After complaints to the police failed, STEF and SMAIS turned to web-blocking in the hope of achieving similar results to those netted by rightsholders in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.

Following setbacks STEF decided to go it alone and earlier this month achieved the result they’d been looking for. The Reykjavík District Court handed down an injunction to ISPs Vodafone and Hringdu forcing them to block several domains belonging to The Pirate Bay and Deildu, a private torrent site popular with locals.

Just two weeks later and it’s now becoming clear that STEF won’t be happy until all of Iceland’s leading ISPs are blocking too.

Earlier this week the rights group demanded responses from ISPs including Sím­inn, Tal and 365 Media as to whether the companies will agree to block Pirate Bay and Deildu in the wake of the Vodafone decision. Threatening legal action, STEF gave the ISPs until Wednesday to respond.

According to local news outlet MBL, 365 Media informed STEF it was willing to at least consider the idea but both Sím­inn and Tal appear to have rejected voluntary blocking, preferring official action through the courts instead.

Sím­inn said that it is not the role of communications companies to decide which sites should be closed and which should remain open so it would need to be presented with a formal injunction in order to block Pirate Bay and Deildu. In broad terms, Tali said the same.

As a result, lawyer Tóm­as Jóns­son says that STEF will now press ahead with its efforts to obtain injunctions against the ISPs that have raised objections. Procedural issues aside, which have dogged previous efforts, it’s likely that sooner or later STEF will achieve its aims.

Finally, there has been a trend recently for under-pressure sites to look at Icelandic hosting and local .IS domains in the belief they offer improved security over those available elsewhere.

While that may indeed be true, Iceland’s domain registry has just canceled an .IS domain that was operated by people with links to Islamic State.

“This is in fact a sad day for IS­NIC. We are very sad over this. It was not an easy de­ci­sion to do this. We had a rep­utaion for never hav­ing sus­pended a do­main name. That is not the re­al­ity any­more. These peo­ple have ru­ined that for us,” said ISNIC director Jens Pé­tur Jensen.

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

A few months ago we reported on the President of the Lithuanian Anti-Piracy Association LANVA, who was jailed for two years for drug trafficking. The boss of Iceland’s anti-piracy group SMAIS is not doing much better, it seems, as he stands accused of fraud and embezzlement.

SMAIS is a local branch of Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association. The group recently failed to get The Pirate Bay blocked in Iceland, and has now run into the law itself.

The organization’s board filed for bankruptcy after it discovered a wide range of serious problems. The group’s financial statements were falsified, the books were not in order, and value added taxes haven’t been paid since 2007.

Making matters even worse, the board says that its CEO Snæbjörn Steingrímsson has admitted to embezzlement. This case is now under review by the Special Prosecutor, who has to decide whether a criminal investigation will be launched against the anti-piracy chief.

The last time SMAIS made international headlines was last year, when the group pulled its Facebook page offline after four days. According to Steingrímsson, SMAIS didn’t have enough resources to handle the constant flaming comments from the public.

What certainly didn’t help was that the launch of the Facebook page coincided with the news that SMAIS never paid for the film and game rating software they purchased from a Dutch company back in 2007. Considering the position the group is in now this is hardly a surprise.

Whether Hollywood has plans to install a new anti-piracy group in Iceland if the bankruptcy goes through is currently unknown.

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

The unit’s most recent and high-profile action was taken against Torrentz.eu, the world’s largest torrent meta-search engine. Despite the site complying with takedowns (clear evidence of which can be seen on the site where dozens of results are marked as deleted by rightsholders), PIPCU approached Torrentz’s registrar requesting a domain suspension.

The company complied, but the effect was only temporary. Confronted with legal argument that the suspension was unlawful, the Torrentz domain was soon operational again.

While it’s easy to see how this kind of result undermines the credibility of the police, there are other considerations too. According to the registry responsible for Iceland’s top-level .IS domain, suspensions of this kind target the wrong area.

“Domains can hardly be considered illegal any more than a street address. A street address is not illegal even if there is illegal activity in one apartment at the address,” ISNIC says.

“When a domain is suspended the website or the content itself is not, as became apparent when torrentz.eu was suspended. A suspension of a domain does not lead to a total blocking of the website it points to.”

However, while content may indeed remain available (or in the case of Torrentz, links to other sites, that carry links, that link to content), suspensions still have the ability to disrupt other services associated with a website that are outside the realms of the initial dispute.

“Disruption of email communication and service, unrelated to the website that is meant to be closed, is utterly unnecessary and unacceptable in these instances,” ISNIC explains.

“A suspension of a domain is in a way comparable to banning the use of an address of an apartment building depriving everyone at that particular address of their postal service. Additionally, the suspension of individual domains can affect other domains, specially in the situation when domain service is a registered subdomain.”

