TorrentFreak Email Update |
| Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying a VPN Posted: 01 May 2012 04:29 AM PDT Faced with the almost impossible task of physically restricting people’s activities online, during recent years authorities and copyright holders have sought to have legislation tightened up, to encourage citizens towards a path of “doing the right thing” through the fear of more and more serious consequences. In Sweden, the results of intense lobbying are clear. Due to a combination of fat Internet pipes and its status as the spiritual home of The Pirate Bay, Sweden and file-sharing go hand in hand. As a result the country is being subjected to considerable online surveillance. But according to new research from the Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University, an increasing proportion of the country’s population are taking measures to negate the effects of spying on their online activities. The study reveals that 700,000 Swedes now make themselves anonymous online with paid VPN services such as The Pirate Bay’s iPredator. A similar study carried out in 2009 revealed that 500,000 Swedes were taking steps to anonymize their connections. Today’s results therefore reveal a 40% increase in privacy service uptake in roughly 2.5 years. Of particular interest is the response to surveillance by the younger generation. According to Cybernorms, 200,000 individuals aged between 15 to 25-years-old are now hiding themselves online. This figure represents 15% of the total group, up from 10% in 2009. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law at Lund and study manager, says that further uptake of anonymization services will only increase as new legislation is introduced. “If the [recent] European Court of Justice opinion leads to an intensified hunt for file sharers, there is evidence that the use of these types of services for anonymity will grow even faster,” says Svensson. While the researchers at Lund estimate that file-sharing is one of the key drivers behind the update of anonymity services, according to the foundation administering Sweden’s top-level .SE domain, monitoring of other kinds is also playing its part. “Where monitoring is increasing, both from government and from private players like Facebook and Google, so does demand,” .SE president Danny Aerts told Svenska Dagbladet. Whether it’s for file-sharing, domain blockage circumvention or freedom of speech, anonymization services are here to stay. Welcome to the encrypted Internet. Source: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying a VPN 
   | ||
| UK ISPs Must Censor The Pirate Bay, High Court Rules Posted: 30 Apr 2012 08:29 AM PDT
Indeed, after a few weeks a conglomerate of music labels filed a lawsuit against several Internet providers, demanding that they block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. Nine labels including EMI, Polydor, Sony, Virgin and Warner said that The Pirate Bay infringes their copyrights and that several ISPs including TalkTalk and Virgin Media should implement a blockade under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. In February the High Court agreed that The Pirate Bay and its users do indeed breach copyright on a major scale, and today this decision was followed by a court order. ISPs Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must censor The Pirate Bay website in the weeks to come. A sixth ISP, BT, has asked for more time to consider its position. A Pirate Bay spokesperson told TorrentFreak that this measure is going to do very little to stop people from accessing their site, as there are many ways to circumvent it. "This will just give us more traffic, as always. Thanks for the free advertising." The UK Pirate Party is also prepared for the block and is offering a reverse proxy which allows blocked Internet users to access The Pirate Bay. Virgin Media responded to the BBC by saying that a blockade won’t be very effective unless the entertainment industry works on legal alternatives as well. “As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behavior to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price,” their spokesperson said. Music industry group BPI, on the other hand, sees today’s verdict as a major victory. “The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them,” BPI boss Geoff Taylor said. The Open Rights Group says the court-ordered block represents the thin end of the wedge. “Blocking the Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism,” ORG Executive Director Jim Killock said. “Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes.” The UK is not the first country in Europe where the Pirate Bay is blocked by court order. Similar verdicts were already handed down in Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Finland previously. Despite these blockades, The Pirate Bay continues to grow month after month. Source: UK ISPs Must Censor The Pirate Bay, High Court Rules 
   |
After the MPA won its blocking case against the Newzbin2 Usenet indexing site last year, it was only a matter of time before similar sites were targeted in the same mannner.| You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment