Category Archives: Jurisprudence

May 31 2012

XS4ALL Managing Director Theo De Vries: Pirate Bay Blockade Counterproductive Because We’ve Seen Overall BitTorrent Traffic Increase

In a further effort to desperately try and prevent additional site blocking verdicts, XS4ALL Managing Director Theo de Vries is now claiming that blocking The Pirate Bay is counterproductive because the internet service provider has only seen overall Bittorrent traffic increase as of late. He makes his statement in an article in the Economy section of Dutch magazine Elsevier.

De Vries does not mention specific traffic data and also does not elaborate on whether the website itself has become more popular in The Netherlands.  Also, the blocking measure relates to a website, not the entire BitTorrent protocol, so one can expect file sharers to seek out other BitTorrent platforms now that The Pirate Bay has been blocked.

Secondly, XS4ALL isn’t one of the major ISPs active in The Netherlands and the blocking measure has not been widely implemented by every Dutch ISP just yet.

Regardless, The Pirate Bay website’s popularity in The Netherlands has recently dropped from the 27th spot to number 43 on Alexa’s site popularity list for The Netherlands.

In The United Kingdom, similar events are taking place as The Pirate Bay website has recently dropped to the 63rd spot, starting out as the 39th most popular website in that country, before it was subject to site blocking measures very recently. As in The Netherlands, not every ISP in the UK is fully blocking The Pirate Bay website just yet.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Economie/339993/Pirate-Bayblokkade-werkt-niet-tegen-downloaden.htm

Previously:

XS4ALL Home Page ‘Black Out’ As A Protest Against Imposed Pirate Bay Blockade. Mere Conduit?

Translation of banner text:

Today is a black day

Wednesday 1st February 2012: for the first time in history a Dutch ISP is being forced to render a foreign site inaccessible. On the basis of an order of the Court of The Hague, XS4ALL is required to block a number of IP addresses and domains.

The judge felt that freedom of information – a fundamental right of European citizens – was being outweighed by the interests of the entertainment industry. A wrong judgment. Therefore XS4ALL will appeal the ruling.

Theo de Vries
General Director XS4ALL

In his verdict, the judge noted that he should be careful and even reserved when being asked to impose remedies related to access to the internet. He noted that those remedies can only be applied when it is sufficiently certain that claimed (copyright) infringements have occurred and conditions in relation to proportionality and subsidiarity have been taken into account. The Court felt that those conditions had been met.

The judge specifically noted that this was about a balance between the protection of copyrights and neighbouring rights of the rights owners versus the protection of the freedom of entrepreneurship of ZIGGO and XS4ALL.

Dutch language verdict:
http://zoeken.rechtspraak.nl/detailpage.aspx?ljn=BV0549&u_ljn=BV0549

http://www.xs4all.nl/ on 1st February 2012

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2729223/xs4all-zwart-protest.html

See also:
http://vrritti.com/?s=xs4all

http://vrritti.com/2012/02/01/xs4all-home-page-black-out-as-a-protest-against-imposed-pirate-bay-blockade-mere-conduit/

and

Every XS4ALL Customer To Receive Free Spotify Premium Subscription
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/23/every-xs4all-customer-to-receive-free-spotify-premium-subscription/

May 30 2012

The Pirate Bay Apparently Looking To Have Its IP Range Blocked

“Threatening” to splatter its website across 256 IP addresses which are all part of its own IP range

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110649/the-pirate-bay-dreigt-met-256-eigen-ip-adressen.html

Previously:

Site Blocking Measures Appear To Work: The Pirate Bay Changes Its IP Address (But Still In The Same Range)
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/18/site-blocking-measures-appear-to-work-the-pirate-bay-changes-its-ip-address-but-still-in-the-same-range/

May 30 2012

A French superior court ruled in favor of YouTube on Tuesday, saying that the Google-owned video sharing platform did not infringe upon TF1, one of the biggest national TV channels in the country

TF1 claimed that YouTube users uploaded videos of some of the sports and film productions that the channel had the rights to distribute, and that Google owed the company up to €141 million (or about $176 million) in damages.

