Wednesday, September 22, 2010

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update

Senior Judge Warns of End To File-Sharing Cash Demands

Posted: 22 Sep 2010 04:47 AM PDT

A senior judge has given the clearest indications so far that patience could be running out with "pay up or else" letters currently being sent out in their thousands to alleged file-sharers. At a hearing to authorize yet more, the judge called the schemes "a huge sledgehammer to crack a nut" adding that once the Digital Economy Act is in force, further applications may not be successful.

After tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of letters sent out to alleged file-sharers demanding cash settlements, there are some early signs that the practice is starting to grind gears in the UK.

On Monday, lawyers Gallant Macmillan were in court on behalf of their client Ministry of Sound, a huge independent music label, to extract yet more identities of alleged file-sharers from UK ISPs.

The hearing, Ministry of Sound Recordings Ltd v Plusnet Plc, went ahead at 2:30pm in London before judge Chief Master Winegarten (CMW). Other ISPs detailed were BT, Sky and O2/Be Unlimited.

Among those who have been tirelessly campaigning against these actions, it’s long been hoped that CMW, a senior high court judge with a wealth of experience in this area, would take a more critical approach with these cases than he has done in the past. On Monday, for once, things didn’t go quite to plan for the applicants.

Although it’s thought that more than 100,000 identities have been handed over to lawyers like Gallant Macmillan and ACS:Law, worryingly CMW confirmed during the hearing that he didn’t possess the technical expertise to assess the nature or reliability of the evidence being used in the cases.

Not only that, CMW also told the court that he had been surprised at the amount of mail he had received from concerned individuals and remarked that this wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t a large degree of misaccusation.

"There wouldn't be this hue and cry unless you were pursuing people who were innocent," he told the applicants.

Condemning the actions as a “huge sledgehammer to crack a nut”, CMW pondered, "I can't understand why in these thousands – hundreds of thousands – [of letters sent out] no-one has been sued."

Of course, anyone following these cases knows why. This is all about money and one successfully contested case means the whole scheme comes to an end and these companies aren’t going to risk that.

However, there could be a light at the end of the tunnel. Chief Master Winegarten told the court Monday that once the Digital Economy Act is fully in force, further applications for court orders of this nature may not be successful.

CMW also refused to grant Ministry of Sound’s (MoS) application for a court order. He explained that he had received by letter “concerns from the public” that must be addressed before he could agree to it. The applicant (MoS) must respond on that by 27th September. The hearing itself was adjourned to be concluded 4th October 2010.

This decision to delay by CMW is particularly unusual and suggests that he is becoming more concerned by these actions. It is, however, commendable that he is doing so because without him trying to at least offer some protection to the public, these court orders would simply be granted.

The reason? Almost universally the UK’s ISPs have shown absolutely no desire to protect their customers, despite being well aware that people are being wrongfully accused. As an example, let’s look at Plusnet, the ISP shown as the primary target in this application by Ministry of Sound.

For months now there has been a storm brewing among Plusnet’s customer base. Dissent against the company’s approach to its handling of these court orders and particularly its relationship with ACS:Law has generated a near 40 page and often heated discussion on its customer service forums.

TorrentFreak has been in contact with Richard Fletcher of Plusnet previously but it seems that for legal reasons, whatever they might be, he hasn’t really been able to answer either our questions or those posed by Plusnet customers. Today there will be many more.

Despite promising that a member of their group’s legal team would be present in court to hear this Ministry of Sound application Monday, no one with any legal ability was sent, just a single observer who sat at the back in silence. On Monday evening, Richard Fletcher posted the following response:

I know a number of you have expressed disappointment at our approach, and that we are co-operating wholly with ACS:Law – I wish to be clear that Plusnet consider each application for Norwich Pharmacal Relief [court orders to reveal customer identities], however the decision as to whether a Norwich Pharamcal Order should be made, or not is a decision for the Court and Plusnet only disclose information when it is compelled to do so by the Court.

However, as TorrentFreak pointed out to Richard in an email yesterday morning (we also asked several questions and provided a summary of what happened in court Monday but have yet to receive a reply), this statement is missing the point somewhat.

The facts are that the judge hearing this case cannot find against the applicant (Ministry of Sound) because the ISP (Plusnet) is the defendant and Plusnet as a company are privately agreeing not to contest these court orders even before they are formally asked for in court. This type of agreement was illustrated very clearly when Plusnet didn’t even bother to send a lawyer.

While we all know that an ISP must comply with a court order once it’s issued, Plusnet and virtually every other ISP in the UK are giving the likes of Gallant Macmillan and ACS:Law a free ride by agreeing not to contest in advance.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. ISP TalkTalk have told TorrentFreak time and again that they refuse to cooperate with these companies and – surprise, surprise – TalkTalk are never required to hand over the details of their customers since they are never included on a court order application. All this despite being one of the country’s largest ISPs.

While the dawning of the Digital Economy Act may put an end to the schemes of ACS:Law and Gallant Macmillan, that time is still a while off and in the meantime many more thousands of people will receive letters and untold numbers of those will be wrongly accused as has been the case up to now.

It is clear. The country’s ISPs, Plusnet included, have the power to do something about this. Do the ISPs share the reservations of Chief Master Winegarten? Will they have the courage to add momentum to his concerns?

Will any UK ISP have the courage to oppose the next court order application based on Chief Master Winegarten’s concerns? If you are one such ISP, tell us. We’ll be happy to let the world know about it.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

New 4chan DDoS Targets Hated Anti-Piracy Law Firm

Posted: 22 Sep 2010 12:14 AM PDT

After all-out assaults on the web presences of the MPAA, RIAA and later the BPI, last night a new company was targeted in a new 4chan DDoS attack. Anti-piracy lawyers ACS:Law, one of the most despised and complained about law firms in Britain, had their website taken offline last night and it remains down "Account Suspended" this morning. TorrentFreak has spoken to one of the key figures in Operation Payback for the lowdown.

Sick and tired of the anti-piracy actions of large corporate entities, this weekend saw the angry hordes of 4chan coordinate DDoS attacks against the websites of both the MPAA and RIAA generating dozens of news stories and worldwide attention.

Although the international music and movie industries were targeted over the weekend, the attacks initially began on Friday against anti-piracy company AiPlex Software, who had earlier bragged about carrying out DDoS attacks against torrent sites. Ironically, their site proved very easy to take down.

Although a third assault against the UK’s BPI was unsuccessful (more on that later), last night another wave of attacks were launched. Anti-piracy lawyers ACS:Law, who send out tens of thousands of letters demanding cash-settlements from often innocent Internet subscribers, became the new target.

ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley has already been referred three times to lawyers regulation authorities in the UK for his behavior and his company is the most complained-about law firm in their field. Widely despised for the work they do and the manner in which they carry out, it comes as no surprise that they became a target in “Operation Payback”.

The ACS:Law website was easily taken down last night and remains down today displaying “Account Suspended”.

ACS:Down

TorrentFreak spoke with one of the administrators of the IRC channel where Operation Payback is being coordinated to find out more about this and earlier attacks.

“[the IRC channel] is where the entire attack is coordinated – including the pastehtml page. When the time came to DDoS mpaa.org, we had the highest number of troops in our IRC channel than ever before (700 people). Despite this, mpaa.org remained online – of course, because of their DDoS protection,” he explained.

TorrentFreak was told that the choice to launch against ACS:Law last night came as the result of a vote among the operation’s admins.

“After announcing that this was our new target,” the admin explained, “the website went down instantly.”

So while the attacks are being attributed to 4chan users, is ‘Anonymous’ really to blame? We were told that they are.

“The vast majority of our users are recruited from 4chan, and all of the targets are posted on 4chan with their corresponding posters,” TorrentFreak was told. “Once an operation of this scale has been established, the central base of operation is never usually 4chan – it’s usually a chatroom, and commands from the chatroom are echoed back to 4chan.”

“The same thing applied with project Chanology and project Titstorm (where they took down the websites of the Australian government). I was there, in both, and have contacts with the organisers.”

Interestingly we were told that not everything has run smoothly in Operation Payback.

Although an assault against the UK’s BPI managed to slow their servers, it failed to take down the site. The lack of manpower to successfully carry out the assault was due to the IRC channel used to coordinate the assault being hacked, depriving the group of their central grounds for communication. This hacking wasn’t an isolated event either. So far, three of the group’s IRC servers have been hacked.

So where will this all end? The administrator told us that he simply doesn’t know.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

France Starts Reporting ‘Millions’ of File-Sharers

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 02:26 PM PDT

This week the controversial French three-strikes anti-piracy law Hadopi went live. Copyright holders are currently in the process of sending out tens of thousands of IP-addresses of alleged infringers to Internet service providers, and this will increase to over a million in a few weeks. The ISPs have to hand over the identities of the associated accounts to the authorities within a week, or face a fine of 1500 euros per unidentified IP-address.

Under France’s new Hadopi law, alleged copyright infringers will be hunted down systematically in an attempt to decrease piracy. Alleged offenders have to be identified by their Internet providers and they will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings.

A judge will then review the case and hand down any one of a range of penalties, from fines through to disconnecting the Internet connection of the infringer.

The French anti-piracy outfit Trident Media Guard has been chosen by the entertainment industry to monitor and report illegal uploaders in France. The company, known globally for its pollution of BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks with fake data, recently started tracking down thousands of illicit file-sharers.

According to a report from PCINpact one of the major ISPs confirmed that the first batch of IP-addresses was submitted just a few days ago. This is the final step before alleged file-sharers receive warning letters.

The scope of the operation is mind boggling. The copyright holders will start relatively ‘slowly’ with 10,000 IP-addresses a day, but within weeks this number is expected to go up to 150,000 IP-addresses per day according to official reports.

The Internet providers will be tasked with identifying the alleged infringers’ names, addresses, emails and phone numbers. If they fail to do so within 8 days they risk a fine of 1,500 euros per day for every unidentified IP-address.

To put this into perspective, a United States judge ruled recently that the ISP Time Warner only has to give up 28 IP-addresses a month (< 1 per day) to copyright holders because of the immense workload the identifications would cause.

All the major French ISPs have to cooperate with the identification process, and the first 'victims' are expected to be disconnected or fined in a few months when they receive their third warning. At this point it is doubtful whether Hadopi will in fact decrease the piracy rate.

There are quite a few options for BitTorrent users to file-share anonymously, and other download options such as Usenet are not monitored at all.

Article from: TorrentFreak.
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