A boycott against Big Monopoly will not work. Any noticeable drop in profits will cause them to throw a tantrum at policymakers and complain how their profits are dropping due to piracy, and request harder enforcement of their copyright monopolies at the expense of our civil liberties and the freedom of the net.

Buying more of their products (yeah, right) will not work. Any noticeable raise in profits will cause them to commission reports to policymakers illustrating their grandiose importance to the economy as a whole, suggesting that they are the direct reason for at least several hundred per cent of the gross national product. Therefore, they will argue, they need additional protection as a national interest.

Doing nothing will not work either, as we are constantly on the retreat in civil liberties.

There is no course of action or nonaction that the net or its individuals can take that would cause Big Monopoly to behave differently from today.

Attacking Big Monopoly is simply barking up the wrong tree. It’s a complete waste of effort.

Also, I’m quite concerned at the overall attitude. I see many on the net somehow trying to please the copyright industries – if they weren’t as obnoxious, would the copyright industry perhaps show a more lenient attitude…?

As if!

This attitude, I fear, is one of the most dangerous of all, for it puts the individual in a subservient position to the corporations. Reality is quite different, but we are only as powerful as we believe ourselves to be. Those who see themselves in shackles will behave with restraint. On the other side of that coin, those who refuse to accept any limitation placed upon them will find that most, if not all, limitations can be broken.

Obviously, the copyright industry’s dream is having us – the people – seek its consent for everything we do, just like they have trained politicians to do for over a century. When you discuss boycotts, you are playing straight into their game of thinking that it is the copyright industry’s desires that matter for the task of building a sustainable society.

They don’t. Their desires are irrelevant. As are they.

They are just one entrepreneur among many. The role of any entrepreneur is to construct a use case and a business case that allow them to make money, given the current constraints of technology and society. They don’t get to dismantle civil liberties, even if they can’t make money otherwise.

The target for any action isn’t the copyright industry. That’s just playing into their hands as imagined kings of the hill.

Rather, the target is – and must be – the policymakers. They are the ones who are actually cutting down on our civil liberties, not Big Monopoly. Normally, they see issues like the copyright monopoly and freedom of the net as totally peripheral to policymaking; the topics du jour are the same as they’ve been in the past 50 years: healthcare, schools, energy and defense.

This is both a problem and a blessing.

It is a problem, as they don’t realize the gravity of the situation. Most governments in the West would be completely baffled to realize that people are actually holding rallies for freedom of speech: they would not understand why. As in, “we have that already”. In their minds, we do. In ours, however, it’s being cut away.

But it is also a blessing, as they’re not politically entrenched on the issue, thinking it is peripheral. As most political parties haven’t identified themselves with one side or the other, thinking everybody were in agreement already, the policymakers can be made to turn quickly at little internal cost of prestige.

At the end of the day, there’s just one single thing that politicians care about, and that is their job. Their job must be put on the line over our freedoms of speech, or change will not happen. This was the (very successful) formula behind founding the Pirate Party in 2006.

This is also what we saw with the SOPA/PIPA battle in the United States, as politicians realized that there were a serious amount of votes to be lost or harnessed over freedoms of speech on the net. As that realization sunk in, the copyright industry’s efforts were dead in the water.

In Europe, 250 million people preserving and sharing contemporary culture in disrespect of an immoral and overreaching copyright monopoly is not “a business problem that you can put an end to”. It is a power base of 250 million voters. This is the message that policymakers must be sent in the loud and clear.

Once the policymakers get that message, the copyright industry can make their money any legal way they can or go bankrupt in the process, and nobody will care whichever way they go, not any more than you would care about the tire industry or the glass blowing industry.

Source: The Target Isn’t Hollywood, MPAA, RIAA, Or MAFIAA: It’s The Policymakers

As one of the older torrent sites around, The Pirate Bay has been at the forefront of this copy revolution. But according to the people behind the torrent site, copying bits is just the beginning. The next step is to download stuff you can hold in your hands.

“We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles,” said The Pirate Bay last month when they announced a new 3D printing section of their site.

To give people something to work with, a 3D model of The Pirate Bay ship designed by Todd Blatt was one of the first items put up for download. Since then several people have printed it out and have now become the proud owner of a cute 3D printed ship.

