In June 2010, several well known websites that linked to movies and TV shows lost their domain names as the U.S. Government's 'Operation in Our Sites' bared its teeth. But the war against linking sites has been going on for some time, much of it off the mainstream radar, with site owners being hit by negative decisions and damages awards running to millions of dollars.

As part of a initiative cracking down on Internet piracy and counterfeiting, at the end of June U.S. Immigration and Customs and the Department of Justice took action against nine web portals suspected of linking to first-run movies. Seven sites had their domains seized – TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and ZML.com. Raids were also carried out against the popular NinjaVideo site.

But these were only the most recent steps taken by movie industry companies and their agents to take down such websites. Action against a significant number of others has been going on for some time. Several large linking websites operated by mostly U.S. citizens have been sued in recent times.

In this article we take a look at some of them, and the large damages awards ordered against operators. The summaries below are followed up with some analysis and the uneasy realization that although cases are being ‘lost’ all the time, the law remains untested.

Paramount Pictures / Universal Studios v Omegatube.com / Atomicmovies.com

These two sites were sued in December 2008. The studios got a court order and discovered the owners’ idenitities – they were Canadians. The studios could not discover any contact information for Pilippe Bruno and 9190-3864 Quebec Inc. The third defendant, Michaud, was served but did not respond to the studios’ letters or emails. Since Michaud did not reply but was served, he lost by default. In the end, the studios simply dismissed the lawsuit against all parties, most likely because the owners were not U.S. citizens.

Warner Bros. / Paramount Pictures v Movies-On-Demand.TV ( Began 2008)

Salman Haque, the owner of Movies-On-Demand.TV, entered negotiations with the studios. He pleaded guilty to contributory copyright infringement and agreed to pay 2.1 million USD to the studios. The trial ended in January 2010.

Warner Bros. / Paramount Pictures v Watch-movies-online.tv (Began 2008)

‘Vladimir Kramskoy’ lost by default, since no one was able to discover his true identity. Assumed to be in Russia. Studios did nothing, trial ends 2010.

Universal City Studios v VideoHybrid.com (Began 2007)

Defendants engaged in contributory copyright infringement and inducement of copyright infringement by identifying, organizing, and indexing on the website (www.videohybrid.com) links to infringing material, which had been posted on third-party websites. Defendant was found liable for damages of $1,075,000.

Disney v FOMDB.com (Began 2008)

Defendant found liable for damages totaling $300,000.

Universal City Studios Productions LLLP et al v. YouTVpc.com et al (Began 2007)

Defendants Billy Duran and Sam Martinez lost their case by not defending themselves. They were ordered to pay statutory damages of $875,000.00, attorneys fees of $21,100.00 and plaintiff’s costs of $6,017.17.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. et al v. Nabolister.com et al

Based on Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Disney Enterprises, Inc.’s Notice of Voluntary Dismissal, which was filed on February 22, 2010, the Court dismissed the case without prejudice. Owners were Canadians, and later closed the site.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. et al v. Peekvid.com et al

The MPAA hired private investigators who presented testimony in the trial. Defendant Frank Meadows represented himself, did not have a lawyer and was unable to defend his point of view. A Default Judgment was issued against Peekvid. Frank Meadows was found liable for damages totaling $2,500,000.

Disney Enterprises, Inc. et al v. 66Stage.com et al

Defendants were found liable for damages to the studios of $500,000 after a ‘consent judgment’. This meant that both parties agreed to settle without a trial.

Discussion

All lawsuits listed above called for the determination of the same question of law. Each lawsuit involved claims of “contributory copyright infringement” because the owners of the sites provide links to copyrighted TV shows or movies.

Initially, studios do not know who owns a site so they obtain a court order to find out. This is an action that cannot take more than 60-90 days. If they fail to identify and serve the owners, the lawsuit will be dismissed due to lack of prosecution. After the owners are discovered, they are added to the lawsuit.

