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Russian Minister: YouTube and Google Should Be Shut Down For Copyright Infringement

enigmax — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:17:09 +0000

When it comes to the protection of intellectual property, it’s well known that the United States is almost continually unhappy with just about every other country’s regimes. A huge amount of lobbying is carried out on a continual basis by government and the private sector in the hope that one day everyone will adopt US-like approaches to rights enforcement.

One of the countries that presents particular challenges to the United States is old enemy Russia. Of course, relations have warmed somewhat in recent years and the world is a safer place as a result, but seeing eye to eye on infringement issues will take a while yet.

The United States feels that Russia needs to show more respect for U.S. intellectual property rights and has been openly critical, for example, of the state of the pirate movie and music scene there. However, perhaps what is less known is that Russia isn’t happy with U.S. efforts to protect its home grown products either.

According to a confidential diplomatic cable dated 13th November 2009, U.S. Russian embassy officials met with Ministry of Economic Development Deputy Minister Stanislav Voskresenskiy to discuss the upcoming United States/Russia IPR Working Group meeting, scheduled to take place in Washington, DC just a few days later.

Voskresenskiy told the meeting that Russia’s record on IPR enforcement had been on an upward trend in the previous 12 months. However, the cable notes that while Voskresenskiy said that pirated goods are now more difficult to buy, he admitted that since Russia’s record is so poor, “a positive trend was not difficult to accomplish.” Actual achievements, he added, would be presented at the Washington meeting.

What follows is an interesting take by Voskresenskiy on the current state of world IPR enforcement and a clear indication that the Russians do not believe that the problems lie exclusively with them.

“Voskresenskiy went on to state that, in his opinion, no country in the world is prepared to fight Internet piracy. He argued that all existing laws, including laws in the U.S., are antiquated and do not address new technological trends,” the cable reads.

“As an example, [Voskresenskiy] stated that YouTube and Google (as YouTube’s owner) should be shut down because they do not conform to current Russian IPR laws. He admitted that this was not feasible, but continued to emphasize that these entities need to follow local laws, even if the laws are outdated,” the cable adds.

But just as Hollywood and the music industry criticizes Russian piracy of U.S. products (the AllofMP3 controversy as just one small example), Russia’s Deputy Minister of Economic Development says that the United States needs to sharpen up too.

“Voskresenskiy also raised two issues [embassy officials] have heard from other sources: a) that Russian made movies are being pirated and sold in the U.S., cutting into Russian box-office sales, and b) that there are U.S.-based Internet sites selling pirated Russian movies for download,” notes the cable.

“Voskresenskiy stated that Russian delegation members to the Working Group are eager to discuss these issues with their U.S. counterparts.”

This and other cables reveal that the Russians believe U.S. / Russia discussions on intellectual property rights are “unbalanced”. However, the fact that the Russians are prepared to discuss the negative effects of piracy on their domestic rights holders is seen as a positive by embassy staff and actually present a great opportunity “to begin engaging the Russians on cooperative efforts to improve IPR protection.”

Rest assured though, the quid pro quo won’t include shutting down YouTube or Google. Hopefully the Russians won’t get any ideas about blocking “rogue sites” that don’t respect their local laws….

Source: Russian Minister: YouTube and Google Should Be Shut Down For Copyright Infringement

Anonymous’ Operation Payback IRC Operator Arrested

Ernesto — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:49:06 +0000

Starting mid-September, dozens of anti-piracy groups, copyright lawyers and pro-copyright outfits have been targeted by a group of Anonymous Internet ‘vigilantes’ under the flag of Operation Payback.

The operation started initially as ‘payback’ against outfits that tried to stop the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay, and DDoS attacks were organized to strike back. A few days ago, the operation changed course and instead began to go after organizations that displayed opposition towards Wikileaks.

Over the last days several high profile companies and institutions were taken offline temporarily by DDoS attacks including Mastercard, Visa and Paypal. Conversely, Operation Payback’s operation was also obstructed with the deletion of their Twitter and Facebook accounts after the news hit the mainstream media.

Yesterday, this was followed by the arrest (Dutch) of an alleged ‘member’ of Operation Payback in The Netherlands. The local police announced that a 16 year old boy was arrested, suspected of being involved in the DDoS attacks on Wikileaks related targets.

The boy, whose identity was not released, will be heard in court today and has reportedly confessed to his involvement.

