me*dia*or

Mass-BitTorrent Lawsuits Stopped Over Unlicensed Attorney | TorrentFreak

The ongoing mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. continue to keep the United States judicial system busy. More than 250,000 people have been sued over the last two years and new lawsuits are being filed every week.

Through these mass lawsuits the copyright holders are trying to obtain the personal details of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared their material online. Once this information is handed over, they then offer the defendant the opportunity to settle the case for a few hundred up to a couple of thousand dollars.

The scheme is used by well known copyright holders such as the makers of the Oscar winning movie The Hurt Locker and book publishers John Wiley and Sons. However, the majority of the cases are filed by adult entertainment companies. Many of these companies can make more money from lawsuits than selling content and are often described as copyright trolls.

Tarik Hashmi of the Transnational Law Group is one of the attorneys who filed dozens of cases on behalf of adult companies in Florida. However, these have now been halted by District Court Judge Hinkle and may be soon dismissed entirely. It appears that Hashmi is practicing law in the Florida federal court without the proper license, an issue that was brought up by a notice three defendants filed at the court.

“All proceedings and all deadlines that have not passed are stayed pending a determination of whether these cases should be dismissed—or other appropriate action taken—based on the notice suggesting that the plaintiffs’ attorney Terik Hashmi resides but is not licensed to practice law in Florida,” Judge Hinkle writes.

While the attorney is given a chance to respond to the allegations, for now he is no longer allowed to demand settlements from the thousands of defendants who are accused in 27 separate mass-BitTorrent lawsuits.

“Until this issue is resolved by a further order of this court, Mr. Hashmi must not attempt to settle any of these cases, must not accept any payment in settlement of any of these cases, and must not take any other action in any of these cases,” the judge writes.

If the investigation into Hashmi concludes that the attorney is indeed not qualified, all cases are likely to be dismissed. Although this would be great news for the thousands of people accused in these specific cases, it will do little to stop new mass-BitTorrent lawsuits from being filed.

As long as the scheme is greatly profitable for both attorneys and the copyright holders, the lawsuits will continue.

Source: Mass-BitTorrent Lawsuits Stopped Over Unlicensed Attorney

European Court of Justice To Examine ACTA For Rights Breaches | TorrentFreak

In an announcement this morning, EU trade chief Karel De Gucht said that following discussion with fellow Commissioners, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be referred to the European Court of Justice.

ACTA, a treaty aimed at harmonizing copyright enforcement globally, has been mired in controversy from its inception not least since its formulation has taken place behind closed doors. Critics fear it would introduce more online censorship and increased surveillance of Internet users.

“We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess whether ACTA is incompatible – in any way – with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property,” said De Gucht.

During the past few weeks protests against ACTA have swept across Europe, with citizens taking to the streets in several major cities. De Gucht said he understands why people are worried.

“I share people’s concern for these fundamental freedoms. I welcome that people have voiced their concerns so actively – especially over the freedom of the internet. And I also understand that there is uncertainty on what ACTA will really mean for these key issues at the end of the day,” the trade chief said.

“So I believe that putting ACTA before the European Court of Justice is a needed step. This debate must be based upon facts and not upon the misinformation or rumor that has dominated social media sites and blogs in recent weeks.”

De Gucht insists that ACTA will not lead to the censorship or closing down of websites and will not hinder freedom on the Internet or freedom of speech, but said that the referral to the European Court of Justice would help “cut through this fog of uncertainty.”

So far the ACTA agreement has been signed by 22 EU member states, but several countries including Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria and Czech Republic have backed away (at least temporarily) from ratifying the agreement following the recent protests.

Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States signed ACTA last October, leaving acceptance in the European Parliament and EU member states as the final hurdle before it goes into effect. The Court of Justice’s view on ACTA’s compatibility with EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms will be key for many lawmakers.

Previously researchers concluded that ACTA does indeed violate human rights. Whether the Court of Justice will reach a similar conclusion has yet to be seen, but in two previous rulings on anti-piracy filters the court placed the rights of the general public above those of copyright holders.

