TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Supreme Court Denies Kim Dotcom Access to U.S. Evidence
- Anti-Piracy Outfit Pirates Article and Images For Own Press Release
- PayPal Cuts Off Torrent Streaming Service Streamza
| Supreme Court Denies Kim Dotcom Access to U.S. Evidence Posted: 20 Mar 2014 02:59 PM PDT
Despite the severity of the charges, Megaupload’s legal team does not have insight into all of the relevant documents the U.S. Government relied upon to arrive at its conclusions. Through the New Zealand courts Dotcom and his fellow defendants have requested access to this withheld information. To mount a proper defense they want to see the extent to which the U.S. authorities can back up their criminal charges. Initially the District Court granted the request for full access to the U.S. evidence. However, March last year these rulings were overturned by the Court of Appeal, which concluded that the United States could move forward with a summary case. After the defeat Dotcom and his legal team quickly filed an appeal at the Supreme Court, which today ruled against the entrepreneur and his associates. According to the Court’s ruling, the District Court was wrong to order full disclosure of all U.S. evidence. The Supreme Court states that the New Zealand Extradition Act doesn’t require a foreign country to share all evidence with the accused, and the District Court had no statutory power to rule otherwise. After hearing the verdict Dotcom responded on Twitter with a sad face. “Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent,” he quoted a few minutes later. Earlier this week Dotcom enjoyed success in another legal matter by obtaining a gag order against his former bodyguard Wayne Tempero. After resigning a few months ago, Tempero was supposedly planning to make “secret revelations” about Dotcom’s private life. Under the injunction obtained by Dotcom, Tempero is “restrained from using or disclosing to any person, firm, corporation or entity, any confidential or trade information acquired whilst working for Kim Dotcom.” The former bodyguard is reportedly going to appeal the gag order in the hope of regaining his free speech rights. There is also talk of a possible lawsuit against his former boss. For now, however, Dotcom’s legal team will shift its focus to the upcoming extradition hearing. After yet another delay, the hearing is currently scheduled to take place in July this year. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.    |
| Anti-Piracy Outfit Pirates Article and Images For Own Press Release Posted: 20 Mar 2014 11:24 AM PDT
The Southern African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT) clearly appreciated the significance of the development, with their CEO Corné Guldenpfennig explaining they had caught the man by employing a hacker. The group further clarified via a piece on their own website. “The senior investigator on the E-Task Team is an internationally accredited CEH, or certified ethical hacker. This team was able to identify, profile, and trace the uploader based on their investigation on the Internet,” SAFACT wrote, adding: “When asked about the significance of the case, Guldenpfennig said that it is a first for South Africa and that they made extremely certain of all the rights issues around this situation.” Unfortunately, making sure “of all the rights issues” wasn’t something carried out by SAFACT in respect of their own website. Let’s take a look at an excerpt from the SAFACT announcement currently displayed on their site, with the focus on the last few lines.  Funnily enough, it turns out that the much of the SAFACT article, minus a few alterations that would identify the source, was lifted from an article written by Jan Vermeulen for MyBroadband.co.nz.  But lifting the text from a news outlet and passing it off as their own work wasn’t the end of the matter for SAFACT. HTXT.africa has noticed some other issues which for a major pro-copyright group should be a major source of embarrassment. The problem relates to the image the anti-piracy outfit published alongside their ‘version’ of the MyBroadband piece. Courtesy of Google cache, here it is:  As can be seen from this Google reverse image search, the center photograph is actually related to the arrest of a LulzSec member carried out by the Australian police and published without the necessary Reuters credit. The fact that the police were Australian was hidden, however, after someone working for SAFACT took the image (from a video shown on The Guardian) and Photoshopped out “Australian Federal” from the officer’s coat leaving just “police” behind. (Original below)  In an email to htxt.co.za, SAFACT CEO Corné Guldenpfennig laid the blame for the image (not the article) at the feet of their web design company. “I wish to confirm that SAFACT would never intentionally infringe on any individual or company's intellectual property rights as it is the mission of SAFACT to protect and enforce IPR,” Guldenpfennig said. But things really take a turn for the weird when one notes that although SAFACT later removed the unlicensed image and replaced it with the image here, they have since taken that down and replaced it with a new version of the unlicensed Reuters image. Quite bizarrely SAFACT has animated the graphic in a way that only highlights the fact that they ‘shopped the original image. You can see it here, but we’ve included it below for reference.  Quite possibly the most bizarre response to a copyright issue this year. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   |
| PayPal Cuts Off Torrent Streaming Service Streamza Posted: 20 Mar 2014 05:13 AM PDT
Last summer Polish developer and Wikidot CEO Michal Frackowiak launched Streamza, a torrent download service that lets users stream music and movies securely to their PC, TV, iPhone or iPad. Streamza has been growing steadily ever since and welcomes thousands of new users each month. Earlier this week, however, the developer was presented with some bad news. Without prior warning, PayPal stopped providing payment services to Streamza and limited the associated account. That also means that all funds have been frozen for the time being. “They emailed to inform me that my PayPal account had been reviewed and that Streamza does not comply with their policies. My account became ‘limited’ until I removed PayPal from checkout and agreed to their policies, which I did immediately,” Michal informs TF. The PayPal ban is a major setback for Streamza, as it will no longer be able to process new and recurring membership fees from premium subscribers. At the time of writing the PayPal account is still locked, and Michal hasn’t heard from PayPal after the initial email. As usual, PayPal remains vague about the precise reason for the ban. The payment provider mentioned that Streamza violated their Acceptable Use Policy, which suggests that PayPal is concerned about possible infringing uses of Streamza.  PayPal’s policies don’t allow “infringing” services to accept payments. In addition, the company requires file-sharing services to be pre-approved. “Service Requiring Pre-Approval: Offering online dating services; providing file sharing services or access to newsgroups; or selling alcoholic beverages,” PayPal’s AUP reads. This approvals process requires services to agree to a list of strict terms and conditions. As can be seen below, this includes full disclosure of the processes that are in place to deter piracy, and allowing PayPal to actively monitor their service for copyright infringements.  While Streamza doesn’t promote copyright infringement in any way, it could be used to download or stream pirated files, much like any other streaming or download services including YouTube. Michal believes, however, that the payment provider is more strict with smaller players. “When looking at these policies I wonder how the hell Mega.co.nz can work with PayPal. Somehow I am not that surprised: rules between two bigger players can be different from between a bigger player and a smaller one,” Michal tells TF. Technically, PayPal may have the right to cut off Streamza under its policies, but it would have been appropriate to send an early warning. Over the past few days the service could only accept payments via Bitcoin, which is hurting business. Due to personal circumstances Michal had plans to auction off Streamza, and the PayPal issue is the straw that broke the camel’s back. He is accepting bids on Flippa and hopes someone is willing to take over the service, to keep the 34,000 registered users happy. “I believe that after half a year of running Streamza I created something cool. A project that some people love. It’s not only a great tech and user interface, but a service that fills a niche,” Michal says. “Personally I hope someone smart can take it from here. It’s a really good piece of tech and a project that has its fans.” Update: A few hours after publication Michal heard back from PayPal. He can enter the pre-approval process to accept payments for file sharing. This means that Streamza has to comply with the terms listed above. Until this process is completed Streamza can’t process PayPal payments, but the other account restrictions have been lifted. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   |
Back in December authorities in South Africa made their first ever arrest of an online movie pirate. The individual, who was connected to a leak of a high-profile local movie on The Pirate Bay, quickly became the focus of the country’s main movie-related anti-piracy group.
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