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Although it wasn’t yet evident, December 2009 appeared to mark the beginning of an effort to shut down the Greek file-sharing scene. The Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (EPOE) conducted an investigation and moved in conjunction with the police to carry out the first action of its type against a file-sharing site in the country.

The 285,000 member Greek-Fun.com carried around 14,000 links to music, domestic and international movies, software and computers games. Around 5,500 of these are believed to have linked to material in the EPOE repertoire. As is usual with these cases, EPOE were quick to point to the financing of the site as an indication of criminal behavior. Like many sites, Greek-Fun offered benefits to users who donated to keep the site running although the admins denied profiteering.

In the end at least one administrator of the site, believed to be in his early 30’s, was arrested and several people were questioned with investigators linking site email addresses to Facebook accounts for evidence. EPOE said the site caused it 1.8m euros in damages.

As the bad news about Greek-Fun spread, Greece’s largest private tracker – the huge 898,000 member Gamato.info – also unexpectedly went down, officially due to “technical problems”. Whatever the reason, as can be seen by the graph below, the result was a massive drop in Greek Internet traffic. Gamato remained down for several weeks, only opening again during the first few days of February 2010.

Today, however, the site is down again, and the news is not good.

ELAS (Greek police) are engaged in an on-going operation to round up the administrators of the site. Already there are reports of 3 arrests in Athens (the capital and one of the world’s oldest cities) and 3 in Thessaloniki (Greece’s 2nd largest city). A soldier, a musician and a confectioner are among those arrested.

New information suggests that ELAS have alerted Interpol to arrest two further admins who are apparently reside outside the country. TorrentFreak has learned that they are located in The Netherlands and are being called “the brains” behind the site. The Gamato servers are also located there although it’s unclear at this stage if there is a connection.

“We host a lot of different sites and do not keep tabs on our clients as long as they comply with our Terms of Service, which includes confirming to the Dutch law,” Gamato’s host told TorrentFreak, adding: “As far as we and our legal counsel can see, this is the case with the site mentioned by you.”

It’s believed that police are looking for 11 individuals in total. Thus far, 27 hard drives, five laptops and more than 600 DVDs have been seized.

According to the police, file-sharing on Gamato was responsible for 80% of online piracy in Greece, with EPOE calculating its losses at the hands of the tracker at a staggering 1 billion euros.

Although Gamato was a private torrent site, it didn’t follow the usual format. It wasn’t “invite-only” – anyone could signup – and although sharing ratios were counted there were no punishments or rewards for the amounts shared. Furthermore, unlike Greek-Fun, Gamato did not accept donations from users.

The Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (EPOE) shot to fame in 2008 when virtually every site offering user-generated Greek subtitles (fansubs) for English language movies and TV shows became recipients of its legal threats. Within a very short time sites including greektvsubs.gr, subtitles.gr, greeksubs, subs4u.gr and apsubs.com had either closed down or removed all subtitles.

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

UseNeXT is a brand operated by Munich and London-based company, Aviteo Ltd. UseNeXT is one of the most popular Usenet services around today and has traditionally advertised extensively within the BitTorrent community and on many torrent sites.

On 19 December 2006, performing rights group GEMA, which handles the copyrights of more than 1 million rightsholders worldwide, filed for an injunction against UseNeXT. GEMA had earlier leveled accusations at UseNeXT’s advertising in which it said, among other things, the company claimed to offer 1 million MP3s through its service.

“[UseNeXT] advertised its fee-based access with unambiguous references to illegal exchange platforms. In particular it publicized the anonymity, speed and security of access to contents available on Usenet,” GEMA said in a statement, adding: “On top of that, the service also offers special, perfected search software that makes it easier to locate and manage musical works and other contents protected by copyright.”

On 18 January 2007, the Hamburg District Court issued a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT’s operators, which included instructions for it to change the way in which it advertised its product and barring it from providing musical works from GEMA’s repertoire. UseNeXT objected to the decision and disputed that it had ever encouraged subscribers to download copyright works, arguing that its use of the terms ‘unfiltered’ and ‘anonymous’ related to features inherent in the Usenet system.

On 17 February 2010, the Hamburg District Court handed down a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT which bars the service from offering a sample 100 musical works to which GEMA administers the copyright. The injunction also states that UseNeXT must go further than simply modifying its advertising in order to protect GEMA’s copyrights.

Although not necessarily liable for infringements, the Court said that Usenet providers would have to take responsibility for the services and environments they provide.

In a statement, GEMA said that the Court of Hamburg’s decision represents expanded liabilities for Usenet providers which go further than regulating their approach to advertising, but also apply when modified advertising proves insufficient to protect rights holders.

“The adoption of the preliminary injunction is a success in our commitment to the protection of copyright,” said Dr. Harald Heker, Chief Executive Officer of GEMA. “Second, the ruling also represents a further important step towards a comprehensive responsibility of the Usenet service operator for its offer.”

At this stage it’s unclear how UseNeXT will choose to comply with the injunction. Unlike services such as Rapidshare that operate their own servers and actually store content, UseNeXT are a reseller of the Highwinds Usenet service. UseNeXT does not store any content, Highwinds do.

UseNeXT used to offer a search engine and software interface to access Usenet, so conceivably something could’ve been implemented there to bar access to the GEMA titles mentioned in the injunction. However, recent changes to their service means they are no longer offering those solutions but suggesting the use of 3rd party software, with one particular solution from Tangysoft up front.

Nevertheless, the Court said that UseNeXT is responsible for the service it’s re-selling so the company will have to find an answer somehow. Many Usenet providers are already working with rights holders to automate the removal of content, so solutions are available. How quickly and comprehensively UseNeXT acts will remain to be seen.

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

Last month it became apparent that investigations by music industry group IFPI were leading to raids against file-sharers conducted by the Swedish police. All of those arrested were allegedly identified as major file-sharers due to their use of Direct Connect.

With millions of individuals using BitTorrent and a relative handful using Direct Connect (DC), many wondered why this smaller group were considered worth of police attention. The answer was simple – gathering evidence of mass infringement to be used against those using BitTorrent is a hugely complicated task compared to Direct Connect.

“They can try to download the movie and see a list of people who have the movie. But they can not get a list of everything you download,” explained uTorrent creator Ludvig Strigeus recently. “It is difficult to attack a specific person.”

In common with DC but on a much bigger scale, BitTorrent is not just one network – every single swarm is a new and separate network and the task of monitoring them all is massive.

“There is a huge apparatus needed to keep track on all torrents. I think it’s too hard to manage to do it and then get [the evidence] to hold in the District Court,” adds Strigeus.

Not to say that Sweden and its fledgling anti-piracy taskforce haven’t been busy, though. They just haven’t been getting that many results.

According to a report, in the last 18 months they have reported between 70 and 80 file-sharers to the police. Of those, just 35 to 40 cases were considered worth pursuing. Around 10 of those individuals have been arrested thus far, only 3 have admitted to offenses and agreed to pay fines and there are just 15 cases still under investigated. Needless to say, this is not considered good progress for the time and money invested. Additionally, none of them were BitTorrent users.

While investigators insist that they are looking into new ways of tracking and logging evidence against BitTorrent infringers, anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran (APB) are hoping that the law will help their battle.

APB lawyer Henrik Pontén says the difficulties posed by BitTorrent “…shows the need for other types of intervention from the legislators, if they are serious about copyright law to work on the Internet.”

Pontén is hoping that changes to legislation will allow collecting societies and outfits like the IFPI to start sending copyright infringement warnings directly to those they suspect are sharing files illegally.

“The simplest option is that the victims of copyright crimes are able to send warning letters,” says Pontén.

Currently this is a problem in Sweden, since it is very difficult to obtain the real identity of someone behind an IP address without the assistance of the police. Because of this, Pontén hopes that his group can cooperate with ISPs so that they can forward infringement warnings to file-sharers on their behalf.

“We will not get [the file-sharer's] identity, we just want the warning message to arrive at the correct address. An independent body should be able to send information to the person breaking the law, possibly a government body or a third party organization,” he concludes.

Although this would be a first step, with no sanctions should the warnings be ignored it’s difficult to see how this system would have ‘teeth’. But it’s probably one step at a time for APB – teeth will be bared at a later stage.

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

Newzbin is one of the original and most popular Usenet indexing sites on the Internet. The site pioneered the increasingly popular .NZB format which simplified previously complicated Usenet downloading.

