For more than a decade the mode of operation employed by these companies has followed a similar pattern. Pick the most famous or popular file-sharing client of the day, use flashy websites and confusing domain names to attract users who can’t tell an imposter from the real thing, lull them in with the suggestion of free downloads, and then extract money from them.

These outfits have picked on just about every file-sharing brand out there with impunity, but now one of them is being held to account.

In a lawsuit filed this week, BitTorrent Inc. is claiming damages from a German-based company for trademark infringement, unfair competition and cybersquatting.

According to the San-Francisco based owner of uTorrent, BitTorrent Marketing GMBH is
making money from users who start out looking for BitTorrent Inc.’s products but then get “misdirected” to dozens of domains bearing similar names, all operated by BitTorrent Marketing.

Listed in the lawsuit are a sample 54 domains such as Bit-Torent.com, Bit-Torrent.com and Bitorrent.net, plus many other misspellings of the official BitTorrent brand.

Once users have visited one of these domains they wrongly presume to be operated by BitTorrent Inc., they are led down a misleading path promising media downloads.

“U.S. users who select the links on Defendant’s BitTorrent website are redirected to websites enabling them to sign up for a variety of services associated with accessing and viewing media and online content, including, among others, ultimate-downloadcenter.com and itv-dish-pro.com,” the lawsuit reads.

However, those who are eventually convinced to part with their money end up disappointed.

“Users who sign up and pay to obtain the services offered through Defendant’s BitTorrent website do not in fact receive those services. For example, after paying over $50 to sign up for ultimate-downloadcenter.com, U.S. users are redirected to third-party websites of other digital media providers, like Netflix.com and Hulu.com, and invited to sign up for membership with those services as well,” the lawsuit continues.

“Accordingly, Plaintiff is informed and believes, and based thereon alleges, that Defendant is intentionally using Plaintiff’s BitTorrent trademark to deceive U.S consumers into signing up for memberships and other ‘services’ that do not afford those users any tangible benefit, with knowledge that such conduct is a result of confusion as to whether those websites are associated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Plaintiff.”

It appears that Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, became aware of the people behind BitTorrent Marketing around 9 years ago. In 2003 Cohen was contacted by an individual requesting permission to register the BitTorrent.de domain name. He refused, but the company (at the time known by a different name) went ahead and started registering BitTorrent-like domains anyway, as well as the German and European trademarks for BitTorrent.

After targeting other world-famous file-sharing brands such as Azureus, Vuze, Kazaa and Morpheus, in early 2012 BitTorrent Marketing started using the BitTorrent trademark in the US through the website BitTorrent.net.

“This filing is part of a series of actions that we’ve taken since 2010 to prevent this company from using the BitTorrent brand to trick users into using a service that is not the genuine article our company provides,” a BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

In conclusion, BitTorrent Inc. is asking for BitTorrent Marketing to be barred from using the BitTorrent mark “or any mark confusingly similar.” They also request damages for trademark related offenses committed by their German namesake including $100,000 for each infringing domain name.

Source: BitTorrent Inc Takes Legal Action Against Download Scammers

The parties agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures, which include slowing down offenders’ connections and temporary disconnections.

The plan was announced under the name ‘Copyright Alerts‘ in July last year and the first ISPs were expected to send out the first warnings before the end of 2011. But this deadline passed silently and as things stand now it looks like the July 1, 2012 deadline is not going to be met by all ISPs either.

TorrentFreak asked the CCI about the upcoming target date, and their response suggests that things may take longer than expected.

“The dates mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are not hard deadlines but were intended to keep us on track to have the Copyright Alert System up and running as quickly as possible and in the most consumer friendly manner possible,” a spokesperson told us.

“We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly and able to be implemented in a manner consistent with all of the goals of the MOU. We expect our implementation to begin later this year.”

In other words, it’s taking more time than expected. That said, the CCI did inform us that they have finally selected a third-party company that will be responsible for monitoring BitTorrent swarms. However, the name of the firm remains a secret for now.

“The technology partner we have identified and begun working with is an independent and impartial expert and we expect to have an announcement about the independent expert shortly,” TorrentFreak was told.

As described in the agreement, this independent “technology partner” will first be tested by yet another independent expert to see if their data collection methods stand up to scrutiny. This is a possible reason for the “delay” but there are many more.

