A company that worked with sites that linked to copies of Hollywood blockbusters has become the target of a new lawsuit. The legal action filed by Disney and Warner Bros. says that Triton Media was guilty of both contributory and inducement of copyright infringement when it assisted several sites with advertising and referrals.

There have been many innovative anti-piracy strategies over the years, from simple scare tactics to high profile hammer-blow aggression, from ISP pressure to the more recent attempts at domain name seizure. This week, a new tactic has been witnessed in the United States – an attack on those who provide financing for file-sharing venues – the advertisers.

In a complaint dated 23rd August and filed in the U.S. District Court in California, movie giants Disney and Warner Bros revealed their intention to go after Triton Media, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company they claim “owned, operated, provided advertising consulting and referrals for, and/or provided other material assistance” to nine movie-centric sites.

The sites – freetv-video-online.info, supernovatube.corn, donogo.com, watch-movies.net, watchmovies-online.tv, watch-movies-links.net, havenvideo.com and thepiratecity.org – are said to have a primary purpose to provide “their users access to content that has been unlawfully reproduced, distributed, publicly performed, and/or publicly displayed.”

The content listed includes Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End for Disney, and The Bucket List, Fool’s Gold and Smallville for Warner Bros.

While the majority of the sites listed above merely offered links to Disney and Warner movies, the lawsuit states that two – supernovatube and donogo – are sites that actually stored the plaintiffs’ movies. Interestingly it states that donogo (currently offline) was actually owned and operated by Triton Media. Readers will recall that thepiratecity.org recently had its domain name seized as part of the FBI-run Operation In Our Sites.

The lawsuit states that Triton Media is guilty of both contributory copyright infringement and induced copyright infringement and as such the plaintiffs “are entitled to the maximum statutory damages as permitted by federal copyright law”.

Although details are scarce at the moment, the part that Triton played in the sites’ operation will prove key in this case. Definitely one to watch in the months to come, as the implications for other US-based advertisers could be huge.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

After years of doing comparatively little to protect copyright, in recent months authorities in Bulgaria came down hard on file-sharing sites. While two of the country's biggest BitTorrent sites continue to function, the previous owner of one - Zamunda.net - will face court this year charged with crimes against copyright. The authorities are hoping for Pirate Bay-style levels of punishment.

Yavor Kolev, the head of Bulgaria’s Computer Crimes Department, has been an unusually busy man during the last few months. After announcing a copyright crackdown against BitTorrent and file-sharing sites in general, authorities were quick to act.

Last month the Bulgarian Ministry of Internal Affairs targeted what it described as a “criminal network” of file-hosting services which allegedly generated more than $3 million. The raids were described as the country’s biggest ever action against file-sharing sites.

These one-click hosters had loose links to one of Bulgaria’s biggest torrent sites, ArenaBG. Another giant is the internationally known tracker, Zamunda.net. Both sites have been the target of previous legal action and threats but remain operational today.

For previous high-ranking staff at Zamunda, however, the torrent experience is far from over. This September, ex-owner Martin Pavlov and ex-admin Dimitar Tzankov will appear before the Sofia District Court charged with crimes against copyright and intellectual property.

The investigation against Zamunda began in 2006 following a complaint from multimedia streaming company, Amotera BG. In a letter to GDBOP – the Unit for Combating Organized Crime – Amotera director Adrian Tzenov said that films were uploaded to Zamunda without his company’s consent.

However, shortly after the investigation began, Pavlov allegedly sold Zamunda to an unknown individual in Amsterdam and the site’s domain was transferred to the United States. Rumors suggest that the site is now owned by a Syrian.

“We cannot stop the website, since it isn’t the property of the two defendants any more,” prosecutor Detelina Iotova told Trud.bg.

“It is now evident that all institutions and not only the Ministry of Interior are realizing their role in the battle against piracy and are taking actions against it,” said Computer Crimes Department chief Yavor Kolev. “We hope that there will be sentences for Zamunda and Arenabg as there were in Sweden for ThePirateBay.”