While most of Hollywood’s legal might was focused on the snowballing BitTorrent scene, Usenet downloading also gained in popularity – and exposure – and by 2008 it soon had Newzbin in the spotlight.

Newzbin received complaints from the studios in May that year, stating that the site was listing NZBs which linked to movies on Usenet which infringed their members’ copyright. In December, Newzbin confirmed it was removing some NZB files at copyright holders’ request but it wasn’t enough and the MPA filed for an injunction.

The London High Court showdown between Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Others v Newzbin Ltd before Mr Justice Kitchin began February 1st 2010. Details coming out of the case have been relatively few and entirely from Newzbin’s perspective. TorrentFreak contacted the MPA for their take but they told us they could not comment on an on-going case.

Newzbin reported that the plaintiffs opened with explanations of the .NZB format and how they differ from regular HTML hyperlinks along with accusations that Newzbin’s backend code specifically sought out copyright works on Usenet.

For their part, Newzbin disputed most MPA accusations but nevertheless ended the first day expressing confidence in Judge Justice Kitchin and his ability to preside over a fair trial.

Referencing “bizarre side issues”, “internal Newzbin issues” (later partly clarified as non-conflict related) and the falling ill of Newzbin admin ‘Caesium’ under cross-examination by the plaintiffs’ lawyer, by Day 3 of the trial events had clearly taken a turn for the strange.

After some rest, Caesium re-took the stand on Day 4 and completed his cross-examination, but the picture painted by Newzbin lacked optimism.

“It would be fair to say that the picture painted in court of Newzbin has not been an entirely positive one. Whilst it is hard to double guess Mr Justice Kitchin, Newzbin may have some difficulties in the near future,” said the site’s legal team in a statement, adding that Caesum had been accused of lying repeatedly under oath.

Newzbin requested a pause in proceedings to hire more lawyers, this was granted and there was a 2 week pause in proceedings. During the break, Newzbin made an announcement to clarify a number of points.

If the site lost its case, it would not be closing down – the MPA isn’t asking for that. It’s the manner in which the site operates that’s under the microscope.

“The message we want you to take away is that, win or lose, you can be confident that the site is here to stay in the long term,” said Newzbin. Other assurances were made in respect of user data, which we’ll come to in a moment.

The trial restarted this week on Tuesday 2nd March and concluded yesterday. As previously noted, the MPA are keeping mum right now but Newzbin reported its version of events. The key points:

Although Newzbin believes that the MPA may have been able to convince the court that the indexer facilitated the infringements of its users, it will not be able to prove damages or losses from copying. This stands to reason, as any infringements would have taken place through an entirely different infrastructure to that offered by Newzbin.

Newzbin will not be shut down. There could, however, be an “enquiry as to damages” and a new trial to consider the terms of any injunction which requires the site to block MPA material.

This could mean that Newzbin is required, Mininova-style, to develop and implement filtering mechanisms.

“At the moment we remain unfiltered and we would fight for the current notice and take down system that we already use. Again this is just our best guess and we may be well wide of the mark,” said the company in a statement this morning.

The previously-mentioned Newzbin assurance regarding privacy of user data goes as follows. Although the site does log some activity, it only keeps this data for a short period and details of NZB files downloaded by users are not stored. This means that the MPA will not be able to get their hands on sensitive data.

“One thing the Claimants did complain about was that Newzbin ‘deliberately arranged it’s systems so that no user details were available: even if we got an Anton Pillar [sic] there would be nothing to seize as no logs were kept’,” said this morning’s announcement, adding;

“Equally, since the site has lawful non-infringing use (our hunch is that the judge accepted our arguments on this: he seemed receptive to our submission that GPL, Creative Commons & non-copyright works were on the Indexes) a mere membership of Newzbin proves nothing against any user: the Claimants didn’t contend this anyway.”

The MPA declined to comment at this point, but told TorrentFreak that they believe the verdict could be handed down before the end of the month.

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

As the campaign initiated by the RIAA in the United States seemed to show, suing file-sharers does little to reduce online piracy. The swapping of files online continued unabated throughout the last decade of litigation, prompting a new strategy from the international music and movie industries – trying to hold ISPs responsible for the activities of their subscribers.

However, under the AFACT umbrella, Hollywood lost its most prominent case against ISP iiNet after the court decided that the ISP was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers.

Despite being ordered to pay all costs, AFACT announced it would not only go back to court in an attempt to avoid paying them, it would also appeal the entire decision, claiming that the judge was wrong on just about every point.

This stubborn attitude hasn’t gone down well, with many observers openly criticizing Hollywood’s bullish stance and insisting it should accept defeat graciously. But of course, that’s not going to happen. After all, what could they do having failed to force ISPs to carry the can? Start suing file-sharers RIAA-style?

Worryingly, an AFACT spokeswoman quoted in a News.com.au article this morning (which has since inexplicably disappeared), said the anti-piracy group now has that armageddon option under consideration. She claimed they are yet to make a final decision.

In the meantime it’s back to the old FUD strategy to try and scare people away from file-sharing networks.

“If you’re using (torrents) (we) can see every movie you want, everyone who is sharing it and everyone who has it on their hard drive,” said the AFACT spokeswoman. “It’s very public what you do and as copyright holders we have a third-party company that is mining all that information and sending it to Internet Service Providers,” she added.

Well that’s not going to scare iiNet customers very much is it?

Nevertheless, AFACT claims there are a number of things ISPs can do to stop piracy, including banning access to torrent sites. Thing is, generally they aren’t, and with this latest iiNet decision there is even less incentive for ISPs to send out warnings or even temporarily suspend accounts, as shown by Exetel which recently reversed its policy.

But there are other ways to encourage reductions in piracy. You don’t have to sue ISPs, spread FUD or imply that suing end users is an option under consideration. Instead of being aggressive towards customers, why not try to pull them onside?

The Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) was created to “promote the value of the industry by raising awareness, understanding and appreciation of intellectual property, and its role and value in society.” In other words, this is a more outwardly friendly anti-piracy group that aims to educate and persuade rather than deal the traditional death-by-lawyer.

Today IPAF announced the appointment of a new CEO, ex-Sony and Fox director Gail Grant who will lead the organization “to motivate a change in public attitude away from piracy” and “encourage supporting the more than 50,000 people employed in all aspects of the industry through the enjoyment of original and legitimate film and television experiences.”

Fair enough. Persuading the public is certainly better than beating them into submission. But there is a problem. While IPAF plays softly-softly with its consumer friendly image, its main sponsors are doing completely the opposite. In case you’re wondering, those sponsors are AFACT and the MPA.

As earlier pointed out by iiNet chief Michael Malone and countless others, the best way to combat piracy is to make movie and TV content available online readily and cheaply. Maybe the studios could get together and create a new group with a CEO dedicated to that, instead of spending money on all of these other good-cop/bad-cop groups with conflicting messages.

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

“I’ve been sent a letter from Tilly Bailey & Irvine, they say i’ve been downloading porn and want £800 or they’re going to take me to court,” said an email to TorrentFreak early February, which was quickly followed by another – and another.

We’re used to receiving these type of emails – we’ve been having them in one shape or another since Davenport Lyons (DL) started sending them out in 2007, and more recently from recipients of letters from ACS:Law.

Founded in 1841, Tilly Bailey & Irvine (TBI) are a law firm based in the North East of England and from what we’ve seen thus far in respect of this business, their modus operandi appears to have much in common with those of DL and ACS.

On January 27th/28th 2010 in the name of Media & More GmbH & Co, TBI successfully obtained a court order against ISP BT who, as usual (and unlike ISP TalkTalk which refuses to comply with these orders), simply rolled over and complied, handing over the personal details of their customers to TBI in super-quick time and charging £12,500 for the service.

In common with ACS, Tilly Bailey & Irvine are in bed with pornographers.

One outfit confirmed as a client of TBI is Golden Eye (International) Ltd, a company connected with the Ben Dover porn brand in the UK and one that has already been pursuing alleged file-sharers in Germany for the movie “Fancy An Indian – Five Spicy Dishes Covered In A Hot Creamy Sauce.” Media & More GmbH & Co have disputes in Germany with the movie “The Babysitter # 8 Cute Cock Craving Girls!”

