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Record Labels Ask Court to Force ISP to Disconnect Music Pirates

Posted: 12 Feb 2014 02:36 AM PST

Four years ago, the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) ended its legal battle with Eircom when the ISP agreed to implement a new anti-piracy policy against its own subscribers.

It was agreed that Eircom customers engaged in file-sharing would be tracked by IRMA and the ISP would take action based on the music group’s recommendations. Letter writing first, then disconnections for those subscribers who continued to share content without permission.

With Eircom publicly penalizing its customer base, IRMA set about forcing other ISPs to follow suit. Its next key target was UPC, Ireland’s second largest provider, but the process didn’t get far. In an October 2010 judgment the High Court said that disconnecting file-sharers in Ireland was not backed up by law.

Since then, however, the legal position in Ireland has changed, something which has given IRMA the enthusiasm to revisit their demands of four years ago. Sony, Universal and Warner (not EMI) are now back with fresh demands that UPC takes action against piracy.

According to the Irish Times, IRMA tracked UPC customers during November 2013 and subsequently reported 7,757 copyright infringements to the ISP. Based on this evidence of apparent large-scale infringement, the labels are demanding that UPC subject its pirating customers to a graduated response scheme.

However, UPC is still refusing to move, stating that any response of that type would raise a "serious question of freedom of expression and public policy and demands fair and impartial procedures in the appropriate balancing of rights” and would need to be backed up by legislation.

Faced with a defiant ISP, IRMA has now initiated fresh legal action with the aim of forcing UPC into compliance.

The case, set to go before the Commercial Court, could turn on whether legislation introduced in Ireland during 2012 will allow a judgment in IRMA’s favor. Already the courts have shown a willingness to clamp down on illegal file-sharing, ordering ISP blockades (1,2) of sites including The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents.

Presuming IRMA are successful, the big question is whether the strikes model will have the required effect of curbing piracy in any meaningful way. While recent research suggests that the approach does not work, the labels see things differently.

According to IRMA chairman Willie Kavanagh the Eircom three-strikes scheme has been “remarkably effective”, since only 0.2% of warned users have proceeded to the disconnection stage. Whether those users actually stopped downloading, moved to unmonitored sharing mechanisms, or simply hid their downloading activities, will probably remained unanswered.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for April.

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

How Pirate Bay Came Close to Hosting on North Korean Soil

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 09:01 AM PST

korea Last year The Pirate Bay made headlines all over the wold when the site seemingly relocated to North Korea.

After a few days the move turned out to be an elaborate hoax, much like the April Fools prank a few years earlier. However, during its early days the notorious torrent site came awfully close to actually having a server on North Korean soil.

This previously unknown fact was brought up by Pirate Bay co-founder Tobias Andersson during a talk in Melbourne, Australia, last week. TF reached out to Andersson to learn more about how the ambitious plan came to be.

The Pirate Bay co-founder explains that the TPB team wanted to host a server in the North Korean embassy in Stockholm, where they had a contact at the time.

“This was way back in the beginning. Probably around 2004-2005. Back then, the site didn’t need the insane amounts of bandwidth it would later on,” Andersson tells TF.

At the time the site had just turned a year old and with its rising popularity the legal threats from U.S. companies increased as well. The Pirate Bay already had a name for ridiculing copyright holders in their replies to takedown notices, but with the North Korea plan they could up the ante.

“In 2004 the site was still young and cocky. So when an opportunity appeared that obviously would piss off the US government, we didn’t want to miss it,” Andersson tells us.

North Korea’s embassy in Sweden

Through a friend, The Pirate Bay team was introduced to an employee at the North Korean embassy who would be able to take a server inside in exchange for a small fee. The people working there didn’t receive any pay and were only compensated for basic necessities, so a little bit of extra income was welcome for them.

For the TPB team this was a unique opportunity to host their servers on North Korean soil to shield the site from local law enforcement and piss off the U.S., so they went ahead.

“Needless to say, we loved the idea,” Andersson recalls.

“We thought, why not host a server or two at the embassy? If not all of them, perhaps at least some of the frontend servers, so that when the cops, media and Hollywood searched for them, they’d end up in the most hostile and isolated countries in the world.”

There was one downside to this idea though. The original Pirate Bay crew, which consisted of anarchists and hackers, wasn’t really eager to be associated with one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

“Of course we considered that. But in this case we couldn’t resist the epicness of this raised middle finger to Hollywood, so we wanted to give it a go,” Andersson says.

The first contact was made with the embassy via email. Initially things looked positive but when they got ready to discuss the finer details all emails bounced back, and the plan went bust.

What exactly happened to the embassy employee remains a mystery up until today.

“We later found out that he had been sent back to North Korea. No idea if it was because of us or just a normal thing for them. But that’s where our real cooperation with North Korea ended. The rest that would come were just April Fools jokes and trolling,” Andersson says.

After 2004 The Pirate Bay never got close to a real North Korean uplink. The site has been hosted in quite a few exotic places though, and in 2011 it eventually settled for a cloud based solution for most of the server power.

Where the servers are located today is unknown, but there is a rumor going around that some are floating around on drones…

_{Photo: John Pavelka}

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