TorrentFreak Email Update |
| Police Arrest 18 Alleged Movie, Music and Software Uploaders Posted: 15 Jan 2011 04:42 AM PST
In an operation starting Tuesday this week and ending Friday, police targeted 50 locations around Japan and ultimately arrested a total of 18 individuals. The ACA, an organization made up of various trade groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan, International Motion Picture Copyright Association and various other film, music and software entities, said the raids followed a similar but smaller operation in November last year. In that action, 11 people were arrested and according to ACA, all have been convicted. As appears to be customary in these cases, the RIAJ – the Japanese equivalent of the RIAA – has taken the step of publishing a list of the ages, sex, locations, occupations and copyright works said to have been shared by the 18 individuals. They range from a 25 year-old taxi driver from Tokyo sharing Cross Game, Dragon Ball Kai, Evangelion, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Gundam 00 Second Season, to a 58 year-old construction worker sharing IBM Homepage Builder 12 and input method editor ATOK 2010. What is striking about the arrests is that none of the accused appear to be heavy uploaders – the ‘worst’ pair appear to have uploaded 6 games, 2 comics and 4 music tracks between them. While downloading in Japan was previously permitted for personal use, both up and downloading of copyright works are now expressly illegal. Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005. |
| Anti-Piracy Outfit Unplugs Warez Topsite ‘Swan’ Posted: 14 Jan 2011 06:44 AM PST
The site had connections to a variety of scene groups and allegedly sold access to several well-known private BitTorrent trackers. Although the unplugging will be seen as an inconvenience and might delay some releases, none of the persons connected to the site appear to be facing legal action. BREIN generally informs hosting providers of its suspicion that ‘illegal activity’ is taking place on their infrastructure and without the authorities getting involved the hosting provider then decides whether or not to take action. According to this scenario it is not impossible that Swan could reappear in a different location, as we’ve seen happening dozens of times after BREIN pulled torrent sites offline. But Scene groups and networks are complex creatures and take more time to reconstruct. However, BREIN’s head Tim Kuik stated in a comment that his outfit is now in possession of the Swan servers. This is interesting to say the least, because BREIN has no authority to seize any equipment on its own, and the hosting provider can’t just hand over private customer data without a warrant. In a comment Swan’s hosting provider Worldstream avoided these peculiarities and simply stated that they were happy to cooperate with BREIN. “We can not accept such activities in our network,” the WorldStream owners explained. “BREIN is known as a reliable partner and provided very clear evidence to demonstrate that unauthorized files were made available on the servers. For us it was therefore quickly decided to cooperate in this action.” The owner of Swan, who operates under the nickname MrTB, has also responded with a response to the events. With the exclamation “F*** me i’m famous!” MrTB claims that the ‘bust’ is the result of the actions of a rogue member. In addition he claims that BREIN misrepresented the facts since Swan only operated 8 servers holding 175 terabytes of data. “I’m waiting for BREIN to offer me a job. I’ll be a one man wrecking crew: TaH, TDA, KoP, AUS, TEL, DC, FUK, TITS, PANDORA, NOT, GUK, 100SE plus the other 30 sites I was on,” he added. “Peace out, and fuck you all!” The last statement seems to indicate that Swan is not planning to make a return any time soon. This makes the BREIN action, albeit trivial, very effective. BREIN’s head Tim Kuik was asked for a comment regarding the ‘seizure’ of the servers but has yet to respond. Update: Tim Kuik told TorrentFreak the following in response to the seizure of the servers. “BREIN exerts the rights and civil enforcement remedies of copyright holders. That includes seizure of servers used for infringements. These can be claimed as property of the right holders. If the owner wants them back, he needs to identify himself, which of course means that he can be held liable as well, if we don’t locate him first. We have ample evidence of the unlawful activities carried out with the servers in question. This evidence convinced the hosting provider to cooperate. Conducting unlawful activities also is in contravention of hosting providers’ terms of use.” Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005. |
For the last few weeks Japan’s Anti-Counterfeiting Association (
The top of the so-called piracy pyramid lost a stone once again yesterday, as BREIN publicized that the Swan topsite had been pulled offline. According to the Dutch anti-piracy outfit, the topsite – formerly known as ATS – operated from 12 servers carrying a massive 220 terabytes of data. | 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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