According to evidence presented at his May 2008 trial, Barry E. Gitarts, aka ‘Dextro’, operated and financed a server based in Texas which was used by aPC to store thousands of music files, movies, software and games. The New York resident was convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Copyright Infringement.

On Friday, Gitarts, aged 25, was sentenced in Alexandria federal court to 18 months in jail for his role in aPC.

Another ex-member of aPC, Jacob Stahler, aka Lunatik, was on the witness list at the May trial, and there has been speculation that he testified against Gitarts. Stahler himself was also convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement, but was later sentenced to just 2 years probation.

So far there have been a total 15 criminal convictions of aPC members, including that of Mark Shumaker of Florida (aka ‘MarkAlso’), a previous leader of the group who already admitted criminal copyright infringement back in 2003.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Gitarts, aged 25, of Brooklyn, N.Y, previously operated under the alias ‘Dextro’ within the warez group aPOCALYPSE pRODUCTION cREW (aPC), thought to be first organized group to coordinate the pre-release uploading of mp3 files to the Internet. aPC were particularly successful in obtaining pre-release music CDs from music industry insiders and magazine workers.

According to evidence presented at the trial, between June 2003 and April 2004, Gitarts financed and ran a Texas-based server that the aPC group used to store thousands of music files, movies, software and video games.

“Music piracy is stealing and, unless you want to end up in a federal prison, don’t do it,” said U.S. Attorney Rosenberg.

For his part in the operation of the group, Gitarts is facing a possible five in years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release, however he is not the first aPC member to appear in court. So far, 15 criminal convictions have been handed down to aPC members including Mark Shumaker of Florida (aka ‘MarkAlso’), a previous leader of aPC who already admitted criminal copyright infringement back in 2003. Gitarts is accused of receiving payments from Shumaker.

District Court Judge Liam O’Grady will decide Gitarts’ fate when he sentences him on 8th August 2008.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

So imagine if you will, the amazing contrast between Mr Fish’s predicament and that of Tony Krvaric, chairman of the San Diego Republican Party. At first glance, they seem very different – but look closer.

To better appreciate the gap, here is some background on Tony Krvaric, courtesy of a Raw Story report and the Republican Party website:

Born and raised in Sweden, Tony Krvaric was inspired by President Ronald Reagan to come to America. Though only a youth, he vowed to one day become an American and pursue his American Dream. The first step was to start his own business, and in 1992 when the opportunity presented itself, he moved to San Diego.

After becoming a naturalized citizen in June of 2003, he decided to become politically involved. Having seen, first hand, the devastating effects of socialism in Sweden and the rest of Europe, he was determined to stand up for the traditional, conservative values that helped make America great.

So what does a politician have to do with warez? Well, the strange truth is that Tony Krvaric is none other than a co-founder of notorious warez group, Fairlight. Krvaric -who started his cracking career at the “West Coast Crackers”- was in fact one of the most well-known individuals in the Warez scene at the time. Fairlight remained active after Krvaric left in 1993, and several members of the group were eventually arrested by the FBI in 2004.

During Fairlight’s earlier days and their involvement in the Commodore 64 cracking and demo scene, although cautious, the members couldn’t have imagined the punishments that are given out today. Although Krvaric isn’t shy in letting the world know some of his history and present-day situation on the C-64 Scene Database;

Presently works as a full-service financial consultant for individuals and families who share his values – helping them grow, preserve and distribute their wealth. He lives in San Diego with his wife and four children. Is a member of the Republican Party.

The excellent article goes on to list other alleged infringements by Krvaric over the years, and although he appeared to leave Fairlight in 1992, there are suggestions that he was still in charge of the group as late as 2004. It’s not possible to say if this is true or not, but according to sources, the group appeared to be operational in late 2007.

Apparently, Krvaric has now sent an email out to fellow Republicans, trying to calm the waters:

Apparently there’s a hit piece floating around on me, “exposing” my wild high school, teenage years where I was in a computer club where we swapped Commodore 64 games (similar to how kids swap mp3 music files these days). This was in the 80’s, on a computer that’s long since defunct!

[In] 1990 I graduated high school, grew up and started my own business, and then in 1992 I came to this country, continuing the same business (selling computer and video game chips and accessories as well as some nonperishable foodstuffs, taking over my father’s business for a while after he died in 1994) until I left that field when the profit margins became too thin to make any money , around 1997 or so. That’s when I became a financial consultant, which I remain to this day.

I’m sure glad they didn’t look in to my elementary school years, as there’s some really embarrassing stuff that I did in 4th grade. BTW, I also heard a rumor that another fellow committee member (who shall remain unnamed) once made a tape copy of his friend’s favorite vinyl record.

I don’t know who is spreading this but just wanted to let you know what’s going on out there. Likely it’s someone who wants us to take our eye off the ball in 2008, be it the democrats, labor or someone else. Either way, we’re not going to let them get away with it. Thanks for your leadership.

I wonder which way the newly-convicted copyright infringer David Fish would vote – if he was allowed to? Speaking of voting, Krvaric – running for reelection in 2008 – registered his email address with the Registrar of Voters. No-one can accuse him of trying to hide anything, that’s for sure:

tkrvaric@fairlight.com

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The five, using names such as iced, kidzapped, niterangr and tcut, were caught as part of ‘Operation Higher Education’ – a component of ‘Operation Fastlink‘ – and are all charged with conspiracy.

