Tuesday, 7 August 2012

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update

Kim Dotcom Was Assaulted By Police During Raid, Court Hears

Posted: 07 Aug 2012 02:30 AM PDT

Kim Dotcom has been giving evidence in the Auckland High Court today. The hearing, which is scheduled to run for three days, follows on from a court ruling in June that found the search warrants used to conduct the January raid against the Megaupload founder’s home were invalid. This week his lawyers will argue that the raid was unreasonable.

Dotcom told the court that at the time of the raid he was in bed installing a Windows update on his computer. Dotcom said he heard a helicopter outside and thought it may have been some guests arriving for his birthday celebrations. However, he realized that something was wrong when the downdraft of the helicopter’s rotors started kicking up stones onto the glass of his Coatesville mansion.

After hearing banging on his door, Dotcom said he fled to a pre-arranged safe room in the house. He stayed in this “red room” until police arrived.

“I heard loud banging noises. I was just scared and worried. I thought I’d better wait for them to come to me rather than popping out and scaring someone who might shoot me,” he said.

Dotcom said he had access to a firearm in the “red room” but in the interests of safety and to simply ward off would-be attackers rather inflicting more permanent damage, the first two rounds in the gun were rubber bullets.

Dotcom denied allegations he refused to cooperate with police and told the court that he had his arms in a “surrender” position when the police entered the room. Apparently that passive attitude didn’t help.

“And then they were all over me. I had a punch to the face, boots kicking me down to the floor, a knee to the ribs. One man was standing on my hand,” he said, added that he was then pushed to the floor and his wrists cable-tied. “It was really tight. I was screaming,” he said.

Dotcom told the court that the force used was completely unnecessary and if only the police had asked he would have complied straight away.

“If someone had knocked on the door and said they had a document with charges I would have let them in,” he said.

The hearing, which is due to last until Thursday, will also hear from New Zealand’s Special Tactics Group, the elite anti-terror force that carried out the raid against the Dotcom mansion.

However, whether their conduct will be revealed by the images and CCTV footage captured on that January day remains to be seen – according to Stuff.nz the New Zealand prosecutors are seeking to have all footage from the raid suppressed. It is believed that a transcript of police-recorded audio will be allowed.

Kim Dotcom and his alleged co-conspirators were due to appear in court on August 6 in an extradition hearing scheduled to last 3 weeks. However, due to legal issues the hearing has now been delayed until March 2013.

Source: Kim Dotcom Was Assaulted By Police During Raid, Court Hears

Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The United States Government

Posted: 06 Aug 2012 07:19 AM PDT

Last week thousands of Demonoid users feared the worst when their beloved site disappeared from the Internet. Many thought that the site had been busted, but were eventually relieved to hear that it was ‘only’ a massive DDoS attack.

But today the roller-coaster ride plummeted to new depths, with confirmation coming out of Ukraine that the DDoS was just the beginning – the site has been busted by the authorities.

ColoCall is the largest datacenter in Ukraine and a place that has been Demonoid’s home in recent years. But in the middle of last week, in the wake of the DDoS attack, government investigators arrived at ColoCall to shut Demonoid down.

“Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them,” an anonymous ColoCall source confirmed. “Some equipment was not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to terminate the agreement with the site.”

As reported on TorrentFreak following our discussions with Demonoid’s admin last week, there were suspicions that the site may have been subjected to some kind of exploit or hack in addition to the DDoS. That version of events is now confirmed by the ColoCall source.

“Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators,” the source added.

But aside from the busting of the site, which is the biggest BitTorrent-related raid in recent memory and one that has taken out the world’s largest torrent site/tracker combo, there is a rather large international sting in the tail.

Despite general opinion that Demonoid did not contravene Ukranian law, especially since it blocked all Ukranian IP addresses to avoid upsetting the locals, the site still attracted the attention of the authorities there. That, according to a source in the country’s government, is all down to the United States getting involved.

A source inside the Interior Ministry has informed Kommersant that the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the very first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky‘s trip to the United States. On the agenda: copyright infringement.

