TorrentFreak Email Update

Piracy ‘Whistleblower’ to Remain Anonymous, Court Rules
How Sweden Gained Access to a Canada-Hosted Torrent Site
This Is How The UK Piracy Warnings Will Work

Piracy ‘Whistleblower’ to Remain Anonymous, Court Rules

Posted: 18 May 2014 04:24 AM PDT

In 2010, Universal Music Group (UMG) sued Grooveshark owners Escape Media in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, claiming that the company infringed their copyrights by storing and subsequently distributing tracks to which UMG holds the copyrights.

In 2011, news site Digital Music News (DMN) published an article which contained claims from a member of a rock band that Grooveshark had illegally hosted the band's music and refused to take it down when notified. The article attracted around 100 comments from DMN readers, one of whom claimed to be an employee of Escape Media.

The commenter, who posted under the name “Visitor”, claimed that he had regularly received "direct orders from the top" at Escape to upload music to Grooveshark’s servers. Worse still, “Visitor” claimed that the company would not fully remove infringing content, even if artists or music labels complained.

These allegations were viewed as problematic by Escape since in order for a service provider to gain immunity under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it must remove copyrighted material once it becomes aware that an infringement has taken place.

So, in an effort to unmask this supposed employee of theirs, in January 2012 Escape served a subpoena on Digital Music News in order to obtain “Visitor’s” identity. After DMN refused to comply, in March 2012 Escape petitioned the Los Angeles Superior Court for enforcement. DMN was subsequently ordered to comply but promptly filed an appeal.

DMN argued that unmasking “Visitor” would not lead to the discovery of evidence admissible in UMG’s New York lawsuit against Escape (identifying information about “Visitor” had all been deleted) and that enforcement of the subpoena would infringe on the First Amendment rights of both DMN and “Visitor”.

Ultimately the court decided that since Escape had presented a prima facie case that “Visitor’s” comments were libelous, no First Amendment protection was available. DMN was ordered to comply with the subpoena and provide a copy of its server to Escape. DMN copied the servers but lodged an appeal in attempt to avoid handing them over.

This week the Court of Appeal of the State of California handed down its decision and it’s bad news for Escape.

Escape had argued that proving “Visitor’s” comments to be false would help them show that the company did not supervise direct infringement of UMG’s copyrights. The Court rejected Escape’s basis for needing access to “Visitor’s” identity stating that this “out-of-court quarrel is of no consequence to the determination of UMG's lawsuit.”

Escape enjoyed no success on the privacy front either.

“Even if Visitor's identifying information was reasonably calculated to lead to
admissible evidence, his or her right to privacy under the California Constitution would outweigh Escape's need for the information,” the Court said.

“That interest begins with Visitor's need for a venue from which to be heard without fear of interference or suppression. Visitor's anonymity also frees him or her from fear of retaliation, an even more compelling interest if Visitor truly is an Escape employee, as represented, because exposure could endanger not only his or her privacy but also livelihood.”

The Court concluded with a summary of its opinion as to the value of “Visitor’s” comments.

“Visitor has done nothing more than provide commentary about an ongoing public dispute in a forum that could hardly be more obscure — the busy online comments section of a digital trade newspaper,” the Court wrote.

“Such commentary has become ubiquitous on the Internet and is widely perceived to carry no indicium of reliability and little weight. We will not lightly lend the subpoena power of the courts to prove, in essence, that Someone Is Wrong On The Internet.”

With that the Court of Appeal ordered the trial court to vacate its order enforcing the subpoena and thereby protecting “Visitor’s” privacy.

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

How Sweden Gained Access to a Canada-Hosted Torrent Site

Posted: 17 May 2014 01:43 PM PDT

Earlier this week tips coming into TorrentFreak suggested that a relatively small torrent site known as Sparvar had come under the scrutiny of the police. Sure enough, the site subsequently went offline.

Problems had been building for more than two years. Swedish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance (Antipiratbyran) had built up an interest in Sparvar, a site directed at a largely Swedish audience. In early 2012 following action against a private site known as Swepiracy, Rights Alliance warned that Sparvar was on their list of targets.

Until this week, however, Sparvar had been hosted in Canada with Montreal-based Netelligent Hosting Services. For some time it had been presumed that hosting a torrent site is Canada is legal, a notion that was recently backed up by Netelligent president Mohamed Salamé.

“[As] long as there are no violations of our [acceptable use policy], we take no actions against torrent sites which are still legal in Canada," Salamé told TF.

Nevertheless, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) still took action against Sparvar. How did this come to pass?

A source familiar with the case who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity told TorrentFreak that Netelligent was served with a data preservation order by the RCMP who were working together with authorities in Sweden.

In the first instance Netelligent were gagged from informing their client about the investigation, presumably so that no data could be tampered with. Netelligent was then sent a hard drive by the RCMP for the purposes of making a copy of the Sparvar server. This was to be handed over to their authorities.