All of the cases that had a favorable outcome for the studios involved US citizens who operated the sites in the US. The lawsuits against websites with Canadian owners were dismissed voluntarily by the studios.

In all of the cases presented, the websites lost by default judgment or they decided to settle in favor of the studios in order to avoid a lawsuit. This means that a crucial question of law remains unanswered:

Is it contributory copyright infringement to provide links to copyrighted content?

There are many facets to this question but all remain unanswered because a full trial did not take place. Among the faces and facets of this question are;

Is it infringement if:

- You link to copyrighted content but you don’t know it’s copyrighted?
- You operate a search engine which links to vast content, some copyrighted? (Google says no!)
- If you use and apply all the directions of the DMCA?

Furthermore, how do the safe harbors for Search Engines apply in such cases? (see OCCILA)

The problem is very complex and we still have no answer even in the US, the most litigious country and the spearhead of copyright/intellectual property law. Instead, new questions have to be answered.

How are ICE/US Customs able to seize domain names when there is no legal precedent and no judgment (even in the US) on the legality of such websites? This seems more like an abuse of power. Also, why is a taxpayer-funded institution serving the interests of private industry and studios?

An interesting side note is that the UK site TV-Links.co.uk was sued in UK and won it’s lengthy trial. This would set a precedent at least in the UK/European Union that in some conditions, these website owners do not do anything illegal. In relation to Section 17 of the European Commerce Directive 2000, TV-Links was a conduit of information and was afforded a complete defense in criminal proceedings for linking to other websites.

Despite extensive legal action, the question of legality of linking websites in the United States still remains unanswered.

This was a guest post from Searchfreek, a keen observer of developing linking sites and law. Editing by TorrentFreak.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Today, BitTorrent Inc. officially debuts the BitTorrent Apps platform in a non-Beta client. The company chose the smaller BitTorrent Mainline client over their leading brand uTorrent for the release, giving 14 million users access to their App platform. The question is, however, how big the demand for Apps among BitTorrent users will be.

After Vuze and uTorrent, the BitTorrent Mainline client is the third most-used BitTorrent client in the western world based on the number of active users. Those who use it will see that it looks much like a rebranded version of uTorrent. Although we can’t look under the hood, it is safe to assume that much of the code is exactly the same.

Due to its similarities with uTorrent, this smaller brother makes an ideal platform for testing new features in the wild – features that will eventually appear in uTorrent as well. Thus far this opportunity hasn’t really been put to use as most of the Mainline features have been lagging behind uTorrent. Today, however, this changes as BitTorrent Inc. has decided to first launch the ‘Apps’ platform in the release candidate of the Mainline 7.1 client.

BitTorrent Apps is a web-based extensions framework to add new functionality without compromising the lightness of the core BitTorrent client. Similar to other apps, addons and extensions in today’s web browsers and phones, the Javascript-based Apps will allow 3rd party developers to create applications that will integrate seamlessly with the client. They can be added to the client with a single click and are displayed using an embedded browser window.

Thus far the Apps have only been available to a relatively small group of uTorrent users, those who downloaded the experimental ‘Griffin‘ client. This means that today’s release will be the first real test for the platform, as it will open up to an audience of more than twelve million users. It is likely that BitTorrent Inc. chose Mainline for the initial release as a final test before the Apps are added to the regular uTorrent client which has over 50 million users.

The Apps ‘store’ launches with 11 Apps that are featured in the client, but developers can make their own apps available on external sites as well. While the platform is open, BitTorrent Inc. is curating the Apps that will be featured in the client. Most likely this means that Apps which promote copyright infringement will be barred from being featured.

The word ‘store’ might not be the best term to describe the Apps section today, but this might change. All the Apps promoted in the client are currently free, but BitTorrent Inc. isn’t ruling out the possibility of paid Apps.

“We can’t rule out someday creating an official commerce platform for developers to use if they choose, however, with many in-app payment systems available to developers today, it’s not the priority. The priority is to create a truly unique and integrated experience so our users can add awesome new functionality,” BitTorrent Inc. told TorrentFreak.

