy business. In the years that followed he continued to monitor what AFACT was up to, and he still can’t help but crack a smile when he reads about the disastrous piracy statistics AFACT tells the media about. And so do we.

Source: Private Anti-Piracy Investigator Spills The Beans

Earlier this year, five member companies of the MPAA filed a lawsuit against Hotfile and ever since the parties have been battling in court.

A few months ago the movie studios requested a substantial amount of information from the file-hosting service, including IP addresses of uploaders and downloaders, and the identities and earnings of top affiliates. In addition the MPAA asked for the source code of the site.

Hotfile protested these requests, arguing that some of the information, including the financials, is confidential. Also, the company claimed that handing over user data and detailed information on its top affiliates,would breach privacy law.

District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan reviewed the arguments from both sides and detailed his decision in a recent order, which is mostly negative for Hotfile. Except for the site’s source code, Judge Jordan ordered that Hotfile has to hand over all data requested by the MPAA.

Firstly this means that Hotfile has to disclose details on all files ever uploaded to Hotfile, including the title, number of downloads and the IP-addresses of the uploaders and downloaders.

Hotfile objected to this request because of privacy concerns, and the fact that it would include gathering data on millions of files that are not specific to the case. The judge, however, disagreed and sided with MPAA’s claim that the data is needed to do a proper statistical analysis on how much of Hotfile’s content is infringing.

“To prove this rampant infringement, the movie studios need to do a statistical analysis showing that most of the content uploaded and downloaded on hotfile.com infringes some copyright or another,” the judge writes.

In addition to all user data, Hotfile also has to handover detailed information on the site’s top 500 affiliates, including their identities and the payouts made to these persons or companies. In their request for the affiliate data the MPAA has described these persons as potential key-witnesses who could be used to gather further evidence on Hotfile’s operation.

Hotfile initially refused this request because it would be an unnecessary breach of privacy laws, but Judge Jordan concludes that they failed to show why this would be the case.

“Hotfile pays ‘affiliates’ when content that the affiliates uploaded is downloaded by others. The movie studios want information on the top 500 money-making affiliates. This information, the movie studios believe, may show that Hotfile and Mr. Titov profited from direct infringement or induced direct infringement. I agree,” the Judge writes.

The third request by the MPAA that Judge Jordan granted was that for the disclosure of the company’s financial information. Hotfile declined this request claiming that such information is confidential, but the judge concluded that despite the possible confidentiality the financial information is both relevant and necessary.

“Part of the movie studios’ case concerns Hotfile’s and Mr. Titov’s motives for allowing their users and affiliates to infringe copyright law. And Hotfile’s and Mr. Titov’s financial motivation may justify an inference of unlawful intent. Thus, the information is relevant,” the judge writes.

Hotfile has to hand over all the information above to the MPAA by September 12, and future filings will have to show how the MPAA plans to use this new intelligence.

For now, however, it doesn’t appear that the movie studios are going to use any of the user data to pursue legal action against individual uploaders or downloaders who are not affiliates. In previous court filings the MPAA stated that Hotfile could mask the last digits of users’ IP-addresses as long as they would be able to determine the country of the user.

The top affiliates on the other hand are more likely to be dragged into the lawsuit, as the MPAA noted that these persons or companies could be key witnesses. Whether this will indeed be the case has yet to be seen, but its safe to conclude that Hotfile and its top affiliates will be disappointed with the Judge’s decision.

Source: Hotfile Ordered To Share User Data With The MPAA

Janko’s observation drew a rebuke from Alex Swartsel at the MPAA, who described it as the “casual promotion of the idea that stealing movies, TV shows and music is a perfectly acceptable way to save money”, and went on to equate copyright infringement to physical theft in conjunction with other common arguments.

Both TorrentFreak and Mike Masnick at Techdirt responded to the MPAA’s comments and although we had very different approaches to the issue, we were in agreement – Janko hadn’t promoted illegal behavior of any kind.

Today, Alex at the MPAA published a response which seemingly for the purposes of debate toys with the idea that that some people may well download content in an economic downturn.

But if we rewind a few years, wasn’t it former MPAA chariman Dan Glickman making the same assertion – and meaning it?

During the December 2008 forum held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Glickman was expressing concern, according to AFP, that piracy on the streets and online might increase in the near future. But what would drive this phenomenon?

“If you look at the situation, the current economic crisis makes this problem much more serious than before,” he told the forum. “If we don’t protect IPR (intellectual property rights), our economic losses will be far worse.”

Now, just a few years later, similar words from bloggers and journalists draw complaints from the MPAA that piracy is being “casually promoted”.

Getting back to Alex Swartsel’s second post published today, instead of admitting that a link could exist between people’s piracy habits and their financial position, Swartsel continues to argue that people should not be inclined to pirate, ever. “Movie and TV theft is inevitable,” is a statement Alex can’t subscribe to.

“Why? Because it’s easy to steal something that, in physical form, exists only as data, and easy to justify stealing it as a result? Because information wants to be free, no matter the cost it took to produce or its creators’ judgments about how best to disseminate it? Because anything is fair game once it’s on the Internet?”

Alex then goes on to pick Mike up on his point that the MPAA should “adapt and deal with reality.” In basic terms, with a couple of omissions, the “reality” can be found in the quote from Alex above.

The Internet is a great big copying machine and yes, when something exists only as data it is ridiculously easy to copy and yes, some people will do that if they can. Information does want to be free and unfortunately the costs of creating that information, for the purposes of this debate, are simply irrelevant. The cost to the downloader is virtually nil and in the majority of cases, rightly or wrongly, the financial implications study will end right there.

The MPAA obviously feel they have no choice but to try and stamp out piracy, and that is their prerogative, but they are facing a general public, as Mike Masnick points out, who feel that downloading movies and TV shows is socially acceptable.

For this reason file-sharing of one form or another – for good or for ‘evil’ – isn’t going away and will continue to be the method of choice for a large number of Internet users to consume media. This is the “reality” and, to use the word that Alex won’t accept, it is indeed almost inevitable.

However, the “reality” according to Alex is that there are “more options than ever before to get movies and TV shows online safely and legitimately – we have a list on MPAA.org here, and the creative minds in our industry are working on even more as we speak.”

Well that’s good news indeed, since after trying more than a dozen of the provided links with my non-US IP address I couldn’t find a single one which would let me watch anything . The Pirate Bay, however, has no geo-lockout. Another uncomfortable ‘reality’.

“But if what Masnick means is that we need to throw up our hands and look the other way while people who had nothing to do with making a movie or a TV show steal and profit from it, that is a reality to which we do not care to adapt, period,” Alex concludes.

But of course Mike isn’t suggesting that nothing be done, he’s suggesting that what is currently being done to compete with piracy needs much more work. The reality here is that he’s absolutely right.

The reality is that just about every movie and TV show, no matter how old or how new, is available to every internet user almost immediately and the studios don’t provide that service. Until they do piracy will continue, through this economic downturn and the next.

Source: Economic Crisis Fuels Will They, Won’t They, Piracy Debate

As is tradition, the RIAA is the biggest spender of the two entertainment industry lobbying groups. In the first two quarters of this year the music industry representatives spent over $3.8 million in Washington.

The topics covered by the RIAA are as expected. They lobbied at the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives in favor of ACTA, the PROTECT IP Act, and to support new legislation that will make streaming of copyrighted material a felony.

And then there’s the MPAA.

Thus far, the MPAA’s lobbying efforts have cost over $1.2 million dollars this year. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but some of the topics they are lobbying for in Washington are quite interesting to say the least. Aside from focusing on the traditional copyright-related matters, the movie industry group is also concerned with reforming Wall Street.

By hiring Michael Torrey Associates, the MPAA has spent tens of thousands of dollars to advance the implementation of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Unusual, since the topic doesn’t relate to the interests of the thousands of movie industry workers whose jobs are at stake.

No, these lobbying efforts are only meant for MPAA’s Chairman and CEO Chris Dodd.

The Wall Street Reform Act the MPAA is heavily invested in is also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, as the current MPAA Chairman proposed the act late 2009 when he was still a senator.

Looking at the history of MPAA’s lobbying efforts we see that Wall Street Reform was already a topic the movie studios where interested in while Dodd was still acting as senator. Dodd was officially announced as MPAA Chairman March 2011, but the MPAA’s lobbying efforts already started in the last quarter of 2010.

The timeline above suggests that the MPAA was putting money into supporting Dodd’s legislation in the hope of convincing him to join them as Chairman. And it worked, as he signed on for the job by the end of February.

And it looks like the MPAA and Dodd made a long tern deal to support his old work. Even today the MPAA continues to put money in supporting Dodd’s Wall Street Reform plans ($180,000 and counting), all at the expense of those poor lighting technicians and makeup artists who work in the movie business.

Update: It appears that we jumped to conclusions.

The MPAA informed TorrentFreak that the lobbying efforts with regard to The Wall Street Reform Act are limited to combating a proposal to let financial traders speculate on motion picture box office revenues.

“Contrary to TorrentFreak’s accusation that this matter “doesn’t relate to the interests of the thousands of movie industry workers whose jobs are at stake,” derivatives based on box office futures are “no more than over-under bets on a movie’s performance and would have a detrimental impact on movies industry workers and businesses,” as we said at the time, working together with a broad coalition that included entertainment industry unions, independent filmmakers and distributors and theater owners.”

“Both the House and Senate, through their respective Agriculture Committees, wisely decided to examine this issue closely. Recognizing the serious problems that could be caused by these proposals, Congress approved a ban on trading box-office derivatives, sponsored by Senator Blanche Lincoln, as part of the much larger financial reform bill.”

“Because the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is still in the process of implementing these provisions of the financial reform bill, the MPAA is continuing to monitor the situation. We are NOT, nor have we ever been, engaged in lobbying any other issues concerning the financial reform bill.”

Source: MPAA Lobbies For Wall Street Reform

Janko hasn’t been so prolific on that specific subject in recent times because as writer and co-editor of popular news resource GigaOm, his brief is understandably wider.

Nevertheless, his work on GigaOm’s NewTeeVee section naturally covers some piracy issues, as the official TV and movie outlets of the future try to compete with the BitTorrent networks of today.

On Thursday Janko published a piece called “Sorry, Hollywood: Piracy may make a comeback” which mulled over recent Netflix price hikes, fresh HULU restrictions, the economic downturn and how they may combine to cause a boost in piracy. It contained the following words:

The U.S. credit ratings downgrade, tumbling stocks and international instability have made not just financial analysts nervous this week. Consumers are also starting to wonder whether we’re about to enter another recession. Whenever that happens, people start to tighten their belts and cut unnecessary expenses — like paying for movies and TV shows…

With memories of the housing slump still fresh, many people could simply return to BitTorrent and download movies for free instead of going to the movies or paying for VOD.

The piece was read by Alex Swartsel at the MPAA who took issue with Janko’s “casual promotion of the idea that stealing movies, TV shows and music is a perfectly acceptable way to save money.”

Since Alex had much more to say, GigaOm allowed the MPAA to have a guest post on their site in which they took the opportunity to chastize Janko and drive home the notion that, among other things, copyright infringement is the same as physical theft.

“But if Roettgers had written that financially insecure families will shoplift clothes from a department store this fall to save on back-to-school costs for their children, he would be laughed out of the proverbial building, right?” wrote Alex.

GigaOm reader Dave Warner could barely control his anger.

“Why is GigaOM publishing MPAA propaganda that continues to try and convince us that copyright infringement is the same as theft, when there are quotes from Thomas Jefferson that convince us it clearly isn’t?” Dave began.

“Why is GigaOM giving web space to an organization that spent decades expanding copyright to the point of absurdity and now wants us to pay them for every film made in the last 80 years, most of which would be in the public domain now?

“Why is GigaOM giving newshole to an organization has bought our malleable Congress and suppressed cultural exchange worldwide to line their pockets?

“Keep these bastards out of our tech news feeds,” he concluded, an opinion shared by many in pro file-sharing, anti-restrictive copyright and other associated movements.

But while Dave makes some good points, GigaOm were right to let the MPAA have their say.

Firstly, Alex’s problem with Janko is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Read any of Janko’s articles and try and find one where he has ever – even casually – condoned copyright infringement. None can be found. All Janko did here was make a credible observation, that people who have the ability may choose to reduce their TV and movie bills in times of hardship. Picking Janko up on something he didn’t do undermines the basis for the whole article.

MPAA 0, Critics 1

Secondly, shooting Janko – the messenger – is another mistake. All this has done is draw attention yet again to the fact that when the MPAA can’t effectively punish the “thieves” taking their content, shooting the messenger (ISPs, webhosts, writers?) is what they’ve been reduced to. That notion is unpopular with just about everyone apart from rightsholders, and very few people – especially journalists – think that is a good idea.

MPAA 0, Critics 2

The other thing is this – no one should be scared of an opposing viewpoint. Letting the MPAA have their say – even when they have criticized a site’s co-editor – is a show of strength and GigaOm are to be applauded.

Last week TorrentFreak published two guest articles together. One argued that people shouldn’t be held responsible for copyright infringements carried out by others. In the interests of balance, we published another from a lawyer operating a porn-based “speculative invoicing”-style model who argued that people should.

Pro-adult industry website Xbiz went on to republish the latter but not the former. I’d venture that TorrentFreak’s readers are now much better informed on the issue, precisely because a dissenting voice was given a platform, an option rendered unavailable to Xbiz readers.

Of course, it will be a cold day in hell when TorrentFreak is allowed to publish an uncensored guest post on piracy for the MPAA blog. However, if the MPAA ever wanted to respond to us here in a piece, we would welcome them. It’s an easy choice because, quite simply, there is nothing to fear.

Free flow of information and freedom of speech is inclusive and if one side of the copyright debate demands it, then the other should receive it too. There is no danger in letting people voice their opinions – one-sided debates are not only boring, they rarely achieve anything.

Vive la différence!

Source: Let the MPAA Speak, There’s Nothing To Be Scared Of

Last month we reported that the movie studios had requested a substantial amount of information from the file-hosting service, including IP addresses of uploaders and downloaders, and the company’s source code.

Hotfile on their turn, has recently requested information on the anti-piracy strategies of the Hollywood movie studios and the third-party companies they work with. The Florida based file-hosting service says it needs this information in order to mount a proper defense and has subpoenaed Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Columbia and Warner, as well as five anti-piracy vendors.

Among other things, Hotfile wants to know how the movie studios find copyrighted material online, what films they give priority and when and where they look for infringing copies.

The MPAA studios, however, do not want to give up this information and have asked the court for a protective order. They argue that disclosing their anti-piracy strategies and protocols could have disastrous consequences, as it would make ‘pirates’ even smarter than they already are.

“Defendants have demanded all documents showing how Plaintiffs and their vendors locate infringing material online. In essence, Defendants are like the fox asking for the combination to the lock on the hen-house door,” the studios explain to the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida.

The request for a protective order is explained in a lengthy document which is accompanied by supporting letters from the anti-piracy chiefs of the five Hollywood studios. The general message is that their anti-piracy strategies should remain secret to prevent an avalanche of piracy.

“Plaintiffs are engaged in a continuous cat-and-mouse game with persons engaged in the unauthorized exploitation of Plaintiffs’ works online. These infringers are often highly sophisticated, and routinely restructure their services or make changes to their modus operandi to evade or decrease the effectiveness of the studios’ anti piracy methods,” the MPAA members write.

To dramatize their point the studios draw an analogy between copyright infringement and drug trafficking.

“In many ways, this is no different than the prejudice to law enforcement if they were compelled to disclose to drug traffickers where law enforcement agents were conducting their stakeouts, or their points of interdiction, or the confidential informants they were using, or the details of the technology they used to detect smugglers’ routes into the United States.”

The same drug analogy is brought up again later to emphasize how severe the consequences could be should Hotfile be given access to information on the studio’s anti-piracy strategies.

“Continuing the drug trafficking analogy, clearly law enforcement efforts would be severely compromised if criminals knew the time windows in which law enforcement intended to step up investigative activities, what particular drugs they would be prioritizing for enforcement, which suspected dealers police were declining to arrest in order to avoid compromising ongoing investigations, and what levels of possession would trigger enforcement.”

The MPAA members want the U.S. District Court to issue a protective order and prevent Hotfile from obtaining any anti-piracy information from the studios directly, or from any of the five anti-piracy outfits (DtecNet, BayTSP, Peer Media, OpSec Security and MiMTiD) they work with.

The movie studios are only willing to send Hotfile copies of the DMCA notices they previously sent to the file-hosting service.

The U.S. District Court will review the request of the MPAA studios and a decision is expected to follow in the near future. Meanwhile, everyone interested in both piracy and anti-piracy strategies across the world will be rubbing their hands in anticipation of the forthcoming revelations, should there be any.

Source: MPAA Afraid To Disclose ‘Secret’ Anti-Piracy Strategies

At the center of their plan is a system to notify and educate suspected copyright infringers by sending them so-called ‘copyright alerts’.

According to the participants, including the MPAA, RIAA and all major ISPs, the warning system is likely to result in a massive decrease in online piracy in the U.S. All partners stress, however, that the agreement is merely a ‘common framework’ to deal with copyright infringements and it doesn’t oblige ISPs to disconnect users’ Internet access.

So what the plan?

The new agreement will streamline the current avalanche of DMCA notices Internet providers are already forwarding to their customers. A third-party will monitor file-sharing networks and collect the IP-addresses of suspected infringers. These will then be added to a database and forwarded to the Internet provider who will send a corresponding copyright alert.

This alert will inform the Internet subscriber that his or her account was allegedly used to share copyrighted content, and how to prevent this from happening in the future. If the same IP-address is spotted again a similar alert will be sent, and only after 5 ‘strikes’ will the Internet provider take action.

The ISPs have several options on how to deal with repeat infringers. One of the suggestions is to slow down their connection speed, but ISPs may also temporarily redirect the customer to a landing page which offers instructions on how to engage in a friendly and educational chat with the abuse department.

Before any of the above sanctions go into effect Internet subscribers have the right to call for an independent review at the cost of a $35 filing fee.

But will it be effective?

Not really. First of all this agreement only covers a few of the many sources of online piracy. The millions of U.S. Internet users who download via cyberlockers are not affected by this agreement at all, as these downloads are impossible to track by third parties. The same is true for the many online streaming portals which have become very popular recently.

The agreement is mainly targeted at BitTorrent users, but these can also bypass the copyright alerts quite easily. Signing up for a VPN or proxy does the trick, and the same is probably true for more obscure private BitTorrent trackers which are less likely to be monitored.

A recent survey in France, where Internet users can actually lose their connection, revealed that the new agreement might not be worth the cost. Only 4% of the polled file-sharers said they stopped sourcing music from illegal services out of fear of detection. In the UK, a recent survey by an ISP revealed similar results.

Despite the relative ease with which copyright infringers can bypass the warning system and the lack of deterrence, all parties involved are ecstatic about the new agreement.

“This groundbreaking agreement ushers in a new day and a fresh approach to addressing the digital theft of copyrighted works,” RIAA’s Cary Sherman trumpeted in a comment.

We have our doubts.

Source: MPAA, RIAA Team Up With ISPs to ‘Alert’ Pirates

The MPAA, who would love a decisive victory against a cyberlocker service under their belt, probably selected Hotfile because of its relative lack of might when compared to market leaders RapidShare and MegaUpload. The company also has a track record of settling lawsuits rather than fighting them. The outcome in the case, whichever way it goes, will have serious implications for others in the same field in the United States.

At this stage there are no indications Hotfile will roll over in this case, but as pages and pages of legal papers are filed and responded to, it is becoming increasingly clear that the MPAA is determined to play hardball.

In a filing from Hotfile dated June 17th, the company bemoans the tactics employed by the MPAA, describing their requests for information as “over-reaching” and tantamount to “murder by litigation.”

So what data does the MPAA want from Hotfile? In a single word – everything.

“In five short demands for documents and two related interrogatories, Plaintiffs seek all data referring to all files hosted by Hotfile, all data about Hotfile’s users, all data about Hotfile’s business partners [aka affiliates], every line of source code ever written, and virtually every conceivable piece of financial data available regarding Hotfile or its business partners or its individual founders,” Hotfile’s legal time write.

Nevertheless, it appears that up to a point Hotfile is prepared to comply with the requests of the MPAA. However, as the tables below show, the company is trying to protect the identities of users and affiliates as much as it can.

The MPAA’s requests for disclosure go beyond user data. The Hollywood outfit is demanding that Hotfile hands over every version of the site’s source code that has ever existed.

Hotfile is currently resisting that request, describing its code as a trade secret which took two people more than 1,000 hours to create. Hotfile’s software gives it a competitive advantage, its legal team argues, and it would prove catastrophic if it fell into the wrong hands.

The case is becoming increasingly complex and is already developing into a bloody legal brawl. Will Hotfile continue to resist the temptation to settle in the face of “murderous litigation”, or will it concede defeat in the face of overwhelming opposition and financial resources?

Hotfile uploaders, downloaders and affiliates will certainly be hoping for the former.

Source: Hotfile Battles MPAA Over Private User Data Disclosure

The mechanism preferred by the big recording and movie studios is the so-called ‘graduated response’ scheme, whereby Internet users are subjected to ever increasing punishments for their infringing behaviors.

Now, having faced resistance for so long, it seems that the MPAA and RIAA will get their way in the United States.

According to CNET, some of the country’s largest ISPs including AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are close to striking a deal with Hollywood and Big Music to put in a framework of measures to progressively punish errant subscribers.

Although a final agreement is yet to be signed, plans are said to be “on track” and could be officially unveiled next month. The deal is believed to be structured as follows:

- Rightsholders track infringing Internet users and send notices to ISPs
- ISPs used this data to send warnings, called “Copyright Alerts”, to subscribers
- If subscribers fail to improve their behavior, further warnings will be issued

Eventually though, ISPs have agreed to get tough with customers who don’t heed warnings.

