TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Police Raid “Miniature Pirate Bay” Run on Home Connection
- Danish Police “Threaten” Former Colleague of Pirate Bay Founder in Cambodia
- UK Police Suspend 2,500 “Counterfeit” Domain Names
| Police Raid “Miniature Pirate Bay” Run on Home Connection Posted: 29 Apr 2014 04:33 AM PDT
Dreamfilm.nu is a tiny site by any standards. This torrent-focused project, not to to be confused with Dreamfilm.se, one of the country’s largest streaming sites, is today ranked the 2,794,493rd most popular domain in the world by Alexa. The Pirate Bay this is definitely not. Dreamfilm’s size is further underlined by the fact it was being run not from a dedicated webhost, but from a home Internet connection in Sweden. Nevertheless, this relative minnow with just over 900 Facebook likes managed to attract the attention of some of the world’s biggest entertainment companies. Last Thursday at 7:00am, a total of eight Swedish police officers raided the home of the Dreamfilm admin, who calls himself “Napster”. “When I asked to see the search warrant I was told in response: ‘This is not a Hollywood movie’,” Napster explained. Police did not have endless server racks to seize. Dreamfilm.nu was being run on a home computer and once that was taken away, the site came to an end. “The computer is currently seized and therefore Dreamfilm is down,” he added. The complaint against the site was initiated by Rights Alliance, the anti-piracy group previously known as Antipiratbyran. The organization told police that the site was offering torrents to 25 movies, three of which were pre-release. “The site is the Pirate Bay in miniature,” Rights Alliance lawyer Sara Lindebäck told Nyheter24. Prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson said that the man who was raided confessed to being the Dreamfilm admin, but maintained that his site was completely legal. “The suspect has admitted that he has been running this site, but says that he has not done anything punishable, Rasmusson said. In response, the 23-year-old clarified his position, maintaining that no illegal content had ever touched his server. It didn’t even store torrent files, only linked to them. “It’s hopeless for the police to take a search engine so seriously, confiscate my stuff, and put me in detention for around eight hours. They can stare at the server until their eyes start to bleed, dreamfilm.nu has never committed a crime and therefore there is nothing to download,” he said. “Dreamfilm.nu is a SEARCH ENGINE like Google . Google gets its information automatically using bots / spiders while Dreamfilm.nu must retrieve information manually and store it in a database.” While Napster’s fate will be revealed in due course, other longer-standing Swedish cases have been progressing to their closing stages in recent weeks. Last week the suspected operator of Tankaner.com was prosecuted for copyright infringement related to the illegal distribution of 32 movies in 2012 and 2013. Prosecutor Fredrik Inglad added that since there were ads on the site, he would be pushing for a prison sentence. Earlier this month, four men were prosecuted for copyright infringement related to the unlawful distribution of 28 Hollywood and local movies in 2009 and 2010. The men, all in their forties, are suspected of being the operators of the warez-scene servers known as ‘Darkside‘. The men admit to having downloaded movies but deny distribution. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| Danish Police “Threaten” Former Colleague of Pirate Bay Founder in Cambodia Posted: 28 Apr 2014 09:18 AM PDT
The trial is expected to begin in the early days of September, more than four months from today and close to ten months since he was extradited to Denmark from Sweden in 2013. But while one might presume that the authorities already have everything they need to prosecute Svartholm, it appears that their investigation is still very much a work in progress. It’s no secret that Gottfrid’s last days of freedom were spent in Cambodia, a country that he came to call home and where he’d built a life and found work. Now, some 20 months since he left the country, the police investigation into his activities there have been revived. And, according to one of their targets, the manner in which it’s being carried out is a cause for concern. John, who has asked us not to use his full real name, is a former colleague of Gottfrid who lives and works in Cambodia. TorrentFreak has confirmed his identity and the fact that he and Gottfrid did business together. On April 2 he received an unexpected telephone call about someone he hasn’t seen for years. Mysterious police threats “The person who spoke to me on the phone was threatening and aggressive. He spoke with a thick European accent and initially said he was ‘with Nordic police’,” John explains. “At that point I didn’t think I was speaking to an actual policeman because really, ‘Nordic police’ is about as evasive as an introduction can possibly be. After I repeatedly asked for more details, he only specified ‘Swedish police’. No name, no badge number.” John was told he needed to go to a meeting to discuss Gottfrid but with such a mysterious introduction he was concerned at what might be waiting for him, including this not being genuine police business. “I felt uncomfortable with the situation, and due to the way the call had been handled up to that point, I didn’t want to meet them. I had no idea whether I was even speaking to a real policeman,” John explains. “I asked if this meeting was voluntary, and he specifically said that they would ‘use local police to force’ me into meeting them.” John was informed that the meeting would consist of him, the mystery Swedish policeman, a local Cambodian policeman, and a Danish policeman. “They allowed me to choose the location, but said it had to be the same day. I chose a very public cafe for my own safety,” he says. Due to the apparent urgency of the situation, John had no time to arrange for a lawyer to be present. Once the call had ended, John contacted his embassy but was informed that there was little they could do to help. Although apprehensive he decided to attend the meeting, set for the lobby bar in the Hotel Cambodiana. Meeting in the hotel “When I turned up to the meeting, the guy who threatened me on the phone wasn’t there, and instead there was Jens Jorgensen from the Danish police and Anders Riisager [pictured right, different occasion], who introduced himself as ‘Copenhagen Deputy District Attorney’,” John explains, adding that neither would reveal the identity of the person who made the earlier threats.