The copy above belongs to Canadian Charles Randall. After he read the announcement on TorrentFreak he downloaded the torrent and went straight to Shapeways.com to print a copy for personal use.

“I was entertained by telling shapeways.com that I owned the copyright on the design though, something they force you to accept in order to have the model printed. But I guess, in a way, we all do,” Randall told TorrentFreak. “I debated just putting it up for sale on the site, but despite the Pirate Bay sensibilities, I didn’t want to entangle myself in any weird controversy for trying to sell it.”

Unlike regular downloads on BitTorrent, 3D objects come with a hefty price tag. Using the cheapest materials available, 3D pirates have to invest roughly $100 to get their new toy made.

“The raw price was about $80 for the material, $6.50 for the shipping, and then I had to pay $15 in Canadian duties,” Randall said

What this process has in common with copying bytes, is that it can be quite addictive.

“As for doing more 3D printing, I am tempted to learn Blender in order to start making interesting little things,” Randall told us. “The build quality is super detailed and fairly solid. You can see the patterns from where it was printed, but if I were to build small model pieces it would probably be easy enough to sand them down.”

“The whole thing is an amazing process and just knowing it’s possible has opened the floodgates of my imagination.”

The above response of one of the first 3D ‘pirates’ is just what The Pirate Bay were looking for when they launched their new category. Since the announcement the 3D printing category has grown to 26 torrents, ranging from a 3D printable MPAA Boss Chris Dodd to a Teddy Bear.

These are the first steps in discovering a new future that will one day allow people to print a perfect set of sneakers and spare car parts for a few dollars. The auto industry should be very worried.

Source: First Downloaded and 3D Printed Pirate Bay Ship Arrives

Having never seen anything like it before, James (as we shall call him for now) became hooked, and quickly began to display a trait inherent in many addicted file-sharers.

“I simply couldn’t get enough,” he told TorrentFreak. “It was more fun downloading and sharing the stuff with all my friends then actually using it or playing the actual games.”

Having become inspired by these simple beginnings, James began chatting with other like-minded people on warez sites and ICQ, going on to share warez via PUBS, FTP-enabled servers conveniently left open by companies with more bandwidth than security sense.

Sharing files wasn’t a simple process back then and James took exception when Napster began dumbing down the process.

“We hated it, simply despised it because it made a mockery of the hard work we put in to obtain all these different warez,” he recalls.

But despite these early bad feelings towards Napster, the future would eventually see James become a facilitator of even easier ways of downloading. Not for just his friends, but for more than a hundred thousand people.

After working his way up to become one of the top members on the GraveyardFXP warez board, James says he became a moderator of DelusionalFXP. It was there, on their IRC channel, that he would meet people whose new project would suck him in and change his life forever. At some point along the line, ‘James’ became better known to his peers as StonyVision, and he was invited to join a new project being set up by, among others, a fellow pirate known as Sk0t.

Under Sk0t’s leadership, a torrent site called Elite Torrents was taking shape and preparing itself for an eventual membership of some 130,000 active users. It would also become the only US-based BitTorrent tracker ever to be busted by the FBI and ICE.

After he’d installed BitComet and began sharing content in February 2004, staff on Elite noticed something very appealing about StonyVision – his impressive upload capability. StonyVision told us he’d “followed instructions” on how to use two instead of the regular one modem his cable connection usually allowed, which gave him business-standard upload speeds. When you’re delivering content on BitTorrent, upload bandwidth is king, and Elite wanted some of Stony’s.

But as file-sharers are often heard to complain, you can never have enough bandwidth, so Stony acquired a 100mbit server at The Planet in Texas and began seeding his files from there. Once around 150 of Elite’s users had grabbed his latest release he’d begin releasing his next torrent, usually the very latest movies. His performance eventually meant that he became a member of staff, later going on to organize other Elite Torrents uploaders.

Of course, StonyVision needed content to share and he wasted no time in getting it directly from source – The Scene. He’d gained access to this elite network through his contacts at DelusionalFXP and ended up adding his own server to something called T.O.P. or “Tower of Power” – 53 dedicated 100mbit servers acting as a single giant RAID FTP piracy site. But still Stony needed more.

