Another case ended in victory for the music group in 2008, with a blockade of The Pirate Bay the end result.

In 2011 the music industry looked to expand its list of blocked domains by using anti-piracy group Rettigheds Alliancen (Rights Alliance) to attack US-based streaming service Grooveshark via the courts. A matter of months later the coalition of 30 rightsholders prevailed in a case in which Grooveshark took no part.

While the entertainment industries are now well capable of obtaining blocking injunctions against pirate sites, each action has to be targeted at a specific service provider. That means that while an injunction might be issued against one ISP, rival ISPs are free to carry on providing access.

This week, however, all that changed.

Following negotiations with anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the telecommunications industry in Denmark has signed a Code of Conduct which will ensure that blockades are put in place country-wide.

The agreement ensures that when a court issues an injunction against a single ISP ordering it to implement DNS blocking against a ‘pirate’ site, within days all rival ISPs will voluntarily implement a similar blockade.

Speaking for the telecoms sector, Jakob Willer of Tele Industrien said that industry-wide regulation will support the growth of authorized services.

“In the telecommunications industry, we find it important to ensure rapid and effective implementation of regulatory decisions across the entire industry. It is also important to ensure the development of legitimate online services, where consumers can find what they are looking for and the artists can get paid for what they have created,” Willer said.

Rights Alliance chief Maria Fredenslund is pleased with the agreement which will assist her group and its members to more easily block ‘pirate’ sites at the ISP level. Under the Code of Conduct, ISPs will block domains within seven days of another provider being issued with an injunction.

Commenting on the agreement, Minister for Culture Marianne Jelved said that it’s important for rightsholders to have tools at their disposal when they feel that their music, movies and books are being used online without their permission.

“I am glad that the copyright holders and telecommunications companies in this area are working together to ensure that we have the most creative and legal digital content. The new Code of Conduct is an important step in this effort,” Jelved said.

The Code of Conduct also allows for expanded blocking if ‘pirate’ sites move to new IP addresses or domains. However, the code states that should wrongful blocking occur due to rightsholder error, then the rightsholders will be liable to the ISPs for any financial costs incurred.

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

As a result, during the past several years many file-sharers were targeted by anti-piracy groups looking to send a message to the masses. And with government providing additional funding, increasingly police became involved in joint operations.

After a period of dealing with smaller cases, Swedish police have just charged a man for illegally making available large amounts of copyrighted material. According to their intellectual property division, the suspect “intentionally or by gross negligence” unlawfully made films available on 2,250 occasions.

The police add that the individual acted “in consultation or concert with other persons, supplied, installed, programmed, maintained, funded and otherwise administered and managed” the file-sharing network from where the infringements were carried out.

The charges are the result of an investigation initially carried out by Rights Alliance, the anti-piracy group previously known as Antipiratbyran. It’s been revealed they’re representing six major studios in the case, so the usual Hollywood giants will be directly involved.

Few additional details have been made public but after contacting lawyer Henrik Pontén at Rights Alliance, TorrentFreak has learned that the charges relate to a raid carried out in 2010 against “The Scene”, the collection of servers and individuals which inhabit the top of the so-called piracy pyramid.

The case involves a so-called ‘topsite’ known as ‘Devil’ which at the time was claimed to carry between 200 and 250 terabytes of media. During the raid, which according to Scene sources took place December 15, 2010, police seized a dozen servers and detained one person.

In press releases following the police action it was claimed that the man was responsible for the unauthorized distribution of “tens of thousands” of mainly Hollywood movies. Those estimates appear to have been rounded down.

An element of the case that remains a mystery for now surrounds the prosecution’s current claims that the man made the movies available “to the public”. Topsites tend not to deliberately distribute movies outside of their immediate circles for security reasons.

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

Speaking with Norway’s Aftenposten, Rights Alliance chairman Willy Johansen now confirms that his group will file a case at the Oslo District Court within a few weeks with the aim of having the country’s ISPs block The Pirate Bay and other similar sites.

Johansen says Rights Alliance has already written to the ISP Telenor with a list of sites it wants blocked. He wouldn’t reveal any other contents of the letter but as expected Telenor isn’t going to do anything voluntarily.

“We can not act as a court or a police authority to act for third parties who want sites to be closed. We will only deal with a court decision,” Telenor’s Jørn Bremtun said in a statement.

New legislation in Norwary does allow for the blocking of sites, but cases have to be taken to court in order to balance copyright protection with freedom of information.

“When [the ISPs] will not block voluntarily, we must prove the illegality of the different sites,” Johansen said.

Rights Alliance hope to do that during the summer with a decision from the Court expected in the fall.

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