TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Anti-Piracy Group Asks Court to Gag The Pirate Party
- Australian Police Accused of Mass Software Piracy
- Repo Man’s Alex Cox: Move Sites Overseas To Kill Copyright Complaints
| Anti-Piracy Group Asks Court to Gag The Pirate Party Posted: 25 Apr 2012 04:39 AM PDT
The lawsuit is the next move in BREIN’s attempt to deny Dutch citizens’ access to The Pirate Bay. In January, a Dutch court ruled that Ziggo, the largest ISP in the country, and competitor XS4ALL, must block access to The Pirate Bay. As a result hundreds of individuals setup proxy websites allowing subscribers to route around the blockade, effectively rendering the order useless. In a countering move BREIN obtained an injunction from the court to shut these proxies down, including one operated by the Pirate Party. However, the Pirates are determined to put up a fight and have taken BREIN to court to get the order overthrown. The case, in which the Pirate Party asked the court to lift all censorship restrictions, was heard by the court yesterday. BREIN, however, did exactly the opposite by submitting a rather broad set of new demands essentially asking the court to gag the political party. In short BREIN’s demands are as follows. 1. The Pirate Party should be banned from operating a reverse proxy for Pirate Bay 2. The Pirate Party should be banned from operating a generic proxy service 3. The Pirate Party should be banned from linking to third-party proxies 4. The Pirate Party should be banned from listing new IP-addresses / domains Pirate Bay registers 5. The Pirate Party should be banned from encouraging people to circumvent the Pirate Bay blockade If the Pirate Party violates the above terms BREIN asked for a penalty of €10,000 per day, up to a maximum of €250,000. Needless to say, the demands of the anti-piracy group are unprecedented for a copyright related case. It is essentially a gag-order to enforce a previously obtained court verdict. If the court sides with BREIN this will have rather far-reaching consequences for people’s freedom of speech. It may also invite other parties to consider making similar demands. The question is also how far BREIN wants to take this. Should other generic proxy sites be banned as well? And what about VPNs or the TOR network? All of these services allow the public to bypass the court-ordered blockade. Meanwhile, the popular Dutch weblog Geenstijl is making some noise as well, as they launched a redirection site (FuckTimKuik.org) that forwards people to available proxies. BREIN has yet to respond to this initiative, but it shows that it will be quite difficult to root out all circumvention methods. The court’s decision in the case between the Pirate Party and BREIN is expected to be published in two weeks. This verdict will coincide with BREIN’s case against two other Dutch Internet providers that are still allowing access to The Pirate Bay. Source: Anti-Piracy Group Asks Court to Gag The Pirate Party
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| Australian Police Accused of Mass Software Piracy Posted: 24 Apr 2012 01:07 PM PDT
There is, however, an even ongoing bigger case in which the New South Wales police are accused of massive software piracy involving its criminal intelligence database. The software in question, ViewNow, is developed by the UK company Micro Focus. While the company licensed its software to the police in the past, it discovered nearly two years ago the police were using thousands of unauthorized copies. Even worse, the police also shared the software with third parties such as the Ombudsman’s Office, the Department of Correctives Services and the Police Integrity Commission. All without permission from the software company. In an attempt to get compensated for several years worth of mass piracy, Micro Focus has filed a lawsuit in which it’s demanding more than $10 million in damages. Micro Focus’ managing director Bruce Craig says they saw no other option than to sue, as they can’t go to the police. “When someone pirates your software you think who am I gonna call, the police? In this case, they’re the pirates,” Craig comments on 7.30. “This is potentially a crime that has to be handled as a civil matter because everybody’s got their hands dirty,” he added. “The victims can’t go to police – it’s the police who are doing the stealing.” At the center of the legal battle is a dispute over the licenses for the ViewNow software. Micro Focus says the police had licenses to install ViewNow on up to 6,500 computers, but in fact more than 16,000 copies were installed. In addition, the police shared copies with other organizations without permission. “The licenses were for police only. Yet police were out there handing out our software like confetti,” Craig says. “They did not pay for those extra licenses. It’s incredible. It shows an organization that’s completely out of control.” The police on the other hand claim that they are not aware of any restrictions. Instead, they claim that they could use as many copies as they want according to their interpretation of the contract. To make matters even worse, Micro Focus is now threatening a new lawsuit as they suspect that the police have replaced the ViewNow software with an alternative called NetManage Applet. This application also belongs to Micro Focus, and they have not licensed the police to use that without restrictions either. Who’s right and who’s wrong will eventually be decided by the court, but there is already one losing party – the taxpayer. The police have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and the case has barely begun. Source: Australian Police Accused of Mass Software Piracy