Source: European Court of Justice To Examine ACTA For Rights Breaches

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde on the Copyright Mafia | TorrentFreak

As many of you know, I used to be the spokesperson for The Pirate Bay.

I left the site a few years ago to continue working on Flattr and other projects, but I’m just as interested in the questions regarding copyright, Internet and censorship as I’ve ever been. I keep following these issues and keep a close eye on the news.

After having skimmed though the High Court decision regarding a UK Pirate Bay blockade I was intrigued by the claimants’ tactics. They appear to know who runs the site, but somehow decided not to include these persons in the suit.

They put up a list of reasons, mostly rants, about how hard it is to find the people behind the site. But is it really?

They still claim that two old friends and I remain as operators, along with the old owner of the ISP that TPB had back in 2005. However, they decided not to include us. (None of us are actually operators, which they probably know. Indeed, one of the people listed might not even be alive, we haven’t been able to reach him for ages.)

The claimants also say they know which company owns TPB, but decided to not include it in the suit. Those who ever started a company know that you must put up an address, so it’s not hard to find a company rep. Addresses and such are always public information.

So why are they not included? Is there a deeper underlying reason for that? Of course there is. Their main interest is not stopping TPB. They’re interested in making the telco industry liable instead.

The ISPs are usually big corporations, the telco industry is in fact much bigger than the entertainment industry. They’re operating on a global scale with billions of customers. This means that they have lots of money as well as lots of potential customers for the entertainment industry. If the telcos could be held liable for any sort of infringement, and have to police the Internet, there would only be two possible ways to do so.

One would be to shut down their business since it’s impossible to make sure that nothing illegal goes on in your network. The second option is to strike a deal with the entertainment industry.

Just as with any other mafia, the entertainment industry wants protection money. To avoid lawsuits the telcos would have to pay. Either by forcing them to re-sell a service the entertainment industry control (like Spotify) or by charging them a set fee for each connection per month.

The record companies have previously asked for $10 per month per Internet connection. But what about other creators? They don’t really care about that question. Porn, movies, bloggers, search engines are all bigger than music on the Internet. How much should we force-pay them?

A few years back an Irish ISP called Eircom blocked their customers access to TPB. It was an out-of-court settlement which noone knows the details of. Either Eircom got paid or the other way around. That’s plain censorship – Eircom sold out the interest and rights of their customers without a court order to do so. Fortunately the other ISPs refused to follow.

The recording industry really wants a landmark case in order to go demanding money from the telco industry. If they sued TPB they can’t make the telco pay the protection money.
It’s not about saving any artists – it’s about controlling the money flow and owning the rights so the artists and customers can’t go anywhere else.

It’s a corrupt industry which has to be stopped!

Source: Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde on the Copyright Mafia

Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom Released From Prison | TorrentFreak

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was released on bail by North Shore District Court Judge Nevin Dawson today.

Dotcom had been held in custody since an anti-terrorist police squad raided his Coatesville mansion last month following a lengthy FBI investigation.

While the prosecution argued that Dotcom would have the financial resources to flee the country, the Judge concluded that “none of significance” were found.

An investigation did turn up four additional bank accounts in the Philippines but they were all empty.

As a result the Megaupload founder was released from prison and will continue to fight the accusations of the United States, where he is wanted on racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges.

Although no longer in prison, Dotcom will have to abide by several strict conditions at his Coatesville house. No helicopters will be allowed to land on the premises, Dotcom will have to give police 24 hours notice should he choose to leave, and when he does there will be a limit of 80km to his travels.

The Megaupload founder will also be denied access to the Internet. Dotcom’s lawyer Paul Davison tried to lift the Internet restriction by arguing that it was unrealistic since his client has to stay in touch with his US-based defense team.

“It’s like saying he shouldn’t have access to a telephone, it’s such a fundamental means of communication,” Davison noted.

Prosecutor Anne Toohey said that Internet access would increase the risk of a Megaupload resurrection in a jurisdiction where US authorities can’t touch it.