According to several sources the arrestee is known online under the nickname Jeroenz0r. The authorities have not yet confirmed this, but the person using this nickname has been ‘missing’ online for the past 24 hours, and has been involved with Operation Payback for quite a while. Jeroenz0r was also an IRC operator at thefailship.net, where one of the former IRC channels of Operation Payback was hosted.

“Jeroenz0r and his server became delinked Thursday night at around midnight UTC time,” a source told TorrentFreak, confirming that the teenager lives in The Hague, where the arrest was made.

“Some of his friends tried calling him yesterday but the phone lead to voicemail. When calling his home number, his dad refused to comment on the situation. Furthermore, his local town newspaper also reported that a local 16 year old boy was arrested.”

Another source, who acts as an Operation Payback spokesman, confirmed that Jeroenz0r has been unreachable since the time of the arrest.

How the police became aware of Jeroenz0r is unknown, but we were told that he didn’t cover his tracks too well.

“Others on the network who know him a bit better knew that he was sloppy and often left traces from his actions online. Also, the Google results on him are quite impressive and indicate that he has been quite active in the torrent scene.”

In a possible response to the arrest, the Dutch Prosecution Office now seems to be under a DDoS attack. Previously the Dutch police stated that they will not go after people who ‘make their computers available” for these attacks, but that they will target people who are more heavily involved.

Update: The Failship IRC team released the following message.

Dear OM [Dutch Prosecution Office],

The remarkably swift arrest of Jeroenz0r, a 16 year old Dutch student, has been all over the international media since the event took place. While the Kremlin takes a dig at the U.S. over Assange’s arrest, while Facebook and Twitter delete the accounts of cyber activists, while over 9,000 ‘hacktivists’ are believed to be behind electronic onslaught, the Dutch authorities arrest a 16-year-old boy
suspected of involvement with Operation Payback.

The whole world reports about WikiLeaks and Operation Payback. How could an underage boy be held responsible for making the world wide news? How could the Dutch authorities hold a 16 year old boy responsible for the world being in a state of digital war?

Is it in the haste of getting something done, that the Dutch government labeled him as a scapegoat and a terrorist, just so they could say: “We have done our part about the cyber terrorists”? Is the detention and possible conviction of Jeroenz0r an act by law,
or is it –as we suspect– a political statement? Is Jeroenz0r being used to scare the
hell out of everybody who would think that they could do something about censorship and the forces our governments (ab)use?

If this would be a fair trial, what evidence would there be? He may have been a user, or even host for an IRC server, still, this may hopefully not be the primary reason? Even if he had an active role in coordinating the attacks on MasterCard and Visa, which is still improbable, Anonymous is not a personal army and will not be commanded like one. How then, would that incriminate him if everybody is responsible for his/her own deeds? One student would never be powerful enough to take down corporations like MasterCard, Visa or Paypal.

Could we accept that in todays’ society, big corporations are using children as a means of manipulating people for their own gain and benefit? What could have happened if the government had decided to stick out for freedom of expression and free speech, and refused to bend under the demands of MasterCard and Visa? It could have turned out to be a turning point in the war between big corporations and the people who get caught in the gears of the system and have no means of making their way out from the mess.

Eventually, even the government will have to decide, either to be the puppet in the hands of global corporations, or be the one who paved way for rebellion against oppressive corporations and corruption of our society.

We would like Jeroenz0r to know that Anonymous will not be giving up on him. One for all, all for one. Divided by zero.

Signed:
10.12.2010
Failship IRC team
Anonboots, Bnon, (Jeroenz0r), Kris, Paws, Zeekill

Source: Anonymous’ Operation Payback IRC Operator Arrested

Wikileaks Cable Shows US Involvement in Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts

Ernesto — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:29:30 +0000

It is no secret that the US Government has been actively involved in copyright enforcement in other countries, including Sweden. After the raid on The Pirate Bay’s servers in 2006, it became clear that the US had threatened to put Sweden on the WTO’s black list if they refused to deal with the Pirate Bay problem.

But that was not the end of the ‘collaboration’ between the US and Sweden on this front.

According to an unreleased US Embassy cable in possession of Swedish Television, the US pressure on Sweden to deal with file-sharing issues continued in the years that followed. In the cable, which dates back to 2008, the US Embassy presented a list of six items that they wanted to see addressed, all related to online copyright infringement.

A year later, five of these six items were indeed turned into action, including the appointment of more copyright police and prosecutors, backed up by educational anti-piracy campaigns. Of course, the Pirate Bay wasn’t left unmentioned in this cable either.