Furthermore, according to the registry the counter-productive effects of domain seizures aren’t limited simply to the technical realm. Perceptions that seizures are unjust persist not only among visitors to the affected domains but also the wider Internet, damaging the reputations of targeted TLDs in the process.

“It should be noted that when registries and registrars are made to suspend domains it can create negative publicity within the internet community, harming the top-level domain and reducing its credibility,” ISNIC says.

“It is difficult to rectify that sort of damage that easily could be avoided with increased awareness and proficiency of the technical workings of the internet.”

It’s worth noting that to date, all attempts at seizing or suspending .IS domains have failed.

“ISNIC has never shut down a domain in response to external requests,” ISNIC’s Björn Róbertsson informs TorrentFreak. “ISNIC however does place domains on hold and automatically re-delegates to parking in case of technical issues – but ISNIC has strict technical requirements for DNS server setup.”

Perhaps finding comfort in this kind security, earlier this month Putlocker.bz moved to an Icelandic domain following pressure from City of London Police. While a court order could potentially force ISNIC to take action against a domain such as this, to date the registry hasn’t been included in any disputes.

“In case of a court order, the court order would have to be addressed directly to Internet á Íslandi hf. [ISNIC] not to the Registrant. That has never happened,” Róbertsson says.

“Icelandic court orders [regarding domain disputes] have always been addressed to the registrant, and ordered him to stop using or/and to delete the domain.”

In addition to its stance on seizures, Iceland also has a great reputation in respect of privacy, something which prompted Kim Dotcom to announce that the Mega file-storing service could relocate there if local legislation compromises the company’s users.

Whether there will be mass Icelandic domain migrations in the future remains to be seen, but the signs are that the ISNIC registry will put up a fight at the very least, something registrars elsewhere have failed to do.

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

Several copyright groups, including the local RIAA equivalent ‘STEF’ and MPAA equivalent ‘SMAIS’, filed a complaint with the police last October. Their aim was to obtain an injunction compelling local Internet service providers to block not only TPB, but also the largest Iceland-focused private BitTorrent tracker, Deildu.net.

“Blocking access to websites that offer a wide range of entertainment without permission of the copyright holders has been proven effective in neighboring countries, and has a strong foundation in EU legislation,” the groups said.

The request for an injunction, filed by four entertainment industry groups against five local ISPs including Vodafone, was initially rejected by a Reykjavík magistrate. As a result the case ended up in the District Court of Reykjavik in March but was dismissed when the Court decided that only music group STEF had the rights to claim injunctive relief.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court which handed down its decision this week. Affirming the decision of the District Court, the Supreme Court highlighted problems in two key areas.

Firstly, it appears that once the district magistrate rejected the original blocking request, the matter should have been referred to the District Court within a week. It took the entertainment groups twelve days, well outside the requirements prescribed by law.

Furthermore, while the complaint was filed in the names of four organizations, only one was recognized by the Supreme Court as having the right to bring this kind of complaint. While it was agreed that music group STEF has lawful standing to fight in court, the others had only local distribution rights.

“The fact remains that STEF can make these injunction requests. But not all of these groups together,” lawyer Tómas Jónsson told local media.

After the Supreme Court’s rejection the case can now return to the District Court where it’s likely that STEF will continue the process alone. If it succeeds the net result will be no different than if all parties had obtained an injunction.

Whether the Court will subsequently grant a blockade of The Pirate Bay remains to be seen though, as this type of injunction is yet to be tested under Icelandic copyright law.

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

Their biggest success came in 2009 when the party won two seats at the European Parliament. During the last year this was followed by dozens more seats in German state parliaments.

Today a new milestone can be added after Iceland’s Pirate Party scored an important victory in the national parliamentary elections. With 5.1% of the total vote (95% counted) the Pirates (just) exceed the required 5% threshold, making it the first Pirate party to enter a national parliament, with 3 MPs.

Today’s success is not totally unexpected as the party has been polling very well in recent weeks. Nevertheless, the accomplishment is truly astonishing when taking into account that it was founded just five months ago.

The Icelandic Pirate Party was formed in November 2012, by activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former Member of Parliament for ‘The Movement’.

Birgitta rose to international attention following the Wikileaks investigations when she was targeted by the U.S. Government for her association with the whistleblower organisation. Her pirate credentials were boosted when FBI agents conducting a low-key investigation into her activities were kicked out of the country in August 2011.

In just a matter of months the new Pirate Party achieved a lot of positive press and hundreds of people signed up to become a member. After today’s election win the party is expected to grow even further.

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, is currently in Iceland to celebrate the victory.

“I’m delighted every time another country gets pirates elected. Some old media and obsolete industries have insisted we were just a flash in the pan. I love it when those stories are exposed as wishful thinking,” Falkvinge tells TorrentFreak.

