At any given time there are dozens of organizations monitoring torrent swarms, sucking up and storing IP addresses, file hashes and timestamps for all kinds of reasons, from genuine research and “six strikes” educational programs, to the preparation of lawsuits.

However, even those aware of surveillance may be surprised at the nature of the monitoring currently being carried out by artist Nicolas Maigret and software developer Brendan Howell. Together they have created The Pirate Cinema, a BitTorrent-watching mechanism that turns file-sharers’ activities and geographic locations into an art installation.

Currently displayed at the Sight + Sound Festival in Canada, The Pirate Cinema manifests itself as a large control room featuring an array of computers coupled to a trio of over-sized screens.

The installation is powered by The Pirate Bay’s top 100 most downloaded torrents and aims to offer a window into the global nature of P2P networks and the viral aspects of torrent distribution.

“An aspect of the concept was to reuse the surveillance systems used by corporations, ISP’s and governments, for other purposes,” Maigret told TorrentFreak.

“On the other hand, the idea was also to monitor the usages or activity of people on a large scale, and to capture the vivid activity of the communities involved in sharing practices. Lastly, I really wanted to consider this ongoing activity as a live infinite Mashup – a snapshot of global file disseminations.”

With developer Brendan Howell, the project was constructed in Python using Libtorrent.

“The idea was to use only the necessary functions – a few lines of code, and to build our tool around it,” Maigret explains. “Then we developed all the monitoring parts and later the decoding process using Gstreamer.”

The installation can operate in two modes. The first constantly downloads the most popular torrents from TPB and displays fragments of them on screen. The setup can involve as many as five computers, each monitoring the site for different kinds of files for a few minutes before gathering fresh input.

The second is a ‘live performance’ version which relies on files such as movies and music being selected by the installation’s operator or ‘performer’. The downloaded content is then played like an instrument and therefore may have cultural, political or economic context, the creators explain.

However, in addition to the playback of segments of media, each screen presents additional information, including the source and destination IP addresses of the computers sharing the content being displayed. This provides a unique visualization of activity between BitTorrent users, wherever they are in the world.

“BitTorrent was a deliberate choice for many reasons. First of all it’s really a Peer-to-Peer architecture and that’s important even symbolically – people/peers are at both sides of each action,” says Maigret.

“Also BitTorrent is not only about mainstream medias, but theoretically open to all kinds of files and content. In a way, the Pirate Cinema reveals some potentials of this peer-based technical architecture.”

The installation also uses the nature of BitTorrent sharing – pieces of fragmented video being shunted around peers in a swarm – to create corresponding visuals.

“This fragmentation loosens the exchanges between different recipients. A file can then be recomposed sample by sample until it is complete, from snippets emanating from separate users and in a disorderly manner. From a cinematic perspective this preliminary fragmentation of the media is also a fragmentation of the film material and of the narration.

“It creates many formal specificities: random editing, weaving together different films frame by frame, glitches and merging of different fragments. When watching the installation, we can’t help ourself interpreting the flows, it produces lots of connections and new narrations, from those chance combinations.”

In terms of the collage of content presented through The Pirate Cinema, Maigret has observed similarities between various TV series as they appear on screen, noting familiar framing, casting and expressions. The diverse sources of pirate content also provide interesting variety.

“At times, you can also see multiple versions of the same films, screeners captured in cinema theaters using different material and framing,” Maigret reveals.

Finally, for readers wondering about the legality of the installation, its creators have indeed considered the implications.

“We saw it as a kind of game. Ever since the beginning of the project, we anticipated the operating modes of the system so that it could be presentable regardless of different countries’ legislations. For example, an encrypted connection to Sweden (iPredator / The Pirate Bay) is used to anonymize each machine used in the project. Fragments of the files are encoded and remain on our machine only temporarily.”

The use of a VPN means that while millions of other peers run the risk of becoming a temporary fixture in The Pirate Cinema installation, its creators won’t ever be able to turn the cameras accidentally upon themselves.

Read more at ThePirateCinema.com

Source: Pirate Bay User Downloads Visualized in Real-Time Art Installation

The people complaining were mostly annoyed that there would be no option to disable the ads. Luckily, BitTorrent listened to the feedback and quickly decided that users would indeed get a chance to opt-out.

However, new stats revealed by the San Francisco company show that there are plenty of users who do not disable the ads displayed in the top bar. In fact, billions of ad impressions have been served since the change was introduced late last year.

According to BitTorrent Inc. the uTorrent and BitTorrent mainline clients are currently good for six billion ad displays a month. Most of these come from uTorrent, which has by far the largest user base of the two.

Based on the stats reported by BitTorrent, the uTorrent client serves more than five billion ads every month. This is quite an impressive figure and more than most smaller advertising companies serve on their entire network.

A quick inspection of the type of ads run on the network reveals that poker software and PC performance ‘enhancing’ apps are the most advertised products. This may of course differ based on the country people download from.

Some of the advertised products are downloaded by thousands of people a day. A product called “SpeedUpMyComputer” has more than 45,000 seeders and hundreds of active downloaders at the time of writing.

Thus far we haven’t been able to spot any ads for premium brands, or plugs for entertainment industry companies. This might be the next challenge for BitTorrent, because there’s certainly an audience to cater to.

As we reported earlier not all ads are allowed on the network. For example, BitTorrent does not accept ads for torrent-friendly VPN providers as these are considered to be “high risk” for some reason.

All in all, it is safe to assume that the ads are providing a healthy new revenue stream for the company. Over the past years the bulk of the revenue came from toolbar installs but with the current numbers the ads have the potential to add a few million to that each year.

TorrentFreak asked BitTorrent to comment on the dazzling numbers and the company’s outlook for the future, but we received no response.

Source: uTorrent Serves Over 5 Billion Ads Per Month

Three months have passed since, and today the overseeing Center for Copyright Information has published a status update. The group explains that everything is going according to plan and highlights one particular case where the educational nature of the program came to fruition.

In a blog post CCI’s Executive Director Jill Lesser brings up a unique situation where a copyright alert triggered a fine example of a homebrew anti-piracy intervention.

“In one specific instance, a parent who was originally convinced he had received an Alert in error, found that his teenager had engaged in the behavior that triggered the Alert and had the teen write a note of apology,” Lesser writes.

While the parent’s initiative is not part of the six-strikes plan, Lesser appears to endorse the educational effort which is in line with the program’s main goal.

Overall there appears to be a very positive vibe surrounding the Copyright Alerts.

The CCI reports, for example, that ISP customer service lines have received “calls of appreciation” from thankful subscribers who had no clue that there were pirates using their connections. In addition, Lesser explains that the alerts also helped subscribers understand the risks of open Wi-Fi.

“ISPs have been able to help consumers take the necessary steps to protect their accounts from being used for illegal behavior,” she writes.

Unfortunately the CCI is not yet ready to announce any public statistics detailing how many alerts have been sent out so far. However, Lesser does suggest that some subscribers have already reached the third stage, which means they have received more than four alerts.

“It’s still very early, but as predicted, there are many more first stage alerts than second stage alerts and – albeit based on only the limited data we have thus far – very few consumers are reaching the third, or mitigation, stage,” Lesser writes.

To us it would be a great surprise if someone has indeed reached the third stage. Thus far we have only heard from one person who received an alert and we weren’t able to find any mentions elsewhere on the Internet either.

We encourage readers who have received an alert, or know someone who has, to let us know. It is still a mystery what language is being used by most ISPs, and we would like to find out more.

Copies of apology letters are also more than welcome.

Source: Parent Punishes Kid for Triggering a “Six Strikes” Piracy Alert

Against a background of initial pessimism, Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act has proven more than capable of enabling the filtering dreams of the entertainment industries after blocking provisions in the Digital Economy Act were deemed too controversial.

While more recent blocks were actioned by the UK recording industry under the watchful eye of the BPI, it was the MPAA who pioneered site censorship in the UK. Their success against Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 has become the model through which ISPs can be forced to black out sites based on the order of a judge.

Last week we reported that the music industry are considering future action against a wide range of sites but there is a more immediate situation developing courtesy of their movie-making counterparts.

Sometime in the past two months the MPAA went to court with a copyright complaint against two sites – Movie2K and another called Download4All (DL4All). The precise details are unclear, but it seems likely that they presented similar arguments to those offered in earlier cases.

Broadly speaking the studios will explain that these sites breach their copyrights and cost them money and, since ISPs are now aware that they’re facilitating their users’ infringements, they must now block the sites to avoid becoming liable themselves.

TorrentFreak can confirm that in the last week of April several of the UK’s leading ISPs including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, and almost certainly O2, EE and Sky, received a copy of a High Court order compelling them to block the sites.

BT have already begun blocking the site in the UK and Virgin Media inform us that they too will initiate a blockade today.

“Virgin Media has received an order from the Courts requiring it to prevent access to Download4All and Movie2K in order to help protect against copyright infringement,” a spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company, but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives to give consumers access to great content at the right price.”

And in a final and somewhat amazing note, the operators of PirateReverse.info, one of the largest Pirate Bay proxy services, informs TorrentFreak that they have already deployed a proxy site to unblock Movie2K.

“We’ve just deployed movie2kproxy.com (in record time), still working on getting the images to load properly but should all be fixed shortly.”

The moles in this game now appear to be getting whacked even before they appear.

UPDATE: The operator of PirateProxy.net, the world’s largest Pirate Bay proxy, says that he too will unblock Movie2K for UK users.

Source: UK ISPs Block Huge Movie Site Movie2K, Proxy Immediately Unblocks

When it came to legal action to prevent sharing the music industry led the way but even now, book publishers – Wiley aside – seem generally unwilling to follow the example. However, there are companies prepared to make uploaders suffer, even those with no malicious or commercial intent.

Pāvels Jurs is a teacher in Latvia who operates a website where children can research history topics, see presentations and find other learning aids. Jurs created the site so that children from poor families can still have access to education. According to Latvian media, Jurs even received recognition from the Ministry of Education for his efforts.

Last Thursday, however, Jurs was leaving home to go to school and found himself confronted by four police officers from the Economic Crime Bureau. They proceeded to search Jurs’ home and confiscate the computer he uses in his teaching job. He was arrested and subjected to two hours of interrogation during which he learned he had committed a serious offense that could result in a two year jail sentence.

Jurs’ crime was to upload a scanned copy of the high school history book “Vēsture Vidusskolai” to his website, an act which drew the ire of publisher Zvaigzne ABC and an official complaint earlier this year.

The publisher currently sells the book for the princely sum of $4.00 and it appears that Jurs had previously held discussions with its author but there was a misunderstandings over what content should have been removed from his site.

Nevertheless, the episode has left Jurs questioning why such heavy handed tactics were needed when a civil action would have sufficed. The police have taken down Jurs’ website and since exams are currently underway, students no longer have access to its resources.

“Is there really such a need for punitive action against these methods of teaching, such as the maintenance of a websites from which I did not receive any benefit, but, on the contrary, cost most of my salary payments for maintenance? I understand that I have violated copyright laws, but is it really necessary to act this way?” Jurs said.

Since the raid a meeting has taken place during which some kind of a settlement was discussed. Further meetings will take place this week but it’s now believed that the publisher will not raise any “substantive claims” against the teacher.

Source: Police Raid School Teacher for Uploading History Book for Students

Iron Man 3 is the most downloaded movie.

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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week

The film, created by Simon Klose, is available for no cost and has already been watched by millions of people. The public response to this free release model has been overwhelmingly positive, but it’s now meeting resistance from Hollywood, TPB’s arch rival.

Over the past weeks several movie studios have been trying to suppress the availability of TPB-AFK by asking Google to remove links to the documentary from its search engine. The links are carefully hidden in standard DMCA takedown notices for popular movies and TV-shows.

The silent attacks come from multiple Hollywood sources including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate and are being sent out by multiple anti-piracy outfits.

Fox, with help from six-strikes monitoring company Dtecnet, asked Google to remove a link to TPB-AFK on Mechodownload. Paramount did the same with a link on the Warez.ag forums.

Viacom sent at least two takedown requests targeting links to the Pirate Bay documentary on Mrworldpremiere and Rapidmoviez. Finally, Lionsgate jumped in by asking Google to remove a copy of TPB-AFK from a popular Pirate Bay proxy.

While it’s entertaining to think that these takedowns are truly targeted at TBP-AFK, the more likely explanation is that they are collateral damage. Most DMCA takedown processes are fully automated and somehow the TPB-AFK links were (mistakenly) associated with infringing titles.

However, that doesn’t make it less of a problem.

The whole episode shows once again that something is seriously wrong with the current implementation of the DMCA takedown system. At the moment rightsholders get to take down whatever they want, with almost no oversight and no incentive to improve the accuracy of their systems.

Perhaps a six-strikes plan or some other form of “education” is in order for copyright holders who fail to learn from their mistakes?

Source: Hollywood Studios Censor Pirate Bay Documentary

However, like all sites of this nature, RapidShare became popular with those looking to store copyright-infringing material. It was a relationship that would prove problematic.

RapidShare fought many legal battles with entertainment companies seeking to hold the company liable for the actions of its users, but it was a big surprise three years ago that really caused it to take stock.

In 2010, the RIAA submitted their list of foreign “notorious markets” to the Office of the US Trade Representative and among the usual torrent site suspects were RapidShare. In the year that followed the company spent huge amounts of cash – reports suggest around 500,000 euros – lobbying to change the site’s image and convince entertainment companies that it was serious about protecting their copyrights.

In the short-term at least the strategy appeared to pay off. RapidShare were absent from the USTR’s 2011 list, a sign that entertainment companies felt they had the file-hoster reasonably contained and on the right track. In the months that followed, particularly following the shutdown of Megaupload, RapidShare made further adjustments to its business plan, publishing a controversial “anti-piracy manifesto” and taking increasingly harsh measures to deter file-sharers. As a result, traffic plummeted.

As can be seen from the chart above, not even a temporary boost in traffic following the 2012 shutdown of Megaupload could disrupt the downward trend for long. RapidShare’s actions caused a continual reduction in traffic from its heyday in 2010 (50th most popular site in the world) but the worst was yet to come.

Late November 2012, RapidShare was still very popular, ranked 150th in the world by Alexa, but now, just six months later, the site is ranked 860th.

The effect on the company has been dramatic. According to an insider who spoke with Swiss news site 20Minuten, RapidShare has been forced to fire 45 employees – 75% of its workforce – even after assuring them late last year that their jobs were safe. Of particular concern is that only a few weeks ago the company was still hiring fresh staff from abroad. They will be told to leave in seven days, the insider reports.

“The employees themselves, no matter who you ask, do not believe in the survival of the company,” the source said.

According to the source, late last year then CEO Alexandra Zwingli announced a “strict austerity program” for the company. Zwingli was subsequently replaced by Kurt Sidler, the former head of business software company Sage.

20Minuten confirmed the departures with RapidShare.

“The situation is undeniably so that we can reduce costs and unfortunately we have to part with a number of employees,” said Sidler. “RapidShare is maintained and the operation has concrete plans for the future.”

With RapidShare having publicly turned its back on the very community that made it rich over the years, never again will the site be able to return to the business model that once elevated it to elite status on the Internet. The appointment of Sidler, who says his job is to “align RapidShare with customer needs and requirements”, suggests the company will now move in a very different direction.

Source: RapidShare Fires 75% of its Staff After “Rogue Site” Revamp Bites

Inspired by these revelations the Canadian Pirate Party decided to take a look at the downloading habits of their local Government and police, against a backdrop of vigorous recent debate surrounding online piracy in Canada, and the copyright troll phenomenon in particular.

With help from the pirating anti-piracy group Canipre several movie studios are gearing up to sue thousands of Internet subscribers. Interestingly, the Pirate Party’s findings suggest that even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Government’s Industry Canada could become potential targets.

“This discovery shows that copyrighted materials have, in fact, been downloaded via the RCMP and Industry Canada networks,” states Pirate Party leader Travis McCrea.

McCrea notes, however, that like most copyright trolls, their evidence is far from rock solid and can’t be linked to individual downloaders.

“However, we cannot be sure who is responsible for downloading the material, or even if it was downloaded by employees, contractors, or a person who was using an open wireless connection. This is why this type of intellectual property enforcement doesn’t work – there is no method of reliably telling who actually engaged in the infringement of copyrighted materials.”

Below are a few “hits” that were found with data provided by BitTorrent tracking outfit Scaneye, starting with the police IP-addresses. The pirated titles are not unusual and the list mostly includes popular TV-shows and movies.

Industry Canada IP-addresses have also been caught pirating movies TV-shows and games, including episodes of The Voice, Duck Dynasty and The Ultimate Fighter.

