TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Canadian Court Slaps Restrictions on Copyright Trolling
- Twitter Blocks Kickass.to Links, Says They’re Unsafe
- RIAA Accuses Grooveshark of Making Piracy a Job Requirement
| Canadian Court Slaps Restrictions on Copyright Trolling Posted: 21 Feb 2014 03:01 AM PST
These questions and more have been under consideration in the Federal Court in Toronto as part of a case involving US-based movie studio and known copyright troll Voltage Pictures (“The Hurt Locker”) versus 2,000 currently anonymous Internet subscribers of local ISP TekSavvy. Voltage say that via local anti-piracy company Canipre they tracked the Teksavvy customers downloading and sharing their movies online without permission and as a result want Teksavvy to hand over the alleged pirates names and addresses. CIPPIC – protecting subscribers The case has been dragging on for some time with third parties such as the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) getting involved in order to protect the subscribers’ rights. CIPPIC believes Voltage are nothing more than “copyright trolls” sending settlement letters to alleged pirates in order to extract hard cash from them.
CIPPIC adds that Teksavvy shouldn’t hand anything over to Voltage, as this will “infringe the privacy rights of the subscribers and may affect the scope of protection offered to anonymous online activity.” CIPPIC fears that any ruling in this case could have a detrimental effect on whistle-blowers and others who leak documents in the public interest. Voltage’s stance For their part, Voltage believe that since they have a case under the Copyright Act, Teksavvy should be ordered to hand over the subscribers’ personal details. Relying on a ruling in BMG Canada Inc. v Doe, 2005, Voltage says it has met all conditions therein (such as having a bona fide case, being reliant on the court/Teksavvy for information to proceed, and promising to reimburse Teksavvy for costs incurred), while adding that it “fully intends to pursue claims against the subscribers.” The balancing act So, should the court issue an order which compels Teksavvy to hand over the information to Voltage and, if so, what kind of protections could be baked into the order to minimize invasion of privacy for the Internet users involved? “Privacy considerations should not be a shield for wrongdoing and must yield to an injured party’s request for information from non-parties. This should be the case irrespective of the type of right the claimant holds,” the Court writes in its ruling. “Copyright is a valuable asset which should not be easily defeated by infringers. The difficulty in this case is that it is not clear that the protection of copyright is the sole motivating factor supporting Voltage’s claim in this Court. [Evidence] suggests but does not prove that Voltage may have ulterior motives in commencing this action and may be a copyright troll.” Despite its concerns, the Court notes that Voltage has established a bona fide claim and as a copyright holder its rights outweigh the privacy rights of alleged infringers. However, it also notes that it would be taking steps to “ensure that privacy rights are invaded in the most minimal way possible.” Privacy concerns and the trolling threat For its part, Voltage previously argued that the alleged infringers had already made their IP addresses public when they joined BitTorrent swarms and therefore should not be able to remain anonymous in legal action. The court accepted that stance to a degree but noted that the “specter raised of the copyright troll” and the “very real specter of flooding the Court with an enormous number of cases involving the subscribers, many of whom may have perfectly good defenses to the alleged infringement” had to be considered.