With the newly gained Parliament seats the Icelandic Pirate Party will focus on a wide range of issues, ranging from the prevention of copyright abuse, through political transparency, to protection of freedom of speech and privacy.

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

Two weeks ago the notorious BitTorrent site traded in its .SE domain for the Greenland-based .GL TLD. The Pirate Bay took this decision because they feared that Swedish authorities were about to take over their domain names.

However, TPB did not receive a warm welcome in Greenland.

Within two days of the move The Pirate Bay lost both its .GL domain names. Tele-Post, the private company responsible for .GL registrations, did not wait for a court order and said it would not allow the domains to be put to “illegal” use.

Resilient as always, TPB aren’t about to give up that easily and have already lined up yet another domain name. This time they’re going for Iceland’s .IS TLD, which will be a little harder to take offline.

Thepiratebay.is was registered after the Greenland debacle and traffic was redirected to the new domain a few minutes ago. Iceland is an interesting choice as the country previously positioned itself as a safe haven for freedom of speech.

Whether The Pirate Bay’s activities are considered protected under this definition remains to be seen, but ISNIC, the company responsible for .IS domains, informs TorrentFreak that they have no plans to treat thepiratebay.is any differently to their other domains.

When we asked whether ISNIC would follow Greenland’s lead and move for a proactive suspension, we got a clear answer.

“The short answer is no. Such an action would require a formal order from an Icelandic court. ISNIC is not responsible for a registrant’s usage of their domains,” ISNIC’s Marius Olafsson told TorrentFreak.

This is not the first time that Iceland’s registry has been asked about possible actions against a controversial domain. In 2010, when Wikileaks was hosted under an .IS TLD, the company gave the same response.

“This policy applies equally to any .is domain,” Olafsson says, adding that it’s the domain owner’s responsibility to abide by the law, not theirs.

“There is an article in our registration rules which states that ‘the registrant is responsible for ensuring that the use of the domain is within the limits of Icelandic law as current at any time’,” he explains.

ISNIC’s position means that The Pirate Bay will probably be operating from the .IS domain for a while. Technically copyright holders could file a complaint, but without a prior ruling against the site in Iceland this will probably turn out to be a time-consuming and expensive endeavor.

Even if the domain was taken away, The Pirate Bay would probably move on to the next one as if nothing happened. Until they run out of domains.

Update: Several users report that the domain change has made TPB accessible again om ISPs where it was previously blocked. We assume that the respective blocklists will all be updated in the near future.

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

However, Iceland’s version of the MPAA didn’t get this memo and SMAIS decided to create a Facebook page of their own last week. This didn’t go well for them.

As expected, there were dozens of Facebook users who started attacking the group’s views in the comments. Initially SMAIS responded to the critique, but the response from the public was so overwhelming that the group couldn’t keep up after a while.

What certainly didn’t help was that SMAIS itself never paid for the film and game rating software they purchased from the Dutch company NICAM back in 2007.

“From the moment the contract was signed, everything went silent. There was no contact between SMAIS and us, unfortunately. We tried to contact them, but it didn’t work,” NICAM’s managing director Wim Bekkers said in a recent news report.

This seemingly hypocritical behavior only added fuel to the fire, and there was little SMAIS could do to change the public’s views. The same happened with other comments made by the group, which were all rebutted by the new Facebook “fans,” neither of whom seemed to support the positions of the movie group.

Realizing that they were hurting their image rather than repairing it, SMAIS decided to delete their Facebook page after being active for just four days.

According to SMAIS’ Snæbjörn Steingrímsson the group would have to hire new staff if they want to address all the commentary on Facebook. In addition, Steingrímsson said it was interesting to see that Internet “freedom fighters” believe that only their voice should ne heard on Facebook.

The group left the following message, and is likely to never come back.

—

Dear Internet people.

Unfortunately it seems that our attempt to be on Facebook is not working out for us at the moment. There are too many people here that only wants to flame us, rather than interact and share their views.

We would still like to thank those who visited our page, and the many that showed interest in sharing their opinions. It is clear that SMÁÍS has a place in the heart of many Internet users, and it’s very surprising how many views and comments this experiment has gotten.

It’s not that we fear criticism or debate, but it’s clear that we have to hire staff that can do this job properly. It is interesting to learn that some freedom fighters think that only some voices have a place on Facebook, but it’s not surprising. This attempt was not in vain, as it shows we have lots to learn before we try again :)

Yours, Snæbjörn Steingrímsson

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

The local anti-piracy lobby had also started to take notice of the BitTorrent tracker’s growing popularity and decided to take legal action. During November 2007, Svavar Kjarrval, the owner of the tracker, received a preliminary injunction which left him no other choice than to shut down the site.