The cable writer mentions that it was hard for the Embassy to get openly involved in piracy related issues, because most of the press coverage was unfavorable towards the copyright industry.

“After the raid on The Pirate Bay on May 31, 2006, the issue of internet piracy was fiercely debated in Sweden. Press coverage was largely, and still is, unfavorable to the positions taken by the rights-holders and the United States Government,” the cable reads.

“The Pirate Bay raid was portrayed as the Government of Sweden caving in to United States Government pressure. This delicate situation made it difficult, if not counter-productive, for the Embassy to play a public role in IPR issues,” it adds.

Excerpt from the cable

In a response to the revelations, Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask denied that Sweden ever responded to pressure from the US Government. She hinted that the cable writer was making these remarks just to get a better payday.

Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde was surprised about the leaked cable, although the fact that the US put pressure on the Swedish Government was not that new to him.

“We all knew for a long while that the US was behind the raid and pressured Sweden, but that they’re still doing it was news to us,” Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. “And that the Minster of Justice just says that the cable writer is lying ‘to get a higher salary’ shows that she doesn’t even care if her government is corrupt.”

The cable in question has not been published by Wikileaks yet, but is expected to be released in the near future. This, and other cables, are likely to add more insight into the backroom deals related to file-sharing and copyright issues.

Update: The full cable “Stockholm 09-141” has been published.

194710 3/2/2009 13:57 09STOCKHOLM141 Embassy Stockholm UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY 08STATE45106|09STATE8410 VZCZCXRO6778OO RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLARUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHNP RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG DE RUEHSM #0141/01 0611357 ZNR UUUUU ZZH O 021357Z MAR 09FM AM EMBASSY STOCKHOLM TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 4176 INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 STOCKHOLM 000141 STATE FOR EEB/TPP/IPE:TIMOTHY R MCGOWAN STATE PLEASE PASS TO USTR FOR JENNIFER CHOE GROVES SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KIPR, ECON, ETRD, PGOV, SW SUBJECT: SPECIAL 301 FOR SWEDEN: POST RECOMMENDATION REF: A) STATE 8410 B) 08 STATE 45106


1. (SBU) Summary. Embassy Stockholm recommends that Sweden

continues to be placed in the Special 301 Initiative, and

not be on the Watch List for 2009. We are aware of the differing

recommendations of the International Intellectual Property

Alliance (IIPA) and PhRMA. Post recommendation is based on: 
-- The progress made by the Government of Sweden (GOS) in five

out of the six items identified in the Special 301 Initiative

Action plan we communicated to the GOS last year and
-- The sensitive domestic politics that the GOS needs to manage

in order to step up internet piracy enforcement in Sweden. The

GOS struggles, with good intentions, against a very negative

media climate and against a vocal youth movement. For example,

we want to highlight the risk that negative media attention on

the file sharing issue gives the Pirate Party a boost in the EU

Parliamentary elections in June 2009.
2. (SBU) This cable reviews the progress Sweden has made on the

Special 301 Initiative Action plan which we presented to the GOS

at the conclusion of the Special 301 review 2008 (Ref B). Post

continues to engage very constructively with the GOS, and has

good access and a good working relationship with key senior and

working level GOS officials. The actions taken since last year's

review strengthen the legislative framework and provide better

enforcement tools for combating piracy. The Pirate Bay trial is

currently being heard in the district court in Stockholm. The

last day of the trial is March 4, and the verdict can be expected

on or about March 25.
3. (SBU) Embassy Stockholm believes it would be counter-

productive to watch list Sweden at this point. Likely negative

political and media reaction to a watch listing must be taken

into account. The Justice Ministry, with primary responsibility

for this issue, is fully on board and well aware of what is at

stake. It is currently battling with the Ministry of Enterprise,

Energy, and Communication about the next appropriate steps to

curb internet piracy. Now that the Enforcement Directive

implementation will finally enter into force on April 1, and

there will soon be a first District court decision in the

Pirate Bay case -- the Justice Ministry will turn its attention

to other key issues, primarily the ISP liability issue and extra

resources to investigative capabilities. The GOS (led by the

Justice Ministry) has to conduct a delicate balancing act,

advancing this issue shortly before Sweden assumes the

Presidency of the EU, in the early days of the Obama

administration, and in the budding election campaign for the EU

Parliamentary elections. 
End summary. Background.

