TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- ACTA Showdown Coming Up – Man Your Barricades
- RoboTrolls Threaten Alleged BitTorrent Pirates With Lawsuit
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 18 Jun 2012 12:24 AM PDT
Wrath of the Titans is the most downloaded movie this week. The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
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| ACTA Showdown Coming Up – Man Your Barricades Posted: 17 Jun 2012 01:31 PM PDT
It is true that there are other horrific backroom deals in the process – the Trans-Pacific Partnership, notably – but a visible defeat of ACTA due to public outrage will be sure to have effects on TPP, as well as on all other attempts to legislate some middlemen’s right to profit at the expense of our civil liberties. The opposite also holds true: if ACTA passes in the European Parliament despite us having held rallies across pretty much all of Europe, the damage to democracy, to the net, and to our civil liberties is going to take two decades to repair. Such a defeat would be a concession that the European Parliament is not an elected body of representatives, but a doormat for so-called “corporate stakeholders” – the monopolists of yesterday who are threatened by our next generation of entrepreneurs at every level. So this is it. Man your barricades. The ACTA approval or rejection process in the European Parliament consists of a so-called “responsible committee” recommending the European Parliament as a whole to accept or reject the treaty. All proposals have such a responsible committee. In the case of ACTA, the committee is “International Trade”, known by its abbreviation, INTA. But before INTA makes its recommendation to accept or reject, four other committees have left recommendations to INTA from their own respective point of view, and INTA is expected (but not required) to weigh their recommendations into INTA’s final recommendation to European Parliament. The four other committees are Industry (ITRE), Development (DEVE), Legal Affairs (JURI), and Civil Liberties (LIBE). All four of them have voted to recommend INTA to recommend a rejection in turn (yes, the roll of red tape is quite long). Meanwhile, the proposed decision on INTA’s table is to recommend a rejection of ACTA, but the corporate monopoly interests are fighting harder by the hour to change this into an adoption. Therefore, we must fight, too. INTA makes its decision this Thursday – on June 21, around 10:00 Brussels time. This recommendation will weigh very heavily on Parliament’s final vote. In this game, the proponents of ACTA are currently trying to get the vote postponed, seeing that public opinion is currently horribly against it. (This is politics as usual – it’s pretty much like the ACTA opponents were trying to stall a vote before the public had woken up to what was going on.) This game is far from over – party lines in the European Parliament can and do shift at the last minute, and the individual voting Members of the European Parliament are not bound to toe those party lines anyway. So some people are trying to push for an outright adoption of ACTA by the European Parliament. The person leading that ratification effort in INTA is the Swedish Christofer Fjellner, who has tabled an amendment to INTA’s meeting – an amendment to change the decision to recommend European Parliament to accept ACTA. Some important people have also invited themselves to INTA’s meeting in order to sway the vote. The public can’t do that, of course. But we can contact the Members of European Parliament before the meeting – and that’s exactly what we need to do. To make that easier, I have set up a mailing list at europarl-inta@falkvinge.net that goes to all the MEPs on the INTA committee. If you want inspiration of what to send, I have a sample letter over at my own blog. Above all, remember to be courteous as a citizen voicing your concern, and being clear that you urge them to vote for a rejection. (You don’t need to live in Europe to do this – ACTA is a global concern.) For those on the outside of Parliament, the institution seems like an impenetrable fortress. Once you get on the inside, though, you realize that citizens’ voices are heard very clearly. It’s our job to make that happen between now and the final vote on the floor on the European Parliament on July 3. Send a mail to INTA right now, and then, let’s build an overall showdown campaign between the INTA vote on June 21 and Parliament’s vote on July 3, spanning all the major tech sites, to make sure the citizen outcry becomes the stuff of legend for decades to come in the European Parliament.  About The Author Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. Book Falkvinge as speaker? Source: ACTA Showdown Coming Up – Man Your Barricades
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| RoboTrolls Threaten Alleged BitTorrent Pirates With Lawsuit Posted: 17 Jun 2012 07:56 AM PDT
The aim of the copyright holders, or copyright trolls, is never to take any of the cases to trial. Instead they want alleged infringers to pay a substantial cash settlement to make legal action go away. Some equal this scheme to extortion, but the copyright holders say they are merely protecting their work. One of the most active law firms engaged in these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits is Prenda Law. The firm has filed numerous lawsuits on behalf of adult entertainment companies and is frequently accused of harassment-like practices once they obtain the identity of account holders. For example, the firm is known to call accused BitTorrent pirates at their homes, urging them to pay up. Starting last week, however, these ‘live’ phone calls we replaced by so-called robocalls. Instead of a real person, the accused now hear a previously recorded message. While these calls may be cheap and effective, the way they are carried out by Prenda Law raises all sorts of question. A transcript of the call was posted online by DTD and reads as follows. Note that the call suggests that the defendant is working for the law firm. “This is [accused name] with Prenda Law. With our clients offer to settle being expired now for more than 30 days it is pretty clear to them that you don't plan to enter into a settlement agreement with them which is fine. This call is to inform you that we are going to start the process of filing a lawsuit with your name in it.” “At first, you will receive time sensitive documents. We have found that most people do have an attorney review them. If you would like to get an idea of what the complaint will look like just go to our website www{.}wefightpiracy{.}com. We do have some of our recent filings there. If you have any questions give us a call. We can be reached at 305-748-2102 and your reference number is xxxx.” An interesting technique, but also one that might actually be against the law, as Sophisticated Jane Doe points out. For example, while robocalls are allowed in some states, they are not in others. Perhaps more worryingly is the suggestion that Prenda Law is targeting their entire database of defendants with these calls. This means that defendants whose cases have been dismissed (even with prejudice) are contacted as well. The same is true for those defendants who already hired a lawyer. Directly contacting a defendant who’s represented by an attorney is frowned upon, to say the least. The above shows that the law firms retained by copyright holders can go to extremes to get their settlement fees. In recent months several judges realized this. For example, in the Eastern District of New York they are advised to throw these cases out because they’re a "waste of judicial resources". In other cases we’ve seen that judges specifically state that ISPs can’t reveal telephone numbers of account holders. The law firms, however, are smart enough to evade jurisdictions where they are not welcome. And as long as they can convince alleged pirates to settle, through robocalls or not, they will continue business as usual. Source: RoboTrolls Threaten Alleged BitTorrent Pirates With Lawsuit
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This week there’s only one newcomer in our chart. 
For reasons I wrote on TorrentFreak 
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