For BitTorrent Inc. the Apps platform opens up some interesting possibilities to generate additional revenue. Commercial affiliate deals and potentially paid Apps could become a significant revenue stream aside from the toolbar installs the company makes most of its income from now.

At this point, however, it is hard to see where the Apps platform will go. With only 11 available Apps there is not much value yet. The success of the platform will therefore depend on what developers come up with, and how useful these Apps will be to BitTorrent users. Time will tell.

Starting today the first release candidate of BitTorrent Mainline 7.1, including the Apps, is available for download on BitTorrent.com. The final version is expected to be released in a week or two.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

A notorious Switzerland-based anti-piracy tracking company has to stop harvesting the IP addresses of citizens using P2P networks. The Swiss High Court ruled that IP addresses constitute personal information and when Logistep collected them without the owner's knowledge, that amounted to a breach of privacy laws. From its eDonkey Razorback beginnings, via France through to yesterday's conclusion, here is the full story.

The road to curtailing the Swiss activities of Logistep has been a long one and although it ended in Switzerland, the complaints began in France.

Back in 2007, Razorback, the non-profit group which previously administered the well known Razorback eDonkey server, alerted data protection authority Préposé fédéral à la protection des données et à la transparence (PFPDT) about the activities of Logistep.

Logistep works in a particularly controversial area of anti-piracy action. It collects the IP addresses of those it believes are sharing its clients’ media on the Internet and that data is then used to identify them through the courts. Once found, they receive cash demands to make lawsuits go away.

The company’s work came to light in France when hundreds of file-sharers received letters accusing them of sharing the game Call of Juarez. For Elizabeth Martin, the lawyer who did Logistep’s work in France, the experience was not a happy one.

As originally reported by Numerama, The Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (French Commission of Freedom and Computings, roughly the equivalent of the Préposé Fédéral in Switzerland) stated that because Martin had failed to declare her activities, her work in this area was illegal.

Furthermore, Martin also became the subject of a disciplinary investigation conducted by her own peers. Condemning her, a lawyer’s disciplinary board declared, “By choosing to reproduce aggressive foreign methods, intended to force payments, the interested party also violated [the code] which specifies that the lawyer cannot unfairly represent a situation or seriousness of threat.”

Martin was ordered by the disciplinary board to suspend her activities as a lawyer for 6 months and she was banned from belonging to lawyers’ professional associations for a period of 10 years. France had not gone well for Logistep and back in Switzerland, things were heating up.

In January 2008 the Swiss data protection authority (Préposé fédéral à la protection des
données et à la transparence) published a recommendation that Logistep stop collecting IP addresses in Switzerland. Among other things it argued that it was unacceptable that Logistep collects data without the knowledge of people involved and that the systematic collection and recording of data in order to track violations of copyright does not conform to the purpose of the P2P applications.

Logistep was dismissive of the request (the Préposé can only make recommendations) and vowed to carry on regardless. It did just that. In response the Préposé – with the assistance of the former Razorback administrator mentioned earlier and his lawyer Sébastien Fanti – filed a lawsuit.

In June 2009 the Federal Administrative Court (TAF) came to a decision, one which saw it overrule the Federal Data Protection commissioner’s decision of 2008.

While the Court acknowledged that the monitoring and data harvesting activities conducted by Logistep raised privacy concerns, it decided that those concerns were trumped by the needs of the anti-piracy company. In a nutshell, since there are few other ways to deal with this type of online piracy, the end justified the means. Logistep could continue.

Refusing to accept this decision, the Préposé decided to appeal the ruling. Yesterday that road came to an end and it was bad news for Logistep.

In a ruling by the Federal Court – which is final and cannot be appealed – the activities of Logistep were declared illegal in Switzerland.

From a panel of 5 judges, the vote was 3 to 2 in favor of the Préposé and against Logistep, with a statement that the breaches of privacy carried out by the company were illegal. Even the judges who believed that Logistep acted legally agreed that IP addresses are private data.