The IP-addresses that were found are pulled from peer lists which increases the possibility of false positives, which is exactly how many copyright trolls are believed to gather evidence.

In the months to come thousands of Internet subscribers may be dragged to court, with movie studios demanding thousands of dollars in compensation. The Pirate Party Canada speaks out fiercely against these trolling actions.

They point out that despite the crackdowns on individual citizens, the police and the Government can seemingly continue to pirate without repercussions.

The fact that the makers of Game of Thrones and other frequently pirated titles don’t seem to mind, makes it all the more confusing according to the Pirate Party.

“Between the difficulty of targeting individual pirates, the double standard of targeting individuals more harshly than organizations, and the fact that many content creators don’t see piracy as detrimental to their business, it’s clear that something is wrong with the way intellectual property rights are currently enforced,” the Party comments.

“If the goal of copyright enforcers – and the creators they represent – is to increase profits and protect creator rights, shouldn’t there be a better way to accomplish this than by harassing individuals who may or may not bear any responsibility for copyright infringement happening on their IP address?”

For the many future troll victims in Canada, we hope that the judges handling these cases will ask the same questions.

Source: Canadian Police and Government Caught Pirating Movies and TV-Shows

In the past sites such as The Pirate Bay, KickAssTorrents (KAT), H33T and Fenopy have been blocked by court action, but the list this time is particularly ambitious.

A total of 25 sites are listed including some of the world’s largest torrents sites – 1337x, Bitsnoop, ExtraTorrent, isoHunt, Monova, TorrentCrazy, TorrentDownloads, TorrentHound, TorrentReactor and Torrentz. In fact, if the current action comes to fruition, only one of the current top 10 torrent sites will remain unblocked in the UK.

However, in the torrent scene news travels very quickly indeed and if there is one thing users hate more than a badly-seeded torrent, it’s censorship, and the signs are that the proposed blocks will be met head on with potent circumvention tools.

PirateProxy.net is the world’s largest Pirate Bay proxy site whose growth has been nothing short of phenomenal. From a standing start in the second quarter of 2012 the site has achieved amazing things. According to Alexa, PirateProxy is the UK’s 137th most popular site, just ahead of its Netherlands ranking of 145th. To give an idea of scale, PirateProxy’s traffic can be compared with that currently achieved by Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz.

“Once I read that TF article, I started configuring and testing new proxies sites for Torrentz, Isohunt and Extratorrent,” the admin of PirateProxy told TorrentFreak.

“I have already created proxy sites for other blocked torrent sites such as KAT, Fenopy and H33T. Katproxy.com has become really popular in the UK recently too and i’m hoping to add these proxy sites to a new section on proxybay.info.”

As noted in our previous article, the world’s second most popular Pirate Bay proxy is PirateReverse.info. An admin there say they’re also well prepared.

“At the moment we’re looking to proxy all the torrent sites that were mentioned and we’ve already acquired such domains,” TorrentFreak was informed. “We’re always willing to invest in the proxies we provide to make them as fast and accessible as possible, and we’re planning some hardware upgrades shortly.”

However, in addition to the torrent sites the BPI list also contains other domains related to file-hosting searches (FilesTube, Filecrop) and MP3 sites (Grooveshark, MP3Skull, BeeMP3 etc). Early signs suggest that these aren’t the main priority of proxy providers since they are more difficult to set up.

“It would be particularly difficult to proxy the file sharing sites however, because of all the protection they use to stop people hot-linking the downloads, same goes for Grooveshark and the MP3 services,” PirateReverse explain.

“We will be looking into it, but for the moment the torrent sites are our priority. They will all be listed on torrentproxies.com when available, which we’re working to make the number one hub for torrent site proxies.”

PirateProxy’s admin says that any non-torrent site proxies will be driven by demand.

“I set up Proxybay.info a while back to collect good working proxies for The Pirate Bay. I am planning on doing a re-design that will allow proxies of other sites to be included as well. Currently, I am only planning on unblocking popular torrent sites, however, I may move onto other types of sites if there is enough demand.”

While both sets of proxy admins work separately, they share the belief that censorship is not only ineffective but also counterproductive.

“The current censorship regime in the UK just shows how technology is always a few steps ahead of government. They will catch up eventually, but by that time, we will find other ways to circumvent these blocks,” says PirateProxy’s admin.

“We think the way to combat piracy is to offer simple to access and good value alternatives. At the moment it is genuinely easier to torrent a movie or album than to buy it DRM free and keep forever online. Censorship will never work in this case,” says PirateReverse.

“However, our concerns lie that in the future we, the proxy operators, may be targeted. It is easier for us to move around into different IP spaces but it will be a tiresome and expensive game of whack-a-mole. In the long-term though, we think it will prove that censorship doesn’t work. Perhaps we will see the ISPs put up more of a fight – it costs them money to implement the blocks.”

PirateProxy’s admin says that there is a message to be sent – and hopefully plenty of determination to send it.

“Looking at the bigger picture, I hope these proxy sites can send a message that censorship on the Internet is pointless and counter-productive. I will continue to run these proxy sites until these sites are unblocked and accessible everywhere,” he concludes.

Source: Fighting Censorship, Proxies Gear Up to Unblock More Torrent Sites

One of the patterns that emerged with the rise of video streaming services is that BitTorrent is losing its share of total Internet traffic.

This downward spiral is confirmed by the latest Sandvine report which reveals that BitTorrent traffic is now responsible for 9.2% of all U.S. Internet traffic in North America during peak hours, compared to 11.3% last year.

However, if we look at the actual volumes of data being transferred through file-sharing networks we see that usage is still growing. Median Internet traffic increased by more than 50% since last year on fixed networks, so in terms of actual traffic BitTorrent usage is going up.

BitTorrent’s presence is most visible in upstream traffic, with 34.8% of all data transferred during peak hours going through the protocol. HTTP traffic comes in second with 7.5% and Dropbox gets a notable mention with 1.2% of all upstream traffic during peak hours.

BitTorrent usage remains high in other regions as well, and highest of all in Asia-Pacific where it’s credited for 21.6% of total Internet traffic during peak hours. In Europe and Latin America this percentage is 17.4% and 10.2% respectively.

Another trend we noticed is that SSL traffic, used for some VPN services, has increased significantly over the past months. In North America upstream traffic over SSL more than doubled its share in a year, from 2.5% to 5.4%. Again, in terms of actual traffic this increase has been even greater and similar patterns are observed in other regions.

In part this boom in SSL traffic may be explained by the increase in VPN usage among BitTorrent users. A significant percentage of users hide their IP-address behind a VPN or proxy and the numbers are expected to go up even further in the future.

This increase in VPN use also means that the actual percentage of BitTorrent traffic is even higher, since the Sandvine report puts the traffic generated by these users in the SSL category.

It will be interesting to see how the “six-strikes” crackdown in the United States and similar measures around the world will accelerate this upward trend for encrypted traffic, and whether BitTorrent traffic continues to grow in the years to come.

Source: BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of All Upload Traffic, VPNs are Booming

The label claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and accused the company of massive copyright infringement. The accusations included claims that bosses and other workers at the company, from the CEO down, personally uploaded many thousands of infringing tracks to the service.

Universal was later joined by Sony, Warner and several other labels who all called for the shutdown of the streaming service and fines against the named employees. In recent months activity in the case slowed down, but behind the scenes the discussions continued.

This has now resulted in a voluntary agreement between the labels and five Grooveshark employees. Nikola Arabadjiev is the only one who still works at the company. Grooveshark founder Sam Tarantino and co-founder Josh Greenberg have not signed an agreement.

The “consent judgments” obtained by TorrentFreak suggest trouble for Grooveshark, which up until now streamed millions of songs without explicit authorization from copyright holders.

Under the agreement the named Grooveshark employees are prohibited from infringing copyrights of musical works owned by the major labels. In addition, they must never again work with a business that systematically infringes upon label copyrights.

“The Defendant and all those acting in concert with the Defendant shall be immediately and permanently enjoined from infringing in any manner any copyright in any and all sound recordings, whether now in existence or later created, in which any of the Plaintiffs own or control any exclusive rights under Section 106 of the United States Copyright Act (the “Copyrighted Works”),” the agreement reads.

“This shall include, but is not limited to, copying, uploading, reproducing, distributing, transmitting or publicly performing any of the Copyrighted Works in violation of the United States Copyright Act, via the Grooveshark service or any other online streaming service, website, application, or peer-to-peer or file-trading system that operates without authority or license from the appropriate Plaintiff or any of its licensees,” it adds.

TorrentFreak approached Grooveshark and the record labels for comment on the recent developments. Grooveshark’s attorneys preferred not to comment on the developments and we have yet to hear back from the labels.

The current lawsuit is just one of many Grooveshark has been dragged into over recent years. January last year EMI sued the music service over a contractual dispute, and Grooveshark has been blocked following court orders in Germany and Denmark. This week, record labels in the UK indicated that they are preparing an ISP blockade of the site.

Over the years Grooveshark has always fiercely defended its business, arguing that it operates within the boundaries of the law and removes unauthorized content when it receives a DMCA takedown notice. At the same time, they negotiated licensing deals with the major labels.

“Laws come from Congress. Licenses come from businesses, Grooveshark is completely legal because we comply with the laws passed by Congress, but we are not licensed by every label (yet),” Grooveshark’s Paul Geller said previously.

However, it seems that the major labels probably want to quash the site entirely instead of legitimizing it through licensing deals.

At the time of writing the music service is still up and running and no settlement with Grooveshark has been entered. However, now that key defendants in the case have struck a deal it would be no surprise if parent company Escape Media follows suit.

Update: Grooveshark sent the following statement. We have yet to get a reply on out follow up questions asking what the settlements mean for the future of the site.

“We are pleased that the case between Universal Music and Escape Media has been narrowed and simplified by the removal of some individual defendants from the case upon their stipulation to simply obey the law—something Escape Media does every day through its active licensing of millions of tracks and its strict compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Escape Media Group will continue to deliver innovative new solutions and services that revolutionize music consumption for its growing audience of 30 million+ fans around the world.”

Source: Grooveshark’s Future in Doubt After Settlements With Big Music

This activity eventually caught the attention of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN who labeled FTD a criminal operation. In February 2011 the Haarlem Court ruled that FTD provided a promotional venue for uploaders of infringing material and deemed the site to operate illegally. FTD was ordered to remove listings of copyrighted files and the operation soon disappeared.

With FTD gone and with a helpful ruling in hand, BREIN moved to positively identify the owner of another ‘spotting’ site called FTD World, a site offering similar services to the old FTD.

BREIN discovered a bank account with connections to the site and said that ING, one of the largest banks in the Netherlands, could provide the information it was looking for. Citing the Data Protection Act, ING refused to cooperate.

The case went to court and this morning a ruling was handed down. The Amsterdam Court decided that ING is not obliged to hand BREIN the personal details behind the bank account.

The Court recognized that BREIN has responsibilities to take action against those infringing the copyrights of its members but noted that ING has obligations to protect the privacy and interests of its customers. When balancing the two sets of needs, copyright enforcement versus banking privacy, the bank’s responsibilities come out on top.

“Under data protection law, you can only use personal information for proper and clearly defined legal goals. Using information for different goals requires an extraordinary interest that outweighs the privacy of the person involved,” Arnoud Engelfriet, a lawyer specializing in Internet law at the ICTRecht law firm, told TorrentFreak.

“The court says that because of the important position a bank plays in society, this is a really high bar to meet and BREIN has not met it.”

In its ruling the Court also noted that BREIN was not allowed to rely on case law which obliges ISPs and webhosts to hand over personal details in copyright cases. Since ING is a bank, it is in no position to understand the legal status of a website.

“While there is a relationship between an ISP or hosting provider and copyright infringement, there is no relationship between ING and copyright infringement,” the Court wrote.

BREIN was also informed by the Court that there were other avenues through which it could have obtained the information, but had failed to use them.

“BREIN had not contacted the Russian hosting provider, for example,” Engelfriet explains. “On the site, next to the bank account details, the name of the holder was given, but BREIN had not even called her to ask where the money went. BREIN said she was likely a ‘money mule’ so it would have been pointless to ask, but the court says you don’t know that till you try.”

Also, BREIN failed to back up its claims of criminal activity with an appropriate complaint to authorities.

“BREIN had not filed a police complaint even though it alleged the actions were a criminal offense (aiding & abetting copyright infringement). It should have done all that before starting this lawsuit,” Engelfriet concludes.

The anti-piracy group is disappointed with the ruling.

“This is not acceptable to us. Fraudsters and scammers can not trust that banks will not pass on their data,” said BREIN boss Tim Kuik.

Source: Banking Privacy More Important than Copyright Enforcement, Court Rules

Despite running the filter for some time the Canada-based torrent search engine hoped to have the decision overruled on appeal, but in March this year that aim suffered a setback.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the decision of the lower court, stating that since isoHunt had previous knowledge of some infringing activity, the site loses its DMCA safe harbor protections across the entire platform.

Concerned by the ruling, early April isoHunt founder Gary Fung’s legal team filed a petition for a re-hearing before a jury, arguing that the Ninth Circuit decision will chill innovation and threaten free speech online.

Later that month the case attracted the attention of Google. The company has concerns that some of the wording in the Ninth Circuit ruling will have implications for its business too.

In a brief filed at the Appeals Court, Google explained that if the Ninth Circuit ruling is interpreted too broadly in future, all service providers could lose their DMCA safe harbor protections leading to a chilling effect on innovation.

Despite the support, for now isoHunt has to deal with another setback. Yesterday the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied Fung’s appeal for a rehearing.

“The panel has unanimously voted to deny the petition for panel rehearing. Judges Pregerson and Berzon have voted to deny the petition for rehearing en banc, and Judge Fisher has so recommended,” Wednesday’s decision reads.

Nevertheless, the battle will not end here. Isohunt’s legal team believes that clarification is required if search engines are to conduct their businesses with certainty in future, and they’re prepared to go to the highest court in the land to obtain it.

“IsoHunt is in the process of requesting review by the United States Supreme Court,” isoHunt lawyer Ira Rothken informs TorrentFreak. “The right to a jury trial is protected by the US Constitution and shouldn’t be usurped by gestalt rules which provide little guidance on how search engines should conduct themselves.”

“Here the court has left the world wondering what type of causation analysis ought to be done – if a search engine has done some alleged bad things five years ago are they still responsible today with a different interface for all user infringements under a civil inducement theory?” the California-based attorney questions.

“There needs to be guidance on legal standards and rules beyond Judges acting in a balkanized and ambiguous manner. The status quo will have a chilling effect on internet development and lead to wasteful civil litigation,” Rothken concludes.

Source: IsoHunt Will Take DMCA Safe Harbor Fight to the Supreme Court

Rather than wait for the day to arrive TPB switched to a Greenland-based domain, later hopping to Icelandic and then .SX domains as other problems became apparent.

Despite the rapid switches, authorities in Sweden are still intent on taking control of TPB’s .SE domains to ensure that the site’s outward Swedish connections are severed for good. However, the prosecutor’s latest actions bear all the signs of an increasingly desperate copyright enforcement mentality that in the face of an unbeatable foe will seek to hold entirely innocent parties responsible for totally detached offenses committed by others.

The Internet Infrastructure Foundation (IIS) is the body with responsibility for Sweden’s top-level .SE domain. Since it handles .SE domain registrations, IIS is the organization with control over Swedish domains operated by The Pirate Bay.

Earlier this month, IIS received news that the Swedish Prosecution Authority had filed a petition with the Stockholm District Court demanding the seizure of two Pirate Bay-related domains – thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se. The prosecutor is now treating IIS as an infringing party in the long-running fight between The Pirate Bay and copyright holders.

“The legal system has not been able to shut down the service after the previous guilty verdict against TPB,” IIS Chief of Communications Maria Ekelund told TorrentFreak.

“Therefore the prosecutor has opened a new case against both the domain holders and .SE. The prosecutor is accusing .SE of assisting TPB who are assisting others to commit copyright infringement.”

Just to be clear, in their criminal trial The Pirate Bay’s former operators were found guilty of assisting in copyright infringements carried out by the site’s users. IIS are now being accused of assisting people who were previously found guilty of assisting other people to commit copyright infringement. The users of TPB, who according to the court actually committed the offenses, have been left out of the process altogether. Not so IIS.

“In the eyes of the prosecutor, .SE’s catalogue function has become some form of accomplice to criminal activity, a perspective that is unique in Europe as far as I know,” says IIS CEO Danny Aerts.

“There are no previous cases of states suing a registry for abetting criminal activity or breaching copyright law.”

