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| Extradition For Pirates? Seized Domain Admins Call It Quits Posted: 06 Jul 2011 04:06 AM PDT
With such a high benchmark set for sticking-it-to-the-man, on countless occasions over the last decade the community has sighed in collective resignation and disappointment when site admins or product developers have “caved in” to the demands of the entertainment industries. But there are real people behind these stories of admins fighting for their lives, and while it’s easy to move on to tomorrow’s news with barely a second thought for their predicament, they are the ones that have to live with the consequences of their actions. In May, US authorities embarked on phase 4 of Operation in Our Sites, seizing the domains of several more sites including that of Re1ease.net, a portal that offered links to movie and TV shows. Although the site quickly returned with a new domain, once the dust has settled the seriousness of their situation weighed heavily on the site’s admins. “At the time I was happy the domain was all that was taken. If we had of lost the server I imagine we would have just quit there and then,” site admin PiraCee told TorrentFreak. RE1_VOD, another Re1ease admin, explained that it came as a shock for the site to be targeted over other much larger sites of the same kind, but they remained defiant. “We registered several domains being stubbon not to be taken offline,” he explained. “The initial plan was to re-code Re1ease to be API-based and be a distributed website.” But it seems the mood soon changed. While RE1_VOD recalls the excitement of getting up during the night to be the first to add content and beat competing sites, he told us that once the US government got involved it was an altogether different game. Already the site had suffered problems with advertisers who would delay payments for months only to announce they could not deal with the site, presumably on copyright grounds. DMCA takedown notices began to cause problems too. “We would reply to DCMA requests but just one email from copyright holders to hosts would result in them turning the website off,” says RE1_VOD. “Apart from the effort that was to be involved, personally, the whole thing killed my passion for the project. What started as something fun simply wasn’t anymore,” says PiraCee.
“This was one of the main reasons for the closure. We didn’t fancy a holiday of that nature,” PiraCee explains. “The risks outweigh the pros of running a site like Re1ease now, then when we heard about TVShack, we thounoughtnough is enough.” “Hopefully, in one way or another, if Re1ease was still being watched in the same was TVShack was, they will see the closure as willingness to co-operate and that will be the end of the matter. We really do feel for Mr O’Dwyer.” So for Re1ease, this really is the end. Both admins send their thanks to the staff and users of the site but while PiraCee and RE1_VOD will stay online, priorities will change. “We don’t plan on leaving the Internet, but we are going to concentrate on our personal lives. I myself have just got engaged and i’m in the middle of buying a house / starting a family,” PiraCee concludes. As the world becomes ever more connected through the Internet and other networks, we are communicating like never before – more quickly and more often. But despite these greater links between us, through the myriad of so-called social-networks, it is easier than ever to forget that there are real people behind these mountains of text on screens. Some of these are real people in the file-sharing community and they face difficult times – who can blame them when they make tough decisions? Their families won’t, that’s for certain. Source: Extradition For Pirates? Seized Domain Admins Call It Quits |
| Piracy Lawsuit Against CNET Dismissed – For Now Posted: 05 Jul 2011 02:09 PM PDT
"The CBS Defendants have been the main distributor of LimeWire software and have promoted this and other P2P systems in order to directly profit from wide-scale copyright infringement. Internet users have downloaded more then [sic] 220 million copies from Defendants' website, found at Download.com, since 2008," the original complaint read. The complaint further noted that Download.com is still promoting various other P2P-applications which the majority of people use to infringe copyrights. By promoting this software in return for money and by showing users how to download, the CBS defendants are willingly contributing to copyright infringement, the plaintiffs claimed. FilmOn's Alki David, the driving force behind the suit who himself was sued by CBS Interactive for copyright infringement, seemed determined to put up a fight. Nonetheless, the suing parties decided to voluntarily dismiss the case yesterday, as Wired reports. On the surface this appears to be good news for CNET and the other defendants, but the opposite is true. As it turns out many copyright holders have approached Alki David with a request to be added to the lawsuit. “Since the time of the filing of the original Complaint by plaintiffs in this case, numerous artists and other copyright owners have approached plaintiff Alki David about potentially joining this lawsuit as plaintiffs,” the plaintiff’s attorney’s write to the District Court judge. “As a result, the current plaintiffs intend to amend and are in the process of working to amend this suit to add further plaintiffs and additional copyrighted works,” the notice adds. Since it takes quite a bit of time to add the new parties and potentially thousands of copyrighted works to the complaint, the plaintiffs decided to dismiss the current case for now. They expect to file a broader complaint on behalf of many more copyright holders in the near future. Case Dropped |
Despite the issues, Re1ease continued with their work but last month came news of a real game-changer – the attempt at 
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