“No-one could imagine how we would survive without Google – most of us use it hundreds of times a day. But it is because they are so effective – and trusted – that Google and other search engines should use their creative energy to help the music industry fight piracy.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/22/harperson_google_rocket/
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 (winning or even losing) lawsuits than selling content and are often described as copyright trolls.
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-lawsuits-stopped-over-unlicensed-attorney-120222/
Agreement with Belgian collecting society does not appear to ‘exonerate’ Grooveshark
Dutch language news article:
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/80184/deal-met-belgische-sabam-maakt-grooveshark-niet-legaal.html
As part of the bail conditions, Dotcom must reside at his leased Coatesville, Auckland mansion. He cannot travel more than 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, from the Coatesville residence on which no helicopters are allowed. Earlier bail applications by Dotcom failed as he was thought to have access to helicopters and chartered private jet planes with which he could flee New Zealand.
Dotcom, who changed his last name to fit his outsize personality and online persona, is also banned from using the Internet.
Lawyers acting for the US government opposed the bail application, and claimed Dotcom has access to financial resources that make him a flight risk. However, Justice Dawson said in the North Shore District Court that as time had passed, authorities had not been able to show that Dotcom has further assets hidden, and the mere suspicion that he is very wealthy cannot be used against him.
Instead, Justice Dawson says Dotcom has “every reason to stay to be with his family and fight to keep his assets.” Justice Dawson also noted that while Dotcom has Finnish and German passports both those countries have treaties with the US that would allow for prosecution should he flee to either place.
(Video available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLMYI20XMhk )
Kim Dotcom, the founder of the file-sharing website Megaupload, was released on bail today after a New Zealand judge determined that authorities have seized any funds he could have used to flee the country.
US authorities allege Dotcom facilitated millions of illegal downloads through his company. He had been in custody since his arrest on 20 January.
A smiling Dotcom spoke to reporters briefly outside the court as he was ushered to a waiting truck.
“I am relieved to go home to see my family, my three little kids and my pregnant wife,” he said. “And I hope you understand that that is all I want to say right now.”
He confirmed he would be fighting US extradition efforts. Asked how he had been treated by the police after his high-profile arrest, Dotcom said, “Well, it felt a little bit like an audition to ‘American Idol.”‘
Dotcom was released without any monetary bail bond, which is standard for cases that come before New Zealand’s district courts. He does have other conditions of release, but Ministry of Justice officials declined a request by The Associated Press to release those details, saying the AP would need to apply to the judge.
North Shore District Court Judge Nevin Dawson found that the German-born Dotcom no longer posed a significant flight risk because, as far as the court was aware, he wasn’t hiding any money or assets that could help him flee the country. New Zealand courts had earlier turned down Dotcom’s bail application and a subsequent appeal, saying he did pose a flight risk, but Dawson said those decisions were made when details about Dotcom’s assets remained unclear.
“Since that time, all known assets have been seized and are unavailable for Mr Dotcom’s use or disposal,” the judge found. “No new assets or accounts of any significance have been revealed since his arrest. Mr. Dotcom’s submission that he has not concealed any assets or bank accounts has largely been borne out.”
Dawson also said he received an affidavit from Bonnie Lam, the Hong Kong chief financial officer of Megaupload, supporting Dotcom’s contention that he has no resources available to him.
Dawson disputed an earlier court finding that the US doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Germany.
The judge said there is a German law which prevents Germans being extradited to any country — but that a treaty between Germany and the U.S. would allow Dotcom to be prosecuted in Germany should he flee New Zealand and should German authorities deem prosecution appropriate. He said a similar situation applies to Finland.
Piracy was really, really killing the software business. We know our games were played by millions of people in the world but not necessarily being paid for. Our business partners know, and they’re disappointed in the number of sales of games on PSP and it’s very natural for them to make the business decision to divert resources to other business opportunities.
Wired: You mentioned piracy. What do you think: Do you have Vita locked down and protected from piracy?
Yoshida: There will always be the effort by those hackers. They are so smart, they’re sharp. But when you compare what happened with PSP to PS3, there are some hacking activities on PS3 but we’ve been doing much better. Our teams in Japan learned a lot and are applying that knowledge to fortifying PS Vita. So hopefully we will have much stronger protection on PS Vita.
Much more:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/02/shuhei-yoshida-dice-interview/
The actions are part of an ongoing sweep against people connected to the popular movie streaming portal Kino.to. Skyload’s operator is suspected of uploading more than 10,000 films to Kino.to’s paid affiliate program.
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.
http://torrentfreak.com/police-raid-file-hosting-site-arrest-operator-and-isp-120221/
A court agreed that both the streaming music service and its users infringe recording label copyrights and granted an injunction forcing an ISP to initiate a block of the service. The anti-piracy group behind the action hopes that other ISPs will now follow suit.
“Grooveshark is an illegal site, which is really big and popular. But they have a business model that is based on trickery and fraud”
“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”
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-isp-to-block-grooveshark-120221/
Studies show that the appeal of piracy has waned in France since the so-called three-strikes law, hailed by the music and movie industries and hated by advocates of an open Internet, went into effect. Digital sales, which were slow to get started in France, are growing. Music industry revenues are starting to stabilize.
“I think more and more French people understand that artists should get paid for their work,” said Pascal Nègre, president of Universal Music France. “I think everybody has a friend who has received an e-mail. This creates a buzz. There is an educational effect.”
But the curtain has not yet come down for the fallen file-sharers. As a presidential election nears, opposition to the law is heating up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/technology/20iht-piracy20.html
1. They hate the US, that’s for sure
2. They like it when they can get stuff for free
3. They do not want to be disturbed during their search for treasure
4. They sometimes share servers (and revenue)
5. They dress funny
French National Front woos internet pirates
Extreme right backs music tax alternative to Hadopi
The leader of the French National Front party, Marine Le Pen, wants Hadopi scrapped and replaced with a blanket licence to compensate creative industries. The extreme right party’s freetard-friendly gambit has caused the Socialists, who also oppose Hadopi, to rethink their policies.
Alliances between the pirates and far right parties are increasing. Most notoriously, the Pirate Bay was bankrolled by Carl Lundström, the heir to the Wasabröd fortune. Lundström financially supported the Progress Party and the racist Keep Sweden Swedish campaign, and was linked to a racist attack in 1985. [Swedish / English Translation.]
Much more:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/20/freetards_vote_for_us/
Previously:
Pirate Bay’s neo-Nazi sugar daddy - And the strange silence of the Freetards
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/26/pirate_bay_neo_nazi/
Wikileaks–in the news after publishing classified U.S. military documents–is connected to “Pirate Bay,” the patron of which is the Nazi-affiliated Carl Lundstrom.
http://spitfirelist.com/news/wikileaks-connected-to-swedish-nazi-milieu/
Assange’s Extremist Employees. Meet Russian-born, Swedish-domiciled, multi-aliased anti-Semite and Holocaust denier currently writing under the name “Israel Shamir,” a.k.a. Adam Ermash or Jöran Jermas
http://vrritti.com/2010/12/24/assanges-extremist-employees-meet-russian-born-swedish-domiciled-multi-aliased-anti-semite-and-holocaust-denier-currently-writing-under-the-name-%e2%80%9cisrael-shamir%e2%80%9d-a-k-a-adam-ermas/
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Online discussions about why exactly Dutch traffic to ThePirateBay.org is being routed via the US have pointed to the fact that the most popular site hosted at Applied Operations (AppliedOps.net AS40475 which is advertising ‘Pirate Bay Prefix’ 194.71.107.0/24) is Sean “Napster” Parker’s Causes.com.
