“As the law is today, you can not have a media center without breaking the law,” he told TorrentFreak.

“When I think of a media center it is a place where you have all your movies, pictures and music together. You can only do that by having a digital copy of the movie.”

Henrik told us that he had taken this action to draw attention to laws which allow him to copy DVDs for his own personal use, but forbid him to remove the DRM in order to do so. In his confession he asked Antipiratgruppen for a response by December 1st, indicating if they are prepared to take action against him.

The group has announced that Henrik will indeed get a response, but didn’t tell him directly, instead preferring to comment via the press.

“It is a political matter, and we have sent it to the Association of Danish Videodistributors so they can consider it. But Henrik Andersen will get a reply by 1st December,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer Thomas Schlüter to Comon.

Schlüter went on to say that proving this type of infringement is usually impossible.

“Unless people confess, then it’s impossible to prove that they have broken copy protection. We can not break down the door to people’s homes and explore what they have available on their media server,” he said.

Poul Dylov, director for Warner Bros Denmark and chairman at the Association of Danish Videodistributors, said they will have a meeting next week to decide whether to report the matter to the police.

Dylov added they have not previously encountered a similar event, and consider the confession to be a media event, an assessment with which Henrik agrees.

“Of course, until now the film industry has not met the intentions of the law and as the culture minister will not force the film industry [to allow copying by removing DRM] by changing the law, then there must indeed be an awareness of the problem through the media,” he explains.

“But the whole problem lies in a sense with the Minster of Culture who does not follow its own interpretation of the law and the intentions of it. This gives the film industry an easy ride to the detriment of consumers,” he added.

All will be revealed here, on or before December 1st.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“It requires very strong and concrete evidence to have these people convicted. We simply could not lift the burden of proof,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer Mary Fredenslund when explaining the decision to Politiken.

In just a year, four cases against alleged pirates have come before the High Court in Denmark and the overall result for the copyright holders has been negative. Three of the defendants were acquitted due to insufficient evidence, and in the one case where a file-sharer was convicted, the defendant had confessed.

Defense attorney Per Overbeck says that in addition to these outcomes, cases against two of his clients have been dropped in recent years. “Antipiratgruppen has acknowledged that they can not get people convicted without either catching them in the act or threatening them to confess,” Overbeck said. “In practice, this means that without a confession there is no case,” he added.

Per Overbeck and Antipiratgruppen’s assessment that recent High Court rulings make it virtually impossible to get individuals convicted for illegal file sharing are supported by a recent Government report from the Ministry of Culture.

According to the report, IP-addresses can only be used to identify the person paying for the Internet subscription, not the person who actually downloaded the files. The courts have ruled several times that in terms of evidence, an IP-address alone is insufficient to prove guilt.

In one case a defendant walked free after arguing that that someone else must have accessed his wireless router to download copyright infringing material.

Despite these legal setbacks for copyright holders in Denmark, it is worth noting that Danish anti-piracy tracking company DtecNet remains the main partner of the RIAA and other music groups in countries where governments are looking to implement three-strikes policies to get alleged file-sharers disconnected from the Internet.

The evidence DtecNet gathers also consists of just an IP-address. Indeed, there is no known anti-piracy method to discover who is sitting at a particular keyboard, on any particular computer, at any given time.

In the on-going trial of AFACT v iiNet, DtecNet gathered the evidence used in the case. Under cross-examination a computer forensics investigator – who was previously a key witness in the 2004 KaZaA trial – admitted that any ISP account could have multiple users in the same household, and could have other unauthorized 3rd-party users if a wireless router was compromised.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“Piracy is here, so how can we take advantage of that? What we did actually, on day one, we put that game immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves,” RedLynx CEO Tero Virtala, told a panel discussion at the Develop game conference.

The company didn’t upload the full game, but a slightly altered version which excluded the leaderboards that are required to play against other users on the Internet, hoping that it would convert some ‘pirates’ into paying customers.

“That game relies really heavily on the server side – the leaderboards are the soul of the game,” Virtala said. “I don’t know if it’s helped, I’d assume so because even though the version that we put on the torrent networks wasn’t the full version, it’s the version of the game without the actual soul, without the leaderboards to play against other players,” Virtala said.

