The follow-up debacle involving ACS:Law was widely documented, with owner Andrew Crossley being forced to close down his business after being suspended by the Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority for misconduct. After misleading the courts, bankruptcy was just the icing on the cake.

None of this was a deterrent to porn outfit GoldenEye International. They embarked on a similar scheme, sending letters to alleged file-sharers and demanding hundreds of pounds in settlements to make supposed lawsuits go away. However, GoldenEye learned from its predecessors by proceeding with caution and staying largely under the radar. But quite predictably and despite legal bluster and empty threats, the company took not a single case to court.

So today, quite possibly due to the tendency of the public to pay up rather than become linked with embarrassing porn movie titles, the porn trolls are back once again in the UK.

TorrentFreak has learned that last year four porn producers teamed up in an effort to force ISP Virgin Media to hand over the names and addresses of more than 1,500 subscribers said to have downloaded and shared adult content without permission.

The companies, none of which appear to be based in the UK, teamed up with Wagner & Co, the London lawfirm also working with GoldenEye. They are Mircom International Content Management & Consulting Ltd, Sunlust Pictures, Combat Zone Corporation and Pink Bonnet, Consultores de Imagem LDA.

Mircom International Content Management & Consulting Ltd are active in Europe, particularly when it comes to demanding cash settlements from alleged file-sharers in Germany. Sunlust Pictures is an adult movie company founded in 2009 by former porn actress Sunny Leone, who – entirely unsurprisingly – has featured in copyright trolling cases in the United States. Combat Zone Corporation is an adult movie company based in California. They’re no strangers to the cash settlement model either.

TorrentFreak contacted Mark Wagner at Wagner & Co to find out what his clients hope to achieve in the UK, but unfortunately our emails went unanswered. The company doesn’t appear to have a working website and its address relates to a house in residential area.

Fortunately, Virgin Media were rather more accommodating. In the past the ISP has been criticized for not doing more to protect its subscribers’ personal details but it turns out the battle with Wagner & Co has been going on for some time.

“We have contested the validity of Wagner & Co’s claims (ongoing for 12 months), asking the Judge to thoroughly review the application and the supporting evidence. We have challenged the reliability of the software used to obtain evidence of infringement (FileWatchBT) and the accuracy of the data collected,” spokesperson Emma Hutchinson told TF.

But despite Virgin Media’s efforts the High Court took the decision to side with Wagner & Co and order the ISP to hand over the details of its subscribers. While the situation is pretty grim, things could have been worse.

“The original request was for double the number of addresses than we have been forced to disclose, now fewer than 800,” Virgin explain.

“We advise any of our customers who receive a speculative letter from Wagner & Co, who also represented Golden Eye International in action against O2 customers last year, to seek independent advice from organizations such as Citizens Advice,” the ISP concludes.

Restrictions placed on GoldenEye in previous procedures indicate that initial letters sent to Virgin customers by Wagner & Co and its clients will not be as aggressive as the ones sent out by ACS:Law and will not contain a precise settlement amount. However, it is guaranteed that cash will be requested at some point.

Upon receipt of these “speculative invoices” there will be those who panic and pay up, and that’s their prerogative. But it’s highly likely that those who admit nothing and stand firm will pay what they’ve always paid in UK cases – absolutely nothing.

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

Called PirateBrowser, the tool allows Internet users to unblock websites that have been rendered inaccessible by governments, rightsholders and Internet service providers.

As of yesterday the software had been downloaded a highly impressive 100,000 times, a clear indication that people not only disapprove of website censorship but will also take measures to circumvent it.

While The Pirate Bay is highly censored in many countries, other sites are also affected, including the TV show-focused EZTV. That site was blanked out by the UK’s leading ISPs following a court order obtained by the MPA, and last week that particular blockade caused its first instance of collateral damage.

After EZTV experimented with its DNS settings pointing them at TorrentFreak.com, Sky Broadband’s systems automatically blocked the site, rendering it inaccessible to the ISP’s four million customers. The company eventually reversed the block, but despite the warnings it appears that yet another site has been wrongfully censored.

