Other approaches, such as the super high-profile and aggressive litigation campaign pursued by the RIAA in the United States, tried to send the message that financial ruination is the inevitable result of sharing music files.

The movie industry’s MPAA tried a “we’re looking over your shoulder” angle with their Internet-only ‘You Can Click But You Can’t Hide’ campaign which was designed to reinforce the notion that file-sharers are not anonymous and can be held accountable.

Untold other campaigns from a myriad of anti-piracy groups followed, from educating kids in schools and persuading boy scouts to take a copyright awareness badges, right up to trying to convincing the public that there is a human consequence to sharing files. Creators everywhere will starve, entertainment will come to an end, and this dark future can only be avoided by buying media instead of downloading it, they cautioned.

Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Denmark’s Antipiratgruppen have been working tirelessly with anti-piracy activities of all kinds during recent years as they desperately try to discourage people from downloading media from the Internet. In common with similar campaigns from America to Asia, the end results are largely the same – they have failed to reduce the overall numbers of people sharing files.

That’s according to a new survey conducted by YouGov Zapera on behalf of publication MetroXpress. Carried out during the first week of August 2010, the survey consisted of interviews with a representative sample of people aged between 18 and 74 years old.

When questioned, 23% of respondents said that they had the ability to find and download music and movies from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 20%. When it came to music alone, 27% of respondents said they had downloaded from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 24%.

Troels Møller from pro-piracy group Piratgruppen said that the lack of progress comes as no surprise.

“The advertising campaigns used to prevent illegal downloads have been a waste of money and have in general been a cop-out from the record industry,” he told MetroXpress. “They try to give people a bad conscience about something that there is nothing wrong with. Because you are not stealing from anyone. On the contrary, you are sharing with others.”

Bente Skovgaard Kristensen, who is responsible for copyright issues at the Ministry of Culture, says that the problem of illegal downloading is massive.

“The unchanged position on the course of piracy shows that there is a problem,” she admitted in a response. “Because the scope of copyright violations on the Internet is so large the Government has appointed a committee to look at how to deal with the issue. They report back with their findings later this year.”

The only area where opinion was slightly improved was in that concerning legislation. In 2009, 31% of respondents said that they felt copying of music and movies should be made legal. This year that figure dropped to 30%.

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

In early January ‘Laeborg’, the Denmark-based administrator of the EliteBits BitTorrent tracker, was confronted at 7:00am on his doorstep by a man from the enforcement court accompanied by three men from Johan Schlüter Advokatfirma, a law firm that works with Danish anti-piracy group, Antipiratgruppen.

They showed Laeborg, real name Jonas Laeborg, screenshots from EliteBits while revealing information on the bank account used to collect site donations. In their possession was a warrant which they said gave them authority to gather evidence to show that Laeborg was involved in the illegal distribution of copyright works.

After accessing Laeborg’s computer and his admin account on EliteBits, screenshots were taken of all the staff profiles, the site’s Top 10 downloaders, Top 50 uploaders and uploaded torrents lists.

That case has now progressed to the point where 18 year-old Laeborg has been hit with a cash claim totaling some 1.6 million kroner ($261,150) from Antipiratgruppen. But he won’t face this battle alone.

Laeborg apparently has insurance which will cover his legal costs while fighting this demand but his policy has an excess on any claim. Pro-sharing group Piratgruppen has announced it will donate an amount to cover this excess charge to help ensure the case gets heard.

“We believe it is extremely important that these cases come to trial, and that you can not just give in to these unreasonable claims, therefore we have paid a sum to cover costs associated with litigation,” Piratgruppen spokesman Troels Møller told Comon.

The case will be handled by regular Piratgruppen lawyer Per Overbeck but no dates have yet been set for a hearing.

The attack on EliteBits represents a new strategy against file-sharing in Denmark. Previously local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen had maintained a policy of going after individuals but its inability to gather solid evidence resulted in the loss of several prominent High Court cases. This prompted an announcement that it would stop its pursuit of petty file-sharers and instead go after larger targets.

