TorrentFreak Email Update |
- BitTorrent Admin ‘Fined’, Despite Anti-Piracy Group Law-Breaking and Blunders
- Court Drops FileSoup BitTorrent Case, Administrators Walk Free
- Evil Pirates: Movie Industry Tops $30 Billion Box Office Record
| BitTorrent Admin ‘Fined’, Despite Anti-Piracy Group Law-Breaking and Blunders Posted: 25 Feb 2011 02:57 AM PST
In a visit to his home at 7:00am he was greeted by bailiffs and representatives of anti-piracy group Antipiratgruppen who wanted to know all about his connections with a well-known private BitTorrent tracker. Laeborg was the admin of EliteBits and this week the 19-year-old’s work there cost him a considerable amount of cash. Despite him being “a poor student” the Court of Kolding ruled that Laeborg has to pay compensation to rights holders totalling $18,500. “We are obviously happy because the judgment emphasizes the gravity of what is happening on such a service,” said Maria Fredenslund, lawyer for Antipiratgruppen. “When you establish and operate a service in order to share movies and music that you do not have the rights to, then you are obviously responsible for what is happening,” she added. The compensation amount payable by Laeborg could’ve been a lot worse – rightholders wanted nearly $300,000 – but due to Laeborg’s financial circumstances the amount was reduced. Interestingly, though, the court also had difficulty assessing exact rightsholder losses, but not for the usual reasons. The judge said that since he could not assess the quality of the movies being offered via the site – including whether or not they possessed Danish subtitles – it was difficult to know whether to award full compensation for each piece. The implication here is that the lower the quality of the product shared, the less compensation rightsholders should get. Fredenslund says that the reverse should be true, that rightsholders should get more money when people share poor quality product. “We are obviously not happy to hear that,” said Fredenslund. “Rightholders lose goodwill when distributed films are in poor quality.” Despite the positive outcome in the case for Antipiratgruppen, the anti-piracy group and bailiffs made significant errors in their investigation. Laeborg’s lawyer, Per Overbeck, said that when bailiffs and lawyers arrived at his client’s home in January 2010 they correctly asked him if he wanted a lawyer. However, without waiting for one to arrive, they wrongfully began their questioning of the then 18-year-old. “So they began to interrogate him, and they should not have done,” Overbeck told Comon. Making the situation worse, bailiffs then stood by while Antipiratgruppen, a private company, went through and seized Laeborg’s personal possessions. “The bailiff made a mistake when they let Antipiratgruppen lawyers collect evidence instead of the bailiff’s IT experts. It’s computers, floppy disks, DVDs and the like. They should not have done so. It’s illegal,” Overbeck explained. Furthermore, Antipiratgruppen are still illegally in possession of Laeborg’s property. “For more than a year they have had his stuff. It is not legal,” said Overbeck. |
| Court Drops FileSoup BitTorrent Case, Administrators Walk Free Posted: 24 Feb 2011 12:00 PM PST
After years of operating the site without any noticeable trouble, in the summer of 2009 police and the Hollywood-backed Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) conducted a raid on the home address of the site's owner, known online as 'TheGeeker'. Another raid was carried out around the same time on the property of fellow administrator 'Snookered'. Both were arrested and taken in for questioning. In the summer of 2010 the two administrators were charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright for their involvement with the site. As in previous cases in the UK, the evidence was solely gathered by the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group FACT. No independent investigation was carried out by the police. This critical lack of investigation on the prosecution’s part was brought to the Court’s attention by the solicitors of the two administrators. The solicitors, who successfully defended the owner of BitTorrent tracker OiNK in an earlier trial, pushed the prosecutor to formulate their charges. This turned out to be problematic. The prosecution failed to understand some of the technical issues, did not know whether to prosecute FileSoup as a business or not, and was unsure whether the copyright holder had caused prejudice. Since there was no independent investigation into the case, all these questions remained unanswered. Today the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop the case entirely. It concluded that the alleged offenses are a civil rather than a criminal matter and decided not to spend any more public money on the prosecution. As a result, 'TheGeeker' and 'Snookered' are free to go. Both men are relieved that the case has finally come to an end, and are grateful for the excellent work their solicitors carried out. “It has been