In 2011 under significant rightsholder pressure, the Ministry of Culture announced amendments to the country’s Copyright Act alongside promises to give the entertainment industries the tools to go after pirates. Two years later in July 2013 the new law went into effect and as promised it gave the pirate hunters a sporting chance.

Out went the days of restrictions on P2P user monitoring and in came a system whereby groups seeking to spy on pirates only needed to get permission from the country’s Data Inspectorate. The big MPAA affiliates obtained permission within the first few months and promised to target uploaders, but what followed next?

Since it’s been a full 12 months since the start of the new law and seven months since the MPA obtained clearance to monitor, Hardware.no filed some questions with the Ministry of Culture to find out the state of play. It also contacted the Post and Telecommunications Authority to find out if any personal details of file-sharers had been handed over to copyright holders.

“The short answer is no,” said Deputy Director Elisabeth Aarsæther.

“From our point of view it looks like the word ‘share’ means go ahead and ‘steal’ among users. I cannot say for certain that nothing will happen going forward, but we have not received any requests so far.”

Aarsæther said that the lack of requests might have something to do with the greater number of legal services now available online. However, there also appears to be a lack of interest from copyright holders who only need to register with the authorities in order to collect IP addresses.

“We took stock moments ago, and we have not received any new messages in a long time,” senior Data Inspectorate adviser Guro Skåltveit told Hardware. “There are currently twelve entities who have advised us and can now collect data.”

Eleven of that dozen registered back in the fall of 2013, and they include a successful application from the Norwegian Pirate Party. Thus far in 2014 there has only been one new application. None have sought personal details.

Finally the new law allows for the blocking of sites confirmed to breach copyright law, but again there has been little visible movement on that front. The industries’ main target, the infamous Pirate Bay, remains accessible in the country despite threats to have it blocked in court. However, this process was expected to take some time, particularly since local ISPs are refusing to do anything voluntarily.

After lobbying hard for new laws over many years one might have expected rightsholders to use every tool available to them as quickly as possible, but for some reason they’re gathering dust 12 months on. It may well be that chasing down individuals has become unpalatable, especially alongside efforts to woo consumers with better legal offerings.

Time will tell what the strategy is going forward, but for now Norwegian file-sharers can rest easy. Their next challenge probably won’t be a letter in the post, but the puzzle of how to unblock The Pirate Bay.

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

The legislation also allows any rightsholder or group to spy on file-sharers providing they inform the country’s data inspectorate in advance. Over the past few months various outfits have been signing up, each with their own agenda for monitoring the Internet.

The MPA/MPAA, for example, have the infamous pirate-hunting lawfirm, Simonsen, scouring BitTorrent and other networks looking for people downloading and sharing Hollywood movies without permission.

As expected, the movie companies aren’t initially intending to use the information to launch a wave of lawsuits against individuals. Instead, the data will be used to justify site blockades, with The Pirate Bay front and center. Willy Johansen, Secretary General of the Norwegian Videograms Association, hopes that lawsuits against ISPs won’t be necessary.

“We want dialog, but if it does not succeed, we must consider other measures,” Johansen says.

Ragnar Bjerkreimselva, chairman of the Norwegian Society for Composers and Lyricists, also confirms that the public isn’t a target. “We are looking for the illegal services, we are not looking to go after our own audience,” he says.

A surprise addition to the list of Internet snoopers is the Pirate Party. They put in their notification to the data inspectorate in the same manner as the anti-piracy outfits but their agenda is somewhat different.

“We plan to monitor the IP addresses associated with the Prime Minister’s office to see if the Pirate Party’s program is copied,” the Party reveals.

The full list of organizations registered so far totals 13, the majority of which are anti-piracy groups. However, there is another interesting entry in Aslak Borgersrud, former member of hip-hop group Gatas Parlament.

“I would like to know who the pirates are that our downloading our records, so I can invite them for coffee and cakes,” he said.

Although Aslak doesn’t reveal how he will be going about that act of friendliness, at least one of the anti-piracy groups has spoken about their techniques. Surprisingly, Rights Alliance suggest that rather than participating in swarms themselves, they intend to scrape information from BitTorrent trackers instead.

“The tracker reveals who is breaking the law,” says Rune Ljøstad of the Simonsen law firm.

For the purposes of general data collection, tracker scraping is probably accurate enough but if the group wished to progress to chasing down individuals the technique is flawed. There are various techniques to inject fake IP addresses into tracker reports which has the potential to cause all sorts of difficulties (and defenses for those accused), which is something to consider if the studios carry out their veiled threats.

