The report is produced by the UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office and provides an overview of recent achievements and current challenges in the fight against piracy and counterfeiting. Increasingly, these threats are coming from the Internet.

“One of the key features in this year’s report is the continuing trend that the Internet is a major facilitator of IP crime,” the Crime Group writes.

The report notes that as in previous years, Hollywood-funded industry group FACT remains one of the key drivers of anti-piracy efforts in the UK. Over the past year they’ve targeted alleged pirate sites though various channels, including their hosting providers.

Not all hosts are receptive to FACT’s complaints though, and convincing companies that operate abroad is often a challenge. This includes the United States where the majority of the investigated sites are hosted.

“Only 14% of websites investigated by FACT are hosted in the UK. While it is possible to contact the hosts of these websites, there still remains a considerable number of copyright infringing websites that are hosted offshore and not within the jurisdiction of the UK.”

“Analysis has shown that the three key countries in which content is hosted are the UK, the USA and Canada. However, Investigating servers located offshore can cause specific problems for FACT’s law enforcement partners,” the report notes.

The figure above comes as a bit of a surprise, as one would expect that United States authorities and industry groups would have been keeping their own houses in order.

Just a few months ago the US-based IIPA, which includes MPAA and RIAA as members, called out Canada because local hosting providers are “a magnet” for pirate sites. However, it now appears they have still plenty of work to do inside U.S. borders.

But even when hosting companies are responsive to complaints from rightsholders the problem doesn’t always go away. The report mentions that most sites simply move on to another host, and continue business as usual there.

“In 2013, FACT closed a website after approaching the hosting provider on 63 occasions. Although this can be a very effective strategy, in most instances the website is swiftly transferred onto servers owned by another ISP, often located outside the UK.”

While downtime may indeed be relatively brief the report claims that it may still hurt the site, as visitors may move on to other legitimate or illegitimate sources.

“The [moving] process usually involves a disruptive period of time whereby the website is offline, during which users will often find an alternative service, thus negatively affecting the website’s popularity.”

While hosting companies remain a main target, tackling the online piracy problem requires a multi-layered approach according to the UK Crime Group.

With the help of local law enforcement groups such as City of London’s PIPCU, copyright holders have rolled out a variety of anti-piracy measures in recent months. This includes domain name suspensions, cutting off payment processors and ad revenue, website blocking by ISPs and criminal prosecutions.

These and other efforts are expected to continue during the years to come. Whether that will be enough to put a real dent in piracy rates has yet to be seen.

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

The Massachusetts Pirate Party – one of the few that has managed to negotiate the US’s labyrinthine laws to become registered – is allowed to collect Bitcoin donations.

A few days ago the Pirates received a response back from the Director of the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF).

“A political committee can accept contributions in Bitcoins,” it said, marking a strong positive for the use of the cryptocurrency. However, the Bitcoin blessing is not without its share of restrictions.

As with any other donation, Bitcoins can only come from a US citizen or permanent resident and there is an annual limit of $500 per person.

In addition, within five days the Bitcoins have to be converted into US dollars “through a high-volume public Bitcoin exchange open to transactions in the US.”

Another restriction is that the Pirate Party cannot spend the Bitcoins themselves. In this, it’s considered no different from stocks and shares.

Perhaps less favored by potential Bitcoin donors is the requirement to have an accurate name and residential address for every donation. This is somewhat of a blow for its advocates, but standard procedure for political contributions.

Now that the approval is in, the Massachusetts Pirate Party aim to be ready to accept donations in Bitcoin within the next two weeks.

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

In 1984, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 5-4 that the Sony Betamax recorder was legal, due to its significant non-infringing uses. This led to the consumer entertainment revolution of the last 30 years.

Everything from DVRs to tablets to MP3 players were made possible. Even the camera in your cellphone owes its existence to that ruling, as otherwise the ability to produce a copy of a copyrighted work (even of degraded quality) would have been enough to scupper its production.

Of the Betamax debate, however, the bit most people recall came from Congressional testimony some two years earlier, with MPAA President Jack Valenti telling Congress how the machine was ‘the Boston Strangler’ of the industry.

What most don’t remember though is that it was only one of four arguments made at the time. He also argued that the movie business was a really risky one, and that VCRs would impact the already tough advertising business. Additionally, machines made overseas would kill the US economy because of imports. And of course, OMG PIRATES!!!!!!!

So, how true were those claims? Sure the US economy’s pretty bad, but overseas electronics are not really a factor in that. Indeed, domestic production of machines to compete would probably have started before Valenti’s speech if it weren’t for… Valenti and his ilk. It happened later with MP3 players too, with the threats over the Diamond Rio in 1998 delaying their introduction.