“At that point I was on four or five top sites, and my main interest was always movies. I loved movies and still do,” Stony explained. “Since my server was tied up I ended up renting two more, one to race with and another for seeding content on Elite Torrents.”

In common with his more old-school peers, Stony saw himself as something of a Robin Hood, “taking from the rich and giving to Average Joe”, and reveled in the positive feedback left by up to 130,000 Elite Torrents users.

But the environment in the United States had become increasingly unfriendly towards The Scene. The FBI and DoJ’s Operation Fastlink was underway and there was a growing fear that torrent sites would be targeted next. Stony sensed the tension and stepped down from the site’s staff around April 2005. He was 19-years-old – and too late.

Elite Torrents and its operators were already being watched and no amount of IP-address obfuscation would prove effective in hiding Stony or his fellow staffers on the site.

“Truth be told I did hide my IP and was the hardest one to find but [the FBI] used the Patriot Act and came up with an asinine amount of money lost to these companies and the movie industry and labeled me as a possible domestic terrorist who was conspiring to commit copyright infringement,” Stony explains.

“I woke up to banging on the door over and over, the dogs started barking. I got up thinking who’s the asshole banging on my door at 6am? Next thing I know there’s 10+ FBI agents in my house. I started laughing at first – I thought it was a joke – until the reality sunk in.”

It was 25th May 2005 and Operation D-Elite, which was to claim several admins and staff members at Elite Torrents, was underway.

“That was the day of days, I was in total and utter dismay and couldn’t even wrap my head around what had happened. I had no clue what was happening to the others. I lawyered up immediately which in itself is a funny story. I opened up the Yellow Pages, looked under ‘lawyer’ and there it was – an ad with a firm that had dealt with computer crime.

“I think I need a lawyer,” Stony told the gentleman on the other end who inquired “Why?”

“Well, the FBI had just raided my house along with a group they called ICE,” Stony responded.

A few awkward seconds of silence was followed by: “How fast can you get here?”

What came next was mountains of litigation and Stony being told to expect the worst – 5 years in prison. The pressure proved too much and Stony went off the rails, turning to alcohol.

In December 2006 he would learn his fate for the uploading of 53 movies, 6 pieces of software and 10 video games. The government demanded a prison sentence in order to deter others from infringement. To Stony’s huge relief, they didn’t get their way.

“Luckily for me I had the most liberal federal judge there was at the time. I was given a fine of $3,500, 6 months house arrest, community service and 3 years probation in which I was not allowed to touch a computer. I had somehow escaped doing time and the U.S attorney was furious.”

But despite avoiding prison, Stony says that he’s still paid a price.

“It’s been the bane of my existence and yet made me who I am. I continued on a self destructive path for quite some time doing crazy things, still working out, getting in bar fights. Truth be told I’ve been to hell and back, stared the devil in the face with its trillions of dollars of influence (RIAA, MPAA) and laughed and walked away.”

Stony says that confessing to a double felony on job applications hinders him, but the support of a new woman in his life has helped tremendously. So how are things today?

“I of course no longer pirate anything anymore as I’m sure I’m still on numerous watch lists. Its simply fun to look every now and again,” says Stony.

“My story isn’t one of inspiration but one of caution. It could happen to anyone out there. I know people are thinking ‘nah, not me’, but that’s what I thought too and now here we are.”

Stony told us that he recently got back online again with his own computer and was inspired by the huge anti-SOPA and PIPA campaigns.

“Thanks to everyone who spoke out on Internet blackout day. It really did give me goosebumps to see people finally stand up and be heard,” he concludes.

Sk0t’s story and those of his fellow operators and uploaders can be found here and here.

Source: Busted By The FBI: The Life Of An Elite Teen BitTorrent Uploader

The dangers and threats of the ACTA treaty are shared by free-speech advocates and access to medicine groups alike. ACTA is seeking to deal with a number of widely differing issues, and hence does not do a good job at any of them. Additionally, there are serious concerns about the collateral damage that ACTA would cause.

Regrettably, concerns by businesses, NGO’s and politicians have not led to a better result. This is partly due to the intransparant way in which ACTA has been established and negotiated. As a democratically elected representative, I believe it is not the role of government to protect outdated business models, and I do believe it is our job to ensure democratic oversight.

Besides zooming in on the details of what ACTA will and will not do, taking a step back and looking at the broader picture is also important. As someone who advocates copyright reform, notably the harmonization of copyright laws in Europe, I do not believe stricter enforcement of outdated systems is helpful or relevant. Enforcement is not even possible in many cases, and not without violating people’s fundamental rights.

Yet there is a big push towards enforcing outdated legal structures of copyright by the entertainment industry. ACTA will lock any signatory country into a system of copyright enforcement, leaving the democratic process disadvantaged to enact necessary reform of our laws to suit the digital age.

The fast development of the information society and all the innovations we have seen in the last 15 or so years have changed the way we live. People can enforce their fundamental rights of access to information, and free speech with the help of the internet. Human rights violations are documented and shared across the world, and the way we access and share information and culture such as news, music and films has changed forever. Most copyright rules were developed for the printing press and codified internationally before radio had even been invented.

Some of the most important EU laws regulating the internet were established before social media and peer-to-peer sharing took off. The E-commerce Directive of 2000 and the Copyright Directive of 2001 were enacted without foresight of the new services which were developed over the last 10 years. Time and time again, it has been proven that the Directives and their national implementations do not suit the digital age that followed directly afterwards. The fragmentation of European copyright puts the EU, which is widely known for its wealth in culture, at a competitive disadvantage in comparison to the United States.

Copyright and E-Commerce need to suit the needs of the advanced information society we now live in. To enable a flourishing Digital Single Market in Europe, we need to analyse case-law of the last 12 years regarding the internet, hear from creators, innovators and consumers. If we want to serve consumers, artists and businesses well, we need to find a new balance in copyright. Every aspect of copyright needs to be discussed: the exclusive rights, limitations and exceptions, collective management, enforcement, etc. Only then should we discuss how to enforce the new found balance on the international arena, such as with ACTA.

ACTA must not be passed. Let’s focus on reform to allow for the opportunities of the internet to bloom, instead of allowing outdated business models to limit the free market, and to criminalize audiences. Additionally, health threats as a result of counterfeit medicine deserve a better solution than ACTA. Join me in voicing your concern with this treaty, so we can establish flexible copyright rules which are fit for the 21st century.

Source: We Need Copyright Reform, Not ACTA!

Continue reading Netflix teams with eyeIO to lower bandwidth use on movie night

Netflix teams with eyeIO to lower bandwidth use on movie night originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Leading up to the Super Bowl this weekend, a total of 307 domain names were seized, 16 of which provided access to online streams of popular sporting events.

Commenting on the actions, ICE Director John Morton was quick to declare victory, but perhaps this came a little too soon. Firstrow, one of the largest sites which had several of its domains taken over by the US government, is not planning to give up the ‘battle’ anytime soon.

Quickly after its firstrow.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net and firstrowsports.com domains were seized, the service was operating as normal under a new domain – Firstrowsports.eu. Talking to TorrentFreak, one of the owners said that the US has stepped out of line by simply taking away their property.

“The US has prided itself on their ‘innocent before proven guilty’ mantra, yet is clearly hypocritical when it comes to this,” the Firstrow co-owner told us. “Numerous times the US has seized domains, before the defendants have been proven guilty in a court of law.”

“What is the point of trying to approve SOPA and PIPA if they do the same without these laws,” he questioned, referring to the pending US bills that would make it even easier to seize allegedly infringing domains.

The response of Firstrow stands in sharp contrast with that of ICE Director John Morton yesterday.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law,” Morton said.

This comment forms the base of the dispute. What is the law of the land? The people who operate Firstrow don’t live in the US, and neither are their servers located there. In fact, Firstrow says that their site is perfectly legal where they are based, so they will continue business as usual.

“Since we don’t live in a third-world country here, the courts decide if something is illegal not the entertainment industry lobbies. We will continue until a court decides that the site is illegal, but for now we’ve seen three court decisions on this matter that say it is not.”

Firstrow’s co-owner is referring to the court cases in Spain, where sites that merely link to copyrighted works have been declared legal. Rojadirecta, a site very similar to Firstrow, won in Spanish courts twice.

