For infringing copyright on a massive scale for decades, the judgment approved yesterday by the Ontario Superior Court means they have to pay just $50M to the artists in question.

Back in January, we covered the initial agreement for the major labels to pay $45M to settle the claims, but the labels were adamant that they were not infringing.

Now the judgment has been approved by court in the amount of $50 Million. Of course, that’s before lawyers fees are taken out, which will mean the infringed artists will see significantly less.

With an estimated 300,000 tracks infringed for profit, it works out to about $166 per song. Cold comfort to the likes of Thomas and Tenenbaum who were hit with tens of thousands for non-commercially infringing a handful of songs (although that was in the US).

It is however a more sane judgment, and one that could have future implications for copyright-based lawsuits, especially as the statutory minimum damages of $500 per track were cut by a third.

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

Over the years the labels have made a habit of using songs from a wide variety of artists for compilation CDs without securing the rights. They simply use the recording and make note of it on “pending list” so they can deal with it later. This has been going on since the 1980s and since then the list of unpaid tracks (or copyright infringements) has grown to 300,000 in Canada alone.

This questionable practice has been the subject of an interesting Canadian class action lawsuit which was started in 2008. A group of artists and composers who grew tired of waiting endlessly for their money filed a lawsuit against four major labels connected to the CRIA, the local equivalent of the RIAA.

Warner Music, Sony BMG Music, EMI Music and Universal Music were sued for the illegal use of thousands of tracks and risked paying damages of up to $6 billion. Today the news broke that the two parties have agreed upon a settlement, where the record labels are required to pay $45 million to settle the copyright infringement claims.

During the case the labels were painfully confronted with their own double standard when it comes to copyright infringement. “The conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers,” the artists argued in their initial claim for damages.

Of course, the labels are not so quick to admit their wrongdoing and in their press release the settlement is described as a compromise. “The settlement is a compromise of disputed claims and is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing by the record labels,” it reads.

David Basskin, President and CEO of one of the major Canadian licensing collectives, was nonetheless happy with the outcome. “This agreement with the four major labels resolves all outstanding pending list claims. EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner are ensuring that the net result is more money for songwriters and music publishers. It’s a win for everyone,” he said.

The major issues that led to this dispute are not resolved though. After paying off a small part of their debt the labels can continue to ‘pirate’ artists’ music as usual, using their work and placing the outstanding payments on a pending list for decades. A real solution would require the licensing system to change, and that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

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

“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

In March 2009, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court where the judge ruled that the issues in question were too complex and consequences too far-reaching not to move to a full trial. This decision was appealed by isoHunt, but without result, meaning that isoHunt has to go through the costly process of a full trial.

This week, isoHunt’s founder continued his crusade and filed the statement of claim (pdf) with the Supreme Court. The document describes the functionality of the search engines he operates (isoHunt and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis) and asks the court to declare that these do not violate Canadian copyright law.

Despite the worsening copyright climate in other parts of the world, Fung remains confident that Canadian law is on his side. “I have high hopes for Canadian copyright laws and its courts to not make the mistakes that have been made elsewhere in the world. We must fight the increasing noise we are drowned in, that file sharing is stealing,” he said.

“As for CRIA and member record labels, if you come to your sense of reason, I would love to talk to you outside of court. The ball you’ve dropped on us is back to you,” Fung concludes.

After the partial shutdown of Mininova yesterday, isoHunt is now the second largest torrent site around in terms of traffic, trailing only behind The Pirate Bay. However, all of Fung’s torrent sites combined draw more traffic than any other torrent site around. Aside from the three torrent sites mentioned in the case and despite the legal troubles, Fung recently launched Hexagon, a new ‘social‘ BitTorrent site.

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

“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

IsoHunt has asked the court to decide whether .torrent files, and BitTorrent search engines in particular, are infringing copyright or not. In other words, should BitTorrent search engines be held liable for the .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data? If so, what does this mean for other search engines, and sites such as YouTube?