Not all of the targets in the crackdown have been big ones though. At the end of June the Bulgarian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that following complaints from the Bulgarian publishing industry, a raid had been carried out against Chitanka, an online book library which was deemed “damaging to culture”. Despite the upheaval, that site quickly bounced back and remains online.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

In early April the UK Government forced through the controversial Digital Economy Bill after its third reading and just two hours debate. Complaints that the legislation was far too important to be passed through during the last minute ‘wash-up’ period were ignored, and the Digital Economy Act was born.

“It’s our belief that this haste meant the Digital Economy Bill, as it then was, became law without being properly scrutinised and without its impact being properly assessed,” writes TalkTalk boss Charles Dunstone today.

TalkTalk, which has been speaking out against both the Bill and Act from the beginning, intends to carry on its opposition by hopefully taking its argument to the High Court with the support of a rival ISP.

“Today, in conjunction with BT, we’ve filed papers with the High Court asking for a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act,” says Dunstone. “We’ve asked the High Court to look at whether the Act was passed into law without going through the correct parliamentary procedures.”

TalkTalk also believes that there could be incompatibilities between provisions in the Act and the E-Commerce Directive which restricts the obligations of ISPs. Other areas concerning subscriber privacy could also be problematic, with Dunstone noting that the measures in the Act designed to prevent file-sharing could undermine “the basic rights and freedoms of citizens.”

“As a result, we’re seeking clarity from the Court before we and other industry players are asked to implement the Act,” says Dunstone. “We want to avoid a situation where we invest tens of millions of pounds in new systems and processes only to find that the Act is unenforceable and the money wasted.”

In recent times, TalkTalk has sought to protect its subscribers from outside interference and is the only mainstream ISP in the UK to stand up to ACS:Law and its campaign against alleged file-sharers. In advance of ACS:Law going to court to obtain the real identities of individuals behind IP addresses it has harvested, the law firm approaches ISPs and asks them if they will contest the court action.

TalkTalk always refuses to comply and is therefore never included in court documents. This means that TalkTalk subscribers are protected from all the wrongful accusations documented dozens of times in recent months. The same, however, can not be said about BT. When approached by ACS:Law, BT indicates in advance that it will cooperate, which means its customers become heavily targeted.

Support TalkTalk on this too, BT, and then your subscribers will really take you seriously.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

The Norwegian movie Max Manus, based on the real-life events of World War II resistance fighter, has been causing quite a stir for both movie fans and privacy advocates. The most expensive and successful Norwegian movie to date, it inevitably leaked out onto the Internet and the hunt for those claimed to be responsible has been going on ever since.

The investigation, controlled by notorious pirate hunter Espen Tøndel and the Simonsen law firm, yielded a single IP address which allegedly belonged to the leaker. Unfortunately, despite the fact that this IP-address did not belong to the original leaker but almost certainly a mere subsequent sharer, the pursuit of that individual has been relentless.

For those interested in whether private firms (in this case the movie companies) should have access to private data, the case has proven difficult to follow. Virtually the whole process, including various court decisions and appeals, have been kept secret, right up to the recent Supreme Court decision. Now, however, we have the full story, and it’s bad news for file-sharers and those concerned about privacy.

Initially the police showed no interest in the case so Simonsen went to court to force an ISP, now named as Altibox, to reveal who was behind the IP address in question. The result in that case was kept secret. All we knew was that one party lost and lodged an appeal.

We now know that it was Altibox who lost the case in the Stavanger District Court and was ordered to hand over the personal details of one their subscribers to Simonsen. The ISP then appealed to the Gulating Court of Appeal, again something which was kept away from the public. The Court of Appeal decision was also deemed unsuitable for public consumption.

“I can confirm that the case is being appealed to the Supreme Court, but I can not confirm which of the parties has submitted the appeal, as that may indicate what the results were in the previous hearing,” commented Simonsen lawyer Rune Ljøstad at the time.