------------------------
4. (U) The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA)

has, in its yearly Special 301 submission to USTR, identified

widespread internet piracy and difficulties in achieving

effective enforcement against criminal copyright infringement

as problems in Sweden, and has requested that Sweden be placed

on the Special 301 Watch List for 2009. Sweden was not placed

on the Watch list in 2008, despite industry's demands, but was

rather placed in the relatively recent, middle step, named

Special 301 Initiative. As part of the Initiative, post

conveyed a Special 301 Action plan to the GOS, covering six

items where the USG hoped to see progress during 2008.
Review of progress on action plan

--------------------------------- 
5. (U) The Special 301 Initiative Action plan 2008 contained

recommendations in six specific areas. The GOS has acted, in

various degrees, in five of those areas. A review of progress

in the six areas follows in paras 6-11: 
6. (SBU) Industry consultations/ISP liability: The GOS held

a series of industry consultations in the summer/fall of 2008,

with the explicit aim to discuss a voluntary industry

agreement involving ISPs and right-holders organizations.

Industry contacts reported that the ISP's were not willing

(they claim they are not able) to take on any action on a

voluntary basis. The first round of consultations was

concluded without results during the fall of 2008. The Justice

Ministry is currently working internally in the GOS to get

acceptance for a second round with a clear incentive for

progress, i.e. threatening with legislation in the absence

of a voluntary agreement. There is some resistance in the

Center party led Ministry of Enterprise, Energy, and

Communications, and negotiations are on-going at senior

GOS-levels.
7. (U) Injunctive relief: The one item without any progress

is STOCKHOLM 00000141 002 OF 003 Action plan item 2,

Injunctive relief. The GOS maintains that there are adequate

provisions currently on the books in Sweden, and does not

intend to introduce new legislation. (Note that industry

claims to the contrary were supported by the recommendations

of the Renfors Commission, a government study commissioned

to look into the file sharing issue. The GOS has declared

that it will not further implement Renfors' recommendations.

End note.) 
8. (U) Implementation of the Enforcement Directive: The bill

was approved by Parliament on February 25, and the new

provisions will enter into force on April 1, 2009. The

political sensitivities made the final handling of the Bill

very delicate for the Alliance government. Much of the debate

and negotiations have been done in public, and there has been

tremendous pressure put on individual MPs. The passage of the

implementing legislation is therefore a much greater victory

for the GOS than it might appear. Major changes, compared to

the original proposal, are:
-- the law will not be retroactive, i.e. only for copyright

infringements committed after the law has entered into force

can a court order that the identity behind an IP-number be

handed out.
-- The court will make a proportionality assessment, i.e.

weigh the need of the rights-holder to get access to the

personal identity against integrity aspects of the person

behind the IP number. The law now stipulates that a certain

scale of infringement will be needed for the court to decide

that the information should be handed out. Normally, that

would be the case when the infringement consists of up-

loading a single film or musical piece -- since that

typically incurs significant damage to the rights-holder.

The same judgment will be made for a significant scale of

down-loading copyright protected material. The law

establishes that if the infringement is the down-loading of

only a few pieces, then normally the court's assessment

should be that the integrity interest must take precedence

and the information must not be handed out. 
-- The law includes provisions that the GOS intends to

observe and assess how the law is used, to ensure that the

law is indeed used to go after significant cases of

copyright infringements. This monitoring will commence

immediately once the law has entered into force. 
9. (U) Granting police and prosecutors the right to

identities behind IP numbers of individuals potentially

implicated in copyright crimes of lower dignity, i.e. fines

rather than prison sentences: The Justice Ministry has

also worked towards the goal of changing legislation so

that police and prosecutors can get access to information

about identities behind IP numbers in cases where the crime

could lead to a fine (rather than a prison sentence). The

usual Swedish term for this type of crime (punishable by

fine, not prison) is crime of lower dignity. At present,

law enforcement officials are only allowed to get such

information if the infringement could lead to a prison

sentence. The GOS has agreed to change the legislation, and

it was made part of a study commissioned to propose the

steps needed to implement such a change. The proposed

changes were recently separated out from the rest of the

study, and were reported in advance to Justice Minister Ask

late January 2009. Although the slow legislative process is

disappointing, the GOS has already agreed on the necessary

changes that will strengthen the investigative tools of

enforcement officials. 
10. (SBU) Police and prosecutors: There are now

two full-time prosecutors dedicated to IPR/copyright

issues. Police officers have been trained, but we

understand that they are not allowed to devote attention

to IPR/copyright issues. They are back in their regular

line of duty in their districts, where there are conflicting

priorities. We have understood that the prosecutors have

alerted that this is a problem for their work - they are

stuck with a backlog of old errands and without the support

of investigative officers. The prosecutors ask for

investigative officers that are exclusively devoted to IPR

issues, today there are no such investigative capacities.