Today, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court. While isoHunt asked the court to rule that they do not break any laws, the CRIA is demanding a full trial against the BitTorrent site.

This landmark case might be the one to define how files can be distributed online. Among other things, isoHunt argues that they are just a search engine, like Google, and that they have no control over the files they find elsewhere on the web. In court today, they showed that a filetype:torrent search for Coldplay on Google returns plenty of torrent files, similar to a search on isoHunt.

All isoHunt does is index other BitTorrent trackers and indexers, without human intervention. The files that can be found on isoHunt are scattered all over the Internet, and even these files are just metadata.

IsoHunt founder Gary Fung told TorrentFreak that the judge converted their petition into action at the end of today’s hearing. “He just thinks the issues are too complicated and consequences far reaching legally and technically, and a full trial is more appropriate for discovering all documents,” Gary said.

“The important issue is not about the complexity or ramifications of our case which we won’t dispute, but rather CRIA liking to use full action and discovery because it’s costly for all parties and the court and was exactly why we decided to bring our petition first for efficiency before they were going to sue with an action,” Gary told TorrentFreak in a response. IsoHunt is likely to appeal the order for conversion.

To be continued.

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

In May 2008, isoHunt received a Cease and Desist letter from the CRIA, in which they demanded that isoHunt founder Gary Fung should take the site offline. If Fung didn’t comply, the CRIA said it would pursue legal action, and demand $20,000 for each sound recording the site has infringed.

A similar tactic worked against Demonoid, but the isoHunt founder didn’t back down so easily. “We have since tried to come to an understanding, but just as with the MPAA in the US, they ignored our offers of cooperation by the take down of .torrent links to their content files, so long as they provide sufficient identification,” Gary Fung told TorrentFreak.

Fung has pointed out that, like most other BitTorrent sites, isoHunt has a Copyright Policy, and takes down .torrent files when they receive an appropriate request. The CRIA simply ignored this, even though they have sent correct takedown notices to isoHunt before (and isoHunt complied), and continued to threaten with legal action.

As an act of self-defense, isoHunt has decided to sue the CRIA instead, and today Fung will file a petition (pdf) to ask the Court of British Columbia to confirm that isoHunt –and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis– do not infringe copyright. “This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak.

“Our petition summarizes BitTorrent technology, its open nature and a whole ecosystem of websites and operators that has developed around it, that CRIA does not own copyright to all files distributed over BitTorrent or on isoHunt websites, and we seek legal validation that we can continue to innovate within this emerging BitTorrent ecosystem on the Internet.”

“Think of this as a follow up to the QuebecTorrent case,” Fung says. “We intend to take this all the way up to the Canadian Supreme Court unless CRIA settles with us out of court in any reasonable way,” Fung added.

This is the first case worldwide where a court will be asked to decide whether .torrent files, and BitTorrent search engines in particular, are infringing copyright or not. Among other things, isoHunt argues that they are just a search engine, like Google, and that they have no control over the files they find elsewhere on the web. The site is indexing other BitTorrent trackers and indexers, without human intervention, and allows its users to find content that is scattered across the web.

So, should BitTorrent search engines be held liable for the .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data? If so, what does this mean for other search engines, and sites such as YouTube? This landmark case might be the one to define how files can be distributed online, let’s hope the Court of British Columbia will make the right decision.

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

Targeted in 2007, they faced the combined resources of the CRIA, ADISQ and APFTQ (the TV and movie companies) – and CIRPA. In all, 31 organizations went after QuebecTorrent, demanding $200,000 in punitive damages.

They ordered that the admin, Sébastien Brûlotte, aka ‘Doditz’, should close the site and never again engage in any similar activity, and post a message clearly indicating the closure of the site. At the time, Doditz didn’t comply. The full details of the case are available in an interview we conducted back in January.