Unusually for these type of cases, TBI send their letters by recorded delivery, an expense avoided by DL and ACS. TBI want more money than their counterparts too – £800 – but like Davenport Lyons threaten to enforce the debt against a non-payers property. They also suggest they have criminal remedies open to them which is typical of the usual heavy-handed and disproportionate psychological warfare tactics we’ve come to expect in these cases.

Those who choose to pay up are asked to sign ‘undertakings’ that they will refrain from certain things in future, one of which is to keep the terms of any settlement “secret”.

The claim letters also contain selected pages from a 160 ‘expert report’ created by
Projective Expert Group on behalf of Media Protector GmbH, the company whose ‘FileWatch‘ system was used to capture evidence used in the claim. In all cases we’ve seen thus far the allegations are connected to the eD2K network. The system appears to differ somewhat from those used previously to log alleged BitTorrent infringers and will be dissected in a future article.

TorrentFreak contacted Amanda Mitten, a lawyer in the ‘Intellectual Property Team’ at Tilly Bailey & Irvine dealing with these cases. In addition to asking how many letters the company intends to send out and a request for a list of movie titles to be claimed on, we asked some other key questions, including;

- Will TBI really “commence proceedings” within 14 days if people don’t pay up? [ACS has claimed the same but thus far has taken no-one to court]
- Can we have a full copy of the ‘expert’s report’ on the FileWatch system?
- How will the evidence identify an infringer behind an IP address and not just a bill payer? How does TBI justify claiming against a bill payer when they’re not certain he or she is an infringer?
- How do those accused go about proving a negative, i.e they didn’t carry out the infringement TBI claim they did? [this point was raised by the Lords recently]
- The letters being sent out by TBI are similar to those sent out by ACS and very, very similar to those sent out by Davenport Lyons. We earlier asked ACS if they were connected to DL – they said “NO”, but that wasn’t exactly true. We asked TBI if they are in anyway connected to either ACS or DL.
- Taking into consideration that when operating almost identical schemes both ACS:Law and Davenport Lyons became the subject of SRA investigations, coupled with the Lords labeling this type of scheme “legal blackmail“, are Tilly Bailey & Irvine concerned about tarnishing their hard-earned reputation?

After emails back and forth, mostly spent talking about TorrentFreak and the nature of this website, Tilly Bailey & Irvine refused to answer any of our questions.

Nevertheless, as expected their activities haven’t gone unnoticed and are already the subject of discussion by the Lords in the Digital Economy Bill debate, with Tilly Bailey & Irvine being mentioned by name yesterday. Lord Clement Jones labeled them, ACS:Law and the Logistep data-gathering outfit “an embarrassment to the rest of the creative rights industry.”

Baroness Howe of Idlicote said that the problem “has to be dealt with and is disgraceful,” adding, “If these firms really are law firms, they are bringing their whole profession into disrepute.”

Lord Lucas gave a very accurate overview of the schemes noting that they “must not be allowed to continue.” His contribution is detailed in its entirety over on our sister site, FreakBits.com.

We will follow this post up in due course with a closer look at the companies, people and tracking system involved in this business model, so if you have any information and would like to contribute (German contributors and eD2k specialists especially welcome), please contact us in the usual manner.

Worried letter recipients can visit BeingThreatened for more advice.

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

On February 18, 2010, RU-Center, Russia’s largest domain name registrar and web-hosting provider, pulled the plug on the Torrents.ru domain name, suspending it with immediate effect and leaving 4 million users and 1 million torrents homeless.

A representative from RU-Center confirmed that the domain was blocked on the orders of the Investigative Division of the regional prosecutor’s office in Chertanovo district, Moscow, but at that time could not disclose the reasons.

Subsequently it was revealed that the seizing of the domain was due to violation of Article 146 of the Criminal Code – “Illegal use of objects of copyright or related rights, as well as acquisition, storage, transportation of counterfeit copies of works or phonograms for sale, committed on a large scale”.

Although Torrents.ru operated a ‘notice and take down’ procedure whereby copyright owners can have torrents removed “no questions asked”, the complaint specifically mentioned software developed by 1C and AutoDesk. Both companies have since denied initiating proceedings against the site but rumors persist that they were somehow involved.

After so easily losing their domain in the .RU zone, the operators of Torrents.ru weren’t about to take any chances by registering a new domain with the same authority. Within hours the site had relocated to a new domain at rutracker.org, apparently registered from the Bahamas.

Understandably the Torrents.ru domain seizure has caused quite a stir in Russia. Even though the law allows a month for a dispute to be rectified, RU-Center acted immediately and without being ordered to do so by a court, prompting theories of back-room deals under the influence of US interests. The operators of rutracker.org say that they are prepared to go to court over the case and will complain to ICANN.

“It was absolutely illegal,” said the owner of Torrents.ru in a recent interview. “We will appeal against it, but in this case it’s not the most important thing. The precedent is created. If you are an owner of domain name in .ru zone, you should know that it can be suspended at any moment by the order of an investigator.”

Following the domain closure a petition was set up addressed to President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, asking them to investigate the authorities who are said to have overstepped the limits of their powers. It currently has more than 15,300 signatures.

Other less conventional responses to the seizure have also been underway, with the Russian Pirate Party reporting that the websites of 1C and online cinema EKinoT have been subjected to DDoS attacks. In January, EKinoT said it would work with the Ministry of Culture to ‘blacklist’ sites which compete illegally with its business – Torrents.ru was one of the sites mentioned along with sharereactor.ru, intv.ru, binmovie.ru and epidem.ru.

Thanks

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

Max Manus, a World War II movie based on the real-life events of resistance fighter Max Manus was the most expensive Norwegian film production to date.

Inevitably, a version of the movie that had been recorded in an empty theater leaked onto the Internet. Producer John M. Jacobsen was furious, vowing to track down the leaker mercilessly.

An investigation controlled by notorious pirate hunter Espen Tøndel and the Simonsen law firm was launched. They later announced that they had tracked down the IP address from where the movie was first uploaded to the Internet.

After the police expressed disinterest, Simonsen went to the courts to force an ISP to reveal the identity of the individual behind the IP address. Much to the disappointment of transparency advocates in Norway, few people know the outcome of that case since it’s being kept a secret. All we know is that one party wasn’t happy with the verdict and the case is now off to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court will have to decide if it’s acceptable for privately owned companies with financial interests in the outcome of a case to be given the power to obtain the identity of an Internet subscriber behind an IP-address, whether or not they committed the alleged offense.

And “whether or not” is a key phrase here. Not only does an IP address alone fail to identify an individual sat at a keyboard, TorrentFreak has been provided with information which indicates that the person the investigators claim to be the first uploader of the movie is actually no such thing.

As with much pre-released material, the content first makes its way on to the Internet via so-called ‘Scene’ groups. The Max Manus movie was first released by a group called KAMERA on a secure site on December 29th 2008 at 14:04:16.

A note the group included with the release reads: “We would recommend everyone to go and watch this movie in your local theater, and even buy the dvd/blu-ray when it hits the stores. This is a great movie, and it definitely deserves it!”

Instead of going after KAMERA, Simonsen are going after a much easier target – a secondary uploader who made his upload to a private BitTorrent tracker just under 3 hours later. Despite all the fuss, to date the movie has been downloaded just 2,800 times from the site it was released on.

Going through intermediaries, a source inside KAMERA confirmed to TorrentFreak they had nothing to do with the BitTorrent release but understandably declined to comment further. A source close to the group said they were disappointed that the movie had escaped onto the wider Internet due to all the publicity it’s received.

The tactic of going for easy targets is nothing new for anti-piracy groups, especially if it grabs some headlines. In 2005, a ‘workprint’ version of Star Wars Episode III leaked onto the Internet, put there by an previously unknown group called VISA. No member of this outfit was ever traced but the admins of EliteTorrents paid dearly for later making the movie available on BitTorrent.

In December 2009, following mountains of bad press and propaganda, Gilberto Sanchez, 47, was arrested at his home in the Bronx on charges of violating copyright law and now faces three years in prison and a $250,000 fine for supposedly being the infamous Wolverine ‘workprint’ leaker. “I’m a scapegoat for this,” he later told the New York Times. “I’m gonna get crucified.”

Few believe that Sanchez was the original uploader of Wolverine and now it appears the mystery person behind the IP address in the Max Manus investigation is not the original uploader either. Whether his or her identity will be made available to the anti-piracy lawyers is now up to the Supreme Court to decide.