Unfortunately the company has no way of knowing whether the free marketing on torrent sites has paid off. Thus far RedLynx has sold almost 150,000 copies of the game, but unlike the CEO claims, it is also available on torrent sites in a version where the leaderboard functionality is hacked.

It is good to see that companies are recognizing that giving away games on torrent sites can actually help to market their products. Making demo versions of a game available to the public is not necessarily a novelty, but uploading these onto torrent sites is an opportunity that only a few have taken advantage of.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Without any legal basis, Telenor refused to comply.

“This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered,” said Telenor boss Ragnar Kårhus.

The verdict in the case was due to be delivered October 30th, but was delayed until today.

IFPI has lost the case and Telenor will not have to block The Pirate Bay.

The court ruled that Telenor is not contributing to any infringements of copyright law when its subscribers use The Pirate Bay, and therefore there is no legal basis for forcing the ISP to block access to the site.

“Obviously we are pleased that the District Court has arrived at this conclusion,” said Telenor’s Ragnar Kårhus in a statement.

“At the same time it is important for us to emphasize that this case is not about being in favor of or opposed to copyright, but about whether or not it is reasonable to saddle Internet service providers with a censorship role in respect of content on the Internet,” he added.

Kårhus went on to say that the most important way for IFPI and other rights holders to maintain healthy revenue streams, is to develop business models and services that render the use of sites like The Pirate Bay less attractive to Internet users.

In making its decision, the court also had to examine the repercussions if it ruled that Telenor and other ISPs had to block access to certain websites. This, it said, is usually the responsibility of the authorities and handing this task to private companies would be “unnatural”.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued Friday in the Federal Court, with iiNet’s chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby, taking the stand following his first appearance Thursday afternoon.

Yesterday, Dalby recalled having difficulty in understanding some of the terminology utilized by AFACT in the infringement notice spreadsheets it submitted to iiNet.

Dalby told AFACT barrister Tony Bannon that iiNet had told AFACT there was an issue with some items being unclear in the spreadsheets.

“There was no legend associated with this spreadsheet. I had to make an assumption. We asked AFACT for more information,” ITNews quotes Dalby as saying.

Bannon then criticized Dalby for not being specific and expecting AFACT to guess at which terms were not understood, but Dalby pointed out that he expected AFACT to contact the ISP for clarification.

Further discussion took place on the issue of IP addresses and how iiNet allocates them to customers. Time and again, Dalby explained that IP addresses are allocated to a customer account and they do not necessarily represent any particular computer that the customer may use.

In what is becoming a recurring theme, today Dalby told the court that iiNet had no intention of forwarding AFACT’s copyright infringement notices to its customers purely on their allegations.

“Our position was that we should not be doing AFACT’s work,” said Dalby. “If we had received authorization by way of court order, that would have changed our position.”

AFACT went on to tender a draft e-security code of practice from the Internet Industry Association (IIA) created earlier this year. It proposes that in future, ISPs could contact, and maybe even disconnect subscribers, who have malware-ridden computers which negatively affect networks. Despite Justice Cowdroy indicating that its relevance was peripheral to the case and wouldn’t but much use when he comes to make his decision, it was allowed.

Dalby said he believed that iiNet had not been involved in the draft and he was personally unfamiliar with it. CW reports that he had been quoted on the issue in the media, but Dalby said that it was a regular occurrence for the press to call him to comment on issues he was not yet familiar with, and in this particular case his comments were “neutral and non-committal”.

In September we reported that Australia’s Internet Industry Association (IIA) felt it had something to offer these court proceedings. IIA applied to be amicus curiae, a ‘friend of the court’, but AFACT objected, insisting the group would not be impartial and would favor iiNet.

The decision on whether this will be allowed or not has been delayed until next week.

In an indication that AFACT still objects to an IIA appearance, Bannon said that “….there’s a conceivable possibility they don’t want to add anything other than to say ‘hear, hear’,” apparently to the amusement of the court.

AFACT barristers are scheduled to make their closing statements next Monday afternoon.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today the project releases the film ‘In Guantanamo’ which makes a worldwide premiere on BitTorrent. The film documents filmmaker David Miller’s three day tour of the controversial camps, invited by the U.S. government.

“Although the event was presented as a chance to ’see inside’ the working of Guantanamo, it was in fact a carefully staged PR exercise designed to yield predictable, stale, controlled media images,” we read on the Gitmo’s VODO release page.