Sean Parker Founder and Chairman
Sean Parker, Chairman and Founder of Causes, is an entrepreneur with a record of launching genre-defining companies that reinvent ways to spread information online. In 1999, at the age of 19, Sean co-founded Napster with Shawn Fanning and changed how people think about and share music. In 2001, Sean co-founded Plaxo, pioneering viral engineering technology for updating contact information. Sean served as Plaxo’s president until 2004, around which time he joined with Mark Zuckerberg to launch the online social network Facebook. Sean was the founding president of Facebook from 2004-2005, again turning a technology start-up into an industry giant. Sean is also a Managing Partner of venture capital firm Founders Fund, where he looks for and supports this spirit of innovation in up-and-coming developers.
http://www.causes.com/teamCauses is the world’s largest platform for activism and philanthropy. Causes was co-founded by Sean Parker and Joe Green. Sean’s background is in consumer internet products such as Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook and Joe comes from a background of grassroots organizing, having worked on the ground in political campaigns on the city, state, and presidential level. They combined their knowledge of offline organizing and online social networking to create Causes.
Dutch language article & comments:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/40418/1/Nederlands_verkeer_Pirate_Bay_gaat_via_VS.html
English language analysis
http://www.mountknowledge.nl/2012/02/01/ziggo-and-xs4all-block-of-thepiratebay-org-technical-details/
http://en.wikipopia.org/as40475
http://www.appliedops.net/contact/
http://www.appliedops.net/clients/
Previously:
Dutch Traffic To ThePirateBay.org Is Being Routed Via California And No One Knows Why
http://vrritti.com/2012/02/20/dutch-traffic-to-thepiratebay-org-is-being-routed-via-california-and-no-one-knows-why/
In a judgement handed down at the high court in London on Monday, Mr Justice Arnold ruled that The Pirate Bay and its users unlawfully share copyrighted music.
The Pirate Bay is one of the world’s longest-running and biggest filesharing sites. According to record labels, The Pirate Bay generated up to $3m in advertising revenue in October last year by making 4m copies of music and films available to its 30 million worldwide users. The site has 3.7 million users in the UK, according to comScore.
The high court is expected to rule in June whether the ISPs should prevent their customers from accessing The Pirate Bay.
Much more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/20/pirate-bay-blocked-uk-high-court
Tech expert Richard van den Berg of the company Mount Knowledge has conducted an analysis in relation to the recent Dutch Pirate Bay blockade.
He has demonstrated that traffic from The Netherlands to Sweden, where The Pirate Bay is hosted, is ‘hopping’ via servers in the US. Those servers belong to Applied Operations, LLC AS40475.
Van den Berg says that there is no technical explanation for this. Someone in California is simply interested in monitoring traffic to thepiratebay.org. He argues that that is quite peculiar.
Relevant articles and information:
(Dutch)
http://www.security.nl/artikel/40418/1/Nederlands_verkeer_Pirate_Bay_gaat_via_VS.html
http://www.xs4all.nl/geblokkeerd/
(English)
http://en.wikipopia.org/as40475
http://www.appliedops.net/contact/
http://www.appliedops.net/clients/
http://www.robtex.com/as/as40475.html
Mr Ortmann is described as shy, very straight and a humble person who lives a modest life in rented accommodation with a long-term girlfriend (MegaUpload)
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/198088/three-co-accused-same-address
Previously:
MegaUpload’s Bram van der Kolk: I’m a humble programmer with a wife and two-year-old son
http://vrritti.com/2012/02/11/megauploads-bram-van-der-kolk-im-a-humble-programmer-with-a-wife-and-two-year-old-son/
Mangham - who it is believed has Asperger’s and was said to have ‘no social life’ - claims that his work was ‘ethical hacking’ and he breached the security so that he could find vulnerabilities within the site, which the developers could then strengthen. This is someone who in previous times would have thrown everything aside to seek the source of the Nile and he would have continued until he did
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102690/Glenn-Mangham-hacked-Facebook-student-bedroom-brought-31m-empire.html
This endless pressure on an Aspergic man with severe mental health issues is barbaric
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-16996362
Richard O’Dwyer said the website had helped him with studies and said when he first set it up he “didn’t even think it would get that popular to be honest”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/student-to-face-us-trial-over-tvshack-website-6289235.html