At their end the internet providers all have to create a system that allows them to keep track of the warnings. To ensure the privacy of subscribers, this database of alleged pirates is not stored centrally.

Hoping to find out more about what type of punishments ISPs have planned and their views on the agreement, we contacted several of them.

Verizon was quick to respond but didn’t want to provide any details on the planned punishments. The ISP did say that they believe the voluntary agreement is the right solution for the piracy problem.

“Verizon has always said that copyright infringement is wrong and through this voluntary consumer friendly system, we believe we can educate our consumers and offer them access to legal alternatives,” the company told TorrentFreak.

“We believe this program offers the best approach to the problem of illegal file sharing and, importantly, is one that respects the privacy and rights of our subscribers. It also provides a mechanism for helping people to find many great sources of legal content.”

Other Internet providers contacted by TorrentFreak, including Comcast and AT&T, did not respond to repeated inquiries about the BitTorrent crackdown.

The CCI, however, ensured TorrentFreak that none of the ISPs has plans to terminate the accounts of subscribers. Temporary disconnections remain as one of the possible punishments. Which measures the various ISPs will choose remains a mystery for now. We’ll publish more on this and other details of the scheme in the near future.

Source: US “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme Delayed

It’s not absolutely clear why this is the case but it’s certainly possible that the cross-continent shared understanding of the English language has brought the fear of censorship closer to home for all Internet users. Whatever the reason, the kick-back has been immense.

Rather than sitting idly by, net activists all around the world have been doing their part to re-connect millions of Britains to The Pirate Bay, many by running their own proxy services. At the forefront of this effort are the UK Pirate Party.

Inspired by their Dutch counterparts who recently set up a proxy to bypass a blockade in the Netherlands, Pirate Party UK reacted similarly to the High Court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK. In parallel with the first ISP block from Virgin Media, PPUK responded by firing up their very own anti-censorship proxy.

After being mentioned dozens of times in the media and featuring in the #1 position on the PirateReverse information site, PPUK’s proxy service quickly became the weapon of choice for UK Internet users wanting to unblock the galaxy’s most-resilient torrent site.

The effect on their web presence has been nothing short of dramatic.

Although impressive, it’s worth pointing out that the graph above doesn’t tell the whole story.

Just over 3 weeks ago the Pirate Party UK website was listed way outside the top 100,000 most-visted websites in the UK. Today, as a direct result of their response to Pirate Bay censorship, the site is listed by Alexa as the UK’s 1,550th most popular website.

According to PPUK’s Harry Percival, during a single 24 hour period last week the site received more than 1.8m hits. Given the unavailability of the Pirate Bay website over the past 48 hours, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the PPUK site’s ranking has increased again.

“Whenever the government tries to break the Internet we get a massive boost,” PPUK Culture & Media spokesperson Andrew Robinson told TorrentFreak.

“Whether it’s the PirateBay blocking, the CCDP snooper’s charter, or the latest idea for a porn morality filter, it seems like traditional parties just don’t get it – and people are starting to realize that you can’t just ignore this stuff, it really does have an impact on freedoms, civil liberties and innovation. That’s why the Pirates, both here in the UK and worldwide, are attracting more and more support.

“Another way of looking at it is: the BPI’s high court action has sent a very clear message to politicians of all parties: Voters love file sharing. If you want to be massively popular, you should support file sharing too,” Robinson concludes.

The big question is what happens next. Just over the North Sea in the Netherlands Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN obtained a far-reaching court ruling which banned the Dutch Pirate Party from not only running a proxy, but also telling people where to go to unblock Pirate Bay.

Will the members of the BPI, the companies behind the UK block, go back to court in an effort to silence the Pirates? That’s certainly a possibility but even if they were successful, given the response to censorship thus far there are plenty of people prepared to take up the slack.

Source: Pirate Bay Ban Rockets Pirate Party Website Into The Big Time

The paper carries the self-explanatory title “Associating Depressive Symptoms in College Students with Internet Usage Using Real Internet Data” and will be published in an upcoming issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine.

In brief, the researchers monitored how 216 undergraduates at Missouri S&T used the campus network. They then linked these findings to the results of a self-rated depression scale (CES-D survey).

What they found was that the use of peer-to-peer octets, packets and duration is positively correlated with depressive symptoms. In other words, people who are “depressed” are more avid file-sharers than those who don’t show depressive symptoms.