The film has been officially released on VODO today and is currently featured on both isoHunt and The Pirate Bay. With help from these sites and several other partners well known to the file-sharing community, the project is able to attract a lot of eyeballs for upcoming and already established film talent.

VODO founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak that the project’s first film performed really well. “I think the first VODO release was a great success,” he said. “Around 250,000 downloads through our DISCO partners — as the filmmaker put it, that was more than his terrestrial TV release in the UK.”

As the project’s name already reveals, downloaders are encouraged to donate to the filmmakers if they appreciate their work. King told TorrentFreak that quite a few downloaders have donated generously. Not enough to fund a new movie obviously, but as the project gains more attention it is likely to bring in some serious income for the filmmakers.

In Guantanamo can be downloaded for free here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

As always, Demonoid staff kept quiet about the site’s future and all its users could do is wait for a sign of life, which quietly arrived earlier today.

A few hours ago Demonoid’s tracker started to respond again. It appears that it’s still hosted in Ukraine, and although the frontend of the site hasn’t updated yet, this comeback might indicate that the site is preparing for a full return.

The current situation stirs memories of Demonoid’s downtime back in 2007. At the time the tracker also returned before the site itself became accessible again, which took two more months. Many Demonoid members are undoubtedly hoping that this chain of events will complete more quickly this time around.

When the site returns, it’s likely that members that joined the site more recently will have to sign up again, while others may have to resubmit their torrents. “A loss of some months worth of activity including registered users and torrent submissions is to be expected,” Demonoid staff warned earlier.

The tracker’s return in itself is already being welcomed by the thousands of users whose torrent clients are not supporting trackerless torrents. Many of them might have been staring at several unfinished downloads for weeks, and now they are finally able to complete their downloads.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

With a vote of 407 in favor, 57 against, with 171 abstentions, EU lawmakers sent the package back to the Council in May, due to concerns that Internet users would not have their rights sufficiently protected.

After all night negotiations the deadlock was broken after a compromise agreement was reached. Internet users in all 27 EU states will be entitled to be put through a “fair and impartial procedure” (although what that means exactly is far from clear), including the right to be heard in response to allegations before being subjected to the ultimate sanction – disconnection.

Christian Engström of The Pirate Party helped to shape the modified text that was accepted in a unanimous vote last night.

“The Telecoms Reform Package neither demands nor prohibits the implementation of three-strikes legislation to disconnect alleged file-sharers by member states,” Engström told TorrentFreak, adding that if they do implement such measures, they will have to be within the parameters of the directive.

As reported by Engström, the exact text reads:

3a. Measures taken by Member States regarding end-users’ access to or use of services and applications through electronic communications networks shall respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and general principles of Community law.

Any of these measures regarding end-user’s access to or use of services and applications through electronic communications networks liable to restrict those fundamental rights or freedoms may only be imposed if they are appropriate, proportionate and necessary within a democratic society, and their implementation shall be subject to adequate procedural safeguards in conformity with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and with general principles of Community law, including effective judicial protection and due process.

Accordingly, these measures may only be taken with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. A prior fair and impartial procedure shall be guaranteed, including the right to be heard of the person or persons concerned, subject to the need for appropriate conditions and procedural arrangements in duly substantiated cases of urgency in conformity with European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The right to an effective and timely judicial review shall be guaranteed.

Engström said the vote for the text was a positive surprise as he thought this agreement would never happen. Although in an ideal world it is not everything he could have hoped for, it is a big step in the right direction.

“We would never have been able to achieve this without all the work that the community of net activists has put in,” he further notes. “We have shown that ordinary citizens working together can make a difference. And this is only the beginning. The Internet community has begun to flex its muscles.”

Engström told TorrentFreak that although he is happy with the outcome, there are still many battles to be fought. “Nobody should be disconnected from the Internet in an open and free society,” he said.

The European Parliament and Council is due to make a decision on the Telecoms Reform Package in late November, with the laws coming into force early 2010. Member countries will then have 18 months to pass the legislation into their own national laws.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued Thursday in the Federal Court, with iiNet CEO Michael Malone taking the stand for the fourth consecutive day, and possibly his last.

Not unusually for a copyright trial involving BitTorrent, the issue of The Pirate Bay was raised.