While the actual first leakers of pre-release material continue to remain utterly elusive, those who dare to leak onto the wider Internet will continue to shoulder all of the blame, thanks to the inability of anti-piracy groups to investigate any further.

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

Earlier this month it was celebrations all round for the operators of Aussie ISP iiNet, as they successfully defended a Hollywood movie studio legal onslaught directed by AFACT, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.

Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network took iiNet to court, claiming that the ISP did nothing to stop its customers from sharing copyright media via BitTorrent and was therefore liable for their infringements.

Judge Justice Dennis Cowdroy disagreed, and handed a huge victory to iiNet.

Today marked the deadline for AFACT to appeal the decision and as expected, they did just that.

In a statement the anti-piracy group said there were good grounds to appeal a judgment which it is dramatically claiming has left an “unworkable environment for content creators and content providers and represents a serious threat to Australia’s digital economy.”

AFACT boss Neil Gane said the judgment conflicted with established copyright law in Australia.

“The court found large scale copyright infringements, that iiNet knew they were
occurring, that iiNet had the contractual and technical capacity to stop them and iiNet did nothing about them,” he said. “In line with previous case law, this would have amounted to authorization of copyright infringement.”

Gane went on to state that the ruling rendered so-called ’safe harbor’ provisions of copyright ineffective. “If this decision stands, the ISPs have all the protection without any of the responsibility,” he said.

AFACT’s appeal, filed with the Fedral Court today, consists of 15 areas where they believe Justice Cowdroy got it wrong. An analysis of the appeal grounds can be found here.

Chief of iiNet, Michael Malone, said Justice Cowdroy’s judgment was unequivocal and the company is confident the Court will stand by its original ruling, noting that more legal proceedings will not provide a solution.

“It is more than disappointing and frustrating that the studios have chosen this unproductive path,” Mr Malone said in a statement. “This legal case has not stopped one illegal download and further legal appeals will not stop piracy.

“The studios themselves admitted during the court hearings that making content freely and cheaply available online was an effective way to combat piracy. People are crying out to access the studios materials, so much so some are prepared to steal it. A more effective approach would be for the studios to make their content more readily and cheaply available online,” notes Malone.

Upon losing the original trial, AFACT was ordered to pay iiNet’s legal costs, revealed to be $5.7 million ($5.08 million USD). Earlier this week AFACT said it will return to court in order to avoid paying some of the costs.

The appeal hearing for the original case is likely be held this year and according to iiNet’s Michael Malone, it should take up significantly fewer days than first time around.

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

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act was one of the last pieces of legislation passed by President Bush back in 2008. The purpose of the act is to toughen current anti-piracy measures.

Among other things the act calls for harsher punishments, the creation of a dedicated FBI anti-piracy unit and a copyright czar who reports directly to the White House. Last year President Obama appointed Victoria Espinel as the new copyright czar and she is now going full steam ahead with the new anti-piracy plans.

For these new plans Espinel is now looking for comments and input from the United States public. Although this might come across as an open and transparent process, the czar already seems to have made up her mind, indicated by the leading nature of the questions.

Yesterday a request for written submissions from the public went out and the copyright czar wants answers to two basic questions, answers that may or may not be used for the development of the new anti-piracy plans. Let’s take a look at what the Government is asking.

In the request we read that the first question the public should respond to is “regarding the costs to the U.S. economy resulting from intellectual property violations, and the threats to public health and safety created by infringement.”

The second part deals with “detailed recommendations from the public regarding the objectives and content of the Joint Strategic Plan and other specific recommendations for improving the Government’s intellectual property enforcement efforts.”

To summarize, the copyright czar wants the public to come up with examples and ideas detailing how piracy affects society and how it should be combated. Unfortunately the request seems to indicate that it is already concluded that piracy has a negative impact and that tougher measures are needed.

It is not too late of course to prove the opposite and voice our concerns. Let’s elaborate a little on the two questions.

The first question is an easy one. Although piracy might hurt some parts of the entertainment industry there is no objective and conclusive report that proves how it negatively effects the entire industry, let alone the United States economy as a whole.

One of the most authoritative reports on the economic and cultural consequences of file-sharing on the music, movie and games industries was published last year. The report, which was commissioned by the government, estimated that file-sharing has a positive effect on the Dutch economy. While it was recognized that the entertainment industry suffers some losses, these don’t outweigh the positive effects of file-sharing.

Other academic publications mainly show that music piracy has no, or a positive effect on actual sales. The more people download through illegal channels, the more they tend to pay for music. This indicates that music fans do want to pay for music but that they download in addition, which could be due to the lack of unlimited download services.

The second question posed by the czar deals with the enforcement side of copyright infringement. One of the main questions here is how to deter people from downloading files illegally.

Again we’d like to start off with pointing to the Dutch report mentioned earlier. In the report it was concluded that measures to combat piracy should not be implemented before the entertainment industries have come up with sufficient legal online alternatives. This suggests that the entertainment industries are in part causing piracy by failing to offer decent competitive DRM-free products.

Furthermore, it is very doubtful that harsher punishments and stricter enforcement will have any effect. Last year the RIAA won two major lawsuits against individual file-sharers and this hasn’t changed the attitude or behavior of the average file-sharer at all. If anything, tougher enforcement will drive piracy underground, motivating the public to hide their identities online.

The bottom line is that the enforcement question is irrelevant. Technology will always stay ahead of any new type of legislation. The new three-strikes law in France for example can be easily circumvented and the same will be true for other measures. Much more can be done by focusing on the core of the problem, that is, taking away the incentive to download illegally.

The issues we have briefly touched on here are just the tip of the iceberg, and we assume that our readers can easily list many more. If so, please take this opportunity to have your voices heard. The US Pirate Party, who alerted us about this public consultation, has a mailing form which you can use, but regular email works fine too. For those who plan to comment we would advise to include as many credible references as possible.

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

On February 4th 2010, several large book publishers filed a lawsuit against file-hosting site, RapidShare. The plaintiffs, Bedford, Freeman & Worth and Macmillan, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, The McGraw-Hill Companies and Pearson, are large suppliers of textbooks.

The lawsuit cited 148 titles to which the publishers own the copyright, and demanded that RapidShare stop user-uploaded electronic versions of the same being made available to the public via their file-hosting service.

On February 10th 2010, the District Court in Hamburg handed down a preliminary ruling against RapidShare which ordered that by February 17th the company must stop the book titles named in the lawsuit being made available on their website.

The Court ruled that RapidShare must monitor user uploads to ensure that none of the book titles are put onto their servers and go on to ensure that the public never gains access to copies that somehow slip through this filtering.

According to Inside Higher Ed, every time a prohibited book named in the injunction is made available on RapidShare it could cost the company up to 250,000 euros ($339,000) or even earn company bosses 2 years in jail.

“This ruling is an important step forward. Not only does it affirm that file-sharing copyrighted content without permission is against the law, but it attaches a hefty financial punishment to the host, in this case Rapidshare, for noncompliance,” said Tom Allen, CEO of the Association of American Publishers. “Consider this a shot across the bow for others who attempt to profit from the theft of copyrighted works online,” he added.

While there is little doubt that copyright material is indeed available via RapidShare, a press release by the book publishers oversteps the mark a little by stating that the company “encourages the unauthorized uploading of content with a variety of reward programs.” While RapidShare could be accused of many things, openly encouraging its customers to upload pirate material is not one of them.

This is not the first time that RapidShare has been ordered to filter content. In 2009, the Regional Court in Hamburg ruled that the company must pro-actively filter around 5,000 music tracks from music industry group GEMA’s catalog to prevent them being made available to the public.

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

In 2008, the New Zealand Government proposed new legislation to deal with illicit file-sharing. Section92A was the subject of widespread protests which eventually caused the Government to scrap their plans and go back to the the drawing board in order to remove the “guilty upon accusation” elements.

Today, Commerce Minister Simon Power will introduce The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill which will repeal Section 92A and replace it with a modified regime intended to reduce illegal file sharing.

“The major feature is the three-notice process, which educates the public about illegal file sharing and provides effective methods for copyright owners to enforce their copyright,” says Power. “It ensures that file sharers are given adequate warnings that unauthorised sharing of copyright works is illegal.”

Despite the more-gently named “three notice” regime (versus the more commonly used “3 strikes” term) the effects are the same. The bill will enable copyright owners to claim damages and make requests for the Internet subscriptions of infringers to be suspended.

