Pirate Bay Co-Founder to Sue Record Labels For Defamation
The Helsinki District Court ordered Sunde to pay $395,000 (350,000 euros) for music shared illegally through the site by its users.
In addition, he faces an additional one million euro fine if the infringements continue in the future, even though he has no control over the site.
The ruling came as a shock to the former Pirate Bay spokesman. Not just because he didn’t share anything himself, but also because he hasn’t been involved with the torrent site for a decade.
Sunde informs TorrentFreak that he wasn’t aware of the Finnish case until after the verdict was handed down, which suggests that he wasn’t served properly. However, he certainly doesn’t plan to let things go. On the contrary, he’s hitting back with a lawsuit of his own, accusing the record labels of defamation
“I’ve decided I’m going to sue them for damage against my good name and stealing a lot of time from me,” Sunde tells TorrentFreak.
“I’m a public person in Finland and they’re calling me a criminal when they KNOW I’m not involved in what they’re suing me for. It’s defamation.”
Turning the tables, Pirate Bay’s co-founder is demanding compensation from the labels instead. Standing idly by is no longer an option and Sunde believes that he has a strong case which will hold up in court.
“It’s getting very obvious the case will be won by me and it’s time to hit them back. Attacking has always been my best defense and I’m going to demand what I’m owed finally.”
With the lawsuit Sunde hopes to put an end to the continued allegations against his person by various entertainment industry outlets. The Finnish case is the first but it’s possible that more defamation suits will follow elsewhere.
Sunde’s lawyer Peter Herkko Hietanen informs TorrentFreak that the default judgment of last week can also be appealed within 30 days, after which a retrial may follow.
After serving a prison sentence for the copyright infringements of others, Sunde has regained his focus with various other projects over the past year.
In addition to several art projects he continues his work for Flattr, as well as various speaking gigs and media projects.
With regard to The Pirate Bay’s current operation the site’s co-founder has been very clear in recent years. Like several others who were involved during the early days, he believes that the site has served its purpose and should have been shut down a long time ago.
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• Facebook • Twitter • Delicious • LinkedIn • StumbleUpon • Add to favorites • Email • RSSUEFA Cracks Down on ‘Pirate’ Euro Cup Streams
While football is considered to be a game of the people, UEFA is carefully controlling who can watch what, when and where.
One of the thorns in the side of the football organization and its rightsholders are unauthorized live streams. These streams have become quite common, and offer people a chance to follow the various matches without having to pay for a subscription.
Over the past week UEFA and its partners have targeted several sites offering such streams. They includes several Google Blogspot blogs that are specifically setup to stream sports events.
TorrentFreak has checked several UEFA notices that were addressed to Blogspot and found that none of the pages were taken down. However, the live feeds on these sites are no longer available, which means that there is no infringing activity either.
This also signals one of the problems sports broadcasters often have to deal with. Due to the live nature of their “works” the actual takedowns have to be pretty much instant. After all, when a match has ended it’s already too late.
Some UEFA Euro Cup rightsholders have tried to address this by sending advance notices to various sites. However, for site owners it is hard to take something down that doesn’t yet exists.
Various torrent sites therefore refused to take pre-preemptive action, and Google hasn’t responded yet to a similar pre-piracy request.
In addition to various specialized live streaming portals, the UEFA Euro Cup and other events are also more frequently shared on social media. Apps such as Periscope make is very easy for people to stream and watch these events and despite the horrible quality, some get hundreds or thousands of views.
UEFA has previously gone after Periscope streams of other events and some recent Euro Cup streams have disappeared as well, suggesting that the football organization is keeping a close eye on these social streams too.
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• Facebook • Twitter • Delicious • LinkedIn • StumbleUpon • Add to favorites • Email • RSSThe Sad Hypocrisy of the Clockwork Orange YouTube Lawsuit
An aspiring young filmmaker, Bond runs Channel Criswell on YouTube and his work shows excellent promise for a fruitful career. Sadly, his immediate future looks decidedly more gloomy.
The details can be found here, but essentially a 20 minute video analysis of Stanley Kubrick movies created by UK-based Bond has provoked a lawsuit from a company holding the copyrights to some of the music tracks featured in the background.
In a nutshell, Bond appears to have a firm belief that he has a strong fair-use case. Serendip LLC, which owns the copyrights to the music featured in the 1971 movie ‘A Clockwork Orange’, beg to differ. Take a moment or two to listen to the track in question at the start of the video below, it’s important.
The end result is a lawsuit which could see Bond on the receiving end of $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringement. From everything seen to date, it seems unlikely the 23-year-old can come up with that kind of cash. It’s possible he’ll struggle to finance a defense.
Seeing Bond visibly choked was a sad sight and it got me thinking. While undoubtedly a wonderful and timeless piece of music, is a track from 1971 really bringing in the money for Clockwork Orange composer Wendy Carlos today? Has Bond’s fleeting reproduction of a part of this track in his documentary caused real financial damage?
I don’t have the answer to those questions but while researching this case I came across something that surprised even me, a huge ClockWork Orange fan. Although arranged and performed by Carlos, the main theme from A Clockwork Orange isn’t her work at all. In fact, the entire piece – virtually note for note – has been lifted from a piece penned by composer Henry Purcell.
Born in England in September 1659, Purcell developed into what many consider to be one of the country’s greatest composers. His 1695 piece ‘Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary’ was played at the funeral of Queen Mary II, who had died in December of the previous year.
It is an abridged version of this music that forms the entire basis of Carlos’ 1971 work. Arrangement and beautiful synthesizer work aside, it’s virtually identical.
Purcell died in 1695 and quite rightfully his work is now in the public domain. As a result Wendy Carlos was absolutely within her right to take this piece and run with it and as a supporter of remix culture, I salute her efforts entirely.
Sadly, however, I can’t help but note the sad hypocrisy here. Just for a moment, let’s cast aside the legalities of copyright law and instead focus on the notion of artists using the work of others to create new art.
In the 1970s, Carlos took Purcell’s work and modernized it beautifully and there are now millions of people out there who only know her version of the work. By taking his work, she has touched audiences in a way Purcell could not. It’s probably worth noting that Carlos undoubtedly made more money from Purcell’s work than Purcell ever did too, and good for her.
Like Carlos before him, Lewis Bond is also somewhat of a remixer. His Kubrick analysis by Serendip’s own description is a “mélange of brief snippets” and he too is bringing the work of the filmmaker and indeed Wendy Carlos to a brand new audience that Purcell himself could only dream of. I’d like to think Purcell would be pleased for their success.
Importantly, in the same manner that Carlos paid homage to Purcell with her work, by opening his video with Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary the main theme from Clockwork Orange, in turn Bond paid homage to Carlos. It strikes me that rather than having disrespect for each other, all involved in this downward chain deeply appreciate each other’s talents.
Of course, since Bond’s channel is monetized, Carlos believes she should be paid for her work. Bond, on the other hand, is stuck in a fair use dilemma, and will have to fight an expensive court battle to find out who is in the right. Let’s face it, that is not going to happen.
Bond is unlikely to put up any kind of fight and whatever happens – win or lose – Serendip/Carlos aren’t going to get a penny from Bond in the UK. What I’m saying today is that among business people – among artists – in today’s climate there must be a better way to sort this out.
Getting the parties to talk might not be easy, but there are plenty of options if they just take the opportunity. Bond won’t have made much from his video, but paying a small sum to Carlos might be an option, if he doesn’t have the stomach for a fair use war.
The option I like best, however, is a collaboration. Carlos has talents. Bond has talents too. So, as artists, why not do something together? When it comes down to it they have a lot in common. Both have made new creative works on the backs of other people’s efforts without paying them a dime. That alone provides the basis for discussion – they’re already on the same page.
But most of all, why are people wasting each other’s lives with these pointless lawsuits? On YouTube there are plenty of instances where people have uploaded the whole of Carlos’ work, literally a full-fledged pirate copy of everything notable she’s ever done. They’re freely available on the platform today yet Bond – someone who brings something creative to the party – faces financial ruination? That makes no sense.