On Thursday police in Cheltenham arrested a 26-year-old man who ran TV Links, which linked to video content on other sites, and shut down its Dutch servers. Then yesterday a 24-year-old IT worker who ran members-only torrent tracker website OiNK was arrested in Middlesbrough. Its servers – also in the Netherlands – were seized.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/media/news/a78397/tv-links-oink-shut-in-download-site-raids.html
Dutch hacker Brenno de Winter will not be prosecuted in The Netherlands for hacking Public Transportation Cards. He did break the law but was acting as a reporter too
http://vrritti.com/2011/09/09/dutch-hacker-brenno-de-winter-will-not-be-prosecuted-in-the-netherlands-for-hacking-public-transportation-cards-he-did-break-the-law-but-was-acting-as-a-reporter-too-public-prosecutors-office-argu/ and http://vrritti.com/2011/06/24/dutch-public-transportation-card-hacker-brenno-de-winter-interrogated-for-four-hours/ and http://vrritti.com/2011/09/15/public-transport-card-hacker-brenno-de-winter-and-wikileaks-hacker-rop-gonggrijp-criticize-and-advise-dutch-government-on-diginotar-issue-during-political-debate-emphasize-need-for-better-it-security/
Only 13 people said they were scared by the recent news and that it made them less likely to break the law, while 42 people said they’re just going elsewhere to find what they want. Twenty-five people admitted that downloading is harder now, and eight people hadn’t heard anything about it.
And yet overwhelmingly, a majority of people said they also pay for music and movies online via services like iTunes and Netflix.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/02/new-yorkers-not-afraid-of-illegal-file-sharing.html
Cinetube.es indexes thousands of copyrighted videos and was mentioned in last month’s Megaupload indictment. It is also one of the top targets of the entertainment industry once Spain’s new antipiracy legislation, dubbed the Sinde Law, is enforced starting in March.
“The links in this web have been found in different video webs online (veoh.com , megavideo.com… ) and we don’t know if these” are legal, says the home page of Cinetube. Referring to the links it redirects traffic to, it says: “all content has been exclusively found in public Internet sites, which makes this content of free distribution. No law prohibits distribution of free content and thus this page doesn’t violate any law.”
The ruling gives legal ammunition to the movement fighting antipiracy laws and will be the most recent precedent when the piracy battle heads to the Supreme Court. Ultimately the question is whether judges or officials should decide when copyright is being infringed.
In the verdict, the judges say the accusation could not prove any crime was being committed by Cinetube and directly dropped the charges, citing a previous ruling from 2011 that also released P2P site Sharemula.com from copyright infringement. Sharemula shut down shortly after winning the case.
The judges in the Cinetube case argue that like in the Sharemula precedent, Spanish law specifically limits the liability of P2P sites, which “will not be responsible for the information to which their users are redirected to,” as long as they 1. have not been “effectively” notified about their illegal nature and 2. if they have, act accordingly to delete the link.
Some of his statements:
Article 17.
- (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
- (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a17
Dutch language video:
http://247.bnn.nl/artikel/466/-24-7-aflevering-22-17-februari
File-sharing website Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom, along with several of the company’s other executives, are now facing new charges added by an American grand jury to those previously brought against them.
According to an indictment made public on Friday, Megaupload and its staff are accused of using copyrighted content from YouTube and several other sites. Dotcom, a German national born Kim Schmitz, faces extradition to the US from new Zealand.
He and six of his associates are now charged with eight additional counts of copyright infringement and wire fraud, in association with a series of allegations that Megaupload executives reproduced copyrighted materials from various sites and placed them on their file-sharing site.
They are also accused of distorting the origins of content posted to Megavideo.com, showing it as primarily user-generated, instead of copyright-infringing content.
MegaUpload was only facilitating copyright infringement and making money from it. They were hardly engaging in infringing activities themselves…
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/is-megaupload-a-lot-less-guilty-than-you-think.ars
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?
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-the-riaa-is-delusional-and-must-be-stopped-120217/