What about advertising? Since we’ve had fast-forward buttons for 30+ years, all adverts are gone, right? No, as most people know, Google makes a fortune from adverts, even skippable and blockable ones. Sure some are made unskippable, but that’s only in the last few years – they could be sped-through at will during most of the 90s. It’s yet another non-starter argument.

How about the Risky Business part? Well, there’s another name for ‘risky business’, it’s called ‘business’. All businesses are a risk and most don’t last a year. And here the movie studios have not done themselves any favors over the past thirty years. While blockbuster films like ET, Ghostbusters and Superman III hovered at $30-40 million dollar budgets in the early 80s, the likes of Man of Steel and Iron Man 3 now cost more than $200Million. The first rule of pleading poverty is don’t massively increase your risk and spending. Not that they’ve had it so bad, with record year after record year.

Finally, how’s that piracy angle? Well, let’s start with VCRs themselves. Back in 1987 we had video sales surpassing the box office for studio income, so it doesn’t seem to have hurt them there. In fact, once they were resigned to it, it took them only four years to turn things around.

So what about the wider economy? Everyone remember the much maligned MPAA LEK study, that claimed piracy cost the world economy $6.1Billion in 2006? Well, Blockbuster, a company that existed ONLY because of the Betamax decision, had revenues of $5.5Billion in 2006. In other words, a loss to the economy the MPAA almost certainly exaggerated was almost wiped out by JUST ONE company that the MPAA almost prevented from existing.

To call Blockbuster the only beneficiary of the Betamax decision is short-sighted. US sales for that same year in ‘home video’ were another $5.4 billion just across the top 100 titles. Now anti-piracy activism looks a little short-sighted.

When you look back on all this and what that decision by the SCOTUS meant 30 years ago, there’s certainly something to worry about when it comes to further restrictions. Just these two things alone made a TEN BILLION DOLLAR increase to the US economy in one year, which would have been lost if the judges had listened to the same people whining about a $6 billion worldwide loss.

With that in perspective, any future claims of loss and damages should certainly be considered with a pinch of salt. Meanwhile it’s a happy 30th to the Betamax decision.

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

The Democrat party is, more often, the party of Hollywood, and so it’s no surprise to see them enacting holly-wood favorable legislation. President Obama is also a big music fan, and has drawn many big names in that industry as supporters too. As such, what can we expect from the 113^th Congress?

First, let’s take a quick look at SOPA. Introduced by Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tx21) in 2011.

SOPA may come around again, as the 64yo keeps his seat with 60.6% of the vote. Nor is it the only internet law proposed by him in this last Congress. He also authored the heavily criticized “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act” requiring ISPs to retain more information on subscribers, for any use by government.

Of the initial SOPA 12 co-sponsors most kept their seats, with three exceptions, all in California. Elton Gallegly did not stand for re-election. Meanwhile two names regular readers are sure to recognize are on the chopping block as well.

First Mary Bono-Mack (R-Ca36), Sonny Bono’s widow who inherited his seat. She pushed strongly for the Sonny Bono Copyright term extinction in 98, adding another 20 years to its length. In a close election, she appears to have lost, provisionally, getting 48.6% to her Democratic challengers 51.4%.

However, the big news is the Howard Berman is out. Often referred to as ‘The Gentleman from Hollywood’, he was pitted against fellow democrat and SOPA sponsor Brad Sherman in California’s 30^th district. Sherman won with 60.5% to Berman’s 39.5%. Berman was also a major driving force behind ACTA and the earlier P2P Piracy Protection Act of 2002 (with Rep. Smith), and other similar legislation.

Of the additional 19 sponsors the bill picked up, another 3 are not coming back in January. Rep. Joe Baca lost the 35^th district of California to another democrat, while Tim Holden [D-Pa17) and Benjamin Quayle (R-Az3) lost in their primaries; both also withdrew their sponsorship in Mid-January.

On the PIPA side, there’s less change, mainly because Senate terms are 6 years, with only 33% being elected each time. Out of Bill sponsor Patrick Lehy (D-Vt) and the 32 co-sponsors, 21(including Leahy), were not up for election.

Of the remaining 14, three did not run for election – Bingaman (D-Nm), Kohl (D-Wi), Lieberman (I-Ct) – while the other 9 retained their seats. However, it was not east for some, including Sherrod Brown (D-Oh) with only 50.3% and Bob Casey, Jr (D-Pa) with 53.6%. Many more stunts like this could see them lose their seats in another 6 years.

