Thursday, July 14, 2011

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update


France Tracks Down 18 Million File-Sharers

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 02:51 AM PDT

Under France's new Hadopi law, alleged copyright infringers will be hunted down systematically with the ultimate goal of decreasing piracy. Alleged offenders are identified by their Internet providers and will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings.

The judge will then review the case and hand down any one of a range of penalties, from fines through to disconnecting the Internet connection of the infringer.

This week the Hadopi office for the first time released official data on the massive anti-piracy effort. The scope of the operation is mind-boggling, but whether it will result in the desired outcome is yet to be seen.

Despite millions of file-sharers being tracked, France has yet to witness its first disconnection.

The Hadopi agency revealed that since October last year the IP-addresses of 18 Million file-sharers were reported by their ‘hacked‘ tracking partner Trident Media Guard. Of this massive list a randomly selected sample of one million IP-addresses was sent to the Internet providers to obtain further information on the subscribers, and 900,000 identities were returned.

This mass discovery process resulted in 470,000 first warning emails, which equals little over 50,000 per month. The number of people who received a second warning is currently stuck at 20,000 and only 10 Internet subscribers received a third warning.

According to the Hadopi agency these 10 cases are currently being investigated by a judge. These alleged offenders risk a fine of 1500 euros and could lose their Internet connection temporarily. Thus far, however, no French file-sharers have been disconnected.

As the results of France’s controversial three-strikes anti-piracy law are revealed, many people doubt whether the costs involved with the massive operation are justified.

Last month a report from the UN's Human Rights Council labeled Internet access a human right, arguing that Hadopi is a disproportionate law that should be repealed. This assessment was supported by Reporters Without Borders recently.

“Aside from its practical omissions and shortcomings, the Hadopi law directly violates the principles of the defence of free expression by making it possible to disconnect people from the Internet. Its adoption was one of Reporters Without Borders' reasons for adding France to the list of ‘countries under surveillance’ in its latest ‘Enemies of the Internet’ report,” the organization writes.

In addition to the human rights issues it is also highly questionable how significant the claimed deterrent effect of the disconnection threat is.

A recent survey by ZDNet.fr found that just 4% of file-sharers polled said they have stopped sourcing music from illegal services for fear of detection. Instead, many BitTorrent users simply turn to proxies and VPNs to conceal their identities.

Thus far, however, the French Government is determined to continue its war against piracy. Effective or not, the Hadopi office will continue to track down millions of French file-sharers each month in the hope that the tide turns in their favor.

Source: France Tracks Down 18 Million File-Sharers

Italian ISPs Sued For Ignoring BTjunkie Blockade

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 02:33 PM PDT

btjunkieEarlier this year an Italian court ordered a nationwide blackout of the country’s most-used torrent site BTjunkie. Italian ISPs were ordered to block both the IP addresses of the site and its domain name as the BitTorrent site is an alleged hotbed for online piracy.

The owner of BTjunkie was not informed about the action. "I'm disappointed with the Italian judicial system,” he tol TorrentFreak at the time. “We will do our best to fight for Italian people’s right to communicate.”

This promise was kept and a few days later BTjunkie launched a proxy site which allowed Italian users to circumvent the block. However, for many Italians the proxy wasn’t needed as the ISPs Fastweb and NGI reportedly failed to block the popular torrent site.

This failure to comply with the court order has now prompted the Cagliari court to launch a criminal investigation into both ISPs who are suspected of aiding and abetting online copyright infringement. This is the first case in Italy where Internet providers are being held liable for the copyright-infringing actions of their subscribers.

The case against the two ISPs was prompted by an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police force with responsibility for dealing with cybercrime. They regularly monitor the traffic levels of ‘pirate’ sites and found that not all Italian ISPs were adhering to the court order.

As expected, the legal action was welcomed by the Italian music industry group FIMI, who previously called for a total blackout of all piracy-related websites.

“We believe the action brought by the judiciary of Cagliari sends a very important signal that lawlessness can not be tolerated or encouraged in any way. Especially not from companies that offer telecommunication services, who have a key role in stopping copyright violations as required by law,” FIMI’s president Enzo Mazza said commenting on the news.

According to a response from Fastweb, the whole case stems from a technical failure. The Internet provider today stated that it was never their intention to allow subscriber access to BTjunkie, and actually resolved the error as soon as the news broke.

BTjunkie’s blockade is not the first Italian attempt at blacking out a popular torrent site. The court order is similar to an earlier Italian block of The Pirate Bay that was first handed down in 2008. After an appeal process of nearly two years, The Pirate Bay was eventually blocked both completely and permanently last year.

Whether Fastweb and NGI’s failure to block BTjunkie was an accident or a deliberate attempt to bypass the court order will become clear in the coming weeks.

Source: Italian ISPs Sued For Ignoring BTjunkie Blockade

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