Pocket-lint.com

Google piracy filter removes top BitTorrent sites from autocomplete and … The Verge Now Google's taking the fight directly to sites like The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt, and TorrentReactor by blocking their proper names from autocomplete and Instant. These results are not being filtered out of Google's search index entirely — Google just … Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and MoreTorrentFreak Google adds Pirate Bay to search blacklistmusicweek.com Google blacklisting file-sharing sites The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and moreSlashGear Siliconrepublic.com -Pocket-lint.com -The Sociable all 19 news articles »

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Siliconrepublic.com

Google adds Pirate Bay to search blacklist musicweek.com Google has expanded its search blacklist to include the names of the top illegal file-sharing websites, including the Pirate Bay. The search giant has been removing more general terms like “torrent”, “BitTorrent” and “RapidShare” from … Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and MoreTorrentFreak Google blacklisting file-sharing sites The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and moreSlashGear Google blocks The Pirate Bay from AutoCompleteSiliconrepublic.com The Sociable -Pocket-lint.com -ITProPortal all 15 news articles »

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TorrentFreak

Google blacklisting file-sharing sites The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and more SlashGear Google has started blacklisting many of the top file-sharing websites on the Internet, including torrent site The Pirate Bay, as well as isoHunt, and 4Shared. According to file-sharing blog TorrentFreak, “the changes were quietly processed and appear … Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and MoreTorrentFreak Google Blocking Auto-Suggest On Torrent, Piracy SearchesLifehacker Australia all 3 news articles »

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TorrentFreak

Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More TorrentFreak Google has expanded its search blacklist to include many of the top file-sharing sites on the Internet, including The Pirate Bay. The changes were quietly processed and appear to be broader than previous additions. Google's blacklist prevents the names … Google Blocking Auto-Suggest On Torrent, Piracy SearchesLifehacker Australia all 2 news articles »

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In June 2008, police arrested Blackistef, the administrator of two Internet sites. The action was taken following complaints by music rights group SACEM who had taken exception to his operations at BitTorrent links forum Torrentnews.net, and Torrent-public-center.com, a BitTorrent meta-search engine.

“I spent a day like a thief, locked in their cells filled with shit and even showered on the walls,” said Blackistef at the time. “A hole in the ground for a toilet (which you can not flush) and a single concrete bench.”

Blackistef lost his case in 2009 and was given a four month suspended jail sentence and ordered by a court to pay SACEM 17,000 euros in damages, plus costs.

Earlier this year the Court of Appeal heard the case but rejected Blackistef’s defense that as a service provider he should not be held responsible for links posted by users, provided he complied with takedown requests.

The court disagreed, noting that having the dirty word “torrent” in a domain name was reason enough to presume that Blacklistef knew that infringement took place on the sites. The original ruling was upheld leaving Blacklistef with a debt to SACEM of just over 19,000 euros.

Speaking with TorrentFreak today, Blacklistef told us that TorrentNews was a place where members exchanged torrent links found on The Pirate Bay, isoHunt and Miniova. It was a non-profit forum and there were no ads to create income.

But now, five months later, SACEM are hoping to generate some revenue of their own.

“Hello, this is for you!” said the bailiffs at Blacklistef’s door last week, handing him documents containing the breakdown of debts owed. As can be seen from the details below, in interest alone SACEM are already claiming more than 500 euros.

The documents further warn that if Blacklistef doesn’t pay the money owed within 8 days, the bailiffs will seize his property to cover the debt.

“But why me, what have I done to deserve this?” asks Blacklistef rhetorically. “Fortunately the costly act comes with a copy of the decision, and allows me to read the reasons for my conviction.

The accused has created websites contributing to the development of a vast underground economy, and whose actions contributed to the destabilization of the economy of artistic creation. He must be given an exemplary and deterrent punishment.

“According to the judge, I was the “Godfather of Wareziens,” he told TorrentFreak.

In order to try and reach some sort of compromise, Blacklistef went to see the bailiff and offered an interim payment of the 50 euros he had in his pocket to show good faith, but the offer was declined. Two days later he received documents containing the notice below:

Translated, the words “Saisie de vos meubles” mean “Seizure of your furniture”.

So now Blacklistef has until tomorrow to raise 19,303 euros or he says he will be forced to “say goodbye” to what little he has left. “My coffee table, my wooden shelf, my carpet,” he adds.

Other items he could have sold to raise money, including computer equipment, a TV and a cable receiver, were all confiscated by the court and never returned.

“So I called on the community to help me pay my SACEM fine so that I may not be ruined for a simple story of linking to torrents,” he concludes.

