Late June 2010, nine sites connected to unauthorized movie streaming were targeted by US law enforcement.

NinjaVideo, at the time one of the Internet’s most popular video portals, was one of the first targets in the now-famous and ongoing Operation in Our Sites.

Five people connected to NinjaVideo were arrested and in September 2011 they were indicted by a federal grand jury. After pleading guilty on September 23rd, yesterday one of the site’s founders was sentenced in Alexandria, Va..

Matthew David Howard Smith, known online as Dead1ne, received 14 months in prison for his activities at Ninja. U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga also ordered Smith to serve two years of supervised release.

Of the total $505,000 said to have been collected by NinjaVideo in ad revenue and donations since its creation in February 2008, Smith is said to have received $172,387. The court ordered Smith to repay this amount and forfeit five financial accounts and previously-seized sundry computer equipment.

When compared to the punishment handed out to NinjaVideo co-founder Hana Beshara earlier this month, Smith was treated relatively leniently. Beshara, known online as ‘Phara’, was sentenced to 22 months in prison followed by 2 years of probation, 500 hours of community service and ordered to repay nearly $210,000.

In contrast to Beshara, 23-year-old Smith appears to have caused the authorities much less of a headache since his guilty plea. After her sentencing, the hugely outspoken 30-year-old Beshara posted comments to Facebook which suggested she had no regrets. The outburst incensed the authorities and she was rushed directly to a local prison to begin her sentence.

Three former operators of NinjaVideo are yet to be sentenced including 34-year-old Joshua David Evans (known online as Wadswerth), 33-year-old Jeremy Lynn Andrew (known online as htrdfrk), and 28-year-old Justin A. Dedemko (known online as Afr1ka). All face a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when they are sentenced in the coming months.

Zoi Mertzanis of Greece, known online as “Tik”, is accused of being one the site’s most active uploaders. A warrant is outstanding for his arrest.

Source: Second NinjaVideo Admin Jailed For Copyright Infringement

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Mid-2010, nine sites connected to movie streaming were targeted by the U.S. government. They included NinjaVideo.net, at the time one of the Internet’s most prominent video streaming sites.

Hana Beshara, known online as Phara, was the first of the site’s founders to be sentenced. She has to spend 22 months in prison followed by 2 years of probation and 500 hours of community service.

After her sentencing Beshara was released to allow her to spend a few weeks in the outside world until a bed became available at a local prison. This is common procedure if a person is unlikely to flee and doesn’t pose a danger to the safety of any other person or the community.

Initially the authorities didn’t protest this decision, but a few hours after the verdict they changed their position. As it turns out, the Attorney’s Office was keeping an eye on NinjaVideo’s Facebook page where Beshara was blowing off stream and interacting with other members of the Ninja community.

“I never snitched, I never left Ninjavideo, and I will always be proud of this incredible world we built, this community that touched millions. I hold my head high. Always. Ride or die, no? THIS SHIT IS NINJA,” was the first of more than two dozen updates to which the authorities took offense.

Aside from joking about her time in jail – picking up a degree, earning pennies making license plates – Beshara encouraged people to spread the word about her sentencing. The NinjaVideo founder further solicited for photo shoots in men’s magazines, and made plans to create a documentary.

Prettier than the MPAA

The authorities were not amused by the outspoken convict, and immediately requested the court to detain her as soon as possible.

“Between Friday afternoon and this morning, Beshara posted more than 25 additional Facebook messages, which variously criticized the government, celebrated NinjaVideo.net’s copyright infringement, and sought to assemble a public relations team to engage media and documentary filmmakers to help her ‘fight back’ and ‘change [ ] history . . . again.’.”

“Beshara also posted several entries on what remains of the NinjaVideo.net forum boards, now hosted at www.ninjavideoforum.net, one of which belittled the sentence imposed by the Court and mocked the named victim of her crimes,” they write.

According to the authorities, the Facebook updates written by the NinjaVideo founder pose a danger to the community.

“Beshara’s post-sentencing actions demonstrate a clear lack of remorse over her illegal conduct and a disregard of the harm her actions have caused, and pose a danger to the community,” they write.

The question is what the authorities see as a threat. We assume that a comment like “IMA RUN MY FUCKIN CELL BLOCK. ,” isn’t taken too seriously. Even if it is, the comment wouldn’t be a threat to the community, and certainly not a reason to rush her to jail.