Bram van der Kolk, Mathias Ortmann and Finn Batato, three other Megaupload employees named in the “Mega Conspiracy” indictment, were all previously released on bail. The former recently called on the New Zealand authorities to keep its dignity in its extradition dealings with the United States.

Source: Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom Released From Prison

Police Raid File-Hosting Site, Arrest Operator and ISP | TorrentFreak

On June 11th last year Europe witnessed one of the largest piracy-related busts in history.

An international operation shut down the movie streaming portal Kino.to and police made more than a dozen arrests. As collateral damage, several file-hosting services connected to Kino.to also went down.

A few days ago Skyload.net, another cyberlocker with connections to Kino.to, was raided and shut down while the site’s alleged operator Maik P. was arrested. According to the authorities the 28-year-old operator was personally responsible for uploading more than 10,000 films .

The German anti-piracy outfit GVU reports that after Kino.to was shut down Skyload continued its operation by linking unauthorized streams and downloads to alternative movie portals such as kinoX.to.

Together with the operator of Skyload, the police also arrested Marcel E., the 25-year-old owner of the site’s hosting provider. Aside from providing hosting services to the cyberlocker, the Internet provider is also alleged to have hosted servers to release groups and movie streaming portals.

How tight the connections were between the hosting provider and the file-sharing services is unclear from the information currently being made public. It is quite unusual for a hosting provider to get arrested for alleged crimes that were committed through clients.

Both men have been charged with copyright-related offenses and face up to several years in prison if they’re found guilty. Several other people connected to the Kino.to ring have already gone on trial for their part in the site’s operation and the main admin was recently sentenced to three years in prison.

Together with the Megaupload shutdown, the actions against sites affiliated with Kino.to have drastically changed the cyberlocker business. In particular, rewards programs for uploaders became a liability and have been dropped by dozens of sites.

Source: Police Raid File-Hosting Site, Arrest Operator and ISP

Court Orders ISP To Block Grooveshark | TorrentFreak

Last year, a group of entertainment companies known collectively as RettighedsAlliancen sent a demand to the Danish Bailiff Court (known locally as Fogedretten) to have the country’s Internet service providers block US-based streaming music service Grooveshark.

RettighedsAlliancen chief Maria Fredenslund said that Grooveshark had no content agreements or licenses with members of her group, accused the service of being “completely uncooperative” in negotiations, and that effectively taking down content from Grooveshark had proven impossible.

The resulting legal action was directed “randomly” at telecoms company ’3′ with a complaint that the ISP’s customers breach copyright and as their supplier they are contributing to infringements.

’3′ argued that not all content on Grooveshark is offered without permission since artists and labels legally upload and distribute their music via the service. If the court did indeed order an injunction its effects would be disproportionate and result in the censorship of legal content, ’3′ argued.

However, the court said that even though certain aspects of the Grooveshark service may be considered legal, the extent of the copyright violations being committed using the service overwhelmed them.

The Bailiff Court said that ’3′ was unlikely to suffer any financial losses as the result of an injunction and since ’3′ customers are violating copyright law when they stream music from Grooveshark, they would not be able to claim compensation from ’3′ when they could no longer access the site.

Based on the Danish implementation of the Infosoc Directive, the court ordered an immediate injunction against ’3′ which prohibits it from facilitating subscriber access to Grooveshark.

“Grooveshark is an illegal site, which is really big and popular. But they have a business model that is based on trickery and fraud,” said RettighedsAlliancen chief Maria Fredenslund commenting on the news.

“Many users believe that when they use Grooveshark payment goes back to the artists and producers. So we think it was important to close off access so the legitimate sites have a chance to recover,” Fredenslund added.

But Troels Møller, co-founder of internet think-tank Bitbureauet, says blocking access to Grooveshark is a step too far.

“This is an attack on free speech and basic Internet freedom. Danish politicians need to educate themselves on this subject, and realize that what is going on is very dangerous. It’s a slippery-slope into complete internet censorship,” he told TorrentFreak.