Sources quoted by CNET say that ISPs will be a given flexibility to select from a “menu” of sanctions, including throttling a subscriber’s connection through to limiting web browsing. One scenario would see the web almost completely removed, with access granted only to the top 200 websites. Other more gentle measures include copyright-awareness programs.

However, unlike the legislative changes already implemented in the UK, the range of sanctions in the US will not include the dreaded “3rd strike”, i.e complete termination of the subscriber’s account. Currently there is no mention of temporary suspensions either; they could prove a deal-breaker in this sensitive environment.

The agreements between the MPAA, RIAA and ISPs in the United States will be completely voluntary. The ISPs will insist that they are completely within their rights to amend their Terms of Service to accommodate such an agreement and will almost certainly do so quickly.

In March, during the House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet, it became increasingly clear that the US government would be backing voluntary agreements to deal with the subscriber end of infringement, rather than the legislative change approach favored for dealing with file-sharing and streaming websites.

“Voluntary cooperative solutions are a priority focus and we believe that, in combination with law enforcement action, voluntary actions by the private sector have the potential to dramatically reduce online infringement and change the enforcement paradigm,” said U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel.

“We will continue to push forward to encourage voluntary cooperative actions on multiple fronts. Our ultimate goal is to reduce infringement online so we will continue to assess our approach to ensure that it is as effective as possible.”

The costs of the ‘graduated response’ will be shared between the entertainment industries and ISPs, meaning that regular Internet subscribers will, as always, pick up the enforcement tab.

Source: MPAA, RIAA, Major ISPs Preparing ‘Graduated Response’ To Piracy

While the debate over whether corporations should be allowed to lobby crime-fighting organizations such as the police and FBI will rage on, at least there is an enforced level of transparency which allows the public to see where lobbyists are spending their money.

The MPAA have just made their mandatory disclosure for the first quarter of 2011 and it makes interesting reading.

In total the member companies of the MPAA – Disney, Sony, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Universal – spent $400,000 in the first three months of the year lobbying influential government departments. These included the office of Vice-President Joe Biden, a valuable MPAA ally in 2010 with his mantra of “Piracy Is Theft, Clean and Simple.”

In the filing, which covers the period from January 1st to March 31st, several government departments are listed repeatedly including the U.S Senate, House of Representatives, Homeland Security, Dept. of Justice, FBI, ICE, U.S. Copyright Office and U.S. Trade Representative.

On the back of moves to turn the activity into a felony, it’s no surprise that streaming illegal content featured heavily in the MPAA’s 1st quarter lobbying. Considering the huge effort already underway with domain seizures, many of them streaming-related, Operation in Our Sites remained firmly on the agenda.

Also listed is the issue of “Pay processors role in IP enforcement”, a reference to the developing strategy of strangling the revenue to sites that the MPAA believe are generating income from infringement.

In November 2010, file-hosting service RapidShare was among the first Internet services to be labelled by both the MPAA and RIAA as a so-called “Rogue Site”, a move which forced the cyberlocker service to initiate lobbying of its own.

In 2011 it is evident that Hollywood is continuing to pressure on the Swiss-based company. RapidShare is mentioned several times in the MPAA disclosure report under several headings, not least ‘Rogue Site Legislation’ and ‘Law Enforcement/Crime and Criminal Justice’.

Interestingly, ‘Graduated Response’ is also listed as a lobbying subject, although the U.S. appeared to rule out so-called “3 strikes” regimes earlier this month in response to a United Nations report.

On the educational front, the MPAA is keen to drive home the anti-P2P message to the country’s schools and universities. Equally it is pushing for anti-camcording activities in the Asia-Pacific region plus awareness of counterfeit movie usage at US military bases, a subject we’ve touched on previously.

The MPAA also discussed the anti-piracy company MiMTiD. A DMCA-related controversy connected to that company was covered by TechDirt in February.

The $400,000 spent by the MPAA in the first 3 months of 2011 represents a $30,000 uplift on the same period last year and a $60,000 increase on its spend during the final quarter of 2010.

Source: MPAA Anti-Piracy Lobbying Targets FBI, DOJ, ICE, DHS and Biden

A product of the movie industry’s licensing rules put in place to avoid the cannibalization of DVD sales, Zediva allowed its subscribers to rent and view physical DVDs remotely using the Internet. Needless to say the MPAA weren’t amused and in early April they filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

“Zediva illegally streams movies to its customers without obtaining required licenses from the movie studios,” said the MPAA, adding that Zediva is little more than a “sham”.

But rather than roll over and die, perhaps surprisingly Zediva are fighting back. According to Paid Content, Zediva have hired a team of lawyers from “elite” San Francisco law firm, Durie Tangri.

The team includes Joe Gratz, the lead attorney in the recent case of EFF/Augusto v Universal Music Group. Troy Augusto was sued by UMG for selling promo CDs on eBay and was represented by the EFF. He won the case, affirming an eBay seller’s right to resell promotional CDs bought from secondhand stores.

Also on the team is file-sharing expert Michael Page. He was lead counsel for Grokster in their epic battle against the record labels and studios, representing them at district, Ninth Circuit, and Supreme Court levels. For this he received the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year award for 2005.

Also on the team is Mark Lemley who commands a place in countless lists of “most-admired” Intellectual Property lawyers. An author of six books, Lemley is a founding partner of Durie Tangri, a veteran of cases involving Comcast, Google, Grokster and NetFlix, and has taught intellectual property law to both federal and state judges.

As detailed by Paid Content, the MPAA aren’t taking any chances either. They’ve hired a team from Munger, Tolles & Olson which includes Glenn Pomerantz and Kelly Klaus – lawyers currently engaged in beating up LimeWire.

Source: Movie Streamers Line Up Heavyweight Lawyers To Fight MPAA

In February Google filed an amicus brief (third party testimony) at the Appeal Court, in the hope that the court would consider Google’s opinion on the case. The MPAA was against a Google contribution, but despite these concerns the Appeal Court has now allowed the search engine’s testimony to be added to the case.

Although Google did not dispute isoHunt’s liability in their testimony, the company stated that some of the reasoning in the District Court verdict went too far, and Google wants to see it scrapped in the appeal.

“While in agreement with the result reached in this case, Google is concerned that some of the reasoning offered by the district court goes too far and would upset the careful balance between copyright protection and technological innovation struck by the Supreme Court and Congress. Particularly because this case is not a hard one, it should be decided narrowly,” Google wrote.

The search giant addresses various issues they feel are not needed to arrive at the verdict, but can negatively impact other services on the Internet. Several of these conclusions are the result of suggestions made by the movie studios, which Google claims are misplaced and incorrect.

Google wants to address these issues because they fear it may otherwise lead to a negative outcome for themselves.

The Appeal Court agreed to accept and consider the amicus brief last month. This is the first time that Google have got involved in a BitTorrent case which is significant itself, but interestingly enough neither the MPAA nor isoHunt are happy with Google’s submission.

In a response to Google’s brief, isoHunt says it agrees with Google’s arguments that the District Court verdict is full of “fatal errors” and “omissions”. However, it doesn’t agree with Google’s conclusion that isoHunt is liable for copyright infringements by some of their users. isoHunt’s lawyer therefore asks the court to reject the latter arguments.

“Defendants submit that Google’s confusing arguments and fallacious reasoning should not obscure the importance of issues presented by this case. Defendants have proposed a practical way to deal with such issues; but Google, like plaintiffs, propose nothing other than affirmance of a factually flawed and legally ill-founded District Court Decision.”

The MPAA also responded to Google’s testimony, and was even less pleased to see the company chime in.

“Google is not a disinterested amicus. Google itself is a defendant in suits charging certain of its business units which intentionally promote infringement. Google’s arguments as amicus reflect its litigation interests in obtaining a legal ruling that facilitation of infringement, even if shown to be intentional, may still be immune from copyright liability.”

The MPAA’s legal team then goes on to refute nearly all arguments made by Google. The search engine wants to scrap all of the District Court’s conclusions regarding liability that could eventually be used against Google, but the movie companies clearly disagree.

“The Court should reject Google’s pleas for immunities for businesses that intentionally facilitate copyright infringement,” MPAA’s lawyers conclude.

Although Google weighed in on the isoHunt vs. MPAA case in self-interest, the mere fact that they got involved signifies the importance of the case. To some it may ‘just’ be a dispute between a BitTorrent site and the MPAA but if affirmed the District Court ruling may have far-reaching consequences for hundreds of other web-services.

After filing the amicus brief Google’s role in the case has likely ended, but isoHunt and the MPAA will continue their battle in court.

There’s a hearing planned in early May where we will find out more about where the case is heading. Interestingly, this hearing is scheduled on the same day and in the same court as Veoh’s appeal hearing. Another DMCA case, but one where the service provider was not held liable.

Source: Google, MPAA and isoHunt Clash in Court

Last year the former president of Brazil posed with Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde and vowed not to cave in to the interests of the copyright lobby. But with the change of leadership the MPAA sees new chances, and so Frazier went to Brazil to convince local politicians that tougher anti-piracy laws are needed.

In common with most Latin American countries, piracy is widespread in Brazil. According to a recent study more than half of all people living in urban areas regularly pirate movies, something the MPAA believes has to be stopped.

In an interview with local newspaper Folha, Frazier commented on the threat piracy poses to the major studios, responding with the classic textbook answers we’ve heard hundreds of times before.

“If you do not believe in the value of creativity, the importance of protecting it and the need to reward those who produce, then maybe you can justify piracy. But in that case you’ll be doing great harm to culture,” Frazier said. Please note the words ‘creativity’ and ‘culture’ in his answer, as we’ll come back to that later.

The reporter then went on to ask how important copyright really is when 44% of households in Brazil are not connected to the sewer system. Not really a fair question, but Frazier made it very clear that even when people are starving it would be immoral to ‘steal’ entertainment from U.S. corporations.

“Obviously, governments and societies have to work to make sure that the population has access to the basics in order to survive, but that does not mean you should ignore other things. Companies must live together because they respect each other and respect that people do not steal from one another. Even if you battle to put food on your plate, it is immoral to steal,” he said.

Things got more interesting when Frazier responded in a surprisingly open manner when asked about Creative Commons licenses, which allow for a more flexible approach to copyright. Creative Commons licenses are very popular in Brazil and the reporter wanted to know what the MPAA’s view on this approach is.

“They [Creative Commons supporters] don’t always agree with what we advocate,” Frazier responded. “And you are talking about democratizing culture, this is not in our interests. It really isn’t my interest.”

Although this answer may not really come as a surprise, combined with his previous answers it shows how subjective the MPAA’s view on creativity and culture is. According to the MPAA piracy is ruining culture, but at the same time they are not allowing others to use even tiny snippets of their works.

