Simon Klose has filmed a documentary about The Pirate Bay, and encouraged everyone to make it available around the net, so here goes:
John
Categories » ‘Courts and law’
Anti-pirates pirate PirateBay
February 24th, 2013 by pirateadminThe Finnish anti-piracy group CIAPC has copied the source code and design of The Pirate Bay, the most notorious media piracy site on the net. The Pirate Bay is outraged and plans to sue CIPAC for breaking their policies. “People must understand what is right and wrong”, The Pirate Bay says.
CIAPC copied The Pirate Bay’s design for their anti-piracy campaign, but the site does not contain any torrents. Instead, links point to a pagethat talks about legal alternatives to Pirate Bay.
A spokesman for Pirate Bay said: “We are outraged by this behavior. People must understand what is right and wrong. Stealing material like this on the internet is a threat to economies worldwide. We feel that we must make a statement and therefore we will sue them for copyright infringement. If not even IFPI and their friends can respect copyright, perhaps it’s time to move on?”
CIAPC is assisted by the music lobby group IFPI, who sued Pirate Bay’s admins in Finland two years ago.
“Our site (and all of its contents) is free of charge for anyone for personal usage. Organizations (for instance, but not limited to, non-profit or companies) may use the system if they clear this with the system operators first,” Pirate Bay’s policy reads, and continues: “We reserve the rights to charge for usage of the site in case this policy is violated. The charge will consist of a basic fee of EUR 5,000 plus bandwidth and other costs that may arise due to the violation”.
The Pirate Bay now believes it is forced to take CIAPC to court and demand compensation. The irony of this matter is just an added bonus.
CIAPC copied the Pirate Bay site despite the fact that Finnish ISPs have been ordered to block the website for public access.
John
Censoring pirates doesn’t work
February 11th, 2013 by pirateadminI told you so……
From TorrentFreak
Censoring Pirate Sites Doesn’t Work, Researchers Find
A new study released by researchers from Boston’s Northeastern University shows that censoring “pirate” sites by blocking or seizing their domains is ineffective. The researchers looked at the availability of various pirated media on file-hosting sites and found that uploaders post more new content than copyright holders can take down. A better solution, according to the researchers, is to block the money streams that flow to these sites.
The file-sharing landscape has often been described as a hydra. Take one site down, and several new ones will take its place. Blocking or censoring sites and files may have a short-lived effect, but it does very little to decrease the availability of pirated content on the Internet.
Researchers from Boston’s Northeastern University carried out a study to see how effective various anti-piracy measures are. They monitored thousands of files across several popular file-hosting services and found, among other things, that DMCA notices are a drop in the ocean. The researchers show that file-hosting services such as Uploaded, Wupload, RapidShare and Netload disable access to many files after receiving DMCA takedown notices, but that this does little to decrease the availability of pirated content.
Similarly, the researchers find evidence that the Megaupload shutdown did little to hinder pirates. On the contrary, the file-hosting landscape became more diverse with uploaders spreading content over hundreds of services.
“There is a cat-and-mouse game between uploaders and copyright owners, where pirated content is being uploaded by the former and deleted by the latter, and where new One-Click Hosters and direct download sites are appearing while others are being shut down,” the researchers write. “Currently, this game seems to be in favour of the many pirates who provide far more content than what the copyright owners are taking down,” they conclude.
The study also looked at the number of sites where copyrighted content is available. The researchers scraped the popular file-hosting search engine FilesTube and found that there were nearly 10,000 distinct domain names and 5,000 IP-addresses where alleged pirate content was hosted.
For example, a search for “dvdrip” returned results on 1,019 different domains using 702 distinct IP-addresses.
From the above the researchers conclude that anti-piracy measures aimed at reducing the availability of pirated content are less effective than often suggested. A more fruitful approach, they argue, may be to take away their ability to process payments, through PayPal or credit card processors. This is already happening widely, especially with file-hosting services that offer affiliate programs. However, as the researchers rightfully note there are also many perfectly legitimate file-hosting services that operate within the boundaries of the law and can’t be simply cut off.
The researchers end with the now common mantra that when it comes to online piracy, innovation often trumps legislation.
“Given our findings that highlight the difficulties of reducing the supply of pirated content, it appears to be promising to follow a complementary strategy of reducing the demand for pirated content, e.g., by providing legitimate offers that are more attractive to consumers than pirating content.”
John
Where file-sharing is legal
October 13th, 2012 by pirateadminIf you think that file-sharing or illegal downloading is illegal in all countries, you are wrong. If the media companies try to convince you that downloading is wrong, they are wrong – and they have certain governments and judges against them too!