Ukraine had promised the United States that it would improve its attitude and efforts towards enforcing copyright and no doubt its Western partner will be very pleased indeed that Demonoid’s head has been presented on a platter.

But while Demonoid’s servers are in custody, the site’s admin does not appear to be. The ColoCall source would not say who is behind the site, only that its management is located in Mexico. The devil may yet be back….

TorrentFreak contacted the Demonoid admin for a comment but we have yet to hear back

Source: Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The United States Government

MPAA Recruits “Surrogates” to Support Extradition of UK Student

Posted: 06 Aug 2012 06:05 AM PDT

Yesterday we covered a leaked MPAA memo with talking points on the TVShack case.

The MPAA successfully lobbied the Department of Justice to demand the extradition of the site’s former operator, UK student Richard O’Dwyer. However, in recent months public opinion turned against the authorities, a point now being noted by the mainstream media.

A new MPAA leak (embedded below) shows that this is worrying movie industry bosses. In a “communication plan” the MPAA explains why these talking points are needed and how the group plans to counter the opposition.

“The overall media coverage has been and will continue to be challenging,” the MPAA writes.

They mention the petition of Wikipedia founder jimmy Wales, the Demand Progress campaign, and note that a recent survey showed that 95% of the public does not support the extradition. According to the MPAA, public opinion is skewed because people are being led to believe that TVShack was operating perfectly legal in the UK.

“To counter these assertions, the MPAA and its allies need a coordinated effort to focus more on the criminal activity involved in the operation of TVShack and other similar linking sites,” the MPAA notes.

Interestingly, the movie industry group appears to be having a hard time finding “allies”.

“Ideally, this would be done through third parties – but finding third parties – especially in the United Kingdom – has been very difficult so far, so the MPAA must be prepared to respond to media requests on the issue and set the record straight to counter the misinformation campaign by our opponents.”

As the leaked “talking points” memo revealed yesterday, the MPAA prepared a case background to be handed out to journalists. In addition, the group drafted responses to the “misinformation” that’s being spread by Jimmy Wales and others.

The MPAA further notes that staffers Mike Robinson and Mark Miller are ready to speak about the case in public. However, they also want to recruit “allies and third parties, both in the US and abroad” to help them get the message across.

“We are also working on an oped as well as blogs by third-party surrogates,” they later add.

While the MPAA never admitted to getting surrogates to report for them this is not totally unexpected. We previously spotted a pro-SOPA op-ed by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff that used phrases that were previously uttered by MPAA people.

The main message these surrogates will be asked to deliver is that Richard O’Dwyer is a criminal. The MPAA continues to point out that an operator of a similar site was recently found guilty in the UK, and will feed this information to journalists.

“We will seek to make sure reporters know about the parallels – and the proof that this kind of copyright theft is illegal in the U.K.,” MPAA notes.

Of course, they don’t mention that the U.K. case they refer to wasn’t about copyright infringement. Neither do they explain why O’Dwyer wasn’t charged with any crimes in the U.K.

To hear the other side of the story TorrentFreak contacted Richard O’Dwyer’s mother Julia, who was baffled by the MPAA’s strategy. According to her, it’s the MPAA who are spreading misinformation.

“It's rather worrying that the MPAA is behaving in this unnecessarily vindictive way, trying to portray Richard as someone he is not in order to further their own interests,” Julia O’Dwyer says.

“Richard has fully cooperated with the Police at all times and has never told a lie. Lying is something he just won't do. In contrast the MPAA peddles misinformation about the details of the alleged conduct.”

Among other things she notes that TVShack fully complied with takedown requests, that the site never hosted any copyrighted content and that MPAA member Warner Bros. even asked if their content could be featured on TVShack.

With both sides determined to be heard, the case will continue to make headlines in the coming weeks. The controversial extradition is currently awaiting an appeal to the High Court later this year.

MPAA’s communication strategy is embedded below:

Source: MPAA Recruits “Surrogates” to Support Extradition of UK Student
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