In the US, however, things work differently. Two operators of streaming sites have already been arrested and await criminal trials. And if the domains are linked to foreigners, the US believes it has the authority to take them over if they are deemed to infringe copyrights.

This stance has raised eyebrows among foreign governments. A few months ago the European Parliament adopted a resolution which criticized US domain name seizures. According to the resolution these measures need to be countered as they endanger “the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication.”

Yesterday’s actions show that the US authorities are not impressed by the international critique, just as Firstrow refuses to change course after yet another domain seizure. Firstrow says ICE is wasting its time and continues to provide access to sports fans all across the world, who are otherwise unable to see their beloved games.

“ICE must have a lot of spare time if they can waste it on these domain seizures,” Firstrow’s co-owner says. “They should invest time in the real important stuff , instead of chasing people who have no other option than to watch a sports game for free.”

Source: Seized Sports Streaming Site Makes a Blazing Comeback

Dotcom has been held in custody since dozens of police raided his Coatesville mansion last month following a lengthy FBI investigation.

During the day-long hearing before Justice Asher, Dotcom’s lawyer, Paul Davison QC, appealed a decision by Judge McNaughton in the Auckland District Court last week which denied the 38-year-old German national bail.

Judge McNaughton had concluded that with all his resources, Dotcom posed a “significant” flight risk.

The defense said that Dotcom has several health-related conditions – one of which is thought to be diabetes – which cannot be properly dealt in prison, adding that the Megaupload founder wanted to be able to spend time with his wife who is currently carrying twins.

Just because Dotcom had access to a helicopter and private jet, Davison added, it did not follow that he would seek to use them to flee the country.

When it was Dotcom’s turn to take the stand he told the Court that during his high-profile arrest last month, police had assaulted him after finding him in a secure panic-room known as the “Red Room”.

“I was punched in the face, I was kicked down on the floor,” Dotcom said. “One guy was standing on my hand so my nail was ruptured and my hand was bleeding, it was quite aggressive.”

Dotcom also told of how that during his time in prison he had received “funny visits”, phone calls and contacts from people he had never heard of including a succession of women wanting to be his friend.

One unsolicited telephone call claimed he was a prosecutor who in return for receiving some money would help Dotcom get bail

“I immediately said ‘absolutely not’ and I gave the number to the officer,” Dotcom said.

Another, the court was told, was said to be an expert document forger.

“If people were to approach me and to offer such a service, I would tell them to go to hell,” Dotcom said. “I have no desire to run away.”

But lawyer for the United States government, Anne Toohey, said that the chances of the New Zealand resident fleeing were too high, a point on which the court eventually agreed.

Describing Dotcom as “an extreme flight risk”, Justice Asher again denied bail. Dotcom is set to appear in court again on February 22nd for an extradition hearing.

Source: Megaupload Founder Accuses Police of Assault, Denied Bail Again

At the time there was no official announcement from the authorities, but ICE has now confirmed that this, their 10th round of domain seizures, is being branded ‘Operation Fake Sweep.’

In total the authorities took down a record breaking 307 domain names. The majority, 291, sold counterfeit NFL merchandise and the remaining sites allegedly linked to copyrighted streams.

The full list of seized streaming domains is firstrow.tv, xonesports.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net, firstrowsports.com, hq-streams.tv, robplay.tv, soccertvlive.net, sports95.net, sports95.com, sports95.org, sportswwe.net, sportswwe.tv, sportswwe.com, youwwe.net and youwwe.com.

In addition to the seizures, police also arrested 28-year old Yonjo Quiroa of Comstock Park, Michigan. According to the press release Quiroa is the owner of nine of the sixteen sites, which he operated from his home.

Responding to the arrest and domain seizures, ICE Director John Morton declared victory.

“While most people are focusing on whether the Patriots or Giants will win on Sunday, we at ICE have our sights on a different type of victory: defeating the international counterfeiting rings that illegally profit off of this event, the NFL, its players and sports fans,” Morton said.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law.”

NFL’s Vice President of Legal Affairs Anastasia Danias welcomed the support of the authorities.