In considering what IIS may have done to deserve being taken to court, Aerts turns to IIS’s responsibility to link readable URLs – such as Google.se – to their IP address equivalent. Their part of the connectivity job is important, but they aren’t the only organization involved in the process.

“.SE translates the .se domain names to name servers, a name server operator translates this into an IP address and a resolver operator (such as Telia) helps .SE respond to the most frequent queries,” Aerts explains.

“IP addresses are subsequently allotted to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) through RIPE. And IANA grants us the right to administer the top-level .se domain. Perhaps I should also remember to mention Google, which helps you find the address if you do not know the domain name.”

What Aerts describes is a complex interconnected system designed to help the Internet function, with each organization and function playing its own crucial part.

“Where should the line be drawn for legal processes and matters of liability?” Aerts questions.

Since IIS are refusing to comply with the prosecutor’s demands, the case will now proceed to court.

“.SE will naturally respond to the prosecutor’s perspective. We have an educational task ahead of us in explaining to the District Court what a domain name is, what .SE does and the fundamentally incorrect nature behind seizing a domain name forever,” Aerts says.

Another sad consequence of this case is that IIS will be forced to divert funds away from its educational efforts in order to fight in a third-party battle between copyright holders and The Pirate Bay.

“This will be an expensive process and, although our lawyers will find it an interesting case, these are funds that we would rather spend on our investments in schools or digital inclusion,” says Aerts.

If IIS wins, and many people way outside the copyright debate hope that they will, then the status quo will remain. However, if IIS lose they could be forced to deregister the domains, remove their name servers, or watch as the domains are seized or placed on Sweden’s block list. While the outcome is uncertain, what is almost guaranteed is that The Pirate Bay will live on.

“Removing a domain name can be compared to taking down the signs hanging outside the shoe store. Although this would make it more difficult for customers to find the store, it would still be there and any customers who were able to find it would be able to continue buying shoes there,” Aerts concludes.

Source: Pirate Bay Domain Registrar Assists Copyright Infringement, Prosecutor Claims

Despite the severity of the charges, Megaupload’s legal team does not have insight into all of the relevant documents relied on by the U.S. Government when it came to that conclusion.

Through the New Zealand courts Dotcom and his fellow defendants have requested access to the withheld information. To mount a proper defense they want to see the extent to which the U.S. authorities can back up their criminal charges.

On two earlier occasions, including once in the High Court, Dotcom’s legal team were granted full access to the U.S. evidence. However, in March these rulings were overturned by the Court of Appeal, which concluded that the United States could move forward with a summary case.

After the defeat Dotcom and his legal team quickly filed for an appeal at the Supreme Court, which was granted a few hours ago. This means that Megaupload has another shot at getting insight into crucial evidence.

“I am looking forward to the NZ Supreme Court review in our case and getting the discovery needed for a fair extradition hearing,” Dotcom commented on the news.

If the Supreme Court sides with Kim Dotcom and his associates, the evidence disclosed would be hugely helpful in ongoing legal battles on multiple continents. This includes the pending extradition battle in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, Megaupload’s lawyers haven’t been sitting still. In the United States they have a request pending to dismiss the case against the company, and last week two of their top lawyers released a white paper accusing the Obama administration of taking instructions from Hollywood.

Over in Europe, Germany was also added to the mix, with Megaupload lawyer Robert Amsterdam asking the Government there to intervene. Amsterdam argues that the human rights of Dotcom, a German citizen, have been violated by the U.S., and he wants the authorities to raise this issue in Washington.

Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing in New Zealand is currently scheduled to take place in August this year, but that date could be further delayed now the Supreme Court has taken up the case.

Source: Kim Dotcom Granted Supreme Court Appeal Over U.S. Evidence

The parties founded the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and few months later they started a non-profit company with the same name in Washington, D.C.

After more than a year of delays the CCI finally launched its Copyright Alert System during February. But just when it appeared the group was on the right track, it met another roadblock.

According to the Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), the company leading the six-strikes program has had its status revoked. This pretty much means that the company is unable to conduct any official business anywhere in the United States.

The revocation means that CCI’s articles of organization are void, most likely because the company forgot to file the proper paperwork or pay its fees.

“If entity’s status is revoked then articles of incorporation / organization shall be void and all powers conferred upon such entity are declared inoperative, and, in the case of a foreign entity, the certificate of foreign registration shall be revoked and all powers conferred hereunder shall be inoperative,” the DCRA explains.

Unfortunately for the CCI, the DCRA doesn’t have a strike based system and the company is now facing civil penalties and fines.

It appears that company status was revoked last year which means that other businesses now have the option to take over the name. That would be quite an embarrassment, to say the least, and also presents an opportunity to scammers.

“When a Washington DC corporation is revoked by the DCRA, its name is reserved and protected until December 31st of the year the corporation is revoked. After December 31st, other business entities may use the corporations name,” the DCRA explains on its website.

Technically the CCI could have started a new corporation under a different name but this seems unlikely. TorrentFreak was able to confirm that at least one of the participants in the Copyright Alert System paid a substantial amount of money to the revoked company last year.

As with any other company, CCI will be able to have its company status reinstated after fulfilling its obligations. A source connected to the Center of Copyright Information informs TorrentFreak that the proper paperwork has been filed now. This most likely means that the DCRA will update the company’s status in the near future.

Finally, it will be interesting to see if this situation holds consequences for the anti-piracy warnings that are supposedly being sent out at the moment – the Internet seems strangely devoid of U.S. subscribers in receipt of any.

Source: “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Outfit Loses Company Status, Faces Penalties

On behalf of the BPI and by extension the major recording labels in the UK, PPL asked its members whether they had licensed any music to a range of torrent sites including KickAssTorrents, H33T and Fenopy. By February 2013 their motivations were confirmed when the High Court ordered ISPs to block all three sites.

Now, ten months after their initial survey and three months after their latest court success, we can confirm that the BPI have just initiated their most ambitious domain blocking initiative yet. Yesterday on behalf of the BPI, PPL sent out a request to its members, similar in most key respects to the one sent last year.

“Over the past years, UK music labels have innovated to build one of the most vibrant digital music sectors in the world. However, the growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music without a licence from the copyright holders,” the communication begins.

“In considering what next steps to take, BPI would like to know if any PPL record company members have, in the UK, licensed their recorded music to the operators of the below websites,” it continues.

What follows is list containing some of the world’s largest BitTorrent, file-hosting, and MP3 search engine websites in the world. A second industry source informs TorrentFreak that the BPI does indeed intend to have the sites blocked via upcoming action in the High Court.

BitTorrent

1337x currently has 484,000 torrents in its database. The site is special since it’s in a minority of public torrent sites that also operates its own tracker. At the turn of 2013 it was the 6th most popular torrent site in the world.

BitSnoop is a torrent indexing site that currently has a massive 19.9 million torrents in its database. When it comes to DMCA notices the site is more transparent than most. BitSnoop says its has complied with 789,303 takedown notices since December 2011 and even publishes league tables of the senders. According to the list the BPI have sent none, which is interesting since they have sent more than 300,000 complaints to Google about BitSnoop.

ExtraTorrent is the 5th largest torrent and 9th largest file-sharing related website in the world. It also claims to be DMCA compliant but that hasn’t stopped the BPI sending close to 200,000 takedowns directly to Google.

Two years ago Isohunt became the first torrent search engine to implement a keyword filter to block infringing content on behalf of the MPAA. It is the 4th largest torrent site in the world and is subject to continuing legal action in the United States. BPI member companies have sent more than 310,000 takedown requests to Google.

TorrentReactor re-entered the Top 10 torrent websites chart this year after a brief hiatus. The site claims compliance with both the DMCA and its European equivalent.

The BPI’s list is long and goes on to include TorrentCrazy, Monova, Torrentdownloads and TorrentHound, and with the word ‘torrent’ cropping up a few times one might presume that these sites are all fundamentally the same. However, there is a surprise inclusion in the list.

Torrentz is the 3rd largest torrent site in the world but it differs from the other sites in the list in an important way. Torrentz is a meta-search engine, in that it’s a search engine that searches other search engines. Furthermore, not only is it fully compliant with the DMCA and its euro equivalent, but Torrentz carries absolutely no torrents whatsoever.

File-Hosting search engines

The attack on torrent search engines is only the beginning. The BPI is also looking to target other sites that don’t carry any of their own material but index content located on other sites.

Filestube, a site that indexes content on a few dozen external file-hosting sites, has been subjected to a massive DMCA notice campaign in recent months. Google says it has received 4.45 million takedown notices from 2,2650 copyright holders. Other similar sites included on the BPI list are Filecrop, Filetram and Rapidlibrary.

Music streaming and MP3

Although it is already the subject of a domain block in Denmark, the inclusion of Grooveshark in the BPI’s list comes as somewhat of a surprise. Isohunt aside, the company’s management have a much higher public profile than any other site in the list and could conceivably turn up in the UK High Court to fight any blocking attempt.

The list winds up with a range of MP3 download/search engine type operations that have grown in popularity during recent months. BeeMP3, Dilandau, MP3juices, MP3lemon, MP3raid and MP3skull have all featured heavily in Google’s Transparency Report, probably due to their ease of use and crowd-pleasing search results.

Abmp3, Bomb-mp3, Emp3world and Newalbumreleases complete the list.

PPL members are being asked to respond directly to the BPI’s legal department by May 21 informing the music group of any licensing deals in place – presumably the BPI wish to avoid potential embarrassment in the High Court.

Source: Records Labels Prepare Massive ‘Pirate Site’ Domain Blocking Blitz

The U.S Copyright Group, for example, ripped off the website of a competitor. They copied the design and code of the Copyright Enforcement Group and passed it off as their own. Only when we called them out on it did they remove all “infringing” content.

In Canada a similar situation is unfolding at the moment. Anti-piracy group Canipre, who work with the makers of the Hurt Locker as did the U.S Copyright Group, have been busted ripping-off the work of independent photographers.

Their dark themed website features images that originate from several photographers, but they all have one thing in common – they are being used without permission. A classic mistake, but one that should have never been made by a company that takes the moral high ground when it comes to piracy.

Just a few days ago Canipre’s boss defended their plan to sue thousands of BitTorrent pirates by claiming that they want to change people’s attitudes. In addition, they proudly use the ironic slogan “they all know it’s wrong and they ‘re still doing it.”

Since Vice Canada broke the news a few hours ago nearly all the photos have been removed. However, there are still screenshots that should be good for an interesting court battle, or perhaps more appropriately, a settlement of a few thousand dollars.

Steve Houk, who took the self portrait pictured above, contacted Canipre about the blatant infringement, looking for compensation.

“I sent them an e-mail via their website. I identified the image, told them that it is my creative property under copyright and requested that they either remove the image from their site or compensate me for its use.”

“I also told them that it was disheartening to see a company that champions intellectual property rights to pirate someone else’s creative work,” Houk notes.

Canipre quickly took on the role of “innocent” infringer and blamed their web design firm for obtaining the photos. The design firm allegedly took content from an image bank, but that would have to be a rogue outfit as Houk never sold away his rights.

In any case, Canipre is of course ultimately responsible for the content that appears on their company website, just like they hold an Internet subscriber responsible for the infringing behavior of their neighbors.

In addition to Houk, Vice also got in touch with photographers Sascha Pohflepp and Brian Moore. Both confirmed that their work was used on Canipre’s website without permission.

“That’s amazing. No, I did not give them permission as far as I know. Go get ‘em,” Moore responded.

So there we have it once again. An outfit that targets copyright infringers is actively infringing copyright themselves.

They are so incompetent and probably blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes, that they can’t even put a website together without breaking the law themselves – the same copyright law they use to go after movie pirates.

Source: Canadian Anti-Piracy Outfit Pirates Photos for its Website

Today the former Pirate Bay spokesman announces his next big move. Born in Sweden but with Finnish roots, Peter Sunde will run as candidate for Finland’s Pirate Party in the European Parliament elections next year.

The Pirate Party movement currently has two Swedish Members of Parliament in Europe. Through the 2014 elections the Pirates hope to add many more, as local parties are participating in many countries. With Sunde the Finnish party has definitely reeled in an outspoken candidate.

“I am doing what I can to help solve the problems we have today, as well as the ones we will have in the future. That’s why I’ve decided to participate in the election for the European parliament 2014,” Sunde informed TorrentFreak.

“Even though I’m not a politician, or perhaps because of that, I think that my experiences and knowledge could help create the solutions we’re in dire need of,” Sunde says.

One of the topics the former Pirate Bay spokesperson hopes to tackle is the growing influence of the copyright lobbyists and other corporate interests. Patent reform and legalizing non-commercial file-sharing is part of this agenda.

“Non-commercial file sharing should of course become legal and protected, and must re-think copyright all together. Copyright is not the thing that makes ARTISTS money, it’s only for their brokers and distributors,” Sunde says.

“I’d rather see us sponsor culture by pushing more money to music education, and facilities for your people to create music. It would be much more sane for cultural advancement then extending copyrights.”

If elected Sunde hopes to be aggressive rather than defensive. This means not just responding to treats to Internet freedom, such as ACTA, but ensuring that this type of legislation doesn’t even make it onto the political agenda in the first place.

“I think there’s a huge possibility for us to impact the EU and I would like to be part of it,” Sunde says.

The Pirates are delighted to have the Pirate Bay founder on board. Harri Kivistö, chairman of the Finnish Pirate Party, says that Sunde’s candidacy will raise the visibility of the party during the upcoming election. Perhaps more importantly, his values fit well within the Pirate Party movement.

“Peter is a very famous pirate and a great example of someone who stands by his principles. He shares the pirates’ views on freedom of speech, online privacy, civil liberties, net neutrality etc and has proven by his actions that he is deeply committed to work on these issues and has the ability to get things done,” Kivistö tells TorrentFreak.

“The Pirate Bay has become a worldwide symbol of standing up against the corporate bullies for the rights of internet users around the glove. Flattr, on the other hand, is a great example of creating positive and constructive solutions at the same time, he adds.”

Amusingly, the Pirate ticket in Finland could have been even bigger than it is now. Sunde informs TorrentFreak that he also reached out to Finnish-born Kim Dotcom to join the race, but the Megaupload founder currently has other priorities.

Sunde himself hasn’t been waiting around either. Last month he launched the Cloud VPS Hosting service Moln.is with a group of friends, and he is continuing to work on other ventures including micro-donation service Flattr.

Perhaps the European Parliament will be added to his resume next year?

Almost prophetically, the Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK that was released a few months ago ends with a clip of Peter Sunde speaking before the European Parliament. To be continued?

Source: Pirate Bay Co-Founder to Run For European Parliament

In 2010 a then 25-year old a man was house-sitting for a friend when early one morning he was confronted by police officers looking for the property owner. The police decided to inspect his computer and found that he was sharing 57 movies through uTorrent.

The police decided to report this accidental discovery to both the prosecutor and copyright holders. The authorities took up the case and the man was found guilty of downloading the films from The Pirate Bay and TorrentBytes. In the initial court case the man received a 6,000 kronor ($920) fine, and after an appeal last week this was increased to 8,000 kronor ($1,200).

However, that still didn’t please the prosecution office, who now want the Supreme Court to take on the case. According to the authorities the prolific file-sharer shouldn’t get away with just a fine – they want to see the man jailed.

“In this case, it is important to set the bar high for other similar file-sharing cases in the future,” My Hedström of the prosecutor’s office told Swedish Radio in a comment.

The prison sentence is not only needed to deter this man from pirating more films, but also to make it possible to hunt down similar offenders in the future. When file-sharing is punished with a jail sentence then the police will have more anti-piracy tools to take on similar cases in the future.

“A prison sentence is needed for the police and prosecutors investigating this type of crime. They will have more powers when the crime leads to imprisonment. For example, they can then do a house search or request certain information, which is not possible when the offense is punished by a fine,” Hedström added.

According to the prosecutor’s office the current laws allow prison sentences for non-commercial file-sharers. Since this is the first case in Sweden against a BitTorrent pirate they are aiming high, to have a favorable precedent put in place.

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party in Sweden, believes that the man should have never been convicted. However, he also notes that the two lower courts have thus far rejected the call for jail time, which is positive.

“The sad state is that somebody was convicted at all in a criminal court for sharing culture with his fellow humans. This should never have happened”, Falkvinge tells TorrentFreak.

“The good news is that the sentence – no jail – means that it’s illegal for police to bust into homes with a warrant, so no evidence can be collected for future cases of this non-crime. Thus, I have high hope that the cases currently under investigation will be the last ones.”