However, the pressure became too great and on July 9th QuebecTorrent was forced to close after it received a permanent injunction from the Superior Court of Quebec. The judgment reads:

ORDER the defendants Sébastien Brûlotte and Quebectorrent.com inc., their officers, administrators, employees, representatives, mandator as well as any person acting directly or indirectly on their behalf or according to their instructions, as well as to any person informed of the present injunction to immediately close the torrents on these website Quebectorrent and to refrain from being involved in any website using the bittorrent technology, peer to peer, or any other technology allowing the download of any work protected by copyright.

QuebecTorrents had indicated all along that they intended to fight the recording industry but in the end, their combined resources proved to be too much. Solange Drouin, the managing director of ADISQ explains:

“We had envisaged three days of lawsuit, but they indicated last week to us that they would comply with the demands. In return, we agreed to drop the claim for $200,000 in damages brought against the site and its administrator.”

Indicating that she hopes the shutdown has an effect on other current and potential torrent site admins he goes on: “We waited to see the result of this first lawsuit. We hope that this result will have a dissuasive effect. If it is not the case, it is possible that we will engage in actions against similar sites.”

Doditz briefly told TorrentFreak: “I just wanna say thanks to all the people who supported the cause and me all along.”

This post will be updated shortly with an exclusive message to the BitTorrent community from Doditz.

Stay tuned.

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

These sort of problem – when users in one geographical location can access a site when others can’t – is usually down to DNS issues which generally resolve themselves in a short time. However, in the case of Demonoid, this doesn’t appear to offer the answer.

According to reports we’ve received, when users from the Netherlands try to access Demonoid all they get is a blank white page. However, should they try to access the site using a proxy or VPN making the visitor appear they are not from the Netherlands, the user can now gain access. The block happens on all the major ISPs, and are persistent.

Canadians, having been previously blocked, remain unblocked, presumably after Demonoid fell out of range of the CRIA. However, more recently reports indicate that not only are Dutch users blocked from Demonoid, but in an unlikely scenario, Brazilians appear to be blocked too. So what could be at the bottom of this?

There could be some purely technical issues with the web, but as time goes on, this seems less and less likely. It is of course possible that Demonoid itself has some technical problems, having reported that the site had a few bugs to be ironed out around 9 days ago or so. If this is the case, there will be lots of relieved people around.

It’s also possible that there is a legal angle to these blocks, after all this type of action by Demonoid isn’t new in its quest to stay within the law. Around 12 months ago Demonoid blocked Dutch users for a while, as the pressure from BREIN increased quietly behind the scenes, and then later on very publicly blocked millions of Canadians following pressure from the CRIA, only to unblock them again after moving to ‘safer’ Ukraine-based hosting.

But, if Ukraine is ‘safe’ as a host country, why block the Netherlands, and why block Brazil of all places? As it turns out there is a Demonoid/Brazil link, in that the Demonoid.com domain has a protected WHOIS provided by the Brazilian-based Neurocube.com, which in turn is hosted in the Netherlands at Demonoid’s old host, LeaseWeb. And of course, Netherlands-based anti-piracy group BREIN aren’t the biggest supporters of Demonoid either – and have lots of resources – but whether or not they still hold anything over the site in order to force a block of an entire country is a matter of speculation.

In the absence of any announcement from the new admin of Demonoid (which seems incredibly unlikely), it’s some users of Demonoid who asked us to find out why they can’t access the site. Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer for them right now, maybe they will become more clear in the future.

In the meantime, please keep us updated in the comments with access reports from your country and we’ll try to keep people updated on the position for Dutch and Brazilian Demonoid fans. If you can or cannot access Demonoid, we’d like to hear from you.

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

They specifically demand that the Moxie Colo stops hosting top ranked torrent sites What.cd, SumoTorrent, BTMon and FullDls. Generally, the CRIA is demanding that Moxie stop hosting all torrent sites.

TorrentFreak has been reporting recently on the plight of QuebecTorrent which is currently tied up in a legal battle against the music industry in Canada. Clearly that – and the running out of town of Demonoid – was just a run up to further action by an emboldened CRIA.