Although Wendy Carlos and her representatives failed to respond to our requests for comment, there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. A TorrentFreak reader managed to make contact with someone on Wendy Carlos’ site who fired back quite an email. It ends as follows:
“There is much bad advice on the internet about copyright and the use of music on YouTube, but some very good advice that should be followed is not to post other people’s copyrighted music on the internet ‘because you like it and want others to hear it’,” the email reads.
“This YouTube user would also be well advised to follow the old saw that ‘when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging.’ His problems might go away if he would just ‘undo’ his previous bad choices.”
That sounds like an olive branch. Someone might like to grab it.
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• Facebook • Twitter • Delicious • LinkedIn • StumbleUpon • Add to favorites • Email • RSS“Piracy Monitoring Outfit Uses Flawed Tracking Technology”
The researchers found that not all anti-piracy companies actually check if someone’s sharing a file, before sending out their DMCA notices. As a result, a local printer at a university was branded a serial pirate.
This mistake is the result of passive monitoring, where tracking outfits don’t verify if an IP-address in a BitTorrent swarm is actually trading pieces of a copyrighted file. This results in many false accusations, not least because many trackers insert random IP-addresses.
While this practice has become more rare in recent years, tracking methods at some companies are still not perfect.
TorrentFreak was recently approached by a torrent site operator who regularly scrapes trackers and BitTorrent’s DHT to discover new metadata. While his system is setup specifically to gather information (not to share any content), he is still accused of doing so by copyright holders.
“In less than 24 hours of indexing we’ve received more than a dozen DMCA notices from IP-Echelon, claiming that we are ‘distributing copyrighted video files’,” the site owner explains.
The odd part is that these notices we’re not meant for the website, but targeted the server that gathered the torrent information. These are similar to the warnings regular downloaders receive through their ISP, and list the IP-address and port that was allegedly used to “distribute” the files.
TorrentFreak has seen copies of the notices in question, which are sent on behalf of major movie studios including Paramount Pictures. They were not sent to the torrent site directly, but to its hosting provider instead.
“IP-Echelon has become aware that the below IP addresses have been using your service for distributing video files, which contain infringing video content that is exclusively owned by Paramount,” the tracking company writes.
“We are requesting your immediate assistance in removing and disabling access to the infringing material from your network. We also ask that you ensure the user and/or IP address owner refrains from future use and sharing of Paramount materials and property,” the notice adds.
The torrent site owner doesn’t deny that he is fetching information from the same BitTorrent swarms IP-Echelon is monitoring, but says that his systems are specifically configured not to share any infringing content.
In fact, he also received notices for a server that only fetches torrent metadata from the DHT.
“This server just fetches infodata, never starts any piece transfers. It was setup specifically as a ‘clean’ box and never participated in any torrent transfers,” he says.
According to the site owner this shows that IP-Echelon doesn’t really bother to check if the people they accuse are actually sharing any substantial copyrighted data, unless they see metadata as “infringing” too.
“To qualify for ‘sharing’ you have to actually share content. That is, have a piece of data, advertise that as available, and then send at least a valid piece of data when asked to. That would be proper actionable evidence.
“IP Echelon just seems to spam anyone who turns up in peer lists,” he adds.
When asking for additional details the site owner explained that his DHT fetching method uses libtorrent’s ‘disabled_storage’ storage setting. This means that no data is stored on the server, so there would be no infringing pieces to upload either.
TorrentFreak contacted IP-Echelon to hear their side of the story, but the company preferred not to respond in detail. Instead, they left the following comment.
“We do not comment in the press regarding IP-Echelon’s technology and operations. However, we can assure you that all statements made by IP-Echelon in dispatched notices are accurate,” the company replied.
“Any recipient of a notice who has concerns about its legitimacy is welcome to get in touch with us direct,” the company added.
Without a comprehensive audit on both ends it’s hard to conclusively say which side is right. However, this is certainly not the first time that torrent tracking methods have been called into doubt.
Earlier this year researcher Aymeric Vitte TorrentFreak revealed extensive research showing that very few DHT tracking outfits actually check whether a BitTorrent user is actively uploading content.
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This is also true for the files that were placed at Cogent.
While the original machines are no longer intact, the hosting company has backed up all data which it will keep in storage pending the various lawsuits against the company and its operators.
However, as time has gone by the condition of the harddrives has deteriorated. A few weeks ago Cogent warned that sixteen of them have actually become unreadable, which is a serious concern since they contain important evidence.
To resolve the issue the RIAA and MPAA, representing various major copyright holders, asked if they could preserve a copy of the data themselves. Alternatively, they were also open to bringing in an independent computer forensics vendor, to copy and preserve the data.
Megaupload disagreed, arguing that rightsholders or other outsiders shouldn’t get their hands on possibly privacy sensitive user data, and opted to simply repair the failing disks.
This week District Court Judge Liam O’Grady ruled on the matter at hand. He rejected the copying proposal by the rightsholders, and went with Megaupload’s suggestion instead.
“The Court finds Defendants’ proposal is the more appropriate remedy for the issue at hand,” Judge O’Grady writes in his order.
The Judge instructs all stakeholders in the civil and criminal cases, including the U.S. Government and Cogent, to come together and agree on a repair process.
“[All parties] shall meet and confer with United States Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson to discuss and devise an appropriate solution to repair the Cogent drives and preserve the evidence on the Cogent servers, as well as to secure and preserve other digital evidence.”
While none of the parties are likely to disagree to a repair, they do have to determine who should pick up the tab.
Megaupload previously said that it doesn’t have the financial resources to do so, and suggested that either the copyright holders or the Government must take care of this. The Government is unlikely to pay though, and previously said that it no longer has an interest in the data.
The fact that the recent filings in the Megaupload proceedings are about data loss is exemplary of the slow progress in the cases, which are still a long way from trial.
Last December a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues can be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges. This decision was appealed and will be heard later this summer, so until then not much is expected to happen.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
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• Facebook • Twitter • Delicious • LinkedIn • StumbleUpon • Add to favorites • Email • RSS“London Has Fallen” Pirates Targeted With Lawsuits and Automated $300 ‘Fines’
Millennium Films and LHF Productions, two companies behind the blockbuster “London Has Fallen” have no problem crossing this line.
A few days ago a high quality Blu-Ray rip of the movie appeared online, more than a week before the official release. Since then hundreds of thousands of people have pirated the film, much to the outrage of the studios.
To compensate the potential revenue loss of these and earlier leaks, LHF Productions has filed lawsuits against more than 1,000 people in recent weeks.
The cases are filed against “does” who are only known by their IP-address, with the studio then trying to uncover their real identities by subpoenaing their ISPs. After their personal info is released, the accused Internet subscribers will get a settlement offer, which can go up to several thousands dollars.
A relatively straightforward way to recoup damages, but there is an even easier option. In addition to the lawsuits the film’s production company Millennium Films has started sending automated settlement demands to U.S. Internet subscribers.
These settlement offers bypass the courts and are sent as part of a DMCA notice. Several Internet providers voluntarily forward these notices to the account holders associated with the infringing IP-addresses.
The language in the notices will be quite intimidating to some. After listing the evidence, Millennium Films’ anti-piracy partner CEG TEK warns that the subscribers could face a potential lawsuit.
“CEG informs you that you may be held liable for monetary damages, including court costs and/or attorney fees if a lawsuit is commenced against you for unauthorized copying and/or distribution of the Work listed above,” it reads.
However, the letter also offers a way out. By settling the case right away and paying $300, all problems will go away. To increase the pressure, CEG TEK adds a hard deadline that expires after a few days.
“If you fail to respond or settle within the prescribed time period, the above matter may be referred to attorneys representing the Work’s owner for legal action. At that point the original settlement offer will no longer be an option, and the settlement amount will increase significantly,” the company adds.
Those who follow the link are directed to the settlement page where the suspected pirates can pay their dues directly through a credit or debit card.
CEG TEK is not a new player on the scene, but it’s rare to see notices for such a high-profile movie. The company mostly works with players in the adult industry, who typically demand a few hundred dollars per infringement as well.
Despite all the anti-piracy activity, thousands of people are still sharing “London Has Fallen.” This means that there’s enough potential for more lawsuits and automated fines.
