TorrentFreak Email Update

Android App Pirates Plead Guilty to Criminal Copyright Infringement
Dotcom’s Mega Plans $179m Public Listing Via Reverse Takeover
Judge: IP-Address Is Not a Person and Can’t Identify a BitTorrent Pirate

Android App Pirates Plead Guilty to Criminal Copyright Infringement

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 02:35 AM PDT

With help from French and Dutch police, the FBI took over the “pirate” Android stores applanet.net, appbucket.net and snappzmarket.com during the summer of 2012.

The domain seizures were the first ever against “rogue” mobile app marketplaces and followed similar actions against BitTorrent and streaming sites.

Yesterday the Department of Justice announced that two of the three admins of the Appbucket site have plead guilty to criminal copyright infringement. Nicholas Narbone, 26, and Thomas Dye, 21, both signed a plea deal with the Government and are currently scheduled to be sentenced in June.

No information was provided on the third Appbucket defendant, Thomas Pace, who was primarily responsible for finding copies of Android apps and managing the site’s servers.

The authorities estimate that more than a million Apps were traded via Appbucket, with a retail value of approximately $700,000. Over the course of two years the site itself generated little over $80,000 in proceeds from subscriptions.

Seizure Banner

Acting Assistant Attorney General David O'Neil is happy with the guilty pleas, which are the first of their kind.

"These mark the first convictions secured by the Justice Department against those who illegally distribute counterfeit mobile apps,” O'Neil says.

“These men trampled on the intellectual property rights of others when they and other members of the Appbucket group distributed more than one million copies of pirated apps.”

Besides Appbucket, there are also cases pending against the operators of Snappzmarket and Applanet. The founder of Applanet previously launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his defense, but only managed to raised $1,029 of the required $50,000.

The FBI, meanwhile, is already on the lookout for their next targets.

"The FBI will continue to work with its various law enforcement partners in identifying, investigating, and presenting for prosecution those individuals and groups engaged in such criminal activities that involve the attempt to profit from the hard work and the developed creative ideas of others," FBI Special Agent Johnson says.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Dotcom’s Mega Plans $179m Public Listing Via Reverse Takeover

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 12:36 AM PDT

Kim Dotcom isn’t known for doing things ‘small’ and that was underlined today with news that the cloud storage firm he founded last year will hit the New Zealand stock exchange.

In keeping with the complex life of the entrepreneur, the plans for the listing aren’t completely straightforward. Mega.co.nz says it will achieve a backdoor listing on the New Zealand stock exchange via a reverse takeover of an existing company.

Earlier this morning TRS Investments, an inactive investment company valued at NZ$2.2m (US$1.88m), said it had reached an agreement to buy Mega Ltd through a share issue to Mega shareholders.

TRS will acquire the shares for NZ$210 million via the issue of 700 million new shares to the shareholders of Mega at a price of 30 cents per share. This will result in those shareholders owning a 99 percent share of TRS.

Once the deal is completed, TRS will change its name to Mega.

While Kim Dotcom himself is longer a director of Mega having stepped down to concentrate on his extradition battle, musical career and political party, his wife Mona owns 26.5 percent of the company.

The acquisition requires TRS to obtain shareholder approval and necessary collateral on or before May 30, 2014.

“The rapid global growth of Mega has generated significant interest from potential investors. Listing on the New Zealand Stock Exchange will allow investors to participate in the ongoing growth of Mega,” said Mega CEO Stephen Hall in a statement.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the deal already has its controversy, with a report this morning that Paul Choiselat, a major TRS shareholder, is facing charges of concealing his interest in listed companies and alleged market manipulation.

Nevertheless, shares in TRS Investments soared to a seven year high, up 600 percent, following news of the takeover.

Mega reports that since its launch in January 2013 it has signed up around seven million users and is currently bringing on board more than 20,000 new ones every day. With encrypted chat video conferencing scheduled for the second quarter, Mega has big things ahead in 2014.

The full NZX announcement can be found here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Judge: IP-Address Is Not a Person and Can’t Identify a BitTorrent Pirate

Posted: 24 Mar 2014 10:08 AM PDT

Over the past several years hundreds of thousands of alleged BitTorrent pirates have been sued by so-called ‘copyright trolls’ in the United States.

The rightsholders bringing these cases generally rely on an IP address as evidence. They then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.

The problem, however, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material. Although not many judges address this crucial issue early on, there are exceptions, such as the one raised by Florida District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro.

Judge Ungaro was presented with a case brought by Malibu Media, who accused IP-address “174.61.81.171″ of sharing one of their films using BitTorrent without their permission. The Judge, however, was reluctant to issue a subpoena, and asked the company to explain how they could identify the actual infringer.

Responding to this order to show cause, Malibu Media gave an overview of their data gathering techniques. Among other things they explained that geo-location software was used to pinpoint the right location, and how they made sure that it was a residential address, and not a public hotspot.

Judge Ungaro welcomed the additional details, but saw nothing that actually proves that the account holder is the person who downloaded the file.

“Plaintiff has shown that the geolocation software can provide a location for an infringing IP address; however, Plaintiff has not shown how this geolocation software can establish the identity of the Defendant,” Ungaro wrote in an order last week.

“There is nothing that links the IP address location to the identity of the person actually downloading and viewing Plaintiff's videos, and establishing whether that person lives in this district,” she adds.

The order

Even if Malibu Media can accurately show that the copyright infringer used the Internet connection of the account holder connected to IP-address 174.61.81.171, they still can’t prove who shared the file.

“Even if this IP address is located within a residence, the geolocation software cannot identify who has access to that residence's computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff's copyright,” Judge Ungaro explains.

As a result, the court decided to dismiss the case for improper venue. The ruling is crucial as it’s another unique order confirming that an IP address alone is not enough to launch a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Copyright Troll watcher SJD points out that the same Judge has also issued orders to show cause in two other Malibu Media cases, which are also likely to be closed.

While not all judges may come to the same conclusion, the order definitely limits the options for copyright holders in the Southern District of Florida. Together with several similar rulings on the insufficiency of IP-address evidence, accused downloaders have yet more ammunition to fight back.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.