Their efforts caused immediate controversy when it was discovered that the campaign site, which depicted a Pirate Bay-style ship sinking into the sea, had been constructed with components ripped from The Pirate Bay itself. To use a turn of phrase preferred by the copyright industries, it was a product of “stolen” content.

This apparent double standard caused headlines around the world which only intensified after The Pirate Bay mockingly threatened to sue, CIAPC said bring it on, and the whole thing ended up in police threats.

A couple of months on and the entertainment industry anti-piracy group have just revealed how pleased they are with the results of their efforts.

“The publicity campaign exceeded CIAPC’s expectations. In less than two months we have received visits from an average of 5,000 people a day, a total of more than 200,000 unique visitors,” CIAPC reveal.

But interestingly and despite its reported success, CIAPC say they have taken the decision to terminate the campaign and replace it with another. The image below shows their new effort.

CIAPC say their ‘movie poster’ is designed to sum up the past few months of news – illegal pirate sites profiting from advertising revenue and running away more often due to mounting problems – although the picture seems to depict a laptop with the screen broken away.

Nevertheless, The Pirate Bay has indeed had more problems than most. The site, its former owners, affiliated connectivity providers and ISPs providing user access to the torrent site have lost countless court battles in recent years. It’s been one disappointment after another.

But while none of these setbacks can be denied, it is also evident that The Pirate Bay is operating in a new mode and mindset, where court battles, endless paperwork and propaganda campaigns against them do little to change the position on the ground. The site is up, running and doing the same work as it always has done.

So the arguments continue, largely around whether the efforts against the world’s most famous torrent site are damaging to the extent the anti-piracy groups claim.

CIAPC say that following their successful legal action to have the site blocked by local ISPs Elisa, TeliaSonera and DNA, between January 2012 and January 2013 visitors to The Pirate Bay from Finland were reduced by a massive 81%.

This figure is an interesting one. The three ISPs now blocking TPB have a market share of around 80%, so on face value CIAPC are sort of telling the truth, but it’s not the whole truth.

TorrentFreak spoke to The Pirate Bay who told us that direct traffic to the site from Finland did indeed drop significantly. CIAPC, however, are deliberately missing out other problematic factors. The Pirate Bay spokesman told us that many Finns have probably switched to using proxy sites.

So how many might that be? Precise figures are unavailable, but the graph below shows the times during last year when Finnish Google users became most interested in the search term “pirate bay proxy”. It will come as no surprise that Elisa implemented their block in January and the other ISPs began blocking mid year.

These are just searches though, so how many are successful in getting through?

According to stats from Alexa, ThePirateBay.se is the 111th most popular domain in Finland. To compare, Vimeo is 109th, YouPorn is 144th, Torrentz is 146th and isoHunt 169th, none of which are blocked.

There can be little doubt that Finns are getting through in large numbers. If they aren’t and 80% of the problem really has been removed, surely we can expect The Pirate Bay to fall out of the headlines as a significant problem for the entertainment companies in Finland.

Yeah, kun lehmät lentävät….

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

The outfit that brought the actions is known as Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC). Better known locally as TTVK, this anti-piracy group also successfully forced Finnish ISP Elisa to block The Pirate Bay.

TTVK also track individual file-sharers in pursuit of cash settlements but according to one of their employees who worked in anti-piracy tracking, he had less than optimum confidence in their operations.

MikroPC quotes a statement given to the police by Jaakko Nurmela, a man who worked at TTVK as a file-sharing investigator.

“I did not receive all the training I asked for,” said Nurmela, adding that he couldn’t be sure if the results being produced by the company’s surveillance software were correct. As highlighted in yesterday’s report, innocent people have been wrongfully accused.

Furthermore, Nurmela said he refused to sign a witness statement on behalf of the anti-piracy group because its lawyers interfered with his statement so much he felt that in the end it was no longer his testimony.

“Originally it was supposed to be a nearly 50-page report, where the whole thing was to be described and explained,” said Nurmela. “What I wrote was my opinion, but the main structure and all additions, modifications and edits came from [TTVK Managing Director] Antti Kotilainen and [TTVK lawyer] Jaana Pihkala. In fact, I felt that it was no longer my statement anymore, so I refused to sign it.”

Nurmela also gave some insight into how investigators like him gain access to private Direct Connect sharing hubs similar to the ones ran by the two men at the start of this article.

Usually hubs like these will insist that new members are only accepted if they are prepared to share lots of their own material too. The theory here is two fold – 1) that the range of material available on the hub will increase and 2) people sharing illicit files will also get themselves into trouble should they be an undercover investigator.

Nurmela was clearly concerned about his personal exposure in this respect and asked TTVK to get him written permission to share copyrighted files in order to do his undercover work. None was forthcoming and he was simply told to go ahead and no cases against him would ever enter a courtroom.