Yesterday AFACT barrister Tony Bannon incorrectly suggested that iiNet’s very own BitTorrent tracker’s functionality had been taken down, later to discover that in fact the court’s network blocked BitTorrent transfers.

Bannon indicated that he would like to be able to give a courtroom demonstration of The Pirate Bay Thursday, and the judge agreed that it would be possible to lift the block so he could do so.

According to ITNews, Bannon was today true to his word.

After the demo, Bannon enquired of Malone whether iiNet had a desire for its subscribers to be able to access the world’s largest tracker, “…when the only purpose it serves is providing a way to download unauthorized copies of films?”

This question was met with objection from iiNet barrister Richard Cobden, who argued that customer “desire” was irrelevant to the case. The judge, Justice Cowdroy, was also keen to discover the relevance.

Bannon then became the latest in a long line of movie and music industry lawyers to reveal that should his clients win the case, they will take legal action to have not only the world’s largest tracker blocked from iiNet’s customers, but other similar sites.

He also revealed that around 50% of the alleged copyright infringements in the case came courtesy of The Pirate Bay.

Then Bannon attempted to show that by allowing its customers to access The Pirate Bay, iiNet effectively sanctioned and authorized their infringing activities.

“We seek Mr Malone’s position as to whether or not his customers should have access to sites such as this,” said Bannon.

However, after legal argument, Bannon withdrew the question.

Malone did, however, concede that iiNet had taken no steps to block The Pirate Bay, but qualified this by indicating that the company didn’t possess the means to do so. Bannon asked if it was technically possible and Malone replied that he could achieve a primitive block with additional equipment, but even that could be easily circumvented

“To completely and conclusively block access to The Pirate Bay, I believe it to be beyond our technical capability or of any ISP,” replied Malone.

Asked by Cobden if iiNet had ever blocked any web sites, Malone said the company had not.

This technical inability led to iiNet pulling out of the Australian government’s filtering trials, reports ComputerWorld. Malone has been an outspoken critic of the filtering scheme, labeling it “fundamentally flawed” and saying his company would only participate in the trials to prove that filtering would fail.

The case continues.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Lisbon Treaty was ratified yesterday by Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, who was the last to sign the document.

Ironically, The Pirate Party was against the Lisbon Treaty, which has now doubled the number of seats the party has in the European Parliament.

The newly gained seat will be awarded to Amelia Andersdotter, who will become the youngest Member of the European Parliament. In order to free up time for her political career, Amelia recently decided to quit Economics and Spanish at Lund University in Sweden.

Besides fighting for fairer and more sensible copyright legislation, she will also spend time on education and the development of Europe’s knowledge economy.

“The Parliament needs to be going for a sustainable knowledge economy, and that’s where I come into play,” Amelia told TorrentFreak.

Amelia will officially take her seat in Brussels on December 1st, where she will be joining Christian Engstrom. The two will have plenty of work to do in the years to come, countering the growing influence from pro-copyright lobby groups.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued Wednesday in the Federal Court, with iiNet CEO Michael Malone taking the stand for the third consecutive day.

Again AFACT barrister Tony Bannon tried to portray iiNet as an encourager of copyright infringement on its network, by referring to iiNet marketing where the ISP measures bandwidth in terms of how much music or TV episodes people can download. Malone said the company did this simply to give a customer an easier barometer by which to measure their consumption.

When questioned on the music aspect, Malone said the company referred to legal downloads, such as those from iTunes. Bannon countered by saying this could not be the case, since iiNet did not count downloads from iTunes towards a customer’s bandwidth quota.

According to iTWire, a welcome email from iiNet to new customers ended with, “Thanks for choosing iiNet. Happy downloading.”

By drawing attention to the above ponts, AFACT hopes to show that iiNet encouraged infringements, thereby losing its safe habor protection as a carrier.

CW reports that AFACT presented press articles regarding the levels of BitTorrent transfers on the Internet, in the context of actions taken by ISPs in order to limit P2P traffic.

In one article, Malone had said that BitTorrent transfers accounted for around 50% of all Internet traffic and admitted in court that BitTorrent had been used on iiNet’s network since it became available. He went on to agree that while much of this traffic involved the transfer of movies and TV shows, he didn’t feel that “..every young person in Australia is downloading illegally using BitTorrent.”