Instead the Tribunal de Grande Instance determined that YouTube was not responsible for filtering the videos that users upload to the platform, and ordered TF1 to pay Google €80,000 (or about $99,900) for legal fees incurred since the case was brought to court back in 2008.

More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/french-court-gives-youtube-a-victory-in-copyright-infringement-case/

May 29 2012

Dutch Operator T-Mobile Refuses To Block The Pirate Bay Website On Mobile Networks

Dutch providers are desperately trying to continue to provide access to The Pirate Bay. They previously tried to argue that changes in IP address and domain name would save them from having to block the torrent website.

Now they’re trying to argue that the judge should have indicated that the verdict applies to mobile networks too…

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2821798/t-mobile-blokkeert-pirate-bay-niet-mobiel.html

Previously:

Judges Are Not Idiots: Change Of Domain Name Or IP Address Will Not Change Illegality Of Websites
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/25/judges-are-not-idiots-change-of-domain-name-or-ip-address-will-not-change-illegality-of-websites/

May 27 2012

Pirate Bay Alexa Rank In UK Continues To Drop Due To Site Blocking. Pirate Bay Is Now 60th Most Popular Website

The website blocking measures in the UK are now seriously affecting The Pirate Bay’s popularity.

Not too long ago, the Pirate Bay was the 39th most popular website in the UK. Right now the site’s popularity is decreasing and even after only a few weeks of blocking by a limited number of ISPs, the effect is already quite noticeable:

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;2/GB

Similar effects in have been observed in The Netherlands too, although only a few ISPs are blocking the site in that country as most of them have refused to do so, regardless of relevant legal verdicts. That situation is expected to change sometime next week.

Previously:

High Court has ruled that several UK ISPs including Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must block The Pirate Bay website
http://vrritti.com/2012/04/30/high-court-has-ruled-that-several-uk-isps-including-sky-everything-everywhere-talktalk-o2-and-virgin-media-must-block-the-pirate-bay-website/

Pirate Bay’s Alexa Rank For UK And NL Continues To Drop After Blocking Measures
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/12/pirate-bays-alexa-rank-for-uk-and-nl-continues-to-drop-after-blocking-measures/

May 25 2012

Judges Are Not Idiots: Change Of Domain Name Or IP Address Will Not Change Illegality Of Websites

Dutch ISPs just lost one of many court cases against BREIN and will now have to block the additional IP addresses or domain names of The Pirate Bay too. Lawyers are nonetheless looking forward to the next ‘circumvention method’ The Pirate Bay will try and use, only to have that method formally declared useless too.

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110629/brein-wint-ex-parte-verbod-op-nieuw-tpb-adres.html

Previously:

Does A Change Of IP Address Change The Illegallity Of A Website? KPN And Tele2 Seem To Think So
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/23/does-a-change-of-ip-address-change-the-illegallity-of-a-website-kpn-and-tele2-seem-to-think-so/

May 24 2012

Google, which spent $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola and its patents in a deal that closed Tuesday, has suffered a major legal defeat at the hands of Microsoft, which successfully argued to a German court that Motorola has violated a patent related to text messaging

The ruling means Microsoft can enforce a ban onAndroid products in Germany. But more importantly, it could signal an end to at least one long-running dispute between Microsoft and Android players. In the increasingly popular game of technology legal warfare, the side that gets to a significant ban first typically has the upper hand in negotiating a settlement.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft-legal-win-over-google-may-signal-ceasefire/

May 24 2012

Italian Court Orders All ISPs To Block KickAssTorrents

KickAssTorrents, one of the most popular BitTorrent websites on the Internet today, is facing a total blackout in Italy

http://torrentfreak.com/italian-court-orders-all-isps-to-block-kickasstorrents-120524/

Previously:

Italian ISP blocking of Pirate Bay leads to significantly fewer visitors – thepiratebay.org is now only the 673rd most visited site in Italy
http://vrritti.com/2011/01/05/italian-isp-blocking-of-pirate-bay-leads-to-significantly-fewer-visitors-thepiratebay-org-is-now-only-the-673th-most-visited-site-in-italy/

May 23 2012

Dutch Court: online marketplace Marktplaats not liable for copyright infringements

Dutch marketplace website Marktplaats, acquired by eBay, can’t be held liable for copyright infringements, the Dutch Court of Appeal of Leeuwarden ruled yesterday. Stokke, manufacturer of chairs for children, sued Marktplaats because it wouldn’t prevent sellers from placing infringing advertisements of counterfeit Stokke chairs and Marktplaats wouldn’t take enough measures to remove these advertisements.

The Court decided otherwise. Marktplaats offers a facility where every seller can advertise on equal terms. It doesn’t promote certain advertisements from certain sellers, so it doesn’t play an active role as a service provider. According to the Court this means Marktplaats is a hosting service according to the E-Commerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC) and the Dutch Civil Code (article 6:196c paragraph 4) and may therefore rely on the legal indemnity mentioned in these legal frameworks This indemnity provision states that – in short – under certain conditions hosting services are not liable for copyrighted content on their websites.

More:
http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-post/2012/05/23/dutch-court-online-marketplace-marktplaats-not-liable-for-copyright-infringements.html

May 23 2012

Anti-Piracy Organization BREIN & Dutch Police Hunt Down eBook Uploader

A Dutch 21-year-old man has posted 4,900 Dutch eBooks and 10 seasons of a certain TV Show on The Pirate Bay.

Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN has tracked down this uploader and filed a criminal complaint against the individual with the Dutch police.

The Dutch police has interrogated the suspect who has now confessed his crimes. He is risking a fine of 19,500 EUR or a prison sentence of 6 months.

Should the public prosecutor’s office decide not to prosecute the individual, BREIN will go and start a civil litigation procedure.

Not too long ago, Dutch internet service provider UPC told BREIN to go and prosecute uploaders.

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110601/brein-stuurt-politie-af-op-uploader.html

May 23 2012

Does A Change Of IP Address Change The Illegallity Of A Website? KPN And Tele2 Seem To Think So

And that’s why they refuse to block The Pirate Bay website (again) now that it has changed its IP address. The Dutch providers feel that BREIN just has to take them to court again.

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110604/kpn-en-tele2–geen-blokkade-nieuw-pirate-bay-adres.html

May 23 2012

ITC judge recommends import ban on Microsoft’s Xbox

An administrative law judge for the International Trade Commission issued a recommendation that the commission ban 4GB and 250 GB Xbox gaming consoles from import to the United States. The recommendation(PDF) was released to the public on Monday, and would punish Microsoft for infringing against some of Motorola’s patents. The patents permit video transmission and compression on the console and between the console and its controllers.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/05/itc-judge-recommends-import-ban-on-microsofts-xbox/

May 22 2012

4 Years In Prison For Armenian Bredolab Botnet Operator

In October last year the Dutch Team High Tech Crime pulled the plug on the Bredolab infrastructure which was hosted at Dutch hosting provider Leaseweb. Malware distribution, coordinated from that location, managed to infect millions of PCs worldwide.

The operator of the botnet, Georgy A. had leased 143 servers at a price of 20,000 EUR per month. He also allowed other criminals to make use of his infrastructure.

Georgy A. could be located via the Facebook account of his girlfriend. An Armenian Court has found Georgy A. guilty of computer sabotage as he also used the botnet network for Denial of Service attacks as well as spam rounds involving the distribution of billions of spam messages.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/41590/1/Beheerder_Bredolab-botnet_krijgt_4_jaar_cel.html

Previously:
http://vrritti.com/?s=bredolab&submit=Search

May 22 2012

The Supreme Court won’t reduce the US$675,000 verdict against a Boston University student who illegally downloaded 30 songs and shared them on the Internet

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., who was successfully sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally sharing music on peer-to-peer networks. In 2009, a jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000, or $22,500 for each song he illegally downloaded and shared.