So, will there be another SOPA/PIPA? Possibly. The Hollywood reporter suggests that it will be one of the first items on Hollywood’s agenda, and was foiled mainly due to Silicon Valley. Completely ignoring the fact that co-sponsors of both bills withdrew over public sentiment.

If the US Congress does decide to undertake another monumentally stupid act though, you’ll hear about it here, on TorrentFreak.

Note: All results are still provisional, until the results are certified by the appropriate authorities

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

The video, showing President Obama singing “Let’s Stay Together” mixed with references to lobbyists, was hit with a DMCA notice from “BMG_Rights_Management”.

The video was hit by a DMCA notice Monday night, less than 12 hours after being released. Opinion on the takedown is mixed, with ArsTechnica opining that the video was probably fair use, a position the Romney campaign holds.

However, as it was a formal notice, even if successfully contended, it will be more than a week before the video can be restored, long after the ‘news cycle’ has moved on to other stories.

It’s far from the first time that takedown notices have been used in such an abusive process, helped mainly by the way penalties for misuse of the DMCA have been completely ignored. Nor is it the first time that a Republican Presidential Candidate has had copyright issues. 4 years ago Sen. John McCain had a number of brushes with infringement (despite being backed by the RIAA CEO).

Then again, If Romney wins it is unlikely that he will remember the ways copyright laws have been abused to stifle speech.

But will his administration be as bad as Obama’s has been so far?

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

The Supreme Court has refused to hear his case. While this is not the be-all-and-end-all for the case, it’s another roadblock.

At issue was the matter of excessive damages, specifically the statutory damages that allow for between $750-$150,000 per infringement.

In their brief, Tenenbaum’s lawyer is reported by the Boston Globe as saying “This pernicious interpretation of the Copyright Act transforms every bit of cyberspace into a potentially exploding lawsuit and is sparking the development of a spam-litigation industry”. He is, of course, referring to the many copyright trolls we’ve covered in recent weeks and months.

Regardless, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, without comment.

Meanwhile the case is not over. The sole issue being referred to the Supreme Court was the constitutionality of the damages, not the merits of the case in any form.

The trial judge had already reduced the damages awarded to $65,000 before having it restored by the 1^st US Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Nancy Gertner could still reduce the damages again, but in doing so the RIAA and it’s member studios can ask for a retrial. This has happened twice with Jammie Thomas in a similar case. It’s an option Tenenbaum has expressed support for in the past.

Who knows when this case, which started in 2004, will end, and how much more court time will be taken up .

Meanwhile, the real winners are the lawyers for the RIAA (and to a lesser extend the government), racking up fee’s despite having a poor record of getting any kind of money for artists.

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

The party gained official recognition at the end of February, when its 50 supporters were verified by the state, allowing it to run candidates, and for voters to label themselves under the pirate name.

However, the party is not a member of the US pirate party, and takes a stance closer to that of the Swedish party rather than the less restrictive positions of many other parties.

The party is headed by James O’Keefe, who, like other successful pirate politicians (such as Christian Engstrom) has previously run for office with other parties. O’Keefe ran for State Treasurer in both 2002 and 2006 with the Green Party, coming in second in 2006 with 322,000 votes (16%).

Their Party’s website is at http://www.masspirates.org

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

“I was tired of seeing those claims on every press release,” he tells TorrentFreak, “knowing there was no evidence to back them up. They could have said that the loss was $20 billion, if they think they could bluff it out. The sad fact is that we have news outlets, and politicians quoting this figure as fact, and yet not one verified any claim. If I said I could turn lead into gold, I would be bombarded with requests to prove it. They have turned air into $6billion, and supposedly smart people accept it without question.”

Frustrated, Norton decided he should study the MPAA’s own figures. When he couldn’t find any data to support their claims, he decided that there needed to be a study of the data the MPAA did put out. “I was thinking about where I could look, when the MPAA announced a new record year, and I thought ‘of course’. The MPAA can hardly question the accuracy of the data published by its members, and itself.”

The preliminary findings of the study, published today, show a different picture to the one the MPAA paints. Norton took the view that the films most likely to be distributed on filesharing networks, and sold on street corners, would be the big blockbuster films, and so he should look at the top 10 films of each year. The results from that are shown below.

With average growth throughout the time period, it would seem that claims of cinema piracy hurting box office figures (leading to cinemas issuing night vision goggles to staff, and teenagers being charged with crimes for recording 20-second clips) are unfounded. When certain p2p protocol lifespans are marked on the graph, for comparison, the MPAA claims are pretty much shattered.