One exchange apparently raised a laugh in the courtroom when Bannon accused Malone of attracting heavy-usage customers in order to boost iiNet profits.

“I would prefer [those customers] go to someone else and let someone else be sued,” said Malone.

“And you’re happy to take their money in the meantime?” Bannon asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

Yet again, Bannon raised the issue of iiNet’s failure to forward AFACT copyright infringement allegations to its customers. However, an email presented from the Internet Industry Association’s Peter Coroneos, indicated that he was concerned that doing so could lead to an assumption that ISPs are responsible for the actions of their customers.

In the email exchange with Malone, Coroneos said it would be preferable and advantageous for all involved if the content owners could provide some legal alternatives.

After Bannon showed the court documentation showing policies in place at rival ISPs to deal with allegations of copyright infringement, Malone again confirmed that iiNet has no formal policy on how to deal with these type of allegations, noting that the company had yet to be presented with evidence of what he described as a “repeat infringer”.

Earlier in the case, Malone had defined a repeat infringer as one who had been proven as such by a court, but Bannon mocked Malone, asking if the iiNet CEO had just heard what he’d said and would he like to think about the question again for a moment.

Malone said he didn’t and Bannon accused him of treating the proceedings as a game.

The case continues tomorrow.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

While the public is denied access to drafts of the controversial agreement, lawmakers continue to receive input from anti-piracy lobbyists such as the RIAA and MPAA. Today, the 6th round of ACTA negotiations have started in Seoul, South Korea, where representatives from the U.S, the European Union, Canada, Australia and several other countries will discuss the treaty’s content.

As happened previously, parts of the document have leaked out to the public and they reveal that the agreement’s scope is even more far-reaching than previously expected. The Internet chapter of ACTA has very little to do with counterfeiting, but adopts many of the same policies that anti-piracy lobbyists have been calling for.

Among other things, the ACTA draft calls for a global three-strikes policy to disconnect alleged file-sharers from the Internet, without solid evidence or a court order. If ISPs won’t do so, they will be held liable for the copyright infringements of their customers.

Similarly, all participating countries have to adopt a ‘notice and takedown’ policy where copyright holders can request ISPs to remove infringing materials, again without having to provide solid evidence or proof that they actually own the copyrights. When ISPs don’t comply with the requests they will be held liable, which means that they will be seen as pirates themselves.

Unfortunately, all parties involved in the negotiations refuse to make the ACTA plans public, effectively preventing any constructive input from the public. Yesterday, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) petitioned President Obama to change this situation and be transparent about the agreement that will affect millions of people. Until that happens we can only fear the worst.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

These findings are the result of the Cyber Norms sociological research project carried out by a group of Swedish researchers. The researchers conducted a survey among Swedes aged between 15 and 25 and found that 10 percent of this group is currently taking measures against increasing online surveillance.

Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimates the percentage of all Swedes who are hidden on the Internet to be as high as 6 or 7 percent. If this figure is accurate, it means that there are more than half a million Swedes who already use a service to hide their identity.

The researchers note that file-sharing is not the only reason for people to anonymize their connection, but the results of the survey clearly show that avid file-sharers would rather hide their identities than stop downloading. And indeed, over the past months we’ve seen that more and more BitTorrent users are seeking ways to protect their privacy online, rendering all the newly proposed anti-piracy laws useless.

Contrary to what the anti-piracy lobby had hoped for, file-sharers are not an easy catch. Their calls for harsher copyright legislation are only driving ‘pirates’ underground. According to the Cyber Norms survey, more than half of all respondents said they would take measures to protect their identities if anti-piracy laws in Sweden are toughened, as is currently happening in the UK and France.

Currently, the most common and widely used privacy services are VPNs. These services allow a user to connect to the Internet while hiding their own IP-address. Millions of file-sharers around the world use services like this to prevent being tracked by anti-piracy companies, and this number is increasing rapidly.

The recently launched Itshidden service is one of the few that offer a free service in addition to premium subscriptions. Due to its increased popularity the owners recently had to disable new registrations in order to keep the service running smoothly. In just a few months Itshidden signed up over 100,000 members. Other VPN services report an increase in signups too.

The anti-piracy laws currently being mulled have created a flourishing multi-million dollar ‘online privacy’ industry. In recent months these services have seen a massive increase in customers, with most of them paying around $10 per month to prevent third parties from logging their download behavior.