A federal judge called that unconstitutionally excessive, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the penalty at the request of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Brothers Records Inc. and other record labels represented by the RIAA.

http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120521/verdict-firm-for-student-who-downloaded-music-120521/20120521/?hub=CalgaryHome

May 21 2012

18 Years In Prison And Involuntary Commitment For Dutch Pedophile Robert Mikelsons

Mikelsons lost his ‘cool’ today when the verdict was read. He threw water at the judge and started shouting that “it was all nonsense” and told the judge “to shut his mouth”. When the judge announced the actual sentence, Mikelsons showed him the well-known middle finger.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/binnenland/2815182/robert-m-krijgt-18-jaar-cel-en-tbs.html

Previously:

Public Prosecutor Discloses More Information About Pedophile Robert Mikelsons. He May Have Abused More Children Than The 87 Currently Identified
http://vrritti.com/2012/04/05/public-prosecutor-discloses-more-information-about-pedophile-robert-mikelsons-he-may-have-abused-more-children-than-the-87-currently-identified/

Breivik And Mikelsons: Two Well-Articulated, Sympathetic And Hyper-Intelligent Nut Cases?
http://vrritti.com/2012/04/04/breivik-and-mikelsons-two-well-articulated-sympathetic-and-hyper-intelligent-nut-cases/

Do You Know Why Some Children Can Not Recall Being Sexually Abused By Robert Mikelsons? Because They Were 19 Days Old
http://vrritti.com/2012/03/20/do-you-know-why-some-children-can-not-recall-being-sexually-abused-by-robert-mikelsons-because-they-were-19-days-old/

Dutch Pedophile Robert Mikelsons Was Teaching Peers How To Abuse Toddlers And Babies Without Parents Noticing
http://vrritti.com/2012/03/14/dutch-pedophile-robert-mikelsons-was-teaching-peers-how-to-abuse-toddlers-and-babies-without-parents-noticing/

The investigation into the Dutch pedophile Robert Mikelsons, who has abused 87 toddlers and babies, produced 46,803 pictures and 3,672 videos (8 Terabytes of data)
http://vrritti.com/2012/03/12/the-investigation-into-the-dutch-pedophile-robert-mikelsons-who-has-abused-87-toddlers-and-babies-produced-46803-pictures-and-3672-videos-8-terabytes-of-data/

Dutch Law Enforcement Hacks Into Computer Systems Of Suspected Child Abusers, Finds 220,000 Child Abuse Images, Videos And Manuals On “How To Kidnap, Abuse And Kill Children” – All Tied To Robert Mikelsons Case Who Abused 87 Toddlers While Working At A DayCare Center in Amsterdam
http://vrritti.com/2011/08/31/dutch-law-enforcement-hacks-into-computer-systems-of-suspected-child-abusers-finds-220000-child-abuse-images-videos-and-manuals-on-how-to-kidnap-abuse-and-kill-children-all-tied-to-robert/

May 21 2012

Greek Court Orders ISP Blockades of ‘Pirate’ Music Sites

Following in the footsteps of other courts around Europe, a Greek court has ordered the country’s ISPs to start censoring sites that allegedly infringe copyright. The blockades, which were requested by music rights organizations against two specific sites, will be implemented by DNS record tampering and IP address filtering.

2012 is proving to be momentous year for those looking to censor the Internet on copyright grounds. With nationwide blockades of The Pirate Bay biting in many countries including both the Netherlands and the UK, it was only a question of time before the phenomenon spread further still.

Much more:
http://torrentfreak.com/greek-court-orders-isp-blockades-of-pirate-music-sites-120521/

May 19 2012

Record companies score infringement victory over “Russian Facebook” vKontakte

Russian social media site vKontakte—a platform with 135 million accounts across Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus—has lost its court appeal seeking to overturn an earlier ruling against it stating that the company was infringing copyright by allowing file-sharing services to integrate with vKontakte’s user-uploaded media libraries.

On May 17, Russia’s Commercial Court of St. Petersburg reaffirmed a lower court’s January ruling in favor of SBA Music Publishing and Gala Records, a Russian subsidiary of EMI, which claimed that vKontakte was liable for all the copyright infringement taking place on its site. The Facebook-like site (even down to the design) will most likely be required to shutter or severely restrict its file-sharing services.

More:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/record-companies-score-infringement-victory-over-russian-facebook/

May 18 2012

UK ISPs must block The Pirate Bay by May 30

Two of the five U.K. ISPs have already enacted site-blocking to prevent access to The Pirate Bay. More than a quarter of the U.K. population will see the site blocked by May 30.

May 18 2012

Site Blocking Measures Appear To Work: The Pirate Bay Changes Its IP Address (But Still In The Same Range)

New IP address: http://194.71.107.80/

The Pirate Bay’s IP Range: 194.71.107.0 – 194.71.107.255

inetnum: 194.71.107.0 – 194.71.107.255
netname: THEPIEATEBAY-NET
descr: The Pirate Bay
country: DE
route: 194.71.107.0/24
descr: The Pirate Bay
origin: AS50066
mnt-by: MNT-STN
source: RIPE # Filtered

The Dutch media report that the Dutch judge has not allowed BREIN to submit new IP addresses so BREIN may have to go back to court for each and every new IP address The Pirate Bay decides to use after a blockade has been implemented.

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110547/nieuw-ip-adres-pirate-bay-omzeilt-brein-blokkade.html

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay’s Alexa Rank in the United Kingdom has dropped to the 50th spot, a rapid decline since 12th May 2012 when it was the 42nd most popular site in that country.

May 17 2012

Finnish Court: Open WiFi Owner Not Liable for File-Sharing Copyright Infringement

In a landmark ruling, a Finnish District Court (*Ylivieskan käräjäoikeus*) has today clarified the legal status of WiFi owners for internet file-sharing in the light of various pieces of EU legislation.

Finnish Anti-Piracy Centre, a coalition of entertainment industry rights-holders, had sued a Finnish woman for copyright infringement, demanding compensation of circa 6000 euros for internet file-sharing conducted with the Direct Connect (DC++) protocol through her internet connection.

This alleged copyright infringement had taken place in a specific 12-minute period in July 14 2010, a date when a summer theater play with an audience of around hundred people was held at the premises of the former school
owned and resided by the lady.

The applicants were unable to provide any evidence that the connection-owner herself had been involved in the file-sharing. The court thus examined whether the mere act of providing a WiFi connection not protected with a password can be deemed to constitute a copyright-infringing act.

Crucially, the applicants also sought an injunction to prevent the defendant for committing any similar acts in the future. Had the injunction been granted, the legal status of various open WiFi providers would have turned out extremely difficult, as rights-owners would have been provided with a powerful legal weapon to shut them down in cases of similar, arguably insignificant infringements by incidental visitors and customers.

More:
http://www.turre.com/2012/05/finnish-court-open-wifi-owner-not-liable-for-file-sharing-copyright-infringement/

May 17 2012

Dutch Advocate-General at Supreme Court Advises Implementation of Both a Ban on Downloading From an Illegal Source AND a Copy Levy

Dutch Supreme Court can choose to follow his advice. Advocate-General Toon Huydecoper is also of the opinion that the European Court of Justice should be the first Court to offer its opinion about matters such as these, including whether the current Dutch Private Copying Levy regime is in accordance with the Berne Three Step Test.

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110527/hoge-raad-overweegt-downloadverbod-pl-s-heffing.html

Previously:

Dutch Advocate General proposes to submit prejudicial questions to the ECJ about the private copying levy
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/17/dutch-advocate-general-proposes-to-submit-prejudicial-questions-to-the-ecj-about-the-private-copying-levy/

May 17 2012

Fredrik Neij, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, takes his case to the European Court of Human Rights

Pirate Bay is mostly used to share illegal, copyrighted content, which is stimulated by its founders (hence the pirate reference in it’s name). It is now up to the European Court to decide if Neij’s share in offering the Pirate Bay service is protected under the right to receive and impart information under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

More:
http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-post/2012/05/15/pirate-bay-founder-takes-case-to-european-court-of-human-rights.html

May 12 2012

Pirate Bay’s Alexa Rank For UK And NL Continues To Drop After Blocking Measures

In the UK, The Pirate Bay website – before the blockade – was more popular than the websites of Virgin Media, NatWest and The Sun. That no longer seems to be the case.

back then:

now:

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;1/GB

In The Netherlands The Pirate Bay website was the 27th most popular website before the blockade and the name change from thepiratebay.org to thepiratebay.se. It then dropped to the 41st spot and is now the 43rd most popular website in The Netherlands. As such it is no longer more popular than the websites of Microsoft, Apple or Amazon.

back then:

now:

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;1/NL

May 12 2012

Court Upholds Google-NSA Relationship Secrecy

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the National Security Agency’s decision to withhold from the public documents confirming or denying any relationship it has with Google concerning encryption and cybersecurity.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-upheld/

May 11 2012

The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has asked the Swedish government for clemency citing health and business concerns

Peter Sunde was scheduled to begin his 8 month jail sentence in the Västervik Norra facility Wednesday, but at least for now that won’t be going ahead. Sunde has filed a plea with the Swedish government requesting clemency, citing health concerns and fears for his fledgling micro-payment business, Flattr.

Blast From The Past:

Mr Sunde has managed to convince investors that the idea is sound, both ideologically and financially. Flattr has angel backing from Stefan Glaenzer, Last.fm’s first investor and chairman, and Eileen Burbidge, formerly of Skype. The pair run White Bear Yard, a hub for tech-startups in central London.

“When we invested, it was in Linus and Peter,” says Ms Burbidge, who says she’s unconcerned by Mr Sunde’s conviction in the Swedish courts in the Pirate Bay case (he says the appeal process will take so long he is unlikely ever to have to serve his jail sentence).

“These guys were in the team that was involved in carrying 48 per cent of the world’s internet traffic,” says Ms Burbidge. “They know how to scale.”

http://vrritti.com/2010/07/06/pirate-bay-founder-aims-to-make-a-flattr-world/

Sunde adds that if the authorities can’t see their way to a full pardon, a delay before he has to serve his sentence would be the next best thing. The specific nature of his health concerns have not been detailed publicly.

In addition to prison sentences there is also the outstanding issues of damages. Recently it was revealed that the compensation amount the Pirate Bay founders are required to hand over to the movie and recording company plaintiffs has been growing steadily. Due to interest being added since May 2006, as of February 2012 the amount owed had jumped from roughly $6.9 million dollars to nearly $11 million.

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-peter-sunde-requests-pardon-120511/

See also:

WikiLeaks continues to fund itself via tech startup Flattr

WikiLeaks, which publishes anonymous leaks of secret material (most recently 250,000 previously secret US embassy cables) still has a trick up its sleeve. In the last few days its sources of funding have been gradually cut off. MasterCard, PayPal and now Visa have all suspended payments to the organsation and founder Julian Assange has been remanded in custody in London without bail (so far).

However there remains one source of funding so far untouched, and that is a small startup, Flattr, created by Peter Sunde, co-founder of torrent site Pirate Bay, who has been reminding Twitter users today via his personal Twitter account that it’s still possible to “help” Wikileaks.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-continues-to-fund-itself-via-tech-startup-flattr/

May 10 2012

The Dutch Court has forbidden the Dutch Pirate Party from linking to, operating or listing websites that allow the public to circumvent a local Pirate Bay blockade

Hackers and pirates are doing Big Brother and Big Content a huge favor. Big Data is watching closely

The Court specifically ruled that the Party’s reverse proxy has to remain offline. It was further ordered that Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses have to be filtered from the Pirate Party’s generic proxy. In addition the Pirate Party can’t link to other websites that allow the public to bypass the blockade. These orders are only valid when paired with an encouragement to circumvent.

Should the Pirate Party fail to comply with the Court’s ruling it faces fines of €5,000 per day to a maximum penalty of €250,000.

http://torrentfreak.com/court-forbids-linking-to-pirate-bay-proxies-120510/

May 10 2012

5 Dutch ISPs Given 10 Days To Censor The Pirate Bay. Are Judges Expecting Domain Name, File, URL And IP Address Specific Litigation?

