Pirate Bay Won't Be Blocked By ISP's UniteTheCows (blog) Anti-Piracy groups can't get rid of BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay on their own so they've decided to put pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to …

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Following a court case initiated by the IFPI, in early 2008 a Danish judge ruled that ISP Telenor (then Tele2) should block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. IFPI, representing the major recording labels, had successfully argued that Telenor was assisting in mass copyright infringement.

Later in 2008 the Eastern High Court upheld the earlier ruling but Telenor, with the support of other ISPs, said they would continue to fight. In April 2009 a Danish appeals body accepted a petition from the ISP to take the case to the Supreme Court.

“We are pleased that we now have the opportunity to find out whether it is Internet Service Providers’ responsibility to ensure the closure of a website,” noted Telenor’s regulatory chief Nicholai Kramer Pfeiffer. Representatives from the music industry believed a decision in their favor was required.

“The principle is extremely important in this case. If the Supreme Court unblocks The Pirate Bay, it means that people can abuse the Danish artists’ music again,” said Martin Arnoldsen, Executive Director of the Danish Musicians’ Union. “Many people may think that musicians are living a life with lots of money, but this is not the reality.”

The Supreme Court hearing began last week on May 20th, with Telenor making its final attempt to have the earlier decision overruled and therefore unblocking The Pirate Bay.

“The central legal argument of IFPI in this case is a statement in Danish copyright law: Any copying due to exceptions in copyright is illegal if the ‘original’ being copied is an illegal copy,” Ole Husgaard of the Danish Pirate Party told TorrentFreak last night.

“Because the ISP makes temporary copies of small fragments of the copyrighted work as IP packets pass their routers, the ISP violates copyright if one of their customers downloads an illegal copy. But this requirement of a ‘legal original’ is not allowed in the EU Infosoc directive in the case of ‘a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary’ (Article 5.1(a)). So here our local law violates EU law,” he explained.

Husgaard told TorrentFreak that the top civil servant in the Danish government responsible for copyright law at the time Infosoc was implemented in local law was Peter Schønning.

“Today he is no longer a civil servant. Now he is employed by IFPI, and is running the legal proceedings to get the Pirate Bay blocked for IFPI,” says Husgaard.

Today the Supreme Court announced its decision and the IFPI came out on top. Telenor – and by extension other ISPs – must continue to DNS-block The Pirate Bay so that Danish subscribers cannot access the site.

“With the Supreme Court upholding an ISP ban against providing customer access to The Pirate Bay it is clearly necessary to have legislative changes,” say the Pirate Party in a response to the ruling.

“Our copyright law should be addressed, so it is no longer in breach of EU law. And the Procedure Code should be amended so the rules on preliminary injunction can no longer be misused by, for example, IFPI to achieve a better position than they are entitled.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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In February 2010, the Supreme Court in Italy decided that ISPs could be forced to block file-sharing sites, even those located outside the country and run by foreigners.

The first victim was The Pirate Bay, which became (officially at least) unavailable in Italy after all the country’s ISPs blocked the site. In March, Labaia – which functioned as a Pirate Bay proxy enabling Italians to continue accessing the site – was shut down by Italian police.

Now, in fresh action by the authorities, the police in conjunction with local anti-piracy groups have shut down LinkStreaming.com, Italy’s most popular movie streaming links location and the 50th most popular site in the country.

Coordinated by Dr. Giangiacomo Pilia, Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cagliari, Operation “Little Angel” had been underway since February 2010 with the assistance of FPM (Federation Against Music Piracy) and FAPAV (Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Federation).

Yesterday LinkStreaming displayed the following message:

LinkStreaming was hosted by PRQ, Sweden’s most infamous “bullet-proof” hoster which was previously run by Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm of Pirate Bay fame and the current host of WikiLeaks.

Although currently completely offline for visitors outside Italy, according to the police the site was first rendered inaccessible to Italian users. In future, local Internet service providers will take steps to ensure that Italians can never access the site, in the traditional ways at least.

Even though it’s believed that LinkStreaming merely linked to content, the operation against the site continued and culminated in searches in three different regions of the country putting six administrators under investigation. According to the police, those suspects are believed to have made available copyright movies to the public for profit and as such risk imprisonment of between 1 and 4 years along with fines up to 15,000 euros.

FIMI, the local division of the IFPI, welcomed the police operation to close the site.

“I hope that other sites still actively operating servers with illegal content in Italy or abroad, will now decide to voluntarily cease trading without risking complaints and seizures,” said IFPI Chairman, Enzo Mazza.

Anti-piracy results in Italy have been somewhat of a mixed bag lately. Although FAPAV largely lost their case against ISP Telecom Italia recently, it now seems that sites deemed to be commercial in nature can be shut down quickly by the authorities.

Article from: TorrentFreak, in the morning.

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After failing to bring online piracy under control by other methods, the music and movie industries have been increasingly turning to the courts to force ISPs into action against their own customers.

In Italy, movie anti-piracy group Fapav (Federazione Anti-Pirateria Audiovisiva) went to court in an attempt to compel Italy’s largest ISP, Telecom Italia, to take unprecedented action against subscribers FAPAV say are infringing their members’ copyrights.

In a April 15th ruling that has just been made public, Judge Antonella Izzo largely rejected FAPAV’s demands.

FAPAV wanted the court to force Telecom Italia to monitor its users, report those who file-share to the authorities, and block them along with a range of web locations including BitTorrent sites The Pirate Bay, 1337x and isoHunt. FAPAV had also called for fines of 10,000 euros per day if Telecom Italia refused to comply.

But in a big blow for FAPAV, Judge Izzo ruled that Internet service providers cannot be held responsible for the material carried over their networks and rejected their calls for user and site blocking. The demand that huge fines should be imposed on Telecom Italia for non-compliance was also rejected.

The decision was welcomed by the rest of Italy’s Internet service providers, who had feared the implications for their businesses should the case have gone FAPAV’s way.

FAPAV didn’t come away from the case entirely empty-handed though. It achieved token success when the judge ruled that ISPs should pass on copyright infringement complaints from rightsholders to the local prosecutor, rather than the current position where the rightsholders have to do that themselves.

After years spent souring relationships with their customers through legal action, one has to wonder about the extent of the damage now being done to the relationships between the entertainment industries and Internet service providers. Will the worldwide tour of expensive and damaging litigation against them continue, or will changes in the law negate the need for that approach? Time will tell.

Article from: TorrentFreak, in the morning.

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The PRO-IP Act is a United States law that aims to toughen current anti-piracy measures.

As part of the Act, President Obama appointed Victoria Espinel as the new copyright czar last year. Espinel announced a public consultation a few months ago, looking for comments and suggestions from the U.S. public on how to deal with piracy.

For this consultation the RIAA and MPAA have now jointly submitted (pdf) their suggestions, calling for a future without piracy.

As expected, the submission starts with bitter complaints about the massive losses the entertainment industries have to endure because of online piracy. The same old bogus studies and reports are cited, publications that were heavily criticized and labeled as inaccurate by the U.S. Government earlier this week.

What follows are a set of recommendations that, if they become law, would turn the Internet into a copyright police state. The EFF has cherry picked some of the most draconian recommendations in a recent blog post, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. We highlight some of the suggestions below.

If the RIAA and MPAA had their way…

- The public would be encouraged to install anti-piracy software on their computers which would monitor their network for copyright-infringing materials. They are most likely referring to the Digital File Check application that they’ve been plugging for a while.

- Internet service providers would have to allow third parties to spy on the files that are transferred by their customers and check them against a reference database of “fingerprints” to check whether the files are infringing copyright or not.

- Torrent sites and file-hosters would have to preemptively filter content that is uploaded to or indexed by their sites. The reasoning behind this suggestion is that the regular notice and takedown procedures are time consuming and ineffective because content quickly reappears.

- Search engines, hosting companies, payment processors, advertising agencies, social networking sites and domain registrars would be encouraged to team up with copyright holders in order to prevent online piracy. The purpose of this collaboration would be to cut off sites that ‘facilitate’ copyright infringement.

- Consumers and websites that repeatedly infringe on the rights of copyright holders would lose their Internet access.

These are just a few of the recommendations that are listed in the submission. It is quite clear that the copyright industries want full control over the Internet by building a copyright police state. Let’s hope that the politicians responsible for drafting the legislation will use their brains, instead of blindly accepting such proposals.

Article from: TorrentFreak, in the morning.

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Following a court case initiated by the IFPI, in February 2008 a Danish judge ruled that ISP Tele2 had to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The music group had successfully argued that that Tele2 was assisting in mass copyright infringement by providing its subscribers access to the tracker.

Sebastian Gjerding, spokesperson for Piratgruppen, a pro-piracy lobby whose goals include the reformation of copyright law, was outraged by the news.

“The verdict is absurd. It will block access for Danish users to the world’s largest distributor of culture and knowledge – copyrighted or not,” he told TorrentFreak. “It’s true that you can access copyrighted material through The Pirate Bay, as you can with Google or Rapidshare. Should they be blocked as well?”

Very quickly controversy hit the ruling when it was revealed that Kristian Løkkegaard, the only expert witness in the case, was previously employed by the Johan Schlüter Law Firm who worked with the IFPI on anti-piracy cases.

Nevertheless, later in 2008 the Eastern High Court upheld the ruling. Tele2 said they would fight on and in April 2009 a Danish appeals body accepted a petition from Telenor to take the case to the Supreme Court.

“We are pleased that we now have the opportunity to find out whether it is Internet Service Providers’ responsibility to ensure the closure of a website,” said Telenor’s regulatory chief Nicholai Kramer Pfeiffer.

The same question has just been clarified to the north of Denmark in Norway, where the courts gave two clear decisions that there is no legal basis under Norwegian law for ISPs to block The Pirate Bay.

The answer to the Danish question is not far away now, as a date has just been tabled for the Supreme Court hearing. Three hours have been set aside to hear the case on 20 May 2010 starting at 9:00am.

Unusually for this type of hearing both sides will be present in person and the public will be allowed to view proceedings although seating is limited.

A final decision is expected to be handed down around a week later.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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As the campaign initiated by the RIAA in the United States seemed to show, suing file-sharers does little to reduce online piracy. The swapping of files online continued unabated throughout the last decade of litigation, prompting a new strategy from the international music and movie industries – trying to hold ISPs responsible for the activities of their subscribers.

However, under the AFACT umbrella, Hollywood lost its most prominent case against ISP iiNet after the court decided that the ISP was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers.

Despite being ordered to pay all costs, AFACT announced it would not only go back to court in an attempt to avoid paying them, it would also appeal the entire decision, claiming that the judge was wrong on just about every point.

This stubborn attitude hasn’t gone down well, with many observers openly criticizing Hollywood’s bullish stance and insisting it should accept defeat graciously. But of course, that’s not going to happen. After all, what could they do having failed to force ISPs to carry the can? Start suing file-sharers RIAA-style?

Worryingly, an AFACT spokeswoman quoted in a News.com.au article this morning (which has since inexplicably disappeared), said the anti-piracy group now has that armageddon option under consideration. She claimed they are yet to make a final decision.

In the meantime it’s back to the old FUD strategy to try and scare people away from file-sharing networks.

“If you’re using (torrents) (we) can see every movie you want, everyone who is sharing it and everyone who has it on their hard drive,” said the AFACT spokeswoman. “It’s very public what you do and as copyright holders we have a third-party company that is mining all that information and sending it to Internet Service Providers,” she added.

Well that’s not going to scare iiNet customers very much is it?

Nevertheless, AFACT claims there are a number of things ISPs can do to stop piracy, including banning access to torrent sites. Thing is, generally they aren’t, and with this latest iiNet decision there is even less incentive for ISPs to send out warnings or even temporarily suspend accounts, as shown by Exetel which recently reversed its policy.

But there are other ways to encourage reductions in piracy. You don’t have to sue ISPs, spread FUD or imply that suing end users is an option under consideration. Instead of being aggressive towards customers, why not try to pull them onside?

The Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) was created to “promote the value of the industry by raising awareness, understanding and appreciation of intellectual property, and its role and value in society.” In other words, this is a more outwardly friendly anti-piracy group that aims to educate and persuade rather than deal the traditional death-by-lawyer.

Today IPAF announced the appointment of a new CEO, ex-Sony and Fox director Gail Grant who will lead the organization “to motivate a change in public attitude away from piracy” and “encourage supporting the more than 50,000 people employed in all aspects of the industry through the enjoyment of original and legitimate film and television experiences.”

Fair enough. Persuading the public is certainly better than beating them into submission. But there is a problem. While IPAF plays softly-softly with its consumer friendly image, its main sponsors are doing completely the opposite. In case you’re wondering, those sponsors are AFACT and the MPA.

As earlier pointed out by iiNet chief Michael Malone and countless others, the best way to combat piracy is to make movie and TV content available online readily and cheaply. Maybe the studios could get together and create a new group with a CEO dedicated to that, instead of spending money on all of these other good-cop/bad-cop groups with conflicting messages.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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After endless negotiations between the copyright industries and Internet service providers which ultimately led nowhere, Spain’s Ministry of Culture has decided to take action to break the impasse.

The new Sustainable Economy Law, sponsored by President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, includes draft amendments to legislation “to protect intellectual property against piracy on the Internet”.

The proposals will add to the country’s current ‘information society services’ legislation. Article 8.1 already allows for restricting access to the Internet on several grounds – protecting public order, a criminal investigation, national security, protection of public health, protecting personal dignity, anti-discrimination and the protection of children.

It is proposed that new grounds for disconnection will be added to “safeguard intellectual property rights”. This will hand “competent bodies” the authority to require Internet service providers to supply information on customers who are deemed to be breaching copyright.

El Pais reports that there will not be an emphasis on disconnecting individual Internet users, but instead the focus will be on sites providing links to copyright works, of which there are several hundred in Spain.

In a statement, Spain’s Minister for Culture, Ángeles González-Sinde, said that sites offering links to copyright works could be taken offline without a judicial order, an announcement which has met with firm opposition from activists.

While González-Sinde denied yesterday that individual Internet users could have their connections disconnected, there are conflicting reports that the government could add a further amendment to the Sustainable Economy Law to allow for such disconnections under the supervision of a court.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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The copyright infringement case of AFACT – representing several Hollywood studios – and Aussie ISP iiNet (multiple links to all our earlier coverage can be found here, here, here, here and here) is set to conclude today.

Lead barrister for AFACT, Tony Bannon, continued with his aggressive approach to this case by issuing warnings to Australia’s Internet service providers on the issue of copyright infringement.

He said that iiNet and other ISPs who don’t want to handle copyright infringement notices (such as those issued by his clients) are happy to take money from their subscribers, but are shirking their responsibilities. The solution to this, he said, was for them to shut down.

“They [ISPs] provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don’t like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business,” he said, as quoted by ITNews.

This reluctance to deal with infringement notices at the behest of the studios has been one of the main points of contention in the case. The studios feel that iiNet should hand infringement notices to their customers and even disconnect them, while iiNet feels that it has no obligation to do so under the law, particularly when acting on the unverified evidence of a 3rd party.

Bannon went on to say that iiNet had made zero effort to deal with even a small percentage of the alleged infringements on their network, commenting: “…they say they can’t send a single notice to anybody, it’s like saying they can’t stop physical violence happening to the person next to them because there’s physical violence happening all around the world.”

Bannon said he believed that terminating a customer or two on allegations of infringement would have sent out a clear message to other potential infringers. But of course, iiNet knows that if they complied with that request the studios would be back saying “you did it there, why can’t you do it here…here….here….here…..”

Bannon went on to say that while iiNet denied it had any control over BitTorrent clients and the potential for users to operate them for infringing purposes, it did have the power to render the software useless.

“But if the user isn’t online there’s nothing the BitTorrent client can do to infringe,” Bannon told the court.

For its part, iiNet sits firmly behind Section 112E of the copyright act:

A person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in an audio visual item merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright.

Earlier the Internet Industry Association (IIA) had applied to contribute to the case as amicus curiae, or ‘friend of the court’. Justice Cowdroy decided today that the industry group would have little to add to the case, since the issues it planned to raise had already been covered in detail by iiNet, mostly concerning the ISP’s commitments under the Copyright Act and Telecommunications Act 1997.

Earlier this week at their annual general meeting, iiNet boss Michael Malone gave company shareholders some painful news. The costs of defending the AFACT case had amounted to $4m AUD (approx $3.7m US).

The court proceedings are scheduled to conclude today, but the verdict will not be issued for several months.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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In file-sharing terms, Spain currently has among the most relaxed laws of leading European countries. The country is believed to have some of the highest rates of online sharing of music and movies and currently it is perfectly legal, providing no money is made directly from infringement, to run BitTorrent and eDonkey sites.

As the copyright industries ramp up their lobbying, the government is finding it more and more difficult to maintain their current position, and is currently examining new ways to deal with illicit file-sharing.

At the opening day of a conference bringing together leaders of the telecommunications industry, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Vivane Reding, said that if the Spanish government implements measures to disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet without the oversight of a judge, it risks coming into conflict with the EU.

“Spanish measures that allow for the disruption of Internet access without a fair hearing before a judge, are certain to clash with the European Union,” she told the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) conference in Barcelona yesterday.

Criticizing France’s Hadopi legislation, Reding stressed that repressing people would not solve the problems of Internet piracy, noting that disconnections may even run counter to the “rights and freedoms which have become part of Europe’s values since the French Revolution.”

Furthermore, the “fundamental freedoms” of EU citizens which Reding insists forbids countries from disconnecting alleged file-sharers without a procedure involving a judge, also applies to Internet service providers.

This is of particular interest to customers of Ireland’s largest ISP, Eircom. Earlier this year IRMA – which controls 90% of Ireland’s recorded music and represents the likes of EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – reached a private agreement with the ISP to implement a 3 strikes deal for alleged pirates, with IRMA discontinuing legal action against it in return.

The arrangement is an entirely private one, with no judicial oversight, which will likely bring it into conflict with the EU.

IRMA also took legal action against BT, Ireland’s largest ISP, and the country’s largest cable operator, UPC Ireland, to force them to follow suit.

However, last week IRMA discontinued its lawsuit against BT Ireland, as the ISP has already transferred its Internet customers to Vodafone. It is unclear if IRMA will now go after Vodafone, but the music group says it will continue to pursue UPC.

In addition, it will be interesting to see how the statement by the European Commission affects the Digital Economy Bill that was presented in the UK last week. The proposed legislation will also call for a disconnection of repeated copyright infringers, a measure that’s proving unpopular among the public. Thousands of people have already petitioned against the new bill.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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