http://www.zdnet.com/indonesias-music-industry-loses-1-65m-a-day-from-online-piracy-7000014627/
Archive for the ‘File Sharing’ Category
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/
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:
Why are respected advertisers funding sites that openly abuse artists to make a profit?
Posted: 2013/04/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Online advertising, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionThe young adult demographic found on infringing sites seems to be very attractive to the auto, auto insurance, mobile phone and credit ratings firms
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-buckley-jr/online-piracy-following-the-money_b_3102471.html
I have arranged to have lunch with the man variously described as “hacker king” and “gangster clown” (MegaUpload)
Posted: 2013/04/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, New Business Models, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionGrowing up in Kiel, northern Germany, Dotcom – christened Kim Schmitz – discovered gaming at the age of 11 and hacking not long after that. (He changed his name to Dotcom in 2005.) His Finnish-born mother had left his father, a violent alcoholic, when he was six. “My mum had to work three jobs. She was cleaning and cooking just to get food on the table and pay rent,” he says. I ask him later if his father is still alive. “I don’t care,” he replies.
As a teenager, he became adept at slipping past the firewalls of such organisations as Citibank, Nasa and the Pentagon. “Back in the day there was no security. It was like a palace with unlocked doors,” he says, misty-eyed. “You could just walk in there, look inside all the cabinets, sleep in the queen’s bed.”
He worked out a scam to rack up fake calls to a pay-by-the-minute chatline, earning DM75,000 by the time he was rumbled by German police in 1994. He was given a suspended sentence. In 2002, he was arrested again, this time for insider trading, a crime that was new on the German statute books. He had sought to avoid prosecution by fleeing to Thailand but when the Thai authorities, working in conjunction with Germany, threw him in jail, he opted to return home and enter a plea bargain. He got a 20-month suspended sentence but now says his capitulation was a terrible mistake, since it allowed his enemies to brand him “a career criminal”.
It is all part, he says, of a battle being waged by Hollywood against Silicon Valley.
Much more:
(Registration may be required) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/95c68080-a68b-11e2-885b-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2R6mfLXdI
Hospital Installs BitTorrent Application On Computer System Built To Prevent Cardiac Arrest. It’s Now Downloading Pirated Content
Posted: 2013/04/20 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionDutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/beveiliging/77454–hartbewaking-in-ziekenhuis-downloadt-torrents-
HADOPI research challenges European Commission’s report on the effects of music piracy
Posted: 2013/04/20 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionA month ago, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission issued a report called the ‘Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data’. It followed from this report that, according to the JRC, digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format. On the contrary; JRC believes that piracy rather has a positive overall effect on music sales, since sales would have been lower if illegal downloading website were to be absent. This is based on the assertion that users of illegal downloading websites are also the main category of users of legal alternatives.
These findings have led to widespread criticism from throughout the music industry. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), for instance, stated that the JRC’s study is ‘flawed, misleading and disconnected from commercial reality’. In a response to the study, the organization states that the JRC wrongly employs the data in order to study sales displacement. Besides, IFPI says that the study does not sufficiently make the distinction between the use of legal and illegal services. Furthermore, the JRC maintains too narrow a view of what the music business’ revenues consist of.
The French High authority for the circulation of creative works and copyright protection on the Internet (HADOPI), issued a working paper in response to the said JRC report. The results from this study show that JRC’s study contains some structural flaws.
Megaupload says US trying to change rules to allow prosecution
Posted: 2013/04/20 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Legislation, Litigation, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThe shuttered file-sharing site Megaupload has accused the United States government of trying to change criminal court procedures to make it easier to prosecute the firm for copyright infringement. In addition to naming CEO Kim Dotcom as a defendant in the criminal case, the US government also named Megaupload, a corporation based in Hong Kong, as a separate defendant.
Megaupload has argued that US law doesn’t allow criminal prosecution of corporations based entirely overseas. Federal rules require notice of an indictment to be sent to a corporation’s last known US address. But Megaupload has never had a US address, the firm argues, so it can’t be prosecuted.
Judge Liam O’Grady rejected that argument in October, reasoning that the government may be able to satisfy the notice requirement by serving papers on Kim Dotcom after he has been extradited to the United States.
Disguise: isoHunt Verdict Endangers Innovation, Google Tells Court
Posted: 2013/04/19 in Copyright, Enforcement, File Sharing, Google, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, New Business Models, Online advertising, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionLast month BitTorrent site isoHunt lost its appeal against the MPAA and since then several rightsholders have used this verdict to their advantage in other copyright infringement cases. Google has also been targeted with the ruling in its case against Viacom, and has now asked the court to change its opinion. The Internet giant explains that the verdict against the BitTorrent site is overly broad and endangers the existence of innovative businesses.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-verdict-endangers-innovation-google-tells-court-130418/
Previously:
Disguise: Company that brought you Google Glass warns against facial recognition database
http://vrritti.com/2013/04/13/disguise-company-that-brought-you-google-glass-warns-against-facial-recognition-database/
Disguise, Disrupt, Dough…No Matter The Consequences. Only Change Your Ways When You Get Something In Return Or You Risk Losing Money. Is That Google’s Strategy?
http://vrritti.com/2013/04/13/disguise-disrupt-dough-no-matter-the-consequences-only-change-your-ways-when-you-get-something-in-return-or-you-risk-losing-money-is-that-googles-strategy/
Interpol Probe Targets Funds of Major File-Hosting Services Turbobit, Uploaded, Filemate, Uload, Extabit, SecureUpload, Luckyshare and Depositfiles
Posted: 2013/04/17 in Copyright, Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsFollow the money…
Citing an Interpol investigation underway with the cooperation of Mastercard and Visa, Czech-based payment processor iKoruna discontinued service to file-hosting sites this week. The target of the investigation was not announced but transaction information was handed over to Interpol and all remaining funds have been frozen. The news comes soon after an Italian prosecutor announced a major crackdown on file-hosting sites, including some iKoruna clients.
(…)
IKoruna is a relatively small player but it was used as a payment option by many file-hosting services, including Turbobit, Uploaded, Filemate, Uload, Extabit, SecureUpload, Luckyshare and Depositfiles.
Monday morning these customers were contacted by iKoruna with the following message:
Dear merchants,
Unfortunately we were forced by association Visa and Mastercard cooperating with Interpol to stop all cooperation with filesharing merchants. Also they required detailed information about our merchants and all transactions that have been made.
Your current balance will be reserved for fraud investigation. After investigation the rest of your funds will be released to your bank account.
We are sorry for the inconvenience
IK support
The Interpol connection and the fact that transactions are being retained makes this story different from all other payment issues we’ve seen in the past. It suggests that the actions are part of a criminal investigation into one or more of the file-hosting clients of iKoruna.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/interpol-probe-targets-funds-of-major-file-hosting-services-130417/
The BBC’s mobile iPlayer client is now using digital rights management from embedded solutions player Inside Secure, which should herald the long-promised Android support
Posted: 2013/04/17 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionAlthough they complain extremely loudly about piracy in the United States, the major record labels have never tried to have a domain blocked there
Posted: 2013/04/17 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Filtering, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsInstead they’ve focused on countries around Europe and have achieved many of their site blocking successes through the UK High Court.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-proxy-now-included-in-secret-isp-blocklist-130417/
Pirate Bay Founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg Charged With Hacking Businesses Among Which Nordea Bank, Trying To Transfer $900,000 To Various Accounts
Posted: 2013/04/17 in Copyright, Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Network Security, New Business Models, Organized Crime, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsIt was never about the money…yeah, right…
A Swedish prosecutor has announced new hacking related charges against Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm. Together with three others he is suspected of hacking several companies including a bank, from where the defendants allegedly attempted to transfer money. The new changes will most likely mean that Svartholm will remain in prison when his Pirate Bay sentence concludes next month.
Once he landed in Sweden the authorities claimed Gottfrid had been involved in several instances of hacking, and today prosecutor Henry Olin of the International Public Prosecution Office in Stockholm announced several charges against the Pirate Bay co-founder.
Svartholm has been charged with several hacking related offenses including serious fraud, attempted aggravated fraud, and aiding attempted aggravated fraud. Three other defendants received similar charges.
“The data breaches involve very large amounts of data from companies and governments, including extensive personal data such as social security numbers and private details,”commented prosecutor Henry Olin.
The prosecution office further explains that among other offenses, the defendants hacked the Nordea Bank in an attempt to carry out unauthorized transactions.
According to the indictment, Svartholm tried to transfer 5.7 million Swedish kronor ($900,000) to various accounts, but only 27,000 kroner belonging to a Danish trade union was effectively transferred out.
“Offenses of fraud and attempted fraud are worsened when preceded by sophisticated hacking, were systematic, were intended to have significant cost and impact on public confidence in the payment system and were of a particularly dangerous nature,” the prosecution writes in the indictment.
Evidence of the crimes was obtained through a seized computer and logs of chats between Svartholm and one of the other defendants.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-charged-with-hacking-companies-and-a-bank-130416/
See also:
http://vrritti.com/?s=svartholm&submit=Search
http://vrritti.com/?s=anakata&submit=Search
and
http://web.archive.org/web/20040201224502/http://www.anakata.hack.se/coding/
http://web.archive.org/web/20040204234151/http://www.anakata.hack.se/papers/
Virgin Media UK will cut the ISPs download speed throttling to just 30% for some and rising to at most 40% but for a shorter period
Posted: 2013/04/16 in Bandwidth Management, Blocking, Education / Awareness, File Sharing, Filtering, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionUsenet via SSL may still escape the wrath of Virgin
Cable operator Virgin Media (Liberty Global) has today introduced a “more flexible and responsive” Traffic Management policy for customers on its 30Mbps and faster “unlimited” superfast broadband packages, which will cut the ISPs download speed throttling to just 30% for some and rising to at most 40% but for a shorter period.
