TorrentFreak Email Update

Joel Tenenbaum To Appeal 90% Reduced File-Sharing Penalty
Pirate Bay Receives Notice To Keep a Torrent
Anti-Piracy Campaigns Fail, People Keep Downloading

Joel Tenenbaum To Appeal 90% Reduced File-Sharing Penalty

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 01:21 AM PDT

Last month the judge in the case of Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum versus four of the world's most powerful music labels decided that his original $675,000 penalty was unconstitutional. Even though the jury-awarded damages were subsequently reduced by 90%, Tenenbaum is clear - he has no means to pay the amount. As expected the case will go to appeal, as neither he nor the RIAA are happy.

In common with the earlier major file-sharing case in the United States involving Jamie Thomas, last month a judge decided that the damages awarded against Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum were excessive and unconstitutional.

"The Constitution protects not only criminal defendants from the imposition of 'cruel and unusual punishments',” wrote District Judge Nancy Gertner in her ruling, “but also civil defendants facing arbitrarily high punitive awards.”

Just as Thomas’s penalties were slashed on appeal, last month the same held true for Tenenbaum. The court reduced the jury’s award from the original $675,000 ($22,500 per infringed work) to $67,500 ($2,250 per infringed work). Tenenbaum had shared 30 songs.

While Tenenbaum expressed relief at the reduced amount, he said that he still had no resources to meet the costs and all the signs pointed to an appeal from his legal team.

Yesterday Tenenbaum slammed the new reduced amount of $67,500 claiming it is “equally as insane” as the previous year’s $675,000 damages award.

"Sixty-seven-and-half thousand dollars only sounds reasonable because it was so much before,” said the 26 year-old, while noting that even the smaller amount would result in his bankruptcy.

According to the Boston Globe, Tenenbaum’s lawyer professor Charles Nesson, has filed a one-page notice saying he will appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He says he intends to challenge several rulings made by District Judge Nancy Gertner, notably her decision which stopped jurors hear that Tenenbaum had offered to settle out of court in 2005.

But of course, the knife cuts both ways and Tenenbaum isn’t the only one who intends to appeal – so does the RIAA. Referring to the decision to reduce the damages by 90%, yesterday an RIAA spokeswoman said that the labels "had no choice but to appeal the erroneous and unprecedented decision''.

While the notices of appeal were filed last month, the actual appeals will be filed in the coming months, but no matter what happens, no artists will receive any of the money. Earlier the RIAA told TorrentFreak that any damages paid will be used to fund new anti-piracy campaigns instead.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Pirate Bay Receives Notice To Keep a Torrent

Posted: 25 Aug 2010 02:12 PM PDT

The founder of the small software company Coding Robots was shocked when he found out that one of his works had been cracked and shared on The Pirate Bay. However, instead of asking The Pirate Bay to remove the torrent the company's founder did quite the opposite. He sent a 'Notice of Ridiculous Activity' because the crack didn't live up to his expectations.

Mémoires is an application that allows Mac users to keep an easy and elegant journal. The application is developed by Coding Robots and can be purchased for $29.95 after a full 30-day trial. However, those who prefer a longer trial can get an unauthorized copy from one of the many torrent sites out there.

A few months ago Dmitry Chestnykh, the founder of Coding Robots and copyright holder of Mémoires, discovered that his program – like many others – was being shared via The Pirate Bay. Out of curiosity he decided to download the torrent to find out how it was cracked, and he didn’t like what he saw.

In a passionate “Notice of Ridiculous Activity” (reproduced in part below, errors intact) the company’s founder decided to notify The Pirate Bay crew about his findings, shocked as he was at the crappy work of the person who cracked his application.

“Not only it requires installing APE plugin, and generating keyfiles using some scary tool, it contains a fucking *WINDOWS* program to verify the validity of this release. The ‘How-to’ section in the description is just incomprehensible, and won’t be understood by anyone other than the writer of the description,” Chestnykh writes.

“Clearly, the ‘cracker’ Minamoto did a lazy job and don’t know how to crack software. It’s a fucking SINGLE BOOLEAN SWITCH that validates the license, it doesn’t require any Application Enhancer tricks or whatever.”

“I demand that you don’t remove this torrent, so that people can laugh at Minimoto and CORE skills. However, I also demand the better crack be made, so that it doesn’t cripple the use experience of my beautiful program,” Chestnykh added, putting pressure on the Pirate Bay crew.

For the Pirate Bay crew it must have been refreshing to receive a request to keep a torrent, especially when it’s written in a mildly entertaining form reminiscent of the replies sent by the site to copyright holders in the past.

Ironically, however, the torrent has been removed from The Pirate Bay for reasons unknown.

Below is the notice in full, as found on Reddit.

Notice of Ridiculous Activity

mem

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Anti-Piracy Campaigns Fail, People Keep Downloading

Posted: 25 Aug 2010 09:49 AM PDT

For as long as Internet file-sharing has been considered a problem, copyright holders and their respective anti-piracy groups have been mobilizing with campaigns they hope can reduce the phenomenon. Despite the efforts, downloading continues unabated. Against the law? One in four in Denmark certainly don't.

During the last decade anti-piracy campaigns have taken many forms. Warnings running on the beginning of a DVD, for example, are fairly straightforward and to the point – “don’t copy this, it’s illegal”, they said.

Other approaches, such as the super high-profile and aggressive litigation campaign pursued by the RIAA in the United States, tried to send the message that financial ruination is the inevitable result of sharing music files.

The movie industry’s MPAA tried a “we’re looking over your shoulder” angle with their Internet-only ‘You Can Click But You Can’t Hide’ campaign which was designed to reinforce the notion that file-sharers are not anonymous and can be held accountable.

Untold other campaigns from a myriad of anti-piracy groups followed, from educating kids in schools and persuading boy scouts to take a copyright awareness badges, right up to trying to convincing the public that there is a human consequence to sharing files. Creators everywhere will starve, entertainment will come to an end, and this dark future can only be avoided by buying media instead of downloading it, they cautioned.

Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Denmark’s Antipiratgruppen have been working tirelessly with anti-piracy activities of all kinds during recent years as they desperately try to discourage people from downloading media from the Internet. In common with similar campaigns from America to Asia, the end results are largely the same – they have failed to reduce the overall numbers of people sharing files.

That’s according to a new survey conducted by YouGov Zapera on behalf of publication MetroXpress. Carried out during the first week of August 2010, the survey consisted of interviews with a representative sample of people aged between 18 and 74 years old.

When questioned, 23% of respondents said that they had the ability to find and download music and movies from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 20%. When it came to music alone, 27% of respondents said they had downloaded from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 24%.

Troels Møller from pro-piracy group Piratgruppen said that the lack of progress comes as no surprise.

“The advertising campaigns used to prevent illegal downloads have been a waste of money and have in general been a cop-out from the record industry,” he told MetroXpress. “They try to give people a bad conscience about something that there is nothing wrong with. Because you are not stealing from anyone. On the contrary, you are sharing with others.”

Bente Skovgaard Kristensen, who is responsible for copyright issues at the Ministry of Culture, says that the problem of illegal downloading is massive.

“The unchanged position on the course of piracy shows that there is a problem,” she admitted in a response. “Because the scope of copyright violations on the Internet is so large the Government has appointed a committee to look at how to deal with the issue. They report back with their findings later this year.”

The only area where opinion was slightly improved was in that concerning legislation. In 2009, 31% of respondents said that they felt copying of music and movies should be made legal. This year that figure dropped to 30%.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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