The Justice Ministry has repeatedly asked the Head of the

Swedish Police for information about how he plans to come

to terms with the investigation deficiencies. Although the

GOS recognizes the needs, the budget bill for next year

will likely not contain significant increases for law

enforcement, given the harsh economic conditions. This is

an area where post can work with the GOS and industry to

highlight the significant impact additional resources in

this area might have. 
11. (SBU) Public education: In the fall of 2008, the GOS

released a new information material, primarily aimed for

youth, which will be broadly distributed in Swedish

schools. Justice Minister Ask's staffers are currently

considering the pros and cons of engaging Cabinet members

in the public debate. Given all the negative attention

around the Enforcement directive and the Pirate Bay trial,

the determination thus far has been to keep a low profile.

The GOS recognizes that there is a real risk that the

window of opportunity was lost already several years ago

-- when leading politicians didn't take the debate. How

to engage at this point is a delicate matter. 
Pirate Bay

----------
12. (U) After the raid on Pirate Bay on May 31, 2006, the

issue of internet piracy was fiercely debated in Sweden.

Press coverage was largely, and still is, unfavorable to the

positions taken by rights-holders and the USG. The Pirate

Bay raid was portrayed as the GOS caving to USG pressure.

The delicate situation made it difficult, if not counter-

productive, for the Embassy to play a public role on IPR

issues. Behind the scenes, the Embassy has worked well

with all stakeholders. After 18 months of investigation,

the prosecutor filed indictments against four individuals

for contribution to copyright infringement because of their

activities administrating the Pirate Bay bit torrent

webpage. The case is currently being heard in the district

court in Stockholm, and the trial is scheduled to be

completed on March 4. The sentence is expected on or about

March 25, i.e. before the conclusion of the Special 301

review process. However, we fully expect that any outcome

will be appealed to a higher court, which means that the

final verdict will not be known for several years.
PhRMA's drug pricing issue

--------------------------
13. (U) PhRMA has also requested that Sweden be put on the

Special 301 Watch List. The request is based on the GOS

decision to de-regulate the pharmacy market in Sweden and

the alleged plans to reduce prices of patented

pharmaceuticals on the Swedish market with the aim to

finance the redesign. The price cut is believed to be as

high as 10 percent.
14. (U) According to the Swedish Ministry of Health and

Social Affairs, the GOS does not plan to impose a general

price cut on patented pharmaceuticals, but rather has the

intention of maintaining a model for a value based pricing

system. TLV, the Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency,

a central government agency, has been assigned to suggest

principles for pharmacy mark-up and to suggest how the

profitability in the pharmacy market will be assessed

and followed up. TLV will present its proposals to the

GOS on April 1 this year.

15. (U) As of March 2 there is no decision, nor anything in writing, that confirms that the GOS is actually proposing a 10 percent general price cut on patented pharmaceuticals. Therefore the Embassy does not recommend that Sweden be put on the 2009 Special 301 Watch List as concerns the de-regulation of the Swedish pharmacies. However, should the GOS as a result of the April 1 TLV report reach a decision to impose a general 10 percent price cut on patented pharmaceuticals, the Embassy will engage in high-level advocacy with the GOS on the issue again.

Source: Wikileaks Cable Shows US Involvement in Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts

Pirate Parties Supply Wikileaks With Much Needed Servers

Ernesto — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 21:10:31 +0000

This week has been quite a ride for Wikileaks, and for the herd of journalists that have been reporting on the site’s hosting difficulties. At times it almost seemed that the technology behind the site was becoming more interesting than the actual content being released, much to the delight of the US Government.

Between the DDoS attacks and the DNS-server bans, it almost went unnoticed that a leaked cable from the Spanish embassy showed that the United States wrote Spain’s proposed copyright law. An interesting revelation to say the least.

It is expected that future cables will reveal more about how deeply the copyright lobby is being played out at the highest political levels, including more details on the ACTA lobby. But, this of course requires that the public has access to the released materials. Here, Pirate Parties worldwide are lending a hand.