Another option is that the authorities simply don’t want Beshara to speak up in public and be critical or even sarcastic about her sentencing. Her motivation to get into the spotlight and have her say, may be one of the main reasons why the authorities wanted to speed up the detainment.

Despite opposition from Beshara’s lawyer, today the court sided with the prosecution and ruled that the NinjaVideo founder should be locked up effective immediately, taking away the few weeks she had left. Beshara was sent off to the Alexandria detention center where she will serve her sentence… and run a cell block.

Source: US Authorities Silence NinjaVideo Founder, Rush Her to Prison

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In support of their ‘Linking is Not a Crime’ campaign, in late July the Czech Pirate Party launched not one but two movie download portals. The sites, which offer links but don’t host any infringing material themselves, were launched to protest the plight of a high school student facing a 5 million euro damages claim for linking to copyright works.

The 16-year-old from Liberec was accused by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union of publishing links to copyright infringing material on his website, acts which the Union claim have caused damages of more than 5 million euros.

Now, in another “don’t pick on the kid, pick on us” move, the Pirate Party have thrown down the gaunlet yet again to the Anti-Piracy Union by partnering and launching another download site.

The social network, called Moviehome, is being described by the Party as a ‘Facebook for movies’. Users of the site are encouraged to upload links to reviews, subtitles and of course, movie downloads.

“Sharing of links is a principle without which the Internet would cease to function,” says Pirate Party chairman Ivan Bartoš. “Therefore we’re systematically fighting against the criminalization of linking.”

In common with Piratskefilmy and Tipnafilm, the two file-sharing projects proceeding it, Moviehome has been created by programmers who are too afraid to reveal their identities in case they are hounded by the Anti-Piracy Union. The Pirate Party have no such fears, and say they have are yet to receive any complaints.

“The Czech anti-piracy union does not know what to do,” Party Vice-President Mikuláš Ferjencik told TorrentFreak.

“They’re probably focusing on the court action with the Liberec student, with the hope that they might claim eventually that all our websites are illegal. They also do not want to give us publicity and they do not have much to say about it really as our sites actually are legal.”

Ferjencik says that the Pirate Party will run Moviehome.cz for as long as it remains a non-commercial concern. He says that the Party wants to separate business and politics, so if the site’s creators want to turn Moviehome.cz into a business venture, they’ll simply hand the site back and wish them luck.

“As a party, we do not want to depend on the finances from web advertising that’s why all of our linking sites are strictly non-commercial. On the other hand, I must emphasize that there’s nothing wrong about running commercial linking websites, after all Google and Seznam.cz have been doing this for a long time,” adds Ferjencik.

The launch of the third site in a little over a month does not mark the end of Czech Pirate support for further file-sharing ventures, or perhaps even more spectacular adventures.

“We will back anyone with a similar project who asks for our support,” Ferjencik explains, while extending an open invitation to The Pirate Bay to take up Czech hosting should they encounter further legal difficulties.

“We’ll also consider suing ourselves to get it to court before the Liberec case is over, but my flatmates are not in a mood for a police visit yet, so it will have to wait for a while,” Ferjencik adds.

While the Czech Pirates now have three file-sharing sites in their portfolio, adding Pirate Party Canada’s Travis McCrea’s site, Tormovies.org, means that a total of four Pirate-inspired movie download sites have been created in less than two months.

“We cannot lose this war,” says Ferjencik.

“In the unlikely case that the court ‘says linking is a crime’, the public uproar will get us into parliament. People hate it when they lose rights they already had, especially when they fought hard to obtain them.

“People did not carry out the revolution in 1989 to see students paying millions of Euros for helping others to share information.”

Source: Pirate Party Launches ‘Facebook’ For Movies

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A teenager was arrested yesterday on suspicion of being involved with the Anonymous’ Operation Payback. The operation orchestrated DDoS attacks on anti-piracy targets in the last months, and more recently against those who obstructed Wikileaks‘ work. Sources have informed TorrentFreak that the arrestee is one of the IRC-operators of Anonymous, known under the nickname Jeroenz0r.