According to Numerama, who have followed this case closely, the ruling was public which is unusual in these types of case. This type of arrangement is usually there to make clear a court’s intent to set a precedent.

The ruling means that it is now illegal to collect IP addresses in Switzerland with the aim of later filing a lawsuit, and the ruling reinforces the notion that IP addresses are private data. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Swiss courts will accept IP addresses gathered from outside the country as evidence against suspected file-sharers either.

For Logistep, however, with a flick of a switch or two it will be business almost as usual. They have already announced a relocation of their data harvesting operation to Germany.

For former Razorback admin bile666, the battle goes on. Despite complying with notice and takedown requests, several years ago the Razorback eDonkey server was seized and that lawsuit continues today.

However, in light of this Swiss decision, TorrentFreak is informed that lawyer Sébastien Fanti and bile666 are seriously considering filing lawsuits against the IFPI and other companies that collected Swiss IP addresses so that criminal proceedings can also be initiated against them.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Earlier this week Europe's warez scene was shaken up by multiple raids in Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain and several other countries. In the reports that came out, dozens of news sources also linked some leading Bittorrent sites including The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie to the busts. Just to be absolutely clear, these sites were completely unaffected.

Earlier this week we reported that police in 14 countries around Europe raided dozens of servers that allegedly belong to Warez Scene topsites.

In a follow up article posted yesterday, we offered more information about the raids and their aftermath from Scene insiders, but still a lot of questions remained unanswered. Things got particularly confusing when leading torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie were linked to the police action in one or two news reports, a rumor which then spread virally around other media outlets.

Since the raids were targeted at Scene servers, computers where members have direct access to a variety of files in a closed system, torrent sites would be an unusual target to include. Still, when there’s news about a huge piracy raid – especially in Sweden – torrent sites are the things that naturally come to mind for a lot of people.

So, when the news broke about the raids while The Pirate Bay was temporarily and coincidentally offline a couple of days ago, several reporters added one and one. This is why dozens of sites reported yesterday that The Pirate Bay was taken down in the raids. Even when it reappeared, it was assumed that the site had relocated elsewhere. Other torrent sites including BTJunkie were mentioned as targets as well. Luckily for the site’s users, none of these sites were affected by the raid, nor were they targeted.

Although we never linked any torrent sites to the raids ourselves we felt the need to clear up the confusion. TorrentFreak contacted both The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie and we were assured that nothing was going on. BTJunkie’s founder told us that they didn’t even suffer the slightest downtime. The Pirate Bay team said that they were indeed down for a few hours, but this was because they had to upgrade the servers.

Hopefully this will put an end to some of the rumors that have been making the rounds in the last few days. There is little doubt that the police raids have had a serious impact on the Scene, but apart from seeing a minor decrease in Scene releases appearing online, BitTorrent sites are operating as usual.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

The Winnipeg-based law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP has put in offers to acquire several of the largest BitTorrent sites on behalf of an unnamed client, TorrentFreak has learned. Although the true source behind the offers has not been officially confirmed, all leads point to a familiar name.

With millions of visitors per day, the leading BitTorrent sites are valuable properties. Although none of the big sites have been sold publicly, most of them are easily worth a million dollars.

In recent history quite a few medium-sized torrent sites have changed owners, but these were all deals done within the torrent community, none were conducted in the open.

The first time that an outsider went public with plans to buy a torrent site was last year when Global Gaming Factory (GGF) made a $7.8 million offer for The Pirate Bay, and a $25 million offer to buy Mininova. GGF planned to legalize the sites and turn them into media portals where movies and music would be sold with approval from copyright holders.

Most readers probably recall that the deals with the two largest torrent sites at the time didn’t go through due to funding issues. However, last month GGF CEO Hans Pandeya popped up again, this time with an offer for the largest semi-private BitTorrent community Demonoid. Apparently, he had not yet abandoned his plans.

