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| To The Bitter End: AFACT Takes BitTorrent Piracy Case To The High Court Posted: 24 Mar 2011 01:54 AM PDT Today’s press release from AFACT, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, needs to be read very carefully. While seasoned readers of TorrentFreak and other publications which are becoming increasingly suspicious of the propaganda war down under, to the casual passer-by it might appear that AFACT had come out on top in their recent case against ISP iiNet. “Despite being successful on many grounds in their appeal to the Full Federal Court, the film companies will seek to overturn the ruling that iiNet did not authorise the acts of infringement that it knew occurred on its internet service,” the release reads. For those on the other side of the debate, “successful on many grounds” actually grinds down to “lost the case for a second time” as in February the Full Bench of the Federal Court dismissed the movie industry's appeal against last year's judgment which found that ISP iiNet did not authorize the copyright infringements of its file-sharing customers. Not that AFACT don’t have a point, though. If the movie industry had provided iiNet with better infringement notices in the first instance and the ISP had still not acted on them, the outcome of the case may have been different, the court decided. “Prior to the case, iiNet was provided with substantial evidence of copyright infringement by users on its network, which iiNet accepted was 100% accurate,” said AFACT this morning. Although the words “100% accurate” don’t appear to have been used by iiNet verbatim, in court the ISP did use the word “compelling” to describe AFACT notices. Nevertheless, two of three judges in the Federal Court found that iiNet had not authorized the infringing activities of their file-sharing subscribers and it is against this majority decision that AFACT are appealing. "We say [the judges] did not apply the legal test for authorisation correctly,” AFACT chief Neil Gane said. Furthermore, AFACT says that the Court’s conclusion – that iiNet did not have enough knowledge of infringements taking place in order to be found as authorizing them – was also wrong. “We are confident of our grounds for appeal and hopeful that special leave to the High Court will be granted,” Gane concludes. However, while AFACT are like a dog with a bone in pursuing this legal action, iiNet continues to call for the movie industry to spend their money on something more creative. “It’s time for the film industry and copyright holders to work with the industry to make their content legitimately available,” iiNet’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Malone said today in response to AFACT’s announcement. Malone said iiNet had received positive feedback “from both consumers and the industry” following the publication of its ‘Encouraging Legitimate use of Online Content‘ report earlier this month and that all parties should consider moving forward on that basis. If the case does indeed move to the High Court, no decision is expected until late 2011 or early 2012. |
| Unreleased Bowie on BitTorrent: Pirate Sabotage Turned Cultural Blessing Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:28 PM PDT
Three days ago, however, Bowie fans worldwide began waking up to a dream. All 14 tracks of Toy, running for around 1 hour in 256 kbps quality MP3, had been uploaded to BitTorrent. While these kinds of controversial uploads are often made to big sites like The Pirate Bay, ‘Toy’ was initially placed on a lesser-known tracker called Mind Warp Pavilion and as far as we can see is yet to have migrated further afield, aside from a couple of brave blogs hosting it for direct play. So where did the release suddenly come from? TorrentFreak decided to try and find out. During the course of our investigations we were initially informed by someone who claimed to be close to the uploader but requested anonymity that the album had been obtained via eBay. The sale we were shown took place on March 14th and was apparently shipped from Australia. Today, though, we managed to make contact with the original uploader. Brigstow, as he is known online, hails from Bristol in the UK and is clearly a big Bowie fan. Not only did he categorically deny that he had purchased a bootleg CD and uploaded it, he said that it was because people were trying to make a buck from ‘Toy’ on eBay that he decided to leak it himself and sabotage their game. “Myself and a few friends were very angry that certain people only seem to want to profit from recordings like the Toy album, so when we saw the eBay auction and heard of someone else selling discs for $55, I decide to upload it and give it away,” Brigstow told TorrentFreak. Brigstow went on to explain that this upload was “not a new concept” to him as he used to run Savage Jaw, a BitTorrent tracker from a few years back which listed only quality David Bowie bootlegs and rare recordings. While Rolling Stone says that Bowie’s office has refused to comment on the ‘leak’, The Sun in the UK is reporting that the star is ‘livid’ that the album has become available. If true, this reaction is in stark contrast to those coming from Bowie’s adoring fans. After reading through hundreds of comments, we only managed to find one which complained directly about the leak and even then it appeared to be focused on a desire for it to have remained secret for the exclusive enjoyment of the ‘real’ fans and not for the masses. Indeed, many Bowie fans are describing the leak as “magical”, “heavenly” and “a dream” and there are already dozens of fan-inspired pieces of artwork circulating as potential album cover candidates. What cuts through in page after page of discussion though, is just how passionate these people are about David Bowie. “Nearly all the comments I’ve read from fans about this album have been positive, and most of them would still quite happily purchase a copy if it were given an official release,” said Brigstow. But of course it’s not officially available and, depending on the location of the consumer, in theory and in extreme circumstances sharing it could even have a prison sentence attached. However, since this album was destined to spend its life in some dark dusty corner of a record exec’s office, never to see the light of day, its release this week cannot mean (even by record company calculations) that a single sale has been lost – quite the rarity among pre-release uploads. The end result though is that many tens of thousands of Bowie fans are in line for an absolute treat, a delicious forbidden fruit of an album which, if not for the Internet, may have been permanently deleted from our musical culture due to label politics. So the question remains. What is the most important – the pure enjoyment of the fans and ultimately the preservation of culture by any means, or the wishes of a record label and the rule of law that, in many instances, they helped to create? Whatever the conclusion, it’s impossible to wind back the clock. Toy is out of the box now, and it’s never going back. |
In mid-2001, a new David Bowie album was scheduled for release. Titled ‘Toy’, the LP contained some of Bowie’s earliest work but following some kind of dispute at record label Virgin, it remained unreleased.| 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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