The million-dollar PC-access question However, police also showed an interest in who had access to Gottfrid’s computer in Cambodia. This is of particular interest because it was on this point that Gottfrid had his Swedish ‘Logica’ conviction overturned after the Court of Appeal couldn’t rule out that someone else accessed his computer to commit crimes. “I was threatened and bullied into attending this questioning, and yet they completely ignored the answers when it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. A good example is that they asked if anyone else had access to [Gottfrid's] computer. When I said yes, they didn’t even ask for a full detailed list of people, not that I’d have one though, it was years ago,” John explains. “The simple fact is that there were 50+ people with direct physical access to [Gottfrid's] computer at the time that the police were asking about. They were visibly pissed off [when I told them that], and given the threats that had already been made, it was an uncomfortable situation for me to say the least.” Why has it taken so long? Considering how closely John worked with Gottfrid it seems extremely unlikely that the police had no interest in him before this month, especially in respect of providing information in the crucial days leading up to and after Gottfrid’s arrest in August/September 2012. Yet this was the first time police had asked him anything. “The implication that this isn’t something they had already looked into earlier on is just bizarre. This was the first time I’ve ever been questioned by police in relation to anything concerning Gottfrid,” John says. “The most shocking part of the whole thing was just how ridiculous their questions were. These people are traveling around to third world countries refusing to identify themselves, making threats that border on being criminal, all so they can ask about rumors and hearsay that dates back over three years.” Desperate times? “You can all say what you want about Gottfrid, but the fact is, the actions of the people investigating this case are clearly the actions of desperate people who are grasping at straws. If they had any evidence, they wouldn’t need to go around behaving the way they are,” he says. Describing the whole episode as “shocking and outrageous”, John says that he hopes some good will come out of making his experiences public. “Gottfrid isn’t someone I feel I owe anything to, but this whole investigation is clearly ridiculous and without merit. It could have been any one of a whole bunch of people [with access to Gottfrid's computer] and they know it. I don’t want to cause problems for myself, but I’d like to see Gottfrid get treated like a human being.” Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| UK Police Suspend 2,500 “Counterfeit” Domain Names Posted: 28 Apr 2014 06:10 AM PDT
The police started by sending warning letters to site owners, asking them to go legit or shut down. Late last year this was followed by a campaign targeted at domain registrars, asking them to suspend the domain names of several “illegal” sites. In celebration of World Intellectual Property Day, the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has today announced the first results of their anti-counterfeiting campaign. According to PIPCU more than 2,500 domains names have been suspended thus far. The domain names are not listed, but all offered counterfeit products of major brands such as UGG boots, Abercrombie, Hollister, and Gucci. "The fact PIPCU can announce on World IP Day that in the eight months since launching we have suspended more than 2,500 infringing websites is further evidence of the expertise of our officers and the level of their commitment to clamp down on IP crime,” Andy Fyfe commented on today’s news. "Consumers also need to be aware that by accessing websites like this they are running the risk of their personal details being compromised and being used for other fraudulent scams, as well as the exposing their computer to malicious malware," Fyfe adds There’s little doubt that 2,500 domain names is a significant number. Interestingly however, the Police have had less success with domains names linked to “pirate” websites. When TorrentFreak asked the police about the suspension of pirate domains, we were told that this is still work in progress. “With regards to digital piracy, that falls under Operation Creative which is still an ongoing investigation in its early days. Therefore at this moment in time we cannot release any figures,” a PIPCU spokeswoman said. Previously PIPCU managed to suspend the domain name of ExtraTorrent and a handful of other sites, which continued operating under a new domain. — Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
At this very moment alleged “super hacker” Gottfrid Svartholm is being held in a Danish prison on suspicion of hacking into the computers of IT company CSC.
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