Wednesday, 8 August 2012

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update

Judge Orders Oron To Settle $34.8m Copyright Suit, Dismisses Case

Posted: 08 Aug 2012 01:08 AM PDT

In June, adult studio Corbin Fisher (through owners Liberty Media) sued the operators of file-hosting service Oron for $34.8 million, claiming that they induce the sharing of copyright infringing files via their service.

Liberty Media's lawyer Marc Randazza went in with all guns blazing, describing Oron as 'criminals' who do not qualify for safe harbor under the DMCA. Oron’s funds were frozen but despite a small part later being released, it became clear that the service would have difficulty continuing without access to much, much more.

In early July it became apparent that the companies had been attempting to reach a settlement, details of which were leaked online following a poor redaction of court documents.

There was a significant gap between what Liberty asked for and what Oron were prepared to give. However, while Oron insisted no final agreement had been reached, Liberty felt that at some point a deal had been struck and went on to ask the court to enforce the terms. Yesterday the court did just that.

“There is nothing in the Settlement Letter that indicates that Defendant did not intend to be presently bound by the proposed terms or that a future writing was required,” U.S. District Court Judge Gloria M. Navarro wrote in her ruling.

“The requirement for the Plaintiff's attorney to sign and return indicates that the parties do agree that all these terms are acceptable and binding. If this was only a proposal of terms there probably would not be a requirement for Plaintiff's counsel to sign and return.”

Judge Navarro went on to find that the settlement negotiations between Oron and Liberty did amount to an enforceable contract.

“The Settlement Letter written by Defendant was an offer, accepted by Plaintiff when its counsel signed the letter. There was a meeting of the minds as to all material terms on July 5, 2012, when Plaintiff agreed that the settlement would include dismissal with prejudice of [alleged owner and operator of Oron] Mr. Bochenko,” Judge Navarro wrote.

“There settlement includes valuable consideration on the part of both Plaintiff and Defendant. In this case, the Court can compel compliance because there are no uncertain material terms that remain. Accordingly, the Court grants Plaintiff's Motion to Enforce Settlement.”

That settlement is detailed in court papers as follows:

1. Oron pays Liberty Media $550,000.
. . .
8. Once payment is received by both parties, both proceedings in NV and HK will be
dismissed with prejudice, and in the event that Oron breaks any part of the deal, the
claims may be reinstated via arbitration after a 30 day "notice and cure" period.
. . .
12. Liberty agree to announce publicly that after a careful review of the facts they
believe Oron is protected by the DMCA safe harbor and that a review of the actual files
shows that there never was any child porn on Oron's site.
. . .
14. Liberty will immediately, once the terms of the agreement are agreed to issue a
letter asking that the HK bank accounts be unfrozen allowing the payment to the
Randazza Trust and then to [former Oron webhosting provider] Leaseweb as well as send a letter to Leaseweb asking them to allow Oron ten (10) days to pay as the settlement of the matter is imminent.

There are at least 19 points to the settlement agreement so as can be seen from the numbering scheme on the items above a significant number are missing from court papers. As previously revealed, Oron were prepared to hand over the identities of its allegedly copyright infringing customers to Liberty and help the studio take legal action against them.

But while the enforcement of the settlement allows Oron to continue with its business in theory, problems remain. Firstly, Oron’s parent company accounts are still frozen, “in order to satisfy any fee award, which may be sought by Plaintiff, but which must be brought within thirty (30) days of this Order.”

Furthermore, as a cyberlocker Oron is currently doing no business at all. The site disappeared from the Internet several days ago, ostensibly to move to a new host, but it is yet to reappear or post any advisory on its homepage.

Source: Judge Orders Oron To Settle $34.8m Copyright Suit, Dismisses Case

Internet Archive Starts Seeding 1,398,875 Torrents

Posted: 07 Aug 2012 02:25 PM PDT

The Internet Archive‘s mission statement is to provide “universal access to all knowledge,” which is not all that different from The Pirate Bay’s ethos.

BitTorrent is the fastest way to share files with large groups of people over the Internet, and this is one of the reasons that prompted the Internet Archive to start seeding well over a million of their files using the popular file-sharing protocol.

Starting today, all new files uploaded to the Archive will also be available via BitTorrent. In addition, a massive collection of older files including concerts from John Mayer, Jack Johnson and Maroon 5 and the Prelinger collection are also being published via torrents.

“I hope this is greeted by the BitTorrent community, as we are loving what they have built and are very glad we can populate the BitTorrent universe with library and archive materials,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told TorrentFreak.

“There is a great opportunity for symbiosis between the Libraries and Archives world and the BitTorrent communities,” he adds.

At the time of writing the Internet Archive is seeding 1,398,875 torrents, but hundreds of new ones are being added every hour. The Internet Archive recognizes that BitTorrent is now the fastest way to download files.

“BitTorrent is now the fastest way to download items from the Archive, because the BitTorrent client downloads simultaneously from two different Archive servers located in two different datacenters, and from other Archive users who have downloaded these torrents already.”

Interestingly, the Archive’s plans for BitTorrent are not limited to providing an alternative download link for their files. Founder Brewster Kahle says that they are also working on turning it into a storage mechanism.

“The next step is to make BitTorrent a distributed preservation system for content like ours,” Kahle told us. Kahle believes that the Internet Archive and the BitTorrent community can help each other and hopes to get the discussion on the preservation idea started.

“I think this whole thing will be awesome, and possibly very important,” he adds.

In the wake of recent news featuring raids, crackdowns, DDoSes and lawsuits, this announcement from the Internet Archive brings some very welcome positive news about BitTorrent. For those who are interested in tracking how many people are leeching from the archive, here are some fancy graphs.

Source: Internet Archive Starts Seeding 1,398,875 Torrents

Demonoid Operators Face Criminal Investigation in Mexico

Posted: 07 Aug 2012 06:28 AM PDT

Confirmation came out of Ukraine yesterday that not only had Demonoid suffered a DDoS and hacker attack, it had also been raided by the authorities.

In the middle of last week government investigators arrived at ColoCall, Demonoid’s webhost, to shut Demonoid down.

"Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them," an anonymous ColoCall source confirmed to local news site Kommersant.

With the dust settling today, the sequence of events is becoming a little more clear.

ColoCall Commercial Director Peter Vlasenko has now confirmed that his company had repeatedly warned Demonoid of complaints being made against it. He added that the company had also cautioned Demonoid’s operators that problems could lead to the ISP severing its relationship with the site. Last week, that’s exactly what happened.

“The Division of Economic Crimes [DEC] received an international request from Interpol to send a request to the company ColoCall. DEC sent the request to the provider, after which the ISP decided to stop working with Demonoid,” said Sergei Burlakov of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.

But the bad news for Demonoid doesn’t end there. The Interpol request that finally forced the closure of the site was the result of call from thousands of miles away in North America.

“In Mexico a criminal case against the owners of Demonoid has been initiated and the tracker is charged with intellectual property rights violations,” Burlakov confirmed.

Demonoid’s links to Mexico have been rumored for some time, but it was action taken last year that finally gave them credibility.

TorrentFreak learned that in October 2011, Mexican authorities carried out a raid in Monterrey, the capital city of the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León. The prime target was one of Demonoid's staff. Following the action the authorities completely blocked access to the site in Mexico.

Movie industry sources confirmed to TorrentFreak that the raids had indeed resulted in the arrest of one of Demonoid's administrators. It remains unclear whether the current investigation centers around the same individual.

Source: Demonoid Operators Face Criminal Investigation in Mexico
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