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Tag: file sharing

  • CA Court Won’t Help Copyright Holders ID BitTorrent Users

    The District Court for the Northern District of California today ruled against copyright holders, saying that it will not assist them to identify BitTorrent users. The copyright holder, Hard Drive Productions, purveyors of online pornography, filed a suit against multiple people, named as John Does 1 through 90 in the suit, for illegally sharing files without the studio’s authorization.

    Hard Drive filed the suit in hopes that the court would subpoena internet service providers so as to identify the IP address associated to the ninety BitTorrent users who shared the movie, “Amateur Allure – Natalia” over a 63 day period last year. However, Hard Drive didn’t actually intend to pursue litigation against the BitTorrent users, which persuaded Judge Howard R. Lloyd to conclude the following:

    The court realizes that this decision may frustrate plaintiff and other copyright holders who, quite understandably, wish to curtail online infringement of their works. Unfortunately, it would appear that the technology that enables copyright infringement has outpaced technology that prevents it. The court recognizes that plaintiff is aggrieved by the apparent infringement and is sympathetic toward its argument that lawsuits like this one are the only way for it to find and stop infringers. However, the court will not assist a plaintiff who seems to have no desire to actually litigate but instead seems to be using the courts to pursue an extrajudicial business plan against possible infringers (and innocent others caught up in the ISP net). Plaintiff seeks to enlist the aid of the court to obtain information through the litigation discovery process so that it can pursue a non-judicial remedy that focuses on extracting “settlement” payments from persons who may or may not be infringers. This the court is not willing to do.

    In other words, the court won’t do the grunt work for Hard Drive in identifying the John Does just to the studio can pursue the matter privately.

    Still, there would be no guarantee that the ISP would reveal the identity of the BitTorrent users. Had one of the John Does been using a public ISP or even a private ISP that was not secure, the subpoena would merely reveal the account holder for the ISP and not the actual identity of the BitTorrent user. It would roughly be the equivalent of someone stealing your car in order to embark on a crime spree. Because it was your vehicle that provided the means for the criminal to perpetrate said crimes, you wouldn’t expect to be held liable even though you had nothing to do with it, would you?

    Further, IP addresses can be masked, so they’re hardly incontrovertible proof of identification.

    Any thoughts on this ruling? Disagree or agree?

    [Via Slashdot.]

  • Kim Dotcom Granted Internet Use, Pool Access

    Kim Dotcom, founder and operator of MegaUpload, hasn’t had much fun lately. He was arrested and denied bail twice. Things began to look up for Dotcom in February when he was finally granted bail. Today in court, Dotcom successfully petitioned to have his bail conditions modified in his favor.

    TorrentFreak is reporting that Dotcom now has more freedom at his disposal, including Internet access, thanks to modified bail conditions. He and three co-defendants today were granted some freedoms today that go a long way towards getting their defense together for his upcoming extradition trial.

    It’s reported that Dotcom’s legal team argued that he needed Internet access to compile his defense. Dotcom had already been working on his defense, but was at a distinct disadvantage that the prosecution had hoped they could keep. The Judge agreed with the defense and granted Dotcom access to the Internet. It didn’t just stop there though.

    It’s also reported that Dotcom had been suffering back problems lately and requested that he be allowed to use the swimming pool at his mansion for relief. The judge ruled that he would be allowed to have 90-minute access to said pool.

    Interestingly enough, Dotcom was also working on a music album with “several International artists.” It’s strange that the defense would object to Dotcom working on an album, but object they did. The judge wasn’t having any of it, however, and granted Dotcom two trips a week to a studio to finish work on the album.

    Like I said, things are looking up for Dotcom and friends. They might just have a shot at properly defending themselves now that more evidence has been revealed in their favor. An example being last month it was revealed that many users of MegaUpload were members of Congress and other government agencies including the DoJ.

    The only thing that will make this way better for Dotcom is if he gets his property back. It was revealed last month that the police filed the wrong paperwork and unlawfully seized his property as a result. It remains to be seen if Dotcom will get his property back, but it’s more likely now than it was when he was first arrested.

    Dotcom is confident that he can fight the charges brought against him. With these new freedoms, I’m sure his legal teams’s confidence has been bolstered even more. It’s only going to get more interesting from here on out so stay tuned for more news from the MegaUpload Saga.

  • Head Of The RIAA Says ISPs To Implement Anti-Piracy Measures By July 12

    Internet service providers are set to start clamping down on illegal file sharing this summer, according to the head of the RIAA. Speaking at the annual meating of the Association of American Publishers, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman said that ISPs that are partcipating in the program will begin implementing their new policies by July 12th.

    The new policy was unveiled last year when AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and other ISPs announced their participation in a new “graduated response” program for dealing with illegal file sharing. Under the program those caught downloading would receive a series of escalating warnings. The first notices are “education,” informing users that downloading copyrighted material without paying for it is illegal, and warning of negative consequences to come. After these education notices come confirmation notices, where the customer is required to acknowledge receipt of the warnings. If the customer continues downloading, ISPs have a range of “mitigation measures” available to discourage or prevent future file sharing. Such measures include connection throttling and suspension of access.

    According to CNet, ISPs who will implement the “graduated response” measures include Cablevision, Time Warner, Comcast, and others. Sherman says that participating ISPs should have their policies in place by July 12th. Each ISP will be responsible for establishing a system for catching downloaders and keeping track of their offenses. The number of warnings at each level is also at the ISPs’ discretion, as is the specific nature of the consequences. No participating ISP has agreed to cut off a customer’s internet service permanently.

    All things considered, this graduated response method is a far more reasonable measure than the ill-conceived and ill-fated SOPA and PIPA laws that effectively died in Congress earlier this year after massive protests.

    What do you think of this “graduated response” policy? Will it actually curb file sharing? Should ISPs be in charge of policing what people do on the internet? Let us know in the comments.

  • Canadian Bill C-11 Committee Review Concluded

    A special legislative committee of the Canadian Parliament concluded it’s clause-by-clase review of Bill C-11 Tuesday, and now the bill heads to the House of Commons for a third reading. In total, eight government-sponsored amendments were added to the bill.

    In this latest round of amendments, the bill’s “enabler clause” was expanded, holding ISPs, social networking sites, and filesharing hosts more accountable for the content their users share online. But “virtually all other copyright lobby demands – website blocking, notice-and-takedown, iPod tax, copyright term extension, disclosure of subscriber information – were rejected,” reports University of Ottowa Law professor Michael Geist, who live-tweeted updates of the entire proceedings. Meanwhile, consumer- and education-group-backed provisions were left intact. These included provisions regarding:

    • User-generated content
    • Time shifting
    • Format shifting
    • Backup copies
    • The degree of Internet provider liability, and
    • Statutory damages

    The bill’s fair dealing was also left intact, despite pressure from publishers and copyright collectives.

    The major sticking point for Canada’s ruling Conservatives, however, was the issue of digital locks. The Tories–with direct backing from Prime Minister Stephen Haper, as well as support from the U.S.–refused to budge on digital lock restrictions, and so in its current reading Bill C-11 will rendering the breaking of digital locks illegal for any reason. Future regulation may open the door for exceptions to this provision–especially for consumers with perceptual disabilities–but for the moment, at least, the bill (if passed) would prohibit all digital lock-breaking, even if consumers break the locks in order to access legally purchased content. There’s a chance that NDP Members of Parliament may even base constitutional challenges to the bill on this provision.

    Following a third reading in the House of Commons, the bill will also need Senate review and royal assent before being enacted into law, but all this could be done and Bill C-11 (in its final form) enacted into law sometime within the next few months.

    Photo Source: ImmigrationinCanada.ca

  • Kim Dotcom Says Many MegaUpload Users Are From US Government

    When MegaUpload went down in January, there were complaints from many legitimate users of the site saying that their personal files, including files for work, were gone. One of the solutions has been in the form of a lawsuit being brought against the FBI by the Pirate Party.

    Kit Dotcom, finally out on bail, has told TorrentFreak that he is now also working with the Department of Justice to get legitimate users their files back. The deal described by Dotcom would have Megaupload users being allowed temporary access to their files to retrieve them.

    The most interesting news, however, comes from the revelation that many users of MegaUpload included government officials from the DoJ and US Senate.

    This isn’t the first time that the very people who are trying to stop copyright infringement have been caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. It was revealed in December that employees at the RIAA and Department of Homeland Security were found to be downloading illegal copies of files. In our original report for example, it was found that people at the RIAA had been downloading all five seasons of Dexter over BitTorrent.

    This is just another case of government officials’ hypocrisy. They push for stricter anti-file sharing laws while their own employees use the benefit of their office’s high speed Internet connection to download all the illegal files they want.

    Going back to Kim Dotcom’s attempt at getting users their files back, the revelation that government officials use the service as well probably won’t help him in his upcoming extradition case. It will, however, make people more aware of the hypocrisy in government which could have an effect on other proceedings and the push for new laws like H.R. 1981.

    We’ll keep you updated on any and all developments in the continuing MegaUpload saga.

  • RetroShare Brings Anonymous File-Sharing To the Masses

    It seems hard these days to find a file-sharing service that isn’t in some way affected by the recent events happening around the world to sites like MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay. There’s always Tribler, the file-sharing service that claims to make torrents obsolete. There may be a service on the net, however, that would make them all look paltry in comparison.

    TorrentFreak is reporting that a file-sharing application called RetroShare has been booming in the aftermath of the MegaUpload take down. We reported that the MegaUpload take down did not affect piracy in any way. While the study at that point said those affected move to other file locker services, the new research suggests that more people moved to services like Tribler and RetroShare.

    RetroShare is a file-sharing application that prides itself on being completely anonymous. For users to even start sharing files, they have to exchange PGP certificates with only those they trust. The transfer is encrypted using OpenSSL, while files from strangers must go through a trusted source. It sounds like the ultimate file-sharing heaven and it apparently is.

    DrBob, the founder of RetroShare, told TorrentFreak that the software has been around since 2006, but it was only recently that he began to see large jumps in usage. He says that downloads tripled on the network in January during the SOPA protest, and that it double again in February when other file sharing services cut back on their services in the wake of the MegaUpload takedown.

    DrBob laid out what RetroShare is all about:

    “RetroShare is about creating a private space on the Internet. A social collaboration network where you can share anything you want. A space that is free from the prying eyes of governments, corporations and advertisers. This is vitally important as our freedom on the Internet is under increasing threat.RetroShare is free from censorship: like Facebook banning ‘obscene’ breast-feeding photographs. A network that allows you to use any pseudonym, without insisting on knowing your real name. A network where you will not face the threat of jail, or being banned from entry into a country for an innocent tweet.”

    Examples like these show that file-sharing is going nowhere and is never going to die. Instead of attacking services or users, content holders need to attack the core problem – their business model. Give users a reason to buy your product and they will. If not, services like RetroShare are going to keep on expanding and growing.

  • File Sharing Company Caffeinated Mind, Acquired By Facebook

    Facebook has acquired Caffeinated Mind, a company that makes a P2P file transfer system called Sendroid. The company says it does so by “making transferring any size file between two people as simple as clicking a link.”

    It appears that this is a talent acquisition, however, as Sendroid will be shutting down. Caffeinated Mind Inc. posted the following message to its site (via Jennifer Van Grove):

    CMI is joining Facebook!

    We’re extremely excited to announce that Caffeinated Mind is joining Facebook!

    When CMI first started, we wanted to change the way files moved online. That vision has evolved over the last year through our experience at YCombinator, where since launching Sendoid we’ve moved countless files for our users and then later went on to tackle big data transfer problems for enterprises with Expresso. The journey has been incredible, and we’ve learned more than we had ever hoped while making our little dent in the world.

    We can’t think of a better place to continue this journey than Facebook, where we’ll be developing internal tools to improve the inner workings of the company and product, applying our technical and product expertise to their rapidly growing service.

    Over the next two weeks, we’ll be winding down Sendoid and closing the corporate pilot for Expresso. We’re hyper-concerned about data here, and our users can rest assured that we have fully purged all transfer history logs on our servers and that we retain no personal data from our users.

    From the entire Caffeinated Mind team, we thank our users for helping us to get where we are today!

    Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

  • The Pirate Bay Has Officially Switched To Magnet Links

    The Pirate Bay Has Officially Switched To Magnet Links

    The Pirate Bay has been planning on moving from torrent files to magnet files for a while now. The change is now official.

    Announcing the change on The Pirate Bay blog, the staff says that new files are simpler for them and less of a hassle for the user. As was already said before, the new file format also uses a lot less bandwidth saving everybody time and money.

    The biggest advantage to magnet links is that they are completely anonymous. The links are just a hash and are the same on every page so no one can know if a user actually downloaded a file or not.

    The only way to really restrict downloading from The Pirate Bay now is to block access to the Web site completely. The staff does say that they fear countries in the EU are moving towards such “harsh censorship tactics.” They are doing everything they can to avoid their users “ending up with less freedom.”

    Said “harsh censorship tactics” are already in place in countries like the Netherlands, but the UK just recently ruled the Web site to be illegal. They may be the next to instigate a block of the Web site on the national level.

    For those who are making the claim that The Pirate Bay is just dropping torrents altogether, The Pirate Bay says it’s like “saying that Ferrari is no longer selling cards – they’re just selling BETTER cars. As are we, we’re giving you the best links there are.”

    At the end, the staff uses a humorous pseudo-quote from the Bible to make a statement on the joys of sharing:

    “Spilling seed is more severe then all sins, since he defiles his soul in this world and the world to come and he does not see the glory of the sharing.”

    What do you think of The Pirate Bay moving to magnet links? Do you think it will protect file sharing? Let us know in the comments.

  • The Pirate Bay: RIAA Is Kid Screaming For Candy

    The RIAA and The Pirate Bay are at it again. Both groups have fired at each other over blogs that paint each other in a negative light. Let’s watch the fireworks, shall we?

    Mitch Glazier, Senior Executive VP of the RIAA wrote a blog post titled, “The Pirate Bay: Exhibit A For Why Foreign Rogue Websites Must Be Effectively Addressed.” In the blog post, he details the recent convictions of the founders of The Pirate Bay that we reported on. He also says that the Web site’s move to an .se domain name clearly demonstrates why there needs to be new laws to address “foreign rogue Web sites” – laws like SOPA and PIPA.

    The Pirate Bay isn’t one to stand for it and published a piece on TorrentFreak in response to the RIAA. “Winston” comes out swinging fast and hard by saying that Glazier’s use of the term “copyright theft” is incorrect.

    Winston is about to jump into semantics, so be prepared:

    A small lesson to Mr Glazier: If someone steals something, you don’t have it anymore. If you copy it, both have it. This means: If someone steals your copyright (aka “copyright theft”) you don’t have the copyright anymore. I’m having a hard time to see that happening though, since copyright isn’t really physical.

    As for the argument that piracy is leading to lost jobs, Winston say to blame technology, not them:

    The jobs that you say are being stolen in the US are somewhat physical though. And if someone steals them where do they go? Maybe they just aren’t needed anymore! That’s what technology does! Sorry, it’s 2012 not 1912 – do you want to forbid robots as well, since they steal jobs?

    As for the RIAA pushing for stricter copyright laws in global treaties like ACTA and TPP, Winston draws upon their recent move from a .org domain to a .se:

    Yes, Glazier is upset that TPB moved away from a US-controlled domain name. He doesn’t seem to understand that there is a worldwide problem when one single country tries to take control over a global infrastructure. TPB has no connections to the US so why should the US be able to control it?

    It’s a very undemocratic procedure which obviously the RIAA is supportive of. Apparently “escaping US laws” means not being born in the US, not living there, not working there or not wanting to kiss your ass.

    The RIAA does have a point when it says that several European ISPs are now blocking The Pirate Bay due to court orders. The only problem is that said blocking may now be illegal with the recent ruling that said social networks are not required to filter their users’ Internet. The same goes for ISPs as well.

    Winston ends with a criticism on the RIAA that I think is important enough to include in its entirety:

    The RIAA wants the tech industry to sit down and talk to them. Fuck that. You’re not in charge. If you want the help of the tech industry, ask for it. You’ll probably get it since most tech people are nice. You’re not in charge anymore and that’s probably why you’re pissed off.

    Plz stop calling yourself “the creative community”. You’re not a community, you’re a coalition of some of the richest companies in the world. And the only thing you seem to be creative with is your accounting procedures.

    The recording industry is like a kid screaming for candy. The problem is that the kid has diabetes.

    The RIAA has not yet responded to The Pirate Bay’s response. When they do, we’ll be sure to update you.

    Do you think that the RIAA or The Pirate Bay has the better argument? Is file sharing equatable to theft, or is it just that – sharing? Let us know in the comments.

  • Study: Piracy Does Not Harm U.S. Box Office Sales

    Despite the claims of the MPAA and other supporters of SOPA and PIPA, file-sharing does not negatively impact box office sales in the U.S., according to a new study conducted by economists from Wellesley College and the University of Minnesota.

    The focus of the study is on lag times between U.S. release and foreign release. The study found that longer gaps between a movie’s release in America and its release in foreign countries led to increased piracy in those countries, and correspondingly lower box office sales. The study estimates that pre-release piracy impacted foreign box office sales by as much as 7%
    In the U.S., however, box office sales were not impacted by piracy at all. The study concludes that the impact of piracy is driven primarily by the lack of legal availability of content in foreign markets.

    The study was conducted by economists Brett Danaher and Joel Waldfogel. Danaher is an assistant professor of economics at Wellesley College. Waldfogel is a professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. The paper is currently under peer review preparatory to publication in an academic journal. Here is the abstract:

    Hollywood films are generally released first in the United States and then later abroad, with some variation in lags across films and countries. With the growth in movie piracy since the appearance of BitTorrent in 2003, films have become available through illegal piracy immediately after release in the US, while they are not available for legal viewing abroad until their foreign premieres in each country. We make use of this variation in international release lags to ask whether longer lags – which facilitate more local pre-release piracy – depress theatrical box office receipts, particularly after the widespread adoption of BitTorrent. We find that longer release windows are associated with decreased box office returns, even after controlling for film and country fixed effects. This relationship is much stronger in contexts where piracy is more prevalent: after BitTorrent’s adoption and in heavily-pirated genres. Our findings indicate that, as a lower bound, international box office returns in our sample were at least 7% lower than they would have been in the absence of pre-release piracy. By contrast, we do not see evidence of elevated sales displacement in US box office revenue following the adoption of BitTorrent, and we suggest that delayed legal availability of the content abroad may drive the losses to piracy.

    Some entertainment companies are already becoming aware of the losses caused by delaying international releases. The BBC network in recent years has begun airing some of their most popular shows (e.g., Doctor Who and The Graham Norton Show) on BBC America on the same day that they air in the UK.

  • Piracy Still Rampant After MegaUpload Takedown

    Piracy Still Rampant After MegaUpload Takedown

    Did anybody seriously think that the take down of MegaUpload would deter people from piracy? I didn’t think so.

    DeepField Networks posted a study on their blog titled, “File Sharing in the Post MegaUpload Era.” They say that file sharing traffic collapsed on January 18, the day that MegaUpload was shut down and its founder arrested.

    They say that MegaUpload downloads represented about 30 to 40 percent of all file sharing. In the span of an hour, global Internet traffic dropped by a huge 3 percent. The copyright industry saw it as a great day for them and a bad day for pirates everywhere.

    To preface, the study found that piracy has not decreased. No big surprise there. Pirates just moved to other services. They always have and they always will.

    The study is far more interesting than that, however, as it sought to map the infrastructure behind file sharing. They say that the general consensus is that file sharing is spread across the entirety of the Internet where everybody is involved in the business of piracy.

    The fact of the matter is that file sharing is located in a centralized part of the Internet. There may be hundreds of file sharing sites, but they all pull from the same six Web sites that drive over 80 percent of all file-sharing traffic.

    They found that on January 18, before MegaUpload was taken down, MegaVideo was pushing 34 percent of all file sharing traffic. Most of that traffic was locally hosted in the United States on the servers in Virginia.

    For comparison, they looked at file-sharing traffic on January 19. File-sharing traffic did not decrease, it just moved elsewhere. Sites like Putlocker saw a massive jump in their file-sharing traffic.

    They conclude that the MegaUpload take down did nothing to combat piracy. All it did was force massive amounts of data to now be transferred from Europe over “expensive transatlantic links.”

  • Ukraine File-Sharing Site Taken Down By Authorities

    Authorities have taken down another popular file-sharing site that you’ve never heard of – it’s in the Ukraine.

    TorrentFreak broke the story that Ukranian feds have taken down popular sharing site Ex.ua. The site was reported to have millions of users. Several international companies like Microsoft, Graphisoft and Adobe filed complaints against the service which led to raid today after a six-month criminal investigation.

    A spokesperson for the authorities confirmed that 200 servers were taken, holding a mind-blowing 6 petabytes of data. For those just joining us, that’s 6,000 terabytes of data.

    Sixteen employees were taken into custody for questioning. It’s unclear if any arrests have been made, but the authorities did confirm that the site was run by a Latvian citizen.

    Ex.ua was similar to MegaUpload, which was taken down just two weeks ago, but TorrentFreak points out a few key differences. Ex.ua allowed users to search for content on their site in categories like ‘MP3’ and ‘Video,’ MegaUpload did not.

    The RIAA labeled Ex.ua as a “pirate haven” in 2010 in a complaint filed with the U.S. Trade Representative. Their main beef was that the Web site allowed users to directly search for content.

    The operators of the site face up to five years in prison if found guilty.

    Reuters is reporting that just like with MegaUpload, the Internet has not taken the news of the take down softly.

    Ukrainians bombarded government Web sites with DDoS attacks that took down the president’s Web site alongside the Web site for the Interior Ministry.

    A government spokesperson confirmed that the Web sites had been attacked. They also confirmed that the call to attack government Web sites was being spread over social networks “in the name of supporting file-sharing Web sites that do not observe copyright laws.”

    The attack does not appear to be an officially sanctioned Anonymous attack, but just bitter users of the Web site. The hashtag #OpExua returns little results as well.

  • More Voters Worry About Censorship Than Piracy

    In the midst of the ongoing controversy surrounding SOPA and PIPA, it may be wise to take a step back and see what the average voter thinks about issues like piracy and internet censorship. That’s exactly what Rasmussen Reports has done recently, and the results of their study are interesting.

    Over two-thirds of likely U.S. voters (67%) responded that they viewed the downloading of content without paying for it as theft. Fifteen percent weren’t sure, and 18% said it was not. In that case, a law designed to curb online piracy should be a good thing, right? Not so, according to the survey. While most agree that piracy is theft, even more respondents – 71% – answered that they felt that internet censorship was a greater threat than piracy.

    This survey suggests that voters agree with what SOPA’s opponents have been saying all along: piracy is bad, and something should be done about it, but neither SOPA nor PIPA is the something that should be done. A good anti-piracy solution is necessary, but censoring the internet is not the way to go about it.

  • Anonymous Creates MegaUpload Replacement

    Anonymous Creates MegaUpload Replacement

    After the MegaUpload shut down and every other file sharing service backing down, surely nobody would be trying to start up a new file hosting service, right?

    Anonymous couldn’t care less and threw caution to the wind by announcing Anonyupload today. The site is billed as being, “100% Free – No Advertising – 100% Anonymous.”

    They are asking for help from users, however, to help them buy server and disk space. They also want to ensure the quality of the service, safety of the users and rapid transfer. The main reason behind the new service is the “sharing of knowledge and culture free and accessible for all.”

    They also send a special thanks to Kim DotCom, founder of MegaUpload. They say, “Thank you mister Dotcom for the service for several years. We hope you’ll release as soon as possible.”

    For those worried about the safety of the site, they claim that their infrastructure is set outside of U.S. jurisdiction in Russia.

    They hope to launch the service within three days.

    I don’t think anybody expected this, but we should have seen it coming. Anonymous is becoming more than just an activist group. They are slowly emerging as a brand that is inseparable from the Internet and has become a part of it.

  • MegaUpload Take Down Affecting Other File Lockers

    MegaUpload Take Down Affecting Other File Lockers

    The MegaUpload take down and resulting all out Internet war with Anonymous has other file lockers running scared.

    TorrentFreak is reporting that many popular file hosting services are drastically limiting the services they offer or are just shutting down.

    Filesonic, one of the biggest file sharing sites on the net, removed its rewards program and revoked access to files from third parties. In short, you can only download files that you uploaded yourself.

    Fileserve, another major player, ended its reward program as well. It has also banned all third party downloads.

    Users of Fileserve are reporting to TorrentFreak that they are having their files deleted and accounts banned for violating the site’s terms of service.

    Uploaded.to took a more direct approach and banned all U.S. ISPs from accessing their Web site. This could be a move to remove itself from U.S. jurisdiction as the government shut down MegaUpload for having a server based in the U.S.

    VideoBB and VideoZer, popular video streaming sites, are reportedly shutting down their rewards program and deleting massive amounts of accounts and videos.

    Other file hosting services ending their rewards programs and deleting accounts include FileJungle, UploadStation and FilePost.

    The major reason for all of this is that one of the reasons behind MegaUpload’s indictment was their rewards program that fed them money over the sharing of copyrighted files. File hosting services, even if they only serve legitimate users with business or persona files, don’t want to be considered targets by the federal government.