If the Supreme Court takes on the case it will be a pivotal one for Swedish file-sharers. Should the authorities get their way they could soon raid the homes of pirating BitTorrent users and throw them in jail. If the current verdict stands then their homes will be safe and a fine will be the toughest sentence available.

Source: Sweden Wants to Jail Pirate Bay User to Strengthen Anti-Piracy Enforcement

Last August, French Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti commissioned former Canal Plus chairman Pierre Lescure to advise on policies for pushing forward local entertainment industries in the digital age.

Yesterday a nine-member panel, lead by Lescure, produced a 700 page report. It recommends that the Hadopi agency, the body that currently administers the so-called “Three Strikes” system, should be resigned to history after spending tens of millions of euros but achieving just one 150 euro fine during its reign.

The report said that the anti-piracy regime had not been effective. Although a reduction in illicit file-sharing on P2P networks such as BitTorrent had been achieved, there had also been an increase in use of other services, including streaming, over which Hadopi has no control. Moreover, legal offerings haven’t benefited as promised.

But contrary to hopes that the so-called ‘graduated response’ would die along with Hadopi, the report suggests that the agency’s tasks, including that of fighting Internet piracy on the ground, should be handed over to the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), the agency which regulates electronic media in France.

However, things will change. The thorny issue of Internet disconnection for infringement, which generated the most controversy but was never actually exercised, looks set to be replaced by a system of automated fines after two warnings, as suggested earlier by the music industry.

Under Hadopi, fines extended to a theoretical maximum of around 1,500 euros, but recommendations by Lescure suggest that these should be reduced to around 60 euros each, but with increases applied to repeat offenders. The panel also recommend decriminalization, so offenses of this nature do not call on police resources or result in a criminal record.

Instead of primarily targeting citizens, France should refocus its anti-infringement drive towards more organized for-profit sources of piracy, Lescure said. Search engines and advertising agencies should be encouraged to help in the fight, but domain seizures and blocking were not advised due to the risk of causing collateral damage.

The abolition of Hadopi was among a list of 75 proposals handed to French president François Hollande yesterday. Others include a 1% tax on smartphones, tablet, laptops and other Internet-enabled devices.

“Companies that make these tablets must be made to contribute some of the revenue from their sales to help creators,” said Culture Minister Aurelie Filipetti.

Revenue raised – an estimated 86 million euros – would be funneled back into French movies, music and other art and would replace current levies on recordable media such as blank CD/DVDs, hard drives and memory.

French lawmakers are now expected to review the recommendations and report back during the summer.

Source: France Set To Dump 3 Strikes Anti-Piracy Law But Automated Fines Will Live On

The general theme of these cases is that IP-addresses are accused of “stealing” copyrighted work. The trolls then request a subpoena from the court so they can ask the corresponding ISPs to reveal the identities of account holders. They then contact the defendants with a settlement offer for a few thousand dollars, telling them that they will be named in the lawsuit if they refuse to pay up.

While some judges are now refusing these cases, there are still plenty who sign off on them. Possibly related, the copyright trolls aren’t getting more friendly. A letter sent by the “Anti-Piracy Law Group,” the latest incarnation of Prenda Law, contains a striking example of a new low.

The letter is part of the LW Systems v. Christopher Hubbard case and was sent after the defendant ignored the first settlement offer. In common with many of these cases it deals with pretty embarrassing pornographic content, but the defendant is also warned that family members and even the neighbors will be informed about the alleged perverse download habits (emphasis added).

“The purpose of this step is to gather evidence about who used your Internet account to steal from our client. The list of possible suspects includes you, members of your household, your neighbors (if you maintain an open wi-fi connection) and anyone who might have visited your house. In the coming days we will contact these individuals to investigate whether they have any knowledge of the acts described in my client’s prior letter,” the letter reads.

The Anti-Piracy Law Group makes it sound like they are doing the defendant a favor, and state that they want to inform the others to ensure that they’re suing the right person. However, SJD points out that fellow copyright troll Steve “Lightspeed” Jones may have given away the true motivation a few years ago.

“People aren’t embarrassed when their neighbors find out they downloaded a few songs, but illegally trading midget, tranny, facials, and teen porn content? There is some news worth keeping from the wife, kids, parents, and neighbors. Please feel free to continue to compare this to the RIAA..,” he wrote in 2010.

The words above turn out to be rather prophetic, as the letter also describes in detail how the RIAA won its case against Jammie Thomas, who was fined $222,000 for sharing several copyrighted songs. An interesting comparison, especially since the current suit is “hacking” related and not based on P2P infringements.

Aside from neighbors and family members the defendant is also warned that his or her boss could also find out about the accusations. The letter, signed by Prenda’s Paul Duffy, notes that it is very important that all relevant evidence is preserved so it can be used in an eventual trial.

“This includes, for example, files on your computer, your credit card purchase history and your Google search history. It also includes preserving these items on your mobile device and any computers you may have access to at work. When our lawsuit is filed we will be seeking evidence from all these sources. If we find out that you destroyed evidence, we will ask the court to impose serious sanctions against you.”

Of course, the copyright trolls are not interested in taking the case to trial, so the letter quickly adds that “litigation is time-consuming, expensive and disruptive.” The easy way out is to settle the case for a few thousand dollars.

Needless to say, the threat of having neighbors and employers informed about the alleged offense may even convince innocents to pay up and get it over with.

It appears that even after receiving a $81,319.72 punishment in court last week the Prenda gang is continuing down the same path, or even worse. Perhaps not completely surprising, as they probably make more than that from their trolling ventures in a good week.

Source: Copyright Trolls Threaten to Call Neighbors of Accused Porn Pirates

The same can happen with songs on the radio but of course they are put there on purpose, to catch the ear and promote the track. The question now is whether this can happen with words, or maybe there is something more coordinated afoot?

Rewind to last Friday, the release day for UK rapper Dizzee Rascal’s video to his track Goin Crazy. The song features Robbie Williams, who to be frank is a fairly unlikely pairing for Dizzee. Nevertheless, and more sniffy hardcore fans of both aside, the track appears to have been well received, but what caught our eye was in the video’s intro.

During its first few seconds Robbie is seen wearing a coat with the word Megaupload written across the back. Once the full back-shot is captured Williams looks at the camera cheekily as if he’s done something he shouldn’t and proceeds to complete the whole video with the jacket on.

And then last night, less than 72 hours later, something else caught the eye on the UK’s main state TV channel, BBC1. During ‘The Voice’, a talent show for quality singers judged by four artists including Will.i.am, the word came up again in a most unusual fashion.

Nearly 30 minutes into the show Will.i.am, real name William Adams, held his fist up to the camera and there it was – a gold custom-made ring adorned with four letters – MEGA.

So is this a case of something appearing more just because we’re aware of it now, like our friend’s new car, or is this the start of something more interesting?

When the Robbie Williams plug came last Friday (and one from Dizzee Rascal, who wove the word Megaupload into his lyrics) the message could hardly be less ambiguous since there has only ever been one Megaupload. This latest instance involving Will.i.am is less blatant (he’s known to have used the word ‘Mega’ in the past) but what the US-based producer has that Williams doesn’t is a high-profile connection to Kim Dotcom.

In 2011, Will.i.am was the main star in Dotcom’s controversial MegaSong promotion.

“When I got to send files across the globe, I used Megaupload,” Adams declared. Of course, there is one person who can tell us if something really is going on, but while he’s being friendly, he’s also being elusive.

TorrentFreak asked Kim Dotcom if there are some guerilla marketing tactics at play here but he wouldn’t be drawn, responding only with “No comment ;-).” Last Friday, however, in the wake of the Robbie Williams reveal, Dotcom said rather more.

“Robbie, I love the Megaupload jacket!” he said. “Ready for Megabox?”

As announced by Kim Dotcom in a 2011 guest post for TorrentFreak, Megabox is a soon-to-launched platform designed to bring potentially free music to the masses by raising revenue through unconventional advertising techniques, and rewarding artists by giving them the lion’s share of the profits.

If Megabox is indeed coming soon and Williams’ and Wil.i.am’s contributions this weekend are linked, the stakes have certainly been raised. So, when the word ‘Mega’ starts to appear inexplicably with big stars more often than usual in the days and weeks to come, will Baader-Meinhof be held responsible, or someone else with a German name?

All spots to the usual address please.

Source: Did Will.i.am Just Promote Dotcom’s Mega on BBC’s Top Talent Show?

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is the most downloaded movie.

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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week

This bill is not about the copyright monopoly at all, and at the same time, about everything that the monopoly actually is. It is the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013.

The bill, which was presented to the U.S. Congress three days ago, makes it legal to unlock devices such as phones that you own, and do what you like with them. Let’s take that again, because it is jaw-dropping: the bill reforms the copyright monopoly to make it legal to tinker with objects that you own. It has nothing to do with BitTorrent, MKVs, streaming, or what we normally associate with the activity of sharing culture outside of the copyright monopoly distributions.

The bill is about your ability to take your phone to a different wireless operator. Your own phone, that you bought and paid for. Your legal ability to bring your own property wherever you like, without breaching criminal law and risking jail. How on Odin’s green Earth did this come to have to do with the copyright monopoly?

Few contemporary discussions put the spotlight like this one on how the copyright monopoly is not about rewarding artists, but is a political war on property – on our ability to own the things we paid for. (I won’t say “bought”, as that implies we actually own them.) The copyright monopoly is dividing the population into a corporate class who gets to control what objects may be used for what purpose, and a subservient consumer class that don’t get to buy or own anything – they just get to think they own things that can only be used in a predefined way, for a steep, monopolized, fixed price, or risk having the police sent after them.

This is not a free market. This is the opposite of a free market. The copyright monopoly stands in opposition to a free market, and in opposite to property as a concept.

Some people insist on deceptively calling the copyright monopoly “property”, which is categorical nonsense every bit of the way. Two people can’t both own an object in full; this is part of the very definition of property. Obviously, the idea that you could own the jacket you’re wearing while I could own its color is both asinine and nonsensical, just like the idea that you can own a CD but I can own the laser-etched pattern of grooves carved into it.

Yet, the copyright monopoly maximalists insist on calling their monopoly “property” in continued and deliberate deception. When you press them on how this goes counter to every known definition of property, they usually fall back to a stupid statement along the lines of “property is whatever we define it to be”, which avoids basic statements of fact on the nature of property, and goes to reveal the true intent – redefining property to something that creates two new classes in society: the corporate masters who own property, and the citizen serfs who get to use things they pay for in ways that are strictly defined and constrained.

To illustrate the absurdity of this, imagine a carpenter that had the legal right to send you to jail if you used his chairs in ways he disapproved of, after your having bought those chairs.

This is what the copyright monopoly was always about. The phone-unlocking issue is not an oddity or an outlier; it lies at the very heart of the monopoly’s philosophy. The copyright monopoly was always about control over other people’s property, and always about preventing creativity and innovation that could threaten the incumbents.

The copyright monopoly hurts creativity, hurts our economy, hurts our entrepreneurs – and most importantly, it is an affront to the most foundational concepts in society, such as the right to tinker with your own property. It needs to be questioned, dismantled, and abolished.

Source: Jail Terms For Unlocking Cellphones Shows The True Black Heart Of The Copyright Monopoly

The verdict was a big win for the porn studio and its controversial law firm Prenda, since many other judges had previously rejected joining so many defendants in one lawsuit. Adding to the controversy, Judge Howell accused the ISPs who joined the case that they were not doing enough to stop online piracy.

The ISPs were not happy with Howell’s ruling and this week Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox filed an appeal. The providers hope to reverse the earlier ruling and stop copyright trolls from targeting hundreds of defendants in a single lawsuit.

The providers point out that many judges have rejected these cases, and that the copyright trolls are trying to create an environment in which they can sue many people at minimal cost.

“The district court’s authorization for Plaintiff to pursue the personal information for more than 1,000 Internet subscribers in a single lawsuit stands in stark contrast to the vast majority of recent decisions addressing the ‘multi-Doe’ pornographic lawsuit phenomenon,” the ISPs write.

“Through this action, Plaintiff hopes to create a ‘safe haven’ in the District of Columbia for pursuing the largest amount of subscribers’ information, at the lowest cost.”

The providers continue by pointing out that many of the targeted account holders are not the individuals who actually downloaded the infringing files.

“Due to unsecured and shared Internet connections in Internet subscribers’ homes, the contact information that Plaintiff seeks is not necessarily a reliable indicator of the true identities of the ‘Does’ who allegedly downloaded Plaintiff’s pornography.”

The movie studio appears to be well aware of this, but according to the ISPs they are not interested in finding the true pirates. Instead, they are looking for settlements of a few thousands dollars per defendant.

Since the evidence in these cases has never been properly tested the ISPs fear that many of the alleged downloaders may be innocent.

“These cases present a substantial risk that the ISPs will be required to disclose innocent subscribers’ information for extra-judicial processes, in cases that rarely, if ever, are tested on their merits,” the ISPs write.

To make matters worse, these innocent subscribers often see settling as the best option. Hiring a lawyer is often just as expensive as paying the settlement fee, and the sexually explicit nature of the titles used in these lawsuits can be quite embarrassing.

“This creates great potential for a coercive and unjust ‘settlement’,” the providers note.

Finally, the ISPs mention the controversial nature of the law firm Prenda, who were recently punished in court for their “mob-like” tactics. Among other things, Prenda’s principals relied on fictitious persons as “clients” and submitted fake documents in support of their lawsuits.

After all the dirt that has come out in recent weeks, the dubious status of Prenda alone may be enough to get the district court ruling overturned.

It’s good to see that Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox are taking a stand in this case. Of course it’s in their own interests, but it also helps the hundreds of subscribers in this case and perhaps thousands more in the future.

Unfortunately the copyright troll cases aren’t going away anytime soon, but by winning this case the ISPs can at least minimize the damage they cause.

Source: ISPs Protest Mass BitTorrent Piracy Lawsuits to Protect Innocent Subscribers

The argument over which is ‘better’ will continue forever, but the differences between private and public sites are clear. Public sites offer content for free on a level playing field. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, you can access the site’s content for free. There are no barriers to entry and there are no rules.

Generally, private sites first require potential users to obtain an invitation and these vary from fairly easy to extremely difficult to get hold of. Once in, users are expected to play by a set of often very strict rules in order to be granted continued access to content. Screw up and the user is out, and sometimes banned forever.

In short, and as strange as it might sound, to a certain extent operators of private torrent sites implement an intellectual property protection regime to restrict access to content. And according to a research paper just published by Bodó Balázs at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, these voluntary IP regimes can go even further.

Balázs begins with a recollection of his attempts to gain an invite to a private tracker via the site’s IRC channel. He was immediately booted by a bot which explained that his entire country had been banned from the site due to users from Hungary proving bad for the community in the past.

“I laughed out loud. In the last few years I got used to the black YouTube screens telling me that ‘This video is not available in your country’, but it was completely unexpected to see that the ‘pirates’ are also locking me out from their musical archives,” he writes.

Not that Balázs does not appreciate the need for control. He understands that by being closed these sites gain a stability that sites like The Pirate Bay cannot hope to achieve and he recognizes the need for rules in order to maintain a flourishing community.

“Most of the rules are there to ensure the long-term survival of the common resource pool of shared files in an increasingly hostile legal and technological environment. They also make sure that the collection is as comprehensive as possible and maintains the highest achievable standards in terms of technical quality,” Balázs explains.

“Other rules establish internal administrative hierarchies, decision-making processes and conflict resolution methods: in other words, they establish the foundations of a self-governing community.”

Throughout his paper Balázs references several private sites but redacts their names to protect their privacy. We’ll continue with his wishes but suffice to say this offers them little extra security – we recognized the sites immediately from his descriptions. One, a site specializing in non-mainstream movies, told Balázs an interesting story about how they handle copyright issues in order to keep their community healthy.

Rather than a straightforward take-down response to a complaint, the site admin described an interesting negotiation, where the complainant was paid off, not with money, but with ‘ratio’, the main ‘currency’ available on a private tracker. Ratio is the comparison between the quantities of data a user downloads versus what he uploads – the more he does of the latter the more he is allowed to do of the former. Site admins have the ability to manipulate these stats to give users more relaxed access to ‘free’ content.

“Most often the producer will ask for [his content] to be removed until a certain date or until they break even on the film. We have also ‘paid’ (in ratio) producers to keep their work on the site,” the admin explained.

Balázs notes that “backroom dealings” like these seem to be better received by site operators and provide an avenue for negotiated settlement rather than the alternative of sending in the lawyers. TorrentFreak spoke to the admin of another private tracker specializing in music who confirmed that deals were in place with at least two dozen artists and label workers who agree to keep the peace in exchange for ratio.