Demonoid’s owner told TorrentFreak that he was not interested in anything GGF had to offer, so Pandeya had to target other sites to carry out his plans. Interestingly enough, a few days after Demonoid rejected Pandeya’s offer, the Canadian law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP contacted several other larger torrent sites with similar offers.

In their correspondence the solicitors claim to be working for a U.S. based corporation that is interested in acquiring the assets of the sites in question. The identity of the potential buyer is not disclosed, but considering the timing it wouldn’t be strange if it turned out to be GGF CEO Hans Pandeya.

Torrent sites don’t often get offers from external parties, except the ones from GGF we discussed above. If Pandeya is indeed behind the offer, it would make sense for him to make his approach using the cover of a law firm due to the bad reputation he has built up among torrent site owners.

The torrent sites that have been approached prefer not to be named, but they are among the most visited on the Internet, which is in line with Pandeya’s plans. The only thing that’s different this time is the money being offered. Unlike the millions of dollars that were thrown around previously, the current offers are at the lower end of the scale.

None of the torrent sites that were contacted are interested in selling, so it is likely that we might never know the truth about the mysterious buyer or if he has connections to GGF.

Hans Pandeya was contacted for a comment, but didn’t want to respond on the record.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Yesterday, police in 14 countries around Europe coordinated in raids against so-called Warez Scene topsites. Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic and Hungary all saw action. With the help of Scene insiders and other sources, today we try to piece together what happened, including which sites were hit and which ones got away.

Twenty-four hours ago brought the news that a huge police operation right across Europe had reached its climax.

Officers in 14 countries coordinated to carry out multiple searches in an attempt to inflict serious damage on the so-called Warez Scene, the shadowy network of Internet based servers and individuals who deal in large quantities of pirated music, movies and software.

Yesterday nearly all information had come from either the authorities, police or staff at datacenters, notably Sweden’s PRQ, but since then TorrentFreak sources with varying levels of inside information have been trying to put us in the picture.

So, keeping in mind that reporting on the Scene is a black art, that we’ve had to hold some information back to protect certain individuals and keep our sources happy, and redact here and there to protect others, here are our findings thus far.

“In pretty much all of the cases the police just walked into the datacenters, proceeded with warrants, more or less unplugged the boxes and left with them,” one source told us. “They knew very well exactly what they were looking for and this was a highly coordinated attack.”

While there were reports of individuals having been taken in for questioning yesterday, for an operation of this size those numbers seem unusually low. This is due to the operation targeting only ‘topsites’ – no specific release groups or their members appear to have been the focus of the action. It’s believed that some siteops weren’t so lucky.

We know that the raids were carried out at the behest of the Belgian authorities and two sources have told us that it is suspected that a Scene group in Belgium had been infiltrated a long time ago. Indeed, the authorities over there say that this operation had been two years in the making.

Another source is pointing the finger squarely at a siteop with poor security, but whatever the reasons, these sites are now in disarray.

As of last night, all the following Scene sites were down either because they were successfully targeted in the raids or as a precautionary measure. The first three are said to be very highly ranked and three of the top four were almost certainly busted.

1. BAR – Sweden.

2. LOST – Czech Republic

3. [name redacted] – major site in The Netherlands

4. SC – Sweden / Poland

5. Affiliated site in Eastern Europe believed safe, but down.

6. [porn section of a sitering, redacted] – Sweden

Based on the information we’re being provided with, certain sites probably survived due to the techniques they employed to thwart this kind of an attack. In other cases perhaps the police didn’t quite get it right. We can’t be more specific.

Sources inform TorrentFreak that Sweden’s BAR was one of the four most important 0day sites. Since it went down yesterday, another significant southern European site in that top four has announced it has closed its operations for good.

In respect of the Czech operation, Jan Podhajsky of the Czech Pirate Party told us that a raid was carried out on a dormitory at the Czech Technical University in Prague. This is not the first time police have carried out an operation in this location – Podhajsky told us that raids against hackers have been going on there since the late 90s.