The MPAA is apparently only interested in creativity and culture when it applies to the works their studios produce. Needless to say, this isn’t necessarily what’s most beneficial to society. The MPAA is merely protecting their corporate interests.

For the general public, culture and creativity are probably better off with less restrictive copyright laws. This doesn’t mean that it should be okay to pirate every Hollywood blockbuster, but the laws that are put in place to please the movie studios are the same ones that cripple the creativity of tens of thousands of other artists and the public at large.

To the MPAA and many others in the entertainment industry, copyright has little to do with the word right, nor with creativity and culture. Instead, it’s a restrictive tool that allows works to be traded, leased and licensed in return for money.

Indeed, democratizing culture is not in the MPAA’s interest, but maximizing profits and control is.

Source: MPAA: “Democratizing Culture Is Not In Our Interest”

“Though long on hyperbole, the Studios’ factual allegations fall far short of the legal mark. They fail to state any claims for copyright infringement upon which relief can be granted and should accordingly be dismissed,” adds the 22-page document.

As previously reported, having apparently overlooked powerful market leaders such as RapidShare and MegaUpload, earlier this year Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Columbia and Warner filed a lawsuit against Hotfile, making the Florida-based company the reluctant guinea pig for testing the MPAA’s fledgling anti-cyberlocker legal strategies.

“In less than two years, Hotfile has become one of the 100 most trafficked sites in the world,” said the MPAA when announcing its lawsuit against the company. “That is a direct result of the massive digital theft that Hotfile promotes.”

The MPAA went on to state that Hotfile’s business model relies on the company encouraging its users to upload “illegal copies of motion pictures and TV shows to its servers”, something Hotfile denies.

As speculated earlier by HR reporter Eriq Gardner, Hotfile was probably carefully chosen as a target, not least because it uses the United States for its operational base but because, notably, it has chosen to settle rather than fight earlier lawsuits. This time, however, Hotfile does not appear to be backing down.

In its motion to dismiss dated March 31st, Hotfile denies the studios’ first claim of direct infringement. The company says that since the studios’ allegations are based around Hotfile allegedly facilitating the infringements of their users, this “could only support a claim – if any exists – for secondary infringement.”

On the issue of secondary infringement, Hotfile says the studios’ claim is deficient.

“The Studios do not allege the requisite clear expression or affirmative steps showing that Hotfile has the specific intent to promote infringement,” the company states.

‘Clear expression’ in this instance is a reference to existing case law involving three other file-sharing type services after they were previously deemed to have encouraged or approved of infringement.

In Columbia Pictures v Fung (MPAA v Isohunt), Hotfile quote site admin Gary Fung as saying “they accuse us for [sic] thieves, and they r [sic] right.” In Arista Records v Usenet.com – “Usenet is full of Music and Movies so get your pirate on!” and other more general comments from Arista Records v Lime Group and MGM Studios v Grokster. Hotfile say no such claims have been directed at them.

In response to the studios’ claim that Hotfile is guilty of contributory infringement, the company points firmly back in time to 1984′s Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., aka the Betamax case, again stopping off at 2005′s MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd on the way.

Claims that Hotfile had knowledge of infringement on its systems “effectively rehashes the argument that they lost in the Supreme Court [in the Sony case] in an attempt to stop technological advances in copying equipment.” Furthermore, the 2005 Grokster case only reaffirmed the legality of products that have “substantial non-infringing users”, say Hotfile.

While noting that it is fully DMCA compliant (and that the studios use its notice and takedown services), Hotfile goes on to refute the claims of vicarious liability on the basis that the studios failed to show that the file-hoster had the “practical ability” to “supervise or police infringement” among the millions of files that it hosts.

Interestingly, in contrast to previous cases involving both Grokster, isoHunt and LimeWire (who all had on-site ‘search box’ facilities, a fact used against them by the plaintiffs), in the studios’ case against Hotfile the lack of a search box is used to support a claim of inducement.

“Hotfile does not organize, categorize or otherwise participate in user selection of files to host. Hotfile provides the same basic service as the hundreds, if not thousands, of other bona fide web hosting services that are critical and necessary to enable the full potential of the Internet,” the company states.

“Realizing that the uninterrupted line of active inducement cases all involved sites with built in search capability, the Studios try to twist the absence of a search box into ‘concealment’. Thus, according to the Studios, web hosts are damned if they allow search (as ‘active inducers’) and are damned (as ‘concealers’) if they don’t.”

Everyone involved in a US-based online hosting business will be watching this case unfold with interest. The outcome will shape their future operations and even has the potential to alter the file-sharing landscape.

Source: Hotfile Files To Dismiss In Pivotal MPAA vs Cyberlocker Lawsuit

Why, one might ask? Well, because this is the only ‘legitimate’ way to watch DVDs online immediately after they are released. All other services have to abide by enforced long delays before streaming digital (vs. physical) copies, since the studios are afraid that giving people access to movies straight away will cannibalize their DVD sales.

Zediva thought they had cleverly bypassed this restriction by letting people rent a physical DVD that plays in a real DVD-player at their datacenter, but with a huge cable attached to it called the Internet. Although it’s insane that they have to go to such an extreme to give consumers access to content in the first place, Zediva thought they had a solid plan.

The MPAA, however, didn’t agree.

Yesterday the movie industry outfit filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, calling Zediva a sham. “Zediva illegally streams movies to its customers without obtaining required licenses from the movie studios,” the MPAA states in their press release.

“Zediva claims it is like a brick-and-mortar DVD ‘rental’ store and therefore not obligated to pay licensing fees to copyright holders. But the DVD ‘rental’ label is a sham. In reality, Zediva is a video-on-demand service that transmits movies over the Internet using streaming technologies in violation of the studios’ copyrights,” the MPAA added.

The MPAA’s stake in this is clear – money, money and more money. It’s not so much Zediva they’re interested in, but the loophole the company exploited to bypass the movie industry’s twisted copyright restrictions. If bigger players pick up this genius idea the MPAA fears they will lose their grip on carefully constructed copyright restrictions.

The big question that has to be answered here is why going to a brick-and-mortar store to pick up a DVD is so much different from playing the same physical DVD remotely. The latter is definitely more efficient, more ‘green,’ and much cheaper for the retailer and consumer. But, and that makes it interesting, from a copyright stance it’s the exact same thing.

The MPAA begs to differ.

“When legitimate companies stream movies to their customers, they pay license fees to the copyright owners, enabling content providers to invest in new products and services that pay writers, set builders, wardrobe designers, and countless others who contribute to a movie production,” MPAA’s associate general counsel Dan Robbins said.

Oh really?

So if you fill up your gas tank and drive to the bricks-and-mortar DVD ‘rental’ store everything’s just fine, but if the store decided to play it for you then they are suddenly ripping off wardrobe designers? How does that work? Seriously.

There is no difference whatsoever. It’s only that that the movie studios want to control who gets to see what, when and where on the Internet, because they think that will benefit their profits. In reality, it’s just as crazy as setting up separate rules for bringing home rental DVDs in a Chrysler and a Ford.

Let’s hope the judge at the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles asks the same questions.

Once again the MPAA is attempting to keep their copyright cash cow alive, and by doing so they are hindering innovation and prohibiting customers from watching films in a convenient way. They think that this option will be the most profitable for them, but it’s certainly not in the best interest of consumers, who might just be tempted to pirate films instead.

Source: MPAA ‘Goes Nuts’ With New Movie Streaming Lawsuit

Although Google did not dispute isoHunt’s liability, it is clearly concerned that some of the reasoning in the District Court verdict went too far, and wants to see it scrapped in the appeal.

As the case moves along Google continues to play a central role. In the reply brief filed by isoHunt, a study brought to the table shows that the majority of the files that can be found through its search engine are also available via Google.

“Neither Google nor Plaintiffs mention the 95% overlap between torrents available through Defendants’ systems and torrents available through Google and/or Yahoo!,” isoHunt’s legal team writes (pdf) to the Court of Appeals.

With this data isoHunt claims that what they do, Google does too, and perhaps even better. To a certain degree this is a valid point. Aside from indexing and caching hundreds of millions of pages with directs links to torrent files, Google also has a filetype command which allows users to search only for .torrent files.

In its quest for a jury trial, isoHunt suggests that they, but not Google, are hunted down and scapegoated by the movie studios. To put it in even stronger terms, isoHunt is indirectly telling the court that Google may be the largest torrent search engine on the Internet.

“Defendants might argue to the jury that it is unfair to hold Defendants liable if Google, unbothered by Plaintiffs, provides torrents to ten or twenty times the number of users that visit Defendants,” the reply brief reads.

It adds, “Defendants might argue that Defendants are being scapegoated. Defendants might argue that holding Defendants liable while ignoring Google would not curtail infringement.”

The reply further responds to several of the arguments made by the movie studios and eventually asks the Court of Appeals to reverse the permanent injunction and summary judgment. Instead, isoHunt favors a jury trial which it deems to be more appropriate considering the nature of the case.

“Defendants submit that upholding the right to jury trial is the best way to deal with rapidly-changing technology. Judicial rulings influence practical decisions for many years but cannot track changes in Internet technology.”

Commenting to TorrentFreak, isoHunt founder Gary Fung said that a trial by “jury of one’s peers” would be be fitting in more way than one.

Source: Google’s the Largest Torrent Search Engine, isoHunt Tells Court

However, in a time where nearly every MPAA press release deals with piracy concerns, box office revenues are booming worldwide. The MPAA has just announced that in 2010 yet another record was broken at the box office. In the US and Canada last year’s record of $10.6 billion was equalled, while worldwide grosses swelled to a massive $31.8 billion.

“It was a strong year at the movies in 2010. Despite a weak economy, shifting business models, and the ongoing impact of digital theft, we had another record year at the global box office driven by growth outside the U.S. and Canada,” MPAA President Bob Pisano said, commenting on the record-breaking revenues worldwide.

“The continued theft of movies online will have a sustained adverse impact on movie attendance in the coming years,” Pisano added somewhat predictably. “It’s impossible to compete with free.”

Oh really? That last statement, although catchy, makes absolutely no sense in this context.

Does the MPAA chief truly believe that a shaky camcorded version of a movie is somehow depriving movie theaters of visitors? Are there millions of people who prefer watching a low quality camcorded version of a movie over a theater visit simply because they can save a few bucks?

Pisano is comparing apples and oranges here – and he and his buddies have nearly 32 billion reasons in their back pocket to prove it.

It would be the same as saying that a fan of band X won’t go to a concert because he can download a bootleg copy on the Internet instead. Movie piracy is hardly a threat (or competition) to movie theater attendances. If anything holds people back from spending a few dollars on a movie it’s probably the insane security measures that have been implemented in recent years.

Still, the MPAA is confident that piracy is affecting box office revenues, so it will therefore continue to push for new legislation and enforcement tools.

“We will continue to work with our industry partners to fight for common sense ways, through legislative, enforcement and legal avenues, to vigilantly protect the creativity at the heart of our industry from theft,” Pisano says.