“In Denmark we are seeing this kind of censorship in more and more areas. It has expanded from blocking child abuse-sites to also blocking file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay, and again to foreign pharmacy and gambling sites. And now we see blocking of music streaming sites without the proper license. What’s next?”

In the meantime, ’3′ are planning their next move

“We have received the result and will now decide what to do next,” Stinne Green Paulsen, Communications Manager at ’3′, told TorrentFreak. “We have four weeks to decide if we want to proceed or not.”

Proceeding would mean ’3′ taking the case to the High Court, but whatever the decision in the meantime the injunction will stand.

In addition to Grooveshark, other sites that have been blocked in Denmark on copyright infringement grounds include AllofMP3 and more recently The Pirate Bay.

RettighedsAlliancen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Court Orders ISP To Block Grooveshark

The Pirate Bay Faces UK ISP Block After High Court Ruling | TorrentFreak

After the MPA won its blocking case against the Newzbin2 Usenet indexing site last year, it became clear that the entertainment industries would seek further injunctions against similar sites.

Predictions pointing towards The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent site, were spot on. This time Hollywood would step aside and leave it to the recording industry to obtain an injunction which would force ISPs to block the infamous torrent site.

Nine labels including EMI , Polydor, Sony, Virgin and Warner, say that The Pirate Bay infringes their copyrights and that several ISPs including BSkyB, BT, TalkTalk, Telefonica and Virgin Media, should implement a blockade under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

Section 97A of the Act gives courts the power to order an injunction against an ISP if it can be proven that it had knowledge that its services were being used to infringe copyright.

In the High Court today Mr Justice Arnold drew parallels with the Newzbin2 case but actually went further by stating that the case against The Pirate Bay and its users was actually somewhat stronger.

He said that the operators of TPB have the power to prevent copyright infringement and noted that the site is prepared to remove torrents if they are mislabeled, child porn, malware or spam.

“As a matter of policy, however, the rights of copyright owners are excluded from the criteria by which the operators of TPB choose to exercise this power,” he said, noting that the site’s owners had treated previous rulings against them with contempt.

“Indeed, according to a statement on the website, the reason for its recent adoption of Magnet links as the default option is that ‘it’s not as easy to block as .torrent files’. This confirms the operators’ determination to do whatever they can to provide users with unrestricted access to torrent files and thereby enable the users to continue to infringe,” Justice Arnold noted.

“In my judgment, the operators of TPB do authorize its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting. On any view, they ‘sanction, approve and countenance’ the infringements of copyright committed by its users. But in my view they also purport to grant users the right to do the acts complained of.

“It is no defense that they openly defy the rights of the copyright owners. I would add that I consider the present case to be indistinguishable from 20C Fox v Newzbin in this respect. If anything, it is a stronger case,” he concluded.

According to Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry, today’s ruling is a clear indication that The Pirate Bay operates illegally.

“The ruling helps clarify the law on website blocking and we will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm,” Taylor said.

If things go smoothly for the labels, a nationwide blockade of The Pirate Bay could be in place in a matter of months. We’ll update this post later today with comment from the site’s operators.

Source: The Pirate Bay Faces UK ISP Block After High Court Ruling

Pirate Bay ISP Block Challenged For Censoring Lawful Content | TorrentFreak

During May 2011, the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) and the Finnish branch of the music industry group IFPI filed a lawsuit at the District Court of Helsinki.

The groups demanded that local ISP Elisa should start blocking The Pirate Bay in order to protect the copyrights of their members. While Elisa initially refused, a subsequent court order in October 2011 forced them to comply and last month it was initiated.

The matter is currently under appeal but in the meantime Elisa’s block must remain, which means that no content indexed by The Pirate Bay – illicit or fully authorized – is available to the ISP’s customers. For one Elisa customer, that situation is unacceptable.

Antti Laine says that the enforcement order handed down to his ISP was unlawful so he has responded by filing a complaint with the authority that sanctioned the block. His complaint states that under Finnish copyright law, any injunction should avoid collateral damage.

Such a wide block fails to consider this responsibility, Laine insists, adding that “enforcement of the decision is based on an erroneous application of law.” His complaint is being made on three grounds.

1. Laine says he has been working on a project and the media created is being distributed via The Pirate Bay. Due to the block, distribution of the content is being affected.

2. As a client of Elisa himself, Laine says that due to the blockade he can no longer download or indeed upload any material that is deemed by creators to be for free distribution. Under copyright law this legal content cannot be a target of the injunction but nevertheless its availability is being threatened.

3. Laine states that the injunction is based on an incorrect application of the law. Service providers can only be ordered to block access to infringing files, but the are huge numbers of other works being affected by the blanket censorship. Furthermore, Laine says that the blockade also affects all legal content uploaded to The Pirate Bay after it was initiated and such preemptive censorship is against Finland’s constitution.

In respect of item 3, Laine attached a list of Creative Commons, GPL and Public Domain material affected including content from Dope Stars Inc, titles such as Steal This Film, LionShare and Zeitgeist from Jamie King’s VODO, Rip: A Remix Manifesto, Finland’s own Star Trek parody series Star Wreck and many open source software applications.

“No blocking mechanism should block content that’s available legally,” Joonas Mäkinen of Finland’s Pirate Party tells TorrentFreak. “If the proposed methods can’t reasonably differentiate between authorized and non-authorized content, they should never be put in action.”

“There is no reason to block even The Pirate Bay’s website itself, as the texts and images there – a whopping 90 megabytes – are definitely not in illegal distribution per se,” Mäkinen adds.

Laine seeks a correction of the existing injunction so that it no longer breaches the Copyright Act and Constitutional Law.

Source: Pirate Bay ISP Block Challenged For Censoring Lawful Content

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent | TorrentFreak

This week there are four newcomers in our chart. Tower Heist 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 on BitTorrent

A Responsible Citizen Not Only Shares Culture, But Destroys The Copyright Industries | TorrentFreak

“Honest.”

This word was used by the copyright industry, to try to get citizens to do their bidding. Honest. Could you believe that today? This industry dared take that word in their mouths?

For some time, it may actually have worked. Not for us who worked with technology and knew sharing as natural and human, and who set the standards of tomorrow, of course, but I got the perception that “following the law” was associated with “being honest” in parts of the population.

That quickly waned.

People realized that “being honest” had absolutely nothing to do with “accepting serfdom in a rigged system” and “doing the wishes of a thoroughly corrupt industry”, quite regardless of the wording of mail-order legislation that had been created at the copyright industry’s persistent tantrums. Following the law and obeying the monopoly became the opposite of being honest.

So the concept of honesty in the debate was replaced by one of humanity and friendship – that good people share, regardless of larger ramifications to society.

As that went on for a few years, more and more people realized that the sky wasn’t falling as had been claimed. Moreover, culture and small bands actually benefited greatly from circumventing the previous gatekeepers. The ramifications weren’t negative. They were overwhelmingly positive.

This view was reinforced by the copyright industry’s attacks on all alternate distribution channels that allowed creative artistry to bypass the middlemen’s skimming of the 90-95% of the pie that they had previously grabbed for themselves.

Something else happened, too: old digital formats went out of fashion. The industry-issued copies became unplayable, especially with silly playback protection methods that never work anyway. All of a sudden, us who had shared culture had done something more; we had also preserved culture. If it weren’t for the so-called pirates, our cultural diversity would have been lost on technology’s scrapheap.

So sharing became a matter of being responsible as a citizen. Sharing culture was not only a good deed in humankind, it was also taking civil responsibility for preservation of our common heritage, a responsibility that neither the industry nor governments took on themselves to fulfill.

But the copyright industry’s war on the people continued.

A very astute observation by Ithiel de Sola Pool in a book from 1984 noted that the copyright monopoly can’t survive in the digital age as it creeps into our everyday activities without heavily regulating conversation itself. This is exactly what the copyright industries have tried to do, and therefore, this monopoly and its industry have become an enemy of our very freedom of speech.