It seems that the impact of this large, Europe-wide operation will be significant, at least for the near future.

“Many groups and especially server operators are once again scared shitless,” a source told us. “We can probably expect more ‘resignations’ in the following days.”

Update: We’ve received information which suggests that a topsite, possibly the main one in the UK, was busted yesterday. There are unconfirmed reports that another is also down, but that could be just as a precaution. Two Scene groups have been reported to us as badly affected by the topsite raids but until we can confirm, we won’t be naming them.

Anyone with further information can contact us in confidence via tips@torrentfreak.com

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Police in up to 14 countries around Europe have coordinated to carry out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. Locations in The Netherlands, Czech Republic and Hungary were targeted but Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the action. Seven locations including PRQ, which hosts WikiLeaks, have been raided.

This morning news is coming in which indicates that very significant raids against illicit file-sharing are taking place in locations across Europe.

Police in up to 14 European countries are said to be involved in an operation, said to be in the planning for two years, targeting the Warez Scene, the network of individuals and servers at the top of the so-called ‘Piracy Pyramid’.

Details are scarce at the moment, but it is believed that at the behest of Belgian authorities, raids have gone ahead in The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden.

Not unusually, Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the activity with a total of seven locations raided including Stockholm, Malmö, Umeå, Eskilstuna and Solna.

Armed with IP addresses, this morning police officers turned up at the Solna premises of PRQ, the company that in part hosts WikiLeaks.There is no suggestion that the controversial whistle-blowing site is connected to the operation.

“At 9:00 this morning, five policemen were here,” explained PRQ’s Mikael Viberg. “They were interested in who were using two IP addresses from 2009 and onwards. We have no records of our clients but we’re handing over the e-mail addresses for those behind the IPs. However, it’s rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Update: Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad told Swedish news outlet Expressen.se, “I can confirm that [this operation] is not about Wikileaks.”

Update 2: Thus far, four people are said to be being questioned on suspicion of breaching copyright law. Servers and computers have been seized in Sweden.

Update 3:Police raided the Umeå University.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Last month, outspoken manager of U2 Paul McGuinness penned a piece titled "How to Save The Music Industry". Among other things, McGuinness suggested that ISPs were unlikely to help the music industry in their battle against illegal file-sharing since they are the ones benefiting from the "multi-billion dollar bonanza" it has generated. UK ISP Entanet are not happy.

Beginning with a recollection of 19th-century composer Ernest Bourget’s dismay at hearing an orchestra playing one of his own compositions in a restaurant without permission (and subsequently leaving without paying his bill in retaliation), it was a typical and now regular anti-filesharing piece from McGuinness.

We are living in an era when “free” is decimating the music industry, but while those who make our music are having the lifeblood sucked from them, others are profiting handsomely, the U2 manager argues.

“Yet for the world’s internet service providers, bloated by years of broadband growth, ‘free music’ has become a multi-billion dollar bonanza,” says McGuinness.

Internet service provider Entanet took exception to his comments and last night responded. After earlier telling Bono to “Stick To Singing“, they are now suggesting that McGuinness should stick to what he knows best – the music.

“Considering Mr. McGuinness proudly informs us he has been debating on this issue for two years, he seems to totally misunderstand the reasons behind broadband customers’ demand for better broadband speeds and equally doesn’t understand the current facilities available on the Internet,” writes Entanet’s head of marketing, Darren Farnden.

Farnden argues that most broadband customers want faster speeds in order to enjoy better performance on legal services such as online gaming, YouTube, iPlayer, iTunes and VoIP, and slams McGuinness for suggesting people just want to pirate more efficiently.

“It is simply naive to suggest that customers’ desire for faster broadband and more bandwidth is driven solely by a desire to cheat music rights holders out of their royalties through illegal file sharing,” said Farnden.

“Furthermore, without legal services such as iTunes music sales would undeniably decrease. Does Mr. McGuinness want to close down this distribution model that has proven to contribute positively to music sales? Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face!”

