Following requests to the High Court by the music and movie industries, BitTorrent, Usenet and streaming indexes are now being blocked, rendered entirely inaccessible by the nation’s six largest service providers.

Although controversial, the reasons why sites such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and Movie2K are being blocked are now clear. Once ISPs have “actual knowledge” that their services are being used by their subscribers to infringe copyright, they are put on notice by the High Court to block the sites in question.

However, it has become somewhat tiresome to learn that when injunctions are handed down by the High Court to ISPs, they appear to fall into some kind of informational black hole – fitting perhaps for a document authorizing censorship.

To try and find out what these injunctions contain TorrentFreak previously spoke with one of the leading ISPs who assured us that the documents aren’t actually secret. However, when we requested a copy we were told that they couldn’t send us one and we would have to go to the Court instead. No luck there – and the BPI weren’t exactly forthcoming either.

Now the Open Rights Group is reporting that it too has been trying to get to the bottom of the website injunction blackout. ORG’s Jim Killock says everyone could benefit from their publication.

“Accountability, fewer errors and less confusion about what is happening should be the result,” he says.

Killock reveals that ORG has also asked ISPs to cooperate but they too have been met with reluctance.

“Possibly [the ISPs] feel that copyright owners asking for the orders may find publication by an ISP provocative. This means we are obliged to ask the courts for the documents, in order that we can publish and analyse their contents,” he explains.

But ORG found that the courts didn’t want to help either, turning down the group’s requests to view the injunctions.

“They have done this because, they say, ‘judgement has not been entered’ or ‘service has not been acknowledged’. At present the rules governing access to court documents only permit access to these orders as of right once the litigation has finished,” Killock explains.

“The courts seem to be treating blocking injunctions as if they were like temporary injunctions made while proceedings are still going on. In fact the injunctions are the end of the section 97A process. Nothing more is intended to happen.”

With this in mind, ORG have applied to have a procedural judge review the group’s requests in order to gain access, at least in the first instance, to the injunctions issued to the ISPs against Fenopy, H33t and KickassTorrents.

“We hope to persuade the Master that a section 97A blocking injunction should be treated like any final judgment in court and be available to the public as of right. If we cannot do that, we will ask the Master’s permission to have access to the orders,” Killock concludes.

ORG is also maintaining 451unavailable.org, a site dedicated to tracking UK blocking requests. It’s currently a little out of date in respect of all injunctions issued so far, but it’s hoped that ORG will soon be able to publish information obtained from the courts to this resource.

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

“Website blocking is a matter of significant public interest. We’re concerned that proposals for this censorship scheme are developing in the shadows,” writes peter Bradwell on ORG.

“So together with Article 19, Index on Censorship, and Global Partners we’re asking that the rights holders involved make the proposals public as soon as possible. They should be subject to a proper open debate.”

ORG have also placed a Freedom of Information request in order to obtain the details of previous meetings. That request can be seen here.

The ORG letter to the BPI is printed in full below:

Dear Geoff,

Jim Killock
Executive Director
Open Rights Group

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

To the absolute dismay of most outside the music and movie industries, some of the most controversial elements of the Bill are unlikely to receive any major scrutiny and will be dealt with quickly under the so-called “wash-up”, a short period between the announcement of an election and parliament being closed down.

“It’s a deeply unsatisfactory and very worrying development,” a senior executive from an ISP told The Guardian. “The fear is that no one will know what is being cooked-up before it becomes law. It’s legislation on the hoof.”

But this situation suits the BPI just fine. This week a leaked memo from the BPI fell into the hands of Cory Doctorow which showed that the “LibDem amendment” – a proposal under the DEB which would allow for websites to be blocked if, essentially, the BPI didn’t like their activities – was in fact written by the BPI. Very cosy.

But the controversies don’t end there. Doctorow also received an internal document prepared by the BPI’s Director of Public Affairs and prospective Labour parliamentary candidate, Richard Mollet. In the document he admitted that the only reason the DEB had a chance of passing is because MP’s are resigned to voting on it without debate.

“Translation: if MPs got to debate the Bill, they would tear it to unrecognizable pieces as they realized what terrible rubbish it really is,” wrote Doctorow. The scandals go on and on, but we have to stop somewhere.

Nevertheless, UK Music head Feargal Sharkey says that he is confident that the DEB will be passed before the general election, although others are not so sure.

“It will still be nip and tuck to get the Digital Economy Bill onto the statute book before the election so the battle is not won yet,” wrote Shadow Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt, on his blog this week.

According to Jim Killock at the Open Rights Group, UK citizens aren’t leaving anything to chance with 10,000 of them having written to their MPs in the last three days to demand a debate on the Digital Economy Bill.