On Monday it was reported that RadioTimes.com, a TV scheduling site, had become unavailable to users of both Sky-owned Be Broadband and Virgin Media in the UK. Today there is confirmation that the problems were down to ISP anti-piracy filters failing again.

According to PC Pro, the problems were not caused by an EZTV-style DNS issue, but a long-feared problem – that sites with shared resources would be all fall victim to overbroad blocking.

An industry source confirmed that rightsholders did not check whether the IP address they called to be blocked was being shared by other sites. As a result, RadioTimes.com went down as collateral damage.

Neither Sky nor Virgin Media officially confirmed what had caused the problems, but did say that the blocks had now been lifted.

According to the Open Rights Group, Sky operate a blocking system codenamed “HawkEye”. Let’s hope the system can live up to name in future – with a little help from improved rightsholder caution.

Update: According to the BBC the problem lies at the feet of the Premier League. When trying to have an IP address of streaming sports site FirstRow Sports blocked by ISPs, the UK football outfit failed to notice that many other sites shared the same IP address.

Now the blame-game is on, with the Premier League blaming the ISPs for not indicating they had a problem with the block, and the ISPs insisting it’s the Premier League’s responsibility to ensure that the provided IP addresses only relate to blocked sites.

Protip: Both act responsibly and stop blocking sites without checking these things, it’s literally a two minute job.

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

The court order covers all major UK ISPs, which means that 94% of all UK citizens are no longer able to access the site.

That is, if they don’t find a way to circumvent the block.

However, as a nice Sunday surprise Virgin Media customers are now able to access The Pirate Bay without having to jump through hoops.

Newzbin, another site that’s blocked by court order, is accessible as well.

From the above it’s safe to conclude that the filtering mechanism is broken somehow. Unfortunately, this also means that The Pirate Bay and Newzbin will only be available for a few hours.

Virgin Media customers who want to enjoy an uncensored Internet one more time better hurry, soon this banner will appear again…..

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

In an attempt to fulfill this need and to convert illegal file-sharers into paying customers, the UK ISP Virgin Media recently announced that it will offer an unlimited music download service to all their subscribers. Such a service would allow customers to download all the music they want and keep it permanently.

Universal and several smaller labels are backing Virgin’s plan, but not all the major labels are as happy. NMA reports that insiders at EMI and Sony Music don’t think that Virgin’s unlimited download service will convert illegal music downloaders into legitimate customers. They say that the model is flawed and will hurt existing digital sales.

“We want to work with Virgin Media as a partner but any deal has to sit comfortably with how we value our assets against how it values its customers,” an EMI insider said. “We have to evaluate each deal as it comes in and make sure we’re happy with the overall value of the proposition.”

An insider at Universal doesn’t think that the worries expressed by EMI and Sony Music are justified, as customers with unlimited access will only download a few dozen tracks per month. On the other hand he stressed that it is vital for the labels to innovate and compete with piracy.

Virgin Media meanwhile is undeterred by the rift between the different labels and will go full steam ahead. They hope to release their unlimited music download service by the end of the year. “We’re forging new ground and want to provide a truly compelling offering for consumers and industry,” a Virgin Media spokeswoman said.

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

To its credit, one ISP, Carphone Warehouse, has refused to comply. Others are working with the music industry and at the forefront of that group is Virgin Media.

Virgin has been receiving quite a lot of bad publicity recently after it was revealed that it agreed to work with the music industry to send out so-called ‘educational warnings‘ to its customers the BPI accuse of file-sharing. Virgin has sent out hundreds of these at the behest of the music industry and they have been dropping through mail boxes up and down the country. The letters come in an envelope and printed on the outside are the words: “Important: If you don’t read this, your broadband could be disconnected” so recipients could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that, frankly, if they don’t read it, their broadband could be disconnected.

However, Virgin Media told has told Jim over at Newsbeat that the printing on the envelope was “a mistake” and there is “absolutely no possibility” of legal action or disconnection for any recipient of these letters. Nice to know.