Just a few days ago Wikileaks was ‘saved‘ by the Swiss Pirate Party, who helped the whistleblower site after they were kicked out by their nameserver provider. Today, a coalition of Pirate Parties is stepping up to host a worldwide network of mirror sites for Wikileaks, making it virtually impossible to shut the operation down.

“Pirate Parties from around the world, including the Pirate Party UK, today reaffirmed their commitment to whistleblowing worldwide. Concerned about freedom of information, opinion and press, the Pirate Parties have decided in a joint resolution to make Wikileaks available on a worldwide mirroring infrastructure,” the UK Pirate Party just announced.

“The mirrors will guarantee that the release of US diplomatic cables can continue and previous publications will stay online,” the Pirates add, explaining that the new solution is not just redirecting people to one central server, but actually hosting files on different servers scattered around the globe.

The initiative is supported by the Pirate Parties of the Czech Republic, Austria, Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Russia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. With the added mirrors they hope to keep Wikileaks online and fight the political and technological pressure the US Government has put on the hosting providers of site.

Over the last week many hosts have abandoned Wikileaks due to the controversial nature of the site and the continued DDoS attacks.

Interestingly enough, the US Government hasn’t gone after the Wikileaks domain yet. This should be an easy job considering the seizure of Torrent-Finder last week, and the fact that the US Government is the copyright holder of the leaked cables.

Even if the .org domain is seized, Wikileaks is not going away since there are still plenty of backup domains around which can be used.

In a way, this cat-and-mouse game is reminiscent of the anti-piracy efforts against torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay that we’ve witnessed over the years. Every time a hosting provider cuts off access, the site reappears somewhere else unharmed. If a domain is seized, a new one is registered in a matter of seconds and the game continues.

Source: Pirate Parties Supply Wikileaks With Much Needed Servers

Troubled Wikileaks Moves To Pirate Party Domain

Ernesto — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:43:07 +0000

The release of thousands of US embassy cables and the many more that are expected to come has propelled the whistleblower site Wikileaks to the front page of every respectable news outlet this week. But for the site itself it hasn’t been a smooth ride thus far.

After it suffered a continued DDoS attack on its servers earlier this week the site relocated to Amazon’s cloud hosting service, but just a day or two later it was pulled following complaints from the US government. Today, the hosting troubles continued and Wikileaks was forced to abandon its .org domain.

Due to prolonged DDoS attacks on the Wikileaks domain, nameserver provider EveryDNS decided to pull the plug on the site this morning. “These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites,” EveryDNS said.

According to a statement from the company, Wikileaks was properly notified about this issue a day in advance.

“Last night, at approximately 10PM EST, December 1, 2010 a 24 hour termination notification email was sent to the email address associated with the wikileaks.org account. In addition to this email, notices were sent to Wikileaks via Twitter and the chat function available through the wikileaks.org website. Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider,” a statement on the EveryDNS website explains.

After being cut off, Wikileaks decided to move from the .org to a .ch domain, which was registered by the Pirate Party Switzerland in June this year. An interesting move, but certainly not the most ideal solution.

Wikileaks’ tweet

The Swiss Pirate Party confirmed that they are now indeed the registrants of the new ‘official’ Wikileaks domain, which had been forwarding to the Wikileaks servers for a few months already. What is problematic, however, is that after being cut off by EveryDNS, Wikileaks has moved its operation to a .ch domain that uses the nameservers of the very same company.

This is not the first time a Pirate Party has helped out Wikileaks. Earlier this year the Swedish Pirates announced a hosting deal with the whistleblower site, to protect the freedom of the press.

“We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party,” Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange said at the time. “Our organisations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world.”

For now Wikileaks.ch is up and running but it’s unclear how long it will stay up. The domain Wikileaks.org has not been seized so it is expected that the site will return there once it finds a new nameserver provider.

Update: The German Pirate Party is actively supporting Wikileaks as well.

Pirate Party registered Wikileaks

Source: Troubled Wikileaks Moves To Pirate Party Domain

Pirate Party Offers Servers and Hosting To Wikileaks

enigmax — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:24:34 +0000

After giving The New York Times, The Guardian and Germany’s Der Spiegel an early viewing, this week WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of confidential U.S. military documents.

Since then there have been thousands of follow up stories which continue today, as people pick through the information on offer and try to work out what it means for authorities around the world and especially the U.S. Government.

While some are trying to play down the implications for the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Wikileaks chief Julian Assange has been more forceful and has suggested that some of the documents show evidence of war crimes carried out by the U.S. military.

