Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category
German court convicts, sentences BitTorrent site operator to nearly 4 years
Posted: 2013/05/08 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Online advertising, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsA German district court in the western city of Aachen has handed down one of the harshest sentences for abetting copyright infringement: three years and 10 months in prison.
The 33-year-old alleged operator of the Russian-hosted torrent.to, who was named only as “Jens. R” in court documents, remains under investigation for fraudulent bankruptcy filings and embezzlement. Other than pleading not guilty, Jens R. did not offer a defense in the case and is expected to appeal.
Like similar sites, such as the Pirate Bay, the defendant was accused of selling ads against links to torrent files.
MegaUpload’s Kim Dotcom Wants To Meet Up With United States Attorney General Eric Holder
Posted: 2013/05/05 in Copyright, Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsHolder will be in New Zealand to join the Quintet meeting with his four counterpart Attorneys General from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
But Kim Dotcom — the notorious Auckland-based, German-born internet entrepreneur and founder of the massive global file-sharing websites Megaupload and Mega — is working hard to ensure that Holder’s fleeting visit is neither unnoticed nor routine. Kim Dotcom is offering $500 to anyone who can capture footage of Holder in Auckland and set it to music — specifically Dotcom’s own Megaupload song.
Dotcom has a gripe with Eric Holder. It is the United States Attorney General who is leading the effort to extradite Kim Dotcom to the United States to face copyright, racketeering, money-laundering and other charges, laid out in a 72-page indictmentfiled by the United States government last year.
More:
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/dirty-tricks-dotcom/610/
See also:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/usa-courts-holder-megaupload-idINDEE94200920130503
Piracy….Perhaps those who are so quick to point the finger at Thailand would do well to look in their own backyards
Posted: 2013/05/05 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsAnd remember that Thais are also victims of such criminal networks. Piracy hinders the development of the country’s creative economy and this affects far more people than the selfish minority who profit from counterfeiting and online theft.
More:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/348337/a-needless-blame-game
Greek Anti-Piracy Group Demands Blocks Of KickAss, isoHunt, 1337x, H33T And Possibly The Pirate Bay
Posted: 2013/05/02 in Blocking, Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Filtering, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Stats / reportsIn a continuation of the website blocking phenomenon, an anti-piracy group fresh to the action has applied to have several major torrent sites blocked at the ISP level in Greece. AEPI, the Greek Society for the Protection of Intellectual Property, has filed at court to have KickAssTorrents, isoHunt, 1337x and H33T all rendered inaccessible to subscribers. Sources inform TorrentFreak that The Pirate Bay will also be targeted later this month.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-group-demands-blocks-of-kickass-isohunt-1337x-and-h33t-130502/
Rapidshare Boss And Internet Millionaire Christian Alexander Schmid Buys Himself A New Lair, Possibly With Use Of Middle Man
Posted: 2013/05/02 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reportsFrank Lucas: That’s a clown suit. That’s a costume, with a big sign on it that says “Arrest me”. You understand? You’re too loud, you’re making too much noise. Listen to me, the loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.
71 Jahre lang gehörte das Anwesen der Gewerkschaft Unia, es diente als Feriendomizil für Mitglieder. Die Gewerkschaft wollte die Liegenschaft 2012 verkaufen, Christian Alexander Schmid gehörte zu den Interessenten. Doch die Unia wollte ihm die Villa nicht verkaufen – zu dubios kamen den Gewerkschaftern die Geschäfte des Deutschen mit dem Dateispeicherservice der Rapidshare AG vor.
In der Tat gehört Christian Schmid zu jener Generation Internetmillionäre wie Kim Schmitz (Megaupload), die mit Dienstleistungen für Datentausch im Web zu einem riesigen Vermögen kamen. Regelmässig hagelt es gegen diese Dienste Kritik von Inhabern von Urheberrechten für Musik und Filme.
