TorrentFreak Email Update |
- How an Anti-Piracy Firm Became Banned In Its Own Country
- Pirate Bay and Others Not Affected by Warez Raids
- Law Firm Puts In Mysterious Offer To Buy Leading Torrent Sites
| How an Anti-Piracy Firm Became Banned In Its Own Country Posted: 09 Sep 2010 04:50 AM PDT A notorious Switzerland-based anti-piracy tracking company has to stop harvesting the IP addresses of citizens using P2P networks. The Swiss High Court ruled that IP addresses constitute personal information and when Logistep collected them without the owner's knowledge, that amounted to a breach of privacy laws. From its eDonkey Razorback beginnings, via France through to yesterday's conclusion, here is the full story.
Back in 2007, Razorback, the non-profit group which previously administered the well known Razorback eDonkey server, alerted data protection authority Préposé fédéral à la protection des données et à la transparence (PFPDT) about the activities of Logistep. Logistep works in a particularly controversial area of anti-piracy action. It collects the IP addresses of those it believes are sharing its clients’ media on the Internet and that data is then used to identify them through the courts. Once found, they receive cash demands to make lawsuits go away. The company’s work came to light in France when hundreds of file-sharers received letters accusing them of sharing the game Call of Juarez. For Elizabeth Martin, the lawyer who did Logistep’s work in France, the experience was not a happy one. As originally reported by Numerama, The Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (French Commission of Freedom and Computings, roughly the equivalent of the Préposé Fédéral in Switzerland) stated that because Martin had failed to declare her activities, her work in this area was illegal. Furthermore, Martin also became the subject of a disciplinary investigation conducted by her own peers. Condemning her, a lawyer’s disciplinary board declared, "By choosing to reproduce aggressive foreign methods, intended to force payments, the interested party also violated [the code] which specifies that the lawyer cannot unfairly represent a situation or seriousness of threat." Martin was ordered by the disciplinary board to suspend her activities as a lawyer for 6 months and she was banned from belonging to lawyers’ professional associations for a period of 10 years. France had not gone well for Logistep and back in Switzerland, things were heating up. In January 2008 the Swiss data protection authority (Préposé fédéral à la protection des Logistep was dismissive of the request (the Préposé can only make recommendations) and vowed to carry on regardless. It did just that. In response the Préposé – with the assistance of the former Razorback administrator mentioned earlier and his lawyer Sébastien Fanti – filed a lawsuit. In June 2009 the Federal Administrative Court (TAF) came to a decision, one which saw it overrule the Federal Data Protection commissioner's decision of 2008. While the Court acknowledged that the monitoring and data harvesting activities conducted by Logistep raised privacy concerns, it decided that those concerns were trumped by the needs of the anti-piracy company. In a nutshell, since there are few other ways to deal with this type of online piracy, the end justified the means. Logistep could continue. Refusing to accept this decision, the Préposé decided to appeal the ruling. Yesterday that road came to an end and it was bad news for Logistep. In a ruling by the Federal Court – which is final and cannot be appealed – the activities of Logistep were declared illegal in Switzerland. From a panel of 5 judges, the vote was 3 to 2 in favor of the Préposé and against Logistep, with a statement that the breaches of privacy carried out by the company were illegal. Even the judges who believed that Logistep acted legally agreed that IP addresses are private data. Furthermore, the Court decided to open a criminal case against Logistep. According to Numerama, who have followed this case closely, the ruling was public which is unusual in these types of case. This type of arrangement is usually there to make clear a court’s intent to set a precedent. The ruling means that it is now illegal to collect IP addresses in Switzerland with the aim of later filing a lawsuit, and the ruling reinforces the notion that IP addresses are public data. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Swiss courts will accept IP addresses gathered from outside the country as evidence against suspected file-sharers either. For Logistep, however, with a flick of a switch or two it will be business almost as usual. They have already announced a relocation of their data harvesting operation to Germany. For former Razorback admin bile666, the battle goes on. Despite complying with notice and takedown requests, several years ago the Razorback eDonkey server was seized and that lawsuit continues today. However, in light of this Swiss decision, TorrentFreak is informed that lawyer Sébastien Fanti and bile666 are seriously considering filing lawsuits against the IFPI and other companies that collected Swiss IP addresses so that criminal proceedings can also be initiated against them. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| Pirate Bay and Others Not Affected by Warez Raids Posted: 09 Sep 2010 12:39 AM PDT Earlier this week Europe's warez scene was shaken up by multiple raids in Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain and several other countries. In the reports that came out, dozens of news sources also linked some leading Bittorrent sites including The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie to the busts. Just to be absolutely clear, these sites were completely unaffected.
In a follow up article posted yesterday, we offered more information about the raids and their aftermath from Scene insiders, but still a lot of questions remained unanswered. Things got particularly confusing when leading torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie were linked to the police action in one or two news reports, a rumor which then spread virally around other media outlets. Since the raids were targeted at Scene servers, computers where members have direct access to a variety of files in a closed system, torrent sites would be an unusual target to include. Still, when there’s news about a huge piracy raid – especially in Sweden – torrent sites are the things that naturally come to mind for a lot of people. So, when the news broke about the raids while The Pirate Bay was temporarily and coincidentally offline a couple of days ago, several reporters added one and one. This is why dozens of sites reported yesterday that The Pirate Bay was taken down in the raids. Even when it reappeared, it was assumed that the site had relocated elsewhere. Other torrent sites including BTJunkie were mentioned as targets as well. Luckily for the site’s users, none of these sites were affected by the raid, nor were they targeted. Although we never linked any torrent sites to the raids ourselves we felt the need to clear up the confusion. TorrentFreak contacted both The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie and we were assured that nothing was going on. BTJunkie’s founder told us that they didn’t even suffer the slightest downtime. The Pirate Bay team said that they were indeed down for a few hours, but this was because they had to upgrade the servers. Hopefully this will put an end to some of the rumors that have been making the rounds in the last few days. There is little doubt that the police raids have had a serious impact on the Scene, but apart from seeing a minor decrease in Scene releases appearing online, BitTorrent sites are operating as usual. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| Law Firm Puts In Mysterious Offer To Buy Leading Torrent Sites Posted: 08 Sep 2010 01:25 PM PDT The Winnipeg-based law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP has put in offers to acquire several of the largest BitTorrent sites on behalf of an unnamed client, TorrentFreak has learned. Although the true source behind the offers has not been officially confirmed, all leads point to a familiar name.
In recent history quite a few medium-sized torrent sites have changed owners, but these were all deals done within the torrent community, none were conducted in the open. The first time that an outsider went public with plans to buy a torrent site was last year when Global Gaming Factory (GGF) made a $7.8 million offer for The Pirate Bay, and a $25 million offer to buy Mininova. GGF planned to legalize the sites and turn them into media portals where movies and music would be sold with approval from copyright holders. Most readers probably recall that the deals with the two largest torrent sites at the time didn’t go through due to funding issues. However, last month GGF CEO Hans Pandeya popped up again, this time with an offer for the largest semi-private BitTorrent community Demonoid. Apparently, he had not yet abandoned his plans. Demonoid’s owner told TorrentFreak that he was not interested in anything GGF had to offer, so Pandeya had to target other sites to carry out his plans. Interestingly enough, a few days after Demonoid rejected Pandeya’s offer, the Canadian law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP contacted several other larger torrent sites with similar offers. In their correspondence the solicitors claim to be working for a U.S. based corporation that is interested in acquiring the assets of the sites in question. The identity of the potential buyer is not disclosed, but considering the timing it wouldn’t be strange if it turned out to be GGF CEO Hans Pandeya. Torrent sites don’t often get offers from external parties, except the ones from GGF we discussed above. If Pandeya is indeed behind the offer, it would make sense for him to make his approach using the cover of a law firm due to the bad reputation he has built up among torrent site owners. The torrent sites that have been approached prefer not to be named, but they are among the most visited on the Internet, which is in line with Pandeya’s plans. The only thing that’s different this time is the money being offered. Unlike the millions of dollars that were thrown around previously, the current offers are at the lower end of the scale. None of the torrent sites that were contacted are interested in selling, so it is likely that we might never know the truth about the mysterious buyer or if he has connections to GGF. Hans Pandeya was contacted for a comment, but didn’t want to respond on the record. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
The road to curtailing the Swiss activities of Logistep has been a long one and although it ended in Switzerland, the complaints began in France.
Earlier this week we reported that police in 14 countries around Europe 
With millions of visitors per day, the leading BitTorrent sites are valuable properties. Although none of the big sites have been sold publicly, most of them are easily worth a million dollars.| You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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