When added to the outrage caused by the recent ‘Collateral Murder‘ video, Wikileaks is developing quite a problem for itself. Yesterday Assange revealed that he had learned that there had been discussions to charge him “as a co-conspirator to espionage.”

Although it appears those discussions were later dropped, Assange still believes that he could be forcefully detained by the U.S. as a witness in the prosecution of intelligence analyst and video-leaker, Bradley Manning. But while concerns persist over Assange’s personal position, some are already considering the implications for the Wikileaks site itself.

“It would not surprise me at all if Sweden is shortly subjected to American pressure to shut down Wikileaks,” says Anna Troberg of the Swedish Pirate Party. “They have acted similarly in terms of The Pirate Bay, and given that Wikileaks’ activities strikes at the very heart of American power, it’s probably just a matter of time before they act.”

“Now is the moment of truth for our Swedish politicians. Will they have enough backbone to stand up on Wikileaks and democracy, or will they give way to the U.S. and go after PRQ and Wikileaks?”

PRQ is the Sweden-based company run by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij of Pirate Bay fame that currently provides hosting to Wikileaks. Although absolutely no stranger to coming under pressure over the sites they host, should PRQ become vulnerable, Wikileaks now have a backup offer on the table.

Never an entity to shy away from the free flow of information, no matter where it lies or whoever might claim ownership of it, the Swedish Pirate Party recently announced that it would become bandwidth supplier to The Pirate Bay. It now says that if the going gets too rough for Wikileaks and PRQ, they will offer the whistleblower site both servers and hosting too.

“The Pirate Party will under no circumstances give in to pressure,” says Troberg. “We now help democracy activists in Iran, including communication via anonymous servers. We provide bandwidth to our greatest political opinion leaders, The Pirate Bay. If Wikileaks is attacked again, we will immediately offer them both server space and bandwidth.”

“The Pirate Party believes in democracy and we are not afraid to stand up for it.”

Source: Pirate Party Offers Servers and Hosting To Wikileaks

WikiLeaks Embraces Torrent and Magnet Links

enigmax — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:48:51 +0000

Earlier this year WikiLeaks, the world’s largest whistleblower website that allows people to publish uncensored information anonymously, suspended its operations due to problems with funding. Through donations, by February 6th it had achieved its minimum funding-raising goal and was eventually restored to its former glory.

Although rarely out of the news for long, on 5th April 2010 WikiLeaks grabbed headlines worldwide after releasing a classified US military video “depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.”

Yesterday the site was in the spotlight again, after ex-hacker Adrian Lamo (who TorrentFreak spoke with recently about a movie leak) admitted that he had informed the authorities who had leaked the so-called “Collateral Murder” video to WikiLeaks.

Of course, all this attention leads to big bills for WikiLeaks as it continues to fund the distribution of leaked documents to the world. Thus far it has carried that out from its own servers but recently it has made a rather interesting addition to its system.

In the ‘Download’ section for individual documents, in addition to the usual direct link ‘FILE’ (.zip) download, two other buttons have been added – ‘Torrent’ and ‘Magnet’.

These files are smaller than the most of the documents hosted on WikiLeaks and allow readers to download the material from BitTorrent users around the world, utilizing their bandwidth rather than the site’s.

However, regardless of where the material is stored people will still need to download the .torrent or magnet links in order to access the material. This would continue to be a problem if WikiLeaks went down due to funding or other more serious problems, such as an attack from a hostile government. Hosting these links in other places would therefore seem to be a good idea. But what if there was another hybrid-style option?

“What if WikiLeaks was a sort of Wiki-BitTorrent, served by thousands of people around the world running a background process on their computers,” mused Edward Benson, a Ph.D. student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

“No fundraising needed here, it’s all P2P. And if the Wiki is maintained WikiPedia style, then we no longer need to pay for a centralized staff to curate it. Plus, there’s no centralized staff to kill or jail. It can be a decentralized, collaborative process,” Benson noted back in March, before WikiLeaks started added .torrent and magnet links.

However, a full Wiki-BitTorrent type system has its problems. Without public confidence in the publisher of this leaked information – in this case the established reputation of WikiLeaks – how can anyone be certain that the information they’re getting from a BitTorrent-type system is actually what it says it is?

“If WikiLeaks was P2P, then it could be attacked — poisoned at the infrastructural level by the governments and corporations that do not want to see it succeed. Even worse, a P2P WikiLeaks could be left standing, but its content could be poisoned with fake and misleading files,” adds Benson.