With issues over outside influences aside, private tracker rules are put in place to keep the community healthy. Balázs argues these revolve around keeping quality high, maintaining the completeness of the overall library, and keeping the sharing community strong. These factors take priority, even if that means significantly reducing the usefulness of the site to the individual user.

One of the biggest complaints from users on private sites is that they are restricted by ratio rules. While these are necessarily put in place to protect sites’ libraries and quality of service (transfer speeds) for the rest of the community, they also amount to a copy protection system enforced by site admins, which effectively introduces a price for consumption (download) and a price for labor (upload).

“It is important to note that [private trackers] are not free-markets, and the prices are not automatically defined by supply and demand. On the contrary, prices are set by the not so invisible hands of the site administrators to signal preferred behavior and to address certain shortcomings of the P2P activity,” Balázs notes.

“By rewarding the sharing of certain content and penalizing the sharing of others, such pricing mechanisms are able to ensure that older, less popular, niche, fringe or otherwise archival content stays accessible at all times within the community. By setting download prices to zero [freeleech] these sites play an important role in directing attention to certain works and authors. Such mechanisms help admins to ‘curate the collection’ and shape the cultural canon within the network.”

Content producers are often accused of failing to adjust to the reality that online, content is no longer scarce. The Internet allows infinite digital copies of content to be made at virtually no cost. Balázs writes that while this is the case for open torrent trackers, private trackers counter with the implementation of rules that reintroduce artificial scarcity.

Nevertheless, users of private trackers are generally happy to play by site rules and their admins seem to be more open to deal with rightsholders, even as they break many of the rules laid down in copyright law. Balázs notes, however, that these decisions are less to do with the rule of law and more to do with the code of ethics negotiated within private site communities.

“As long as the main question of the IP field is not how people can be forced to obey the law, but rather under what conditions they choose to respect the wishes of authors and ensure the reproduction of different cultural fields, the survival of different social practices will be a factor of their ethical disposition rather than their legality,” Balázs writes.

“In other words we should expect ethically robust practices to persist even if their legality remains in question, and unethical practices will face considerable public opposition even if they are found to be legal.”

Finally, on the issue of private trackers and their restrictions, Balázs closes with the following thoughts.

“Voluntary IP restrictions in piratical communities are probably the most effective enforcement mechanisms up to date. Closed file-sharing communities have developed tools of social control in spaces where statutory copyright is irrelevant. The enforcement efforts that target these networks destroy not just the resource pools and the communities that built them, but also destroy the social controls that are in place,” Balázs notes.

“Paradoxical as this may sound, the aforementioned piratical communities may be the enforcement allies that rights-holders have been seeking all this time. In any case, it is apparent that they both have at least one interest in common: a sustainable cultural ecosystem. So maybe it is time to ask ourselves: should we set the foxes to watch the geese?”

Set the fox to watch the geese: voluntary IP regimes in piratical file-sharing communities, can be downloaded here.

Source: Why Private Torrent Sites Have Strict Copyright Enforcement Rules

While these cases differ in nature, all companies have been accused of facilitating copyright infringements through their services.

FileServe is the latest cyberlocker to run into trouble in court. This week the Virgin Islands-based company was named in a lawsuit filed in a California federal court by Cowslip Film Partners, the makers of the indie movie American Cowslip.

The movie producers accuse FileServe of a wide variety of copyright related offenses, including inducement and contributory infringement. According to the complaint FileServe’s business is based on selling subscriptions to pirated material.

“FileServe is a website that sells access to large amounts of unauthorized intellectual property to the public, including California residents, without paying the rightful owners of that property,” the filmmakers write.

“FileServe is aware that its websites are being used as a vehicle to illegally copy and distribute large amounts of infringing materials. Because it charges membership fees for immediate access to the copyrighted materials stored on its servers, it is a distributor and seller of pirated materials.”

Under this general characterization pretty much every cloud hosting service could be branded a ‘pirate site’. The producers add, however, that they have advised FileServe that it was offering infringing copies, but that the infringements continued nonetheless.

“Between March 31, 2011 and February 7, 2012 Cowslip sent FileServe notices by letter and email advising FileServe that it was infringing upon Cowslip’s copyright in the work. Despite such notices, defendants’ infringements did not cease,” they write in the complaint.

Whether these notices where in the form of proper DMCA takedown requests and whether specific files were pointed out is unknown.

Cowslip Film Partners believes that FileServe is responsible for the distribution of the pirated copies and demands a jury trial. The movie producers want to see $1,000,000 in damages as well as the maximum $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringement.

This is not the first time that FileServe has been branded as a “rogue” website. Last year Paramount Pictures’ vice president for worldwide content protection identified the file-hosting service as one of the prime candidates to be shuttered next as part of any future U.S. Government action.

The current lawsuit does come as a surprise considering that the cyberlocker no longer allows users to share files in public. Immediately after the Megaupload raids last year the company changed its policy to only allow users to download files they have uploaded themselves.

Whether this will change anything for the pending case has yet to be seen.

Cowslip Film Partners previously sued Megashares in a similar lawsuit. This case was settled last year but the terms were not disclosed.

Source: FileServe Hit With $1,000,000 Movie Piracy Lawsuit

The song, called ‘Goin Crazy’, features the pair cruising around the East End of London in mobility scooters pimped to look like the two-wheeled scooters featured during the intro of The Who’s classic movie, Quadrophenia.

After Rascal appears from a smoking and exceptionally spiky car, he and Williams are joined on their cruise by a number of pensioners.

But it’s the start of the video that succeeded in raising eyebrows and piquing our interest. As Robbie moves into shot, walking away from camera, the focus pans from his colored sneakers up to his coat, on which is painted two very familiar words – MEGA and UPLOAD.

But could this really be related to the now-defunct Megaupload? Well, we’ve sen pop tie-ins before with the controversial MegaSong of 2011 – big name artists were only too pleased back then to be associated with the file-sharing site. In the song Goin Crazy, Dizzee Rascal also weaves ‘Megaupload’ into his lyrics – it hardly seems like an accident.

And, adding to the intrigue, Kim Dotcom himself has commented on the development.

“Robbie, I love the Megaupload jacket!” he said on Twitter, adding: “Ready for Megabox?”

As first announced by Kim Dotcom in a guest post for TorrentFreak in 2011, Megabox is a soon-to-launched platform designed to bring music to the masses and reward artists by giving them the lion’s share of the profits. Its development was held back due to the raids on Megaupload in January 2012 but is now on course to launch sometime in the coming months.

If there is a link, and Robbie and Dizzee are indeed promoting Kim Dotcom’s new venture, this would be another huge coup for the larger-than-life entrepreneur. If it isn’t, and the guys are just having fun, Kim will settle for that since it’s still quite a compliment. It has to be said though, Kim appears to be taking quite an interest in this video.

So here it is, enjoy it while you can because if previous experiences are anything to go by, it might not stay up long.

Source: Robbie Williams ‘Promotes’ Megaupload in New Dizzee Rascal Video

The research targeted Internet users over 12 years old with the aim of gathering information on the way they consume movies, music, TV shows, video games, software and books to assist with copyright enforcement policy making. The results are now in and they interesting to say the least.

The researchers split infringers into several categories according to their attitudes and motivations.

So-called ‘Justifying Infringers’ were the group who demonstrated the highest levels of infringing behavior. This group accounted for 9% of all infringers, 24% of total infringed volume and 2% of total digital consumers. They felt that they’d already spent enough on content (the researchers say this was confirmed) but like to try before they buy. They’re also the most receptive group when it comes to considering fairly priced legal alternatives.

The ‘Digital Transgressors’ group (9% of all infringers, 22% of total infringed volume, 2% of total digital consumers) consumed more films and TV shows than the ‘Justifying Infringers’. While they showed the least remorse over their behavior, this group had the highest fear of getting caught and the researchers say they would be the most receptive to warning notices sent by ISPs.

The largest group, the ‘Free Infringers’ (42% of infringers, 35% of infringed volume, 10% of total digital consumers) lived up to their name. They all download content because its free and pay for the lowest proportion of legal content compared to the other infringers.

Ambiguous Infringers (39% of infringers, 20% of infringed volume, 9% of total digital consumers) had the lowest level of digital consumption and the highest proportion of paid and legal content. They made less attempt to justify their infringing.

“Most infringing segments found it easy to find content on the internet for free which would normally be paid, ranging from 45% for the Ambiguous Infringers to 76% for the Top 20% infringers,” the researchers note. “Among non-infringers the figures were notably lower, ranging from 28% to 45%.”

Looking at the infringers overall, the researchers made some very interesting discoveries, particularly among the most prolific.

The top 10% of infringers (who accounted for just 1.6% of all Internet users over 12) were responsible for a massive 79% of all infringed content. Pull in another 10%, to consider the top 20% of all infringers (equal to 3.2% of all Internet users over 12), and this group were responsible for 88% of all infringements.

This means that the other 80% of the total infringers accounted for just 12% of all infringements by volume.

While they are undoubtedly prolific consumers of illicit content, the Top 20% group proves to be of great value to entertainment companies. Not only does the group account for 11% of all legal content consumed, but they also spend the most.

Across all content types, the top 20% of infringers on average not only spend more than the remaining 80% of infringers, but also more than consumers who never infringe. The figures are impressive – the 20% worst infringers spent £168 over the six month monitoring period with the remaining 80% spending £105. Tailing in last place were the ‘honest’ consumers with just £54 spent, three times less than the prolific pirate group.

“For all content types there were differences in terms of payment between the two groups; the large majority (92% overall) of content consumed by the Top 20% Infringers was free. This compared to 76% among the Bottom 80% Infringers,” the researchers write. “However, because they consumed more content in total, the Top 20% purchased more ‘paid for’ digital files in absolute terms than the Bottom 80%.”

Later on in the report the researchers reveal which services – authorized and unauthorized – respondents use to access content. Even for the infringers, authorized sites such as YouTube and BBC iPlayer prove most popular as the table below shows.

Interestingly, despite being blocked in the UK during the research period, The Pirate Bay is still being used by almost a third of the top 20% of infringers. The site was used by just 9% of the bottom 80% of infringers which perhaps suggests that the more hardcore the pirate, the more likely they are to unblock a site.

So what might encourage infringers to stop accessing content illegally? As usual, pricing, availability and convenience top the list. Interestingly, fears over internet disconnections in the Top 20% group trumped fears of being sued.

The research, titled OCI Tracker Benchmark Study ‘Deep Dive’ Analysis Report, was prepared by Kantar Media for Ofcom and is available for download here. (pdf)

Source: ‘Worst’ File-Sharing Pirates Spend 300% More on Content Than ‘Honest’ Consumers

Enter DEFCAD, a site dedicated to hosting designs that have been banned at Thingiverse. Namely, the entirely printable 3D gun design which clocked up more than 100,000 downloads within its first two days of release.

This did not sit well with the Department of State Office of Defense Trade Controls who kindly requested that DEFCAD remove the availability of the 3D printable gun documents, enthusiastically named “The Liberator,” citing a possible violation of International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

In the letter from the State Department, which can be read in full at Forbes, the Government explains that it wants to review whether the designs are in compliance with arms export control laws.

While the attempted censorship of the 3D gun blueprints may come as no surprise, the popularity of these files is a vivid example of the daunting task faced by those charged with censorship of information.

While DEFCAD promptly complied with the request to remove access to the design, it was shared so widely during the short window of availability that it is now virtually impossible to prevent any further distribution. Currently, there appears to be several torrents available for the design at The Pirate Bay and the site informs us that these will not be censored.

“TPB has for close to 10 years been operating without taking down one single torrent due to pressure from the outside. And it will never start doing that,” A Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak.

The Pirate Bay is not out to promote guns, but they do have a great interest in 3D printing.

“We think the whole idea of a printable object is interesting. You can print guns for sure, but even better you can print plowshares and other things as well. The problem is not the object but what you do with it. Just as with a cooking knife.”

The torrent site also says it welcomes Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson to start publishing designs on The Pirate Bay. A year ago TPB launched a 3D print section where the blueprints would fit nicely.

“When Defcad is closed down there is still TPB. Cody is welcome to upload everything on Defcad to TPB as well, so the users can comment on the crap.”

“Cody Wilson’s site has been branded ‘A Pirate Bay for 3D objects’ which is kind of funny, since TPB has had its physibles section more than a year already, with lots of objects in there. And since the whole idea behind TPB is to not let outside pressure judge, TPB is prepared for things like that.”

The Pirate Bay insider welcomes a debate on gun laws and U.S. oppression of free speech. “We laugh at their gun love since it’s so obviously the wrong way to go.”

“We think that the good thing about the discussion about 3D printers and their gun laws might bring more focus on the double standards that the U.S. is having and hopefully – people will start printing signs to protest against the guns, the corruption and the threats against freedom of speech that the U.S. is pushing on us.”

For now the 3D gun links posted on The Pirate Bay are from unverified sources. Printing those might not be such a good idea, but it is clear that the original designs are not going away. All one needs in order to access these files is a hash, there is no longer a central source that can be shut down to prevent public access to these files.

This BitTorrent connection also gives the term Defense Distributed a whole new meaning.

The takedown of the blueprints could very well mark the beginning of an era where proponents of so-called cyber warfare begin using military resources in attempts to regulate a data distribution protocol which has, thus far, been impossible to regulate.

At the minimum, it’s the start of a crackdown on 3D blueprints, which will undoubtedly become more common as technology advances.

Ryan Smith contributed to the article.

Source: Pirate Bay Takes Over Distribution of Censored 3D Printable Gun

In addition to this public attack, Megaupload’s legal team is also building up pressure in court.

In a new brief they argue that the case against the company should be thrown out, since the Government has more or less admitted that there is no legal basis to keep the company in criminal limbo.

The two parties have a standoff about “Rule 4” of criminal procedure, which requires the authorities to serve a company at an address in the United States. According to Megaupload this is impossible since the company is based in Hong Kong. The U.S. Government disagreed and said that it could find a way to serve the company, but this is yet to happen.

What followed was a back and forth exchange, with Megaupload requesting an end to the case and the U.S. arguing against it. In an unexpected move last week, the Government stressed the importance of the pending decision by pointing out that the wrong choice could put an end to the case.

In a brief filed yesterday evening, Megaupload’s lawyers respond to these claims by pointing out that without a dismissal “Megaupload will be indefinitely stuck in criminal limbo.”

This would mean that the company’s rights will continue to be violated by the current stalemate.

“As a result, Megaupload is trapped in a state of criminal limbo, where it is subjected to daily, irreparable harm from criminal indictment and the seizure of its assets, while being denied the benefits of the adversarial process and protections,” the lawyers write.

According to Megaupload’s legal team the Government appears to be contradicting itself. The lawyers note that the Government first argued that Megaupload can be served when Kim Dotcom and the other defendants are extradited from New Zealand, but that it now appears to be backing away from this stance.

“The Government has now changed its tune, claiming that because of delays in the extradition process, ‘it is likely that any ‘temporary’ dismissal would be permanent and contrary to the interests of justice’,” the lawyers write.

“The Government thus seems to confirm what this Court has already observed—namely, ‘that the individual defendants may never be extradited’ and criminal proceedings may therefore never commence. Given this reality, due process demands that the Superseding Indictment be dismissed.”

The recent briefs from the U.S. Government and Megaupload show that District Court Judge Liam O’Grady’s decision will be a pivotal one.

Source: Megaupload Asks Court to Dump The “Baseless” Criminal Case

To try and discover more we spoke to a company called RamNode, the site’s host in the United States. Company owner Nick told us that D2.vu had been hosting malware, but by last evening his stance had softened a little.

“The malware may not have been intentionally hosted on this VPS,” Nick told TorrentFreak in an update. “It is possible that one of the ad banners running on the site triggered the malware alert. The server will still be removed from our network to prevent any further issues related to my company.”

Now, 24 hours later, D2.vu is back online with a new host outside the U.S. and fortunately some of our other inquiries have now paid off. So, with the owners of the site speaking with us directly, we put forward a few questions.

“As we all know these communities of free file-sharing are currently under scrutiny by government and media powers so all involved wish to remain anonymous to avoid unnecessary complications and any further risk,” the D2 domain owner told us.

Nothing particularly unusual there but what is somewhat strange is how D2.vu has somehow been able to launch with the database from Demonoid including user details, torrents and comments – how do they explain that?

“It was, as we stated in the email to the user base, an unlikely set of events that flowed from the last Ukraine install. We kept the code safe waiting for Demonoid to return. When it didn’t return we purposely rebranded, to separate from Demonoid’s past and related issues, with the main goal of maintaining the community,” we were told.