Perhaps the entertainment industry should invest some time and money in creating legal and attractive alternatives to piracy. Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“I’ve started this because i don’t want to be a criminal,” Henrik told TorrentFreak.

“As the law is today, you can not have a media center without breaking the law. When I think of a media center it is a place where you have all your movies, pictures and music together. You can only do that by having a digital copy of the movie.”

“In my media center I have digital copies of my legally purchased DVD movies,” he writes in his confession. “Overall, I suppose I’ve made digital copies of approx. 100 films and 10 seasons of TV series,” he added.

On the surface this should be fine, since Danish copyright law allows for the private, non-commercial copying of purchased DVDs.

12.–(1) Anyone is entitled to make or have made, for private purposes, single copies of works which have been made public if this is not done for commercial purposes. Such copies must not be used for any other purpose.

Unfortunately the law does not allow for the circumvention of the DRM on the disks in order to do so.

75.c –(1) It is not permitted to circumvent effective technological measures without the consent of the rights holder.

“Since the above copying is a violation of Danish law, I would therefore like to declare myself in violation of section 75 of the copyright law,” Henrik told Antipiratgruppen.

While previously acknowledging this catch 22 situation, Denmark’s Ministry of Culture felt that the situation would shortly rectify itself.

“…it is expected that in future copy protection will be designed in such a way that it will be possible to take one or more copies for personal use, and this is certainly the intention of the law,” they wrote.

However, as Henrik points out, while this might be the government’s plan, the movie industry has failed to live up to this vision, hence his intended piracy martyrdom to draw attention to the issue.

“As the culture minister sees no reason to change the law, she must, in my opinion, not understand the problem, therefore I choose to confess to you, to see whether you are prepared to get the legislation tested in court,” says Henrik as he concludes his confession.

Henrik has given Antipiratgruppen until December 1st to respond. Even given a prosecution on a plate, it’s extremely unlikely they will take him up on his offer.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Continuing first from yesterday’s proceedings, ITnews reported an exchange between iiNet CEO Michael Malone and movie industry barrister Tony Bannon, over Malone’s understanding of BitTorrent.

Malone told the court that while he had an understanding of the protocol, he had never used uTorrent, the client used earlier by Bannon to give the court a technical demonstration. Bannon’s demo used iiNet’s own tracker (an installation of RivetTracker) which it has used to distributed several press releases which all relate to the trial.

It is difficult to see where Bannon was going with his questioning, but it began with an admittance by Malone that the torrent files were intended to be used by people with access to a BitTorrent client. Malone then denied that the releases were specifically targeted at iiNet customers, noting that anyone can access them

Under further questioning regarding the inclusion of a note in the torrent files dialogue box indicating the files were non-pirated, Malone reiterated that while he had an understanding of the BitTorrent protocol, he did not have experience of the client used by Bannon

Then, with an apparent deafness towards Malone’s perfectly clear response, and demonstrating an apparent ignorance between a BitTorrent client and the BitTorrent protocol, Bannon sought to press Malone into admitting to his 400,000 customers that he didn’t understand BitTorrent.

Again, Malone stated that he didn’t know how to put a comment on a torrent file, but Bannon persisted in trying to get Malone to admit that he knows how uTorrent 1.8.4 works, but Malone said he’d never used it. There could, however, be people in iiNet who had, he conceded.

Bannon then said that in the last 24 hours the torrent file functionality for the press releases had been removed. Malone said that if it had, he certainly hadn’t requested it, asking Bannon how he was attempting to access the Internet, suggesting that a firewall in the court was stopping the transfer.

TorrentFreak’s checks show a single seeder on each torrent and each one worked absolutely perfectly.

Moving on to iiNet’s handling of copyright infringement allegations, iTWire reports that Bannon tried to paint a picture that iiNet’s policy of forwarding AFACT notices to the police was little more than a cynical attempt to pretend that they were dealing with them, when in fact they were not.

For the umpteenth time in this case, Malone said that he was under no obligation to act on mere allegations from AFACT which were not backed up by a court order.

“AFACT was telling us to disconnect customers without further ado,” said Malone. “The question is, what should we do when confronted with illegal activity? And our response is, report it to the proper authorities.”