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

Two years ago we reported on a case where an intentional leak was used as a promotional tool. When the band BuckCherry found out that their latest single had leaked on BitTorrent, they issued a press release instead of trying to get the torrents offline.

In the press release they reported how devastated they were that the single was up for grabs. However, it all turned out to be staged event as we later found out that the person who uploaded the torrent had the same IP-address as the band’s manager.

BuckCherry’s failed PR-campaign was pretty low, but Danish filmmakers have taken this particular promotional technique quite a bit further by blaming a third party for the leak. A few days ago the makers (Regner Grasten Film) of the film Winnie & Karina issued a press release in which they accused the Danish copyright reform group Piratgruppen of stealing the master DVD.

“Until now there has been no ransom demands, but Regner Grasten Film is willing to do all it can to avoid the film being made available for free online,” they wrote in the press release.

The film in question was a big flop in theaters but through the faked piracy threat they hoped to get some attention for the upcoming DVD-release. The press release was ignored by the media though, so they had to release another one a few days later.

In this new press release they went even further by claiming that Piratgruppen was threatening to leak the film on YouTube that evening. Again, the media didn’t pick it up and eventually the filmmakers came clean by stating that the whole story was made up.

In an email to Piratgruppen the studio’s boss Regner Grasten admits that he was desperate because of the bad reviews and disappointing ticket sales. Accusing Piratgruppen of breaking into their premises and stealing the master film was just a joke, Grasten explained in the email.

Piratgruppen couldn’t really see the humor in being accused of a serious crime and called it a “pathetic little media stunt”.

In the end the filmmakers got a bittersweet result, since although the Danish media finally picked up the story, their failure was exposed.

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

The cases went to court and were heard this Friday, and to the file-sharing masses of Denmark, it turned out to be a very important day. The women did not deny the claims that unauthorized file-sharing had taken place on their Internet connections but stated clearly that they were not the ones carrying it out.

They claimed that their Wi-Fi had been piggybacked by persons unknown but the music industry didn’t care. Rather like the lawyers chasing the UK’s alleged pinball pirates, they asserted that an Internet subscriber is responsible for what others do on their connection, and it was up to the women to prove that they had not shared music with others. The court didn’t agree and acquitted the women of all charges.

Lawyer Per Overbeck told Ritzau: “It is an unusually clear and precise judgement. It is the plaintiff, who has the burden of proof. Many who have received letters with claims have been given the impression that they were required to pay. But we now have the court’s word for that, they do not [have to pay]. It is not enough to say that you are guilty of piracy due to owning a particular Internet access point.”

Piratgruppen, a pro-sharing group and antithesis of Antipiratgruppen, was delighted with the verdict, with spokesman Sebastian Gjerding inviting the anti-piracy outfit to drop all claims of compensation against file-sharers.

“They can not continue to send these demands to people. Antipiratgruppen and the IFPI should send an apology instead. It is an absurd claim that an Internet subsciber must take responsibility for the actions of others. Many networks can be attacked and abused.”

Antipiratgruppen, on the other hand, thinks this is a bad decision by the court and refuses to send out apologies. Their lawyer, Torben Steffensen, says this is a matter for the Supreme Court to decide. “We do not believe that this law is appropriate and we disagree with this decision,” he said. “There should be a law that protects artists from losing income due to piracy. Therefore we would like to have the Supreme Court deal with the issue.”

However, lawyers for the two women doubt the case will end up in the Supreme Court, since a lower court and now the High Court has ruled in the same way – it is the plaintiff who has the burden of proof.

There was a similar decision in Germany recently, and if Topware Interactive and Davenport Lyons have the guts to take on a defendant in the UK who actually fights back with a ‘wireless defense‘, there could be one there too:

“The onus is on the party bringing the action to convince the court on a balance of probabilities that the person being sued is responsible for the infringement,” says Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with prominent law firm Pinsent Masons. “The legal wrong isn’t that you left your network open, it’s the file-sharing.”

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