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Pirate Bay Blockade Dismissed By Icelandic Supreme Court

Posted: 03 May 2014 02:31 AM PDT

Following in the footsteps of copyright groups around Europe, last year representatives of the music and movie industry in Iceland decided to take action against The Pirate Bay.

Several copyright groups, including the local RIAA equivalent ‘STEF’ and MPAA equivalent ‘SMAIS’, filed a complaint with the police last October. Their aim was to obtain an injunction compelling local Internet service providers to block not only TPB, but also the largest Iceland-focused private BitTorrent tracker, Deildu.net.

"Blocking access to websites that offer a wide range of entertainment without permission of the copyright holders has been proven effective in neighboring countries, and has a strong foundation in EU legislation," the groups said.

The request for an injunction, filed by four entertainment industry groups against five local ISPs including Vodafone, was initially rejected by a Reykjavík magistrate. As a result the case ended up in the District Court of Reykjavik in March but was dismissed when the Court decided that only music group STEF had the rights to claim injunctive relief.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court which handed down its decision this week. Affirming the decision of the District Court, the Supreme Court highlighted problems in two key areas.

Firstly, it appears that once the district magistrate rejected the original blocking request, the matter should have been referred to the District Court within a week. It took the entertainment groups twelve days, well outside the requirements prescribed by law.

Furthermore, while the complaint was filed in the names of four organizations, only one was recognized by the Supreme Court as having the right to bring this kind of complaint. While it was agreed that music group STEF has lawful standing to fight in court, the others had only local distribution rights.

“The fact remains that STEF can make these injunction requests. But not all of these groups together,” lawyer Tómas Jónsson told local media.

After the Supreme Court’s rejection the case can now return to the District Court where it’s likely that STEF will continue the process alone. If it succeeds the net result will be no different than if all parties had obtained an injunction.

Whether the Court will subsequently grant a blockade of The Pirate Bay remains to be seen though, as this type of injunction is yet to be tested under Icelandic copyright law.

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

HBO Demands Takedown of “Pirated” Game of Thrones Trailers

Posted: 02 May 2014 09:37 AM PDT

thrones Game of Thrones is without a doubt the most pirated TV-show on the Internet.

The popular series entered its fourth season early April and broke the record of most people sharing a pirated copy simultaneously. While several people connected to Game of Thrones have noted that piracy might actually benefit the show, HBO executives are clamping down on widespread piracy nonetheless.

Over the past few weeks the TV-network has sent dozens of takedown requests to Google, listing thousands of allegedly pirated copies of their work. Many of these are links to torrent sites and streaming portals where recent episodes can be downloaded for free.

With these takedown requests HBO hopes to make it harder for people to find unauthorized copies. However, a careful inspection of the notices by TorrentFreak reveals that promotional material such as trailers are also being censored.

Unfortunately for HBO, Google happily processed these requests and removed the “infringing” trailers from their search results. As can be seen below, a search for “Game of Thrones trailer torrent” includes a notice that several results have been removed on copyright grounds.

GoT trailer torrent search results

Looking at the individual notices, it becomes clear that these are indeed links to promotional trailers which should be freely available to the public. The DMCA notice pictured in the screenshot below lists several of these URLs, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

GoT trailer takedowns

gotdmca

The current crackdown on Game of Thrones runs counter to comments from director David Petrarca who said that piracy generates much-needed "cultural buzz." These dubious takedowns may create a buzz as well, but probably not the kind HBO is hoping for.

As for the trailer takedowns, we expect that these have been taken down in error. That wouldn’t be HBO’s first mistake either, as the company previously tried to censor their own website HBO.com because it apparently contained infringing content.

Perhaps their automated takedown tools need some further adjustments?

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