While iiNet said it had always been policy to forward the notices to the police, ITWire notes that evidence emerged that the company had sent notifications twice, although there was no indication of how many infringement notices were in each batch.

Yesterday Malone said that the evidence provided by tracking company DtecNet’s investigation was “compelling” and should be reviewed by a third party and the courts. In the face of this statement, Bannon asked Malone why he had not taken action based on AFACT’s allegations.

“This is a right,” said Malone, “not an obligation of iiNet.”

These days arguments in favor of anti-piracy action seem almost incomplete with the obligatory reference to child pornography, as we heard in yesterday’s propaganda piece from CBS. This case is no different.

Bannon put it to Malone that if the evidence provided was “compelling” and Malone had received “compelling evidence” that an iiNet customer was accessing child porn, would the company allow the user to do so “day after day?”

Of course, any allegations of this nature would involve the police, and the police or the courts would do the investigation, get the proper paperwork and order iiNet to comply, which they naturally would. Malone said that on mere AFACT allegations of civil infringement (as apposed to an infinitely more serious and jailable criminal offense), such action would not be permitted.

Bannone then pressured Malone to admit that “…you’re happy to tell your customers this from the witness box,” that iiNet will not disconnect subscribers for infringing copyright.

At this point one has to wonder if Bannon is deaf or just plain stubborn. It is absolutely crystal clear to anyone following these proceedings that yes, iiNet will disconnect customers for copyright infringement, providing there has been due process and a court has ruled that disconnection is appropriate.

The case continues tomorrow.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

What bothered us the most is that the item conveniently mixed file-sharing with commercial piracy, while linking it to organized crime, human trafficking and child prostitution. This setup is a bit misleading to say the least. That aside, the claimed role that piracy plays in organized crime is based on an MPAA-funded study we have previously debunked.

The MPAA’s stance didn’t really surprise us that much though. Their job is to manipulate public opinion in the hope that less people will engage in illicit file-sharing. But it was disappointing to see that CBS didn’t care to bring someone in to counter the arguments of the anti-piracy lobbyists.

No, instead they managed to get director Steven Soderbergh on, who joined the movie industry trade group by providing more twisted facts. Reciting the MPAA’s propaganda, Soderbergh said he wished the Internet was never invented. “Piracy is costing Hollywood $6 billion a year at the box office,” he told the reporter, adding that “as the margins of profit shrink, fewer projects get made, which means fewer people go to work.”

These statements are both inaccurate, or at least highly doubtful. The $6 billion statistic Soderbergh is referring to actually comes from an MPAA-funded report for which the sources were never revealed. In fact, the MPAA itself had to release a statement saying that they “made a mistake” with one of the figures, but they continue to use the report nonetheless.

Similarly, Soderbergh’s claim that “fewer projects get made” was debunked only last week after Sony boss Michael Lynton made a similar statement. The opposite seems to be true. Hollywood is far from bankrupt. In the past decade box office earnings actually increased significantly.

The only piece of the entire item that was pretty accurate and worth watching was the explanation of how BitTorrent works. John Malcolm, a former Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA shows that his work for the trade group paid off, as it turned him into a BitTorrent expert (video below).

The entire piece is disappointing nevertheless. It fails to ask the questions about why people download movies illegally and acts as if the movie industry is a powerless victim. Perhaps Hollywood should start to see the millions of illegal downloaders as potential customers instead of thieves. There’s a huge demand for online entertainment, so why not compete with piracy instead of spending millions of dollars fighting it?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today, iiNet CEO Michael Malone was questioned at length over dealings he had with Westnet, another ISP which was acquired by his company for AUS $81 million in May 2008.

Westnet had developed an automated system to pass on infringement notices from copyright holders to its customers, a process which Malone earlier described as “making more work for no benefit,” and was said to be scathing in defense of due process and consumer rights.

“Taking the opposing argument, a random third party is lodging an unsubstantiated accusation against a customer and you’re passing it on?” wrote Malone in an email to Westnet, continuing, “Your current approach is doing damage to the industry and iiNet’s position on this matter.”

According to itNews, today Malone admitted he had “hit the roof” when he had discovered Westnet’s policy on infringement notices.