We can now report that it was Altibox who lost that decision with the Court of Appeal’s rejection of the case. So, with the ISP refusing to give in, it would be for the Supreme Court to decide if it’s acceptable for privately owned companies with financial interests in the outcome of a case to be given the power to obtain the identity of an Internet subscriber behind an IP address.

The Supreme Court rejected Altibox’s appeal on June 18, so the previous decision stands. They must hand over the alleged file-sharer’s details. Altibox said that it would have to comply with the decision in this case but would stand firm on any further demands for information from the private sector.

“We will continue to adhere to our current practice, and only comply with this requirement if it is made in connection with a police investigation or the existence of an enforceable ruling,” said CEO Eirik Gunde Gjerde.

Already the IFPI in Norway are hailing the Supreme Court decision as a triumph in their battle against music file-sharers and said the result was expected.

“I am not so surprised – the result has been the same in both District Court and Court of Appeal,” commented CEO Marte Thorsby. “Hopefully the fact that we now have the opportunity to pursue civil illegal file sharing cases in Norway will provide the same results here as in Sweden. There the Pirate Bay ruling and the introduction of IPRED Act (ie the Swedish implementation of EU Directive on Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement) meant that music sales in 2009 increased by approximately 10%.”

Thorsby added that Simonsen law firm are in possession of the IP addresses of some Norway’s biggest music uploaders. While noting that they “..do great damage, and should be stopped,” she would not confirm how many there are.

However, Simonsen lawyer Rune Ljøstad rejected the implication that they somehow had a “sort of archive of who did what on the Internet”

“We are required to delete information we have as soon as we do not need it any more in matters of our research,” said Ljostad. “But we follow events, and know who are most active at any time.”

Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the notion that it will open the floodgates for litigation against file-sharers in general seems remote.

“Without this decision copyright holders wouldn’t have the opportunity to pursue copyright violations on the Internet. Now we have that opportunity, so the question is when to use it,” notes Ljøstad.

“Currently it’s the only option we have, but there is no one who wants a lot of litigation. We are therefore working actively for what we call ‘graduated response’ – that is, that we sometimes wish that ISPs contact those who upload and tell them that we know who they are. This can serve as a warning. Going to court will be reserved for only the most serious cases,” he concluded.

Dr. Njål Borch at the Northern Research Institute told TorrentFreak that the Supreme Court decision was far from ideal.

“Just to top off everything, 28% of the film’s budget came from the Norwegian Film Fund, so we tax payers both largely paid for the film, the personal wealth of the film makers AND we lost our fundamental rights, all in one go.”

“A sort of perversely inverted Kinder Egg…”

Article from: TorrentFreak.

When the Swedish Pirate Party announced, back in mid-May, that they were the new ISP of The Pirate Bay, it surprised a lot of people. With their latest announcement, that they will run The Pirate Bay from inside the Swedish Parliament, they hope they will surprise people again.

The Pirate Parties around the world are best known for copyright activism and are often seen as a ‘one-issue party’. While they also focus on privacy, government transparency, free speech, and patent reform, it is copyright that people’s minds spring to. So, with an election coming up, the Swedish Pirate Party has decided to play to their strength.

The party has announced totay that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate. They intend to push the non-commercial sharing part of their manifesto, by running The Pirate Bay from ‘inside’ the Parliament, by Members of Parliament.

This move will certainly push the site to center-stage in Sweden. It will ensure a huge amount of scrutiny in any and all decisions made regarding the site, which is undoubtedly the intent.

“Sweden has long been a nation at the forefront of IT. But we have fallen in the rankings, largely because today’s politicians do not see the connection between file-sharing culture and future industry skills. We have now moved from place form place three to eight in available household bandwidth,” the Pirate Party informed TorrentFreak in a statement.

“There is no reason for us to accept this development – there are no technical reasons for this, only political.”

“Therefore, we can never accept the copyright industry’s way of systematically and legally harassing anyone who tries to build next-generation industries. The approach is criminal in the world and should be criminal in Sweden also, professional saboteurs are professional criminals, whoever they get their money from,” the Party added.