Blacklistef’s PayPal fund raiser can be found here, but progress is slow with just 175 euros pledged. Maybe a miracle can happen overnight.

Source: “Dirty Word” BitTorrent Admin Faces Furniture Seizure To Pay Piracy Fine

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Developed by a team of Russian coders, MediaGet was first released to the public in February 2010. At the time the client was only available in Russian, but through partnerships with various websites the client reached its millionth download within a few months.

But the MediaGet team wanted more. Earlier this year they translated the BitTorrent client into English, Spanish, French, German and Italian, and not without success.

As of today the BitTorrent client has been downloaded more than 18 million times, and the share of US and Western European users is growing steadily. The MediaGet team estimates that 70% of their current users still come from Russia and Ukraine, but other parts of the world are catching up quickly.

Judging from the features and a few trial runs, it is not hard to imagine that the client could appeal to a wide audience, especially those who prefer an all-in-one download application.

MediaGet Search Results

MediaGet is available to both Windows and Mac users and allows users to search, download and play files all from within the application. Although it has nearly all the features one would expect in a BitTorrent client, MediaGet is primarily targeted at novice users.

“Our software is made to be a BitTorrent client for ‘dummies’, who are looking to download movies, music and games. We provide built-in search which searches on various open torrent-trackers, and we have media player to watch movies on demand,” the MediaGet team told TorrentFreak.

One of the most notable features of MediaGet that most other clients lack is a built-in search engine. Aside from searching various public torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and isoHunt, in the future MediaGet plans to add an API so users can add other sites as well.

MediaGet Search Options

Whether the torrent sites, whose resources are users to power the search, will be very happy with the current implementation is a question that has to be answered another time.

On the privacy side MediaGet provides easy integration with the Faceless.me VPN service, in addition to regular proxy support for anonymity services like BTGuard. Other features worth mentioning are the uTorrent importer, the media player with streaming support, and the Android remote access interface.

Overall we have to say that MediaGet gives the impression of a mature and stable client that works out of the box. It works as advertised and is certainly a client worth keeping an eye on in the coming years.

Source: MediaGet BitTorrent Client Set To Conquer The West

Popularity: 1% [?]

May last year the U.S. District Court of California issued a permanent injunction against BitTorrent search engine isoHunt.

The injunction is the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that started back in 2006. The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S.

With the injunction, isoHunt saw no other option than to implement the filter, which they did. However, at the same time isoHunt owner Gary Fung filed an appeal at the Court of Appeals. Through the appeal, isoHunt hopes to reverse the permanent injunction and obtain a jury trial instead of a summary judgment.

In previous months both isoHunt and the MPAA filed their opinions on the case to the Court, and in February even the search giant Google added its testimony in the case.

Yesterday, the parties appeared before the thee-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to motivate their stance on the case. isoHunt was represented by long-standing legal counsel Ira Rothken, and the MPAA by their attorney Paul Smith.

MPAA v. isoHunt hearing

In its quest for a jury trial, isoHunt’s attorney argued that there is no evidence that his client and his websites induced specific acts of copyright infringement.

“isoHunt is a search engine. It does not host any copyrighted content, it only links to BitTorrent files. Any copyright infringement that could ever occur, would occur off-site, and leave isoHunt behind.”

“In this case a motion for summary judgement should never have been granted. The District Court made errors, both in terms of the inducement as well as the DMCA. It also issued an overly broad injunction,” Rothken said.

After having introduced some of the arguments, Rothken was interrupted by one of the judges who, in a display of modest curiosity, wanted to confirm that isoHunt was in fact a website.

“As I understand [stops and laughs]. I won’t pretend to understand, I didn’t know what a BitTorrent was until this case. The Internet progresses faster, I just got my iPad 9 months ago and it’s already obsolete,” the judge said.

“So with that caveat, my understanding is that at least with regard to your client, he had a site. He has a site right?” he adds, which isoHunt’s attorney then confirmed. The judge then went on to describe the isoHunt system and asked what element is missing to show a causal relationship between isoHunt and potential copyright inducements.

During the rest of his speaking time isoHunt’s attorney explained how there is no direct evidence that isoHunt’s actions actively induced copyright infringements. Furthermore, he explained that Gary Fung and his websites are protected under the DMCA.

After 20 minutes MPAA attorney Paul Smith took the stand. He argued that “the record makes amply clear that the District Court had every reason to grant the summary judgement to the plaintiffs in this case on their claim of intentional inducement of infringement.”

“I think it’s important to understand here that the claim is a Grokster claim; intentional inducement by the creation of this entire set of websites that facilitated infringement of the plaintiffs copyrighted works on a massive scale.”

“The evidence that it was intentionally designed to do that is extremely compelling and indeed is undisputed. We heard a lot about the need for a trial this morning but there wasn’t a single material fact identified that was disputed in this record,” Smith added.

MPAA’s attorney then went on to explain why the plaintiffs believe the District Court was right, and why isoHunt does not deserve protection under the DMCA. During one of the interruptions, a judge made a call-back to Google, mentioning that the search giant was very worried about MPAA’s take on the law, as described by Smith.

When MPAA’s attorney was done the panel gave isoHunt’s lawyer a brief moment to reply and balance things out before the court adjourned.

Despite the earlier signs that not all judges may be that BitTorrent-savvy, the core issues of inducement and liability have become very clear during the hearing. The important question for isoHunt (and Google and other web-services) in the coming months is whose version of the truth is more compelling to the judges. In this, the judges will be assisted by several technical analyses of legal experts.

Commenting to TorrentFreak, isoHunt founder Gary Fung previously said that a trial by “jury of one’s peers” would be fitting in more way than one. Whether the judges will agree with him will become apparent in the near future.

Source: MPAA Has Nothing On Us, isoHunt Tells Court

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Anti-piracy companies come in all shapes and sizes, from the large corporate concerns of the United States and Europe to the smaller outfits operating in a niche, taking down content and links for smaller, independent rights holders.

Some like to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut while others try the more sensitive approach, negotiating in person and gently persuading sites to comply. Others, like India’s AiPlex Software, do things in a way which can leave onlookers completely bewildered.

Last September the company admitted DDoSing torrent sites in order to get their way, a tactic which backfired when Anonymous DDoSd them in response. AiPlex also made hollow threats to have torrent sites blocked all over India and told another site in a bizarre email they would get into trouble for paying users to spot fake files.

But the Indian anti-piracy companies aren’t finished with their wacky strategies, not by a long way. First up, movie distributor Dil Raju.

Dil Raju reported this week that he has filed what appears to be a preemptive complaint with the FBI against three dozen sites who he suspects will try to offer or link to his new movie Mr.Perfect sometime in the future.

The list of 36 domains includes famous torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor, ExtraTorrent, Vertor, TorrentHound and a number of lesser known ‘desi’ trackers. There are also a few surprises such as Google, GoDaddy and Netherlands ISP, LeaseWeb.

“Website owners who would like to distribute full length video of Mr.Perfect online through their official websites will get very serious punishments legally,” Raju sad in a press release. “Imprisonment up to 7 years, both users and the website owners.”

Raju goes on to warn that “websites which do not follow our rules” will be “blacklisted in all Organic search engines like Google, Yahoo! And Bing.”

Let’s hope that Google isn’t forced to ban itself from its own search engine, or things could get very messy indeed. It would also mean we couldn’t read about more crazy strategies, such as the one about to be introduced by filmmakers Prem and Rakshitha. And that would be a real shame.

According to Rakshitha, the producer of a new movie called Jogaiah, her company has hired an anti-piracy outfit called Shree Technologies to protect the movie’s soundtrack due to be released later this month.

“The software that we’ve used will help us track each person down, so that we can take action against them. It is much-needed in the film industry,” Rakshitha said this week.

Then, and without explaining exactly how the anti-piracy system will achieve its most extraordinary feat, Prem – the director of the film – drops the bombshell.

“All it requires is for someone to search for the keywords ‘Jogaiah music download’ and it automatically tracks them down,” he said. “If they have a webcam on their system and it’s switched on, it will also capture the photo of the offender.”

Time to scream in rage or laugh hysterically? We’ll let you decide.

Source: Crazy Warnings and Hacking Webcams: Anti-Piracy, Indian Style

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Two months ago Google got involved in a BitTorrent case for the first time in its history. The company took an interest in the ongoing legal action between isoHunt and the MPAA, fearing that the standing injunction has the potential to damage Google and other web services.

In February Google filed an amicus brief (third party testimony) at the Appeal Court, in the hope that the court would consider Google’s opinion on the case. The MPAA was against a Google contribution, but despite these concerns the Appeal Court has now allowed the search engine’s testimony to be added to the case.

Although Google did not dispute isoHunt’s liability in their testimony, the company stated that some of the reasoning in the District Court verdict went too far, and Google wants to see it scrapped in the appeal.

“While in agreement with the result reached in this case, Google is concerned that some of the reasoning offered by the district court goes too far and would upset the careful balance between copyright protection and technological innovation struck by the Supreme Court and Congress. Particularly because this case is not a hard one, it should be decided narrowly,” Google wrote.

The search giant addresses various issues they feel are not needed to arrive at the verdict, but can negatively impact other services on the Internet. Several of these conclusions are the result of suggestions made by the movie studios, which Google claims are misplaced and incorrect.

Google wants to address these issues because they fear it may otherwise lead to a negative outcome for themselves.

The Appeal Court agreed to accept and consider the amicus brief last month. This is the first time that Google have got involved in a BitTorrent case which is significant itself, but interestingly enough neither the MPAA nor isoHunt are happy with Google’s submission.

In a response to Google’s brief, isoHunt says it agrees with Google’s arguments that the District Court verdict is full of “fatal errors” and “omissions”. However, it doesn’t agree with Google’s conclusion that isoHunt is liable for copyright infringements by some of their users. isoHunt’s lawyer therefore asks the court to reject the latter arguments.

“Defendants submit that Google’s confusing arguments and fallacious reasoning should not obscure the importance of issues presented by this case. Defendants have proposed a practical way to deal with such issues; but Google, like plaintiffs, propose nothing other than affirmance of a factually flawed and legally ill-founded District Court Decision.”

The MPAA also responded to Google’s testimony, and was even less pleased to see the company chime in.

“Google is not a disinterested amicus. Google itself is a defendant in suits charging certain of its business units which intentionally promote infringement. Google’s arguments as amicus reflect its litigation interests in obtaining a legal ruling that facilitation of infringement, even if shown to be intentional, may still be immune from copyright liability.”

The MPAA’s legal team then goes on to refute nearly all arguments made by Google. The search engine wants to scrap all of the District Court’s conclusions regarding liability that could eventually be used against Google, but the movie companies clearly disagree.

“The Court should reject Google’s pleas for immunities for businesses that intentionally facilitate copyright infringement,” MPAA’s lawyers conclude.

Although Google weighed in on the isoHunt vs. MPAA case in self-interest, the mere fact that they got involved signifies the importance of the case. To some it may ‘just’ be a dispute between a BitTorrent site and the MPAA but if affirmed the District Court ruling may have far-reaching consequences for hundreds of other web-services.

After filing the amicus brief Google’s role in the case has likely ended, but isoHunt and the MPAA will continue their battle in court.

There’s a hearing planned in early May where we will find out more about where the case is heading. Interestingly, this hearing is scheduled on the same day and in the same court as Veoh’s appeal hearing. Another DMCA case, but one where the service provider was not held liable.

Source: Google, MPAA and isoHunt Clash in Court

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Last month search giant Google got involved in a BitTorrent case for the first time in its history. The company took interest in the ongoing court case between isoHunt and the MPAA, fearing that the standing injunction has the potential to damage Google and other web-services.

Although Google did not dispute isoHunt’s liability, it is clearly concerned that some of the reasoning in the District Court verdict went too far, and wants to see it scrapped in the appeal.

As the case moves along Google continues to play a central role. In the reply brief filed by isoHunt, a study brought to the table shows that the majority of the files that can be found through its search engine are also available via Google.

“Neither Google nor Plaintiffs mention the 95% overlap between torrents available through Defendants’ systems and torrents available through Google and/or Yahoo!,” isoHunt’s legal team writes (pdf) to the Court of Appeals.

With this data isoHunt claims that what they do, Google does too, and perhaps even better. To a certain degree this is a valid point. Aside from indexing and caching hundreds of millions of pages with directs links to torrent files, Google also has a filetype command which allows users to search only for .torrent files.

In its quest for a jury trial, isoHunt suggests that they, but not Google, are hunted down and scapegoated by the movie studios. To put it in even stronger terms, isoHunt is indirectly telling the court that Google may be the largest torrent search engine on the Internet.

“Defendants might argue to the jury that it is unfair to hold Defendants liable if Google, unbothered by Plaintiffs, provides torrents to ten or twenty times the number of users that visit Defendants,” the reply brief reads.

It adds, “Defendants might argue that Defendants are being scapegoated. Defendants might argue that holding Defendants liable while ignoring Google would not curtail infringement.”

The reply further responds to several of the arguments made by the movie studios and eventually asks the Court of Appeals to reverse the permanent injunction and summary judgment. Instead, isoHunt favors a jury trial which it deems to be more appropriate considering the nature of the case.

“Defendants submit that upholding the right to jury trial is the best way to deal with rapidly-changing technology. Judicial rulings influence practical decisions for many years but cannot track changes in Internet technology.”

Commenting to TorrentFreak, isoHunt founder Gary Fung said that a trial by “jury of one’s peers” would be be fitting in more way than one.

TorrentFreak

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