So here was a man sharing huge numbers of files on a criminal scale, with a private company telling him not to worry since basically they control who does and who doesn’t potentially face jail and huge fines. Joonas Mäkinen of Finland’s Pirate Party isn’t impressed with Nurmela’s revelations.

“I can say that it is extremely interesting – and unforgivable – that the people who so vigorously watch after copyright infringements on the internet with the mandate of collecting organisations, the entertainment industry and thus indirectly that of the artists and creators, are doing this while lacking understanding of the very technology they are supposed to be using,” Mäkinen told TorrentFreak.

TTVK counter by noting that anyone wrongfully accused has the right to complain and they will see to it that an investigation is launched.

“It is good to hear that TTVK does in fact have some sort of process to handle totally misdirected cases but that doesn’t take away one of the main problems that a private organization is obtaining the personal information of internet users,” Mäkinen concludes.

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

Two individuals from Finland have just learned this the hard way. Their cases, relating to offenses carried out in 2007 when they operated a pair of Direct Connect hubs, have just been concluded and to say their punishments are harsh is an understatement.

A 36-year-old man was sentence to four months in prison accompanied by a huge 326,734 euro ($432,955) rightsholder compensation bill, and a 22-year-old received one of 220,077 euros ($291,625). Both appear to have been treated in court as file-sharing site operators (the former stood accused of operating a 130TB hub) even though setting up and managing a Direct Connect hub requires no website and is easy as running a piece of software on a home machine.

The original complaint against the men was brought by the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC). Known locally as TTVK, this anti-piracy group is currently trying to make life difficult for The Pirate Bay.

But tracking large-scale file-sharers and hounding huge torrent site operators is not the only anti-piracy technique currently being employed by CIAPC. According to a MikroPC report (Finnish), they are also pursuing the average Internet user for cash settlements too, sometimes in error.

One individual told the site that his wife had received a letter from CIAPC stating that she had been caught sharing 5,000 songs online and was being given two options – settle for cash or face the case going to court. Upon investigation, however, the allegation proved problematic.

The IP address identified by CIAPC had been passed to the supposed infringer’s ISP, which by coincidence happened to be Elisa, the service provider that was recently forced by CIAPC to block The Pirate Bay. Elisa used their databases to match the IP address to a subscriber, but something went wrong. One theory is that the IP address had been recently transferred to a new customer, but in any event the wrong person was issued with a cash demand.

CIAPC’s Executive Director, Antti Kotilainen, insists that this type of error is rare.

“In 99 per cent of cases, people acknowledge on receipt of the letter that they have distributed files illegally. If there is uncertainty the issue is investigated,” he explains.

Kotilainen says that cash settlement letters are only sent out to around 100 Internet users per year but the settlement demands can be huge, ranging from a few thousand euros to tens of thousands. Larger cases are handed to the police and as demonstrated by the cases of the two men above, although rare the punishments can be extremely harsh.

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

According to reports a woman from the Pohjanmaa region was astonished to receive a threatening letter last New Year’s Eve from Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC). The group, known locally as TTVK, claimed that the woman had been tracked sharing unauthorized files online and the only way to make the case go away would be the payment of a 6,000 euro settlement.

The woman is vigorously protesting her innocence.

“I have not used any such [file-sharing] programs at all,” she told Helsingin Sanomat.

However, what makes this case interesting is that not only does the woman believe that someone used her WiFi connection without her permission, but it’s acknowledged that whoever did so was actually only sharing illicit files online for just 10 minutes – that’s a 600 euro fine per minute.

“That’s the most expensive ten minutes of Internet use we’ve ever heard of,” Joonas Mäkinen of Finland’s Pirate Party told TorrentFreak.

“The problems here are numerous,” Mäkinen continued. “Not to mention the idea that a mere third-party NGO obtains private details of an ISPs customer, the owner of the network should by no means be responsible for the actions of users. This threatens the assumption of innocence and neutrality of service providers.”

Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFI) lawyer Ville Oksanen agrees.

“Open network owners are not responsible for other users’ activities,” says Oksanen.

Nevertheless, there are concerns that if the woman in this case is found guilty by a court then the presumption in future could be that open WiFi operators can be held responsible for the actions of their users.

CIAPC Managing Director Antti Kotilainen refused to comment on individual cases but insists that his group does not proceed with wrongful cases.

“If it can be shown that the challenge is unfounded, we do not take further action,” he said.

While Kotilainen’s comment may seem reassuring, the woman with a 6,000 euro settlement demand doesn’t appear to be reassured.

“The other party [TTVK] refused to negotiate on this issue,” she says

Kotilainen says that in 2010 TTVK sent out around 100 similar settlement letters, an amount set to be doubled this year.

Separately, CIAPC is continuing its efforts to have The Pirate Bay censored in Finland.

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