That said, the element most criticized in Section92A was the lack of a right to reply to an accusation, and that appears to have been addressed. The Bill will extend the jurisdiction of the country’s Copyright Tribunal, which will hear both sides of the argument and will be empowered to rule on cases of alleged infringement.

“It’s important that account holders are given a reasonable time to stop infringing before enforcement takes place. The bill prescribes timeframes so account holders have the opportunity to address illegal file sharing activity occurring on their internet connection before enforcement action is taken,” says Mr Power for the Government, adding, “They will also have the chance to challenge notices and may request hearings at the Copyright Tribunal to contest infringement claims.

Yesterday it was revealed that Peter Dengate-Thrush, a lawyer specializing in Internet and IP law, has been appointed to the three-person Copyright Tribunal.

Dengate-Thrush, who was legal advisor to InternetNZ for 3 years and is the chairman of Internet policy-making body ICANN, will serve on the Tribunal for five years.

“I straddle both camps, in that I have got a history of involvement in developing internet institutions, practices and rules and also my daily practice is as an intellectual property barrister,” he said in a recent interview.

“I make my living out of advising trademark owners and copyright owners and fully appreciate the consequences of infringements. These are bad things for the economy, communities, inventors and creators of good ideas.”

The Tribunal will be able to fine persistent infringers up to $15,000 ($10,539 USD) with the exact amount linked to damages alleged to have been suffered by the copyright owners. It will also be able to order the suspension of Internet accounts for six months.

“[There] will come a time when disconnecting them [repeat infringers] for a period is the right thing,” added Dengate-Thrush.

While welcoming most of the amendments, InternetNZ, the group which oversees the Internet in New Zealand, says the account suspension clause needs to go.

“The only major flaw remaining in the legislation is that its provision for the suspension of people’s Internet accounts. Internet users would simply start a new account at another ISP,” says Policy Director Jordan Carter.

“While suspension would require an order of the District Court, it is still unworkable and unnecessary. InternetNZ will argue strongly that suspension be deleted by the Select Committee.”

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

In November 2009, details finally became public concerning the UK Digital Economy Bill, which aimed to turn elements of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report into law.

Part of the proposals indicated that Internet users would face being monitored by the music and movie industries. Their ISPs would then be required to pass on copyright infringement notices based on evidence supplied by anti-piracy tracking companies.

If file-sharing wasn’t reduced by 70% in 2 years using these ‘educational’ measures, alleged persistent infringers faced the ultimate sanction of being disconnected from the Internet.

The proposals were met with massive opposition, with ISP TalkTalk going as far as threatening legal action over what it says amounts to a breach of human rights.

Adding to the pressure, a petition against the proposals was launched on the Number 10 website demanding;

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to abandon Lord Mandelson’s plans to ban individuals from the internet based on their use of ‘peer to peer’ file sharing.”

The Government has now responded, and for TalkTalk and the countless others who share their views, on the surface it seems like good news, but a closer look reveals a somewhat disappointing result.

In its response the Government says that it wants as many citizens as possible to enjoy the benefits of the Internet and recognizes that technology has changed the way people access media content, in some cases “faster than products and services commercially on offer have developed” – an apparent reference to the superior accessibility of unauthorized downloads.

The Government goes on to say that they take the interests of artists and creators very seriously and have been working hard to find solutions to online copyright infringement. Nevertheless, they will not require ISPs to monitor their users to detect infringements and downloaders will be pretty safe, as is the case now, with detection being focused on those who upload material without permission.

On potential disconnections for persistent file-sharers – the key issue for many – the Government goes on to say:

“We will not terminate the accounts of infringers – it is very hard to see how this could be deemed proportionate except in the most extreme – and therefore probably criminal – cases.”

What categorizes an infringement as ‘criminal’ is open to interpretation, but is likely to mean very large-scale infringement, infringement for profit, or both. So good news then? Well, not quite.

Despite throwing out absolute permanent disconnections as a measure against file-sharers, the Government is still considering other ‘technical’ solutions if the ISP warnings aren’t effective including “band width restriction, a daily downloading limit or, as a last resort, temporary account suspension.”

So we’re back to disconnections again. In terms of time, ‘temporary’ is not defined. Of course, anything less than ‘permanent’ fits the wording. A day? A month? A year?

Another part of the response which has been mentioned several times before and still remains puzzling is this section:

“In the cases of the most serious infringers, if a rights holder obtains a court order, the ISP would have to provide information so that the rights holder can take targeted court action.”

As anyone who has followed the activities of Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law will tell you, the personal details of anyone alleged to have shared a single file can easily be obtained by rightsholders.

Sadly, despite the headline-grabbing statements, it seems that little has changed with this response from the Government.

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

Earlier this month, the Federal Court in Australia ruled in favor of ISP iiNet following a copyright infringement case brought by AFACT, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.

The studios it represents, Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network took legal action against iiNet, claiming that the ISP did nothing to stop its customers from sharing copyright media via BitTorrent.

As part of the defeat, AFACT was ordered to pay iiNet’s legal costs, recently revealed to be a staggering $5.7 million ($5.08 million USD). Despite the ruling, AFACT says it will now return to court to avoid paying some of the costs. The anti-piracy group says that even though the final verdict went against them, elements of the trial went in their favor, so they believe they should not have to pay iiNet for defending those parts.

One area of claim was highlighted by AFACT spokesperson Rebecca Tabakoff, who said that early on in the trial iiNet conceded that its customers did indeed share copyright material, despite earlier claims they did not.

“[iiNet] spent a lot of time in the lead up to the trial not conceding that their customers had infringed copyright. The judge awarded all costs against applicants but iiNet was not successful on all fronts,” she explained.

Tabakoff indicated that AFACT would present other arguments to see if costs could be recouped elsewhere.

iiNet managing director Michael Malone believes that since AFACT lost the case, they should pay the costs.

“We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses,” Malone told ZDNet.

Malone says that money spent on legal action would be better off spent serving customers better.

“I look at the amount of money we have spent on litigation, and no doubt there would have been a lot more [spent] by the studios. Think of what that could have been spent on if it was applied to online content instead.”

This attempt by AFACT to challenge the instruction to pay iiNet’s legal costs will be heard on February 25th, the same day by which it must appeal the original ruling in order to take it to the High Court.

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

In 2008, the latest Batman movie ‘The Dark Knight’ became a massive hit, setting a one-day box office record of $66.4 million on its opening day and taking $996,500,000 by the end of the year.

Of course, Warner worked hard to hinder piracy, even handing out night-vision goggles in Australia to thwart cammers. Over in the United States, however, much lower-tech means were used to identify an individual attempting to record the movie.

The movie industry already had their eye on the East Glenn Movie Theater in Lee’s Summit since they believed an illicit copy of the Will Smith movie ‘Hancock’ had previously been recorded there. After noticing a man wearing a long winter coat in the summer, on July 18 on-site MPAA investigators grew suspicious that he was up to no good.

They confronted 42 year-old Robert L. Henderson, seized his video camera and called the police who arrived shortly later and arrested him.

Henderson’s camera was found to contain footage of The Dark Knight, Hell Boy 2 and The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian. While conducting a search of his home, police found several computers and 1,240 counterfeit DVDs.

On October 7th 2009, Henderson pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan to criminal copyright infringement under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act 2005 – the same legislation that sent the EliteTorrents admins and uploaders to prison.

Last week, Judge Gaitan ordered Henderson to serve 24 months in federal prison along with 3 years probation for recording the movie. In addition he must pay $24,738 in fines – $19.95 for each of the pirate movies seized from his home.

“The theft of films by camcording is a serious threat to the health of the motion picture industry and the 2.4 million Americans it employs,” said Mike Robinson, Sr. Vice President of Content Protection at the MPAA. “This is an appropriate sentence for a very serious crime, and we hope it will serve as a warning to would-be movie thieves that they will face severe consequences for engaging in these activities.”

Despite all the efforts, The Dark Knight still leaked online in cam and other formats and went on to become the most-pirated movie of 2008 with 7,030,000 downloads on BitTorrent alone.

The US is extremely tough on ‘cammers’ these days, an attitude which isn’t shared by the Australians. Recently an 88 year-old man who tried to record Avatar wasn’t arrested, but allowed to carry on watching the movie.

