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.

Five years on things are really improving, but the same cannot be said about its citizens’ access to international media products.

For reasons best known to Apple, Icelanders have no access to iTunes. In fact the company doesn’t directly sell iPhones to Iceland so people have to obtain them through resellers. If locals want access to content through Netflix and even Amazon, well, they can think again.

Of course, faced with this dearth of availability it comes as little surprise that there are plenty of services around that seek to solve the problem. Googling “VPN Iceland Netflix” produces dozens of results from international outfits but it is a new product from a local company that’s currently causing waves.

The product is the brainchild of Icelandic telecoms company Tal, who are now offering what they call their Lúxusnet package. Among other things it allows customers to access sites outside Iceland by exchanging a local IP address for an international one.

“We want an Internet that is open and accessible to all, no matter where in the world they are born or residing. We want things to be simple and easy to use so that you can do what you really want. Therefore, we have added a little luxury to your network,” the company explains.

While Icelanders will no doubt be pleased at the prospect of accessing content from services such as Netflix and Hulu, a local anti-piracy outfit has rather a different attitude.

Founded 20 years ago, the MPA-affiliated Association of Film Rights-Holders of Iceland (SMÁÍS) represents the interests of local and international movie companies. It says that the service being offered by Tal is illegal. Tal, on the other hand, think that they are offering a tool and how that tool is used is down to the user.

“The use of foreign content providers and websites is always the responsibility of the customer,” said Tal director Petreu Ingileifar Guðmundsdóttur in a comment.

According to the anti-piracy group, this attempt at shifting liability away from the ISP and onto the customer simply doesn’t wash.

“This argument does not hold, either morally or legally, in our opinion,” says SMÁÍS general manager Snæbjörn Steingrímsson. “In fact, we hear this exact same argument about torrent-sites.”

SMÁÍS insist that Tal’s product (and another similar one offered by Flix.is) are tools designed to circumvent technical measures (in this case geo-blocking mechanisms) put in place to protect copyright, which are illegal under local law.

“We are very surprised that a great company such as Tal is offering this sort of thing, but we will challenge them and Flix.is too,” Snæbjörn says.

According to local media SMÁÍS will try to get Tal to cooperate but in parallel preparations are being made to take the case to the police.

“This is like saying people can buy contraband goods legally as long as they come to this country legally,” Snæbjörn concludes. “There is no commercial or other economic activity in Iceland that could survive against such competition.”

It is of course interesting that SMÁÍS cites circumvention issues as the basis for its complaint but ends up talking about competition.

One of the anti piracy group’s most prominent members is a company called 365 Media, who just happen to be Iceland’s largest television, radio and publications giant. For a company that supplies movies to locals at premium prices, the prospect of competition from Netflix and Hulu at much more competitive U.S. rates will no doubt be proving less than attractive.

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 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.

However, justice works swifter in Iceland than it does in the US, and after only 4 months, the case has been to court.

The decision, however, was as surprising as it was swift. Instead of deciding for or against the defendants, the court simply dismissed the case. It is likely, however, that the plaintiffs will appeal the decision to the Icelandic ‘Supreme Court’ (Hæstiréttur).

The verdict, (available in Icelandic here) seems to hinge on the fact that under Icelandic laws, searching for files, or providing accessibility to them, is legal, as long as the files provided by the service are not themselves copyrighted. Torrent files, are not themselves copyrighted, but are instead metadata , data about data- describing copyrighted material, as indeed are reviews.

Svavar Lúthersson, owner of torrents.is, told TorrentFreak in a response to the court ruling “I’m very glad they came to this decision although it came as a surprise for myself and the plaintiffs. I will have to consult with my lawyer as to what this decision means regarding the preliminary injunction but currently it’s still in effect.”

The preliminary injunction seems likely to stay in effect until an appeal is heard, so the site won’t be back up yet. However, the plaintiffs were ordered to pay the court costs of Istorrent ehf (Pltd), the company behind Torrent.is, and its owner Svavar Lúthersson in the amount of 500,000 Icelandic Krona (approx £3320UK / $6700US / €4250 Euro)

SMÁÍS was asked for their comment on the ruling, but their contact email address was automatically bouncing as failed.

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