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Netflix Blocks IPv6 Tunnels Over Geo-Unblocking Fears
Due to licensing deals with content providers, most regions in the world are granted access to differing levels of content. Users in the United States get the best deal from a choice perspective while subscribers in many other regions are offered much more shallow libraries.
However, for many years determined subscribers from all over the world have been using various tricks to gain access to the forbidden fruits of the U.S. Netflix library. This has largely been achieved through the use of VPNs and proxies, techniques which worked almost flawlessly until complaints from rightsholders forced Netflix into a crackdown earlier this year.
Nevertheless, other methods to circumvent Netflix blocks do exist. Some savvy individuals have been using something known as a tunnel broker, an online service which provides the user with a network tunnel. One particular type, known as an IPv6 tunnel broker, provides users with a modern IPv6 tunnel to sites via the much older (but massively more prevalent) IPv4 protocol.
One such service is provided free of charge by Hurricane Electric, the operator of the world’s largest IPv6 transit network. Called simply ‘IPv6 Tunnel Broker‘, the company describes the service as follows.
“Our free tunnel broker service enables you to reach the IPv6 Internet by tunneling over existing IPv4 connections from your IPv6 enabled host or router to one of our IPv6 routers. Our tunnel service is oriented towards developers and experimenters that want a stable tunnel platform,” Hurricane explains.
With noble goals at heart, this service is clearly not designed to give Netflix headaches. However, with tunnel endpoints in the United States that was apparently the net result, with people using the service able to access titles geo-restricted to the U.S.
Somehow this situation came to Netflix’s attention and during the past few days the company decided to take action. Numerous reports indicate that Netflix has now blocked users of Hurricane Electric’s tunnel broker from accessing its services, regardless of their intent. They now receive the message below.
A Reddit user called KeiroD contacted Netflix after receiving an identical message with the same error code – M7111-1331-5059. From the transcript of the discussion its clear that KeiroD already had a good idea why he was blocked.
“The only thing that I can think of that would affect us would be using the Hurricane Electric tunnelbroker but we’re US-based as is Hurricane Electric’s tunnel,” he explained. Netflix responded as expected.
“Yes it is possible as they work the same as the VPN or proxies. There is a way to find out if that is the reason, do you have a way to turn it off for a moment so we can try the service again?” customer support asked.
In response KeiroD turned off IPv6 in his router’s tunnel broker setup, rebooted, and played a random movie successfully.
General blocking aside, the sad part here is that KeiroD is based in the United States, so already had access to U.S. content on Netflix. The fact that his account with Netflix was registered in the United States and his endpoint was in Kansas City didn’t help at all.
Interestingly, the topic is also under discussion in Hurricane Electric’s forums. After years of people questioning whether he had access to the U.S. version of Netflix, a Canadian user there reported that his Netflix suddenly stopped working a few days ago.
“Turns out that I did [have the U.S. Netflix] and didn’t even know it! Now Netflix is blocking me, and after a long while I finally figured out that it was because of my IPv6 tunnel. The thing is though, I am in Canada, and I use the tunnel server in Toronto, also in Canada, but Netflix detects my connections as coming from the US!” he explains.
“Well of course this problem only affects traffic coming over the IPv6 tunnel. If I shut it down, then Netflix works fine over native IPv4. I obviously still want my IPv6 connectivity, and don’t have any easy way that I know of to specifically block only Netflix-related traffic from resolving IPv6 addresses and using the tunnel.”
Sadly, however, Hurricane say they can’t help.
“Our [subnet] is registered as part of a US company, and that is the address space being used there. We do not have any IPv6 allocations allocated and designated as ‘Canada’,” a senior Hurricane engineer responded.
“Our [subnet] is used globally, as-is. If Netflix has some sort of whitelisting system in place, perhaps the ranges used there can be submitted, if such a whitelist exists, Netflix willing.”
As an avid supporter of IPv6, Netflix’s decision to block Hurricane users is somewhat disappointing, especially when they have U.S. accounts and are also based in the U.S.
Understandably the company is responding to pressure from rightsholders but interestingly there’s no change in the current situation even when they aren’t a factor. Netflix previously indicated it wanted to improve licensing issues by creating its own shows, shows that can be accessed anywhere in the world without issues. But even they are off-limits, it seems.