Auch Rapidshare befindet sich seit Jahren im Kampf ums Image – dafür gab die Firma auch Hunderttausende von Franken aus, um im US-Kongress für einen guten Wind zu sorgen. Rapidshare muss sich gegen Klagen der Unterhaltungs- und Medienindustrie wehren. Für Vertreter des Musikverbandes Ifpi ist Schmid ein rotes Tuch.
in Besitzer wie Schmid war der Unia nicht geheuer. Darum kam Dany Taner Bahar zum Zug, der seine Karriere in einem Sportartikelladen in St. Moritz zündete. Der Bündner sorgte bald auch schon für Schlagzeilen, vor allem mit seinem Engagement beim britischen Sportwagenhersteller Lotus, der nicht vom Fleck kam. Doch «sein Gesamtbild, das sich aus den Informationen des Maklers ergab, erschien uns als glaubwürdig», so Unia-Sprecher Hans Hartmann gegenüber der «Neuen Luzerner Zeitung». Die Zeitung schreibt, dass für die Liegenschaft ein zweistelliger Millionenbetrag fällig wurde. Hätte die Unia eine kleine Recherche angestellt, wäre Bahars dürftiger Leistungsausweisbald klargeworden. Und dass sich Bahar nach den Nöten in England eigentlich Mitte 2012 mit Kind und Kegel nach Dubai absetzte.
Villa Nummer 2 für Schmid
Nun hatte also Bahar die Villa nach nur wenigen Monaten schon wieder verkauft – diesmal an Christian Alexander Schmid, der sich schon zu Beginn für die Liegenschaft interessierte. Die Unia fühlt sich düpiert und findet den schnellen Deal «sonderbar». Zum Vorwurf eines reinen Strohmann-Geschäfts Dany Bahars will sich die Gewerkschaft nicht äussern. Allerdings will die Unia nun von der Maklerin Auskünfte zum Weiterverkauf einfordern. Weder Bahar noch Schmid äusserten sich gegenüber der «Neuen Luzerner Zeitung».
Platznot kennt Rapidshare-Gründer Schmid kaum: Auf ihn war in Küssnacht am Rigi bereits eine neugebaute Villa im futuristischen Stil eingetragen, zeigten Recherchen von handelszeitung.ch vom letzten Jahr.
Much more:
http://vrritti.com/?s=rapidshare
It doesn’t take more than five minutes to find discs for sale on Amazon UK that appear not to carry BBFC classification
Posted: 2013/05/02 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy, Stats / reportsOnly a few days ago films such as Quentin Tarantino’s latest gore-fest Django and Marlon Brando’s career highlight A Streetcar Named Desire fell into those categories, along with at least half a dozen other titles. But Amazon UK’s head office failed to respond to repeated requests for comment, while its legal department declined.
This is no popcorn issue – it involves big money. Internet streaming of films may be making inroads, but sales of physical discs in the UK still take the lion’s share of trade, with the latest figures from the British Video Association showing the UK market was worth more than £1.8bn last year.
But according to Brustad, Trading Standards as historically organised cannot allocate sufficient resources to enforce the classification law.
New criminal investigation into The Pirate Bay said to involve several publishing houses as well as Swedish anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån
Posted: 2013/05/01 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Online advertising, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsPirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg denies charges. Says that evidence against him was planted
Posted: 2013/04/30 in Copyright, Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Network Security, Organized Crime, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionMuch of the prosecution’s evidence was obtained from a computer seized from Gottfrid. The Pirate Bay co-founder says that the information was placed there via the Internet but he won’t name the culprit out of fear of reprisals.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-on-trial-next-month-facing-societal-damage-claims-130429/
Previously:
http://vrritti.com/?s=svartholm
China shuts down movie piracy websites, arrests operators
Posted: 2013/04/28 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsChinese authorities have shut down two movie pirating websites in a clampdown on both online and offline piracy. YYeTs.com suddenly closed down on April 25th, but a notice on the site’s official Sina Weibo account says that it’s only temporary. The other site, Siluhd.com (Silu HD) was forcibly taken down and CEO Zhou Mou and eight other employees reportedly arrested.
Silu HD is said to be China’s biggest piracy site of HD movies, and has been online in plain sight for over a decade. It claims to have 140 million registered users, Chinese media reports that the Silu HD site was subtle, hiding its movies behind a paywall.
YYeTs was less subtle and operated a blatant movie download site. The service hasn’t gone down without a fight, and its semi-deactivated homepage currently directs users towards other URLs where they can download pirated content.
http://advanced-television.com/2013/04/26/china-shuts-down-movie-piracy-websites/
“Senior MPAA executive” tampered with piracy evidence before handing it to the police
Posted: 2013/04/27 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Stats / reportsEarlier this month Finland’s largest ever Internet piracy case ended with four men being found guilty of copyright infringement and two being exonerated. The case involved a so-called ‘topsite’ called Angel Falls and had an interesting twist. During the trial it was revealed that evidence gathered by a local anti-piracy group and the IFPI was also handed to a “senior MPAA executive” who tampered with the evidence before handing it to the police.
