Soundike and GoMusicNow are very much like the AllofMP3 alternatives we wrote about a while ago. They all offer dirt cheap music for direct download with tracks as low as 9 cents each with further discounts for whole album purchases.

Adding insult to injury, many of these sites carry content which would be more at home on a torrent site, such as a full length ‘Michael Jackson Memorial Mix’ bootleg being sold by Soundike for $0.12. So-called ‘Scene’ rips can be found on these sites in abundance.

Needless to say, the music industry in most parts of the world hate these sites and isn’t averse to taking legal action against them to shut them down or in this case, get them blocked from the Internet. Hindering this process is the fact that many such sites are licensed in Russia by the Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems, which they claim allows them to operate legally, at least inside Russia.

Despite the noise being made by RISA, South African ISPs aren’t about to comply with their requests. On behalf of its members the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) wrote to RISA rejecting the demands.

“It isn’t up to ISPA to decide whether or not websites should be blocked. It is up to ISPA to assist and advise its members in dealing with take-down notices made in terms of the ECT Act,” Mybroadband reports ISPA GM Ant Brooks as saying.

Brooks went on to explain that copyright law only allows for removal of content hosted on the network to which any takedown complaint is sent and cannot be used to block access to material on other networks or indeed, in other countries.

ISPA has informed its members that the music industry demands are invalid and will be rejected. However, blocking sites is possible, just not via the route RISA would like.

In common with other attempted blocks around the world on various sites (including the recent proposed block of The Pirate Bay in The Netherlands) courts in South Africa do have the power to block websites although that would require some expensive due process, something RISA would like to avoid.

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

Lawyer Reinhardt Buys from Buys Inc. Attorneys, who had previous experience of defending against RiSA threats, offered to represent the sites free of charge, telling TorrentFreak, “Sites that collect, index and host so-called torrents are legal in South Africa – the content of such sites is not only protected by the constitutional right to free speech, but is also outside the scope of any copyright claims.”

In correspondence with ISPA, Buys refuted the allegations made against BitFarm and NewsHost, stating that RiSA failed to comply with the Electronic Communications and Transaction Act 25 of 2002 and acted unconstitutionally in dealing with the takedown requests from RiSA.

According to a new report, immediately after Buys’ correspondence, RiSA responded saying that they are prepared to work with Buys’ clients BitFarm and Newshost “to ensure that the rights and interests of all parties are respected under the law,” with Sony BMG Managing Director and RiSa board member Keith Lister providing assurances that while these negotiations take place, further takedown notices would be suspended.

“I am not at liberty to disclose current mutual undertakings / progress, but I’m confident that this whole thing might still have a happy ending,” Buys told mybroadband.co.za.

However, the language used by RiSA is not completely conciliatory, stating that there should be no doubt over “our willingness – and our capacity – to protect the economic and constitutional right of our members and, through them, the rights and interests of a large number of South Africans.”

At the time of publication, both BitFarm and Newshost are operational. A third smaller private BitTorrent site, NinjaCentral, appears to be in the process of closing.

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

The legal threats emanate from the country’s equivalent of the RIAA, the Recording Industry of South Africa, otherwise known as RiSA. Instead of targeting the individual sites directly, it seems RiSA notified South Africa’s ISPA (an industry group for ISPs) who accepted the complaints.

In their complaint about NewsHost, RiSA stated that the site was an “invite only piracy-centric NZB site” offering over 12,300 NZB files. RiSA states that the site “contravenes Section 27 (1) (b) of the Copyright Act 98/1978 through the facilitation of piracy”, even though this section doesn’t mention facilitation directly:

27. (1) Any person who at a time when copyright subsists in a work, without the authority of the owner of the copyright

(b) sells or lets for hire or by way of trade offers or exposes for sale or hire;

ISPA accepted the complaints and contacted the ISPs hosting the BitTorrent and NZB sites. Part of their correspondence to the ISPs is listed below:

ISPA recently received the attached take-down request, targeted at your organisation. Acting as your appointed agent, we have reviewed the complaint and in our opinion it is a valid complaint which meets all of the legal requirements of the Electronic Communications and Transactions
(ECT) Act. The limitations on liability of service providers for content granted by Chapter XI of the ECT Act require that you remove or disable access to the data concerned upon receipt of a take-down notification. We therefore request that you respond expeditiously to this notice.

Although the BitFarm and NinjaCentral sites are down right now, RiSA also demanded that NewsHost’s domain name should be blocked, but the site is still partly accessible (but it continually tries to pull data from BitFarm, which is down) and displays an unusual note on the homepage:

In the meantime, lawyer Reinhardt Buys from Buys Inc. Attorneys who has previous experience of defending against RiSA has offered to represent the sites free of charge.

Reinhardt told TorrentFreak: “Sites that collect, index and host so-called torrents are legal in South Africa – the content of such sites is not only protected by the constitutional right to free speech, but is also outside the scope of any copyright claims.”

Noting that the sites in question do not host any actual copyrighted content but simply metafiles which link to the location of material hosted elsewhere, Reinhardt explains that sites such as these are similar to The Pirate Bay whose content in turn can be easily found using another search engine – called Google.

“A site like The Pirate Bay can never be liable for direct and criminal copyright infringement because it simply does not copy, share and distribute copyrighted material. The person using a torrent to download a file is the guilty party and not the publisher of the torrent,” he explained. The only liability left for a site like TPB would be under ‘contributory infringement’.

Reinhardt explained that there three types of copyright infringement under the South African Copyright Act 98 of 1978.

- Direct infringement – copying and using a copyrighted file without permission
- Criminal infringement – selling and distributing copies of copyrighted files
- Contributory infringement – materially contributing to either of the above forms of infringement.

“The courts have developed a nice test to determine whether a technology, tool or action amounts to contributory infringement and that is the so-called ‘but for’ test,” says Reinhardt, “i.e. will the P2P sharing of copyrighted files be taking place but for the existence of The Pirate Bay? This test was developed to protect innovative technologies such as CD burners, recorders and the like.”

“The answer is, absolutely not. Even without sites like The Pirate Bay, P2P file sharing would be possible. So, The Pirate Bay can never be guilty of contributory infringement.” Based on Reinhardt’s comments, ISPA may have taken down the sites prematurely. At this point it is unclear whether the sites will take the case to court, but if they do, they certainly have a chance to win.

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