McGuinness further provokes ISPs by stating, as if they are somehow responsible for the actions of others, that “their free-music bonanza has got to stop”. This can be achieved, he says, by ISPs entering into commercial partnerships to offer unlimited music via streaming services and “taking proportionate responsible steps” to stop customers sharing unauthorized music.

But ISPs are not the Internet police, they are mere conduits of information, writes Farnden, while questioning why yet again the emphasis is being put on ISPs to solve someone else’s problem.

“It’s about time the music industry took responsibility for its own revenues and embraced the new distribution models available instead of trying to shut them down!” he concludes.

But of course, McGuinness recognizes that ISPs aren’t going to fight someone else’s battle voluntarily and his solution is, predictably for the music industry, the use of lawyers.

“Some things have got to come with the force of legislation.”

Article from: TorrentFreak.

According to yet another leaked draft of the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), participating countries will no longer be obliged to impose secondary liability on Internet Service Providers for copyright infringements carried out by their customers. Other harsh measures to counter copyright infringement are still in place.

The level of secrecy which surrounds ACTA, the developing international agreement that aims to target piracy and counterfeiting globally, is unprecedented. It took nearly two years for negotiators to release a heavily redacted draft to the public, but by that time citizens were already fairly well informed having gathered information from previously leaked documents.

Bypassing U.S. opposition to the release of an official text, last night yet another draft leaked out, published by Knowledge Ecology International. The draft contains details on the round of ACTA negotiations which took place last month in the United States.

Notable in the 29 page draft titled ‘Consolidated Text, Reflects Changes Made During the August [Washington] DC Round’ are changes to Section 4 – Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Environment.

With the relevant texts having been removed from earlier drafts, it appears that countries will no longer be required to impose secondary liability for infringements onto their ISPs. Previously, ISPs would be held liable for the copyright infringements of their customers when they failed to respond swiftly to ‘notice and takedown’ requests from copyright holders.

Although dropping the ISP liability paragraphs could be seen as a step in the right direction, there are still various strict ‘anti-infringement’ measures in place. The countries that sign up to ACTA are being asked to provide relevant authorities with the power to order ISPs to hand over the identities of customers suspected of infringing copyright to rights holders on the presentation of a “sufficient claim of infringement”.

Countries are also required to provide “remedies to prevent infringement and remedies which constitute a deterrent to further infringement” along with enforcement procedures which address “technologies that can be used to facilitate widespread infringement”. Although the text is open to interpretation, it opens the door to all kinds of filtering systems that may be used to block websites which are deemed illegal, a measure that is high up on the ACTA wish list of anti-piracy groups.

Participants are further encouraged to “promote cooperative efforts within the business community to effectively address infringement” while preserving “legitimate competition”, “freedom of expression, fair process and privacy”.

According to an analysis by Michael Geist, the anti-circumvention (DRM-breaking) provisions are still on the table.

“There is general agreement on a broad provision that largely mirrors the WIPO Internet treaties in calling for ‘adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures.’ If the obligation were to end there, the provision would simply ensure that all ACTA countries establish anti-circumvention rules, with all the flexibility that WIPO allows,” Geist explains.

However, the United States wants to go further – time will tell if they get their way.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Robin Hood' tops the chart this week, followed by 'Iron Man 2'. 'The Expendables' completes the top three.

This week there are four newcomers in the list. Robin Hood is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent this week.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Week ending September 5, 2010

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	Robin Hood	7.0 / trailer
2	(…)	Iron Man 2	7.4 / trailer
3	(1)	The Expendables (DVDscr)	7.4 / trailer
4	(2)	Salt (R5)	6.7 / trailer
5	(3)	Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time	6.9 / trailer
6	(4)	Grown Ups	5.7 / trailer
7	(…)	MacGruber	5.8 / trailer
8	(8)	The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (DVDscr)	4.6 / trailer
9	(5)	Sex and the City 2	3.9 / trailer
10	(…)	The Last Seven	3.7 / trailer

Article from: TorrentFreak.