In the following countries, file-sharing is actually LEGAL by law:
Canada
In the 2004 case of BMG Canada vs John Doe, the court decided that both downloading music and putting it in a shared folder available to other people online were legal in Canada. It has led to harsh criticism from organizations like International Federation of the Phonographic Industry: “Canada, practically the only government of a developed country not to have implemented international copyright treaties agreed over a decade ago, is a major source of the world’s piracy problem. A disproportionate number of illegal sites are hosted on Canadian soil.”
Mexico
Current intellectual property laws do not punish file sharing and Mexico’s intellectual property laws cannot affect file sharers because no money is being exchanged.
Morocco
Peer to peer file sharing is very widespread in this North African country, especially that there are not yet laws to legislate the internet sector.
Netherlands
According to Dutch law, reproduction of a literary, science, or art work is not considered a violation on the right of the creator or performing artist when all of the following conditions have been met:
- The copy has not been made with an (in)direct commercial motive
- The copy’s purpose is exclusively for own practice, study or use
- The number of copies is limited
Such a copy is called a ‘thuiskopie’ or home copy. Since 1991, after appointment by the Dutch ministry of Justice exists an organisation which guarantees that artists and rightsholders get a compensation for copies of their works that citizens make use of for private use. This compensation is levied indirectly through a surcharge on information carriers, like empty CDs, DVDs, MP3 players, and from 2013 on, hard disks and tablets.
Spain
In a series of cases, Spanish courts have ruled that file sharing for private use is legal. In 2006, the record industry’s attempts to criminalize file sharing were thwarted when Judge Paz Aldecoa declared it legal to download indiscriminately in Spain, if done for private use and without any intent to profit. In a decision from May 2009, a judge ruled in favor of a person engaged in the private, non-commercial file-sharing of thousands of movies, even though the copying was done without the consent of the copyright owners. File sharing and torrent websites were ruled legal in Spain in March 2010. The judge responsible for the court ruling stated that “P2P networks are mere conduits for the transmission of data between Internet users, and on this basis they do not infringe rights protected by Intellectual Property laws.”
Portugal
This week a Portuguese prosecutor came back with a ruling and decided not to go after individuals connected to IP-addresses. According to the prosecutor it is not against the law (in Portugal) to share copyrighted works for personal use, and an IP-address is not enough evidence to identify a person. “From a legal point of view, while taking into account that users are both uploaders and downloaders in these file-sharing networks, we see this conduct as lawful, even when it’s considered that the users continue to share once the download is finished.” The prosecutor adds that the right to education, culture, and freedom of expression on the Internet should not be restricted in cases where the copyright infringements are clearly non-commercial.
If you know of other countries with legal file sharing, please post them in the comments field.
John
Arnold and Jackie against piracy
September 12th, 2012 by pirateadminHere are two of my favourite actors in a propaganda video togehter, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan. They acted briefly together in “Around the world in 80 days” but I don’t think they have worked together since. Until now, as they want to encourage their fans to stop buying pirated movies.
I agree that some media piracy do support criminals. If you buy bootlegged DVDs or CDs money trickle down to networks that may not do much good. But, the whole point of online digital piracy is that no money changes hands. And almost nobody makes any money from it. Even with torrent websides having ads or taking donations, this money largely goes to paying for costs and expenses.
Arnie and Jackie may not be aware that online piracy is largely a money-less activity and the only ones who make money are large telecoms and ISPs.
John
Bruce Willis to sue Apple
September 3rd, 2012 by pirateadminFound this news item about action actor Bruce Willis and his views on what it means to buy digital music:
BRUCE Willis is preparing to take Apple to court over who owns his huge digital music collection after he dies. The Die Hard actor, 57, wants to leave the haul to his daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah.
But under iTunes’ current terms and conditions, customers essentially only ‘borrow’ tracks rather than owning them outright. So any music library amassed like that would be worthless when the owner dies.
Willis has asked advisers to set up a trust that holds his downloads, which reportedly include classics from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin, to get around this rule. The action star is also backing legal moves to increase the rights of downloaders. Apple can freeze users’ accounts if they suspect them of sharing tunes with others.
Chris Walton, an estate specialist at Irwin Mitchell, told a newspaper: “Lots of people will be surprised on learning all those tracks and books they have bought over the years don’t actually belong to them. It’s only natural you would want to pass them on to a loved one.”
Apple is known for having terms beyond reason. Whenever I have bought a few tracks from iTunes, on a handful of occasions, I have converted the files to normal/open formats so that Apple can’t take my purchases away later.
John