TorrentFreak Email Update |
- RIAA Wants Search Engines to Censor “Pirate Sites”
- How Scary is the US “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme?
- BitTorrent Admin Jailed For Tax Evasion On Site Donations
| RIAA Wants Search Engines to Censor “Pirate Sites” Posted: 06 Jun 2012 04:51 AM PDT
While the music industry group’s main aim at the hearing is to convince legislators to close a loophole that allows radio stations to play music without paying performance rights, the topic of online piracy will not go undiscussed. In a prepared statement, Sherman begins by pointing out that the image of the music business as an innovation-shy industry is misplaced. DRM-free downloads, unlimited streaming, free ad-supported streaming and music backups in the cloud are a few highlighted examples of innovative developments. But despite all these services, piracy is still rampant. More needs to be done. According to Sherman the music industry is more frequently steering towards voluntary agreements, and with success. They have struck a deal with ISPs to punish copyright infringers, helped payment processors to reduce payments to pirate sites, and encouraged major advertisers to discontinue business with “rogue” websites. If the RIAA has its way, Google and other search engines will also collaborate on a similar agreement. Ideally, these search engines would no longer link to “infringing sites” such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. “We hope other intermediaries like search engines will follow suit in negotiating voluntary marketplace best practices to prevent directing users to sites that are dedicated to violating property rights,” Sherman says in his speech. TorrentFreak asked the RIAA to provide more details on what they see as an ideal scenario. Without going into specifics, we were directed to the following statements which reveal a bit more about the RIAA’s demands. “Sites that engage in infringing activity should not appear as the first results when searching for what entertainment content to download or stream. This just leads to more piracy and popularity of the site,” the RIAA states. “Rather, whether a site is authorized or unauthorized to make copyrighted works available to the public should be a significant indicator in determining ranking of the result, with unauthorized sites having lower rankings than authorized sites.” In other words, “legitimate” search results should be boosted while “illegitimate” sites are degraded. The RIAA further suggests that the massive amount of DMCA complaints can be reduced by “technical changes,” a fancy way to describe censorship. “Google should investigate why it has such a high volume of complaints from copyright holders, and whether additional procedural or technical changes could be made to assure legal activity, thereby lessening complaints.” The above is in line with a set of demands copyright holders handed out to Google, Bing and Yahoo during a behind-closed-doors meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport. In this proposed "Voluntary Code of Practice" the copyright holders ask search engines to de-index substantially infringing sites. While there is no sign yet that Google and others are open to these suggestions, it is a clear sign that the RIAA and others see broader search engine control as the way forward. Source: RIAA Wants Search Engines to Censor “Pirate Sites”
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| How Scary is the US “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme? Posted: 05 Jun 2012 03:18 PM PDT
The parties agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After five or six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures. A lot has been written in the press about the upcoming scheme, but unfortunately there are still many myths and misunderstandings. Today we hope to clear up some of these inaccuracies by answering a few simple questions. What punishments are expected?After six warnings ISPs will impose so-called “mitigation measures” or punishments. The CCI made it clear from the start that nobody’s Internet account will be terminated. However, temporary disconnections are an option. In fact, the agreement between the copyright holders and ISPs specifically mentions the option of such temporary terminations. This means that in theory subscribers could be disconnected for a week, or even a month. That said, such disconnections are not mandatory and ISPs have little incentive to impose such a strong mitigation measure. A more likely punishment is a throttled connection, where connection speeds are severely degraded for a set period. The agreement specifically mentions 256 -640 kbps as an example. Alternatively, ISPs can direct users to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter. What happens to those who ignore all warnings?This is an interesting question. Public information provides no answer but the CCI told TorrentFreak the following: “The program is intended to educate consumers, taking them through a system that we believe will be successful for most consumers. If a subscriber were to receive 6 alerts, that user would be considered a subscriber the program is unable to reach.” “If ISPs receive additional allegations of copyright infringement for that user, those notices will not generate alerts under the program,” a CCI spokesperson told us. In other words, nothing will happen under the program. People who receive more than 6 warnings are removed from