According to a report, Dominic Tymorek, a 53 year-old from Woodstock, Georgia, and 57 year-old Robert Hardick, of Getzville, N.Y., face three counts. Steven Fiatarone, a 55 year-old from Spring Hill, Florida and 43-year-old Michael Uszakow, of Oakdale, Minn., face two counts and William Parrott, of Roanoke Rapids, N.C., faces one count.

If convicted, the men face up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000 on each count.

At the same time, 25 year-old Daniel Jaeger, aka ‘Microeguy’ of Wappinger, New York, waived his right to indictment and pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge Donna F. Martinez in Hartford. Jaeger admitted to being a ’scene member’ for two years and building and running an FTP server known as ‘DataStream’ (DS), used for the distribution of pirated material.

Jaeger admitted that he knew that those accused along with him had uploaded pirate material to both ‘DataStream’ and another FTP site known as ‘Arakis’ (AKS)

Jaeger also faces five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Last week, District Judge Frank D. Whitney sentenced Justin Paul Emch for his involvement in the ‘warez scene‘ – specifically an offense claimed to have been carried out when he was leader of the release group ‘MaGE‘.

Emch was indicted in yet another action forming Operation Fastlink – a huge undercover investigation carried out by the FBI, the US Department of Justice and Interpol into the ‘warez scene’

It’s claimed that Emch was a leader of the group ‘MaGE’ and worked to supply the group with software. Other members of the group then cracked the software (removed the security/copy protection) and passed the titles back to Emch for testing. The group had a huge collection of copyright material to which Emch had full access.

For his actions, Emch (like a few before him) received 12 months in prison on a felony count of conspiracy to infringe copyright, two years of supervised release and a $5000 fine.

Presumably the authorities will be wanting to keep a tighter grip on Emch than they did with the leader of RISCISO who proved to be quite an annoyance.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

During his plea hearing he confessed to being involved in the sourcing and distribution of movies and software. He also admitted organizing and aiding others to ‘cam’ movies still in theaters. The list of movies includes titles such as ‘Cars’, ‘Monster House’, ‘Firewall’, ‘Click’, ‘The BreakUp’ and sundry (forgettable) others. It’s claimed that the movies were then uploaded to servers for other users to download, after they had paid Madhani cash to do so.

For the camming, he’s looking at 3 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and two years of supervised release. Unfortunately, this offense doesn’t carry the longest sentence Madhani faces – we’ll come to that in moment.

From the plea agreement, Madhani appears to be something of a jack-of-all-trades. He admits to being a ‘cammer’ – that is the willful using or directing others in the use of an audio/visual recording device to ‘cam’ or record a movie, currently protected under copyright law.

The most interesting part of the plea is where Madhani further confesses to being a ‘ripper’ by admitting to the circumvention of DVD Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Before making a new ‘master’ from which to take further copies or before uploading to the internet, Madhani removed information from the DVD such as the title, numbers and other markings which identified it as a copyright works – so-called copyright management information.

These actions put Madhani in breach of the DMCA but interestingly, he’s the very first person to be charged for simply removing so-called ‘copyright management information’ from a DVD. Previous cases were all brought for the bypassing of DVD copy-protection mechanisms.

Breaching the DMCA is a serious offense in the US. Just by changing the data held on a DVD, Madhani is facing 5 years in prison plus a $500,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

Madhani also admits to being a ‘racer’, i.e working hard to be the first group or individual to release new movies or software onto the internet for others to download. There doesn’t appear to be any specific punishment for this offense although in the future, the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007(.pdf) will surely have it covered.

Sentencing is set for Monday December 17, 2007 in San Jose, California.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

What Torrenty.org did is simply change the the IP address of their tracker (tracker.torrenty.org) to the open tracker’s IP address. They’re reasons for doing so remain unknown.

Apparently, in all their torrents they were still using the hostname “tracker.torrenty.org” in the HTTP header. That means that all torrents originating from the site could easily be tracked, something a torrent site hosting illegal torrents might not necessarily want happening. The author of the ‘Stories from an Opentracker‘ blog and admin of the open tracker in question writes:

The fun part is, a quick look at the torrenty.org website shows us that they in fact serve warez-torrents and take money for that. Now they provided us with a complete list of IP-addresses of their customers and an easy way to distinguish their customers from all other requests by checking the HTTP-header. If we would be some kind of copyright-prosecutor, which we are totally not, now would be the time to send some letters to customers of torrenty.org.

Whether the site was aiding in the illegal sharing of copyright files is besides the point. What’s really shocking is that a site can be so careless about protecting its users privacy and anonymity.

The open tracker guys e-mailed Torrenty.org, but their e-mail bounced. A day later traffic from Torrenty.org fell sharply. It looks like they’ve stopped using the open tracker. I’m not sure if the fact that Torrenty.org (Google Cache) is unavailable has anything to do with it, but all of this seems exceptionally peculiar.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

First the MPAA’s DVD sniffing dogs, now a trojan that’s targeting P2P content. Although the creators of the trojan are unknown until now, my guess is that the MPAA will be quite delighted.

Graham Cluley of Sophos, the company that discovered the virus, commented:

“The Erazer Trojan is a vigilante worthy of a Charles Bronson movie, taking the law into its own hands. However, it’s perfectly possible for the Trojan to aim poorly and wipe out innocent files too”.

As far as I know BitTorrent is safe, for now.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.