a long and stressful 18 months but I am happy to finally have the weight lifted from me,” Snookered told TorrentFreak. “During this time my solicitors, Burrows Bussin and David Cook in particular have kept me sane. Nothing was too much for them. I owe them a debt of gratitude along with my Barrister Ian Whitehurst.” “I hope to have some more details in the next few days so I may say more then. Thank you to everyone for all the support. It was greatly appreciated,” he added. Morgan Rose solicitors, who defended TheGeeker, are now able to add another win in a prominent BitTorrent case to their resume, which is welcomed by other UK-based operators of file-sharing sites. "This case is not a one-off,” David Cook, Snookered’s solicitor said in a comment. “We have now seen two prosecutions for allegations such as these, both of which were fundamentally flawed. We have persistently worked in exposing the flaws in these cases, which have resulted in the absolute failure of both prosecutions." Today’s news is a great blow to the UK anti-piracy outfit FACT, who have spent tens of thousands of pounds on this case alone. According to the prosecution FACT’s involvement created a great inequality. The movie industry funded group has enormous financial resources while the defendants only ran a non-profit website. Yet again the prosecution was led by FACT to believe that they were dealing with a criminal gang, a picture that didn’t hold up on closer inspection. Luckily for the UK tax payer and the FileSoup admins, the Court realized in time that justice was best served by dropping the case. |
| Evil Pirates: Movie Industry Tops $30 Billion Box Office Record Posted: 24 Feb 2011 10:14 AM PST
However, in a time where nearly every MPAA press release deals with piracy concerns, box office revenues are booming worldwide. The MPAA has just announced that in 2010 yet another record was broken at the box office. In the US and Canada last year’s record of $10.6 billion was equalled, while worldwide grosses swelled to a massive $31.8 billion. "It was a strong year at the movies in 2010. Despite a weak economy, shifting business models, and the ongoing impact of digital theft, we had another record year at the global box office driven by growth outside the U.S. and Canada," MPAA President Bob Pisano said, commenting on the record-breaking revenues worldwide. "The continued theft of movies online will have a sustained adverse impact on movie attendance in the coming years,” Pisano added somewhat predictably. “It's impossible to compete with free.” Oh really? That last statement, although catchy, makes absolutely no sense in this context. Does the MPAA chief truly believe that a shaky camcorded version of a movie is somehow depriving movie theaters of visitors? Are there millions of people who prefer watching a low quality camcorded version of a movie over a theater visit simply because they can save a few bucks? Pisano is comparing apples and oranges here – and he and his buddies have nearly 32 billion reasons in their back pocket to prove it. It would be the same as saying that a fan of band X won’t go to a concert because he can download a bootleg copy on the Internet instead. Movie piracy is hardly a threat (or competition) to movie theater attendances. If anything holds people back from spending a few dollars on a movie it’s probably the insane security measures that have been implemented in recent years. Still, the MPAA is confident that piracy is affecting box office revenues, so it will therefore continue to push for new legislation and enforcement tools. "We will continue to work with our industry partners to fight for common sense ways, through legislative, enforcement and legal avenues, to vigilantly protect the creativity at the heart of our industry from theft," Pisano says. One of the focuses of the MPAA has been to reduce camcording in movie theaters, but one has to question whether the investments that are made in this area are worth it. Do movie theater employees really have to be equipped with night vision goggles? Are metal detectors, emotion recognition and advanced audio watermarks really needed to pinpoint pirates? It is almost as if the MPAA and other anti-piracy outfits continue this “piracy theater” just to guarantee and justify their jobs and those of their comrades. Make no mistake, anti-piracy is big business. There are dozens of anti-piracy outfits, copyright protection vendors and lobby groups that each earn millions of dollars merely because of this supposed piracy threat. Something to think about. |
Better known online by his none-too-cryptic nickname 'Laeborg', Denmark-based Jonas Laeborg had quite a surprise in January 2010.
Founded in 2003, UK-based 
The MPAA has made it very clear that hundreds of thousands of jobs are under threat and the economy is losing billions due to piracy. Illegal downloads, they say, are slowly killing their creative industry.| 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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