“We have already begun efforts to collect the IP addresses of people who use pirate sites,” says Willy Johansen.

“We collect only the information, and so far we have not gone to court to demand to know the identity of those involved with this. But it may be appropriate to do that later.”

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

On top of many previous ventures, just this week the MPA achieved a fresh set of blocks in the UK to black out SolarMovie and TubePlus, a pair of movie streaming portals that have been growing in popularity for some time. The recent action only adds to a long list of sites currently blocked in the country on copyright grounds.

But while concerted UK action is a fairly recent development, another country not too far away has been getting in on the web censorship action for some time. In addition to wiping out at least 20 gambling-related sites, during 2006/7 legal action in Denmark resulted in the blocking of two famous MP3 download sites, Russia-based AllofMP3 and MP3Sparks. In 2008, then key domain of The Pirate Bay, thepiratebay.org, was added to the list.

After a break of four years, in 2012 three more domains were censored on copyright grounds – thepiratebay.se, homelifespain.com and streaming music service GrooveShark.com. And now a year later, rightsholders have returned once again.

Court documents reveal that Fox-Paramount, Sony Music, Disney, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and several local companies went to court to have ISP Telia block four of the most popular movie and TV show sites in the region – Movie4K.to, PrimeWire.ag, Swefilmer.com and Dreamfilm.se. The Copenhagen City Court granted the request.

“The four sites are the most popular among users, and the sites each offer thousands of movies without paying money back to the people who have invested in the films. Prime Wire for example offers around 55,000 movies,” anti-piracy group Rights Alliance said in a statement.

“It is a problem for filmmakers because they miss out on the revenue needed if they are to make new films in the future. Instead the money is flowing to the people behind the illegal movie sites. These activities are illegal and web blocking helps us to stop them.”

The anti-piracy group says that while some of the sites offered to remove infringing links, attempts at giving them the opportunity to defend themselves failed.

“We have tried to give the organizers behind the sites a chance to meet up and argue their case by sending information via their domain name registrations but none have thus made themselves known,” Rights Alliance said.

What is interesting about these new Danish blocks is that unlike in the UK where users are simply advised that a page has been banned, local ISPs display a banner which directs users to ShareWithCare.dk, a site that offers links to legal content. It is operated by Johan Schlüter Advokatfirma, the law firm acting on behalf of the plaintiffs in the blocking case.

Meanwhile in Norway this week, an anti-piracy group confirmed they are taking the next steps to having sites in the country blocked on copyright grounds. Unsurprisingly The Pirate Bay is on the top of the list.

“We have been preparing the process for a couple of months, and we anticipate that we will shortly be in talks with several Internet service providers in Norway to block illegal sites. First and foremost we will go after The Pirate Bay,” said Willy Johansen, Secretary General of the Norwegian Videograms Association.

Those talks are expected to get underway early December but although a new law in Norway does allow the blocking of sites, according to lawyer Olav Torvund, the threshold remains fairly high.

“First, you have to prove that there are violations of copyright on a large-scale, then the court must weigh up whether to shut down access to freedom and freedom of information,” Torvund said.

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

By May that same year it became clear that the government wouldn’t stand idly by, with a Ministry of Culture announcing amendments to the country’s Copyright Act. The promise was that movie and record companies would be given “the tools they need” to tackle infringement.

On July 1 the new law was passed and along with it a framework that would allow any rightsholder or trade group to spy on file-sharers providing they inform the data inspectorate in advance. After a somewhat slow start, copyright holders are now getting themselves organized and are almost ready to start.

The MPA, the international branch of the MPAA, and its associates including the Norwegian Videograms Association, Norwegian Association of Film Distributors, and the Norwegian Society of Composers and Lyricists, are among the organizations that have recently advised the inspectorate that their monitoring will soon begin.

Of course, all the data gathered will need to be subsequently handled and processed. That task will be carried out by the infamous pirate-hunting lawfirm, Simonsen.

According to Rune Ljøstad, a partner at Simonsen, the project will begin in just over three weeks.

“From 29 November we will be able to process personal data for [the purpose of tracking file-sharers],” Ljøstad explains.

As can be seen from the excerpt from Simonsen’s notification below, the aim of the exercise is to protect the MPA and its members.

Ljøstad, meanwhile, has been explaining that uploaders will be the MPA’s key target.

“Our goal is that most of the uploads and downloads stop and people instead go over to legal alternatives,” Ljøstad told Tu.no.