Under the new policy Virgin Media will manage traffic between the hours of 4pm to 11pm each weekday and 11am to 11pm at weekends, which the provider claims will only impact around 5% of their customers each day. During these times the ISP will slow your upload and download speeds if you go above a certain level of usage (threshold) within a given timeframe.
The new system works on a 1 hour threshold (30% download / 60% upload speed reduction) and 2 hour threshold (40% download / 75% upload reduction), which means that some customers will be able to exit traffic management after at least 60 minutes if they get into it (the reduction use to last for 5 long hours).
But to exit after 60 minutes you’d need to stop any big downloads, otherwise the stricter 2 hour threshold might trigger. The usage thresholds, which trigger a speed reduction once you go over them, are perhaps best explained with the use of an example – Traffic Management on Virgin’s 60Mbps (XL60) package.
Some of the thresholds have also been lowered, especially on the side of upload speeds. For example, under the old system 60Mbps customers downloading over 10,000MB (10GB) during the daytime period would have triggered the 40% throttle for 5 hours. But now a 30% throttle will trigger, albeit after only 3.6GB of usage, and rising to 40% after 4.5GB if you fail to exit the first 60 minute window in time. This system may benefit some but others are likely to view it as being more restrictive.
As usual it can be complicated to explain the details of any policy and as a result Virgin Media has updated its Traffic Management Threshold’s page to give a better explanation for each package, which is useful because the usage thresholds (but not the reduction %) are different for each package and trying to explain all that here would quickly cause confusion.
It’s important to stress that Virgin’s new TM policy isn’t just about slowing all service speeds. The system is designed to prioritise certain types of traffic (e.g. web browsing, gaming etc.) in busy times or busy areas to “ensure that it is of an adequate quality“, while P2P and Newsgroups will be slowed.
Massive Anti-Piracy Operation Underway In Italy
Posted: 2013/04/15 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionA complete list of all the blocked sites in Italy:
bitshare.com
cineblog01.org
clipshouse.com
cyberlocker.ch
ddl-fantasy.org
filmfreestream.org
filmnuovistreaming.com
filmpertutti.tv
flashdrive.it
flashstream.in
freakshare.com
gatestreaming.com
italiafilm2.com
likeupload.net
megaload.it
nowdownload.co
nowvideo.co
panicmovie.altervista.org
queenshare.com
rapidgator.net
robin-film.net
speedvid.tv
streamingworld.forumcommunity.net
uploaded.net
uploadjet.net
videopremium.net
yourlifeupdated.it
More:
http://censura.bofh.it/elenchi.html
http://torrentfreak.com/massive-bittorrent-and-cyberlocker-domain-crackdown-underway-130415/
South Simcoe Police, along with representatives of the Motion Picture Association-Canada, tracked down movie pirate
Posted: 2013/04/13 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy, Stats / reportsA 51-year-old Bradford man faces multiple charges after police purchase pirated movies from him over the Internet on a buy/sell website.
South Simcoe Police, along with representatives of the Motion Picture Association-Canada, began to monitor the suspect.
Police obtained a search warrant of the man’s home Saturday, April 6 and uncovered copies of films, some of which are still in theatres today, police said.
The Motion Picture Association completed analysis of DVDs and confirmed they were pirated or “burned” copies of movies.
South Simcoe Police were notified and executed a search warrant and seized items from the home, such as computers, hard drives, thumb drives, burned copies of DVDs as well as blank writeable DVDs, shipping receipts and a sales log, including e-mail transactions between buyers and the accused.
The suspect has been charged with multiple counts under the Copyright Act.
More:
http://www.simcoe.com/news-story/2521544-pirated-current-movies-found-in-bradford-home/
Dutch Pirate Forum FXP Labeled As Criminal Organization By Court Of Appeal. Member Received 3 Month Prison Sentence
Posted: 2013/04/12 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsDutch language news articles and verdicts:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/114036/hof–piratenforum-is-criminele-organisatie.html
http://www.itenrecht.nl/?//Minder+punten+voor+%26%23039%3BWarez%26%23039%3B+die+worden+verwijderd+of+afgekeurd////32604/
http://zoeken.rechtspraak.nl/detailpage.aspx?ljn=BZ6496
http://zoeken.rechtspraak.nl/detailpage.aspx?ljn=BR5615
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FXP_board