In files served on Moxie Communications Inc (the parent company of Moxie Colo), the CRIA is demanding that Moxie turn over the personal details of the torrent site administrators, presumably so they can go after them. The CRIA also want Moxie to turn over all relevant site logs, but it is at least unlikely that the Canadian police will be interested in most of the users.

Of course, just because the CRIA demands something, doesn’t mean they will get it. For now, Moxie Colo said it won’t be giving in to the CRIA’s demands.

Sean Corbin, CEO of Moxie Communications told TorrentFreak: “We will not be following the request and will be fighting for the rights of our clients as to date laws in Canada protect them. We have looked into the matter and from what we understand these sites are not breaking any laws in Canada. If we do not comply they might bring legal action against Moxie Communications, as they believe without us these sites could not do what they do so therefore we are as bad as they are.”

More on this breaking story as we get it.

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

The legal background to the case is available in TorrentFreak’s previous interview with QuebecTorrent back in November 2007. Essentially, it’s felt that the decision in this case will impact the future of all Canadian BitTorrent trackers and have more serious implications, explained here by Micheal Geist:

This case is one worth watching – while the knee jerk reaction of some will be to call for the site’s immediate takedown, the legal principles that come from the case, including the liability for linking to unauthorized content and the responsibility of site owners for content posted by 3rd parties, could have significant implications for search engines, bloggers, and anyone else operating online.

TorrentFreak recently caught up with the admin, Doditz, and he told us: “First of all I had to change my lawyer because he got sick and can’t represent me anymore. The new lawyer is Sébastien Leblond and his team at Fetch Légal LTÉE.”

Doditz told us that the next big dates are the 9th, 10th and 11th July, where there will be a summary analysis of the case taking place in the Court of Justice in Montréal.

In an announcement to QuebecTorrent’s 85,000 members he said:

The eventual hearing will require adequate preparation, which will require active involvement of our lawyers in the next three months. Notably, this will require our defense, which will rest particularly on account of the jurisprudence involved with the subject, and the actual evaluation of the law.

Doditz says he will personally have to participate in this process and added that it’s possible that some of the site’s users could be asked to testify too.

Of course, with all this talk of legal action, talk of lots of expenses can’t be far away either. Indeed, the fear of increasing legal costs is often enough to make someone cave in to the demands of the media industry, and they know this all too well.

Nevertheless, QuebecTorrent is standing up and fighting. Doditz hopes that given the wider implications of a negative outcome in the case – such as those indicated by Michael Geist – this will enable him to raise the funds needed for an adequate defense and sensible outcome. He estimates they will need “approximately $15,000, plus applicable taxes, so about $5000 per month”.

A final message from Doditz: “Thank you in advance to all those who will allow QuebecTorrent to defend your rights and the exchange of international culture.”

Anyone wishing to help the cause, can do so by clicking here.

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

It’s been just over 6 weeks since the CRIA allegedly shut down the Demonoid BitTorrent tracker. Details were scarce at the time, with lots of people simply claiming the site had some technical or server issues. Indeed, TorrentFreak came in for quite some criticism when we claimed the CRIA was involved, but when the site returned there were some ominous signs which seemed to support our claims.

Eventually, the Demonoid trackers reappeared, followed by the site itself but was forced to block Canadian visitors by the CRIA. However, despite blocking Canadians, it seems the CRIA hasn’t yet had enough of harassing Demonoid and its host.

On Demonoid.com we now read:

“The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.”

Indeed, Demonoid’s host had previously said that if it had any major hassle, it was likely it could pull the plug on the site.

A message on the Demonoid IRC channel says: “Site is down, tracker is up. Expect the site to return, unless we hear otherwise from Deimos.”

Canada seems to becoming more unfriendly for BitTorrent sites – Demonoid aren’t the only ones being threatened by the recording labels there.

Developing story

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