While the majority of BitTorrent tracker owners would have given up when confronted with legal action, Svavar decided to put up a fight. “I’m going to fight this as far as I possibly can. The general public seems to be on our side,” he told TorrentFreak at the time, and he kept his word.

What followed was a lengthy legal battle that was fought in two rounds. In the first round Torrent.is came out as the winner at both the District Court and the Supreme Court. However, the local equivalent of the RIAA (STEF) simply started a new case based on new claims, so the whole circus started from scratch.

STEF claimed that Torrent.is was violating copyright law and the case went before the District Court again. The Icelandic tracker again came out victorious, but the legal bullying didn’t stop there and STEF took the case to the Supreme Court hoping for a win.

Today the Supreme Court delivered its verdict, announcing Torrent.is had been found guilty. The owner of the site was ordered to pay legal fees of $3,350 and refrain from opening the site to the public.

Svavar informed TorrentFreak that this negative outcome marks the end of a seemingly endless legal battle. Although he is disappointed in the verdict, Svavar said that he simply cannot afford to appeal the case due to a lack of money.

It is expected that the outcome of this case will be used to bolster European anti-piracy outfits to pursue legal action against other BitTorrent trackers. In Iceland, Svavar thinks it will mean that file-sharers will increasingly go underground, if it has any effect at all.

“The battle might be lost but the file-sharing war has not ended,” Svavar concluded.

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

The sole purpose of the covert-operation was of course to gather information from SMÁÍS on the ongoing investigation on TVB (Icelanders only) and Torrent.is, two Icelandic BitTorrent trackers. “Me and an administrator at TVB were pondering one morning about what Smáis actually got on us, and I had this idea to contact Snæbjörn and set up a meeting,” Unnar explained.

To gain the confidence of Snæbjörn and the other investigators, 15 in total, Unnar led them to believe that the TVB staff was threatening him. “I was called in for another meeting and I told him that I had been assaulted because somebody knew I was going to witness against TVB, I made my friend give me some bruises.” Undy told TorrentFreak.

The investigators fell for it, and believed that they finally had an insider on their side, so they started to share confidential information. The cover story had worked, and this Friday Unnar was called in for a meeting where they showed 1000 pages of evidence against TVB. In addition they told Unnar that they were plotting a criminal case against the tracker, not a civil case as the one against Istorrent.

“I was shown screenshots of admin profiles on TVB, which showed information only available to administrators. I asked how they got this information and if somebody else was snitching, but they replied ‘you can do everything on the internet’,” Unnar said. The most likely scenario is that SMÁÍS used an exploit or some other hack, to gain access to the tracker.

At that point they still thought Unnar was going to testify against the people behind TVB, so they showed him all the info they had gathered on the tracker, and which users they would go after, if it would come to that. “They gave me the usernames of two persons who where responsible for 90% of the Icelandic material on TVB,” Unnar said. “After the meeting I gave this information to those users, so they could take evasive action.”

“The most interesting part about this is that I said at the beginning of the meeting: “No offense, I can help you convict some administrators, but the website isn’t going down just for that,” to which Snæbjörn replied “It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, we will still bankrupt you.” This shows that they are simply using their money to force the trackers to go offline.

All in all Unnar thinks that he has gathered enough information to have a significant advantage in court. This Friday he publicly shared his covert-ops experiences with other users at TVB, but up until now, he hasn’t heard anything from SMÁÍS.

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

This did indeed happen, and today, the Supreme Court announced a ruling (Icelandic) in favor of torrent.is, awarding it an additional 400,000 ISK ($5025 US or 3250 Euros) on top of the 500,000 ISK awarded in March.

The case was dismissed because of legal formalities. It would appear that some of the plaintiffs in the case were found to have no legal grounds to pursue an injunction. When the prosecution team tried to switch plaintiffs in order to save the case, the Supreme Court flat out dismissed it.

Speaking to TorrentFreak, Torrent.is owner, Svavar Kjarrval, said he was “very happy with the decision,” adding he hopes to have the site open on the 16th. “However, the executive of one of the plaintiffs [SMÁÍS] claims he will use any means available to stop the site from reopening. I don’t know if that will succeed or not.”

A spokesman of SMAIS was quoted by mlb.is as saying “This verdict is sad, and it is incredible to deny copyright holders seeking their rights. This is an unnecessary adherence on legal formalities in this case, rather than taking on the subject as it should. There still has not been a formal verdict in this case and it seems to be hard to get a judge to review the facts of the case itself, that is, the copyright laws themselves.”

However, before people rush to host torrent sites there, Svavar has a warning. “This ruling doesn’t state that torrent sites are legal so there is still no certainty as to their legality” Hosting a BitTorrent site still is in the “grey zone” for now, but that doesn’t stop Torrent.is from reopening.

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