TorrentFreak Email Update

Registrar Liability in Torrent Case is “Common Sense”, Universal Lawyers Say

Posted: 08 Feb 2014 02:24 AM PST

The world’s major entertainment companies are well known for becoming involved in legal battles with file-sharing sites and services. One of the most recent has now ended with a worrying court ruling.

The dispute dates back to last year when Universal Music discovered a torrent of Robin Thicke’s album ‘Blurred Lines’ being made available on popular torrent site H33T. After complaints failed to get the torrent removed, Universal took their case to court and eventually obtained a interim injunction against H33T’s German-based domain registrar, Key-Systems. In order to comply with the court order the company disabled H33T’s DNS entries, taking the entire site offline.

A ruling published this week by the Regional Court of Saarbrücken (pdf) clarified that considering infringement by H33T was “obvious”, Key-Systems could indeed be held liable for their customer’s infringing activities if they fail to take action after becoming aware of a problem.

In comments to TF, Key-Systems lawyer Volker Greimann said that the ruling “made no legal sense” and could have “dire consequences for the kind of services German registrars can provide."

Now lawyers for Universal Music are firing back and disputing Greimann’s assessment of the ruling.

“Mr. Greimann states, the judgment ‘makes no legal sense’ and would threaten the whole business of Registrars. This is not true,” lawyer Miro Bruess from Rasch Legal informs TorrentFreak. “First off, the judgment not only makes sense legally, but also follows common sense.”

Bruess says that H33T was actually a Key-Systems domain reseller and as such Key-Systems was both financially and technically involved in H33T, as well as being aware of the alleged infringement being carried out.

“After our [infringement] notice, Key-Systems had positive knowledge that a copyright infringement was happening on H33T,” Bruess explains.

“[Key-Systems] asked their reseller and the registrant (whom TorrentFreak calls ‘Shelby’, who claimed he would step forward in court but later decided against this) but neither of them took action to stop the infringements,” he adds.

Bruess says at this point it became “quite clear” that as “the only party involved who could stop the infringement”, Key-Systems needed to take action. That involved Key-Systems effectively disabling the whole domain, but Bruess says that was not his company’s request. They had only one requirement – to disable access to a single URL.

“In essence, Rasch Legal had not asked Key-Systems to close down h33t.com, but to stop one single torrent from being communicated to the public through h33t and h33t’s tracker,” he explains.

“This can be compared to a notice and takedown request. Most courts around the world agree that ISPs have to react to a notice and takedown request and if they don’t, they become liable. This is exactly what happened here.”

Key-Systems say they intend have the ruling overturned but in the meantime the stated aim of Universal Music appears to have failed, as the album Blurred Lines is still available via the H33T.to website. However, it would be naive to think that Universal would go to all this trouble for a single URL takedown – it can be safely presumed they had bigger goals in mind right from the start.

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

Comcast Sent 625,000 Copyright Alerts to ‘Pirating’ Customers

Posted: 07 Feb 2014 08:59 AM PST

February last year Comcast started sending copyright alerts to customers who use BitTorrent to pirate movies, TV-shows and music.

The anti-piracy measure is part of the "six strikes" Copyright Alert System, a partnership between five major ISPs and copyright holders. Those who are “caught” receive an email with details on the file that was allegedly shared, and customers who continue to pirate face a variety of mitigation measures, including bandwidth limitations.

Thus far the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which oversees the program, has released no details on the volume of alerts sent out by ISPs. However, based on information from several sources we can now report that Comcast has sent out more than 625,000 warnings since the system went into effect.

The total 625,000 represents roughly 3% of all Comcast subscriber accounts and an average of nearly 2,000 emails per day. The number of affected customers is believed to be lower though, as some accounts have received multiple warnings.

The information further shows that the number of issued warnings increased slightly over the year. This makes sense as the ISPs wanted to start slow, not knowing what response to expect from subscribers.

At this point it is still unknown what percentage of Comcast customers have received multiple warnings, or how many reached the mitigation stage. The Internet providers are not allowed to share this data in public without permission from the majority of CCI’s Executive Committee.

TorrentFreak asked Comcast to verify our findings, but the Internet provider would not confirm nor deny that it sent out 625,000 alerts.

“We have no official, authorized information to announce at this time,” a Comcast spokesperson said.

The 625,000 number applies to Comcast alone, and the total number of copyright alerts is believed to run into the millions. Comcast is the ISP with the most BitTorrent users in the United States, so it’s expected that the other providers have sent out less warnings.

Part of Comcast’s 1st Copyright Alert

TorrentFreak also reached out to the CCI who did not comment on the number of alerts that were sent out by Comcast. The group told us, however, that they are happy with the progress made so far and are looking forward to the upcoming one-year anniversary of the launch of the Copyright Alert System.

“During this initial period, we have been pleased with the way the system is working and have, on a regular basis, been observing the system and reviewing its progress and effectiveness,” a CCI spokesperson told us.

For those who received warnings last February, the one year anniversary is good news. Under the Copyright Alerts System all “strikes” will expire and reset 12 months after the last alert was received.

The CCI told TF that they are still evaluating the system and will release more details about its scope and effectiveness in the months to come.

“We are in the process now of working with our partners and Advisory Board members to evaluate the first-year of the Copyright Alert System and anticipate sharing our observations as soon as they are complete.”

Besides the sheer volume of alerts, CCI will look at a variety of factors to determine the effectiveness of the program. This includes the proportion of subscribers of each ISP who ceased receiving alerts at each step, and the number of P2P Online Infringements copyright holders detected per month.

The number of warnings Comcast has sent to its customers thus far is significant. However, whether this has put a dent in local piracy rates has yet to be seen.

Last year we reported that instead of kicking their download habit, many people took measures to prevent being monitored. In addition, we observed that U.S. traffic to The Pirate Bay did not decline after the system was implemented.

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