TorrentFreak Email Update

ISPs Free To Continue Deleting Evidence Against File-Sharers
US Copyright Group Drops Cases Against Thousands of BitTorrent Users
Torrent-Finder Determined to Fight U.S. Domain Seizure
Kids Detained By Police On Suspicion of Running Torrent Sites

ISPs Free To Continue Deleting Evidence Against File-Sharers

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 03:23 AM PST

Sweden's highest court has rejected an application by an anti-piracy group which would force an ISP to hand over the identity of a file-sharing site operator. Antipiratbyrån wants TeliaSonera to reveal who is behind the SweTorrents BitTorrent tracker but the ISP has refused and taken its case all the way to the Supreme Court. That Court has now decided that the final decision lies with the European Court.

swetorrents In 2009, four movie studios represented by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån applied to the Södertörn District Court in a move designed to force ISP TeliaSonera to hand over the identity of a BitTorrent site operator.

Later that year the Court announced its decision in favor of the anti-piracy group and ordered TeliaSonera to hand over the personal details of the person alleged to be behind the SweTorrents tracker.

TeliaSonera launched an appeal against the decision but in May 2010 the Court of Appeal upheld the District Court’s ruling. Failure to comply with this decision would result in a 750,000 kronor ($109,000) fine. Nevertheless, TeliaSonera were not prepared to accept the decision and immediately appealed and took the case to the highest court in the land.

Sweden’s Supreme Court has now ruled that the final decision in the case lies with the European Court in Luxembourg, a decision that might take several years to arrive.

The root of the complexity in this case lies with Sweden’s IPRED legislation. Both Antipiratbyrån and the lower courts believe that ISPs have an obligation to hand over to rightsholders identities of customers implicated in copyright infringement cases.

On the other hand, TeliaSonera insists that all ISPs have a long-standing and fundamental obligation to protect customer privacy which precedes the introduction of IPRED, while noting conflicts between IPRED and the EU data retention directive which has not yet been implemented in Swedish law.

The introduction of IPRED was expected to make it easier to track down file-sharers, but thus far the opposite is true at some ISPs. Since there is nothing in the country’s Electronic Communications Law that instructs ISPs to store information about the IP addresses they allocate to their customers, some ISPs have stopped storing this data to protect the privacy of their customers.

The decision by the European Court in the SweTorrents case is likely to be some time coming, and in the meantime ISPs will be free to continue deleting data, at least until the data-retention directive ‘loophole’ is closed.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

US Copyright Group Drops Cases Against Thousands of BitTorrent Users

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 02:27 PM PST

The US Copyright Group (USCG) campaign to turn piracy into profit is starting to fall apart. Today, the anti-piracy lawyers dropped 97% of the alleged BitTorrent file-sharers from the Far Cry case because of a lack of jurisdiction. This setback seriously limits the profitability of the law firm's business model, and is a clear victory for thousands of people who were pressured to pay expensive settlements.

torrentfreak Since the beginning of this year the United States Copyright Group (USCG) has sued tens of thousands of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared films without the consent of copyright holders.

One of the copyright holders who teamed up with USCG are Achte/Neunte, the makers of the movie Far Cry. This case originally had 4,577 defendants, all of whom were accused of distributing the film via BitTorrent.

However, three weeks ago District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ordered USCG to limit their case only to those defendants who the Court has jurisdiction over, and in an amended complaint filed today the anti-piracy lawyers have done just that.

Of the thousands of defendants, only 140 remain in the latest complaint. The remaining 4,437 were dropped from the case without prejudice. The new complaint specifically states that the remaining defendants reside in the District of Columbia, where the case was filed.

“The named Defendant resides in this District. Although the true identity of each remaining Doe Defendant is unknown to the Plaintiff at this time, on information and belief, each remaining Doe Defendant may be found in this District and/or a substantial part of the acts of infringement complained of herein occurred in this District,” the lawyers write.

These recent developments are welcome news to the thousands of people who have been pressured to pay thousands of dollars in settlements over the past months, including those in the Hurt Locker case. As it now stands, all people being chased by USCG outside of the Court’s jurisdiction can have their case dropped.

“This is certainly a reassuring decision for file sharing defendants in parallel cases around the country although they remain vulnerable to file sharing suits brought in their home states,” Stewart Kellar, a California attorney representing several defendants in the Far Cry Case, told TorrentFreak in a comment.

It has to be noted, however, that the cases have been dropped without prejudice, which effectively means that USCG can file suit against defendants again at a later stage if they so choose.

That said, having to file cases in dozens of states will significantly increase the workload for USCG’s lawyers, not to mention escalating costs. The question now is whether or not the scheme will remain financially viable.

Right now there is little doubt that what first seemed to be a relatively effective and profitable way to turn piracy into a healthy revenue stream, is rapidly turning into a nightmare for the anti-piracy lawyers and their partners.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Torrent-Finder Determined to Fight U.S. Domain Seizure

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 12:29 PM PST

The owner of BitTorrent meta-search engine Torrent-Finder, one of the sites that had its domain seized recently, is determined to put up a fight against the actions of the U.S. authorities. The Egyptian founder of the site has hired an attorney to assist him in regaining control over the website he maintained trouble-free for more than half a decade.