Mr. Norton is also aware that he will have to prove he is not just making things up. The US Pirate Party, who is publishing the study, has stated that all data used in the study will be available when the full study will published at the end of July. He does have a comment for the MPAA however. “Prove your claims, or shut up about them.”

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

At a preview of his new Change Congress project at the ETech conference, the Creative Commons founder responded to a question about the US Pirate Party, saying “I’m skeptical of the utility of something like the Pirate Party in the United States.” He went on to comment about the naming, referring to the ‘honest business fighting illegitimate thieves‘ battle that Hollywood portrays with “Call your party the Pirate Party, and you’ll reinforce that. The branding is not one that I would embrace here in the United States.”

Naturally, the Pirate Party of the US disagrees. “As a professor, he should know better than to advocate judging a book by it’s cover” says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party. “It’s also unusual that the man that fought Hollywood’s increase of copyright, should find fault with a party that only seeks to represent the general public, and what better title than the name that Hollywood is using for all citizens.” referring to a recent study,(pdf) which suggested that everyone violates copyright, and are thus pirates, every day.

“It may, however, be that he feels since we are called ‘The Pirate Party’, that at some point we may advocate Piracy, or at least copyright infringement. We do not, and will not, promote the breaking of any law, criminal or civil,” added Norton. “We, like Prof. Lessig, stand squarely behind the political process, and hope that people will use their ability to vote, to vote for the candidates they want, rather than the so-called ‘tactical voting’ which has turned current US politics into the sham it is. In this, we are willing and eager to work with the Change Congress campaign in any way we can.”

These sentiments regarding the political process in the US have suddenly come to a head, with Independent Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader condemning the current political setup. On an appearance on the hugely popular Daily Show Tuesday, he commented “The two parties have shut out the people in Washington. It’s corporate occupied territory.”

He later went on to comment about how the two parties have rigged things so it’s hard for any other party to even get on the ballot, which the Pirate Party knows only too well. “Many states bury their party registration requirements in vast amounts of legalese,” says Norton. “Other states don’t publish it clearly, and don’t respond to requests for information on it. Government is supposed to exist for the benefit of the people, but right now, it’s benefiting the lawyers, and those that can pay for them.”

Can Lessig really ‘Change Congress’? It all depends if he will see past names, to the actual issues they hide.

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

It seems then, that instead of hiring, or listening to people who will tell them the truth, or at least explain what happens in a way they can understand, they listen to lobbyists who tell them a bunch of lies, and hand over some cash to ‘prove it’s true’. There can be little other reason for the actions of Congressman Howard L. Berman at a recent US Chamber of Commerce panel on ‘antipiracy’ held in Hollywood.

Variety is reporting that at the end of this get together, Berman promised legislation that will require ISPs to send warning letters to their users, if they access ‘pirated content’. He has reportedly said he’ll introduce legislation to this effect soon, maybe next month.

Now, whilst Congressman Berman is in some ways being a good politician, and representing his constituents (his district covers Hollywood) in this he will be acting in no-one’s best interests, except those of the rights-holding clearing houses. This scheme differs only slightly from the current questionable practice of sending letters, or filing John Doe suits, and attempting to intimidate regular citizens into paying large sums of money, by making the ISPs send the letters out automatically, without a rights holder noticing, and collecting evidence.

There are some problems, however, with the basic feasibility of this scheme. They are:

1. There is no easy way to tell if data being transmitted via a protocol such as bit-torrent, is protected by copyright at all
2. There is then no way to tell if the data is being transmitted by the rights holder, or with their permission.
3. Even if the data is copyrighted, and without the rights-holder’s permission, it may still fall under fair use.
4. ISPs are having enough problems with network capacity. To then have to devote more money and manpower to this will reduce further their ability to expand their services to cope with the latest demands.
5. Finally, since at least 95% of all material on the net is copyrighted to someone; it will take only a day or so before every net subscriber has acquired enough letters to warrant disconnecting their service.

Eric Clifford, founder of Fair Use day likened such legislation to “an information police state”. He then added, “what happens if I access my music files at home remotely?”

Of course, such a system would only work if everyone only used sequential, single-source, plain text data streams. Any requirement for ISPs to be able to monitor usage in the way Berman wants, would have to require this, and so it makes online identity theft easy and simple , no encryption, nothing from multiple sources, or out of order. In short, he wants to cripple one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century, in order to preserve the 1970s business practices of some parasitic middlemen, whose entire reason for being is to make money off other people’s creative efforts. Rep. Berman, for your own sake, fire the fools advising you of things like this, and start listening to someone who knows what they’re talking about.

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