Furthermore, Asam Ahmad from Virgin notes that they cannot be 100% sure that the person they send the letters to has actually committed any offense at all. “It is important to let our customers know that their accounts have been used in a certain way but we are happy to accept it may not be the account holder that’s involved.”

He goes on to highlight the problematic issue of incorrectly accusing someone due to a lack of solid evidence: “It could be someone else in the family or someone living in a shared house. It could even be someone stealing wi-fi. We are not making any form of accusation.”

Virgin Media has also stated that it will not hand over the personal details of anyone accused by the BPI “under any circumstances”. This is a good start by Virgin and all credit to them for taking this stance but the reality is that Virgin hands over its subscriber’s details in the blink of an eye when faced with a court order to do so. We know for a fact that they hand over the details of petty file-sharers to the likes of lawyers Davenport Lyons for the alleged sharing of one cheap game costing little more than a single album. However, the BPI has said in the past that it doesn’t want to start taking legal action against individuals.

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

In the UK and at the forefront of this controversy has been Virgin Media. Various reports suggested that Virgin would implement the 3-strikes policy with the BPI but this proved very unpopular and it took just a few days for Virgin to deny any such deal had been struck.

Undeterred, the BPI has carried on working with Virgin who, according to a Music Week report, have now agreed to some sort of halfway-house. Virgin will not (yet) disconnect persistent uploaders, but after receiving information from the BPI about users making unauthorized uploads, Virgin Media will start sending out warning letters along with ‘educational’ advice about how to ensure that the customer’s account isn’t ‘misused’. Included in the advice will be links to authorized music sources, along with the usual fear mongering about viruses and spyware.

In this 10-week trial, along with the letter from Virgin, the subscriber will also receive a warning letter from the BPI. It will state that persistent offenders will be disconnected and/or taken to court, despite the fact that Virgin appears to be refusing to disconnect users so far.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “Virgin Media is the first ISP to publicly address the problem. It is a socially responsible ISP and I think other ISPs will look at this and see progress. I am very encouraged they have engaged with us. They understand the rights of musicians.”

A Virgin Media spokesman added: “We want people to enjoy music online without infringing the rights of musicians and music companies. This campaign is about helping our customers understand how they can do this.”

It’s unclear what the BPI strategy will be on this but to really put Virgin under pressure, it will probably decide to put IP-addresses it collects into a database. This way it would be easy to flag IP-addresses that had already been ‘caught’ before, and put these IPs forward to Virgin as persistent users – prime candidates for disconnection. Virgin Media (unlike comparable ADSL ISPs in the UK) hand out static IP addresses, so most users will be an easy target as they display the same IP address all the time. But for those Virgin customers with a router, simply changing the MAC address of the unit will force Virgin to hand over a new IP, which then offers the user the same perceived ‘protection’ as a dynamic IP ISP.

So at the end of it all lies a very large inconsistency. If a casual uploader simply gets a warning from the BPI/Virgin and only persistent, regularly-caught users MIGHT be disconnected or MIGHT get taken to court (in a civil action, of course), why has the BPI ignored all of these things while effectively directing the police that the recently arrested uploaders from OiNK should be treated as serious criminals?

TorrentFreak knows that at least two of those accused uploaded just a single album. Persistent? Hardly. Conspiring to Defraud? Give us a break.

Where were their friendly, education-based warnings from the ISP?

Update:The Register ran a piece and are also hosting copies of the letters that will be sent out to users. You can find the Virgin letter here and the BPI letter here.

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

A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “There is no pilot in place. There are no details to confirm as we haven’t come to any sort of agreement with the BPI. The BPI wants the Government and ISPs to adopt the three-strikes system, we don’t want to go down to that level as it raises questions about privacy and funding.”

Under the suggested proposals, those caught sharing unauthorized files would be disconnected from the internet, should they fail to heed warnings to stop. Virgin is right to be cautious about privacy issues. Anti-piracy outfit Logistep ran headlong into operating illegally in Italy recently, when it was ruled that they illegally spied on P2P users.

When quizzed, the BPI said it was unable to talk about its discussions with ISPs: “We can’t talk about the pilot and can’t give out details but we have outlined plans with Virgin and do have a dialogue with them. But there is no confirmation of a pilot.”