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| Repo Man’s Alex Cox: Move Sites Overseas To Kill Copyright Complaints Posted: 24 Apr 2012 05:57 AM PDT
From its roots three years earlier, in 2009 Cleland created myPDFscripts, a platform which enabled him to share his passion with others. In recent months, however, things have not been easy. To cut a long story short, Cleland has been plagued with DMCA takedown requests from movie studios, one in particular. November last year Cleland was forced to take down the site after Universal issued complaints against more than a hundred scripts. One of them, at position #69 on the list, was from the classic movie ‘Repo Man’. Interestingly, its creator Alex Cox contacted Cleland about the takedown directly. “I believe you have received a 'takedown' notice from Universal to remove the script. I do not agree with this. I'm very pleased you have my script on your site and would like to see it remain. If you would like to add any other of my scripts, get in touch. You are welcome to post them,” Cox wrote. But given the direct interest of a powerful company such as Universal, Cleland was concerned of the consequences should he simply repost the script. So he contacted the studio for clarification. “Mr. Cox is the author of the Repo Man screenplay; however, his rights to and interests in the screenplay for the film were granted to Universal Pictures, which is the exclusive owner of Repo Man throughout the world in perpetuity, including, without limitation, all copyrights in the film and in the underlying screenplay,” the studio responded. “Accordingly, Universal stands by its request that you take-down the Repo Man screenplay from your website.” So, if posting the actual script was off limits, maybe it would be OK for Cleland to post a link to the copy of the script that Alex Cox hosts on his own website? Apparently not. “Please don't post the links,” advised Universal. “I don't believe Mr. Cox is authorized to post the script on his personal website either.” Cox disagrees. “Universal are both right and wrong. Right because in many cases writers do cede all their rights to a purchaser, and lose them. Wrong because REPO MAN wasn't a work for hire, and in three years time all rights to the script will revert to me under an obscure provision of US copyright law. This may be why they haven't sent me a takedown notice: but it's disgraceful that your site has been kneecapped in this way,” Alex told Cleland. “Have you thought about transferring all the material to a server outside the US — in Brazil, perhaps? I know of others who have done this to keep valuable sites alive.” But Cox doesn’t end there. After giving Cleland permission to post up every script he’s ever written (he’s already given everyone permission to download his films), he finishes up with an alarming broadside against the studios. “The studios, including Universal, are pretty clearly a criminal enterprise, operating an illegal blacklist and functioning as a price-fixing cartel. They actually have legislation which permits them to operate as a cartel abroad (the law is called Webb-Pomerene) but absolutely no right to operate as a cartel domestically. They do so because they're powerful and have politicians in their pockets,” Cox notes. “If the cops ever went after them using the RICO statutes the whole studio cartel would collapse like a pack of cards, and individuals like their ‘litigation counsel’ would have to look for honest work. It's unlikely that this will happen, but we can dream,” he concludes. At the moment myPDFScripts is suffering a bit of a crisis after Mediafire blocked the site’s locker account so whether Repo Man and the other scripts will ever appear there remains to be seen. Source: Repo Man's Alex Cox: Move Sites Overseas To Kill Copyright Complaints
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The legal battle over Internet censorship is reaching new heights in the Netherlands, as the local anti-piracy group BREIN is now asking the court to gag the Pirate Party.
The Aussie police are clearly not setting the right example when it comes to copyright infringement. In 2008 computers of the South Australian police force's IT branch 
Sheridan Cleland describes himself as an independent filmmaker with his own small production company. In addition to making music videos he also has a passion for hunting down and studying movie screenplays.| 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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