TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Dutch ISPs Ordered To Block The Pirate Bay
- BitTorrent Seeders Harrass Blackmail Victim, High Court Rules
- ‘Rogue’ Attorney General Spreads MPAA-Fed SOPA Propaganda
| Dutch ISPs Ordered To Block The Pirate Bay Posted: 11 Jan 2012 04:10 AM PST
To help avoid a damaging legal precedent, Ziggo was joined in the case by rival ISP XS4ALL. Initially the partnership was successful. The Court of The Hague decided that blocking all customer access to The Pirate Bay was a step too far. BREIN, refusing to give in, launched a full trial. During November last year that case was heard before the Court of The Hague. BREIN argued that it would be trivial for the ISPs to initiate a block of The Pirate Bay, while the ISPs stated that doing so could compromise the security of their networks, threaten freedom of expression, and would ultimately prove ineffective. BREIN countered by insisting they have rights too – copyrights – and that the reason the ISPs don’t want to block TPB is because they profit by selling bandwidth to users so they can access it. Today, the Court of the Hague delivered its verdict – and it’s victory for BREIN. The Court noted that approximately 30% of Ziggo subscribers and 4.5% of XS4ALL subscribers use The Pirate Bay to share unauthorized media. Downloading copyright material is currently legal in the Netherlands but uploading is not, so due to the two-way nature of BitTorrent it is deemed that those customers are infringing copyright. While the Court noted that an ISP blockade against The Pirate Bay would also prevent subscribers with legitimate business from accessing the site, it said that the legal offerings available there are not only limited, but also available from other sites. Preventing a large number of copyright infringements trumps the availability of a more limited supply of legal content, the Court noted. Furthermore, the Court concluded that in granting an injunction to block The Pirate Bay it would only be preventing access to a site already subject to a court order which forced its operators to block access to Internet users in the Netherlands. That order was previously issued by the Amsterdam Court but was ignored by the site’s operators. Spokesperson for XS4ALL, Niels Huijbregts, said the company is “bitterly disappointed” by the decision, noting that fundamental rights had been traded for “commercial interests”. The ISPs have ten days in which to initiate the blockade – failure to do so will result in fines of 10,000 euros per day. Source: Dutch ISPs Ordered To Block The Pirate Bay
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| BitTorrent Seeders Harrass Blackmail Victim, High Court Rules Posted: 11 Jan 2012 01:56 AM PST During August 2007, ‘AMP’ used her cellphone to take explicit pictures of herself. It was a decision she would later regret, and its effects would end up costing a significant amount of money to mitigate. Whilst at University in 2008, AMP’s phone was either lost or stolen. Shortly after the images it contained appeared on an unnamed file-hosting service and these were linked by someone to her Facebook account. Although Facebook removed them, it was clear that the situation was developing – into blackmail. AMP was contacted personally on Facebook and her fathers business public relations team were “threatened and blackmailed” over the existence of images. Then, the genie was let out of the bottle. During November 2008, the images were uploaded “to a Swedish website that hosts files known as ‘BitTorrent’ files,” court papers reveal. Although not mentioned by name, the revelation that AMP legal’s term couldn’t get the site to respond to DMCA takedowns points the finger towards The Pirate Bay. Making matters worse, AMP’s real name had been added to the BitTorrent filenames, meaning that the torrents were the first results if anyone typed in her name on the leading search engines. So this extraordinary battle was on – could it really be possible to take this content down? For the purposes of the action, it was presumed that people most interested in downloading the photos would, in common with AMP, reside in the UK. Therefore, if a court could be convinced to issue an order declaring that the distribution of the material is illegal, then any seeder could be served and ordered to cease his or her activity. If every seeder could be attacked this way, then the torrent would simply die. While it might be expected that the claimant claimed copyright in ‘the work’ and attempted to take it down that way, instead she sought an injunction “to preserve the right to respect for her private and family life” under the Human Rights Act 1998. The High Court noted that although under the Human Rights Act citizens have “the right to receive and impart information without interference”, the rights of BitTorrent users to “download the digital photographic images using the BitTorrent protocol and to disseminate them by seeding them” had to be balanced against the privacy rights of the claimant. AMP was ultimately successful in obtaining an injunction in respect of her privacy and under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, with the Court deciding that anyone seeding the image files on BitTorrent within its jurisdiction would be committing an offense. “There is therefore a good arguable case that the conduct of disseminating the digital photographic images amounts to harassment of the Claimant under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and that this is a case where it is appropriate to grant an injunction,” the Hon. Mr Justice Ramsey wrote in his decision. As far as we are aware, this is the first case of its type where BitTorrent users are expressly forbidden by a court injunction from sharing specific material. But the big question remains – has it been successful? AMP’s name is secret, the filenames are secret, and the court reinforces the confidentiality of both sets of information by expressly including them in the court order – revealing them would also be an offense. Since we don’t know either we can’t search for them, but it’s likely that the torrents still exist. Whether they have any seeders is key, but any within the jurisdiction of the court should beware. According to Andrew Murray, Professor of Law at the London School of Economics, AMP’s lawyer will track down seeders in England and Wales (and anywhere in the EU thanks to a European Arrest Warrant) via their ISPs using CPR 31.17, not a Norwich Pharmacol order which is usually the preferred method in such cases. Reading this case it is clear that AMP and/or her father and family were prepared to spend a large some of money pursuing this action. Exactly how much is unclear but from the files appearing on, presumably, The Pirate Bay, it has taken 3 years to reach the point where seeding them is covered by an injunction. Effective? We have no way of saying. But 10/10 for persistence and ingenuity. Source: BitTorrent Seeders Harrass Blackmail Victim, High Court Rules
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| ‘Rogue’ Attorney General Spreads MPAA-Fed SOPA Propaganda Posted: 10 Jan 2012 01:33 PM PST
A few days ago Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff wrote an article in the Salt Lake City Tribune. In the column the Attorney General stresses how important it is for Congress to pass the SOPA and PIPA bills. The MPAA is delighted with the support and praised it in a blog post yesterday. “Shurtleff effectively hammers the point that Google, Yahoo and others have spent millions trying to distort – that states which allow rogue websites to operate unfettered will experience massive revenue reduction and job loss,” the MPAA writes. The Attorney General’s statements do indeed bolster what the MPAA and other pro-copyright groups have said all along. By itself this is not unusual, but when we examined the article in more detail we began to notice that many of the sentences that are passed off as Shurtleff’s work actually look very familiar. Could it be that the column was partly written by the MPAA? We say yes. To back up this claim we will highlight a few sentences from the Attorney General’s article, and compare them with those previously delivered by the MPAA and affiliated pro-copyright groups. The first sentence that caught our attention is: “It will take a strong, sustained effort to stop Internet thieves and profiteers.” Strong words, but also familiar ones. In fact, former MPAA President Bob Pisano uttered exactly the same words in 2010 when he congratulated the Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimously approving the COICA bill, the predecessor to SOPA and PIPA.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg really. Here’s another example. “Congress can make a significant contribution to that effort with legislation to strengthen law enforcement tools. In the interests of American citizens and businesses, it is time for Congress to enact rogue sites legislation.” The sentence above is copied from a pro-COICA column (bottom paragraph) written by Mike McCurry, co-chairman of the pro-copyright outfit Arts+Labs. At the time, McCurry’s piece was praised by pro-copyright lobby groups and in his writing McCurry also uses the previously mentioned sentence from the MPAA’s former president. But there’s more. The column from McCurry, which is often quoted by the MPAA and affiliated groups such as FightOnlineTheft, displays more similarities with the article published by Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. For example: “[Rogue sites legislation] cut off foreign pirates and counterfeiters from the U.S. market and deprives them of what they want most — our money. By disrupting the business models of these online criminals, this legislation would make it less profitable and more difficult for those who wish to engage in blatant intellectual property theft.” Now compare that to this quote from McCurry’s MPAA-inspired column which is nearly identical, far beyond what can be called a coincidence.  The Attorney General was also directly inspired by the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, a Chamber of Commerce outfit that belongs to the same pro-copyright clique. Compare: “[rogue sites] represent the worst of the worst infringers on the Internet, are a threat to our economic security and they have no place in a legitimate online market.” ..to this quote (PDF) “[rogue sites] represent the worst of the worst on the Internet, and have no place in a legitimate online market.” And the list goes on. Although we can’t say with certainty that Attorney General Mark Shurtleff was fed by the MPAA directly, it is obvious that the article wasn’t written by him. It’s a collection of ripped off sentences that can be directly traced back to the MPAA and affiliated groups. This is quite a concern coming from someone who is supposed to be objective, especially considering that this Attorney General will have the exclusive power to grant requests for domain seizures and DNS blockades if SOPA or PIPA passes. The way we see it now, this Attorney General is clearly in the pockets of the pro-copyright lobby. Holmes Wilson of the citizen rights group Fight for The Future agrees with this assessment. “This is a reminder that SOPA/PIPA—the language, the money behind it, and the arguments used to justify it— are coming straight from the same place: the copyright industry,” he told TorrentFreak. “It’s possible that they’re turning up the heat in Utah in response to the meetings Utah residents have scheduled with Utah Senator Mike Lee.” Unfortunately this isn’t an isolated incident. A lot of seemingly independent groups that recently supported PIPA and SOPA use the exact same language that appears to be fed to them by a single source. Just Google the sentence “Criminals have turned to the Internet, abusing its virtually unlimited distribution opportunities,” and you’ll see that it was used in pro- SOPA/PIPA letters by the National Governors Association, Public Safety and First Responder Groups and others. Letters that were coincidentally all highlighted on the MPAA blog. The more we dig, the more we find… Source: ‘Rogue’ Attorney General Spreads MPAA-Fed SOPA Propaganda
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In 2010, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN went to court to try and force Ziggo, the largest ISP in the Netherlands, to implement a DNS and IP address block of The Pirate Bay.
It is no secret that the MPAA and other pro-copyright groups lobby politicians and law enforcers, but when a column by a prominent Attorney General appears to be written directly by the entertainment industries something is horribly wrong. | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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