Also of interest is the Court’s examination of other ‘trolling’ cases in the United States and UK, particularly those involving ACS:Law and adult movie company GoldenEye. Alongside privacy issues, the Court looked at how the involvement of a consumer group in the latter case had influenced the letters of claim eventually sent out by GoldenEye. Conclusion: Voltage get the green light, but must proceed with caution The Federal Court notes that evidence exists to show that Voltage is a troll-like operation but the evidence was not compelling enough to put the brakes on the exercise. Voltage has a right to the subscriber information held by Teksavvy following the issue of a relevant order, the Court said. However, in line with recent cases in the UK, the Federal Court says it intends to maintain control over the process by appointing a Case Management Judge to monitor “the conduct of Voltage in its dealings with the alleged infringers.” Furthermore, the settlement letters sent out by Voltage will have to be approved by the Court and CIPPIC, and must include a copy of the court order and a clear statement that no court has yet found any recipient liable for infringement or liable to pay damages. This addresses concerns from past cases in the UK where letters implied that a court had already found guilt. Other restrictions involve Teksavvy, who must be fully reimbursed for their costs incurred when handing over information, which will be restricted to names and addresses only. This data may not be handed to any other entity, including to the public or media. Significant restrictions to protect subscribers Describing the above safeguards as “significant”, Canadian lawyer Michael Geist says that the restrictions could affect the financial viability of troll-type activity. “Given the cap on liability and the increased legal costs the court involvement will create (not to mention paying legal fees for the ISP), it calls into question whether copyright trolling litigation is economically viable in Canada. The federal court was clearly anxious to discourage such tactics and its safeguards certainly make such actions less likely,” Geist concludes. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.    |
| Twitter Blocks Kickass.to Links, Says They’re Unsafe Posted: 20 Feb 2014 03:15 PM PST
The site indexes millions of torrents, some of which are then shared through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. For example, author Alex Sayf Cummings posted a link to a torrent of his book Music Piracy And The Remaking Of American Copyright in a tweet recently. Cummings was obviously inviting people to grab a free copy from the site, but Twitter is not making that easy. Those who click on the link in question are presented with an ominous warning. “The site you were trying to visit may be unsafe! This link has been flagged as potentially harmful.” In the grey-on-black fine print in the bottom right corner, Twitter points out that people can proceed to the site at their own risk, but not everybody may be that gutsy. The big question of course is why Twitter classified KickassTorrents as an unsafe website. TF contacted the company for an explanation, but 24 hours later we have yet to hear back. On its website Twitter claims to use Google’s safe browsing diagnostic tool, but the Kickass.to domain is not blocked here. Perhaps even stranger, KickassTorrent’s old domain Kat.ph gets the same blocking treatment. It appears that Twitter has decided on its own that the torrent site is a no-go zone for users. This is an option, as the site explains in one of its help sections. “Even if Google’s diagnostic report of the URL is clean, we may decide to continue blocking the URL on Twitter as potentially harmful,” Twitter notes. Whether the fact that KickassTorrent’s links to a lot of copyright infringing content has anything to do with the blockade is unknown. Previously Facebook restricted access to The Pirate Bay for the same reason, but this decision was reversed after a few months. Thus far, Kickass.to appears to be the only large torrent site that’s blocked by Twitter, but perhaps it’s just the start? Photo: Michael Theis Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.   |
| RIAA Accuses Grooveshark of Making Piracy a Job Requirement Posted: 20 Feb 2014 07:34 AM PST
The case, which sees Arista Music heading up a list of labels including Atlantic, Sony, UMG and Warner, has Grooveshark standing accused of massive copyright infringement. Grooveshark sees itself as nothing more than a music-only version of YouTube with all the legal protections that affords. Needless to say, the music giants frame things quite differently. Motion for summary judgment This week the labels went for the throat, moving for an order granting summary judgment against Grooveshark parent company Escape Media and Grooveshark founders Sam Tarantino and Joshua Greenberg. “By any objective measure, Grooveshark is a linear descendant of infringing music services such as Napster, Grokster, and LimeWire, all shuttered by federal courts for large-scale copyright infringement,” law firm Jenner & Block wrote on behalf of the labels. “Like those pirate services, Grooveshark illegally provides tens of millions of users with access to a comprehensive library of popular music overwhelmingly comprised of unlicensed copies of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings.” The twist in the Grooveshark story is that the labels say that in order to build a comprehensive catalog of music, the company’s founders “expressly and repeatedly” instructed Escape employees to upload as many sound recordings to Grooveshark as possible, including ones from the plaintiffs’ catalogs. Encouraged employees to upload music – the early days Many of the labels’ claims date back to Grooveshark’s early days as P2P sharing software ‘Sharkbyte’, a service they say was trying to grow its catalog of musical offerings. The labels say that in his deposition Tarantino admitted that the company intended to “vacuum in” all of the infringing music available on other then-current P2P networks with the aim of later monetizing it, “by selling pirated copies of Plaintiffs’ sound recordings to Grooveshark users for profit.” And this is where the labels’ claims get very serious indeed. The