TorrentFreak Email Update |
- BREIN and Usenet Portal Face Off In Court Over Legality
- French ISP Refuses to Send Out Hadopi File-Sharing Warnings
- ACTA Anti-Piracy Treaty Not As Horrible as Feared
- Apple Boots BitTorrent App From iPhone Store
| BREIN and Usenet Portal Face Off In Court Over Legality Posted: 07 Oct 2010 04:18 AM PDT The long-running battle between anti-piracy group BREIN and a Usenet community reached a Dutch court room this week. For their part, the FTD newsgroup portal wants the courts to issue a declaration that they operate legally. On the other hand, BREIN insists that publishing the locations of copyright material is illegal and tantamount to directly publishing it. On that basis BREIN is demanding a permanent injunction against FTD's operations. In the Court of Haarlem on Monday, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN met with the operators of Usenet community FTD for the hearing of their long-standing copyright dispute. According to BREIN, FTD is a service which allows users to easily but illegally download movies, TV shows and music. FTD see themselves differently and state that they only allow their members to point out where such content might be found on Usenet. A statement sent to TorrentFreak by FTD lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet of Ictrecht law firm noted that the four hour long hearing took place in the largest court room available but generated enough interest to still become crowded. Lawyer Gijsbert Brunt began by outlining how FTD operates. He argued that FTD allows users to report or ‘spot’ where material may be found on Usenet, but does nothing more than this, adding that FTD does not upload any content to users, nor does it offer users any downloads. Brunt further argued that FTD’s service is not even necessary to download content from Usenet and is not, as BREIN claims, an “entertainment shopping” service from where movies can be downloaded. As part of their argument, BREIN referred to an earlier legal battle between FTD and the movie studio, Eyeworks. In that case, a court ruled that by allowing the publication of ‘spots’ detailing the location of an unauthorized movie stored on Usenet, FTD effectively became the publisher of that movie as if they had actually hosted it on their own servers. “The court in The Hague already determined that FTD provided access to unauthorized copies of a Dutch movie,” BREIN chief Tim Kuik told TorrentFreak in a statement. “FTD is like a downloadshop providing access keys to unauthorized content. Therefore BREIN agrees with the court in The Hague that deemed FTD is making available without permission of the right holder and therefore directly infringing copyright itself even though the content itself is stored and downloaded from Usenet.” Coincidentally, the appeal of that particular decision will be heard this week in The Hague. Needless to say, the outcome could prove of particular relevance to this case. BREIN argued in court Monday that FTD is a portal which "organizes and promotes" illicit content making it easy for users to download it from Usenet. The anti-piracy group said that this “unlocking” of newsgroup content by FTD amounts to them publishing it and asked the judge to consider that in the light of the Eyeworks ruling, not only is FTD illegal but also a direct infringer of copyright. Even if the Court does not eventually consider FTD to be a direct infringer, BREIN says that FTD still acts in a similar manner to other sites who have previously lost lawsuits in The Netherlands including Zoekmp3, ShareConnector, Mininova and The Pirate Bay. The anti-piracy group argued that all of these sites illegally used the availability of copyright content as a business model. “In previous cases courts ruled that comparable business models were acting unlawful without saying the activity amounted to direct infringement,” Kuik told us yesterday. “The point is that such business models structurally make use of the availability of unauthorized content. Even if it is not deemed infringement itself, it still is unlawful,” he added. In an apparent reference to the earlier “filtering” rulings handed down against both Mininova and The Pirate Bay, BREIN argued in court that FTD should also have to check (filter/moderate) the potential copyright status of material before allowing the publication of their Usenet locations. BREIN said that moderation of ‘spots’ does take place on the FTD service, but only on quality grounds, never due to copyright concerns. Countering, FTD insist that since it is legal to download copyrighted material in The Netherlands, they have no duty to remove such ‘spots’. BREIN, however, see things differently and believe that commercial use of illicit material constitutes an infringement of copyright. Lawyer Gijsbert Brunt reiterated that FTD is not responsible for the material uploaded to, or downloaded from, Usenet. The Court’s decision is due to be handed down on or soon after 7th November 2010. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| French ISP Refuses to Send Out Hadopi File-Sharing Warnings Posted: 07 Oct 2010 02:33 AM PDT During the last week, French Internet users have been starting to receive letters as part of the graduated warning system built in to the controversial Hadopi anti-piracy legislation. The email warnings are being sent by Hadopi via France's ISPs. But even at this early stage at least one ISP is refusing to forward them to their customers prompting complaints from rivals that they are seeking to achieve a competitive advantage.
