TorrentFreak Email Update

Kim Dotcom Fails in Bid to Suppress FBI Evidence
Open Source Chief at Redhat Hit With Bogus Copyright Claims
Supreme Court Rejects Application of Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde

Kim Dotcom Fails in Bid to Suppress FBI Evidence

Posted: 22 May 2014 11:59 PM PDT

In 2012 following the raid on his New Zealand mansion, Kim Dotcom fought to gain access to the information being held against him by the FBI.

A ruling by District Court Judge David Harvey in May of that year, which stood despite an August appeal, ordered disclosure of all documents relating to the alleged crimes of the so-called Megaupload Conspiracy.

While it was agreed that this information should be made available, an order forbidding publication was handed down in respect to the so-called Record of Case, a 200-page document summarizing an estimated 22 million emails and Skype discussions obtained by the FBI during their investigation.

Last November a sealed court order by US Judge Liam O’Grady already allowed the U.S. Government to share the summary of evidence from the Megaupload case with copyright holders, something which was actioned before the end of the year.

Over in New Zealand, however, Kim Dotcom has been fighting an application by the Crown to make the Record of Case public. That battle came to an end today when Auckland District Court Judge Nevin Dawson rejected an application by Dotcom’s legal team to extend the suppression order placed on the document.

According to RadioNZ, the document contains sensitive information including email and chat conversations which suggest that the Megaupload team knew their users were uploading copyrighted material.

In another setback, further applications by Dotcom to force Immigration New Zealand, the Security Intelligence Service, and several other government departments to hand over information they hold on him, were also rejected by Judge Dawson.

Dotcom’s lawyer Paul Davidson, QC, told Stuff that the battle will continue.

“We will press on with our resolve,” he said.

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

Open Source Chief at Redhat Hit With Bogus Copyright Claims

Posted: 22 May 2014 12:01 PM PDT

As the largest user-generated content site, YouTube employs ContentID, a system that scans uploads and compares them to a list of works in its databases. If a match is found YouTube can take a variety of actions, from disabling the upload entirely to allowing third-party rightsholders to monetize the content.

Sadly, the system is not foolproof, especially when it is fed false data. Only recently a user was hit with bogus claims from a digital distributor after they wrongly claimed monetization rights over a public domain JFK speech.

Yesterday the scattergun approach to claiming rights on content people simply don’t own hit an inappropriate target, to say the least.

Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc, the 6,000 employee giant behind many open source enterprise products including Red Hat Linux. Apparently, even a man with Tiemann’s credentials and copyright awareness can’t escape bogus YouTube claims.

After creating a video recently, Tiemann decided to set it to music. Quite appropriately he headed off to ccMixter, a site which originated as a Creative Commons site a decade ago and one which provides samples, remixes and a cappella tracks under Creative Commons licenses.

Tiemann selected Sunray, a track available under a CC-BY-NC 3.0 Creative Commons license, married it to his video and uploaded it to YouTube. Things didn’t go well.

Straight after the upload a user called “RouteNote” claimed copyright ownership over Tiemann’s video. He filed an immediate dispute and RouteNote promptly dropped the claim. But then things started to get silly.

“I posted new versions of the video that were shorter, but using the same music, and lo, I received several more claims from routenote (and others!),” Tiemann explains.

“I disputed those, which routenote initially released. But here’s where things are broken: less than a day after they released the claim, they filed a new claim, against the same song, in the same video.”

So who are RouteNote? The YouTube user account is linked to a network of 53 channels totaling 21,717,873 views. It links to RouteNote.com, a company offering digital distribution services.

“RouteNote is the leading digital music distributor in the UK” the company claims.

TorrentFreak contacted RouteNote to find out why they’re plaguing Tiemann, but at the time of publication we’ve received no response. But for the Red Hat Open Source chief, however, the nightmare continues.

“In the mean time, others have filed claims against that song, which I have disputed, and some of those others have released their claims. They have subsequently filed claims against the new versions of the video that contain the same songs,” Tiemann explains.

Making matters worse, AdRev, a company that claims to be “the leading ContentID and Network partner on YouTube”, has also claimed copyright over Tiemann’s upload. But while RouteNote initially dropped their claims, AdRev have not.

“Another entity, AdRev, has rejected my dispute, despite me providing the URL to my source material,” Tiemann explains.

For AdRev, complaints about their copyright claims are nothing new. Their Twitter account is littered with questions about why they are monetizing other people’s content or having strikes placed on their YouTube accounts. In this instance a problem took more than a month to sort out.

Since AdRev rejected his dispute Tiemann now needs to appeal, but as this exchange shows, the company is not initially responsive.

Add the risk of getting a YouTube account strike if it all goes bad, Tiemann wonders what effect this is having on creators.

“So now I need to file an appeal, which puts my account at risk of a copyright strike. How many others have abandoned the fight at this point? How many Creative Commons artists are seeing their works abandoned because of this bad behavior on the YouTube frontier?”

While alleged infringers are quick to be punished by the YouTube system, there is no come back on those making the erroneous complaints. This is something that YouTube definitely needs to address.

“Banks got into a lot of trouble for robo-signing mortgages. I think that all this robo-enforcement of copyright is going to end badly for everybody, too,” Tiemann concludes.

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

Supreme Court Rejects Application of Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde

Posted: 22 May 2014 06:07 AM PDT

In 2012 Sweden's Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running criminal case against the founders of The Pirate Bay.

This meant that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström would stand.

Both Svartholm and Lundström have completed their jail sentences, but Peter Sunde decided not to give up without a fight. First he submitted his case to the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR), and after that was rejected he tried again at the Swedish Supreme Court this year.

A childhood friend of Sunde took on the case as part of his legal training, helped by several law professors. Despite an earlier rejection by the Supreme Court, the legal team believed that there was a good chance the case would be re-opened based on recent EU rulings and regulations.

Today, however, the Supreme Court announced that it will not re-open the case. According to Swedish Radio the Court ruled that there is no new information that requires them to revisit their earlier decision.

TorrentFreak spoke to Peter Sunde, who isn’t really surprised by the outcome. His friend felt that justice would be served, but he never got his hopes up too high.

“It doesn’t affect me that much, it’s just more evidence that Sweden has no intention to follow the law or EU-regulations at all,” Sunde said.

Sunde will now continue working on several of his startups, including the NSA-proof messenger app Heml.is, for which he raised more than $150,000 through a crowd-funding campaign.

In addition, Sunde is also one of the Finnish Pirate Party candidates for the European Parliament elections later this week. If he is elected, Sunde hopes to do something about the negative effects of copyright law in Europe, something he is personally familiar with.

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