“To achieve this goal you have to prioritize what is most important. Typically licensees are affected more by uploads than downloads. An upload can provide the basis for 1,000 downloads, while one download is just one download,” he said.

But despite the assurances that this will be an effort aimed at the ‘worst’ offenders, there is a key problem. It is virtually guaranteed that BitTorrent users will be the first targets of the new crackdown and by the protocol’s very nature, every downloader is also an uploader. This effectively puts most of Norway’s file-sharers under the microscope.

The MPA’s next move remains unclear, but several scenarios come to mind. Although it will already be in possession of the data having harvested it from abroad, initially the MPA will suck up as much Norwegian file-sharing data as possible so it can be used officially in local procedures.

That data will be used in several ways. It’s possible that a few hand-picked unlucky individuals will be singled out for punishment, but it seems more likely having come this far that the data will be used for more broad action. There are two likely candidates.

First, the data could be used to justify a letter-writing or “three strikes” style regime, something all rightsholders have expressed an interest in.

Second, the data could be used to show how bad the piracy situation is in order to obtain court orders to have sites like The Pirate Bay blocked at the ISP level. There are already provisions in the new law to block sites and rightholders have signaled they’re ready for it, so expect this outcome sooner rather than later.

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

The report found that since 2008 music piracy has been in steady decline, to a point in 2012 where it sat at just 17.5% of its level four years earlier. Piracy of movies and TV shows has been hit too, both down by about a half over the same period.

Against a backdrop of improving availability of licensed services such as Spotify and Netflix, entertainment companies were bound to reap the rewards. However, their insistence that progress would not be possible without tough action against pirate sites has never gone away. And now they’re back again with fresh domain blocking action against a local ISP.

“Our attorneys have started preliminary work on getting Telenor to block The Pirate Bay for their customers. Telenor will not do so without an injunction, but we hope it will happen almost immediately when we go to court,” says Willy Johansen, Secretary General of the Norwegian Videograms Association.

Together with an alliance of rightsholders, Johansen says a lawsuit will be initiated against Telenor during the next few weeks.

The announcement represents a new chapter in a long history of industry legal action against Telenor, which began back in 2009 when IFPI and music rights group TONO tried to force the ISP to block The Pirate Bay. After failure at the District Court and later at the Court of Appeal, the pair eventually conceded that there was no basis for the ISP to block sites under Norwegian law.

However, a new law went into action in Norway at the start of this month which means that blocking will now be tested again, this time with the balance tipped in favor of the rightsholders.

“TONO lost their case because legislation was not in place to force Telenor to block sites like Pirate Bay. Now we have an opening,” Johansen says.

But despite the change in the law Telenor insist they are clear where they stand at the moment. A judgment in 2010 said that Telenor does not have to block The Pirate Bay and the ISP says as far as they are concerned, that ruling is still in place.

“Telenor does not engage in censorship. No one has ordered us to block access to The Pirate Bay, so we are not,” says Knut Sollid, Telenor’s Regional Head of Information.

With Norway’s new copyright law specially crafted to allow for site blocking, it seems almost certain that Telenor will be forced to block The Pirate Bay. Once that happens, other ISPs will be required to do the same.

Johansen has also warned that his organization has a list of other sites that they’d like to be blocked too. The Pirate Bay, he says, is only the beginning.

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

In May 2011, things began to change when the Ministry of Culture announced proposed amendments to the Copyright Act aimed at giving rightsholders “they tools they need” in order to tackle online copyright infringement.

Fast forward a little over two years and the Government’s plans are now about to come to fruition. On July 1 a new law will come into effect and change the online file-sharing environment forever.

Previously only a single licensed entity had permission to monitor file-sharers online but from the first of next month any rightsholder or trade group may do so, providing they inform the country’s data inspectorate in advance.

According to Willy Johansen, Secretary General of the Norwegian Videograms Association, a brand new anti-piracy group is currently being formed to make use of the new freedoms available to rightsholders.

“We are in the starting blocks to start a rights alliance in Norway, as we have done in Denmark and Sweden,” Johansen told Tu.

Modeled on the Swedish Antipiratbyran and Danish Rettighedsalliancen, the new group will be a team effort by the major labels of IFPI, the movie industry and other publishers.

“It is intended that the alliance will conduct an investigation of infringement of copyright. We hope this will be a strong organization with many members who own rights,” Johansen said.

Sending “strike” notices to file-sharers aren’t specifically part of the new law, but Johansen says it would be preferable to have this option before being forced to take legal action.