Today the Court of The Hague ruled that BREIN’s latest ISP targets – UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort – must also block The Pirate Bay.

The blocking order is broad covering 20 specific domains including ThePirateBay.org, ThePirateBay.se, ThePirateBay.com, DePiraatBaii.be and TheMusicBay.net. BREIN also asked for a total of three IP addresses to be blocked, but the Court only granted a block against two after it decided that one of addresses carried only Pirate Bay-owned content such as website images and CSS files.

A request from BREIN to be permitted to add further IP addresses and domains to the ruling was opposed by the ISPs and ultimately denied by the Court. This means that The Pirate Bay could simply add a new domain or IP-address to circumvent the block.

http://torrentfreak.com/five-more-dutch-isps-given-10-days-to-censor-the-pirate-bay-120510/

May 9 2012

Cloud Savvy Pedophiles Rejoice. New York Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick: “Merely viewing Web images of child pornography does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement”

“Caching” apparently not “storing”. New business opportunities for cloud providers. 

Viewing child pornography online isn’t a crime, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in the case of a college professor whose work computer was found to have stored more than a hundred illegal images in its Web cache.

The decision rests on whether accessing and viewing something on the Internet is the same as possessing it, and whether possessing it means you had to procure it. In essence, the court said no to the first question and yes to the second.

“Merely viewing Web images of child pornography does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement within the meaning of our Penal Law,” Senior Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick wrote for a majority of four of the six judges.

“Rather, some affirmative act is required (printing, saving, downloading, etc.) to show that defendant in fact exercised dominion and control over the images that were on his screen,” Ciparick wrote. “To hold otherwise, would extend the reach of (state law) to conduct — viewing — that our Legislature has not deemed criminal.”

Read the full appeals court ruling (.pdf)

In other words, “the purposeful viewing of child pornography on the internet is now legal in New York,” Judge Victoria A. Graffeo wrote in one of two concurring opinions that agreed with the result but not with the majority’s reasoning.

All of the judges agreed that child pornography is an abomination, but they disagreed whether it was necessary to “criminalize all use of child pornography to the maximum extent possible,” as Ciparick wrote in the majority opinion. The majority said that was up to the Legislature, not the courts, to decide.

The court dismissed one of the two counts of promoting a sexual performance of a child and one of the dozens of counts of possession of child pornography on which James D. Kent was convicted. The court upheld the other counts against Kent, an assistant professor of public administration at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Kent’s convictions on the other counts rested on other evidence, including a folder on his machine that stored about 13,000 saved images of girls whom investigators estimated to be 8 or 9 years old and four messages to an unidentified third party discussing a research project into the regulation of child pornography.

“I don’t even think I can mail the disk to you, or anyone else, without committing a separate crime. So I’ll probably just go ahead and wipe them,” one of the messages said.

Much more:
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/08/11602955-viewing-child-porn-on-the-web-legal-in-new-york-state-appeals-court-finds

May 7 2012

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom

In what could be a major blow to Android, Google’s mobile operating system, a San Francisco jury issued a verdict today that the company broke copyright laws when it used Java APIs to design the system. The ruling is a partial victory for Oracle, which accused Google of violating copyright law.

But the jury couldn’t reach agreement on a second issue—whether Google had a valid “fair use” defense when it used the APIs. Google has asked for a mistrial based on the incomplete verdict, and that issue will be briefed later this week.

The results aren’t clear going forward. Both sides are going to write briefs arguing how to proceed from here, with Google likely arguing the verdict needs to be thrown out, while Oracle somehow tries to hang on to its win on question 1A, the fundamental question about whether Google infringed copyright.

More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/05/jury-rules-google-violated-copyright-law-google-moves-for-mistrial.ars

May 6 2012

So users of UK ISP Virgin Media can no longer access The Pirate Bay? Well, presuming you still have access to Google there are a few little tricks we can try

With TorrentFreak, Pirate Parties and Gizmodo around, who needs a court of law?

http://torrentfreak.com/unblocking-the-pirate-bay-the-hard-way-is-fun-for-geeks-120506/