“This started happening to me this afternoon. Called Netflix support, and based on that conversation I concluded they consider Tunnelbroker a VPN/Proxy,” another user on HE’s forums explains.
“They’re not wrong, but it’s still frustrating. Ironically the show I was trying to resume is a Netflix original. I wouldn’t have expected that there would be licensing issues on their own content.”
And so the whac-a-mole continues….
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In a nutshell, key entertainment industry players believe that the DMCA is no longer fit for purpose and has been twisted out of shape by pirate sites, Google and even YouTube, to work against their best interests.
One of the main problems is taking down infringing content. The legislation allows content to be removed following the issuing of a so-called DMCA notice, but copyright holders say that this descends into a game of whac-a-mole, with content repeatedly reappearing.
To end this cycle they’re pushing for a new mechanism provisionally titled ‘Takedown, Staydown’ or ‘Notice and Staydown’. This would order web platforms to ensure that once content is taken down it will never appear again on the same platform. These proposals are currently under review by the US Copyright Office.
But while copyright holders feel this would be a great tool for them, it’s perhaps unsurprising that content platforms are less enthusiastic. After weighing in earlier in the year, the latest warnings from the Internet Archive, a gigantic public repository of a wide range of media, and are among the sternest yet.
Noting that even the current system is regularly abused by those seeking to silence speech, the Archive says that on a daily basis it receives wrongful takedowns for content that is in the public domain, is fair use, or is critical of the content owner. Therefore, further extending takedown rights could prove extremely problematic.
“We were very concerned to hear that the Copyright Office is strongly considering recommending changing the DMCA to mandate a ‘Notice and Staydown’ regime. This is the language that the Copyright Office uses to talk about censoring the web,” the Archive warns.
The Archive has a number of concerns but key issues involve due process and user monitoring. Once a platform is in receipt of a “staydown” order, it will be required to ensure that content never reappears, regardless of the context in which it does so. This means that users posting content subject to fair use exceptions will effectively be denied their right to issue a counter-notice when their upload is blocked, thus trampling due process.
But of course, blocking content also requires that users are monitored, and the Internet Archive doesn’t like that idea at all.
“The current statute protects user privacy by explicitly stating that platforms have no duty to monitor user activity for copyright infringement. Notice and Staydown would change this – requiring platforms to be constantly looking over users’ shoulders,” the Archive warns.
With free speech potentially at stake here, the Internet Archive says that taking content down and keeping it down has constitutional implications.
“Notice and Staydown has a serious First Amendment problem. The government mandating the use of technology to affirmatively take speech offline before it’s even posted, without any form of review, potentially violates free speech laws,” it says.
Such an automated system would amount to a censorship “black box”, the Archive adds, to which the public would be denied the key.
“It would be very difficult to know how much legitimate activity was being censored.”
Fair use has come up time and time again during this DMCA debate and the Internet Archive is clearly very concerned that it receives protection. Worried that content filtering technology isn’t even up to today’s challenges, the Archive warns that systems that can identify instances of fair use simply don’t exist.
“So far, no computer algorithm has been developed that can determine whether a particular upload is fair use. Notice and Staydown would force many cases of legitimate fair use off the web,” it warns.
“Further, intermediaries are not the right party to be implementing this technology. They don’t have all the facts about the works, such as whether they have been licensed. Most platforms are not in a good position to be making legal judgments, and they are motivated to avoid the potential for high statutory damages. All this means that platforms are likely to filter out legitimate uses of content.”
Finally, there is the not insignificant matter of who is going to pay for all of these systems should platforms be forced to adopt them. While copyright holders would apparently reap the benefits, sites like the Internet Archive would probably be expected to foot the bill.
“Developing an accurate filter that will work for each and every platform on the web will be an extremely costly endeavor. Nonprofits, libraries, and educational institutions who act as internet service providers would be forced to spend a huge amount of their already scarce resources policing copyright,” the Archive warns.
“The DMCA has its problems, but Notice and Staydown would be an absolute disaster,” it concludes.
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