According to lead researcher Dr. Sriram Chellappan, the findings are unique among their kind.

“The study is believed to be the first that uses actual Internet data, collected unobtrusively and anonymously, to associate Internet usage with signs of depression,” he told Psys. “Previous research on Internet usage has relied on surveys, which are ‘a far less accurate way’ of assessing how people use the Internet.”

It is unclear what the direction of the relation between depressive symptoms and file-sharing is. The MPAA and RIAA may use the results to claim that file-sharing is bad for your mental health, but this can’t be concluded from the current findings.

Aside from heavy P2P use, people with depressive symptoms also use online chat more, and spend more time sending email. HTTP traffic and streaming were not correlated to depressive symptoms.

As a category file-sharers are in good company as previous studies have linked depressive symptoms to online shopping, excessive online video viewing, social networking, online gambling, and excessive late-night Internet use.

Where things do get scary is when Dr. Sriram Chellappan suggests that it might be a good idea to develop applications that scan people’s Internet use for these risky behaviors.

“The software would be a cost-effective and an in-home tool that could proactively prompt users to seek medical help if their Internet usage patterns indicate possible depression. The software could also be installed on campus networks to notify counselors of students whose Internet usage patterns are indicative of depressive behavior,” he explains.

This goes a bit too far, and is also uncalled for as there is absolutely no evidence that even a decent percentage of all avid P2P users show depressive symptoms.

That a researcher even suggests this is baffling. Not everything has to be monitored and checked. Most people just want their monthly invoice from their ISP, not a complete mental health report. Or perhaps i’m just being far too negative…

Source: File-Sharing Is Linked to Depression, Researchers Find

None of these researchers, however, used a large sample of accurate download statistics from a BitTorrent tracker to examine this topic. This missing element motivated economist Robert Hammond, Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, to conduct his own research.

In a paper titled “Profit Leak? Pre-Release File Sharing and the Music Industry” Hammond published his findings.

Between May 2010 and January 2011 the professor collected a variety of download statistics of new albums that were released on the largest private BitTorrent tracker dedicated to music. He then used this data in combination with sales numbers to construct a model that predicts what the causal effect of piracy on music sales is.

The results are unique in its kind and reveal that BitTorrent piracy causes an increase in album sales.

“I isolate the causal effect of file sharing of an album on its sales by exploiting exogenous variation in how widely available the album was prior to its official release date. The findings suggest that file sharing of an album benefits its sales. I don’t find any evidence of a negative effect in any specification, using any instrument,” Hammond concludes in his paper.

In total the sample includes 1,095 albums from 1,075 artists. The research focuses on albums that leaked before their official release. The music industry often states that “curbing pre-release piracy is a particular priority for the recording industry.” These releases are also the focus of criminal proceedings against pirate sites both in the US and the UK.

However, according to the research, sales may actually be hurt by going after these sites. Hammond’s findings suggest that piracy itself acts as a form of advertising similar to radio play and media campaigns, where more downloads result in a moderate increase in sales.

That said, the effect described in the paper is a moderate one. Taking all factors into account Hammond finds that an album that leaks a month in advance results in 59.6 additional sales.

To some degree the results are surprising, as other studies have found a negative relation between music piracy and sales. However, Hammond notes that none of these studies had access to such detailed and precise download statistics which make it possible to go beyond the usual correlation.

Also, unlike several other studies, Hammond’s focuses on album releases instead of single songs.

“I focus on how file sharing of an individual album helps or hurts that album’s sales. The question of interest here is whether an individual artist should expect her sales to decline given wider pre-release availability of the album in file-sharing networks. I find that the answer is no.”

Another unique finding reported in the paper is that popular artists profit more from piracy than less established acts. For smaller artists there is no effect of pre-release piracy on sales. This contradicts older research. Hammond, however, notes that his data is richer than in the other studies, and therefore more accurate.

In addition, we’d argue that the focus on pre-releases may also account for the missing effect on new artists.

While the reported data appears to be solid, the question has to be asked how representative the data set is for all music piracy on BitTorrent. The private tracker in question has more than 150,000 users, who are almost exclusively more than average music fans.

Overall, the paper offers a unique and unprecedented analysis of BitTorrent piracy on music sales. It clearly disputes the music industry argument that pre-release piracy hurts album sales, and suggests that BitTorrent piracy can act as promotion.

Source: BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds