 The Guardian |
Global music sales dip 3% as industry vows to continue anti-piracy fight
The Guardian The news came as record labels hailed government action to crackdown on pirate websites — with notable victories including LimeWire, Pirate Bay and the recent international police raid on MegaUpload — and a surge in usage and growth of legal music … |
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 UNLIMITED CMU |
Brits Demand Pirate Bay Blockade
TechNewsWorld British lobby group BPI wants one of the UK's largest Internet service providers, BT, to ban its customers from accessing file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. The site's been blocked in a handful of countries before, yet it lives on … UK music industry: Block The Pirate BayDaily Caller BT Asked To Ban Pirate Bay After Failed Ban On NewzbineWEEK Europe UK UK Record Labels Urge BT to Block Pirate BayWall Street Journal (blog) ComputerworldUK (blog) -UNLIMITED CMU -V3.co.uk all 66 news articles » |
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 Telegraph.co.uk |
Record labels demand BT blocks access to the Pirate Bay
Telegraph.co.uk Record labels have issued an ultimatum to BT demand in it blocks its six million broadband customers from accessing the Pirate Bay, one of the world's biggest unlawful download websites. By Christopher Williams, Technology Correspondent The BPI, … BT under pressure to block The Pirate BayThe Guardian BPI Asks BT To Block BitTorrent Site Pirate Bay, Or It's Court Time AgainpaidContent.org British ISP told to block Pirate Bay torrent site, or face courtZDNet (blog) Inquirer -Register -Financial Times all 25 news articles » |
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 The Guardian |
BT under pressure to block The Pirate Bay
The Guardian The Pirate Bay's first server at the Technical Museum in Stockholm: BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor described the filesharing site as 'a huge scam'. Photograph: Scanpix Sweden/Reuters A coalition led by music industry body the BPI has written a letter … Record labels demand BT blocks access to the Pirate BayTelegraph.co.uk BPI Asks BT To Block BitTorrent Site Pirate Bay, Or It's Court Time AgainpaidContent.org Music industry demands BT block Pirate BayFinancial Times musicweek.com -Business Insider -.net magazine all 10 news articles » |
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In May, news broke that a group of record labels had initiated steps to have The Pirate Bay censored in Finland. The Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) and the local branch of the IFPI announced that they had filed a lawsuit at the District Court in Helsinki.
The legal action targeted Elisa, one of the largest ISPs in Finland, demanding that the Internet provider stops providing subscriber access to The Pirate Bay.
While the result in that case is yet to be decided, CIAPC have just pulled off quite a victory in their battle against illicit file-sharing.
During the course of their online anti-piracy monitoring, CIAPC discovered five Internet connections which were making available thousands of music tracks on file-sharing networks. According to the group, in all cases the file-sharer was either an actual Internet subscriber or a family member of a subscriber.
CIAPC took the information to court looking for an order to prevent the individuals continuing with their activities. Now, under Section 60c of Finland’s Copyright Act, a court has granted CIAPC injunctions in three of the cases.
What this means is without the sending of a so-called “first strike” letter, the respective ISPs of the subscribers in question are now required to completely disconnect their infringing customers from the Internet.
“This has not happened in Finland before nor did we expect it to happen,” says Joonas Mäkinen of the Pirate Party of Finland.
Mäkinen told TorrentFreak this morning that legal sanctions available to rightsholders should always be proportionate and that these disconnections overstep the mark.
“This is indeed a worrisome addition to the anti-piracy arsenal. It seems that lately politicians and legal procedures alike have been more focused on how civil rights can be restricted rather than how they can be protected. There shouldn’t even exist anything in the legislation that allows such a limitation to people’s right to communicate,” says Mäkinen.
“With no own means of using their everyday social interactions, working or handling their bills and bank account online, the damages to the accused are unreasonable.”
Furthermore, Mäkinen – who is Vice Chairman of Pirate Party of Finland’s youth organisation, Piraattinuoret – raises the question about the neutrality of Internet service providers in respect of this court-ordered intervention.
“It shouldn’t be surprising that we expect all Internet communications to be governed as responsibly as one’s right to send a letter using postal services. ISPs should not be forced to take back anyone’s right to send electronic messages privately, be it love letters or torrent traffic.
“And if there is evidence of misuse, it is up to the police to handle all individual cases, not copyright organisations demanding a total ban on the communication services.”
Large-scale file-sharers in Finland are indeed usually referred to the police, sometimes with severe consequences. Earlier this year two individuals received huge fines and suspended jail sentences for their part in a file-sharing hub. Whether or not they would have preferred to have their Internet connections taken away instead is a question for them.
While the individuals in all of these cases were caught using a sharing system known as Direct Connect where it is easy to get caught sharing many files at once, CIAPC are warning users of The Pirate Bay that they’re not safe either.
“Many might believe that by using the Pirate Bay they can not get caught, when in fact the result can be they have to pay several hundred euros in compensation,” says CIAPC Managing Director Antti Kotilainen.
“Legal services being offered now are so good that no one should have to download music from an illegal source,” Kotilainen adds, a point contested by Pirate Party of Finland.
“The legal options given to music consumers are definitely not ‘good enough’ yet to compare with Internet filesharing,” says Mäkinen, who goes on to bemoan ongoing global music rights battles, lack of better-than-mp3 quality music on streaming services, DRM and counter-intuitive payment systems.
Whether these injunctions will be replicated again against other file-sharers remains to be seen, but in the meantime Finland must sit and wait to discover if ISP Elisa is ordered to terminate access to The Pirate Bay.
Source: Court Orders ISPs To Disconnect File-Sharers
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Finnish Record Labels Want ISPs to Block The Pirate Bay
Zeropaid The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Finland has stepped up its efforts to combat illegal file-sharing in that country by trying to force ISPs to blcok access to Swedish BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. … Court to decide over ordering Elisa to block PirateBayTelecompaper (subscription) |
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 FRANCE 24 |
Finnish record label petition to block Pirate Bay
AFP HELSINKI — Finnish record labels said Thursday they filed a petition in court to block access to The Pirate Bay, a popular Swedish website that provides access to copyrighted music, movies, and other material. "The development of a legal online market … Pirate Bay Sued in Finland in Bid to Halt Music Track SharingBloomberg Music Producers Challenge Pirate BayYLE News Finnish record lobby mounts Pirate Bay legal actionHelsinki Times (subscription) Bangkok Post all 12 news articles » |
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Pirate Bay Sued in Finland in Bid to Halt Music Track Sharing
Bloomberg The Pirate Bay file-sharing website was sued in Finland by a group of 23 Finnish record labels, who are seeking to prevent the illegal distribution and downloading of copyrighted music in Finland. … Music Producers Challenge Pirate BayYLE News Finnish record lobby mounts Pirate Bay legal actionHelsinki Times (subscription) |
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The entertainment industries have tried long and hard to take The Pirate Bay offline in Sweden.
Aside from the main criminal trial, they also obtained a wide variety of interim injunctions through the courts.
In 2009, a Stockholm district court injunction ordered founders Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg to cease assisting in The Pirate Bay’s operations or face fines of 500,000 kronor ($78,000). Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde was later presented with a similar injunction.
Neij and Svartholm Warg were prohibited from assisting in the operation of The Pirate Bay website, and any website that hosts torrents available through The Pirate Bay, and The Pirate Bay tracker.
However, an interesting situation arose in the fall of 2009 when The Pirate Bay decided to remove their in-house tracker. As the setup of the site had changed the Appeal Court ruled that the interim injunction against the site’s founders was no longer valid. The Pirate Bay no longer consisted of all three elements, the Court ruled.
The movie studios and record labels were not pleased with this outcome and filed for a new interim injunction against Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde in June 2010 and against the other founders, Neij and Swartholm Warg, in October last year.
The injunction against Sunde was made final in October last year after a decision by the Court of Appeal, and the injunction against Neij was made final in February this year. Swartholm Warg was unfindable. The new injunctions in force no longer prohibit the site’s founders from operating all three elements of the site, but any.
Last week the companies dropped the enforcement action under the old injunction to replace it with one that applies to the broader injunction. If this order is violated, Neij faces a fine of 500,000 kronor.
Whether or not the update was needed has to be questioned. The founders of The Pirate Bay have stated many times that they handed over the operation of the site and all its aspects to the Seychelles-based company Reservella.
During the past several years the entertainment companies initiated several civil cases in addition to the criminal trial, and by doing so managed to obtain several injunctions. Two of these prevented the site’s former ISPs Portlane and Black Internet to serve the site as a customer.
In the months that followed anti-piracy outfit IFPI threatened several ISPs around the world against daring to host The Pirate Bay, quoting the injunctions above. Needless to say, the paperwork was one of the most powerful tools they have to chase down The Pirate Bay and make the lives of those who operate it as difficult as possible. Eventually this forced The Pirate Bay to seek shelter with the local Pirate Party.
With the new and more broad injunction and the injunction against Portlane, the movie studios and record labels now have even more ammunition to go after companies who dare to provide services to The Pirate Bay. This means that the new mountain complex where the servers are currently located is probably on the top of their hit list.
Source: Hollywood Beefs Up Injunction Against Pirate Bay Founders
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According to the injunction that shut down LimeWire last year, the company “intentionally encouraged infringement,” its software was used “overwhelmingly for infringement” and the company knew about the “substantial infringement being committed” by LimeWire users.
The evidence further showed that LimeWire marketed its application to Napster users and that its business model depended on mass copyright infringements.
Following the injunction LimeWire immediately disabled its file-sharing client, but the trouble for the company was far from over. Record labels and music publishers kept chasing LimeWire demanding compensation for the losses they claim the file-sharing service operator had caused.
The labels calculated that the company behind the popular file-sharing client owed them up to a billion dollars, and they filed a claim to collect it.
Last week, a New York federal jury trial started, but before this came to an end the two parties agreed to settle the case for $105 million. The RIAA brought in 9,715 tracks as evidence, which means that the amount translates to $10,808 per track instead of the maximum $150,000 the jury could have awarded.
The labels are obviously pleased with the outcome of the case. They’ve successfully argued that LimeWire caused both them and their artists significant losses.
“The resolution of this case is another milestone in the continuing evolution of online music to a legitimate marketplace that appropriately rewards creators,” RIAA Chairman Mitch Bainwol said in a comment.
Too bad, however, that the RIAA isn’t sharing any of the ‘damages’ with the artists, to reward them. Despite presenting thousands of artists as victims in the case, none of them are expected to see any of the settlement money in their bank accounts anytime soon.
RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously told TorrentFreak that the ‘damages’ accrued from piracy-related lawsuits will not go to any of the artists, but towards funding more anti-piracy campaigns. “Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs,” he said.
Thus far the RIAA has not announced officially how the LimeWire settlement will be spent, but we don’t expect them to steer away from their previous course. This makes today’s decision on compensation a victory for the major labels, but certainly not one for musicians.
Source: LimeWire Pays RIAA $105 Million, Artists Get Nothing
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