(…)
During the trial an IFPI investigator was called upon as a witness, but during his testimony something unusual came to light.
“After his presentation the defense counsels pointed out how the information shown on the video of his investigations did not match with the printed log files,” Hietanen informs TorrentFreak.
The video, a screencast of the investigation, showed a particular username accessing an Angel Falls FTP server. However, the corresponding text log for the same event showed a completely different username.
“When the IFPI investigator was asked about this he acknowledged that the names did not match. He said that the Finnish anti-piracy people and IFPI had collected the information together, but there was also an MPAA executive in the room while the evidence gathering took place,” Hietanen explains.
The IFPI investigator was then asked to reveal the name of the MPAA executive. He declined, but did offer an explanation for the inconsistencies in the evidence.
In an apparent attempt to hide the identity of one of their spies, the MPAA executive edited the evidence gathered during the session.
“The IFPI investigator handed over the evidence material to the MPAA senior executive who then changed the text file before the anti-piracy organization handed over the evidence to the Finnish police,” Hietanen says.
No one from the MPAA informed the defense that the edits had been made and the tampering was revealed at the worst possible time – during the trial. This resulted in the prosecutor ordering a police investigation into the changes that had been made.
“Police then proceeded by comparing the ‘work copy’ that the IFPI investigator produced with the material that police and the defending counsels had received. Police found out that the material had differences in over 10 files,” Hietanen reveals.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-executive-tampered-with-ifpi-evidence-in-internet-piracy-case-130427/
A mortgage is similar to a music file. A securitized mortgage is similar to a pirated music file
Posted: 2013/04/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reportsIn either case, no immediate harm was done to the person who once upon a time stood to gain a levee benefit. After all, what has happened is just a setting of bits in someone else’s computer. Nothing but an abstract copy has been created; a silent, small change, far away. In the long term, the real people at the source are harmed, however.
Much more:
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/04/digital-music-is-like-a-mortgage/
Hollywood Studios Fuming Over BitTorrent, Cinedigm ‘Deal With the Devil’
Posted: 2013/04/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionHollywood studios are furious that BitTorrent, synonymous in the movie industry with piracy, has partnered with independent studio Cinedigm to promote “Arthur Newman,” TheWrap has learned.
“It’s a deal with the devil,” one studio executive told TheWrap. “Cinedigm is being used as their pawn.”
Police Flex Muscles Again, Arrest Admin of Sweden’s #2 BitTorrent Site: Tankafetast
Posted: 2013/04/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy, Stats / reportsTaunting the authorities with their return, Tankafetast rented cinemas and launched a clothing range but for the police there was clearly unfinished business. An admin of the site has now been arrested and questioned. The site, however, remains fully operational.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/police-flex-muscles-again-arrest-admin-of-swedens-2-bittorrent-site-130424/
Brussels Court of Appeal: embedding illegal YouTube content is no copyright breach
Posted: 2013/04/22 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Jurisprudence, Legislation, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsOn 19 March 2013, the Court of Appeal of Brussels decided that embedding a YouTube video with illegal content doesn’t constitute a copyright infringement. In the underlying case, the Belgian movie Fait d’Hiver was uploaded integrally on YouTube by a user with a IP address that belongs to a Russian website. Thereafter, a Belgian Fait d’Hiver fan embedded the YouTube movie on his website. He placed a banner on his website via Google AdSense and generated a minimal revenue from the advertisements. The right holders sued the Belgian fan in criminal proceedings for copyright infringement.
However, according to the Court, the Belgian fan didn’t infringe the copyrights of the right holders, as he was allowed to assume that the content uploaded on YouTube was legal. After all, YouTube’s terms of use prohibit the uploading of illegal content that infringes copyrights of others. The fact that the Belgian fan earned 2 cents per click with the banner on his website doesn’t prove that he had fraudulent intentions, the Court argues.
This decision provides us some interesting observations on the law in Belgium.
Cinedigm deal marks the first time that BitTorrent has helped market a Hollywood movie
Posted: 2013/04/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionThe partnership underscores the company’s efforts to shed its image as the pariah that was perceived as encouraging consumers to illegally download movies and TV shows
More:
