TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Pirate Party Ordered to Shut Down Pirate Bay Proxy
- Censoring The Pirate Bay is Useless, Research Shows
- Student Bay File-Sharing ‘Admin’ Walks Free
| Pirate Party Ordered to Shut Down Pirate Bay Proxy Posted: 14 Apr 2012 02:43 AM PDT
These proxies render the court order useless, which is a thorn in the side of local anti-piracy outfit BREIN. In an attempt to take these proxies offline, BREIN obtained an injunction against one of the sites and used this to convince others to shut down as well. While several site operators gave BREIN what they wanted, the local Pirate Party refused to do so. They claimed that BREIN’s demands are hampering people’s freedom of speech, and objected to the fact that an “ex parte” decision against one proxy was used to “threaten” other site owners. "The demands are ridiculous," Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak last week. "A private lobbying organization should not be allowed to be the censor of the Dutch internet. We were also amazed to find an ex-parte decision attached, threatening Dutch minors with €1000 per day fines for operating their proxy,” he added. So the Pirate Party kept the proxy site offline and consulted with lawyers to see what steps could be taken next. However, BREIN wasn’t sitting still either and asked the Court of The Hague for a new injunction, specifically naming the Pirate Party proxy. This injunction was issued yesterday, and the court orders the Pirates to take the proxy offline within 6 hours, or face a penalty of 10,000 euro per day. BREIN successfully argued that the proxy is an immediate threat to the effectiveness of the ISP blockade, and submitted tweets of Pirate Party chairman who confirmed how much traffic the site received. The Pirate Party was not heard in the matter (ex parte) and according to board member “blauwbaard” the judge ignored their requests to be heard. “The judge has decided to ignore our express and valid request to have the injunction either denied flat-out, or to at least be heard in the matter before a decision was made,” blauwbaard states in a response. “This decision is even more strange because BREIN was allowed to bring over 20 pages of arguments to convince the judge to stretch a quaint rule of IP-law, meant to block the sudden appearance of mass quantities of counterfeited goods, far enough to be applied to the website of a political party.” Faced with huge fines, the Dutch Pirate Party saw no other option than to take the proxy offline, replacing it with a list of tip and alternative proxies. Monday the Pirate Party will file a request to overturn the injunction, meaning that while BREIN won the first battle, the war is far from over. Source: Pirate Party Ordered to Shut Down Pirate Bay Proxy
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| Censoring The Pirate Bay is Useless, Research Shows Posted: 13 Apr 2012 01:09 PM PDT
The verdict was the first to bring broad censorship to the Netherlands, much to the disappointment of the two Internet providers. But for BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group that started the court case, it was a major victory. The Hollywood-backed group had convinced the court that many subscribers of the ISPs shared films that were linked through The Pirate Bay. Among other things, the group presented data on the percentage of Ziggo and XS4ALL subscribers present in several popular BitTorrent swarms. The assumption of BREIN and the court was that a blockade of The Pirate Bay would lower the number of infringers at the two providers, but new research from the University of Amsterdam shows that this is not the case. Researchers from the System and Network Engineering group repeated the initial BREIN tests with new torrents that were not available prior to the blockade. If censorship is effective, this number would have declined, but the researchers found that it makes no significant difference. “The claim that The Pirate Bay blockade by Ziggo and XS4ALL leads to a decrease of copyright infringement by their subscribers via BitTorrent transfers must be rejected. There is no significant effect of this measure,” the researchers conclude. % of Ziggo subscribers in swarms, before and after
In other words, despite the court order the number of BitTorrent pirates at the two censored Internet providers remains constant. “Ziggo and XS4ALL subscribers who use BitTorrent apparently found different routes other than ‘The Pirate Bay’ to share files, and remain active as seeders to upload files to others,” the researchers note. The results are not really unexpected, as there are countless other ways to download the torrents that are available on The Pirate Bay. Reverse proxies are one example, or indeed the many other BitTorrent sites that are out there. The results will prove interesting in respect of a new lawsuit filed by BREIN against two other Dutch Internet providers. Now that it’s clear that a blockade has little effect, the anti-piracy group will have to present new arguments to warrant a Pirate Bay block. Source: Censoring The Pirate Bay is Useless, Research Shows
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| Student Bay File-Sharing ‘Admin’ Walks Free Posted: 13 Apr 2012 07:18 AM PDT
These were the words that accompanied the launch of a new file-sharing site in 2008. The aim of The Student Bay was to bring to free books to the masses. "Student Bay does not publish the course books as a whole, rather we divide them up in chapters, so that one can download them for personal use," they added. Due to the similarities present in their domain names and logos, speculation grew that The Pirate Bay and Student Bay were connected. There were even claims that The Pirate Bay's Gottfrid Svartholm (aka Anakata) was directly linked with the site, an accusation he denied. By December, Student Bay had been reported to the police by the Swedish Association for Educational Writers (SLFF) with the organization insisting that Svatholm was connected to the site. In fact the only connection was that the site had been hosted at PRQ, a web host previously owned by Svartholm. Indeed, The Pirate Bay openly criticized Student Bay for taking subscriptions via premium SMS and suggested that sharing should be free, but by May 2009 it was a moot point – Student Bay had closed. Last December, very nearly 3 years after the original complaint against the site, Swedish prosecutor Frederick Ingblad announced that a 23-year-old man had been prosecuted for founding and running Student Bay. He was charged with violating and assisting in breaches of copyright law between August 2008 and May 2009, and charged with "regularly receiving and assimilating payments" from site users totaling $8,000. But despite a lengthy investigation and legal process, the prosecution were left disappointed by a ruling from the Södertörn District Court today. In the judgment the Court said that the prosecution had not shown “that [the defendant] alone or in concert with others had started the website StudentBay.se, whose domain was registered by another person during the fall of 2007.” The defendant had previously admitted doing some paid design work on the site but denied being the site’s operator. The District Court agreed, noting that it had “not been established” that the defendant had “administered the website.” The Court concluded that despite being involved with the website the defendant had not done enough to be found guilty of the crime in question – facilitating copyright infringement of textbooks. “It’s excellent that there was an acquittal,” said Victoria Westberg, spokeperson for the Young Pirates. “We believe that it’s obvious that no one should be found guilty for only having designed a website and created a logo. It feels good that the District Court shares our view.” The prosecution is expected to appeal. Source: Student Bay File-Sharing ‘Admin’ Walks Free
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After two Dutch ISPs were ordered 
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