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| Downloaded ‘The Expendables’ on BitTorrent? The Copyright Police Are Coming Posted: 05 Jan 2011 04:51 AM PST
One of the movie companies partnering with USCG are Achte/Neunte, the makers of the movie Far Cry. That case originally had more than 4,500 defendants but in November 2010 a district court judge told USCG that they could only pursue those who were sued in the correct jurisdiction, 140 in total. Now, according to Hollywood Reporter, USCG have not been put off by this setback. On the contrary, they have just signed up a new company to their scheme. Although Nu Image Films may not immediately ring any bells with BitTorrent users, they have an impressive 179 movies in their portfolio. One of their most successful movies to date will certainly sound familiar- the 2010 blockbuster ‘The Expendables’. According to Thomas Dunlap at USCG, The Expendables will be the focus of a new lawsuit being prepared by his company which is set to target the untold thousands of Internet users who shared the movie on BitTorrent during 2010. Dunlap says other lawsuits for Nu Image movies will follow. The potential numbers are significant. The Expendables first appeared in TorrentFreak’s chart of most-pirated movies back in August 2010 and stayed there for 8 straight weeks. It was also the 27th most-searched for term on one of most BitTorrent’s most popular indexes last year. In a sure sign that USCG’s business plan is all about making money from piracy and not stopping or deterring it, THR quotes Dunlap as saying that USCG has been doing background checks on identities of BitTorrent users it has obtained to date and that those who live in “a $100,000 house” may be more appealing targets than those who live in a “$10,000 trailer”. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| Anti-Piracy Outfit Threatens Pan-Indian Torrent Site Ban Posted: 04 Jan 2011 12:30 PM PST
While the majority of these outfits do their job with a relative low profile, there are a few oddballs that continue to make the news due to their unconventional tactics. In the past we’ve covered the mysterious ways of the Web-Sheriff, and more recently the Indian based company AiPlex Software has been making a name for itself. Last September Girish Kumar, managing director of AiPlex Software, admitted that his company DDoSed torrent sites that were not complying with their DMCA takedown requests. “We flood the website with requests, which results in database error, causing denial of service as each server has a fixed bandwidth capacity," he said at the time. This revelation was not appreciated by everyone, and led to the start of Anonymous’ Operation Payback which took down the AiPlex website for days on end. A costly attack for the Indian multi-purpose firm that also specializes in medical transcription and search engine optimization. Despite this setback AiPlex is not backing down, on the contrary. Although the DDoS attacks seem to have stopped the outfit has continued to harass torrent site owners, often incorrectly. Now Bitsnoop has alerted us to an interesting email conversation he had with AiPlex’s managing director. A few days ago Bitsnoop’s owner received a takedown request for the following torrent, which linked to a copy of the Indian blockbuster Tees Maar Khan. The torrent site owner quickly took the linked page offline and thought the case was settled, but he was wrong. Yesterday, AiPlex’s general manager Girish Kumar sent a reminder for the file that was already removed. For Bitsnoop’s owner these type of incorrect reminders are an annoyance, and he replied to AiPlex that similar unverified requests will be ignored in the future. Girish Kumar obviously failed to see the mistake he made, but quickly replied with an oddly worded, brand new and unprecedented threat.
Really? It is hard to take any of the above response seriously and indeed Bitsnoop’s owner wisely ignored it. Needless to say, through these unusual threats AiPlex is not making themselves popular among site owners. TorrentFreak contacted Girish Kumar to hear more about their close ties and influence within the Indian authorities, but we have yet to receive a reply. Of course this is just one side of the daily DMCA troubles torrent site owners face, there are also many agents that are more pleasant to work with, and these usually get more done. When the takedown notices are complete and properly formatted most torrent site owners will cooperate and take the infringing links offline quickly. AiPlex has obviously chosen to go down another route, which makes it harder for them to succeed. But, this doesn’t matter much for them of course, they’ll simply ask the Indian Government to ban Bitsnoop and The Pirate Bay, making piracy a thing of the past. And putting themselves out of the anti-piracy business in the process. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
During 2010 the United States Copyright Group (USCG) sued tens of thousands of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared films without the consent of copyright holders. The aim was not to take cases to court, but to get alleged infringers to pay a cash settlement to make legal action go away.
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