http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-demands-return-of-millions-of-dollars-from-u-s-govt-120531/
Category Archives: Litigation
UK ISP Sky Broadband Blocks Internet Piracy Website The Pirate Bay. Says It Is In Favor Of Copyright Protection
Sky Broadband (BSkyB) yesterday become the latest internet provider to block its UK customers from being able to access The Pirate Bay website, which follows an identical move by both Virgin Media and Orange UK. Several other operators, including O2, TalkTalk and BT, are expected to follow suit within the next couple of weeks.
The move follows an April 2012 ruling by the High Court of Justice in London (here), which imposed a court order upon the ISPs that required them to block the website. The Pirate Bay is one of the world’s largest BitTorrent (P2P / File Sharing) trackers but also allows internet copyright infringement (piracy) to take place.
Sky Statement
We have invested billions of pounds in high-quality entertainment for our customers because we know how much our customers value it. It’s therefore important that companies like ours do what they can, alongside the Government and the rest of the media and technology industries, to help protect their copyright. Such protection makes sure that consumers continue to benefit from TV programmes, movies and music both now and in the future. This means taking effective action against online piracy and copyright infringement.
Increasingly content owners are turning to the courts to present evidence of copyright infringement by websites that offer content illegally to users. When they do so, and the court agrees that copyright infringement has occurred, the content owners can seek a court order which compels the internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to those sites over their broadband networks.
To date Sky has received court orders to block the following websites that were found to have breached copyright laws:
* Newzbin 2, which Sky blocked on 13 December 2011
* The Pirate Bay, which Sky blocked on 30 May 2012
Registered Sex Offenders Are Fighting for Facebook Access
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/
MegaUpload’s Defense Files for Dismissal of All Government Charges
The legal team filed the motion on the grounds that the US government had violated MU’s due process rights by destroying its business without properly serving the company. Coincidentally, unlike people, companies cannot be served outside of US territory (like, say, New Zealand). Per the statute, due process rights are harmed when, “a liberty or property interest which has been interfered with by the State and that the procedures attendant upon that deprivation were constitutionally sufficient.”
MU’s legal team is arguing that seizing the company’s domains and data has effectively put it out of business.
More:
http://gizmodo.com/5914419/megauploads-defense-files-for-dismissal-of-all-government-charges
Larry Ellison’s rose colored glasses: “The jury found that Google infringed”
Lawyer: “Aereo is taking the plaintiffs’ broadcast signals and reprocessing them so they can be streamed over the Internet. That is a violation of copyright law”
EU to sue Netherlands, Portugal, 3 others for not implementing new telecoms rules aimed at protecting users’ privacy online
The other countries are Belgium, Poland and Slovenia, the official said, declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. The Commission is due to announce its decision to take legal action on Thursday.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/29/net-us-eu-telecoms-rules-idUSBRE84S0YO20120529
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lost his Supreme Court fight against extradition to Sweden to face accusations of sex offences
The implementation of the judgement will be deferred for two weeks
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/
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.
Notorious Megaupload.com kingpin Kim Dotcom has been relieved of his electronic monitoring cuffs and is returning to graze in his NZ$30 million mansionette rental in suburban Auckland
A New Zealand court this week relaxed his bail term and ruled that Dotcom was no longer a flight risk.
New Zealand press report that meaning Ortmann, Batato and Van der Kolk- are also no longer subject to electronic monitoring.
Dotcom, currently on bail awaiting an extradition hearing to the US, last week his defence team filed a motion requesting that Dotcom be allowed to move back into the property with his wife Mona and their children.
At a court appearance last week Dotcom’s bail conditions were also altered in order for him to spend more time at Neil Finn’s recording studio where he is recording his own album.
Judge David Harvey told the Auckland District Court he believes it is unlikely that Dotcom will flee New Zealand, claiming that the original flight risk was overstated and he no longer needs to be electronically monitored.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/29/kimdotcom_hangs_at_home/
Megaupload Wins Crucial Evidence Disclosure Battle With US Government
A New Zealand court has ruled that the U.S. Government must hand over the evidence they have against Megaupload so Kim Dotcom and other employees can properly defend themselves against the pending extradition request. The U.S. refused to comply but Judge Harvey concluded that this would be unfair. He further noted that the entire U.S. case stands or falls on the strength of the alleged copyright infringement charges.
This is a significant victory for Megaupload, and not only because they can now build a better defense against the extradition as well as any U.S trial. The comments made by Judge Harvey also suggest that without proper evidence of criminal copyright infringements against the accused, there’s not much left of the case. And as Kim Dotcom revealed earlier, this evidence might not be that strong
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-wins-crucial-evidence-disclosure-battle-with-us-govt-120529/
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/
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/
United States law enforcement authorities have confirmed they are investigating images of child abuse unearthed from Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload servers
United States law enforcement authorities have confirmed they are investigating images of child abuse unearthed from Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload servers.
The material was discovered during FBI examination of the contents of the internet millionaire’s cloud storage system, seized in the global takedown of the “Mega Conspiracy” that included police raids at Dotcom’s Auckland mansion in January.
A spokesman from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Peter Carr, said there was an ongoing investigation into the images of child pornography found on the servers but would make no further comment.
More:
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/child-porn-found-megaupload-servers-fbi-4901637
A former Lloyds Banking Group head of digital banking fraud and security has been charged with defrauding her employer by submitting false expenses claims that totalled £2.46m
Kim Dotcom lawyer blasts US government’s “pattern of delay” (MegaUpload)
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/
Fox and NBCUniversal have both separately sued Dish Network in a Los Angeles federal court over its new service that lets consumers skip TV ads
Apple has accused the US government of siding “with monopoly, rather than competition”
Govt lawyers red-faced after FBI spirits Dotcom evidence to US (MegaUpload)
The Government’s lawyers have been ordered to explain how the FBI left the country with evidence in the Kim Dotcom case meant to be kept in “secure custody” by New Zealand police.
High Court chief judge Helen Winkelmann has told the Attorney-General’s lawyer, Mike Ruffin, he has until Monday to explain why FBI agents were allowed to take 135 cloned computer and data storage devices to the United States.
At a legal challenge at the High Court in Auckland yesterday, Dotcom’s lawyer Paul Davison, QC, called the revelation “high-handed” at best and “at the worst misleading”.
Mr Davison and lawyers for Dotcom’s three co-accused want a judicial review into search warrants used during FBI-inspired raids on January 20. Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortman and Bram van der Kolk were arrested over allegations of criminal copyright violation through their file-sharing website Megaupload.
Mr Davison said he asked for assurances in correspondence with Mr Ruffin’s predecessor, Anne Toohey, that no evidence would leave New Zealand shores unless on the back of a court decision.
More:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10808032
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
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
Facebook settles lawsuit over “Sponsored Stories”
Facebook Inc has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged the site’s “Sponsored Stories” feature publicized users’ “likes” without compensation or the ability to opt out, according to a court document filed on Tuesday.
The proposed class action lawsuit, filed in a San Jose, California federal court, could have included nearly one of every three Americans, with billions of dollars in damages, court documents say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/22/us-facebook-settlement-idUSBRE84L16920120522
The data on Kim Dotcom’s personal computer is encrypted, and he will only hand over passwords if he can also access the data (MegaUpload)
Try “w0rldd0m1n4t10n”
And so it winds on further: in the latest installment to the Aotearoan legal battle, Kim Dotcom’s lawyer that he will only hand over his passwords as part of a “proper judicial process”.
Dotcom, head of Megaupload and accused by the FBI of racketeering and copyright infringement, is resisting extradition to the USA and seeking the return of computers and other property seized when his rented mansion in New Zealand was raided by the Feds and New Zealand police.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/22/dotcom_password_court_fight/
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.
Undercover MPAA Agents Expose Alleged Movie Pirates In What Hollywood Describes As The Largest Copyright Related Fraud Case In UK History
A British couple are facing life imprisonment after an MPAA sting operation revealed they were the owners of streaming links site SurfTheChannel. Aside from the use of an undercover agent who gained access to the defendants’ house under false pretenses, the case also involves an unprecedented cooperation between the US and UK governments, in which a defendant in the US was offered a deal after agreeing to cooperate and testify in a UK trial.
For years the US movie industry has tried to bring streaming links site SurfTheChannel.com to its knees.
After a chain of events that reads like a Hollywood blockbuster script, the case is now on trial with husband and wife team Anton and Kelly Vickerman as the defendants.
Much more:
http://torrentfreak.com/undercover-mpaa-agents-expose-alleged-movie-pirates-120521/
See also:
Hollywood sting lands “pirate” pair in the brig
A Gateshead couple are accused of running a site that enabled a billion illegal film and TV viewings a year
http://www.scribd.com/doc/94186395/Vickerman-Piracy-Case-Sunday-Times
The Vatican is threatening to take legal action against those responsible for publishing a new book of leaked internal documents
The book sheds light on power struggles and corruption inside the Holy See and the thinking of its embattled top banker.
http://www.rt.com/news/vatican-slams-leaked-documents-criminal-694/
BitTorrent Inc. is claiming damages for trademark infringement, unfair competition and cybersquatting
“This filing is part of a series of actions that we’ve taken since 2010 to prevent this company from using the BitTorrent brand to trick users into using a service that is not the genuine article our company provides,” a BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson told TorrentFreak.
In conclusion, BitTorrent Inc. is asking for BitTorrent Marketing to be barred from using the BitTorrent mark “or any mark confusingly similar.” They also request damages for trademark related offenses committed by their German namesake including $100,000 for each infringing domain name.
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-inc-takes-legal-action-against-download-scammers-120518/
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:
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.
More:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/uk-isps-must-block-the-pirate-bay-by-may-30/4712
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.
Simon & Schuster settles antitrust-ebook suit with state AGs
Indian Supreme Court orders Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pirate Bay, Pastebin blocks, gets DDoSed
An injunction issued by an Indian court in a copyright infringement case has forced Indian Internet service providers to block access to the video-sharing sites Vimeo and DailyMotion, Bittorrent-tracker The Pirate Bay, text-sharing site Pastebin and a number of other websites. In response, members of Anonymous mounted a denial of service attack on the websites of the Indian Supreme Court and the Indian National Congress political party. As of 2pm GMT, both sites are back up.
The temporary restraining order (PDF) was issued by The High Court of Judicature at Madras in response to a lawsuit by the Chennai, India based company Copyrightlabs (whose site appears to have been taken down for maintenance) over the sharing of the movie “3″ online. It orders ISPs to stop sharing of the film “by copying, recording, reproducing, camcording or communicating, or allowing others to to communicate” the contents of the film in any form.