“I hope we can find a way to do this, in the best interests of all parties,” he said.

The anti-piracy group will be supported by infamous pirate-hunting lawfirm Simonsen. The company previously held an exclusive license to monitor file-sharers in Norway and in 2010 tracked down an uploader of a famous local movie after an epic battle.

It is not yet clear what the new anti-piracy group will be called but searches reveal that Simonsen already have a number of suitable domains under their belt including RettigHets-Alliansen.net, RettigHetsAlliansen.no and RettigHetsAlliansen.com.

In addition to the monitoring of individual file-sharers, the blocking of sites deemed to be infringing copyright will now be made possible by the changes in the law.

After years of trying to force ISP Telenor to censor The Pirate Bay ended in failure, Johansen says that rightsholders will soon be back.

“We want all broadband providers to block The Pirate Bay. This has worked effectively in Denmark and Finland,” he says.

“For years we have been working towards this, and we should not stop once The Pirate Bay is blocked. Basically we are interested in blocking all the major sites. We will make it as difficult as possible to download illegally, so people have to choose a legal solution.”

A spokesman for Telenor said that as far as they are concerned there is already a final judgment on how to deal with blocking requests for The Pirate Bay (i.e the law doesn’t allow for it) but if a new application is made to the courts in light of the new law, the ISP will deal with it accordingly.

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

In March 2009, the IFPI and several local movie studios began putting pressure on Telenor, Norway’s largest Internet Service Provider. They asked the ISP to block its subscribers from accessing TPB, but Telenor refused.

The ISP insisted there was no legal basis for the action, and they were right. After being taken to court, a subsequent ruling clarified that the ISP had no obligation to block The Pirate Bay. In February 2010 a rightsholder appeal was rejected and it soon became evident that blocking would only be possible following a change in the law.

Just over a year later in May 2011 the Ministry of Culture announced that it had put forward proposals for amendments to the Copyright Act. In January of this year the amendments were presented and on Monday they were put to the vote in parliament. The Labor Progress Party, Socialist Left Party, Christian Democrats and Conservatives all voted in favor of the bill, while only the opposition voted against.

The proposed amendments, which observers say will almost certainly be signed into law, are designed to make it easier to chase down both enablers and end-users of unauthorized material.

In the case of the former, rightsholders may apply to the courts to have ISPs “prevent or impede access” to sites that have “extensively made available material that clearly violates copyrights.”

Website owners will be named as opposing parties in such procedures but if the owner of the site is unknown or has an unknown address “..the case can be decided without the person concerned being given an opportunity to comment.”

In the real world this means that should website owners wish to remain anonymous, they can, but blocking their site will become somewhat of a formality. Expect this to be the case in most instances.

In dealing with end-users of unauthorized material (i.e the general public) the amendments are designed to make it easier for rightsholders to pursue individuals without falling foul of Norway’s data protection laws. Once passed, the new legislation will exempt personal data from the Personal Data Act when processing of such data is necessary for the pursuit of a legal claim.

“If it is likely that copyright or other rights under this law have been violated, the court may, notwithstanding the confidentiality provided by the Electronic Communications Act, at the request of the licensee, require a provider of electronic communications to disclose information that identifies the owner of the subscription used for the violation,” the amendments read.

There are some safeguards to protect subscribers, but whether they will come into effect for straightforward infringement cases remains to be seen.

“In order that the petition should be granted, the court must find that the arguments in favor of disclosure outweighs the interest of confidentiality. In assessing the court shall weigh the interests of the subscriber against the licensee’s interest in gaining access to the information taking into account severity, scope and effects of the violation,” the amendment adds.

Jens Christian Koller of the Parliamentary Information Service told Teknofil.no that while the amendments still have to progress through a second parliamentary hearing before formal adoption, it is very rare for the outcome to differ from that of the first.

“In practice therefore these amendments to the Copyright Act have been adopted, but it is still not correct to say that it has already been formally adopted by the Parliament. What you can say is that it is now very difficult to stop this law,” he concludes.

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

The Party and its leaders took this difficult decision after they were threatened with a lawsuit by a local anti-piracy group.

Luckily for The Pirate Bay, the pirate parties of Norway and Catalunya were willing to take over the role. However, after just a few days the Norwegians had to shut down their Pirate Bay node as well, facing similar threats as their Swedish comrades.

This resulted in some downtime earlier today after which The Pirate Bay returned online from a rather unexpected location.