By 2010, about half the population was directly or indirectly involved in this preservation or sharing of culture: many in a household gain from one person taking such civic responsibility. In Europe, that means 250 million people. Put another way, it means 250 million votes.

250 million European votes trump 250 million Euros in lobbying money, every single time.

And so, with the copyright industry’s outright war on the people, on our culture, and our civil liberties, we have arrived at a point where responsible citizens not only share and preserve culture, but also act in defense of society to destroy the copyright industry.

Every act towards that goal helps, and is now an act of everybody’s civic responsibility. 250 million Europeans doing something small every day to destroy this corrupt industry that stands between us and our future makes a lot of difference at the end of the day.

Source: A Responsible Citizen Not Only Shares Culture, But Destroys The Copyright Industries

SABAM Charged With Copyright Fraud, Embezzlement, Money Laundering | TorrentFreak

In 2004, a Belgian composer filed a complaint against local music rights group SABAM. Philippe Delhaye, an associate member of SABAM, claimed that there had been “breaches” in the correct payment of his royalties.

Delhaye’s complaint, which was backed up with witness statements from a former SABAM general manager and a former group auditor, triggered off interest in SABAM’s internal affairs.

Later that year Judge Frederic Lugentz began a fraud investigation which focused on SABAM’s non-profit association Caisse d’Entraide et de Solidarité (CES), a fund which SABAM claimed was to support older members over 60.

The investigation culminated in 2007 and resulted in 24 complaints against the group including embezzlement, money laundering and the falsification of accounts, the latter to allegedly cover up the payment of bribes to an official in the Ministry of Finance.

Although many charges were dropped due to Belgium’s statute of limitations, SABAM must now face Belgium’s criminal court on six charges.

Former SABAM President Jacques Leduc is one of the accused but former financial directors Marcel Raiglot and Jean Huysmans and current finance director Luc Van Oycke are being held accountable for corruption and forgery.

“We are pleased that the merits of the case will be heard by the criminal court,” says SABAM general manager Christophe Depreter. “I am fully confident that we can show that nothing wrong happened.”

A date has not yet been set for the court hearing.

Source: SABAM Charged With Copyright Fraud, Embezzlement, Money Laundering

Pirate Bay: The RIAA Is Delusional and Must Be Stopped | TorrentFreak

The following is a guest post by The Pirate Bay’s ‘Winston’ in reply to an article published by RIAA boss Mitch Glazier.

—

The Senior Executive Vice President of the RIAA (wow, what a long title), Mitch Glazier, has published a blog post on why TPB is “one of the worst of the worst”. The piece gives us ample information on just how delusional the recording industry really is, and shows why they must be stopped.

In the very first sentence Glazier uses the phrase “copyright theft”. It’s an interesting concept – if anyone in history ever stole copyright, it must be the record industry. At least they tried, as in the Swedish TPB case where they sued over a record they did not have the copyright to.

A small lesson to Mr Glazier: If someone steals something, you don’t have it anymore. If you copy it, both have it. This means: If someone steals your copyright (aka “copyright theft”) you don’t have the copyright anymore. I’m having a hard time to see that happening though, since copyright isn’t really physical.

The jobs that you say are being stolen in the US are somewhat physical though. And if someone steals them where do they go? Maybe they just aren’t needed anymore! That’s what technology does! Sorry, it’s 2012 not 1912 – do you want to forbid robots as well, since they steal jobs?

Let me quote the title of Peter Sunde’s latest piece in Wired: “It’s evolution, …”. If you search for it, you’ll find the rest of the title for that piece. It might be illegal for me to put that in print since a new censorship law was passed in Syria. Since you apparently think that US law should control people around the world, shouldn’t we follow laws in Syria as well?

Yes, Glazier is upset that TPB moved away from a US-controlled domain name. He doesn’t seem to understand that there is a worldwide problem when one single country tries to take control over a global infrastructure. TPB has no connections to the US so why should the US be able to control it?

It’s a very undemocratic procedure which obviously the RIAA is supportive of. Apparently “escaping US laws” means not being born in the US, not living there, not working there or not wanting to kiss your ass.

And Mr. Glazier, talking about the countries in the EU that you have forced ISPs to block TPB (and other sites) is interesting, as the European Court has just decided that these types of censorship are just that – censorship, and should be treated as illegal. Could we see your view on the matter, as the RIAA is clearly supporting illegal censorship?

The RIAA wants the tech industry to sit down and talk to them. Fuck that. You’re not in charge. If you want the help of the tech industry, ask for it. You’ll probably get it since most tech people are nice. You’re not in charge anymore and that’s probably why you’re pissed off.

Plz stop calling yourself “the creative community”. You’re not a community, you’re a coalition of some of the richest companies in the world. And the only thing you seem to be creative with is your accounting procedures.

The recording industry is like a kid screaming for candy. The problem is that the kid has diabetes.

Source: Pirate Bay: The RIAA Is Delusional and Must Be Stopped

RIAA: The Pirate Bay is The Worst of The Worst | TorrentFreak

Two weeks ago The Pirate Bay redirected the site to a Swedish .se domain, safely outside the reach of US authorities.

This change hasn’t gone unnoticed by the RIAA, as Vice President Mitch Glazier just published a scathing reply. Describing The Pirate Bay as one of the worst offenders, the RIAA boss argues that the industry needs better tools to topple such ‘rogue’ websites.

“Talk about Exhibit A for addressing rogue websites in a meaningful manner,” he writes.

“A blatantly illegal file-sharing site, proud that it’s an online bazaar of every conceivable U.S. copyrighted work, found criminally responsible by its own country’s legal system and who has been ordered by courts in at least seven European countries to be blocked by ISPs, has publicly acknowledged changing its domain name to escape U.S. laws.”

“It is motivated by its brazen philosophy of thumbing its nose at the basic rights of America’s creators. It is, in a phrase, one of the worst of the worst.”

The RIAA boss then seizes the opportunity to call on lawmakers to pull sites like The Pirate Bay offline before it does more damage to the entertainment industries.

“It is one of the most clear and obvious examples of why meaningful tools are needed to target foreign rogue sites that steal American jobs. Responsible leaders in the tech community should come to the table with constructive ideas and work with us and others to address this blatant theft before more damage is done to our economy and the creative community.”

Although the punchline above is expected from the music industry group, the response does raise an interesting point. Apparently the RIAA also realizes that domain seizures are completely useless as websites can simply switch to foreign domains. If that is the case, then why risk breaking the Internet by baking it into law?

The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, is seriously offended by Glazier’s writing. They decided to respond with a rebuttal, describing the RIAA as a delusional outfit that has to be stopped.

Source: RIAA: The Pirate Bay is The Worst of The Worst

Single Movie Download Could See Swedes Prosecuted | TorrentFreak

For more than a decade Swedish netizens have been placed at the forefront of mainstream file-sharing culture, mainly through their historic links to the thriving BBS and warez scene (not to mention bandwidth on tap), but more recently due to their association with The Pirate Bay and similar sites.

This status did not go unnoticed by the world’s leading entertainment companies. Their response for the past several years has been to lobby, threaten and otherwise coerce Sweden’s government into taking tougher action against file-sharing sites and file-sharers themselves, and not without result.

In addition to raiding The Pirate Bay and sentencing its founders to jail, Swedish authorities have spent the last few years going after file-sharers who share many thousands of files at once. In theory these multiple infringements can result in a prison sentence, so on this basis the police are allowed to obtain file-sharers’ identities from ISPs.

However, if the Swedish government has its way, in future downloading a single movie could be enough for the authorities and copyright holders to come knocking.

The issue surrounds a proposed change in the law which would allow police and prosecutors to obtain the identity of individual, even though their alleged offense is only deemed serious enough to warrant a fine.

Although the proposed changes to Sweden’s Electronic Communications Act (LEK) are ostensibly being proposed to target fine-punishable offenses such as child grooming or even bullying, their scope would encompass petty file-sharing too.

“I would no longer need to make a preliminary assessment of the criminality of the offense I am investigating. If I have an IP address, can I request information about who is the subscriber, regardless of the seriousness of the offense,” says Henrik Rasmussen, a prosecutor specializing in copyright infringement.

“Of course, a violation of copyright law has been committed even if you just download a movie from a source that is not lawful. The risk then of course is that even those people will be contacted by the police, be interrogated, prosecuted and convicted,” Rasmusson adds.

While the proposed legislative change would not give police the power to search the homes of suspected file-sharers for these minor offenses, Rasmusson says there are other ways to get the evidence needed to prosecute.

“We can also call people in for questioning and it has happened several times before that when people have to face certain facts they admit the offense. We might use that on a larger scale,” Rasmusson adds.

Founder of the first Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, told TorrentFreak that the proposals demonstrate the Swedish government’s continued “lapdoggery” towards the United States.

“This was point nine in a cable from the US Embassy regarding a checklist the US had given to the Swedish government to avoid trade sanctions from the United States.

“It is also remarkable how far beyond ’1984′-level surveillance this takes us when combined with the Data Retention Directive. In that dystopic novel, if the government didn’t see you doing something bad at the moment you did it, you were safe. With this law and Data Retention, the government gets the ability to rewind and play back if they missed your dissenting actions the first time.

“Our civil liberties are crumbling, and we’re venturing into very dangerous territory,” Falkvinge concludes.

Patrik Hiselius, a lawyer at ISP Telia Sonera, told SvD that it is important to find a balance between law enforcement, privacy and cost, and that combating file-sharing through legislation is not the answer.

“Put down the attempts to constantly find repressive means to the problem,” Hiselius advises, adding: “The way to curb file sharing is to provide better legal alternatives.”

Source: Single Movie Download Could See Swedes Prosecuted

EU Court Bans Anti-Piracy Filters On Hosting Services | TorrentFreak

For several years music rights group SABAM and the social networking site Netlog have battled in court. To protect the rights of its members, SABAM demanded that Netlog should install a tool that would scan all files uploaded by its users for copyright infringement.

Today the European Court of Justice delivered its ruling, concluding that the social network can’t be forced to install an anti-piracy filter.

“This obligation would be contrary to the requirement that a proper balance is ensured between the protection of copyright and the freedom of entrepreneurship, the right to privacy freedom, and the freedom to obtain knowledge and information,” the Court announced.

The Court noted that the privacy of users is more important than protecting copyright. In addition, it fears that a filter would result in censorship of legitimate content, thereby obstructing freedom of information.

“[The filter] could potentially undermine freedom of information, since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content, with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications,” the Court writes.

The unprecedented decision has major implications for all services in Europe that host user uploaded content, not least among cyberlockers such as RapidShare. Also, the verdict would prevent copyright holders ordering BitTorrent sites to filter uploaded files, something that isoHunt already does based on a US injunction.

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party in Sweden, is happy that the EU Court of Justice has placed the rights of people above those of corporations.

“I think it is quite remarkable, and very promising, that Europe’s highest court says outright that the copyright monopoly and people’s right to privacy of correspondence cannot be protected at the same time – and most importantly, that the latter has unequivocal precedence,” Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak.

“This is what we have been saying since 2006, that there is a strong conflict between the copyright monopoly and fundamental rights. It is quite a relief to see that not only confirmed in black and white, but also a verdict that the fundamental rights override the copyright monopoly.”

The entertainment industry on the other hand, will be greatly disappointed, as they are pushing hard for online services to take greater responsibility when it comes to copyright infringement.

Today’s ruling follows a similar European Court of Justice ruling last November which concluded that Belgian Internet provider Scarlet could not be forced to monitor subscriber traffic to detect piracy because that would violate the fundamental rights of both the ISP and its subscribers.

Source: EU Court Bans Anti-Piracy Filters On Hosting Services