TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Dotcom Heads to Supreme Court to Appeal Raid Decision
- Pirate Party Launches Senate Petition to Fight Site Blocking
- Google Asked to Remove 100 Million Pirate Search Results in 2014
| Dotcom Heads to Supreme Court to Appeal Raid Decision Posted: 06 May 2014 01:43 AM PDT
In mid 2012 a High Court judge found that the warrants were not only overbroad but also illegal, providing a big boost to Dotcom’s extradition battle prospects with the United States. However, this February the Megaupload founder suffered a setback when the Court of Appeal overturned the earlier High Court ruling. While it was agreed the warrants contained flaws, the judges found that overall the warrants were legal. But it’s not over yet. The Supreme Court has now granted Dotcom leave to appeal the Court of Appeal ruling from February. “The Supreme Court granted us permission to argue the validity of search warrants used in this raid,” Dotcom announced on Twitter. The hearing is set for June 11 to June 12. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.    |
| Pirate Party Launches Senate Petition to Fight Site Blocking Posted: 06 May 2014 12:48 AM PDT
Just a few days ago Vice President Joe Biden questioned how a country could consider itself "a law abiding nation", "when they are stealing the most valuable intellectual ideas of our country." Few civilized country’s escape the wrath of Biden and his friends in Hollywood and yesterday news broke that after continuous pressure from the studios, the Australian government will soon consider the introduction of two new anti-piracy mechanisms. The first, the graduated response, has been documented many times before and is already present in several countries. Site blocking is more controversial though, since despite being demanded by Hollywood abroad, the same is not practiced at home. Today the Australian Pirate Party says that it will do all it can to ensure that neither mechanism lands on Aussie soil. With the launch of a petition resting on the notion that neither technique has been shown to be effective against piracy, the Pirates hope to stop the juggernaut in its tracks. “There has been no evidence advanced that graduated response regimes are effective. In fact, academic literature on the matter has been skeptical that they have any measurable impact on reducing file-sharing,” Brendan Molloy, Councillor of Pirate Party Australia, told TorrentFreak in a statement. “Our petition is intended to remind the Senate of its obligations as the House of Review. It lays out detailed reasons for opposition to the proposals — including that neither will work — and calls on the Senate to reject any legislation instituting either a graduated response scheme or website blocking.” Research is available to back up the Party’s stance. A paper published in January 2014 by U.S. and French researchers found that three-strikes-style regimes did little to reduce piracy. Also in January, the Court of The Hague ruled that the web blockade previously ordered against The Pirate Bay was not only disproportionate, but also ineffective. Like many before him, Molloy says that something needs to be done about Australians being treated as second-class citizens when it comes availability and reasonable pricing of content. Dealing with these key areas will go somewhere towards solving the piracy conundrum. “Geographical market segmentation is causing Australians to pay more for digital content. Is it any wonder Australians are called ‘the world’s worst pirates’ when we are paying significantly more than everyone else? Surely these issues are more deserving of attention than attempting to introduce schemes that have been proven to be ineffective?” The Pirate Party petition can be found on Change.org. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   |
| Google Asked to Remove 100 Million Pirate Search Results in 2014 Posted: 05 May 2014 12:01 PM PDT
These requests have increased dramatically over the years. In 2008, the search engine received only a few dozen takedown notices during the entire year, but today it can process in excess of a million in a single day. Adding up the numbers reported in Google’s Transparency Report, we found that since January 2014 Google has been asked to remove over 100,000,000 links to infringing webpages. Most of the reported webpages have indeed been removed and no longer appear in Google’s search results.  The massive surge in removal requests is controversial. It’s been reported that some pages contain no copyrighted material, due to mistakes or abuse, but are deleted nonetheless. Google has a pretty good track record of catching these errors, but since manual review of all links is undoable, some URLs are removed in error. On the other end of the spectrum, copyright holders are also far from satisfied. While Google does its best to comply with its obligations under current law, some industry groups claim that the search giant can and should do more. For the RIAA the staggering amount of takedown requests only confirms the notion that the process isn’t very effective. Brad Buckles, RIAA executive vice president of anti-piracy, previously suggested that Google should start banning entire domains from its search results. "Every day produces more results and there is no end in sight. We are using a bucket to deal with an ocean of illegal downloading," Buckles said. "Isn't it simply logical and fair at some point to conclude that such links are infringing without requiring content owners to keep expending time and resources to have the link taken down?" Google is doing its best to address the concerns of copyright holders. A few months ago the company released a report detailing the various anti-piracy measures it uses. However, the company also stressed that copyright holders can do more to prevent piracy themselves. Without legal options it's hard to beat unauthorized copying, Google argues. "Piracy often arises when consumer demand goes unmet by legitimate supply. As services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated, the best way to combat piracy is with better and more convenient legitimate services,” the company explained. “The right combination of price, convenience, and inventory will do far more to reduce piracy than enforcement can." The apparent standoff has also piqued the interest of U.S. lawmakers. Earlier this year the House Judiciary Subcommittee had a hearing on the DMCA takedown issue, and both copyright holders, Internet service providers, and other parties are examining what they can do to optimize the process. In the meantime, the avalanche of removal requests is expected to continue, at an increasing rate. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   |
Following the huge raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion in January 2012, questions started to be asked about the legality of the warrants used to launch the operation.
In the hope of steering prospective customers away from pirate sites, copyright holders are overloading Google with DMCA takedown notices.| You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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