In late November, the news that 82 domains had been seized by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was making headlines across the Internet. In particular, the seizure of the BitTorrent meta-search engine Torrent-Finder was seen as a particularly controversial move.

The site, which doesn’t host or link to any infringing content, disappeared from the Internet for allegedly infringing copyrights. It was the oddball in a list of dozens of sites that were selling counterfeit goods including fake watches and sports clothing.

Up until that day the owner of Torrent-Finder had never run into legal issues when operating his site, which he founded more than half a decade ago. Waleed – who runs the site from his home country of Egypt – always felt he was running a perfectly legal operation and openly registered the domain in his own name.

Needless to say it came as a shock to him that his domain had been taken over by the U.S. authorities last month, a decision he is now determined to fight fiercely. Waleed has hired a lawyer to assist him in this process, and the first steps have been set into motion to hopefully regain control over the domain.

TorrentFreak got in touch with David Snead, the lawyer who represents Torrent-Finder, to ask him about this peculiar case.

“At base, what ICE did is legal, if, in torrent-finder.com's case, a stretch of the law, which is likely what they intended,” Snead told TorrentFreak.

“There is a civil forfeiture law that has been used for many years by the U.S. to enforce its customs laws, and it has been widely, and legally, used to seize items that infringe copyrights. The classic case would be for customs to seize counterfeit DVDs sold at a flea market.”

“In this case, we believe that ICE's activities are based on a provision of the statute that allows seizure of items that are facilitating infringement. Because the DNS resided in the U.S., ICE was likely within the law in seizing the DNS, even though the owner of the domain name is not in the U.S. It's important to note that the site itself wasn't seized, only the domain name,” Snead added.

The Torrent-Finder homepage

torrent finder

It has to be added that Snead and everyone else are still mostly in the dark about the exact reason why the Torrent-Finder domain was seized. “We really don't know what happened here. So the legal analysis is based on ICE's past activity enforcing U.S. customs laws,” the lawyer told TorrentFreak.

Thus far, ICE has been contacted with a request for more details about the seizure order that was filed under seal. But, despite promises that more information would be provided before last Friday, both Snead and Torrent-Finder are still waiting to receive a copy of the order.

In the coming days (or weeks) we hope to find out more about the allegations against the BitTorrent search engine, which will enable Waleed and his lawyer to determine what steps to take next. In the meantime Torrent-Finder is still available under their backup domain, Torrent-Finder.info.

As far as we are aware, the owner of Torrent-Finder is the only person protesting the seizure of his domain. Waleed sincerely believes that his site isn’t breaking any laws and hopes that the United States legal system will side with him in the end. .

“I am sure I will win the case. Any internet user who used Torrent Finder before and understands how it works will know that I am not doing anything different than any other search engine. Besides, the silence of the ICE and keeping the investigation ‘under seal’ can only mean that they have done something wrong,” Waleed told TorrentFreak.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Kids Detained By Police On Suspicion of Running Torrent Sites

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 05:44 AM PST

As part of an investigation running for more than a year, police in Iceland have been trying to track down individuals who run file-sharing sites and those who added large amounts of content to them. This week, teenagers as young as 15 had quite a surprise when police raided several locations across the country.

Following complaints from rightsholders, this week an investigation run by Icelandic police culminated in raids against suspected BitTorrent site operators and individuals suspected of being prolific uploaders of content.

In total, 9 houses were targeted and searched. In the capital Reykjavík, 3 people were arrested. Another 7 were arrested in the port city of Akureyri in the north of the country. Computer equipment was confiscated along with cellphones which according to sources close to the investigation were already being monitored. Police also seized 80g of marijuana.

While the oldest person arrested is 20 years old, others are as young as 15. The youngest of those detained complained that since they are doing school tests this week, that would be hindered without their computers. Some appear to have complied with police interrogations and have been let go, but others have been more stubborn.

“The cops also held ‘Mr. IceFox’, the owner of Rtorrent.net, in jail for 28 hours or even more,” a source told TorrentFreak, adding: “He was given no food, he only got water!”

It is believed that police were looking for operators and major uploaders at four other trackers including icebits.net, isparty.org, icebay.net and kreppa.org. Of these, only Icebay continues to operate. Although reports suggest that a staffer from Icebay was arrested on Wednesday afternoon, the site deny this, but admit that due to the current climate the individual has resigned.

News of the police activity quickly spread and several other torrent sites went down as a precaution.

Icebits.net previously had problems with their hosting provider back in October and isparty.org had also suffered downtime. In November, Isparty announced that they would be back online on December 1st and being run by one of their original founders and assisted by three of the founders of Icebits. Ominously the announcement noted that the site would in future be hosted on a “foreign server which is very safe.”

By December 2nd, two days after the raids, three senior staffers at Isparty – TerraNova, Chrome and Intel – announced their permanent retirement and closure of the site.

Earlier this year, the Icelandic torrent site Istorrent.is finally lost their 3 year copyright battle with a coalition of anti-piracy organizations and were forced to close down.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

loveislife

Pages

Tuesday, December 7, 2010