When any company acquires another there is often a need to standardize procedures and policies, and with iiNet and Westnet the position was no different. Malone said that whenever he found differences in policies between the two companies he took steps to bring those of Westnet into line with those at iiNet. He also stated that he was unaware that Westnet had failed to follow his instructions and adopt iiNet group policy following the acquisition.

One of the reasons he sought to change the Westnet policy, he said, was to bring the company into line with the position held by the Internet Industry Association on the issue.

Cross-examining Malone on iiNet’s role in providing a broadband service which enabled users to share movies using BitTorrent, senior counsel Tony Bannon for the movie industry referred to infringement notices sent to iiNet for the Sony movie, Pineapple Express.

According to CW, Malone responded that as a mere service provider, iiNet had no way of knowing if any of its customers were engaged in copyright infringement, but could confirm that the individual who allegedly committed the breaches was still an iiNet customer.

The company was not aware, however, if the customer continued to breach copyright.

The case continues tomorrow.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

When writing this article we were faced with a problem. Technically there isn’t really an alternative to Demonoid, as the site acted both as a private and public tracker with a library of hundreds of thousands of user uploaded torrent files. We have to admit that the sites listed here don’t quite compare to the ‘late’ Demonoid, but when combined they go someway to filling the gap for those struggling for ideas.

We previously listed 25 Pirate Bay alternatives. Because many of these could also serve as Demonoid replacements we decided not to include any duplicates here, hence the absence of sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and Torrentz. Here are some of the options that Demonoid users have while the site is down. If you’re looking for high speed downloads you could also consider to try Usenet instead (our Usenet guide).

Join another private tracker

The Internet is populated with thousands of smaller BitTorrent trackers that require users to signup, mostly through an invite system like Demonoid’s. Luckily for those new to the private tracker phenomenon, there are always a few dozen sites that allow newcomers to join without being invited. We’ve listed 5 of these sites below, more are available at Btracs.

1. TorrentZilla

2. TorrentsForAll

3. All4Nothin

4. Midnight-Torrents

5. ThePeerHub

Switch to Public BitTorrent Indexers and Meta-Search Engines

One of the downsides of most (smaller) private trackers is that they don’t offer as many torrents as Demonoid did. Those looking for more obscure or niche content are often better off at one of the public torrent indexes or meta-search engines. We’ve listed 5 lesser known torrent sites below. Although these are perfectly suited to find the latest torrents, we have to admit that their existence relies on other torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova (where they get torrents from), and public trackers such as OpenBitTorrent and PublicBT.

6. KickassTorrents

7. yourBitTorrent

8. TorrentDownloads

9. AliveTorrents

10. RSSTorrents

We understand that this list isn’t complete, we could have mentioned isoHunt’s new project Hexagon and there are many other torrent sites we could have included, but we have a secret weapon – the readers of TorrentFreak – who can list alternative sites by the dozen.

So, in the spirit of sharing, if you know a public or private site which is open for signups that is not already listed here or in our Pirate Bay alternative article, we encourage you to list it in the comment section below.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Bragginrights, ShunTV, Btefnet, CDDVDHeaven, SciFi-Classics and Zonatracker served around 100,000 users between them, and were all targeted with lawsuits in May 2005. Earlier in the year moves were also made against LokiTorrent, s0nicfreak and TorrentStop.

While others faded away, users and admins of some of these sites regrouped to form new sites, and from the ashes of another targeted site, UK-Torrents, UK-T was born.

After the scares of 2005, becoming a large and open site became less attractive. With security in mind UK-T was an invite-only private tracker with an estimated membership of less than 5000. The site also had a fake frontend which gave birth to its codename: Wheel Mods

Some might wonder why the site is being referred to in the past tense after a healthy four years’ operation. The reason is that the site is no more.

In the absence of any official announcement either by the site’s staff or any anti-piracy outfit, details about the shutdown have been very difficult to obtain. After sitting on this story for quite a while, TorrentFreak managed to get a couple of individuals close to the site’s owners to part with a few pieces of information.

According to our sources a senior member of staff experienced legal issues following allegations of selling counterfeit DVDs which led to a search of his home address. Reports from a second source close to the situation claim that there have been further arrests of site staff, although we have been unable to confirm these reports at this point.

Some facts, however, seem fairly solid. Ex-site members are assured that they are safe, since staff quickly took the opportunity to securely delete the site and databases. However, the bad news is that the site will not be returning.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.