“It is outrageous for corporate lobbyists including the BPI, FAST and UK Music to demand that MPs curtail democracy and ram this Bill through Parliament without debate,” says Killock, adding: “The British people did not elect UK Music and the BPI to write our laws.”

Killock says that what is making the 10,000 so angry is the pushing through of the DEB without debate, an act he describes as “undemocratic and dangerous”.

If you’d like to add your dissenting voice, please email your MP, write to your local newspaper, and attend the planned demonstrations.

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

Opposition to such plans are widespread, but until recently, public opinion hadn’t been tested in a measurable way. Today we have a much clearer idea, as results from a YouGov poll commissioned by the Open Rights Group have been released.

A significant 68% of those surveyed felt that individuals accused of illicit file-sharing should have the right to a fair trial before their accounts were disconnected or otherwise interfered with as punishment.

Just 16% of respondents said they would be happy for Internet users to have their accounts automatically suspended once their ISP had received “a number of accusations.”

While 44% said the proposals would not influence their vote, just under a third of respondents (31%) said they would be “much less likely” to vote for a political party that endorsed disconnection from the Internet without a trial. Just 7% said they were more likely to support a party bringing in such sanctions.

In this digital age, Internet connectivity is becoming more and more important for us to carry out everyday tasks, and as time presses on we all becoming more and more reliant on our gateway to the online world. So just how would disconnection affect the respondents ability to carry out various tasks?

19% of respondents said their ability to work and conduct their education would be completely disrupted following disconnection, with 23% labeling the disruption as “fair”.

When the focus is placed on processes such as online shopping or home banking, 30% said disconnection would completely disrupt their activities, with an additional 43% calling the problem caused as “fair”.

Jim Killock, executive director at the Open Rights Group, feels that the government is out of step.

“Our conclusion must be that this is a politically unwise move, that will be unpopular and a vote loser for its architects,” he said, noting that such measures will fail to meet their objectives. “[They] won’t make a single penny for artists, or help online music businesses get off the ground,” he added.

While the Open Rights Group is aware why the government has gone down this “disastrous” route, Killock says they are not prepared to watch the rights of the people being taken away.

“The right to freedom of expression, a fair trial, to be presumed innocent until proven guilty: and for proportionate punishments, these are basic principles on which democratic societies are built,” he said.

Finally Killock is calling for citizens to write to their MPs to support Tom Watson’s cross-party Early Day Motion on file sharing, which was featured here last week on TorrentFreak.

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

The Directive, due to be voted on some time in the near future, will mainly be to the benefit of large record label, and not small artists and session players, as proponents claim. In a speech last month, though, Commissioner McCreevy countered that argument, saying “To that criticism can I say that the average annual pay-out might not appear significant to academic critics, but €2,000 (£1,760) extra per year is significant to an average session player.”

The reality though, is very different. Even EU backed studies have found significant downsides to any extension, with the only study supporting an extension coming from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) – the British music lobby group. Even Andrew Gowers, author of the independent Gowers Report into ‘intellectual property’ has recommended against an extension.

Thus the Open Rights Group has decided to try and educate MEPs. It will be holding a meeting with them, to try and bring attention to the problems and negative aspects of the directive. It has also created the following video to explain to those that can’t be there.

The meeting is free to attend, and will include people with experience in the industry. If you’re interested in attending, details are available here

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

The proposal is supposed to secure the pensions of long forgotten artists. In a statement, McCreevy said “I am not talking about featured artists like Cliff Richard or Charles Aznavour. I am talking about the thousands of anonymous session musicians who contributed to sound recordings in the late fifties and sixties. They will no longer get airplay royalties from their recordings. But these royalties are often their sole pension.”

According to the Financial Times, the proposal could come up to vote as early as this Wednesday, July 16th. Also up for discussion would be a plan to split up rights societies by the antitrust arm of the commission, potentially making rights societies compete against each other for the rights to collect royalties from artists.

While this would certainly be a better way to curb their less than philanthropic actions, if it comes at the cost of greater copyright, is it that beneficial to the 500 million citizens of Europe? There is a glimmer of hope though. Two commissioners are opposed to the extension plan; telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding and commissioner Antonio Tajan.

The copyright extension plans met initial scorn back when they were first announced in February, with groups like the Open Rights Group and the EFF launching a petition to have it blocked, as well as a website to deal with the issue. Nevertheless, McCreevy kept on going, and the proposal is now ready to be voted on.

McCreevy himself has his pension already planned from a former partnership in a chartered accountancy firm (and he has been in politics since 1977, so he clearly planned early). It is left to wonder then why he feels the need to legislate some sort of speciality pension for artists. If they decide to stop work at 25, why should they be paid for it past 75? If that has been their only source of income, why could they not have done as the hundreds of millions of other EU citizens, myself included, and planned for their retirement?

Commissioner McCreevy had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publication.

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