RIAA says that Grooveshark’s founders instructed employees to create user accounts and store “hundreds of thousands of digital music files on their computers” with the aim of uploading these files to other service users. “Thus, Defendants provided a substantial portion of the infringing content files used for the initial Grooveshark service,” the labels explain. Citing information reportedly obtained from emails, sundry documents, and testimony from former Grooveshark employees, the labels claim that Tarantino and Greenburg made it very clear that all employees were expected to upload as much music as possible into the Grooveshark system, including the most popular current songs. The aim, the labels say, was for Grooveshark to get big first, with an eye on striking licensing deals later. Directly quoting comments made by Escape Media’s Chairman, Grooveshark “bet the company on the fact that [it] is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission.” Centralizing Grooveshark Due to its peer-to-peer nature, the system preceding today’s Grooveshark required that users remain online in order to seed plenty of content, meaning that when those users disappeared, so did the music. The labels say that by introducing changes, Grooveshark made their service more commercially viable. “In order to overcome this limitation, in June 2007, Defendants began to utilize their central servers – internally referred to as their ‘cache’ – as a vast central storage library for all of the music files available on the Grooveshark P2P Network (hereinafter the "Central Music Library"). As a result, users had access to all the music in the Central Music Library regardless of the number of users online at the time,” the labels write. Those changes, they say, only came about through yet more infringement, with Grooveshark’s founders “repeatedly instructing” employees to upload infringing content. “Simply put, Defendants made it a job requirement that Escape's employees engage in copyright infringement in order to attract users and thus benefit Defendants,” they write. Web-based Grooveshark The labels add that when Grooveshark introduced its current web-streaming model infringement continued, as “Escape employees regularly uploaded files to Grooveshark (including copies of popular sound recordings owned by Plaintiffs) in order to ‘test’ the functionality of the uploading process.” In 2009 the record companies say they sent numerous DMCA notices to Grooveshark which “threatened to diminish” the Grooveshark library. A sample of the alleged uploading activities of Grooveshark employees “As part of this process, Escape's senior officers searched for infringing songs that Defendants had removed in response to DMCA takedown notices and re-uploaded infringing copies of those songs to Grooveshark to ensure that its music catalog was complete.” While the exact number of infringements is redacted in court documents, the labels say that music by Michael Jackson, Prince, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Green Day, Britney Spears, plus tens of thousands of other popular sound recordings had their copyrights infringed. Virtually all of Escape’s employees were identified as serial infringers, the labels say. Liability for infringement As a result of the actions detailed above, the record companies say that Escape Media is liable for both direct and secondary copyright infringement. Vicarious liability (profiting from and failing to prevent infringement), inducement (encouraging employees to infringe), and contributory infringement (assisting employees to infringe) are all in the mix. The recording firms add that founders Sam Tarantino and Joshua Greenberg share personal liability for all of Escape’s infringing activities since they personally participated in and directed the infringing conduct of Escape’s employees. In addition, Tarantino and Greenberg are being held personally liable for direct infringement over their own infringing uploads to the Grooveshark service. Destruction of evidence. In addition to their motion for summary judgment, the labels have filed for evidentiary and monetary sanctions against Escape after the company allegedly engaged in “repeated, willful spoliation of multiple categories of key evidence.” If that evidence had been available it would have shown details of infringement which would’ve “exposed [Escape] to hundreds of millions of dollars” in additional damages. The labels say that Escape destroyed hundreds of thousands of uploading accounts, including one operated by founder Joshua Greenberg. “[It] is an undisputed fact that Escape's Chief Technology Officer, Joshua Greenberg, uploaded a massive volume of infringing copyrighted works to the Grooveshark service. However, despite explicit demands to preserve such evidence, Escape systematically deleted internal database records for Greenberg's user account.” It’s further claimed that other Escape employees deleted their uploading accounts and the company created a script to purge uploading records. Important encryption data was also discarded. “Escape has admitted that it deleted the method of encryption for the Upload Report after the report was produced to UMG thereby rendering it impossible for Plaintiffs to use the report to identify the uploading activities associated with hundreds of undisclosed employee accounts. In other words, Escape knowingly destroyed key evidence of the true scope and scale of its employees' infringement.” As a result of these alleged actions the labels ask the court to impose penalties on Escape to not only punish the company, but to “deter others who might view Escape’s bad-faith litigation tactics as a blueprint for future cases.” Endgame Whether the case will end in summary judgment is yet to be seen but if the pattern for the Hotfile and isoHunt cases are anything to go by, a Grooveshark-terminating agreement could be on the cards in the months to come. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.   |
Do individuals using BitTorrent to download copyright material from the Internet via their ISP have a right to remain anonymous so that they remain out of reach to rightsholders? If so, what remedy will rightsholders have to prevent such infringement?
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