Aside from hosting The Pirate Bay in Parliament, the Pirate Party also plans to criminalize copyright lawsuits against noncommercial file-sharers and websites, as well as lawsuits against ISPs for linking to copyrighted material.

“The Lobby is used to using dirty tricks. Let’s see them take on legislators under constitutional protection who aim to criminalize their entire bag of dirty tricks,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told us.

Of course, the plan can only take place if the Party wins some seats in the September 19^th Elections, where there is a 4% barrier to overcome. However, last June they did manage 7% in the European Parliament elections, so it’s not an impossible goal by any means. We will have to wait and see what September brings.

If The Pirate Party succeeds it will add some more controversy to the upcoming appeal of the ‘Pirate Bay Four’, which is currently scheduled to take place a month after the general elections.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Following last week’s threats from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel directed at those offering unauthorized movies and music, yesterday saw indications of the first clear action.

Under the banner “Operation In Our Sites”, authorities targeted nine domains that are claimed to have offered first-run movies without consent from the copyright holders, a serious criminal offense under U.S. law.

“Criminal copyright infringement occurs on a massive scale over the Internet, reportedly resulting in billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office handled the warrants authorizing the seizures of seven of the domains.

The seven seized domains are TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and ZML.com.

In addition to the domain seizures, agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized assets from 15 bank, PayPal, investment and other advertising accounts. Four residential search warrants were also executed.

The other two domains targeted – NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net – belong to the hugely popular streaming service NinjaVideo. According to authorities the site had been subjected to a months-long operation which resulted in the seizure of both their domains and website content.

“This investigation resulted in the execution of federal search warrants for their content and domain name at servers in the United States and the Netherlands. HSI agents also executed four residential search warrants in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and Washington,” reads the ICE announcement.

Here at TorrentFreak this announcement didn’t really come as a surprise. Several months ago we were informed that NinjaVideo was being closely watched but we had no idea the U.S. authorities were behind it.

In March we received word that Dutch police had arrived at Ecatel, NinjaVideo’s host in The Netherlands. Our sources said that servers had been removed for examination but had been later returned. TorrentFreak contacted Ecatel who told us that “your sources have given you a lead far removed from the truth.”

We also contacted NinjaVideo and gave them what few details we had but after emails back and forth, it became clear that NinjaVideo either couldn’t or wouldn’t be drawn on the information we had provided. Without any absolute clear information or quotable sources we were sadly forced to abandon our planned article.

Now, three months later NinjaVideo is one of the nine websites that were targeted by the U.S. Government. As is often the case, however, not all of the websites are surrendering without putting up a fight. At least two sites have already adapted.

Movies-Links.TV, is operational under the new domain name of Watch-Movies-tv.info and TVShack.net is now located at TVShack.cc. Both are hosted with former Pirate Bay bandwidth supplier CB3ROB and both are mentioned in a previous MPAA copyright warning.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Black Internet’s relationship with The Pirate Bay has been far from smooth. Last year, the Swedish ISP bravely put its head above the parapet when it became a bandwidth supplier to the site, a move which has had several knock-on effects.

In August 2009, Stockholm’s district court ordered Black Internet to disconnect The Pirate Bay from the Internet or face fines of 500,000 kronor ($64,527). The ISP quickly complied with the ruling and the site temporarily went dark, but quickly reappeared with a new host.

The very next day following its decision to disconnect The Pirate Bay, Black Internet’s infrastructure was sabotaged with cost implications of “millions of kronor”. Although it was never proven, many believed that the attack and the blacking out of the world’s most famous BitTorrent site were connected.

After initially saying it wouldn’t appeal the district court’s decision, Black Internet changed its mind. “This is the first time in Sweden that an operator has been ordered to stop delivering Internet to someone. We want to know if it’s correct to do so,” said company boss CEO Victor Möller. The appeal was granted.

Last month the Svea Court of Appeals made its decision and for Black Internet the outcome was poor.

The Court ordered Black Internet to “stop providing Internet access to the TPB web site consisting of a web site including search engine and databasefunctions on which torrent files may be stored and a tracker.”

Even though the ISP is no longer servicing The Pirate Bay, the scope of this injunction appears to be broader than first thought. Not only must it never host the site, it must also stop the rest of its regular customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, making it the first ISP in Sweden ordered to block the site.

“We have chosen to block traffic into and out of the IP addresses that are using the Pirate Bay,” said Black Internet’s Victor Möller. “We made a decision on our assessment that this was the only way to live up to the Court of Appeal’s decision.”

Although being precise is difficult, Möller estimates that the block affects many thousands of businesses and individuals, many of which are keen to reestablish links with the site.

“They are looking for more tips and advice on getting past this block,” notes Möller. “There seems to be a great need to reach the Pirate Bay.”

TorrentFreak is awaiting comments from both Black Internet and Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted and will update this article with that information as soon as it arrives.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Last month the U.S. District Court of California issued a permanent injunction against BitTorrent search engine isoHunt.

Gary Fung, the owner of isoHunt, was ordered to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S. Thus far little has changed. The Lite version of isoHunt remains accessible and unfiltered to U.S. visitors while isoHunt and the MPAA battle in court against both the legitimacy and usability of the proposed filter.

IsoHunt has decided to appeal the injunction and this week both parties filed their motions with the court. In his support for the motion, Gary Fung argues that the list of generic keywords provided by the MPAA is unworkable and he accuses the movie studios of wanting to obtain control over BitTorrent.

“In my opinion, which I have expressed publicly, plaintiffs, MPAA and the Entertainment Industry are seeking not just to ‘stop copyright infringement’ but to obtain control over BitTorrent technology so that only their partners or those that conform to their demands for limiting access will have practical use of the technology,” Gary Fung told the Court.

Fung backs up his statement with the argument that keywords such as ’10′, ’21′, ‘Birth’, ‘Cars’, ‘Dad’, ‘Dave’, ‘Firefox’ and ‘Soldier’ would result in significant collateral damage with a keyword filter. It might make movie titles unavailable, but also a lot of public domain, GPL and Creative Commons works.

The MPAA has been asked by District Court Judge Wilson to supplement their titles list with more specificity, but apart from adding a few hundred more titles to the modified list, the defendants say it still lacks information which would allow isoHunt to filter effectively. Ideally, they would like to see a list of torrent hashes of alleged infringing material.

IsoHunt’s lawyer Ira Rothken further notes that the court failed to address the freedom of speech issues that are involved in this case. Fung himself likens the filter to the Great Firewall of China, where a similar keyword filter is used to censor the Internet.

“I find it absurd that we are required to keyword filter which ironically all search engines in countries like China are required to do due to political censorship, but isoHunt would be the only search engine serving traffic to US users required to do similar filtering..,” Fung wrote to the court.

These censorship and freedom of speech issues aside, isoHunt’s owner says that keeping the injunction would do serious harm to the site’s traffic and thus his business. IsoHunt has already seen a 50% drop in visitors from the U.S. after it switched to the Lite version.

“Since isoHunt switched to the Lite interface in compliance with concerns raised and publicized in the Summary Judgment, we have seen a 50% drop in US traffic and I am concerned that if a stay is not issued there will be no way to unring the bell on lost traffic,’ Fung wrote.

With both parties having presented their arguments, the District Court of California has now to decide whether the permanent injunction will stay in place or not. This decision will be a crucial one to the future of isoHunt and possibly other BitTorrent sites. Gary Fung has always said that a keyword filter is out of the question and that he would rather shut the site down in the US.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Following its 2009 out-of-court settlement with Ireland’s largest ISP Eircom, last week IRMA – representing EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – confirmed the pair would start tracking, warning and disconnecting alleged file-sharers.