Starting mid-September, dozens of anti-piracy groups, copyright lawyers and pro-copyright outfits have been targeted by a group of Anonymous Internet ‘vigilantes’ under the flag of Operation Payback.

The operation started initially as ‘payback’ against outfits that tried to stop the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay, and DDoS attacks were organized to strike back. A few days ago, the operation changed course and instead began to go after organizations that displayed opposition towards Wikileaks.

Over the last days several high profile companies and institutions were taken offline temporarily by DDoS attacks including Mastercard, Visa and Paypal. Conversely, Operation Payback’s operation was also obstructed with the deletion of their Twitter and Facebook accounts after the news hit the mainstream media.

Yesterday, this was followed by the arrest (Dutch) of an alleged ‘member’ of Operation Payback in The Netherlands. The local police announced that a 16 year old boy was arrested, suspected of being involved in the DDoS attacks on Wikileaks related targets.

The boy, whose identity was not released, will be heard in court today and has reportedly confessed to his involvement.

According to several sources the arrestee is known online under the nickname Jeroenz0r. The authorities have not yet confirmed this, but the person using this nickname has been ‘missing’ online for the past 24 hours, and has been involved with Operation Payback for quite a while.

“Jeroenz0r and his server became delinked Thursday night at around midnight UTC time,” a source told TorrentFreak, confirming that the teenager lives in The Hague, where the arrest was made.

“Some of his friends tried calling him yesterday but the phone lead to voicemail. When calling his home number, his dad refused to comment on the situation. Furthermore, his local town newspaper also reported that a local 16 year old boy was arrested.”

Another source, who acts as an Operation Payback spokesman, confirmed that Jeroenz0r has been unreachable since the time of the arrest.

How the police became aware of Jeroenz0r is unknown, but we were told that he didn’t cover his tracks too well.

“Others on the network who know him a bit better knew that he was sloppy and often left traces from his actions online. Also, the Google results on him are quite impressive and indicate that he has been quite active in the torrent scene.”

In a possible response to the arrest, the Dutch Prosecution Office now seems to be under a DDoS attack. Previously the Dutch police stated that they will not go after people who ‘make their computers available” for these attacks, but that they will target people who are more heavily involved.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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Some of the biggest Internet brands have declared their love for BitTorrent in recent months. Both Facebook and Twitter are using BitTorrent to update their networks and not without success. In Twitter‘s new setup the BitTorrent-powered system has made their server deployment 75 times faster than before.

Large scale web-services such as Twitter need thousands of servers to manage the flow of updates sent out by their millions of users. As a result, keeping all these servers updated with the latest data can be time and resource intensive. To improve the deployment of files across their servers, Twitter recently called in the help of BitTorrent.

After having considered several scalable deployment options, BitTorrent turned out to be the only candidate that met their standards. “It was time for something completely different, something decentralized, something more like.. BitTorrent.. running inside of our datacenter to quickly copy files around,” Twitter engineer Larry Gadea explains.

With BitTorrent, Twitter hoped to distribute files faster and more efficiently, saving time and precious resources while improving the scalability of Twitter’s operation. Earlier this year the new BitTorrent-powered system was rolled out and didn’t fail to impress.

“Using the file-sharing protocol, we launched a side-project called Murder and after a few days (and especially nights) of nervous full-site tinkering, it turned a 40 minute deploy process into one that lasted just 12 seconds,” Gadea commented.

BitTorrent is 75 times faster when compared to the old server deployment system, reducing deployments across thousands of servers to just a few seconds. With BitTorrent, every server not only downloads the new files, but also becomes a distribution point that helps to spread it to others.

Larry Gadea, who says he’s an avid BitTorrent user himself with experience of downloading tons of Linux ISOs, named Twitter’s new deployment system ‘Murder’ after a flock of crows. The code is based on the BitTornado BitTorrent client and available to the public and licensed under the free software Apache License.

The BitTornado client was chosen as the base code for its openness, Gadea explained, so Twitter can redistribute their code to other developers without running into licensing issues.

It’s beginning to look like BitTorrent may become the standard for large-scale networks wanting to update their machines quickly and efficiently. With huge brands such as Facebook and Twitter adopting it, we can only expect that others will follow their lead.

Twitter’s Larry Gadea explains a bit more about the Murder setup in the presentation he gave at the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference earlier this year.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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