Wednesday, November 24, 2010

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update

PC Mag Admonished By Music Biz For Encouraging Piracy

Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:58 PM PST

The CEO of publisher Ziff Davis has just had an ear bashing from not only the RIAA, but just about everyone in the music industry. It seems that the world's recorded music leaders were more than a little annoyed when PC Mag reported on alternatives to LimeWire, going on to call 'their' report on a TorrentFreak article "nothing more than a roadmap for continued music piracy." Confusingly, PC Mag didn't actually write it. IDG's PC World did.

Oh oh. Quite a few people in the music industry are voicing their displeasure today at Vivek Shah, CEO of PC Mag publisher Ziff Davis. Rather than being subjected to a short finger wagging by just the RIAA, according to Billboard poor Shah seemingly has the entire recorded music world on his back.

In a letter signed by 17 music groups featuring everyone from the RIAA to the Church Music Publishers Association, Shah is told in no uncertain terms that his employees have been very naughty indeed.

“We write to express our deep disappointment with your decision to publish Chloe Albanesius' October 27 article, ‘LimeWire is Dead: What are the Alternatives?‘ as well as Sarah Jacobsson Purewal's November 9, 2010 article ‘LimeWire is Quietly Resurrected: It’s Baaack!’,” begins the letter.

“Both articles are nothing more than a roadmap for continued music piracy. The disclaimer in the first, ‘PC Magazine does not condone the download of copyrighted or illegal material,’ rings hollow to say the least.”

The first article, which lists LimeWire alternatives, led those sending the letter to accuse PC Mag of “…slyly encouraging people to steal more music and place at risk the tens of thousands of music industry jobs – including singers, songwriters, musicians and the technical professionals who put it all together.”

However, it seems that the second article, LimeWire Is Quietly Resurrected: It’s Baaack!, caused the most trouble for PC Mag. The article reported entirely on an article published first here on TorrentFreak titled LimeWire Resurrected By Secret Dev Team.

However, while we chose not to link to the software out of concerns of being labelled a disciple of Lucifer, according to the music industry letter, PC Mag apparently had no such qualms.

“Even worse is offering a direct link to a ‘resurrected’ Limewire,” states the letter to Ziff Davis’ Vivek Shah, which goes on to quote the writer of the piece, Sarah Jacobsson Purewal.

"I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly,” it reports Purewal as saying while going on to complain loudly that she included a link to the rogue LimeWire software.

However, there’s a bit of a problem. While PC Mag did indeed publish the first article, they weren’t the architects of the second – Sarah Jacobsson Purewal writes for IDG’s PC World.

Nevertheless, Ziff Davis and PC Mag get even more of a dressing down in the final paragraphs.

“We would hope that your sense of decency and the realization that even PC Magazine has a responsibility to the rule of law, would have informed your editorial decision in this matter,” the letter continues.

“We suspect you'd feel differently about this issue if, like the music industry, you'd had to let go more than half of the talented writers and journalists who create your magazine because of uncontrolled piracy of their work. Unfortunately, it is clear that the rule of law was an afterthought.”

IDG must be breathing a sigh of relief tonight at escaping the wrath of the industry, but maybe they’ll get their admonishment tomorrow.

In the meantime, we seem to have escaped the naughty chair for writing the original article which just goes to show – if you’re going to annoy the music industry, it’s best to do it via proxy.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Anti-Mafia Unit Conducts Melodramatic Warez Piracy Raid

Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:04 AM PST

According to Bulgaria's Interior Ministry, the country's organized crime unit has dramatically raided a piracy site. Following a music industry tip-off, an "American movie" style raid ensued with unwitting employees at the site location ordered to lie on the floor while the anti-mafia unit - who didn't even have a search warrant - conducted what appears to a Keystone Kops inspired operation.

While reading the Interior Ministry’s press release, one could be forgiven for thinking this was an pretty important anti-piracy raid.

As part of the Ministry’s continuing policy of taking down piracy sites, on Saturday it announced that employees of GDBOP, the Computer Crime Department of the country’s organized crime unit, had busted a site that was illegally distributing movies, music and software.

Carried out in conjunction with the police from the southern city of Haskovo and the town of Ivaylovgrad, the raid netted servers which the authorities described as a “huge mall” for copyright infringing material.

While this is the extent of information provided by officials, thanks to TorrentFreak’s Bulgarian sources we can provide quite a bit more.

Not surprisingly, the authorities were prompted into action by the IFPI-affiliated Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP) who appeared to be working under the impression that they had a very big fish to catch.

With this in mind, on Saturday afternoon and with plenty of man power, the anti-mafia unit carried out their raid.

“Around 3 PM, 15 people form GDBOP entered the office, and as in an American movie, got everyone to lay down,” recalled Atanas Shishmanov, the owner of the company targeted.

Shishmanov owns Elkom 63, a company which offers internet and television services for a small town of around 4,000 people, CCTV systems, computer/cash register repair services and web design.

So what did the mafia unit take with their 15 men and police backup? Two PCs containing 5TB of data in total.

According to Shishmanov the computers aren’t even owned by his company.

“I read the Internet report and laughed,” he said, while noting that the police had no search warrant.

“The bad thing is that those computers were ones left by customers for repair, and they were taken open, as they were. We even don’t know what they had on them.”

Shishmanov is not the only one who’s clueless about the target of the raid. The authorities have left the the public in the dark about the name and identity of this to-be-repaired “piracy mall” that was allegedly operating from two broken PCs.

This action is the latest against alleged online copyright infringement in Bulgaria. Following talks with IFPI, in July authorities started taking action against various torrent and other file-sharing services, including online library Chitanka.

Article from: TorrentFreak.
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