We’re led to believe that Netelligent put up a fight to protect their customer’s privacy but in the end they were left with no choice but to comply with the orders. And here’s why.

MLAT, or Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty agreements, enable countries to gather, share and exchange information in order to enforce the law. Since 2001, Canada has had an MLAT with Sweden and since there was a criminal investigation underway in Sweden against Sparvar, Canada and Netelligent were legally obligated to provide assistance in the case.

So what does this mean for other sites hosted in Canada? Well, according to our source anyone running a site should be aware of the countries that Canada has MLAT agreements with, just in case another country decides to launch a case.

Those countries can be found here but they include everyone from the United States to Australia, from China to Russia, and many countries across Europe including the UK, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, France and Italy.

Finally, our source informs us that while cooperation in criminal cases has obviously been requested before, to the extent of his knowledge this is the first time that a torrent site has been a target.

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

This Is How The UK Piracy Warnings Will Work

Posted: 17 May 2014 06:05 AM PDT

In an effort to curb online piracy, the movie and music industries have reached an agreement with the UK’s leading ISPs to send warnings to alleged copyright infringers.

Thus far details on the proposed system have been scarce, leading to the wildest assumptions and in some cases a core misunderstanding of how the process will work.

Earlier this week, for example, the CEO of a smaller UK Internet provider said that he will refuse to join the program as ISPs shouldn’t be compelled to monitor everything their customers do. Others fear that they may receive a warning for downloading an MP3 from a file-hosting site, or for streaming a copyrighted YouTube video.

All of the above have nothing to do with the proposed measures.

To clear up some of the confusion TorrentFreak spoke to a source closely involved in the Vcap system. We were informed that Vcap will be part of a larger campaign to inform the public about copyright issues. For this reason, the warnings, or alerts rather, will focus on educating people about how they can access content legally, much like the scheme currently operating in the U.S.

The four ISPs who are confirmed to be involved in Vcap are BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, but other providers could join in at a later stage. Below we have summarized how the Vcap program is expected to work, including several new details.

What will be monitored?

According to information obtained by TorrentFreak the Vcap system will only apply to P2P file-sharing. In theory this means that the focus will be almost exclusively on BitTorrent, as other P2P networks have relatively low user bases.

Consequently, those who use Usenet providers or file-hosting services such as 4Shared, RapidShare and Hotfile are not at risk. The same is true for those who use streaming sites. In other words, the Vcap program only covers part of all online piracy.

Will all P2P file-sharers receive a warning?

TorrentFreak has learned that not all P2P file-sharers will receive a warning. The system will focus on people whose Internet accounts have been used to share copyrighted material more than once. This is different from the U.S. model where people get an alert after the first offense.

The focus on repeat infringers is a logical choice since there are millions of file-sharers in the UK and the copyright holders and ISPs have agreed to cap the warnings at 2.5 million over three years.

Who will be monitoring these copyright infringements?

While ISPs take part in the scheme, they will not monitor subscribers’ file-sharing activities. The tracking will be done by a third party company. The most likely candidate is MarkMonitor (Dtecnet) who are also the technology partner for the U.S. Copyright Alert System.

This tracking company collects IP-addresses from BitTorrent swarms and sends its findings directly to the Internet providers. The lists with infringing IP-addresses are not shared with the record labels, movie studios or other third parties.

Each ISP will keep a database of the alleged infringers and send them appropriate warnings. If the ISPs get approval from the Information Commissioner's Office, recorded infringements will be stored for a year after which they will be deleted.

Will any Internet accounts be disconnected?

There are no disconnections or mitigation measures for repeat infringers under the Vcap program. Alleged file-sharers will get up to four warnings and all subsequent offenses will be ignored.

The source we spoke with clarified that it’s not the intention of Vcap to stop the most hardcore file-sharers. The program is mostly focused on educating casual infringers about the legal alternatives to piracy.

Can the monitoring be circumvented?

The answer to the previous questions already shows that users have plenty of options to bypass the program. They can simply switch to other means of downloading, but there are more alternatives.

BitTorrent users could hide their IP-addresses through proxy services and VPNs for example. After the U.S. Copyright Alert Program launched last year there was a huge increase in demand for these kind of anonymity services.

So how scary is the Vcap anti-piracy plan?

While we can’t say anything too conclusive, it appears that the main purpose is to inform casual infringers about their inappropriate behavior. The focus lies on education, although the warnings also serve as a deterrent by pointing out that people are not anonymous. For some this may be enough to switch to legal alternatives.

All in all the proposed measures are fairly reasonable, especially compared to other countries where fines and internet connections are on the table. Whether it will be successful is an entirely different question of course, and one which will only be answered when the first results come in.

Finally, it’s worth noting that if Vcap fails it’s not automatically a win for the pirates. A few months ago the Government promised to “bring the Digital Economy Act into force as soon as practicable,” which will result in more stringent anti-piracy measures.

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