TorrentFreak tested an old Demonoid research account registered some years ago – it worked – as did one registered in more recent times. That goes someway to confirming the D2 owner’s claim that the database copy was taken from a July 2012 backup just after Demonoid’s shutdown.

So what other information culled from the old Demonoid is currently in D2′s possession?

“Everything except the domain names which led to the rebranding to d2.vu,” the admin explains.

“What you see is the tracker database of the old Demonoid. We aren’t launching the forum at this time but we do plan to start an IRC channel in the near future so the community can interact in real time,” the admin explains.

While on initial inspection there is a familiar look and feel (color changes aside), what D2 does not have is something that Demonoid was famous for – a tracker. All torrents are now tracked by outside sources/magnets which means that the site is now more like a sign-up version of The Pirate Bay than the semi-private offering users experienced before.

“This was done based on functional and legal necessity, efficiency and to take the site out of the negotiation of peer-to-peer file sharing. Also note that there is work in progress which will re-implement missing functionality and add new features,” TorrentFreak was told.

Technicalities aside, there is also another big issue – that of trust. How can former users of Demonoid be confident of the site’s intentions? For example, is the site endorsed or approved by any former senior staff?

“No former admins have been involved with this rebranding or launch. This effort is independent and undertaken entirely for the benefit of the community. We do welcome past community moderators to help with d2 if they wish,” we were told.

Thinking ahead, we posed another question to the admins of D2. Demonoid has a bit of a reputation as the comeback kid and in the past has reappeared online just when people think the show is over. If users migrate to D2 and that site gets momentum, what happens in the event that the real Demonoid comes back?

“If the previous admin group wanted the admin role back we’d have to figure out how to verify that it’s really them and then we’d work it out,” we were informed.

“The great effort we made here is for the Demonoid community. We completely understand the community’s need to be cautious and questioning. We aren’t phishing or pushing malware or attempting anything malicious. We intend to do our best to keep the site up and current. It’s in the hands of the community to participate as they did before to co-create and thrive,” the admins conclude.

More information as we get it…..

Source: Demonoid Resurrected? An Interview With the Admins of D2.vu

The idea is to let artists share their work for free, exposing it to millions of BitTorrent users all around the world.

Thanks to the massive user base of over 170 million users the program has been very successful. But, aside from promotion some artists would also like to see some hard cash in return. This is now an option thanks to the new and improved “BitTorrent Bundles.”

In addition to giving away free stuff, BitTorrent Inc. now also promotes premium content. For the launch the company has teamed up with the record label Ultra, home of David Guetta, Tiesto, deadmau5, and Calvin Harris.

In their first premium bundle BitTorrent Inc. is promoting the American DJ Kaskade. BitTorrent users can download a torrent with a few freebies, and if they hand over their email addresses they get access to more. Artists also have the option to replace the email requirement with a paywall.

“Premium content does not exist within the file until a fan interacts with it – by entering a valid email, or payment information. The media as published into the BitTorrent ecosystem will be secure,” a BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

By “secure” BitTorrent Inc. means that there is no malware or other nefarious content inside. However, there are no technical restrictions that prevent users from sharing the “premium” content with friends or family, without paying.

The company couldn’t tell us under what license the content in the premium torrents is being released, but the company stressed that people are not supposed to share these torrents in the wild.

“We expect people to do the right thing. When given the option, we have seen that people want to reward the artists for offering good, accessible content.”

TorrentFreak looked at the premium torrents and they appear to be just regular torrent files, using popular public trackers. There are no built-in restrictions to prevent sharing which means that like all other bundles, they may end up on random BitTorrent sites.

BitTorrent nevertheless hopes that, to reward the artists, its users are wise enough not to share these premium torrents with unauthorized downloaders.

“What we have found during our past experiments is that our users are inclined to support the content creators that publish into the BitTorrent ecosystem. They appreciate that the artist ‘gets it’ and is willing to engage fans on their native turf,” BitTorrent told us.

“We anticipate that given the choice between content officially published into the ecosystem and infringing content, a majority will support the artist.”

While people should indeed appreciate the fact that artists want to try out BitTorrent, putting content in a restrictive area is of course not really ‘native turf’ for BitTorrent users – apart from those using private trackers of course. To most users the BitTorrent “ecosystem” consists of finding and discovering content through torrent search indexes and search engines.

BitTorrent Inc. is to be applauded for helping artists to leverage this great technology. However, whether this will be successful is another question. After all, many people turned to BitTorrent in the first place due to their dislike of restrictions.

Source: BitTorrent Lets Artists “Share” Behind a Paywall

It soon became clear that the authorities were interested in the site as part of an investigation into the site’s alleged Mexico-based owners. Demonoid’s servers in Ukraine were seized shortly after.

With a site admin reportedly arrested then released as the case against the site stalled in Mexico, ex-users of the site have remained hopeful it would one day return. A fake site, Demonoid.mk, already caused serious confusion but now a new development has really stirred things up.

Overnight a new site – D2.vu – appeared claiming to be Demonoid resurrected. Former members of the site received the news via email, suggesting that someone with access to database of Demonoid users had indeed set up the site. Emails received by TorrentFreak are somewhat of a mixed bag – some believe their emails were registered at Demonoid, others aren’t so sure.

“The heart and soul of Demonoid lives on!” the email exclaimed. “Through an amazing sequence of unlikely events, the data on those Ukrainian servers has made its way into the safe hands of members of our community and has now been re-launched as d2.vu.

“Invitations to return are being sent out only to existing Demonoid members, which is the reason you have received this email. For the foreseeable future d2.vu will remain a semi-private site and no new invitations to join will be issued until we are certain that the system is stable. To login, click here and authenticate using your old Demonoid username and password.”

The D2.vu domain claimed to be registered in Hong Kong via a Hushmail address. We tracked down the owner by other means and connected him to other Chinese-registered sites. We contacted him on his personal email account but thus far he has remained silent.

Of course, for former users the email offers tempting news and we know for a fact that dozens of people tried to log in as the email suggested. According to information obtained by TorrentFreak, that was probably the wrong decision.

The D2.vu site was hosted on a server owned by a company called RamNode in the United States, which in itself set off alarm bells. Then we discovered it was on a VPS, another warning sign. We contacted RamNode and received the following.

“I’m not sure what was going on with that VPS, but it was at the very least hosting some malware. As such, we have already suspended it and will probably terminate it soon,” RamNode’s Nick informs TorrentFreak.

When pressed on what type of malware, RamNode couldn’t help us further.

“I don’t have any further information to offer at this time unfortunately. Once we had a sense of what might be going on, we took the VPS down immediately,” Nick concludes

TorrentFreak is aware that Demonoid was breached by hackers at least once, possibly twice or even three times in the past few years. We do not know what was taken, if anything, but the events of the past few hours suggest that a database, or part of one, from a date unknown, appears to be available.

Update: New information just in suggests that if you logged into the fake Demonoid and used the same user/password combo on any other site (torrent, email, Steam, PayPal) you should change them immediately.

Update 2: “The malware may not have been intentionally hosted on this VPS,” says Nick at RamNode in an update just received by TF. “It is possible that one of the ad banners running on the site triggered the malware alert. The server will still be removed from our network to prevent any further issues related to my company.”

Source: ‘New’ Demonoid D2.vu Quickly Shutdown For Hosting Malware

New Zealand is celebrated worldwide for its human rights. Renowned as being the first country in the world to grant suffrage to women in 1893, the first nation to stand up to the United States and ban nuclear-powered ships from her harbors in 1984, the Kiwis have never backed down from difficult decisions.

That’s why it’s particularly difficult to see the United States come forward to their ally New Zealand, and purposefully distort facts, withhold evidence, and make the government an accomplice in a massive violation of rights during the crackdown against my client, Kim Dotcom.

Perhaps once considered a beacon for values of personal liberty, in more recent years, the reputation of the United States on rights has sunk to new lows. Following two grinding wars of the George W. Bush era, hopes were high for an improvement. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case under President Barack Obama, as drone strikes have escalated completely beyond anyone’s imagination, while a massive hunger strike of more than 130 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, some of them being force fed through nasal tubes, has virtually eliminated the U.S. administration’s ability to speak about international law in any capacity.

However it’s a mistake to think that the failure to close Gitmo is simply an aberration. It represents an attitude among a handful of key U.S. officials, from President Obama to Vice President Joe Biden as well as Attorney General Eric Holder – who happens to be visiting New Zealand this week – that the rights of certain people and businesses can be suspended at their choosing.

The flagrant overreach of the U.S. attack against Megaupload bears all the hallmarks of a digital Gitmo.

Digital Gitmo contains no bars, no barbwire, and no guards. What it does share in common is a total absence of rule of law; the type of exceptional treatment and arbitrary deprivations of rights that are usually reserved for terrorism and threats to national security. Digital Gitmo belongs to no single nation; instead it is a shared perception that the rights of a very small group of corporate and government interests are more important than the rights of everyone else. The deprivation of rights is seen as convenient to the state, which has unburdened itself from the obligation of actually having to prove its case before the courts of law.

But what purpose does the law serve if such frequent exceptions are made?

It’s a fact that U.S. prosecutors misled both the defendants as well as the government of New Zealand. The search warrants were fraudulently obtained, and the spying against Dotcom and other individuals was carried out illegally. An entire business, along with the rightfully owned property of millions of users was stolen before Megaupload or Kim Dotcom were even given one chance to defend themselves in court. Essentially, the U.S. prosecutors made specific decisions to deprive Megaupload and Kim Dotcom of the normal rights of defense, including an absurd worldwide asset seizure to prevent them from retaining defense counsel.

Earlier today the defense team for Kim Dotcom released a new white paper detailing the unlawful handling of this case, and highlighting the political motivations it served by guaranteeing the continuation of campaign financing by the ‘Hollywood lobby,’ including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), among others. When the draconian Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) failed – a piece of legislation which would have granted Washington worldwide control over the content of the Internet – the Hollywood lobby openly threatened to cut off campaign financing unless the Obama administration did something dramatic to service these special interests.

What they chose to do was to destroy Megaupload, even though they had to break the law to do it.

Consider for example the fact that Dotcom and his family were planning to travel to the United States only a few months after the chosen date of the raid. The putative defendant had made firm travel plans that the FBI knew about from their illegal spying. He would have stepped off the plane right into U.S. jurisdiction – so why did they deploy the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), two attack helicopters, dozens of armed men, and attack dogs, risking the life of his pregnant wife and her unborn twins while also creating an unnecessary extradition challenge?

The Americans did not share their alleged evidence with New Zealand, and the New Zealand officials appeared to not care. Judging by their haste and willful disregard of local and international law, the authorities appeared only too enthusiastic to be used by the FBI in a raid that was specifically designed to create the impression that this was some kind of dangerous criminal gang.

Was the government of New Zealand particularly eager to assist the U.S. in this illegal campaign because it would please Hollywood? Already we have seen this government generously deliver more than $120 million to the film studios in the form of tax breaks, and has even gone to far as to create special laws to suspend labor rights and allow them to employ New Zealanders at exploitatively low wages.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand has already publicly apologized to Dotcom for trampling over his rights, but unfortunately, now the GCSB’s reaction is to call for an expansion of their spying powers over Kiwi citizens. The facts detailed in the white paper should alarm each and every citizen of this country. Not only does this case set a negative precedent for Washington’s ability to unilaterally censor the global Internet, it carries dark overtones for more authoritarian-inclined nations who can now use the same reasoning to remove content or services or ideas that find “troubling.”

It’s possible that some readers of this publication may not like the larger-than-life excesses of Kim Dotcom, or alternatively, they may not understand him. But that is not sufficient reason for him to have fewer rights of defense than anyone else.

When New Zealand rejected nuclear power and took other stands like rights for same-sex marriage, it did not do so because these issues were universally popular. It did so because it was right.

If reasonable people are willing to read this white paper and fairly consider the facts presented, a real discussion can begin. We do not need to be given anything – all we want is a fair fight for our rights, because a fair fight is one that we can win.

—

Robert Amsterdam is founding partner of the international law firm Amsterdam & Partners LLP, with offices in London, United Kingdom and Washington, DC. His company is currently working alongside the Rothken Law Firm as they defend Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, and his associates in their ongoing legal battle with the United States and New Zealand governments.

Source: U.S. Govt. Attack on Megaupload Bears Hallmarks of ‘Digital Gitmo’

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been announcing it for months on his website and a white paper released today is the first big step towards that goal.

Titled “The United States vs You (and Kim Dotcom)” and written by Megaupload lawyers Ira Rothken and Robert Amsterdam, the paper accuses the Obama administration of being a pawn of big corporations. It further describes in detail how the authorities obliterated Megaupload on flaky legal grounds.

“The message is clear. The White House is for sale. Due process and the rule of law have little value to the current administration. More and more of our rights are eroding away to protect the interests of large corporations and their billionaire shareholders,” Dotcom tells TorrentFreak.

According to Dotcom his case is just one example of how corporate interests threaten people’s rights and freedom on the Internet in general.

“Silicon Valley has been turned into Surveillance Valley. Kids with keyboards are the new terrorists. Copyright is now a matter of national security. This is all very un-American. Read the White Paper and wake up.”

The 38-page white paper starts with a bang:

“The criminal prosecution of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom is purportedly the ‘largest copyright case in history,’ involving tens of millions of users around the world, and yet it is founded on highly dubious legal principles and apparently propelled by the White House’s desire to mollify the motion picture industry in exchange for campaign contributions and political support,” the white paper begins.

One of the main complaints against the legal process is that under U.S. law Megaupload and its employees can’t be held criminally responsible for copyright infringements committed by the site’s users.

“The prosecution seeks to hold Megaupload and its executives criminally responsible for alleged infringement by the company’s third-party cloud storage users. The problem with the theory, however, is that secondary copyright infringement is not – nor has it ever been – a crime in the United States.”

“The federal courts lack any power to criminalize secondary copyright infringement; the U.S. Congress alone has such authority, and it has not done so. As such, the Megaupload prosecution is not only baseless, it is unprecedented,” Rothken and Amsterdam write.

The paper continues to give a detailed overview of legal jurisprudence in Megaupload’s favor. Among other things, the lawyers note that Megaupload granted very broad DMCA takedown powers to copyright holders, who could remove any file from the cloud hosting service without oversight.

Most of the legal arguments laid out in the white paper have been highlighted previously. What is new, however, is the legal team’s frontal attack on the Obama administration. The suggestion is, that the White House has been corrupted by corporate money and that the assault on Megaupload was a payoff.

“The degree to which the Copyright Lobby, and the MPAA specifically, have managed to instrumentalize the current Administration to take down a foreign corporation and its executives is, quite literally, un-American,” the lawyers write.

Corrupted by sizable election contributions from corporate interest groups, the United States no longer stands for principled standards and the rule of law, the lawyers argue.

“Those values appear to have fallen by the wayside under this White House, which seems content to violate the due process rights of criminal defendants, mislead the courts, and advance baseless legal theories so long as its fund-raising remains uninterrupted.”

The Truth Will Come Out

Megaupload’s lawyers see the MPAA as the driving force behind the criminal prosecution of the cloud hosting site and its employees. According to them, it is no coincidence that the Hollywood group is headed by former Senator Chris Dodd, one of Vice President Joe Biden’s best friends.

“As the new Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, Chris Dodd improperly leveraged his friendship with Joe Biden to achieve the MPAA’s objectives. Former Senator Dodd’s relationship with the Vice President– who comes off manipulated, a cheerfully credulous facilitator – together with the Obama Administration’s ravenous hunger for campaign contributions, has given the MPAA absolute control over how the U.S. Department of Justice plays the game in enforcing copyright law,” they write.

Continuing on the corruption theme, Rothken and Amsterdam go on to describe MPAA’s influence in Washington as “State Capture.”

“The MPAA’s overt use of campaign contributions to sway the U.S. government into engaging in what amounts to unlawful action against Megaupload reflects a form of State Capture, a term coined by the World Bank to describe a brand of corruption characterized by the ability of a relatively small number of private interests to shape the official rules of the game through direct payments or other forms of financial influence.”

One cited example of how political funding was used to influence decisions was a January 2012 threat from the MPAA’s Chris Dodd. He stated that Hollywood would stop donating to politicians who fail to protect their interests.

“By threatening to revoke vital political and monetary support from the Administration at a crucial moment, the MPAA has exercised de facto control over key levers of executive power in Washington – law enforcement, prosecutors, trade negotiators – and is using those instruments of state power to further the financial interests of its members in Hollywood.”

The white paper further gives numerous examples of how Megaupload’s lawyers believe the authorities abused their power to further the interests of the copyright lobby. The overall conclusion is that people’s rights and freedoms are trumped to secure political donations, which are clear signs of contract prosecution.

“The U.S. government’s attack against Megaupload bears all the hallmarks of a contract prosecution: a case resting on erroneous theories of criminal law, littered with due process violations and prosecutorial abuses, carried out for the benefit of a select few in exchange for their political and financial support,” the lawyers write.

“In the name of eliminating copyright infringement, Hollywood has exerted a corrupting influence in Washington, leading us all down a slippery slope that not only threatens innovation and Internet freedom, but also has profound implications for constitutional principles of free speech, privacy and due process.”

Finally, the white paper suggests that this is not an isolated incident. It warns the public that these corrupt forces can quash anything that stands in the way of the private interests of those who make significant campaign contributions.

“Megaupload and Kim Dotcom are today’s targets, but the crosshairs can just as easily be trained on anybody who dares challenge or inconvenience a special interest that holds sway in Washington, and the current Administration – with its notoriously insatiable appetite for campaign contributions – seems all too willing to cooperate.”

The above points are just samples from the white paper, which is certainly worth reading in its entirety. There is no doubt that the Megaupload legal team have just planted a virtual bomb under the Megaupload prosecution. It will be interesting to see how this is received, and whether we will hear a response from the accused.

Source: Megaupload Launches Frontal Attack on White House Corruption

When a federal judge’s contempt for a case is illustrated via a sanctions order littered with sci-fi references it doesn’t bode well for any attorney on the receiving end. Any judge that finds the time to do this is not doing it because he’s bored, but because he’s highly motivated to do so. The shenanigans of Prenda and its associates certainly rankled Judge Wright, and prompted him to make Steele and friends the subject of derision.

In the order, Judge Wright demolishes the claims of Brett Gibbs, by doing simple things like “looking them up on Google.” To demonstrate his point, the Judge includes a handy screen capture from Google Maps, pointing out that one of Gibbs’ statements was “a blatant lie.”

Towards the end, he starts laying down the damages, starting with attorney’s fees. Judge Wright assigned fees and costs totaling $40,659.86 to be paid to defense attorneys Morgan Pietz and Nicholas Ranallo. While that’s more than many expected, he then doubled the amount as a punitive measure, meaning a grand total of $81,319.72 will have to be paid by some combination of the plaintiffs (Steele, Duffy, Hansmeier, Gibbs, the shell companies and lawfirms) on or before May 20th.

And that’s not all. Judge Wright will also be referring the matter to the US Attorney for Central California requesting a RICO (racketeering) investigation, notifying all judges where plaintiffs have cases, and, as we noted a month ago, the IRS. Finally, there will also be disciplinary requests made to state and federal bars.

While some would have liked the order to have gone even further, its restraint will make it less likely to be overturned on appeal.

The next question is whether the Prenda ‘mob’ will pay up, or have another excuse to join the legion put forward so far. For that we’ll have to wait two weeks, if not more.

Source: Federal Judge Fires Phasers, Photons at Prenda for $80k Damages

Not surprisingly, providers of such services are eager to advertise their products to this ‘niche’ group. Many VPN providers are buying ads through Google and other ad-networks, but there is a more direct method.

Last year BitTorrent Inc. added advertisements to its uTorrent and BitTorrent clients, which cater to over 150 million monthly users. The owner of VPN and proxy provider TorGuard therefore made inquiries to the San-Francisco based company to learn more about advertising opportunities, but he was in for a surprise.

In a phone conversation the Vice President of advertising at BitTorrent Inc. told TorGuard that his brand was not a good match since it’s categorized as “high risk.” According to BitTorrent, TorGuard is seen as a service that promotes the use of torrents, which is apparently not allowed.

To find out what is wrong with his service, TorGuard agreed to an extensive review by BitTorrent Inc’s legal team and late last week the final verdict came in. The VPN provider is welcome to advertise with BitTorrent, but not before all torrent related references are removed.

To be accepted, TorGuard has to remove the “tor” from its brand name and website URL, because this directly relates to torrents. In addition, all images even remotely relating to BitTorrent or torrents in general have to go. And it doesn’t stop there.

“Any text content containing the words ‘BitTorrent’,'utorrent’ or ‘torrent’ would also need to be removed. This would of course include landing pages, knowledge base articles, forum/blog posts, and more,” TorGuard’s Ben Van Pelt tells TorrentFreak.

The long list of demands is a bit much for TorGuard’s owner, who is baffled by the entire ordeal.

“Needless to say, we won’t be censoring any of these concerns and will continue to pursue other advertisement initiatives,” Van Pelt says.

“We’ve worked with some of the biggest names in marketing like Google, Cnet and Bing, but never expected censorship requests of this extent from the likes of BitTorrent. It really is wildly ironic,” TorGuard’s owner adds.

The question that remains is why BitTorrent doesn’t want to work with BitTorrent-friendly VPN and proxy services. After all, both the uTorrent and BitTorrent clients have built-in support for proxy connections. And like BitTorrent, VPNs and proxies are nothing more than a technology.

Before the weekend TorrentFreak asked BitTorrent Inc. for a comment on their rules and regulations regarding VPN advertisements, but we have yet to receive a response.

The irony of the situation is amplified by BitTorrent Inc’s ongoing attempts to distance itself from everything piracy related. Deals with content partners are hard to get when people associate your company with illegal downloading, and time and time again the company has been forced to explain that there are plenty of legitimate uses for BitTorrent.

However, BitTorrent now appears to be doing the same to TorGuard.

TorGuard’s owner tells TorrentFreak that he understands that BitTorrent is protecting its brand, but he disagrees with the way the company is going about it. He was willing to make a few changes here and there, but completely banning all references to torrents, suggesting these are somehow evil, is simply not an option.

“To me, the name ‘TorGuard’ first represents anonymity, overcoming censorship and encryption, before it has anything to do with BitTorrent,” Van Pelt concludes.

Source: uTorrent and BitTorrent Reject “High Risk” VPN Ads

In September 2011 IMAGiNE was dismantled when its U.S-based members were rounded up and arrested. In the months that followed IMAGiNE members were brought to justice and handed some of the harshest copyright infringement sentences on record.

Lower ranking members of the group received 23 months in prison but a sysop, cammer and group leader were hit with jail sentences of 40, 48 and 60 months respectively, the latter being the longest sentence ever in a case of this type.

One of the witnesses to be heard in the IMAGiNE case was Toronto-based anti-piracy group Deluxe. They were hired by the studios to spy on group members and produce an intelligence report on their activities. A copy obtained by TorrentFreak reveals some interesting facts.

Deluxe lists IMAGiNE’s strengths as being able to get a movie online shortly after its theatrical release, ability to provide consistently high audio captures, maintaining a high volume of releases, and their connections to international suppliers.

The following chart shows a league table of release groups between September 2009 and December 2011, a period in which IMAGiNE is said to have been “easily the most significant release group in terms of volume.”

IMAGiNE are said to have been responsible for 41% of all English language movie audio piracy from September 2009 until they were busted in 2011, five times the amount of their closest competitor. The group used a total of 15 video sources between September 2009 and September 2010, and a further 39 between then and the group’s demise in September 2011.

Deluxe obtain some of their evidence by analyzing forensic codes embedded into video and audio of new movies. They note that IMAGiNE successfully removed the codes from seven movie releases including Fast Five and X-Men:First Class. However, Deluxe were able to trace many back to the theater in which they were originally recorded, as the chart below shows.

Interestingly, IMAGiNE themselves were also victims to piracy. Deluxe report that for some pirated movies released online by other groups, every audio track could be traced back to IMAGiNE. Over a single year period IMAGiNE were responsible for 54% of all English language audio tracks examined by Deluxe.

Of course, the raids had an immediate impact.

“The enforcement actions occurred in early September 2011, and there was a decrease of unique pirated English audio sources this month. In fact, September 2011 had the lowest amount of English-language piracy instances in the entire dataset,” Deluxe report.

But the downturn didn’t last.

“However, in the following month, the amount of new English audio sources shot up dramatically, with more English-language release than each of the nine months prior to the enforcement actions. Electronic audio, which is typically higher quality (and more difficult to obtain) continued to be captured and released,” Deluxe reveal.

“October 2011 [the month after the IMAGiNE raids] had more electronic English audio theft than most other months in the dataset. This content was released by many groups including ILLUMINATI, MISTERE, FYA, UnKnOwN and DTRG. Since the enforcement actions against IMAGiNE we have seen several groups with similar release patterns emerge to provide pirated English audio captures.”

“The data implies that the enforcement action towards IMAGiNE impacted the volume of English language audio piracy strongly in September, and other release groups increased their activity in response to IMAGiNE’s departure,” Deluxe add.

The anti-piracy group further notes that audio piracy in December 2011 was down on the same month in the previous year but there was still a high volume of pirated releases in the months following IMAGiNE’s demise. But there was more bad news when Deluxe examined piracy latency – the number of days between a movie being released and subsequently being pirated online.

“The latency period during September 2011, the month of enforcement actions, increased substantially. During the following three months, there was another significant change, with the latency period decreasing substantially.

“This implies that the piracy community re-oriented itself following IMAGiNE’s departure. English language audio was, on average, available online sooner after the theatrical release date than was previously normal when IMAGiNE was active,” Deluxe note.

While the information produced by Deluxe suggests that busting IMAGiNE yielded only short-term success, the report only goes as far as December 2011 and therefore omits the important period starting January 2012 when everything had settled down. We shall have to wait for further information to become available to assess the long term impact the IMAGiNE busts had on movie piracy and whether or not it was worth all the effort.

Source: Busting World’s Biggest Movie Pirates Made Piracy Worse

Parker is the most downloaded movie.

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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week

A common way for BitTorrent users to circumvent ISP blocks and protect themselves at the same time is to use a VPN service. These products do the job particularly well, but of course they do cost a small amount of money.

Those who prefer a free solution for unblocking their favorite torrent site are increasingly turning to dedicated proxies. These sites are as simple to access as typing a URL into a web browser and provide immediate access to sites such as The Pirate Bay and the more recently blocked KickAssTorrents.

Nevertheless, anti-piracy companies continue to claim that blocking is a success. In carefully worded statements they state that blocks are effective since visible traffic to domains has reduced since they were censored. Of course, those statements are technically true, but what they do not take into account is the number of users now accessing blocked sites through VPNs and various proxies.

And, according to the operators of The Pirate Bay, proxy websites are now driving a substantial amount of traffic to the world’s largest torrent site.

“A total of 8% of all Pirate Bay page views go through the proxy IP-address now, so I’m guessing the blockades are not working too well,” a spokesman told TorrentFreak.

But even that number is a lower-end estimate. The TPB insider told us the figure only relates to proxy sites that connect to TPB using a dedicated IP address.

“The 8% is just what goes through the dedicated IP-address, a lot of proxies use the site’s domain name instead,” he added.

Exactly how many proxy sites are out there is unknown, but TorrentProxies currently lists more than 200. The ones generating the most traffic at the moment appear to be PirateProxy.net (way out in front) followed by PirateReverse.info and ProxyBay.net.

“So far in 2013 we’ve had 4,964,424 unique visitors to our pirate bay proxies,” the operators of PirateReverse told TorrentFreak. “That equates to 61,546,871 pageviews, with a rough average of half a million a day.”

The table below shows the top countries in terms of visitors to PirateReverse. It comes as no surprise that out of the top six entires, five of those countries are currently blocking (or attempting to block) access to The Pirate Bay. An earlier review produced similar results.

Finally, it is pretty much common knowledge that there are more dedicated Pirate Bay proxies around than those serving other blocked sites such as KickAssTorrents, H33T or Fenopy. As a result, PirateReverse told us that their KAT.ph proxies (kickassunblock.info and katunblock.com) are now generating more traffic than their Pirate Bay services.

There used to be a popular phrase which went something like “kill one file-sharing site and 10 more will appear in its place.” These days that’s probably untrue, but in the case of The Pirate Bay it’s fair to say that blocking one site has led to the creation of 200 new sites specifically designed to unblock it. That’s undoubtedly a powerful message.

Source: At Least 8% of All Pirate Bay Traffic Now Provided By Proxy Services

Megaupload based its request on “Rule 4” of criminal procedure, which requires the authorities to serve a company at an address in the United States. However, since Megaupload is a Hong Kong company, this was and is impossible.

The defense argued that the court can only protect Megaupload’s due process rights by dismissing the case. However, the Government disagreed and asked the court to deny Megaupload’s motion. Among other things the Government claimed that federal rules shouldn’t be interpreted so narrowly.

Two weeks ago Megaupload renewed its request and the defunct file-hosting company noted that the Government was trying to change the law in its favor. The lawyers cited a letter to the Advisory Committee on the Criminal Rules where the DoJ made suggestions that would directly influence the Megaupload case.

Among other things the letter suggested an amendment to the law so that it would no longer be a requirement to serve a foreign company in the United States. Megaupload’s lawyers used the letter to point out to the court that the Government knew very well that it was not playing by the rules.

This week the U.S. Government replied to the motion, stating that Megaupload misrepresents the facts.

The Government explains that the DoJ’s letter begins with “a bedrock principle of criminal law, one that applies equally to both organizations and natural persons,” citing the following passage:

“When a person located abroad violates the laws of the United States, that person may be held criminally liable despite the fact that the person has never set foot in the United States.”

In other words, every person and company in the world should comply with U.S. law. The Government explains that some companies including Megaupload are exploiting “Rule 4” to remain unaccountable. However, the Government tells the court that the suggestion to improve the law doesn’t mean that Megaupload can’t be prosecuted.

“The Department never concedes, as Megaupload wrongly claims, that a proper interpretation of Rule 4 would bar the company’s prosecution,” the Government tells the court in its most recent filing.

In addition to this clarification the Government further references an additional legal precedent which shows that foreign companies without an address in the United States can be criminally prosecuted.

The Government’s response ends with a “warning” that dismissing the indictment against Megaupload, even temporarily, may mean the end of the case.

“Such dismissal, even without prejudice, would harm (perhaps fatally) the government’s ability to fully prosecute serious criminal conduct of the corporate defendant Megaupload, the ability of victims to obtain justice, and the public’s interest in resolving this case efficiently,” the Government writes.

With the sentence above the Government suggests that the entire case against Megaupload could collapse, putting a lot of weight on the decision of District Court Judge Liam O’Grady, and perhaps not unintentionally.

Under this pressure the Judge now has to decide whether or not Megaupload should be dismissed from the indictment. If that’s the case, Megaupload plans to give users access to the files that were seized, and it will also free up funds for a proper defense.

Source: U.S. Government Fears End of Megaupload Case

Recent information suggests that Gottfrid intends to plead “not guilty” to claims that between January 2010 and April 2012 he and his co-conspirators accessed confidential tax records and data on the systems of Logica, an IT company working with Sweden’s tax authorities.

Gottfrid and his alleged accomplices will now go on trial starting May 20 but in the meantime additional information has been emerging via Niklas Femerstrand, a researcher, hacker, political activist and friend of Gottfrid.

Late last month, Femerstrand published translated transcripts of Gottfrid’s interrogation over several days between September 2012 and March 2013. Further information is now coming to light.

No comment

“This investigation, it has gone on since this spring and we have have quite a lot of material that we’ve been looking at. There are clear indications in this material that shows that you were involved. Do you know of this breach of Logica?” an interrogator asked Gottfrid last year.

“No comments!” responded Gottfrid. The interview was terminated after Gottfrid refused to admit knowing individuals referred to as ‘MG’ and ‘KS’ and answered “no comment” to pretty much everything. A follow up interview in which the Pirate Bay founder was asked if he knew “CS” was ended after achieving the same result.

An interview in March 2013 found Gottfrid marginally more compliant. In amongst an overwhelming number of “no comments” he admitted working as a freelance consultant and running an outsourcing company during his time in Cambodia.

Gottfrid also admitted to owning two computers, a desktop and a Macbook, that were found in his Cambodia apartment. He said the computers were used as servers, not by him personally, and were accessed via the Internet by individuals he admitted knowing and meeting.

“These people then, who have accessed [the servers]. Do you want to say something about them?” the interrogator asked.

Gottfrid responded “No…[..] because I fear for my own life.”

TrueCrypt container, chat logs and aliases

Later discussion turned to a 16GB TrueCrypt container found on one of the computers which appears to be a reference to material downloaded by the alleged hackers from Logica’s systems. Also present were log files listing the computer’s connections to Logica.

“In your computer, there are a number of different log files, the connections you have done to Logica… or that’s in your computer against Logica systems, what were these log files from?” the interrogator asked.

“Probably from those who used the computer. Either locally or, more likely remotely,” Gottfrid responded.

What followed was a discussion about various characters. According to earlier statements made by the prosecutor, some of those arrested in the case have Pirate Bay connections.

It appears that the previously arrested ‘MG’ was found in possession of chat logs with various nicknames listed. Gottfrid admitted to using “Anakata” and prosecutors suggested that he also used “tLt”. Gottfrid wouldn’t be drawn, but admitted that “Anakata” is a well known name.

“For example diROX asks TiAMO [Pirate Bay co-founder] where is Anakata? So he responds Cambodia, that’s correct isn’t it?” the interrogator questions.

What follows are lengthy logs read out by the prosecutor where “diROX” and “tLt” discuss cracking databases and gaining access to information.

“I also have complete dumps of amongst others the bailiff registry, only that is 12 Gb haha, got hold of the table of contents, it’s a little easier to find fun things then,” the interrogator read out, quoting “tLt”.

“I… just want to comment that bailiff records are public documents,” Gottfrid responded.

In November “MG” was interrogated again but refused to have a lawyer present. After being shown chatlogs he told his interrogators that “tLt” was Gottfrid Svartholm.

Cellphone data, Ubuntu One and the Hells Angels

Evidence also gathered from MG included forensics on his cellphone which revealed tools for cracking WiFi networks. Text documents within them contained the exact same login credentials used to access Logica’s servers. The same data was found on his Ubuntu One cloud storage account. MG later went on to admit that he had used the name “diROX” online.

MG denied that he’d downloaded any data through the tax intrusions but admitted carrying out queries on his friends. The interrogator asked ‘MG’ if those friends are members of the “Hells Angels” – MG said that was possible.

What followed next was an exchange where MG implied he was scared for his safety so couldn’t say anything more. His interrogators suggested things were still going to look bad for him with his ‘friends’ whether he cooperated or not. MG’s lawyer stepped in and put an end to the approach.

Lawyer’s account used as hacking springboard

It’s also been revealed that the alleged hackers gained access to systems via an account belonging to a movie industry lawyer. Monique Wadsted of the MAQS lawfirm was used extensively by the entertainment industries in the original Pirate Bay trial. For those who’ve seen the movie TPB AFK, she is the lady for whom Peter Sunde held open the door.

Wadsted had an account on a system called Infotorg, a provider of online information about private individuals, companies, properties and vehicles. Wadsted’s account was allegedly modified by the attackers to become a super-user account which enabled the download of large amounts of data. Traffic to that account was traced to IP addresses belonging to ISPs in Cambodia and Sweden.

Also of interest to those who followed the original Pirate Bay trial is the type of data that was accessed during the hacks. Searches were carried out on a wide range of individuals from an actor to a representative of a space project, but they were also conducted on Gottfrid himself, controversial ISP PRQ and various police cars. Interestingly a search was also conducted on Jim Keyzer, an IT forensics police officer who later transferred to Warner Bros., a plaintiff in the trial.

What is clear from even the small amount of information revealed so far (thanks again to Niklas Femerstrand) is that this is an incredibly complicated case that any court or jury will do well to keep up with. Whether it will stride confidently to its conclusion or collapse under its own complexity remains to be seen. We will know more later in May.

Source: MPAA Lawyer’s Computer Account Used in Pirate Bay Founder Hacking Case

That’s quite an achievement, especially when taking into consideration that streaming Hollywood blockbusters was virtually impossible half a decade ago.

Furthermore, with the rise of these legal options people have less incentive to search for pirated copies on file-sharing sites – two years ago we noted that Netflix was killing (unauthorized) BitTorrent traffic. Now Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos reports he has some evidence to back up this claim.

In a recent interview with Stuff, Sarandos notes that BitTorrent traffic dips every time the video provider opens up shop in a new location.

“One of the things is we get ISPs to publicise their connection speeds – and when we launch in a territory the BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows. So I think people do want a great experience and they want access – people are mostly honest.”

In other words, many people who previously pirated movies via BitTorrent stop doing so when Netflix becomes available. Choice is also the key to solving the piracy problem according to the Netflix CCO.

“The best way to combat piracy isn’t legislatively or criminally but by giving good options,” Sarandos says.

It’s not rocket science and quite logical to most, but still there are many parts of the world where movie and TV streaming options are rather limited. Even in the United States some releases are held back or delayed to save old business models.

According to Sarandos this has to change – people want to consume Hollywood content and need legal options to do so.

“One of the side effects of growth of content is an expectation to have access to it. You can’t use the Internet as a marketing vehicle and then not as a delivery vehicle,” he says.

There’s still a lot can be done to improve the current situation. Since the launch of Netflix’s streaming service in 2008, BitTorrent traffic has continued to rise in the United States, but it’s indicative that Game of Thrones is one of the most pirated titles of all time.

After all, HBO is not making it easy for people to access the show and Netflix is unable to buy it.

Of course, there are many reasons why people pirate and there will always be freeloaders who simply can’t or won’t pay. But this is no reason to offend those who have the right intentions.

Making content available may not make piracy disappear, but at the very minimum it gives the millions of people who want to pay a place to spend their money.

Source: Netflix Says It’s ‘Killing’ BitTorrent Traffic

Froman will be tasked with protecting U.S. trade interests around the globe and informing other countries on how to improve their copyright enforcement initiatives.

“He does not rest until he’s delivered the best possible deal for American businesses and American workers. He’s fought to make sure that countries that break the rules are held accountable,” the President said in his speech.

However, the U.S. itself hasn’t been playing by the rules either. In fact, one of the issues the new Trade Representative will have to deal with is the lingering dispute with Antigua and Barbuda. The U.S. refuses to lift a trade “blockade” preventing the Caribbean island from offering Internet gambling services, despite several WTO decisions in Antigua’s favor.

Earlier this year TorrentFreak broke the news that the WTO had granted Antigua the right to suspend U.S. copyrights and launch a “piracy site.” The money generated by such a site would compensate the country for some of the losses suffered due to U.S. actions.

Since the initial announcement a lot of progress has been made behind the scenes and a source close to the Government of Antigua informed us this week that they will soon start accepting bids for the new media platform.

One of the potential partners that has been suggested is none other than The Pirate Bay. The world’s largest file-sharing site has plenty of experience with online media distribution and its owners are unlikely to succumb to the inevitable pressure from the U.S. Government.

Antigua’s attorney Mark Mendel confirmed to TorrentFreak that the Government is likely to soon start a process to solicit bids to operate whatever platform the Government determines to put in place. However, he didn’t want to speculate on any of the parties that could collaborate.

Mendel did emphasize that whatever Antigua ultimately choose to do, it will respect the copyrights of non-U.S. owners.

“Whichever vendor is selected in the process, be it The Pirate Bay or any other company, it would be involved in a dialogue with the Government and a partnership that will be strictly supervides to make sure that the operation is conducted in accordance with the WTO rulings,” Mendel says.

The above means that The Pirate Bay would have to develop a separate service for Antigua. This service could be advertising supported, levy a charge per download, or operate on a subscription base. The advertising model would be an interesting option as that revenue would not be bound to the $21 million cap defined by the WTO.

A Pirate Bay insider informed us that they are considering their participation and are looking forward to working out the details for an eventual bid. “The Pirate Bay would definitely love help out,” TorrentFreak was told.

Thus far official negotiations haven’t been initiated, but the unusual collaboration could prove to be an interesting one for both sides.

Antigua of course knows very well that having The Pirate Bay on board will raise the visibility of the project. The Pirate Bay on the other hand never likes to waste an opportunity to mock the U.S. copyright monopolies.

“I think this would be a great opportunity to finally launch The Freedom Bay,” The Pirate Bay says.

Source: Pirate Bay and Antigua Explore Launch of Authorized “Pirate Site”

He accused half the show’s audience of being thieves which perhaps understandably caused a bit of a fuss. Bleich’s Facebook page lit up with reaction – most of it critical, some of it abusive – but, as the Ambassador now points out, “a frank exchange is a good thing”.

In a new address to those who download content from unauthorized Internet sources, Bleich recaps some of the issues, including one on many critics’ lists – doesn’t a U.S. Ambassador have anything better to do than talk about file-sharing?

“Actually, given the overwhelming response to the topic, maybe I haven’t talked about internet piracy enough,” Bleich begins. “The point is, this isn’t just about ‘Game of Thrones’ and it isn’t a small issue.”

Citing a whole bunch of figures, such as U.S. businesses “losing” $48 billion to Chinese-based copyright infringement in 2011, Bleich said piracy “is a big deal” for both the U.S. and Australia. “Fortunately, working on this topic doesn’t mean I’ll stop working on other big issues too,” he adds.

Bleich goes on to dismiss accusations that copyright enforcement is all about protecting the profits of big corporations. Game of Thrones, he says, costs $6m per episode to produce and relies on people putting money into their pockets to fund the show. However, we also know directly from mouth of HBO that the show is doing very well indeed, despite all the piracy. Bleich, however, feels this is missing the point.

The Ambassador argues that profitable shows and artists help bring niche products to market. Without Taylor Swift, One Direction and Justin Bieber, labels won’t have the money to support acts that aren’t commercially viable.

“When the labels aren’t fully compensated for the big acts (or HBO doesn’t get receipts for ‘Game of Thrones’) that means other artists won’t get a chance at all,” he says.

Bleich then goes on to address the one thing that seems to come up in every infringement debate – the notion that copying is the same / is not the same as theft. He makes some more analogies, but none of them will quieten this baby.

“Making use of someone’s property without permission — is against the law, and for the same reason as stealing. Think of it this way: no one would argue that it’s legal (or moral) to slip into a movie theater and watch a movie without paying for your ticket (even if a seat was empty and the theater still had the movie afterward). That’s basically what you do when you illegally download a video.

“Stealing is the word that comes to most people’s minds when you use something that’s not yours without permission and without paying for it. So if folks want to call it something else, that’s fine, but my point here is that it is both wrong and illegal,” he says.

But hold on just one minute – didn’t the maker of Game of Thrones and an HBO executive describe piracy of the show as a kind of compliment? They did, but Bleich is having none of it.

“Illegal immigration is a sort of compliment, too (it means people would rather live in your country than theirs) and so is having someone hit on your partner (because it means they find him/her attractive),” the Ambassador says.

“No one seriously thinks that illegal immigration or someone seducing your partner is a good thing. Likewise, the idea that people who download illegally may generate ‘more buzz’ or might decide to do the right thing and buy the next season may be true, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that you are taking something that is not yours when you illegally download content.”

Of course, no one likes the idea of someone hitting on their partner, but they aren’t exactly up for grabs in the first instance – free, paid for, or otherwise.

Countries attract illegal immigration for a number of reasons, not least because they’re a) desirable and b) hard to access by the official routes if you live in the wrong locale, which coincidentally is something Game of Thrones and HBO know a little about.

“Many companies today are working on how to deliver their products flexibly enough to meet the lifestyle and expectations of online consumers. But while they are working out the kinks, we shouldn’t be doing something that hurts people who work in the entertainment industry,” says Bleich.

“I know some people will still passionately disagree (and will let me know it). But instead of shifting blame, I’d just ask that the next time one of us considers illegally downloading a copyrighted work, we remember (and actually follow) the Lannister family code: ‘A Lannister always pays his debts’,” he concludes.

To be continued….

Source: U.S. Ambassador: Internet Piracy and Illegal Immigration are Both a ‘Compliment’

In February the makers of the animated movie Zambezia, featuring Samuel L. Jackson as voice actor, filed a dozen lawsuits at a federal court in Washington. At first glance this is nothing new, but careful observers noticed something odd in the lists of IP-addresses that were supplied to the court.

One IP-address was named in three different lawsuits, with time-stamps varying from October to December 2012. These identical IPs were sharing the same movie but were listed in separate cases among dozens of other IP-addresses.

With dynamic IP-addresses there is a theoretical possibility that the downloads all come from different subscribers, but this is not the case here. TorrentFreak talked to the unfortunate John Doe defendant behind the IP 71.231.2.115 who told us that Comcast had recently informed him (or her) about the three pending cases.

Recognizing the bizarre situation, the John Doe prepared his own defense and submitted motions to quash or vacate the subpoenas, to keep his personal details from being shared with the copyright holder. In the motions the Doe explains to the judge that the appearance of a single IP-address in three different cases is suspicious, to say the least.

“Plaintiff’s technical monitoring personnel failed to notice the repeat entries of the identical IP address after sorting and filtering and filed 3 different federal lawsuits. This calls into question their accuracy in managing their cases properly…,” the Doe writes.

Instead of sheer sloppiness, the copyright holder could also have darker intentions. That is, to submit the IPs in multiple cases hoping that at least one judge grants a subpoena.

“Plaintiff’s strategic decision may be to split this same IP address into 3 different cases with the assumption that each case will be assigned to 3 different judges. This way plaintiff’s chances are increased of at least one case being granted by one of the judges,” the Doe explains.

Fortunately for the defendant, the cases all landed on the desk of the same judge. This makes it likely that, leaving all other issues aside, at least two of the three cases will be thrown out.

TorrentFreak spoke with defense lawyer Nicholas Ranallo, who has experience with these type of cases. Ranallo has never seen multiple cases being filed for one IP-address before, and points out that if this is allowed to continue BitTorrent users could be sued hundreds if not thousands of times for a single download.

“I think it would be very difficult for a Plaintiff to sue for three ‘different’ infringements of the same movie. If you could sue for three, you could sue for a nearly infinite number, given the structure of BitTorrent,” Ranallo says.

Another issue brought up by the attorney is that there’s a limit on the maximum damages for a single infringement. If multiple suits for seemingly the same offense are allowed then this limitation would be rendered meaningless.

“In addition, there is a limitation in the copyright act that you are only allowed one award of statutory damages per work, per action. I don’t think you can get around this limitation simply by filing two suits for the same thing, one on Day 1 and one on Day 2,” Ranallo told TorrentFreak.

“The entire limitation would be rendered meaningless – copyright infringement almost never involves a single ‘copy’ of anything,” he adds.

However, from the looks of it the intention of the Zambezia makers was not to outsmart the law. An analysis of the evidence posted on DTD shows that there are multiple repeat IP addresses listed. Some duplicates even appeared in the same case, but with a different version of the BitTorrent client.

“Overall, I think it is sloppiness in one form or another. It looks like the torrenter just changed/updated from Utorrent 1.0 to 1.1, so it registered as discrete individuals and nobody looked closely to weed these things out,” Ranallo explains.

The defendant we talked to hopes that the judge will recognize the sloppiness and end the cases. Getting trolled is never a pleasant experience, but receiving three separate settlement letters for the same download is just ridiculous.

Source: Alleged BitTorrent Pirate Sued Three Times For The Same Download

More recent and notable successes for the entertainment industries include the blocks against major torrent sites in the UK, and in Italy where a total of 27 domains were blocked last month.

In addition to sundry other countries already initiating court-ordered blockades, action can be expected from other major regions in the months to come. Spain has been allowed off the United States’ naughty step after agreeing to bring in tough new measures, France has its eye on future domain blocking, and just this week Norway moved a major step towards infringing site censorship.

Today we can report that yet another entertainment industry anti-piracy group has gone to court to have someone of the world’s largest torrent sites blocked by ISPs. According to court papers filed at the end of last month, The Greek Society for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AEPI) is targeting a total of ten sites.

The list of domains includes KickAssTorrents, isoHunt, 1337x and H33T, plus several local sites – Greek.to, Greek-Team.cc, P2Plaent.net, Tsibato.info, GreekDDL.eu and Greek-Best.com

On April 30 AEPI’s demands were heard by the Athens Court (court papers, Greek PDF). The anti-piracy group initially requested a temporary injunction against several ISPs including OTE, Wind, Vodafone, Forthnet, Hellas Online, On Telecoms and the academic GRNET, to force them to block the above sites by IP and DNS.

AEPI argued that an immediate injunction is required to stop the sites further damaging their members’ businesses but the ISPs countered by informing the court that the sites have been open for years so urgency is not an issue.

“It should be noted that this is the first time a case of this magnitude and importance has appeared before a [local]court, even for temporary measures,” Greek news outlet ADSLGR told TorrentFreak in a comment.

“The option to block access to sites raises serious questions on the issue of the protection of Net Neutrality. The decision is expected within the next few days and will take effect until there is a ruling about the injunction measures asked by AEPI. Even if there is no concept of ‘legal precedent’ in the Greek Law System, it is believed that a ruling favoring AEPI may influence future cases in Greece.”

TorrentFreak sources have confirmed that later this month The Pirate Bay will also be targeted by AEPI. The anti-piracy group did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Source: Anti-Piracy Group Demands Blocks of KickAss, isoHunt, 1337x and H33T