Most readers will be familiar will the concept of the fake or useless download. From the spoofed files uploaded by the RIAA onto shared-folder type file-sharing networks containing nothing but silence or other useless junk, to the malware, renamed or otherwise manipulated files of uncertain origin of today. With a music or video file this is a minor inconvenience, for a leaked document of global significance and implications, errors or deliberately misleading information would be an unmitigated disaster. It is here that Benson notes an irony in his analysis of WikiLeaks.

“What if this experiment in citizen’s power is successful precisely because it is a dictatorship?”

As with the ‘verified downloads’ offered by many torrent sites today, it seems that at least for now there is a requirement for a central source of trust to ensure that the material being offered is what it says it is, whether it’s the recreational business of grabbing media or the world-changing implications of leaked documents.

Source: WikiLeaks Embraces Torrent and Magnet Links

Proposed Treaty Turns Internet Into a Virtual Police State

Ben Jones — Sat, 24 May 2008 09:46:07 +0000

Again, it’s one of the few bastions of anti-corruption, Wikileaks, that has spilled the beans on this unsavory topic. Yesterday the site revealed a document proposing a treaty that will significantly limit the privacy and rights of Internet users, to the benefit of multimillion dollar companies.

“ACTA” is basically an attempt to criminalize the Internet, thus allowing a virtual police state to occur by the selective prosecuting of crimes. In short, it’s an international treaty, or hopes to be, that will greatly increase already draconian copyright measures, in a poor attempt to appease the copyright and patent industries.

The proposal is based on the assumption that ‘intellectual property rights’ (a term used nine times on the first page of the proposal, and 24 times over the entire 3 Â½ page document) trump personal privacy, data protection, probable cause, and lots of other important principles in western democracies.

The measure which has received wider publicity is the so-called ‘Pirate Bay killer’. At the end of page two, there is a list of things that should be included in a signee’s legal framework, and in the section about criminal sanctions it states “significant willful infringements without motivation for financial gain to such an extent as to prejudicially affect the copyright holder (e.g., Internet piracy)”. Think non-profit, personal use file-sharing.

Of course, this could go two ways, as the MPAA, for instance, has been guilty of ‘Internet piracy’ in the past, with it’s university toolkit.

Worst of all though, are the following two points speaking of “establishment and imposition of deterrent-level penalties” and “ex-officio authority to take action against infringers”. It is argued that the current level of penalties aren’t harsh enough (“people are still doing it, so they’re no deterrent”), so there should be room for harsher punishments. Combine this with the ability to prosecute without a rights holder complaint, which means that people could be liable for millions, or imprisoned (they are talking about CRIMINAL enforcement) for sharing Steal this Film, or Paulo Coelho’s books. So, these people actively want you to share would have no say in any such prosecution.

There are some other pure gems proposed, such as “ex officio authority for customs authorities to suspend import, export and trans-shipment of suspected IPR infringing goods”. Given that copyright law is so complex and convoluted, and that judges make mistakes in the cases they hear, this is worrying.

Unsurprisingly, the US patent office is backed up beyond belief and dominated by patent trolls that wait until a successful business is established, before pouncing to clean up. This would mean the death for any new and innovative products, or art. If that wasn’t bad enough, there is a further provision for rights holders to prod customs officials into suspension. Thus, a company can make an allegation, forcing a competitors products to be held in limbo until sorted.

Protest has been swift. TorrentFreak occasional contributor Jamie King wrote on his own blog: “In the form that it currently appears to exist, ACTA would ratchet-up further the rights of Hollywood and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) at the expense of all of our civil liberties. It provisions to criminalize information use practices currently allowed under U.S., European, and international law are completely disproportionate to the ‘problems’ it claims to address.”

Andrew Norton, chairman of the American Pirate Party was much less restrained: “The very existence of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) , be it in policy or just planning, sends one definite message to people around the world; Corruption is rife in the interested countries. There can be no other reason for yet another ‘intellectual property’ (itself a misnomer) law aimed at protecting business interests and expanding government intrusion into the private affairs of it’s citizens, in the name of ‘protection’.”

Of course, the other area most affected by this would be whistle-blower sites like Wikileaks itself. The owner of any leaked document can claim copyright infringement on its publication, and have it pulled. In this, ACTA is a very effective censorship tool. For some reason, though, this aspect has not been widely reported, or even mentioned.

Source: Proposed Treaty Turns Internet Into a Virtual Police State