Armed with tracking data from Danish company DtecNet, IRMA would begin supplying the ISP with suspected infringing IP addresses during a 3 month pilot period.

Now, in line with their promise to Eircom that they would not leave the ISP at a competitive disadvantage, IRMA are now going after yet more ISPs in an attempt to force them into the same ‘3 strikes’ style agreement.

According to a report this morning, IRMA now has the mobile broadband sector in their spotlight. Yesterday the music industry group – which controls 90% of Ireland’s recorded music – filed papers against mobile operators O2 and 3.

“O2 can confirm that it has been served with a plenary summons by solicitors acting on behalf of record labels EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony,” the company told Irish Times. “O2 is currently reviewing the issue, but does not believe it is legally liable in relation to illegal filesharing activities that any of its customers might seek to engage in.”

A spokeswoman for 3 Ireland confirmed that they too had received legal papers.

Two other mobile ISPs, Vodafone and Eircom subsidiary Meteor, seem to be cooperating with IRMA and are said to be in “advanced negotiations” with the group.

To go after Ireland’s mobile ISPs is an interesting move by IRMA. When disconnections were threatened under the UK’s then Digital Economy Bill, many individuals stated they would use 3G wireless dongles to evade any such ban. Apart from their higher costs of operation, they do have a significant benefits for would-be file-sharers. Operators have stated that due to the way the system is set up, it could be almost impossible to match tracked IP addresses with specific customers.

In the meantime, cable operator UPC continues to dig in its heels by refusing to cooperate with IRMA. Its case will be heard in the High Court in June.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

It is no secret that the MPAA is involved in an ongoing battle against copyright infringers in the United States. Tens of thousands of copyright notices are sent out each year informing illegal file-sharers that they are breaking the law.

Less known are the movie industry’s efforts to clamp down on copyright infringers who are defending their country’s interests on foreign soil. Because the availability of legal movies and TV-shows is limited in countries such as Iraq, soldiers sometimes use BitTorrent to get their fix, or buy pirated DVDs from local sellers.

The MPAA is not happy with these defiant soldiers. A declassified document from the United States Central Command shows that, a few years ago, the MPAA asked the military what they do to prevent soldiers from accessing pirated DVDs in Iraq.

One of the questions posed by the MPAA is whether they have banned U.S. troops from going to stores that sell pirated DVDs. The Central Command answered this question negatively, as it would hurt the business of Iraqi salesmen.

“No….banning our troops from visiting these shops would have the unwelcome secondary effect of harming Iraqi entrepreneurs selling legitimate goods.” They add that there is nothing they can do about DVDs that are being sold on Iraqi property because these stores fall under Iraqi law.

The document does state, however, that selling pirated DVDs on US bases is not permitted. It further says that piracy could be reduced by giving soldiers access to legal forms of entertainment.

“U.S. forces have had a long-standing, positive relationship with the entertainment industry. Working to continue this relationship, including the provision of popular entertainment like first-run movies, concerts and other events will help to curtail the demand for pirated media,” it states.

Pirated DVDs are not the only worry for the MPAA as more recently military personnel have also been using BitTorrent to access U.S. entertainment on foreign bases. A military insider told TorrentFreak that they see no other option than to ‘pirate’, as the entertainment industry gives them little opportunity to enjoy digital media legally.

“We have sent letters to the RIAA and the MPAA repeatedly letting them know that our downloads are a direct representation of their failure to allow us to be good consumers as others in the US can be,” our military insider explained.

Instead of holding out a helping hand to deployed soldiers, the entertainment industries continue to treat them as criminals. On a daily basis, the MPAA and RIAA send copyright notices to military personnel via their base ISPs. In turn, the personnel are threatened with account suspension and in serious cases, disconnection.

At the same time Hollywood continues to exploit military conflicts with hit shows like The Pacific and Oscar-winning movies such as The Hurt Locker. Ironically, The Hurt Locker centers around a friendship between a heroic soldier and a young Iraqi boy who sells pirated DVDs at a U.S. base.

Article from: TorrentFreak.