After three such incidences they will be reported to a judge who will be empowered to hand down a range of penalties, from fines right through to Internet disconnections. The initial warnings, sent by Hadopi to alleged infringers via the country’s ISPs, have already started to go out. “Attention, your internet connection has been used to commit legally-noted acts that could constitute a breach of the law,” they begin. However, customers of one ISP won’t be receiving any, at least for now. “The French ISP ‘Free’ decided not to send the warning letters to their subscribers, because the law does not mandate them to do so,” Guillaume Champeau, Editor of French news outlet Numerama told TorrentFreak this morning. “The law says that it is the Hadopi which has to send the warning ‘for his own account and under its stamp, by electronic means, through the (ISPs)’. It never says how it should be sent ‘through the ISPs’.” Furthermore, although ISPs have been given the job of identifying and matching up IP addresses with the alleged infringers' personal details (on pain of 1,500 euros per day per IP fine for failing to do so), there are no penalties in place for not sending out warnings. “The thing is, the HADOPI and most ISPs decided it was more convenient and secure to use the ISPs’ SMTP [mail] servers [for sending out warnings],” explained Guillaume. “But ‘Free’ did not agree to Hadopi using its SMTP servers without a signed agreement, which apparently was refused, probably because they required payment or other forms of compensations.” Of course, any ISP that does not send warnings to its customers could only become more popular with Internet users, so it’s no surprise that some ISPs are unhappy with Free for at least appearing to opt-out of the Hadopi process. One ISP, Numericable, has sent a letter of complaint to Hadopi asking it to investigate Free on the basis that it could be seeking to achieve a competitive advantage from its stance. The ISP Orange also accused Free of “maintaining the image of a certain laxity”. “Yesterday, the French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand announced that the Government would issue a decree to sanction non-collaborating ISPs,” added Guillaume. “But it is yet to be seen if it can be legally issued, since the law does not mandate any obligation for the ISPs to send the emails themselves.” Nevertheless, although Free is not currently sending out warnings to its subscribers, it does not necessarily mean that they have not been issued. Time will tell how this plays out. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| ACTA Anti-Piracy Treaty Not As Horrible as Feared Posted: 06 Oct 2010 01:08 PM PDT After years of secret negotiations the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is as good as finalized. What was once feared to become a treaty that would give unprecedented powers to the global copyright lobby, has been watered down to a few pages of widely interpretable recommendations. First impressions reveal that not much will change with regard to file-sharing. More than two years after we introduced ACTA as a treaty that “seeks to turn the Internet into a virtual police state”, the (near) final text of the controversial trade agreement has been released today. While the fears were real at the time, ACTA has evolved into a much more acceptable agreement now that all negotiations are over. Many of the measures that were on the wish list of the RIAA and the U.S. Government have been scrapped along the way. What’s left is a treaty that enables governments to implement all kinds of anti-piracy measures, but forces none of the participating countries to do so. One of the more controversial paragraphs, where countries would be obliged to impose secondary liability on Internet Service Providers for copyright infringements carried out by their customers, was removed earlier last month and didn’t return in the final draft. Previously, ISPs would be held liable when they failed to respond swiftly to 'notice and takedown' requests from copyright holders. With regard to file-sharing, ACTA is not going to bring any immediate change to the laws that are already in place in most countries. Even camcording in movie theaters is not going to be criminalized, as it was in previous ACTA drafts. None of the RIAA’s wild suggestions for ACTA have been implemented either. The music industry pushed hard for a mandatory three-strikes policy to disconnect pirates, but this suggestion never made it into the ACTA drafts. That said, individual countries are free to implement this and other measures on their own. Many of the other paragraphs, including those related to DRM and border measures, are not as draconian as feared either, leaving room for fair use and other exceptions. “Taken together, the Internet chapter must be seen as failure by the U.S., which clearly envisioned using ACTA to export its DMCA-style approach,” prof. Michael Geist writes in a brief analysis of the text. “Instead, the treaty leaves much the same flexibility as exists under the WIPO Internet treaties and opens the door to Canadian reforms to the digital lock provisions in Bill C-32.” Despite ACTA being softer than expected, not all of the participating countries are happy with the final draft. The Mexican senate just voted in favor of pulling out, and the EU parliament remains skeptical. ACTAArticle from: TorrentFreak. |
| Apple Boots BitTorrent App From iPhone Store Posted: 06 Oct 2010 05:02 AM PDT Just a few days ago we broke the news that the first BitTorrent app had been allowed into Apple's App Store. The developer managed to get it approved despite Apple's hatred towards BitTorrent. Unfortunately, the fun was soon over as Apple has already kicked the App from the store. The developer is not giving up that easily and hopes to convince Apple they're wrong.
Although the App itself is not quite revolutionary, the fact that Apple allowed a BitTorrent-based app into their iPhone store is. Previously, all BitTorrent related submissions were rejected because BitTorrent is often used to “infringe copyrights”, according to Apple. By carefully avoiding the dirty word "torrent" or anything that could hint at unlawful use of the app, developer Derek Kepner passed Apple’s stringent approval regime. The big question was whether Apple had changed their ‘policy’ or if the approval was an oversight at the company. It turns out that the latter was the case. Kepner informed TorrentFreak that he got a call from Apple a few hours ago, announcing that IS Drive would be booted from the App store. The Apple employee cited section 22.4 of the App Store Review Guidelines: “Apps that enable illegal file sharing will be rejected.” “I mentioned to the person that called me that my app doesn’t do anything that can’t be done in Safari. It sounded like he wasn’t going to change his mind though,” Kepner told TorrentFreak. “I’m very disappointed by Apple’s decision. A lot of people think BitTorrent is just for piracy, but it’s not. I wanted to help change that misconception with this app. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to be interested,” he added. Despite the setback, the developer is not giving up so easily. He’s currently drafting a letter to Apple where he is going to explain in detail how his App does nothing different than a web browser, and that it’s not a pirate App. Below, Kepner shared a few sentences from his writing to Apple.
Kepner is totally right of course. IS Drive is not enabling illegal file-sharing any more than a regular web-browser. However, somehow we doubt that Apple will be easily convinced, to them BitTorrent is synonym for piracy. “I feel like I’m fighting for the BitTorrent community here. Wish me luck,” Kepner concluded. Finally, although IS Drive was the first App that was linked to a web-based torrent download service, there were already Apps that allow BitTorrent downloads via the Synology Disk Station such as SynoLoad and SynoDS. Expect these to be removed in the coming days. Right Apple? It is just this kind of inflexibility which encourages Apple users to jailbreak their machines and head over to Cydia, which they are doing in their hundreds of thousands. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
Under France’s fledgling Hadopi anti-piracy law, alleged file-sharers will monitored and tracked back to their ISPs. There, an IP address will be matched to a subscriber and that bill-paying individual will be on his first infringement warning.
Just before the weekend the BitTorrent-based ‘IS Drive’ App was | 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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