One of the focuses of the MPAA has been to reduce camcording in movie theaters, but one has to question whether the investments that are made in this area are worth it. Do movie theater employees really have to be equipped with night vision goggles? Are metal detectors, emotion recognition and advanced audio watermarks really needed to pinpoint pirates?

It is almost as if the MPAA and other anti-piracy outfits continue this “piracy theater” just to guarantee and justify their jobs and those of their comrades. Make no mistake, anti-piracy is big business. There are dozens of anti-piracy outfits, copyright protection vendors and lobby groups that each earn millions of dollars merely because of this supposed piracy threat.

Something to think about.

Source: Evil Pirates: Movie Industry Tops $30 Billion Box Office Record

The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S. The injunction was the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that started half a decade ago, in 2006.

IsoHunt owner Gary Fung decided to implement the filter, and is now up for an appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There, he hopes to get the law on his side and quash the previous District Court ruling. IsoHunt argues that they’re just like Google – a neutral search engine – and hopes the court will decide that the keyword filter is needless censorship.

The appeal is currently ongoing. Two months ago isoHunt filed its opening appellate brief to the Court, requesting better protection from such mass copyright lawsuits for both isoHunt and other search engines alike. Even Google may face similar censorship threats if the injunction holds up, isoHunt lawyer Ira Rothken argued.

Google has been keeping an eye on the legal battle between the MPAA and isoHunt as last week, out of nowhere, the company unexpectedly got involved in the motion for summary judgment appeal. The search giant, which has always stayed far away from these types of cases, filed an amicus cuiae brief (third party testimony) at the Appeal Court.

“This cases raises issues about the interpretation and application of the safe-harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512 et seq. (“DMCA”) and common-law rules governing claims for secondary copyright infringement. Google has a strong interest in both issues,” Google’s counsel writes.

Google asked both isoHunt and the MPAA studios for their consent in filing the amicus curiae brief. Interestingly enough, the movie studios didn’t want Google to take part, while isoHunt was more permissive. That doesn’t mean, however, that the brief is in support of isoHunt’s case, not at all.

In fact, Google specifically states that it agrees with the District Court’s conclusion that the isoHunt search engine induced copyright infringement. According to Google isoHunt can be seen as a true “pirate” service and no objections are made against the Court’s final decision.

What Google is worried about is the reasoning the District Court used to reach its conclusion.

“While in agreement with the result reached in this case, Google is concerned that some of the reasoning offered by the district court goes too far and would upset the careful balance between copyright protection and technological innovation struck by the Supreme Court and Congress. Particularly because this case is not a hard one, it should be decided narrowly,” Google writes.

Google argues that there is plenty of evidence that isoHunt encouraged its users to download copyright infringing content. However, in the discussion on the relation between inducement and liability the Grokster standard is ignored, especially the question of whether the inducement led to direct infringements or not.

Google wants to address this because they fear it may otherwise lead to a negative outcome for themselves.

Another major issue Google addresses is the District Court’s analysis of the DMCA’s safe harbor and the inducement of copyright infringement. According to Google this discussion can severely impact ‘legit’ businesses like YouTube.

“As with its treatment of inducement, the district court’s discussion of the DMCA reached the right result but in a problematic way. The court complicated a straightforward DMCA case by wading into an unnecessary discussion of the relationship between the statutory safe harbor and judge-made principles of secondary liability, including inducement,” Google writes.

Google states that it is apparent that isoHunt doesn’t fall under DMCA safe harbor protection, since it failed to meet several of the requirements, so a detailed discussion and conclusions with regard to liability and the DMCA are not needed.

“In short, the question whether a defendant is eligible for DMCA protection is distinct from whether the defendant is liable for inducement under Grokster. Those two questions should not be conflated, as the district court appears to have done,” Google writes.

Google further addresses various issues that they feel are not needed to arrive at the verdict, but can negatively impact other services on the Internet. Several of these conclusions are the result of suggestions made by the MPAA movie studios, which Google claims are misplaced and incorrect.

Although isoHunt’s owner was initially happy to see that Google got involved in the lawsuit, the end result is a huge disappointment. Google clearly doesn’t agree with the assessment of isoHunt that they are ‘just like Google’.

Google taking part in the MPAA vs. isoHunt appeal is mainly done in their own interest, but in doing this they make some valid points which are important for torrent sites also.

Google notes that the DMCA comes before any secondary infringement liability, such as inducement for example. In its ruling the District Court said that inducement disqualified isoHunt from DMCA safe harbors, which is strange as that completely defeats the purpose and definition of “safe harbour” for online service providers.

TorrentFreak contacted isoHunt owner Gary Fung for a response. Fung appeared to be disappointed, but couldn’t comment on the implications the Google brief could have. His lawyer Ira rothken was asked for a comment as well, but didn’t respond. It is now up to the Appeal Court to decide whether Google’s suggestions and comments will be taken into consideration.

Source: Google Gets Involved in BitTorrent Search Engine Lawsuit

The process works as follows. The copyright holders hire companies such as BayTSP and MediaSentry to track down people who share certain titles on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks. These companies then join the swarm and request files from others. When someone shares a piece of the file with them, they log the IP-address, look up the ISP and send out an infringement notice automatically.

Most of the notices are sent out to the larger ISPs who are then asked to forward them to the customers in question, but search giant Google has also been receiving quite a few. A search on ChillingEffects – a site that collects some of the DMCA notices that are sent to Google – reveals that more than 100 of these automated warnings were sent to Google in the past several months.

Since Google also offers Wi-Fi hotspots in some cities, most of the infringers are not actually sharing material directly from Google headquarters. However, in some cases these warnings do appear to be aimed at Google employees. This is an awkward situation for a company that is trying to help out the entertainment industry, and has even revealed a censorship policy towards certain BitTorrent-related terms.

But there is more. If we believe some of the notices sent to Google, the company is at risk of losing its connection to the Internet.

“Copyright infringement also violates your ISP’s terms of service and could lead to limitation or suspension of your Internet service. You should take immediate action to prevent your Internet account from being used for illegal activities,” the movie companies write in various letters.

The above text is of course intended for average consumers, but in this case it appears to be directed at Google. Not that we (or Google) have to worry about it much. Although the copyright holders use strong language, these kind of notices are nothing more than a warning, and they never lead to legal action.

At the bottom of each notice there is generally some info about the alleged infringer, in the following format.

Infringing Work: The Green Hornet
First Found: 2 Feb 2011 16:57:21 EST (GMT -0500)
Last Found: 2 Feb 2011 16:57:21 EST (GMT -0500)
IP Address: 216.239.XXX.XXX
IP Port: 14077
Protocol: BitTorrent
Torrent InfoHash: 42708AA384CF93EC6B67E6CEFB6E27B32362F689
Containing file(s): The Green Hornet TS(iPod.Zune.PSP).torrent (442,480,008 bytes)

Of the 100 latest infringement notices received by Google for sharing copyright works, most of them are associated with IP-addresses used by Wi-Fi customers while a few point to Google’s headquarters. Even though they are posted on ChillingEffects (some redacted, some with full IPs) it is impossible to tell whether the company has forwarded them to employees, if these are traceable at all.

The movie companies, however, do have some advice for Google.

“An MPAA website, www.respectcopyrights.org, offers step-by-step instructions to ensure that your Internet account is not being used to violate the copyright laws. Also, the site can point you to an array of legal choices for enjoying movies and TV shows online. You can also learn there how theft of motion pictures and TV shows damages our economy and costs thousands of Americans their jobs,” they write.

The most recent notices received by Google were sent on behalf of Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures for the illicit sharing of The Fighter and The Green Hornet respectively. In total, Google has published 20+ of these warning letters in the last 30 days.

Source: MPAA Snags Google Downloading Torrents, Threatens to Disconnect

Although the actions appeared to be significant, at the time of publication we were unable to name even one site that could have been caught up in this massive anti-piracy sweep. BREIN and the MPAA weren’t naming any sites in fear of boosting their profile should they return, which made it impossible to determine the scope of their actions.

However, shortly after we published the article about the MPAA shutdowns a staffer of a well-known torrent site got in touch, informing us that they were of of the casualties. The site in question – DarksideRG – is a relatively small community where torrents are posted in a forum, but it made a name for itself a few years ago as being the ‘home’ of aXXo.

To the older crowd the name aXXo will ring a bell as one of the best known DVDrip releasers. Between the fall of 2005 and March 2009, those four iconic letters were attached to hundreds of torrent files that linked to pirated movies. In the release notes of these files there always was a link back to DarksideRG.

Over the years the aXXo brand went on to achieve cult status. While there have been endless debates in the file-sharing community about the sources aXXo used for releases, for many the tag became synonymous with quality, dominating the searches on all public torrent sites. As a result, aXXo has grabbed the attention of scammers, the mainstream press and even documentary makers.

TorrentFreak spoke to a staff member at DarksideRG who informed us that they are indeed one of the 39 Dutch-hosted sites that has been pulled offline. Although this may sound dramatic, in reality the site’s owners were kindly asked by their hosting company to relocate, following complaints from BREIN and the MPAA.

DarksideRG’s hosting company Leaseweb had to ask the site’s owner to leave because BREIN has previously won a case in The Netherlands against a torrent site hoster. DarksideRG was notified about the complaints in advance and was given enough time to secure their files. The forum has been temporarily replaced with an announcement that it is in the process of moving servers.

Despite the setback, DarksideRG is not planning to keep their forums offline for very long. “Bags have been packed and we’re expecting to be down for around a week whilst a new home is found. Unfortunately we can’t discuss details for obvious reasons but we’ll be back,” the staffer said.

Source: aXXo’s ‘Home’ DarksideRG Disconnected by the MPAA

Last November it reported some of the largest torrent sites to the US Government, including The Pirate Bay, isoHunt and BTjunkie, calling them piracy havens.

In a follow up to the many accusations, the MPAA has now managed to shutter 12 torrent sites at once, a headline designed to send shockwaves through the BitTorrent community.

The MPAA has teamed up with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, who have perfected the art of pulling sites offline. In the last two years alone the organization has (temporarily) disabled more than 1000 torrent sites in The Netherlands, and they are now helping the MPAA towards doing the same in the US.

Twelve torrent sites were wiped from the Internet this week, but there is a catch to this ‘unprecedented’ action. As often with BREIN-led takedowns, nobody noticed a thing. If a torrent site of any significance goes offline for an hour or two our email inbox is usually alive with reports from readers. Today, however, we received none.

That doesn’t mean of course that the news isn’t worth reporting on. BREIN issued a press-release earlier today in which they appear very satisfied with what they’ve accomplished, and they assure the public that this isn’t the last time we will hear about such a torrent site massacre.

At the same time BREIN head Tim Kuik also explained why they target small players and why they keep the site names a secret.

“New sites are popping up, but we take these down faster and faster so they can’t gain an audience,” Kuik says. “Our goal is to limit the availability of illegal sites so people rather use legal platforms. BREIN doesn’t publish any names because some sites relocate and start over elsewhere.”

The MPAA, perhaps wisely, didn’t release a comment at all.

That leaves us with a final question for our readers. Do you happen to know of a torrent site that has gone missing over the past several days, or do you have more information on the affected sites? Feel free to get in touch with us.

Source: MPAA Takes A Dozen Torrent Sites Offline

With a view to correcting this and other misconceptions about their operations, RapidShare took the unprecedented step last year of hiring Washington-based Dutko, the same lobbying firm retained by Google. The lobbying registration form filed in November clearly set out their aims.

“Develop and implement a coordinated government affairs/public relations program for RapidShare targeted at Congress, the Administration and the media to help counter negative attacks on the company from U.S. copyright interests,” it read.

U.S. copyright interests = MPAA and RIAA.

By ordering Dutko to counter the political efforts of these two organizations, RapidShare appears to be acknowledging that they are the biggest threat to its expansion or, more negatively, the biggest threat to its survival in the US.

But despite this rivalry, comments from spokesman Daniel Raimer suggest that the differences between his company and the content industry are not insurmountable, particularly when RapidShare is offering something they need.

“There are plenty of reasonable people in the content industry. Those people know that a file hosting company that is truly dedicated to fight online infringement may be of high value to them,” said Raimer.

“We therefore want to convince people in Washington and in the content industry that we are such a legitimate company. I would be surprised if anyone in Washington or anyone within the content industry is going to have an issue with that.”

This olive branch approach is not particularly new. Last year, leaked documents showed that RapidShare’s outgoing General Manager Bobby Chang had tried to curry favor with the entertainment industries by offering to distribute licensed content alongside the implementation of tougher measures to close the accounts of users who use RapidShare to share infringing content.

“We are more aggressively than before terminating accounts of users who have been caught uploading copyright protected content,” Chang wrote.

However, while a tougher line towards uploaders would be welcomed by the entertainment industries, the signs point to them seeking a more proactive response to the infringement problem. Last year RapidShare told TorrentFreak that copyright holders have been pushing hard for the company to install filters that will prevent users from uploading copyrighted material in the first instance, a prominent theme in the ongoing isoHunt case.

But just how keen is RapidShare to install filters?

Although in a different jurisdiction, if one looks at recent legal battles RapidShare has fought in Germany, the signs are that although it is prepared to take some anti-piracy measures, filtering is not one of them. After being previously ordered by a court to install a filter to keep certain ebooks off its servers, RapidShare was hit with a fine of 150,000 euros for failing to do so.

This week, the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf ruled that RapidShare does not have to install filters to stop an Atari video game appearing on its servers and that its current measures are adequate.

“The ruling demonstrates once again that RapidShare is operating a fully legal range and has taken measures against the misuse of its service which go beyond the level that is legally required,” said Raimer about that case. “We are confident that copyright holders will gradually come to accept this conclusion.“

So while RapidShare may have announced that it’s dedicated to fighting online infringement, its recent actions indicate that it would seek to fight the introduction of filtering technology, something the entertainment industries desperately want. Indeed, the company already feels that it goes beyond the requirements of the law and the comments by Raimer seem to show that the olive branch – and the line of cooperation – will be drawn right there.

It will be fascinating to see how and where this particular battle plays out, both in the legal arena and, perhaps more importantly, on Capitol Hill. RapidShare almost certainly operates entirely legally under current US law, and the company – with the help of its lobbyists – will be keen that the government doesn’t implement changes to alter that position.

Source: RapidShare: We’re Dedicated To Fighting Online Infringement

In describing the file-hoster’s activities, the RIAA suggested that many of the files posted to RapidShare – whose URLs were then posted to blogs – contained pre-release content, an eye-catching offense in the US for those that posted the files and links, but not necessarily RapidShare.

In its submission to the Office of the US Trade Representative, the MPAA said that cyberlockers such as RapidShare were put forward because their main source of traffic is driven by the availability of vast amounts of infringing content on their servers.

“As you can imagine, we’re not very happy about that,” said Daniel Raimer, attorney and spokesman for RapidShare, in a just published interview.

As illustrated by the Lobbying Registration form shown below, RapidShare is now out to present their side of the story. The company has hired Washington based lobbying firm Dutko to send a clear message to the RIAA and MPAA that they aren’t the only ones who can lobby the US Government.

Drawing comparisons with Google, Daniel Raimer says the inclusion of the company on the “most notorious” list is unfair since RapidShare, like the search giant, is prepared to filter content. While some cooperation with the entertainment industries seems inevitable, it remains to be seen how interested they will be in an informal filtering agreement, especially since even enforced ones can easily go off course.

When it comes to lobbying, RapidShare will be up against formidable and well practised opponents. As revealed this month, in the last quarter alone the MPAA and RIAA spent a combined total of $1.8 million on lobbying in Washington. Public records reveal that these entertainment industry groups focused heavily on legislation and authorities involved in domain name seizures.

Of course, following the recent domain name seizures carried out by DHS and ICE, it seems that lobbying paid off nicely. RapidShare will be keen to avoid a similar devastating fate, particularly given its status on the “most notorious” list.

However, even for the mighty US Government, taking on RapidShare in a domain war would be an entirely different prospect to picking a squabble with the relative minnows targeted in November, but RapidShare has much to lose and is taking no chances.

The aim is for RapidShare to be removed from the list of “Notorious Markets” by early 2011. They’re in for one hell of a fight.

Source: RapidShare Shows MPAA/RIAA: We Can Lobby Lawmakers Too

The injunction is the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that started back in 2006. The court ordered the owner of isoHunt to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S.

The filter has now been implemented for a few months and prevents a list of film related phrases from showing up in the search results. In addition, isoHunt changed the appearance of its search engine for U.S. users, such as removing the list of most searched for phrases on the site. Although the site’s owner actively protested this form of commercial censorship, the court left isoHunt with no choice.

However, isoHunt does not intend to be defeated so easily and has decided to take the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There, it hopes to get the law on its side and quash the previous District Court ruling.

The BitTorrent search engine has now filed (pdf) its opening appellate brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting for better protection from such mass copyright lawsuits for both isoHunt and other search engines alike. The counsel of isoHunt argues that if the permanent injunction holds up, other search engines such as Google may face similar censorship threats as well.

“This case is about the freedom to search on the internet and whether web search engines have to preemptively censor user generated links and torrent data files or be subject to keyword filtering,” said isoHunt counsel Ira Rothken.

The appellate brief addresses the various misunderstandings and misjudgments that the defendant believes were made by the District Court. One of the questions is whether the keyword filter violates the First Amendment Free Speech rights.

In addition, it is questioned “whether the District Court exceeded its territorial jurisdiction in ordering Defendants, Canadians operating in Canada, to ‘filter’ communications taking place entirely within Canada.” In other words, is a US court permitted to order censorship measures for a Canadian company?

Among other things, isoHunt further questions whether it was rightfully excluded from the “safe harbor” provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and whether the common law that resulted from the Grokster verdict applied to a BitTorrent search engine.

Instead of being equated to P2P applications that actually touch, distribute, or copy copyrighted material isoHunt should be seen a regular search engine. After all, most torrent files can be downloaded through Google as well, the defense argues.

“Defendants showed that 95% of the torrents available on their system were also available on Google or Yahoo!,” the brief reads.

The opposition against the permanent injunction does not mean that isoHunt is not willing to make concessions. Instead of a keyword filter, isoHunt’s owner would rather implement a system that bans torrent files based on “infringing” hashes. A similar system is already in use for a partnership the site has with the US Attorney General to ban child porn.

The Ninth Circuit Appeal Court has now to decide whether the permanent injunction will stay in place or not. This decision will be a crucial one to the future of isoHunt and possibly other search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Source: isoHunt Continues Legal Fight To Thwart MPAA Censorship

Both the recent domain name seizures and the proposed COICA bill were encouraged by the MPAA and RIAA. However, the role of the RIAA and MPAA has not been limited to passively applauding the actions of the Government. On the contrary, both groups lobbied extensively for more Government control over domain names.

A look at public filings reveal that the outfits spent more than $1.8 million in the third quarter of 2010 on lobbying efforts directly targeted at the COICA bill and the authorities that carried out the recent domain name seizures. Money, that as it stands now, was well spent.

The RIAA’s filings at the Office of the Clerk reveal that the music industry trade group invested the most, $1.29 million in total. This money was spent on a variety of subjects, including the COICA bill and ACTA. In total, the RIAA listed nine copyright/trademark lobbyists including its CEO Mitch Bainwol.

The MPAA on its turn spent $520,000 on lobbying efforts in the third quarter. Part of the money went to lobbying efforts at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the authorities that were responsible for the recent domain seizures.

In addition, the MPAA lobbied for three-strikes anti-piracy initiatives such as ‘graduated response’ and legislation that targets digital piracy on ‘rogue sites’ such as COICA. The MPAA lists three lobbyists including Michael O’Leary who previously served as counsel to the former Senator Joe Biden.

Indeed, the same Joe Biden who is now the Vice President and declared war on digital piracy earlier this year. “Piracy Is Theft, Clean and Simple,” Biden said at the time.

Although it is no secret that the MPAA and RIAA spend millions of dollars in Washington every year, it is worth looking into where that money goes. From public filings it becomes apparent that the US Government’s move to commercial censorship is also reflected in the lobbying efforts by the entertainment industry.

And that’s just part of the influence. Aside from trying to influence lawmakers and the authorities, both groups are also playing their role in law enforcement. As we reported last Friday, the MPAA helped out Homeland Security with the application for the seizure order of Torrent-Finder and other sites.

It is of course impossible to measure if any of the lobbying efforts did indeed have an effect on the increased anti-piracy actions by the US Government, but considering the money that the MPAA and RIAA spent on lobbying, it wouldn’t come as a total surprise.

Source: MPAA/RIAA Lobbied Extensively In Favor of Domain Seizures

The first tip said that the movie industry would try to force UK ISPs to block Newzbin in the UK. The second was more specific – that target would be one of the leading ISPs, BT.

After trying to gather more information, we contacted the MPA with what we knew and asked them if they could confirm our suspicions. At that stage, no information was forthcoming and Newzbin were also in the dark. The trail ran cold but in the last 24 hours the picture clarified somewhat.

Yesterday, the MPA went to court seeking an injunction against BT in order to force them to block Newzbin2, the resurrected version of the original Newzbin which lost a High Court battle earlier in the year.

In a statement sent to TorrentFreak, the MPA explain the process it has undertaken.

“The law which the Court referred to is Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which provides for possible injunctions against internet intermediaries. Article 8.3 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive, of which S97A is the UK implementation, has been used successfully in Denmark to block rogue sites hosting illegal material, with further cases pending in Germany, Holland and Belgium.”

“In launching this case, the MPA is aiming to secure an order that will enable BT to block Internet access to the site, thus preventing the site from using the Internet to make money through infringement,” the MPA adds.

In order for the MPA to obtain an injunction under section 97A it is believed that they must have approached BT already with a request to block Newzbin, but had it denied.

At this stage, BT have confirmed they have received paperwork but refused to comment further.

John McVay, Chief Executive of Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (PACT), a UK trade association representing and promoting the commercial interests of independent films and television, welcomed the news.

“PACT supports today’s announcement. It is a shame that a legal action has to be taken, but illegal websites such as Newzbin2 pose a grave threat to our membership who do not have the resources to combat online copyright infringement.”

In a response to the news, Newzbin state the following:

“This is just an application and not yet a decision of any court. We will be looking to instruct lawyers to fight this on behalf of our UK users. The MPA application to engage in censorship of the Internet for their own petty interests would, if granted, set a dangerous precedent in a Western democracy.

“We don’t want to engage in a polemic but we have fully cooperated with DMCA requests from content owners and we are careful to act lawfully: ‘drive-by’ litigation such as this will cut off access to substantial legitimate content and is entirely unwarranted & disproportionate.”

Source: MPAA Takes Legal Action To Force ISP to Block Newzbin

The names of the sites, which appear to have been offering links to movies, music, TV shows, games and books, are currently unavailable but at least one appears to be identified as HD-UNiT3D.

As can be seen from its http://hd-united.com/ URL, it diverts straight to BREIN’s homepage.

Despite being hosted in the US the anti-piracy outfit cited Dutch law as the reason for the closures. “They are directed at the Dutch public” and “unlawful under Dutch law,” Kuik told TorrentFreak.

“This year we have made over 600 of these sites inaccessible. Some seek refuge in a foreign hosting provider. These 29 apparently thought that in America they could go undisturbed. That is incorrect,” Kuik said.

“Through cooperation with our foreign colleagues we can make sites in other countries inaccessible,” he added.

BREIN says it will also seek out the personal details of those who operate the sites in order to hold them personally liable.

As mentioned in our earlier articles, BREIN has indeed closed down many torrent and Usenet related sites. However, while some of them have been reasonably sized, most of them are particularly small and easy to close by pressuring their hosts.

The fact that none of the owners or users of the sites have alerted us about these alleged closures suggests that no sizable sites were included.

The MPAA are yet to make a statement on the action and as yet BREIN haven’t formally identified any of the sites targeted. If past actions are anything to go by, they will try to avoid naming them for fear of giving them even more publicity.

That HD-UNiT3D is redirecting to BREIN’s homepage is both worrying and suspicious. Previously, BREIN simply asked the hosting providers to take the sites down or face the legal consequences. This is the first time that they appear to have gained some level of control over a domain, an action that is usually only taken by the authorities and not a private anti-piracy group. Whether this is the result of old-fashioned pressure or something else will remain to be seen.

Update: TorrentFreak requested a list of the affected domains from BREIN and received this response from Tim Kuik.

“No that would amount to free PR for the sites that intend to continue their unlawful activities at another hosting provider. These are not large sites and we want to keep it that way.”

In response to a question about how the sites were taken offline:

“The sites were taken down by the hosting provider,” said Kuik.

Source: MPAA Shuts Down 29 BitTorrent and NZB Sites

Individual movie companies have sent thousands of infringement notices but these campaigns have never been led by the MPAA, until now.

This week the MPAA will notify all college and university presidents about this upcoming policy change, and at the same time the movie industry outfit will urge institutions to do whatever they can to stop illegal downloading on their campus networks.

In July this year, the US put into effect a new requirement for colleges and universities to stop illicit file-sharing on their networks. This legislation puts defiant schools at risk of losing federal funding if they don’t do enough to stop illicit file-sharers on their campus.

With this ammunition in hand the MPAA drafted a letter which TorrentFreak received a copy of this weekend, a few days before it will be mailed to the universities. In the letter the MPAA politely asks the colleges and universities to help the movie industry to fight the evil that piracy is.

The MPAA writes that the jobs of 2.4 million US workers are at stake, if proper countermeasures are not taken.

“For these workers and their families, online theft means declining incomes, lost jobs, reduced health and retirement benefits, and a lessened ability to provide their children with an education at institutions like yours,” MPAA’s anti-piracy head Daniel Mandil writes.

“In addition, online theft is a job-killer that also reduces the number of opportunities for graduates of your institution to make a living in the creative sectors.”

“Beyond the negative economic consequences for both the current workforce and future employment, the downloading and distribution of copyrighted works are serious offenses that carry with them the risk of substantial monetary damages and, in some cases, criminal prosecution,” Mandil adds.

Of course, between the lines the MPAA also notes that colleges and universities who fail to implement proper anti-piracy policies, may lose federal funding.

The letter further notes that the MPAA itself will get involved in sending out warning letters to higher education institutions for any ‘illegal activity’ they detect. This, in addition to the DMCA takedown notices that individual film and television studios have been sending out already.

Of course, the MPAA doesn’t only warn universities, they also offer solutions. One option that is recommended by the MPAA is to block students and employees access to ‘rogue web sites.’ This means, actively censoring BitTorrent search engines and indexes such as The Pirate Bay, Demonoid and isoHunt.

Aside from commercial censorship there are also less aggressive methods such as ‘educational seminars,’ monitoring the browsing habits of students, or blocking all P2P-traffic entirely which some of the appointed ‘role model‘ schools do.

Naturally, the additional DMCA notices and expensive countermeasures will take away a few hundred thousand dollars a year from the education budget, but it’s for a good cause. After all, if piracy continues at this rate many of the current students might not even be able to get a job when they graduate.

Source: MPAA To Target Pirating College Students and Rogue Universities

“The Motion Picture Association of America submits the following response to the request for written submissions issued October 1, 2010, by the Office of the US Trade Representative, inviting submissions from the public on notorious markets outside of the United States,” wrote Interim CEO and President of the MPAA, Bob Pisano.

Following a preamble describing the importance of the movie industry to the U.S. economy, Pisano stresses the influence MPAA member companies products wield internationally and the need to protect their business outside US borders.

“The industry distributes its films to over 150 countries and in 2007, 46 percent of MPAA’s member companies’ revenue came from overseas,” he wrote.

“MPAA has a strong interest in the health and sustainability of these international markets and appreciates USTR’s interest in identifying notorious markets that threaten legitimate commerce, impair legitimate markets’ viability and curb U.S. competitiveness and hurt our overall economic strength. It is critical that our trading partners protect and enforce intellectual property rights.”

It will come as no surprise to learn that Pisano’s list of “notorious markets” is headed by some of the world’s biggest torrent sites. Below, we list the sites being targeted and the description of each that the MPAA gave to the U.S. Government, errors (such as TPB having a tracker) intact.

BTjunkie.org – Sweden

This BitTorrent indexer with an Alexa ranking of 385 aggregates content “torrents”, which are executable instructions that initiate the download process. Btjunkie offers nearly 100,000 active torrents that are identified as copyrighted movie or television files. Unique to btjunkie.org is its ability to make available both public and non-public infringing content. With most release groups posting new content to non-public torrent websites, this indexing capability is particularly challenging for rightsholders. The site is currently hosted by Sweden’s NetworkSpiration.

Demonoid.com – Ukraine

Demonoid is a very active, semi-private BitTorrent tracker and website with servers located in the Ukraine. Individuals can view what is available but downloading the torrent metadata requires the user to log in. A review of the accessible content on the site lists nearly 100,000 copyrighted movies and television files. Demonoid’s Alexa ranking is 516 which is extremely high for a semi-private environment

IsoHunt – Canada

This is the most popular BitTorrent site in the world after The Pirate Bay. IsoHunt boasts of having 12.51 million peers and 3,743,581 active torrents and has an Alexa rank of 227. A U.S. Court issued a permanent injunction against IsoHunt after finding that over 90% of the downloads made using IsoHunt’s services related to infringing content and that the defendants were liable for inducing infringement. Yet, its Canadian operator continues to run the site with impunity. The site’s operator has commenced an action in Canada seeking a declaration that its operations do not violate Canadian law. IsoHunt can be found at 208.71.112.30. Its corporate address is IsoHunt Web Technologies, Inc., 820 Broadway West, Vancouver, BC V8Q 4K1.

Kickasstorrents.com – Sweden

This BitTorrent portal has a commercial look and feel that could deceive users into thinking it is legitimate. It has been gaining popularity since 2009. The site is hosted by Sweden’s Dedicated Network, Luxembourg’s Root, and France’s OVH. This infrastructure creates redundancy to defend against successful litigation, raids or other actions that may threaten the service. Its current Alexa ranking is 457 and it appears to offer access to 8.1 million torrent files.

Rutracker.org – Russia

This BitTorrent portal is the clone to Torrents.ru, which was taken down by the Russian criminal authorities. It is an indexing site that serves four million users and it has over one million active torrents. It has a global Alexa ranking of 297 and a shockingly high local ranking – 15. Torrent.ru had its domain name suspended by RU-Center, the nation’s largest registrar and web-host, but for now the site is back up at Rutracker.org and it remains to be seen whether the new domain will be taken down by the authorities. Its IP address is 195.82.146.114 and it is hosted by AvtomatizatsiyaBusiness Consulting.

ThePirateBay.org – Sweden/Netherlands

This BitTorrent portal has servers in both Sweden and the Netherlands. The Pirate Bay (TPB) comprises a BitTorrent tracker and websites which facilitate the exchange of vast amounts of infringing content. The Pirate Bay operators proudly claim that it is the biggest tracker of its kind in the world, with over one million users. Since its establishment in 2004, the website has grown exponentially and is now accessible in some 39 separate languages. It has facilitated the illegal exchange of untold millions of protected copyright works. Rightsholders, their trade associations and collecting societies have made countless complaints about the TPB’s activities. The Pirate Bay contains significant and lucrative third-party advertising, much of it promoting the porn industry and US green cards. Advertising revenue is typically a function of number of unique site visits per day. With more than one million hits per day – the Pirate Bay takes in an estimated $60,000 per month from advertisers in addition to thousands of dollars collected from user “donations.” In May 2006, the Swedish Police executed search warrants at 10 separate locations and seized 17 computer servers and made three arrests, closing down the site for a brief period. Although the site operators were ultimately convicted by a Stockholm court, the site has not been shut down. Only the Italian government has taken such action vis à vis Italy. This site has also sparked numerous civil proceedings.

Cyberlockers/File-hosters

From torrent sites, the MPAA then moves to their next biggest target – file-hoster/cyberlocker services.

“It is very common for links to illegal copies of movies and television shows stored on cyberlockers to be widely disseminated across the Internet via linking websites, forums, blogs or email,” says Pisano.

“Some cyberlockers offer both legitimate and infringing content. The cyberlockers listed below were identified because traffic to their sites is driven by the vast amounts of infringing premium content available to users.”

The MPAA goes on to list several hosting services including Megaupload.com, Megavideo.com, RapidShare.com, Webhards (Korea) and Ba-k.com (Mexico).

The linking site Kino.to, which appeared in our recent article, is also listed as problematic.

Not even the newsgroups escape scrutiny, with famous Usenet service UseNext making the list. The MPAA’s description can be seen below:

UseNext.de – Germany/Netherlands.