“We are grateful for Homeland Security Investigations’ tireless efforts in combating intellectual property theft and are pleased to be working along with them and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on this important issue,” he said.

The controversial seizures which started early 2010 have now resulted in the takeover of 669 domain names. The majority of the sites in question offered counterfeit goods and three dozen were linked to copyright infringements. One domain name has been returned because it was seized by mistake.

Source: Feds Arrest Streaming Site Operator for Copyright Infringement

“I should write a book about doing business in Hong Kong, that’s how good it is. People there leave you alone and they are happy for your success,” he added.

But leaving him alone wasn’t on the agenda of the Hong Kong authorities. In a triumphant January statement they revealed how they had worked with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to “smash a transnational cyberlocker syndicate” – aka Megaupload.

The commitment from Hong Kong Customs was significant. Not only did they invest a year’s worth of investigative manpower, but also supplied 100 officers from their various copyright enforcement divisions to carry out raids on the company.

According to an FT report, authorities there are set to go even further. Later this year, Hong Kong Customs will set up an “electronic crime investigation” center after being called on by media companies to pay closer attention to other cyberlocker-type services operating locally.

The announcement is likely to further unsettle several other file-hosting services that have a presence in the territory such as Filesonic.com, Uploading.com, Uploaded.to, zshare.net, Filepost.com and Hulkshare.com.

Just a couple of days after the Megaupload raids, Filesonic – one of the top 10 file-sharing sites on the Internet – reacted by disabling all 3rd party sharing.

Like Megaupload before it, Filesonic blocks all local IP addresses, presumably in an attempt to avoid local difficulties. But although there is no suggestion that Filesonic has done anything wrong, this type of blockade alone will not ensure it has a quiet life.

Hong Kong authorities described the motivation behind Megaupload’s IP block as “a bid to hinder investigation by law enforcement agencies.” Filesonic told FT that they have “a zero tolerance” approach to piracy.

Uploaded.to, another site with Hong Kong links, reacted to the Megaupload raids by blocking all visitors from the United States. Others have disabled their affiliate programs or taken other measures.

“Targeting the organized and transnational nature of IP infringing activities in the wake of technology development, the Hong Kong Customs will continue to monitor the situation and co-operate with the IPR industry and overseas law enforcement agencies so as to suppress infringing activities effectively,” HK Customs said in a statement.

Whether Customs will follow-up with further action remains to be seen, but in the meantime an Eastern chill is certainly blowing through cyberlocker land.

Source: Megaupload: Hong Kong Mulls Copyright Crackdown

Thus far, neither the Department of Justice nor Homeland Security’s ICE unit have officially commented on the seizures, but it can’t be a coincidence that sports streaming sites are being targeted a few days before the Super Bowl is due to be aired.

The targets of today’s seizure round include Firstrowsports.tv, Firstrowsports.com, Firstrowsports.net and Soccertvlive.net, but more may be added in the coming hours (see update below). The former apparently remains operational via Firstrowsports.eu.

For the first time, seized domains also include the .TV extension as Firstrowsports.tv is now displaying the familiar seizure banner. The .TV domain belongs to islands of Tuvalu, but is operated by the US-based company Verisign.

Last year there was a similar round of domain seizures during the lead up to the largest American sports broadcast. At the time the feds seized a dozen domains including Firstrow.net and Atdhe.net.

Both sites continued to operate under different domain names, several of which have been taken down today.

The seizures in 2011 also targeted domains linked to the website Rojadirecta, owned by the Spanish company Puerto 80. Despite being declared legal by two courts in Spain, the US authorities ruled that Rojadirecta was a criminal operation. The company has been fighting in US courts to get the decision overturned, but so far without luck.

Another target during the seizures last year was ChannelSurfing.net, which was operated by the Texan Brian McCarthy. The 32-year-old McCarthy was later taken into custody on suspicion of criminal copyright infringement, and he is currently awaiting his trial.

The extent of the fallout of the new “Super Bowl Crackdown” will become apparent in the coming days. It will, however, once again fuel the censorship debate which exploded last month with the SOPA/PIPA protests and the MegaUpload shutdown.

Update: ICE statement and arrest.

Source: Feds Seize Sports Streaming Domains in New Super Bowl Crackdown