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| Private BitTorrent Tracker Admin Will Go To Trial Posted: 21 Apr 2011 03:07 AM PDT Following two criminal complaints, one submitted jointly by the MPA-affiliated Portuguese Phonographic Association (AFP) and the Federation of Editors of Video (FEVIP), and another solely by FEVIP, four years ago three file-sharing sites – Btuga, Zetuga and Zemula, with a combined 200,000 users – were targeted by the authorities. The Polícia Judiciária, a police division dedicated to fighting organized and financial crime, terrorism, drugs and corruption, eventually executed six search warrants against the sites in July 2007. The private BitTorrent tracker Btuga was of particular interest. According to a study carried out in 2005, the site led the national rankings for the total number of hours citizens spent surfing a single website – 478,000 hours – and was the 3rd most-visited site in the country with 110,000 daily users. The creator and admin of Btuga, Martini-Man (real name Luis Ferreira), was arrested on accusations of copyright infringement and has been awaiting his final fate ever since. Last week the Lisbon Court of Appeal overturned a 2010 ruling by the Court Of Inquiry and decided that Ferreira should indeed be tried for copyright infringement offenses. The ruling, which was handed down on April 14th, noted that “the defendant used P2P networks and the BitTorrent protocol for the sole and exclusive purpose of sharing or allow sharing of files protected by copyright.” The Court said that Ferreira had “sent a clear message to the users, which also included himself, that it was the tracker’s purpose to allow the sharing of movies, music, games and videos of the most recent releases [that] they possessed, so that such an exchange would benefit all users of the network because it would cost nothing monetarily to any of them, namely payment of copyrights.” Contrary to the earlier ruling from the Court of Inquiry, the Court of Appeal said that Ferreira had “made use of lawful means [BitTorrent] to accomplish unlawful ends”, i.e the sharing of copyright protected material. The court documents further stated that Ferreira provided “premium services”. This is an apparent reference to giving so-called ‘upload credits’ to improve sharing ratio in exchange for donations, a common practice on many private trackers. In fact, this is how many sites of this type finance their operations. A TorrentFreak source familiar with the situation told us that a few weeks after Ferreira’s arrest, the source code from Btuga leaked and an identical site reappeared under a new name, BTNext. Unlike Btuga, BTNext is not hosted in Portugal and remains operational to this day. |
| MPAA: “Democratizing Culture Is Not In Our Interest” Posted: 20 Apr 2011 01:55 PM PDT
Last year the former president of Brazil posed with Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde and vowed not to cave in to the interests of the copyright lobby. But with the change of leadership the MPAA sees new chances, and so Frazier went to Brazil to convince local politicians that tougher anti-piracy laws are needed. In common with most Latin American countries, piracy is widespread in Brazil. According to a recent study more than half of all people living in urban areas regularly pirate movies, something the MPAA believes has to be stopped. In an interview with local newspaper Folha, Frazier commented on the threat piracy poses to the major studios, responding with the classic textbook answers we’ve heard hundreds of times before. “If you do not believe in the value of creativity, the importance of protecting it and the need to reward those who produce, then maybe you can justify piracy. But in that case you’ll be doing great harm to culture,” Frazier said. Please note the words ‘creativity’ and ‘culture’ in his answer, as we’ll come back to that later. The reporter then went on to ask how important copyright really is when 44% of households in Brazil are not connected to the sewer system. Not really a fair question, but Frazier made it very clear that even when people are starving it would be immoral to ‘steal’ entertainment from U.S. corporations. “Obviously, governments and societies have to work to make sure that the population has access to the basics in order to survive, but that does not mean you should ignore other things. Companies must live together because they respect each other and respect that people do not steal from one another. Even if you battle to put food on your plate, it is immoral to steal,” he said. Things got more interesting when Frazier responded in a surprisingly open manner when asked about Creative Commons licenses, which allow for a more flexible approach to copyright. Creative Commons licenses are very popular in Brazil and the reporter wanted to know what the MPAA’s view on this approach is. “They [Creative Commons supporters] don’t always agree with what we advocate,” Frazier responded. “And you are talking about democratizing culture, this is not in our interests. It really isn’t my interest.” Although this answer may not really come as a surprise, combined with his previous answers it shows how subjective the MPAA’s view on creativity and culture is. According to the MPAA piracy is ruining culture, but at the same time they are not allowing others to use even tiny snippets of their works. The MPAA is apparently only interested in creativity and culture when it applies to the works their studios produce. Needless to say, this isn’t necessarily what’s most beneficial to society. The MPAA is merely protecting their corporate interests. For the general public, culture and creativity are probably better off with less restrictive copyright laws. This doesn’t mean that it should be okay to pirate every Hollywood blockbuster, but the laws that are put in place to please the movie studios are the same ones that cripple the creativity of tens of thousands of other artists and the public at large. To the MPAA and many others in the entertainment industry, copyright has little to do with the word right, nor with creativity and culture. Instead, it's a restrictive tool that allows works to be traded, leased and licensed in return for money. Indeed, democratizing culture is not in the MPAA’s interest, but maximizing profits and control is. Source: MPAA: “Democratizing Culture Is Not In Our Interest” |
The MPAA sent its Vice President Greg Frazier to Brazil this week to carry out some damage control. | 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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