This Usenet service markets to mainstream P2P users much more heavily and directly than do traditional subscription Usenet services. UseNext claims that over 1.2 million videos are available and proclaims “There is nothing you won’t find here.” High-quality Blu-ray rips of MPAA members’ content can be found on UseNext. UseNext has approximately 200,000 regular users. UseNext provides a free trial period to users and then subscription plans start at approximately $10 USD a month and go up based on the quantity of content users wish to download. It is estimated that UseNext clears around 100,000 EUR a month. UseNext is a German operation with indexing servers in the Netherlands. Its Alexa rank is 5,845 and its German rank is 2,811.

The rest of Pisano’s letter is dedicated to both online services selling counterfeit physical products and real-life physical locations around the world selling the same, including markets in such diverse locations such as Ukraine, Czech Republic, Canada, Indonesia, Ireland, India, various South American countries and China.

“MPAA supports USTR’s efforts to identify foreign notorious markets. These markets are an immediate threat to legitimate commerce, impairing legitimate markets’ viability and curbing U.S. competitiveness. We strongly support efforts by the US government to work with trading partners to protect and enforce intellectual property rights and, in so doing, protect U.S. jobs,” Pisano concludes.

Source: MPAA Lists Major Torrent, Usenet and Hosting Sites In Submission To U.S. Government

As part of a course on the production of digital media at the University of Texas, the two were invited for an interview to share their views on copyright and the movie industry in the digital age.

The two touched on a wide variety of subjects such as three-strikes policies, the future of DVDs and fair use. They also gave some background information on key decisions they’ve made over the years. Although the MPAA believes that piracy can be decreased by beating pirated films in terms of quality and availability, they don’t think that it will ever go away completely.

“We will do whatever we can to discourage illegal accessing of our motion pictures,” Fritz Attaway said. “We have no illusions that we will be 100 percent successful. Piracy has always been and will always be with us. Our goal is to keep it under a reasonable level of control where we can make enough revenue in a legitimate market to recoup expenses and continue to make new movies.”

“And I am very optimistic that we will be able to do that. I said in the very beginning that a very large part of that is developing new business models that consumers will access legally and find that experience superior to illegal access. And I think the industry is doing an excellent job of that and will continue to do so,” he added.

When the interviewer compared the RIAA’s anti-piracy operations with those of the the MPAA, Attaway seemed to be offended when the RIAA’s tactics were described as more aggressive. He noted that the two outfits have chosen different paths to pursue their goals, but that they are just as ‘bad’ as their music industry counterpart.

“We are extremely aggressive, certainly equally aggressive as RIAA or any other copyright owner group,” Attaway said. “We have used slightly different tactics than RIAA in part because of the nature of our respective works. There are certainly other reasons as well but MPAA has filed end user lawsuits like RIAA has.”

“However, they are very expensive and we have determined that there are other routes that provide a better return; among them education, working with intermediaries like ISPs to discourage infringing activity, and one, that is probably the most important, is encouraging the development of new business models that provide legitimate alternatives. All of these avenues we are pursuing very aggressively,” he added.

When the subject turned to the role ISPs have in countering copyright infringement, three-strikes policies for repeated infringers were brought up. The MPAA is encouraging these kinds of policies, but stressed that in the United States the decision to terminate the account of an alleged copyright infirnger is made by the Internet provider.

“We encourage ISPs to at least notify subscribers who are engaging in infringing material and advise them that it is illegal and could have consequences. And for repeat infringers we encourage ISPs to terminate service but that is strictly a decision of the ISP and not ours,” Attaway said.

The full interview with the two MPAA executives is available on the Copygrounds website which is part of the introductory course on the production of digital media at the University of Texas.

Source: MPAA: Piracy Will Always Be With Us

Sometimes things need sorting out, and what better way than getting hundreds of thousands of anonymous users of this notorious message board to work together to achieve it. If they’re not trying to bring down Scientology, they’re teaching foul-mouthed pre-teen girls a lesson or using their combined forces to destroy the lives of stupid bankers who think it’s ‘funny’ to throw cats in the trash.

Yesterday two new targets hit the radars of ‘Anonymous’, the faceless and powerful hordes who carry out 4chan attacks. The beauty is that anyone can join in the action, 4chan ‘membership’ is not even required. People wishing to participate can simply load up their Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) and enter the IP address they want to attack. The resulting assaults are massively distributed making defending against them almost impossible.

Yesterday’s target one was everyone’s favorite Indian anti-piracy company, AiPlex Software. A completely unknown entity until a couple of weeks ago when they stupidly admitted to DDoSing uncooperative torrent sites (then unsuccessfully trying to backtrack), it seems their rise to fame came at a price.

Following claims that AiPlex had DDoS’d The Pirate Bay, a few hours ago their website was taken down and remains that way at the time of writing. Along with the downtime came this message (pic):

How fast you are in such a short time! Aiplex, the bastard hired gun that DDoS’d TPB (The Pirate Bay), is already down! Rejoice, /b/rothers, even if it was at the hands of a single anon that it was done, even if ahead of schedule. now we have our lasers primed, but what do we target now?

We target the bastard group that has thus far led this charge against our websites, like The Pirate Bay. We target MPAA.ORG! The IP is designated at “216.20.162.10″, and our firing time remains THE SAME. All details are just as before, but we have reaimed our crosshairs on this much larger target. We have the manpower, we have the botnets, it’s time we do to them what they keep doing to us.

REPEAT: AIPLEX IS ALREADY DOWN THANKS TO A SINGLE ANON. WE ARE MIGRATING TARGETS.

While it’s claimed that AiPlex was taken down by a single attacker, the ongoing assault on the MPAA.org website is definitely a group effort. The site was attacked on schedule (9pm eastern time yesterday) and taken down in minutes. It remains down at the time of writing.

Update: After 18 hours the MPAA moved its site to a new IP-address, which means it’s up again. More news coming up tomorrow.

Update: Is the RIAA next?

Source: 4chan DDoS Takes Down MPAA and Anti-Piracy Websites

Gary Fung, the owner of isoHunt, was ordered to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S. Thus far little has changed. The Lite version of isoHunt remains accessible and unfiltered to U.S. visitors while isoHunt and the MPAA battle in court against both the legitimacy and usability of the proposed filter.

IsoHunt has decided to appeal the injunction and this week both parties filed their motions with the Ninth Circuit Appeal Court. In his support for the motion, Gary Fung argues that the list of generic keywords provided by the MPAA is unworkable and he accuses the movie studios of wanting to obtain control over BitTorrent.

“In my opinion, which I have expressed publicly, plaintiffs, MPAA and the Entertainment Industry are seeking not just to ‘stop copyright infringement’ but to obtain control over BitTorrent technology so that only their partners or those that conform to their demands for limiting access will have practical use of the technology,” Gary Fung told the Court.

Fung backs up his statement with the argument that keywords such as ’10′, ’21′, ‘Birth’, ‘Cars’, ‘Dad’, ‘Dave’, ‘Firefox’ and ‘Soldier’ would result in significant collateral damage with a keyword filter. It might make movie titles unavailable, but also a lot of public domain, GPL and Creative Commons works.

The MPAA has been asked by District Court Judge Wilson to supplement their titles list with more specificity, but apart from adding a few hundred more titles to the modified list, the defendants say it still lacks information which would allow isoHunt to filter effectively. Ideally, they would like to see a list of torrent hashes of alleged infringing material.

IsoHunt’s lawyer Ira Rothken further notes that the court failed to address the freedom of speech issues that are involved in this case. Fung himself likens the filter to the Great Firewall of China, where a similar keyword filter is used to censor the Internet.

“I find it absurd that we are required to keyword filter which ironically all search engines in countries like China are required to do due to political censorship, but isoHunt would be the only search engine serving traffic to US users required to do similar filtering..,” Fung wrote to the court.

These censorship and freedom of speech issues aside, isoHunt’s owner says that keeping the injunction would do serious harm to the site’s traffic and thus his business. IsoHunt has already seen a 50% drop in visitors from the U.S. after it switched to the Lite version.

“Since isoHunt switched to the Lite interface in compliance with concerns raised and publicized in the Summary Judgment, we have seen a 50% drop in US traffic and I am concerned that if a stay is not issued there will be no way to unring the bell on lost traffic,’ Fung wrote.

With both parties having presented their arguments, the Ninth Circuit Appeal Court has now to decide whether the permanent injunction will stay in place or not. This decision will be a crucial one to the future of isoHunt and possibly other BitTorrent sites. Gary Fung has always said that a keyword filter is out of the question and that he would rather shut the site down in the US.

Source: IsoHunt Tells Court That MPAA’s Filter is Needless Censorship

Less known are the movie industry’s efforts to clamp down on copyright infringers who are defending their country’s interests on foreign soil. Because the availability of legal movies and TV-shows is limited in countries such as Iraq, soldiers sometimes use BitTorrent to get their fix, or buy pirated DVDs from local sellers.

The MPAA is not happy with these defiant soldiers. A declassified document from the United States Central Command shows that, a few years ago, the MPAA asked the military what they do to prevent soldiers from accessing pirated DVDs in Iraq.

One of the questions posed by the MPAA is whether they have banned U.S. troops from going to stores that sell pirated DVDs. The Central Command answered this question negatively, as it would hurt the business of Iraqi salesmen.

“No….banning our troops from visiting these shops would have the unwelcome secondary effect of harming Iraqi entrepreneurs selling legitimate goods.” They add that there is nothing they can do about DVDs that are being sold on Iraqi property because these stores fall under Iraqi law.

The document does state, however, that selling pirated DVDs on US bases is not permitted. It further says that piracy could be reduced by giving soldiers access to legal forms of entertainment.

“U.S. forces have had a long-standing, positive relationship with the entertainment industry. Working to continue this relationship, including the provision of popular entertainment like first-run movies, concerts and other events will help to curtail the demand for pirated media,” it states.

Pirated DVDs are not the only worry for the MPAA as more recently military personnel have also been using BitTorrent to access U.S. entertainment on foreign bases. A military insider told TorrentFreak that they see no other option than to ‘pirate’, as the entertainment industry gives them little opportunity to enjoy digital media legally.

“We have sent letters to the RIAA and the MPAA repeatedly letting them know that our downloads are a direct representation of their failure to allow us to be good consumers as others in the US can be,” our military insider explained.

Instead of holding out a helping hand to deployed soldiers, the entertainment industries continue to treat them as criminals. On a daily basis, the MPAA and RIAA send copyright notices to military personnel via their base ISPs. In turn, the personnel are threatened with account suspension and in serious cases, disconnection.

At the same time Hollywood continues to exploit military conflicts with hit shows like The Pacific and Oscar-winning movies such as The Hurt Locker. Ironically, The Hurt Locker centers around a friendship between a heroic soldier and a young Iraqi boy who sells pirated DVDs at a U.S. base.

Source: MPAA Worries About Pirating U.S. Soldiers in Iraq