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

Their ‘Best Things in Life Are Free’ TV campaign, complete with eye-catching computer graphics, with movie and musical themes throughout left the viewer with a clear message: if you want to download music and movies quickly (for free), join us. Now, in 2008, the situation has changed dramatically. Kind of.

According to a report, the ISP has had a change of heart and will be working in collaboration with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Starting with a pilot scheme, the BPI will deviate from its stated policy of not going after individual file-sharers by targeting Virgin Media customers on P2P networks and reporting them to the ISP.

Set to go live during the next few months, and at the behest of the UK music industry, Virgin’s scheme will see them send warning letters out to customers flagged as file-sharers by the BPI. Those who do not heed warnings to stop will see Virgin disconnect them from the internet. The scheme will also be available to movie and TV studios who wish to punish Virgin’s customers.

Earlier this year the government said that ISPs should find a way to curb unauthorized downloading. By stepping up with its own plan, Virgin is hoping to side-step government enforced legislation.

A Virgin Media spokesman said: “We have been in discussions with rights holders organizations about how a voluntary scheme could work. We are taking this problem seriously and would favor a sensible voluntary solution.”

So as Virgin Media constantly upgrades its broadband customers to faster and faster connections over the last couple of years (4Mbit connections became 10Mbit, 10Mbit then became 20Mbit, 20Mbit due to become 40mb), it now agrees to punish the very people it targets when offering these super-fast connections.

However, all might not be lost for the file-sharer at Virgin Media, especially those who want to max-out their new bandwidth offering. The ISP will be rolling out a new newsgroup service for its subscribers which should be ready in the next couple of months. Using the Highwinds server banks, the service will offer 7 days retention on the all important binary newsgroups. A Virgin spokesman said: “We’re delighted to be working with Highwinds to build out our newsgroup service. Our expanded access to newsgroups will give our customers a free news feed to newsgroups with exceptional retention, providing one of the best free newsgroup services in the UK.”

Not to mention super high speed access to all the movies, music and software anyone could ever need, with no fear that the BPI, RIAA or IFPI can snoop on the transfers.

The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.

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

‘OiNK’ himself participated in a short Q&A and the truth is that this is not the case. Here is a rundown of the salient points:

The raid was completely unexpected and came with no warning at all but steps had already been taken to protect the users. Although there was no ‘self-destruct’ or encryption according to OiNK, “the logs we store aren’t enough to incriminate users.” This will come as a huge relief to ex-members of OiNK.

A Cleveland Police spokesman told The Telegraph: “It is too early to tell if we will go after individuals, it all depends on what we find.”

OiNK is accused of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringements with police questioning OiNK for hours after which he was eventually released. It became apparent that the police had limited technical knowledge which, according to OiNK “made the interview quite amusing.”

OiNK’s father – who was also dragged into this, is fine – although the police took his laptop.

There was an implication that a backup of the site may exist, although this is unconfirmed and there is no news yet that the forums will be restored for the purposes of music discussion. Additionally, it’s unclear if OiNK remains the owner of the OiNK.CD domain.

Sites have been cropping up claiming to collect donations for legal defense but according to OiNK there aren’t any that potential donators should feel comfortable donating to right now.

Certain changes had been made to the OiNK site and IRC channel in recent weeks security-wise and there was a suggestion that this may have been because a raid was expected. OiNK has denied this and confirmed these changes were a coincidence.

In echoes of what happened to Alexander Hanff (admin of the BitTorrent tracker DVDR-Core) Alan Ellis aka OiNK has been fired from his IT Consultant job following the raid but has refused to elaborate on what grounds his employer – Virgin Media in Stockton-on-Tees – chose to dismiss him.

It’s hugely commendable that OiNK has taken the time to come out and give the community timely facts. Alan told The Daily Telegraph: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t believe my website breaks the law. They don’t understand how it works.”

Stay Tuned

Update: Seems like someone involved in the takedown left an administrative message on the OiNK site (thanks for the tips DaanRiver and R10T):

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