A Pirate Bay insider informs TorrentFreak that they had been working for a while to get connectivity in North Korea. Today they made the big switch.

“We’ve been in talks with them for about two weeks, since they opened access for foreigners to use 3G in the country,” a Pirate Bay insider told us. “TPB has been invited just like Eric Schmidt and Dennis Rodman. We’ve declined up until now.”

While The Pirate Bay may not visit North Korea, they announce that they are using the country’s network to connect the BitTorrent site to the rest of the world.

“This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high.”

“At the same time, companies from that country are chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information,” they add.

The Pirate Bay says that it sees the current step as one forward for North Korea, and the BitTorrent site hopes that all North Koreans can soon access the site to foster freedom of information.

“We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond.”

“We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand,” TPB concludes.

It’s worth noting that the Korean connection is used to hide Pirate Bay’s true location. The cloud servers behind it are still believed to be hosted elsewhere in the world.

While it’s hard to believe everything The Pirate Bay says, the site does indeed route through a North Korean netblock at the moment. Whether it is sanctioned by the authorities, or if there is perhaps some hacking and hijacking trickery involved is a “mystery”. Keep in mind that the Pirate Bay is known for its satire.

In either case, Hollywood and the major music labels will have a hard time shutting that node down.

Update: The Pirate Bay admits on Facebook, as expected, that it was a hack for the lulz.

“We hope that yesterdays little hack proved that we know the internet better than our enemies. Since about 40% of the entire internets traffic consists of torrents enabled by us, you can almost say that we ARE the internets. Fuck with the internets and we’ll ridicule you (points at MAFIAA with a retractable baton) until you beg for mercy.”

“We’ve hopefully made clear (once again) that we don’t run TPB to make money. A profit hungry idiot (points at MAFIAA with a retractable baton) doesn’t tell the world that they have partnered with the most hated dictatorship in the world. We can play that stunt though, cause we’re still only in it for the fuckin lulz and it doesn’t matter to us if thousands of users disband the ship.”

“We’ve also learned that many of you need to be more critical. Even towards us. You can’t seriously cheer the “fact” that we moved our servers to bloody North Korea. Applauds to you who told us to fuck off. Always stay critical. Towards everyone!”

Update: The Norwegian Pirate Party told TorrentFreak that they never routed any traffic. They just put their name on the node. The Telecom company Availo pulled the plug, allegedly after being contacted by copyright holders.

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

Despite claims by the ignorant that it’s just a ‘one trick pony’, the political movement based on transparency & accountability of government officials; increased personal privacy; and reform of copyright, trademark and patent laws can chalk up yet another country – Norway.

The Norwegian Pirate Party announced its new status in a low-key manner, with a tweet. Now Norwegians nationwide can vote Pirate.

It’s a fast turnaround for a party that only started a serious quest for recognition in July. To do so, they had to collect 5000 signatures by January 1, 2013.

The recognition from the Register in Brønnøysund indicates they made that goal. However, it’s just the first step. In an email to TorrentFreak, the party warned that they still have to organize chapters in all 19 counties, and they hope to do so by the next election on September 9 this year.

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

There have been difficult periods though, such as in 2009 when the company’s license expired in the midst of a debate over what licensees can and cannot do. Now, three years later, Simonsen face another crisis.

Simonsen, which is home to famous pirate-chaser Espen Tøndel, became unlicensed in March this year after the Privacy Appeals Board rejected the law firm’s appeal against the Data Inspectorate’s decision not to issue a new license on data protection grounds. The effects of that rejection are now being felt.

“As of today no hunting of file-sharers is allowed in Norway,” said Cecilie Rønnevik, senior advisor to the Norwegian Data Inspectorate.

Simonsen, who work on behalf of clients such as the MPAA, says the decision is a blow to rightsholders.

“When no one is authorized to process personal data in order to stop copyright infringement, it weakens licensees’ ability to pursue violations happening online, and thus their ability to protect their interests. We hope and believe that this problem will soon be solved,” the company told TU.NO in an email.

There is a suggestion that one way around the problem would be to form an anti-piracy group to represent rightsholders, such as those that exists across the border in Sweden.

“We have been asked if we could accept an organization on the licensee side, a bit like Antipiratbyrån in Sweden,” said Cecilie Rønnevik from the Data Inspectorate. “We will consider it if we get an application for a license.”

No application has yet been received, so until one is – and a license is granted – Norwegian file-sharers can download whatever they like without any fear of repercussions. Whether that green light will have any effect on their habits remains to be seen.

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