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

In the Western world, sites such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt get plenty of publicity, largely due to their size and prominence. Of course, there are other sites elsewhere that attract relatively little attention in English speaking countries and around Europe, despite being very large indeed.

One such giant is Torrents.ru, a huge Russian BitTorrent site with 4 million users and one million torrents which has operated relatively trouble-free – until now.

RU-Center, Russia’s largest domain name registrar and web-hosting provider, today pulled the plug on the Torrents.ru domain name, suspending it with immediate effect.

Andrey Vorobiev, Director of Public Relations at RU-Center said that the domain was blocked on the orders of the Investigative Division of the regional prosecutor’s office in Chertanovskaya, Moscow, but could not disclose the reasons.

In the meantime, the operators of Torrents.ru have been working on some counter-measures to mitigate the effects of the suspension.

Already they have set up an alternative domain at Rutracker.org in order for users to keep accessing the site, but of course this doesn’t help to keep existing torrents running since they contain the URL of the tracker located at the old domain.

To fix this issue users can change the announce URL in old torrents from bt.torrents.ru, to bt.rutracker.org. Alternatively it’s possible to simply go to the site under the new domain and re-download the torrents which now contain the new tracker URL.

A video report is available here (Russian).

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

The rise of YouTube and all the adult-focused video streaming sites that followed has caused major headaches for the adult entertainment industry. Instead of having to worry about people seeding their content on BitTorrent, so called “tube sites” are now the prime threat.

The owners of these streaming sites tend to be very cooperative and assist in taking down copyrighted material when they’re asked to. In fact, the owners of several popular streaming sites have recently launched a system through which the porn studios can protect their entire catalogs for free.

The system named COP-CMS creates unique fingerprints for each of their videos. It then checks all current videos on the participating “tube” sites and removes any matches it finds and prevents the video from being uploaded in the future.

“We believe we have one the most robust systems available. Videos can be matched even if they’re blurred, resized, rotated or have sections removed. Our system is accurate enough to detect a video from just 1 second of footage,” TorrentFreak was told by David, one of the people behind the COP-CMS system.

The innovative anti-piracy solution was picked up by XBIZ, one of the leading adult news outlets, and is already in use by several porn studios. However, not all studios were equally happy about this free anti-piracy service offered by the ‘pirate’ tube sites, possibly because it directly competes with their own solution.

In the forum thread discussing the XBIZ article on the COP-CMS system, several studio representatives vent their concerns. The overall opinion seems to be that these “scoundrel thieves” don’t deserve the coverage, and not too long after the article was posted the head of leading porn studio TitanMedia replied that “It’s been taken care of…”

Indeed, the article on XBIZ was pulled from the site. “We rang xbiz.com and spoke to the editor who said they had been contacted by someone about us and now the article is “dead in the water,” Steve told TorrentFreak, adding that he never got an explanation why.

Coincidentally, the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), the trade association for the adult entertainment industry announced it’s very own anti-piracy solution on XBIZ a day later. Could it be that this upcoming competitor was one of the reasons why the other article was pulled?

If we take a look at the directors of the FSC we see that they are made up of a TitanMedia lawyer, the founder of XBIZ and the Senior Editor from AVN news. Something smells fishy here, to say the least.

Meanwhile, COP-CMS continues its free service and is currently working with several studios that are not members of FSC. On the other hand, the Free Speech Coalition might have to rethink whether or not it should change its name after this alleged gagging escapade.

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

Following the introduction of Sweden’s IPRED anti-piracy legislation on April 1st last year, the country saw a huge 30% drop in Internet traffic. Many attributed this fall to Internet users become scared that they would be caught downloading and sharing copyright material.

Several months later in November 2009, TorrentFreak looked at some Netnod data which seemed to indicate that not only had Swedish traffic levels returned to pre-IPRED levels, but actually surpassed them.

Traffic levels naturally increase year-on-year anyway, so it was difficult to be certain that that this boost was related to recovering levels of online piracy. However, new research just published by a consultancy firm seems to suggest that accessing illicit material online is indeed on the increase.

Mediavision bills itself an independent consultancy firm specializing in analyzing consumer behavior within the sphere of digital media. Its clients include media groups, TV channels, advertisers and production companies.

In its just published 2009 fourth quarter report, the company reveals that it detected an increase in the downloading of TV shows during the autumn of that year. In the 15 to 74 year-old bracket, 1.4 million Internet users engaged in that activity.

In the 15 to 24 year old group, 0.5 million used illicit streaming services to access both movies and TV shows, a method which Mediavision believes is becoming more sought after. 20% of the respondents in this age group admitted using them.

The company further says that 60% of 15 to 24 year-olds are estimated to have consumed illicit media online via various means in the fourth quarter of 2009, versus 40% of the 15 to 74 year-olds. This figure is the same as that reported by Mediavision before IPRED was introduced.

Overall, the company says it believes that the accessing of illicit movies and TV shows via the web has recovered at least to pre-IPRED levels, maybe slightly higher.

Jens Heron at Mediavision says that the piracy situation with TV shows would improve if foreign TV shows and other international became more readily available, at a time and place of the consumers’ choosing.

“Our analysis shows that consumers increasingly want to decide for themselves when to watch and from which screen. Unfortunately, many have become adept at circumventing the IPRED legislation. The way to remedy this, in addition to legislation, is, of course, by offering great legal alternatives,” he added.

Indeed, as earlier reported, around 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 are taking measures to neutralize IPRED, with as many as 500,000 others in the country following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.

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

With 30,000 members Filmowisko was a prominent file-sharing forum. The site didn’t host any illicit material, but like many of its type, linked to movies, TV shows, music and other warez stored on hosting sites such as Rapidshare.

“Forum administrators are not responsible for content written by users. The files placed here by users are only for promotional purposes. After 24 hours you must delete all files downloaded from this forum,” said the disclaimer on the front page of the site before it disappeared.

Polish police and the Foundation for the Protection of Audiovisual Creativity (FOTA) anti-piracy group clearly didn’t think the disclaimer counted for much, and on February 12th conducted raids against the site’s operators.

During the raid last Friday, police say they arrested three individuals on suspicion of running the site – a 21 year-old computer science student and two teenagers aged 16 and 17 – and also conducted searches on site members in three other locations.

Equipment was seized including 6 computers and 150 DVDs and CDs which allegedly contained copyright infringing content.

After lengthy questioning the 21 and 17 year-olds were released and now face copyright infringement charges which carry a maximum 5 year prison sentence in Poland. The 16 year-old, who was reported yesterday as still being detained, will be dealt with by the family courts.

The police, who are still to officially confirm the name of the site, say that “streaming movies” were also available via the forum and that those arrested benefited financially from operating the site as they collected revenue from advertising.

They add that the collected evidence is being examined by experts in order to assess the level of damages suffered by the creators of the films and music whose work was linked to by the site.

Anti-piracy group FOTA, which awards the police with “Golden Plate” accolades for carrying out piracy crackdowns on their behalf, will undoubtedly be pleased with this result.

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

While conducting their usual monitoring of file-sharing networks, anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen noticed that a user with a Danish IP address was uploading a screener copy of the Anders Matthesen movie ‘Black Balls’ via The Pirate Bay.

Antipiratgruppen collected evidence and asked a court to force TDC, the man’s ISP, to reveal his identity and home address. The court complied.

Armed with a warrant and a representative from the court, last week Antipiratgruppen carried out a raid on the man’s Herning home to gather evidence of his alleged offenses.

Maria Fredenslund, lawyer with Antipiratgruppen, was keen to emphasize the significance of the raid.

“We are waiting for the IT expert’s report on yesterday’s action, but there is no doubt that he is behind massive violations of copyright. We found and seized several hard drives, web server, etc. so it will take time to go through it all. The case is a good example of how a case which at first glance seemed modest, in fact, is about massive piracy. At least in Denmark,” she said in a statement.

Although Fredenslund said that they presume the man’s hard drives were filled with copyright content which made it a “very big case”, she also noted that the man in his 20’s had to her knowledge only violated movie copyrights online four or five times. A quick look at the user’s Pirate Bay account seems to confirm he has uploaded a handful of movies and a small number of music torrents.

Fredenslund told Danish media that Antipiratgruppen secured an injunction against the man so if he continues to share files he can be punished. Speaking of the man with DR.dk, she said that her group doesn’t intend to “sue him to hell” since they are “nice people”, but will need to see the volume of files traded in order to calculate the compensation required.