the system. They wont receive any further warnings or punishments and are allowed to continue using their Internet service as usual. Who will be monitoring these copyright infringements?While ISPs take part in the scheme, they are not the ones who will monitor subscribers’ behaviors. The tracking will be done by a third party company such as DtecNet or PeerMedia. These companies collect IP-addresses from BitTorrent swarms and send their findings directly to the Internet providers. The lists with infringing IP-addresses are not shared with the MPAA, RIAA or other third parties. The CCI has not yet published the name of the monitoring company, but informs TorrentFreak that the evidence gathering methods will be reviewed by an independent expert. Each ISP will keep a database of the alleged infringers and send these subscribers the appropriate warnings. Recorded infringements will be stored for 12 months after which they will be deleted. What will be monitored?According to the CCI the copyright alert system will only apply to P2P file-sharing. In theory this means that the focus will be almost exclusively on BitTorrent, as other P2P networks have a relatively low user bases. Consequently, those who use Usenet providers or file-hosting services such as 4Shared, RapidShare and Hotfile are not at risk. In other words, the “six strikes” scheme only covers part of all online piracy. Can the monitoring be circumvented?The answer to the previous question already shows that users could simply switch to other means of downloading, but there are more alternatives. BitTorrent users could hide their IP-addresses through proxy services and VPNs for example. A recent study in Sweden showed that this is a likely response to tougher copyright enforcement. So how scary is the “six strikes” anti-piracy plan?While we can’t say anything conclusive just yet, it appears that the main purpose is to reach as many copyright infringers as possible to inform them about their inappropriate behavior. The CCI frames this as education, others will probably describe it as scare tactics. How 'bad' the “six strikes” scheme turns out to be largely depends on what punishments Internet providers intend to hand out. Needless to say, a temporary reduction in bandwidth is less severe than cutting people's Internet access. However, since ISPs have little incentive to apply such stringent measures we expect that the punishments will be rather mild. Source: How Scary is the US "Six Strikes" Anti-Piracy Scheme?
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| BitTorrent Admin Jailed For Tax Evasion On Site Donations Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:01 AM PDT According to the charge sheet from December 2011, the defendant in the case had been responsible from the operations and administration of a BitTorrent site between early 2007 and 2009. The site, the now-defunct private BitTorrent tracker PowerBits.org, is described as a site which allowed users to upload torrent links with the intention of making copyright material available to the public. Among those who provided evidence in the case were Antipiratbyran and IFPI. The sample set of infringements included nine music albums and ten films. PowerBits was further described as “a commercial file-sharing service” in the sense that the admin “regularly received and assimilated payments from the users.” These payments appear to be what most private torrent sites call “donations” although it’s clear that the authorities did not consider them gifts. When TorrentFreak spoke with Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyran about the case he framed the site’s operations as a business, an opinion apparently shared by the Swedish tax authorities. They considered PowerBits to be an Internet business that generated “significant revenues” and on this basis went on to accuse the administrator of failing to fulfill his accounting obligations and avoiding tens of thousands of dollars in taxes. The Varberg district court heard yesterday that through PowerBits the now 34-year-old former admin had helped to make at least 2,000 copyright protected works available to the public without rightsholder permission. Although the Court found that the defendant had not directly made available any of the works himself, he was found guilty of assisting in the copyright infringements of the site’s users. The man was also found guilty of accounting and tax offenses, having allegedly generated nearly $207,000 from PowerBits without declaring the income. A request to confiscate almost $54,000 was denied. He was sentenced to one year in prison and banned from running a business for three years. “In addition to PowerBits, there are a number of similar Swedish illegal services with identical business ideas,” Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyran told TorrentFreak. “The services often have a technical argument when they explain why their business model is legal. So far this has not been successful and those responsible for The Pirate Bay and PowerBits have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms.” Swedish sites that refuse to close down are being reported to the police, Pontén adds. Source: BitTorrent Admin Jailed For Tax Evasion On Site Donations
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Later today RIAA CEO Cary Sherman will take part in the "The Future of Audio" hearing at the U.S. House of Representatives. 
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