  • SOPA and PIPA Bills Lack Common Sense

    SOPA and PIPA Bills Lack Common Sense

    Did you know that a majority of new laws passed on our books in this country get passed via the efforts of special interest groups and lobbyists? What does that mean? It means a small majority of people are making their voice heard in order to have their needs or demands met. In very many cases the majority would not sympathize with the views of these groups or want any of the subsequent laws or legislation past.

    Realistically most of us have better and more important (like earning a living) things to do than examine every law or bill that gets passed. We only pay attention to the items which have “special interest” to ourselves and our lives. So let us look at this from the perspective of SOPA and PIPA.

    Who has the special interest? Fortunately, almost anyone who uses the internet. Of course it probably starts with big film production companies and record producers. They are losing a lot of money ever since people figured out how to share music and movies. These are not the only people but it’s a good strait forward example. Almost everything can be pirated (sold or exchanged without paying royalties to the inventor or artist) over the internet.

    The other end of the special interest are the people who use the internet and enjoy the privacy and freedom of viewing content without the fear of invasion and persecution. Copyright infringement can occur just about anywhere on the web (or elsewhere for that matter). Every web page would be shut down and we would all be tied up in some sort of litigation! Stupid!

    As a country we should strive to get a handle on this thing in a manner that doesn’t punish the masses and benefit the few, as we have often done in the past. There is no simple solution to the online piracy problem and anyone who thinks there is, is simply out of touch with reality or merely concerned with amassing wealth.

  • NinjaVideo Founder Sentenced to 14 Months

    NinjaVideo Founder Sentenced to 14 Months

    The Department of Justice is on a roll – First MegaUpload, now NinjaVideo’s founder.

    Of course, as you may be aware, NinjaVideo was actually taken down by the DoJ in 2010 for hosting “high-quality copies of copyright-protected movies and television programs.” The case took a turn for the worse today as a co-founder of NinjaVideo, Matthew David Howard Smith, was sentenced to 14 months in prison according to the Department of Justice.

    At the sentencing, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga also ordered Smith to serve two years of supervised release following his prison term, to pay $172,387 and to forfeit to the United States five financial accounts and various computer equipment involved in the crimes.

    Smith was one of the founders of NinjaVideo.net, which was in operation from February 2008 until its shutdown in June 2010. Smith admitted that he made agreements with online advertising entities to generate income for the Web site. He and the other staff of the Web site collected more than $500,000 during the Web site’s two-and-a-half years of operation. Smith kept $172,387 of the money for himself.

    On September 9, 2011, Smith was indicted along with four of the other top administrators of NinjaVideo. Co-defendant Hana Amal Beshara was sentenced on January 6, 2012, to 22 months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $210,000 for her role as a co-founder. Two additional co-defendants are awaiting sentencing. An arrest warrant remains outstanding for the fourth indicted co-defendant, Zoi Mertzanis of Greece.

    The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section.

  • SOPA Blackout: TorrentFreak ******s Its ******* In Protest

    TorrentFreak is joining the, well, torrent of websites that are blacking out in protest of SOPA today. While some, like Wikipedia and Reddit, are blacking out completely, many are showing their support in other ways. TorrentFreak, a site that specializes in new from the world of filesharing, shows users a blacked out site with a dialogue box asking them to help save the internet. Users who agree to save the internet are taken to a site that helps them send a letter to their Congressional representatives. Those who click “Meh” are taken on to TorrentFreak’s uncensored site, where they are greeted by a flashing yellow and pink banner encouraging them to stop censorship. Clicking the banner takes them to the same contact page.

    TorrentFreak's Stop Censorship Banner

    While TorrentFreak could easily be accused of preaching to the choir with its protest, the inclusion of an option to contact users’ Senators and Representatives is perhaps the cleverest part. It provides a direct link for those who might not otherwise get involved in the political process to express their opposition to the legislation with nothing more than a few keystrokes and a couple clicks of their mouse.

  • EMI Sues Ireland For Not Blocking Pirates

    EMI, one of the three big music companies and a vocal supporter of SOPA, has filed suit against the Republic of Ireland for failing to bring itself into line with EU law regarding anti-piracy measures. EMI has been lobbying the Irish government to institute measures that would allow copyright holders to block access to infringing sites. Despite a government promise to pass such a law, EMI is concerned that that the government is deliberately delaying, and that even if such a measure is produced, it will not be to EMI’s satisfaction.

    Willie Kavanagh, head of EMI in Ireland, said yesterday that the government had ignored a request from EMI to produce the law it was preparing, and that he suspected that the measure would not “satisfy the music industry’s requirement for injunctive relief.”

    EMI filed the suit with Ireland’s High Court. The suit is the second EMI has filed in recent years concerning music piracy in Ireland. In 2010 the High Court shot down an attempt by EMI to enforce a 3 strikes rule on internet service providers in the country.

    [Source: Irish Times]

  • Piracy Uncovered At French President’s Palace

    A new Russian website continues to prove a source of embarrassment for high-level opponents of music and movie downloading. The site, YouHaveDownloaded.com, shows users their downloading history based on their IP address. It also allows users to put in IPs other than their own and see the download history for those addresses as well. Today French tech site Nikopik is reporting that it has used the site to identify six separate instance of piracy in the Élysée Palace, official residence of French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife. That total is double the amount necessary to cut off the average person’s internet access under France’s three-strikes law. Sarkozy himself has been a vocal proponent of harsh legislation to prevent filesharing.

    This is the second time recently that YouHaveDownloaded.com has been used this way. On Tuesday we brought you news that TorrentFreak had used the site to uncover what appears to be rampant downloading at some of the entertainment industry’s biggest companies – which also happen to be the most vehement critics of filesharing, and the most ferocious proponents of SOPA. TorrentFreak found that people in the offices of Sony, Fox, and NBC Universal had downloaded a wide variety of content, including material to which other companies owned the copyright (for example, somebody at Fox downloaded Paramount’s Super 8).

    Among the files downloaded in the French president’s residence are a Beach Boys greatest hits album, a few movies, and The Miracle of Self-Discipline, a self-help audio program.

    [Hat Tip: TorrentFreak]

  • Megaupload Sues Universal Over Takedown of Viral Video

    Popular file hosting site Megaupload has filed suit against Universal Music Group today over claims that UMG abused YouTube’s automated copyright infringement reporting system to take down a video posted and owned by Megaupload

    On Friday we ran a story about The Mega Song, a YouTube video posted by filesharing site Megaupload. The video is a response to allegations by the RIAA and MPAA that the site is illegal, and that it promotes music and video piracy.

    The video includes a startling array of A-list celebrities, including Jamie Foxx, Kanye West, Brett Ratner, Alicia Keys, and more, all singing about their love and support for Megaupload. The video was produced entirely by Megaupload, and contains no content owned by any other party. That fact, however, did not stop Universal from reporting the video to YouTube for copyright infringement. YouTube immediately took down the video. When Megaupload re-posted it, UMG again reported it, resulting in a second takedown of the video and threats by YouTube to suspend Megaupload’s account as a repeat offender.

    UMG blocks The Mega Song

    After attempts at reinstating the video failed, Megaupload eventually took it down themselves.

    Megaupload takes down The Mega Song

    All is not lost, however, for those who still want to see the video. As is so often the case, something posted to the internet once does not really go away. Another YouTube user acquired the video and re-posted it on Friday, even as UMG was having it taken down. It is embedded below.

    According to statements made to TorrentFreak, the issue has also prompted Megaupload to break its silence regarding SOPA, the controversial legislation working its way through Congress that many argue would legalize rampant internet censorship by record labels and Hollywood studios. David Robb, the company’s CEO, thanked users for their support and urged them to oppose SOPA and PIPA.

    As may be expected in a situation like this, Twitter has exploded over this issue, with public opinion overwhelmingly siding with Megaupload against UMG. Many view the issue as an example of how badly things could go if SOPA is passed, and as evidence that the entertainment industry cannot be trusted with the level of power SOPA would give.

    @Nash076
    Nash    These are the people Congress wants to trust with the power to file infringement claims: http://t.co/ZDGKv5V5 1 day ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @koush
    koush    Undeniable proof that the music industry can’t be trusted with a censorship button: http://t.co/DOJBvenW 1 day ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto

    @johnpaul
    John Paul Titlow    Are record labels now just issuing takedown requests for *any* content they don’t like? Looks that way. http://t.co/c7nwJ496 #megaupload 2 hours ago via bitly · powered by @socialditto

    As yet UMG has not released any response either to the controversy over the takedown or to Megaupload’s suit.

    What do you think of UMG’s actions? Let us know in the comments.