In November 2009, Antipiratgruppen announced that after losing several court cases they had largely given up on trying to get illegal file-sharers convicted, mainly due to their inability to gather solid evidence.

Indeed, the Danish courts have ruled several times that in terms of evidence, an IP-address alone is insufficient to prove guilt. However, the new tactic is to label people like this screener uploader and torrent site operators as “big fish” in order to get a warrant to seize physical evidence.

Fredenslund said that because this man was the first to make Black Balls available on the Internet, Antipiratgruppen had considered this as an aggravating factor which justified their action.

Equally, the recent raid on the operator of the EliteBits BitTorrent tracker was targeted at “traffickers”, she explained.

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

During the last two years, Sweden has created a number of posts with responsibility for dealing with violations of intellectual property. In 2010 the resources dedicated by the authorities to this seemingly unwinnable battle are set to increase.

In the spring a new task force will go into operation dealing with file-sharing and other intellectual property violations.

The new unit will consist of nine specially trained investigators forming three groups operating out of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, working under Paul Pinter, Stockholm County Police’s National Coordinator in the Intellectual Property Crime division.

The team will also consist of two prosecutors, Frederick Ingblad and Henrik Rasmusson who were both involved in the nine recent raids against Direct Connect users.

Pinter, who previously worked as a computer crime and forensics investigator with the Stockholm County Police, said that the idea is to streamline law enforcement in this area. His role will be to act as coordinator between the various investigators and locations.

“The idea is that groups should only focus on his own territory, but it should also be able to operate nationally. In the case of raids this may facilitate a certain degree of coordination,” he told SvD.se.

Due to the distributed nature of the Internet and its users, Pinter said that nationwide collaboration will become increasingly important.

“In the case of such fraud, so much of that takes place over the Internet. It is difficult to know where a crime will fall and it’s possible to be spread too thinly over many places,” he adds.

Swedish media are reporting that the chances of getting away with illicit file-sharing are set to decrease as a result of this new unit’s work. From a current position of virtually zero that shouldn’t be a particularly difficult task, but as pointed out this week by file-sharing researcher Daniel Westman, getting enough evidence to raid a BitTorrent user can be very tricky. Expect Direct Connect users to stay in the spotlight.

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

When news broke that TV-Links.co.uk had been raided by police and admin Dave Rock arrested, it was met with a certain element of disbelief. TV-Links was not a warez or torrent site, but one which linked to videos hosted on sites like YouTube. It carried absolutely zero illicit content.

This major detail wasn’t of much concern to the UK’s Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), whose investigation along with Trading Standards later came to involve the police.

Rather than go after giants like YouTube, Google Video, Veoh and DailyMotion who actually hosted the content, FACT built a case against the operators of TV-Links, David Rock – aka ‘Sin’ – and site partner David Overton who was raided 5 months later.

Dave Rock later explained that it would’ve been an easy task for FACT to track him down, since he never made any attempts at secrecy.

“To be honest I didn’t really attempt to hide my ID, as under UK Law linking to another site isn’t illegal, so I didn’t see the need,” he told TorrentFreak in a November 2008 interview.

There was confusion as to the basis for the initial raid, with FACT citing “offenses relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet” – an offense that doesn’t even exist under UK law – with Trading Standards and the police referring to “supplying property with a registered trade mark without permission.”

After a long wait the official allegations became Conspiracy to Defraud and breaches of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act. Similar fraud allegations were leveled at Alan Ellis, the ex-admin of OiNK.

More than 2 years of waiting later, in January 2010 the TV-Links case went to court. On the 19th January 2010 the operators of TV-Links – represented by Morgan Rose Solicitors, counsel William Clegg QC and Alex Stein for David Rock, and Ian Bridge for David Overton – raised preliminary points of law and asked for the proceedings to be dismissed.

This week Judge Ticehurst gave his judgment, announcing that TV-Links had won their case. He ruled in detail for the first time in a Crown Court in relation to Section 17 of the European Commerce Directive 2000, stating that Section 17 indeed applied and afforded TV-Links a complete defense in criminal proceedings in England and Wales for their linking to other web sites. In a nutshell and to coin a familiar phrase, the site was deemed a mere conduit of information.

The Judge also ruled that the allegations under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act failed because there was no evidence that TV-Links made available to the public the films and shows they linked to. There is no appeal available to FACT against this ruling.

The Judge noted that FACT had not applied the Attorney General’s guidelines when deciding to prosecute the defendants with Conspiracy to Defraud.

Morgan Rose Solicitors also represented OiNK owner Alan Ellis in January 2010, successfully defending a Conspiracy to Defraud charge. In OiNK’s case there was no ruling on the e-commerce directive, but Mr Ellis was unanimously acquitted, the jury finding him not guilty.

Both cases cost the public purse a large amount of money and even though FACT ran a private prosecution, it is the tax payer which picks up the bill for both the defense and prosecution costs.

The Court of Appeal has twice stated in games console mod-chip cases (R v Gilham and R v Higgs) that cases involving complicated issues of copyright law ought not to be tried before a jury but should instead be dealt with in Chancery where specialist judges can try these cases more efficiently and grant an injunction if required.

Although TV-Links triumphed in the end, there were many obstacles to overcome. In late 2008 after Dave’s TorrentFreak interview, the defendants were served with a financial restraining order under Proceeds of Crime legislation. This meant that the necessary funds required to mount a full defense against the MPAA-funded FACT were simply unavailable. But things came good in the end.

“In the process of successfully obtaining a court order to discharge the Restraint Order against the defendants, a copy of the agreement came to light. Had the Restraint Order remained in place it would have severely hamstrung David Rock in presenting his defense – under legal aid Representation Order it would not have been possible to appoint Mr Clegg QC, who was outstanding,” TV-Links’ legal team told TorrentFreak.

“I’d just like to thank Simon Rose from Morgan Rose Solicitors, William Clegg QC, Alex Stein and Ian Bridge for the positive result,” Dave Rock told TorrentFreak, as he moves to put the last two traumatic years behind him.

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

It all began on Tuesday 2nd February. Following investigations carried out by music industry group IFPI, Swedish police carried out raids on individuals said to be sharing between 9,000 and 17,000 music tracks.

Five different locations including Gothenburg, Docksta, Handen and Upplands Väsby were targeted, resulting in the arrest of a 28 year-old man believed to be a Direct Connect hub operator. Several others, all accused of copyright infringement offenses carried out via the hub, were questioned and had their equipment confiscated.

At the end of last week the police conducted more raids, targeting the alleged operator of a Direct Connect hub in Motala and a user in Örebro who reportedly later admitted making available 6,500 tracks via the hub.

Two days ago the police struck again, this time against an individual in Ronneby suspected of sharing around 6,000 tracks via a hub. According to the police, there is now an investigation underway against a university network.

Yesterday saw continued action with the ninth raid in little over a week. This time the location was Kista where the police seized a computer and questioned an individual who allegedly admitted making available around 7,500 files.

These raids throw up an interesting question.

While BitTorrent users could be sharing a limited amount of material with tens of thousands of others in a very public and open setting, the relatively reclusive DC user is admittedly often sharing a lot but within a very much user-limited environment. One could argue that the average DC user contributes far less when it comes to the spreading of copyright material.

But as we have learned, unlike their BitTorrent counterparts they are much more at risk of receiving a visit from the police. So why is that?

File-sharing researcher Daniel Westman told NT that proving mass infringement in order to get the police involved is difficult with BitTorrent, but with Direct Connect it’s a much more simple affair.

“The DC technology allows the police to see everything that the user makes available and there may be thousands of files,” he explains.

Furthermore, for prosecutors to be interested in these cases there will need to be hard evidence available. Unlike in some civil cases, an IP-address and a few spreadsheets isn’t going to be enough.

“The judgments we’ve seen so far also show that it is not enough to simply track a particular subscriber, but you will probably have to also do a search and examination of his computer,” says Westman.

“Conducting a search requires a certain seriousness of crime and that severity can be difficult to prove with BitTorrent,” he concludes.

Thus far, no Swedish BitTorrent user has attracted the attention of the police but although IFPI lawyer Magnus Mårtensson accepts that getting evidence against BitTorrent users is more complicated, he says it’s not impossible.

“We will act even against users of BitTorrent in the future. We are looking right now on how best to collect evidence against BitTorrent users,” he explained.

In the meantime, actions against DC users are likely to continue, with Henrik Rasmusson at the Prosecutors Office promising more raids in “winter and spring.”

Ex-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde says that some good will come out of these raids, as people become more interested in sharing mechanisms that move away from small private groups, and on to those enabling sharing with everyone on the Internet.

“They do not realize it, but they are only driving more people to The Pirate Bay,” he concludes.

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

In keeping with their new strategy of going after ISPs instead of end users, in March 2009 the IFPI, MPAA and several local movie studios began threatening Telenor, Norway’s largest ISP.

Their demands were simple enough – stop your customers from accessing The Pirate Bay voluntarily or we will make you do it by force.

Telenor boss Ragnar Kårhus refused to comply and the entertainment groups made good on their promise and took the ISP to court. In November the verdict was handed down. Although initially things looked promising for the studios, in the end it didn’t go well.

The Asker and Bærum District Court clearly stated that Telenor was contributing to copyright infringement by providing infrastructure which allowed customers to access The Pirate Bay, and that it was also passively contributing due to its refusal to act when its services were used for illicit file-sharing.

But this wasn’t enough. Since these contributory acts were not directed at specific customers or their actions, or the actions of the Pirate Bay itself, the court ruled that Telenor operated consistently, treating both legal and illegal use of their network in the same manner. This meant that Telenor acted within the law and the court refused to force the ISP to block The Pirate Bay.

Marte Thorsby of the IFPI insisted that Telenor was acting unlawfully and believing that the court had ruled incorrectly, Cato Power from music performing rights outfit, TONO, said they would take the case to appeal.

The Borgarting Court of Appeal has just announced it has rejected their appeal, as there is no basis under Norwegian law for the claim.

After the November ruling, Power said that it was possible that the Norwegian authorities had not implemented the EU Copyright Directive properly in 2005. This rejection by the Court of Appeal appears to confirm his fears.

“The Court of Appeal’s decision confirms what we have previously stated, that the licensees in Norway are right to address this area,” he said in a statement.

Marte Thorsby for the IFPI said there is a need for clarification.

“The Court of Appeal wrote in its ruling that the limits for contributory responsibility are unclear and that the Culture Ministry must clarify this when they go through the copyright law again,” she said in a statement.

“This is, in other words, is a ‘no man’s land’ in current law, and that means people are free to facilitate illegal activities in the Norwegian [ISP] network,” she added.

The Ministry of Culture has already announced a review of the Copyright Act and there are suggestions that this current gray area will be clarified then.

In the meantime, although they insist they are currently examining their options, it is expected that the studios will take the case to the Supreme Court.

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

The Federal Court in Australia has ordered a man from Queensland to pay Nintendo the equivalent of $1.3m in damages after he uploaded the Wii version of New Super Mario Bros. to the Internet in late 2009.

James Burt, a 24 year-old manager at games retailer Electronics Boutique, admitted uploading the game on November 6th, a week before its commercial release in Australia.

In a statement the Japanese games giant said it used a range of forensic techniques to track down the uploader and on 23rd November obtained a Federal Court search order. This was used to locate and seize items from Burt’s property in Sinnamon Park, Queensland, to be used in evidence in the case against him.

As part of the investigation, Burt was also ordered to allow access using his passwords to social networking sites, email accounts and other websites he had used.

Australia traditionally lags behind the United States and Japan when it comes to media releases, but with the release of New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii the reverse was true, leading Nintendo to refer to the leak as a “global issue”.

“This legal proceeding was commenced to protect the creative rights and innovation of game developers, and to combat the growing international problem of Internet piracy,” the company said in a statement.

The game was a sure fire hit on BitTorrent. Data collected by TorrentFreak indicated that by December 27th 2009, the game had been downloaded 1,150,000 times.

Nevertheless, the game was still a huge commercial success. The game sold in excess of 10 million units in its first 2 months on sale – that’s 1 in 6 of all Wii gamers buying a copy – making it the fastest-selling single-platform game ever.

It’s unclear how Mr Burt will be able to pay this huge amount in damages. His salary at Electronics Boutique is unlikely to cover it – if he still has a job there.

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

The 2008 Summer Olympics were a huge hit online, both through legal and illegal channels. NBC streamed a record breaking 2,200 hours of live video to the delight of millions of people, but strangely enough this year the network will limit its live coverage to hockey and curling.

An NBC representative explained that the network will only cover the highlights because people “are not dying to watch lots of long-form content on a 13-inch screen.” However, at the same time NBC contradicts itself by announcing that it will do all it can to prevent people from accessing unauthorized live feeds or downloads of Olympic broadcasts.

While NBC doesn’t believe there is much demand for live coverage, it will do all it can to prevent the ‘few’ people who do from downloading or streaming the events online. “Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,” said Rick Cotton, NBC’s Executive Vice President commenting on their Olympic mission.

Once again one of the major entertainment industry outfits has got it entirely wrong. If NBC really wants to prevent piracy they have to offer at least some sort of alternative. Cutting 2,200 hours of live web coverage back to just a few hundred is certainly not going to help in stopping piracy.

NBC reportedly has teamed up with Ustream and Justin.tv, two popular live streaming sites, to use filtering schemes in order to prevent illegal broadcasts. However, it is inevitable that they won’t be able to stop them all since there are dozens of live streaming sites. Preventing torrents from being uploaded will turn out to be even more problematic for the network.

During the Beijing Olympics two years ago, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing being shared via The Pirate Bay. This didn’t help much and during the weeks that followed millions of people continued to download broadcasts of Olympic events.

We assume that in the coming weeks most events will again appear online, despite NBC’s efforts to prevent the Olympics from being pirated.

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

Released in 2008, Max Manus is a Norwegian World War II movie based on the real-life events of resistance fighter Max Manus. Created at a cost of NOK 55,000,000 it was the most expensive Norwegian film production to date.

Shortly after the movie’s 19th December release date an illicit copy of the movie appeared on the Internet. According to producer John M. Jacobsen the recording was made in an empty theater, prompting suspicions that a projectionist was involved.

“I think this is totally reprehensible, and I wish we knew who is behind it,” Jacobsen told Norwegian media. “Anyway we will go after those who have done this quite mercilessly. There are ways to track these things down.”

An investigation was immediately launched by the Filmkameratene studio, to be handled by the Simonsen law firm with notorious pirate hunter Espen Tøndel at the helm. Technicians went to work, systematically going through every copy of the movie sent out to find a match – that meant checking 103 analog and 20 digital copies.

Their detective work paid off. Simonsen said they had not only tracked the correct copy but also identified the IP-address from where the movie was first uploaded to the Internet. They took the information to the police but were notified that the case would not be a priority for them. Simonsen responded by taking the case to the courts.

Simonsen, a law firm which since 2006 had held a license to monitor alleged pirates and collect their IP-addresses, demanded that the ISP connected with the IP-address hand over the identity of the subscriber, something it had thus far refused to do. The request had the support of the Norwegian telecoms authorities which in this case made a special exception to the country’s Privacy Act, enabling the person’s identity to be handed to a group other than the police – if the court agreed.

On May 5th 2009, Simonsen received the decision from the court but the verdict was kept a secret from the public. Espen Tøndel said this was to prevent the possibility of evidence being spoiled. This lack of transparency caused an uproar, with thousands of Internet citizens demanding to know the verdict in this important case. Many argued that if there was evidence to be spoiled, it would’ve been spoiled by now.

Today in 2010, the verdict is still a mystery to the public, but at least one of the parties is disappointed with the court’s decision.

“I can confirm that the case is being appealed to the Supreme Court, but I can not confirm which of the parties has submitted the appeal, as that may indicate what the results were in the previous hearing,” said movie industry lawyer Rune Ljøstad.

The Supreme Court will now have to decide if it’s acceptable for privately owned companies with financial interests in the outcome of a case to be given the power to obtain the identity of an Internet subscriber behind an IP-address, whether or not they committed the alleged offense.

Despite the leak, Max Manus did incredibly well in Norway, breaking all records. Its 2009 theater run yielded almost NOK 200 million across 1.16 million tickets and the DVD sold 400,000 copies in the same year. From recording a loss in 2008, movie company Filmkameratene made a profit in 2009.

“There is a dramatic change for the better for us in 2009,” said producer Sveinung Golimo. “So we are not now concerned about the future.”

Privacy campaigners will look toward the forthcoming Supreme Court decision before sharing in his optimism.

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