TorrentFreak Email Update

Court Hands Google a Worldwide Site Blocking Injunction
Torrent Domain Suspensions Damage Credibility, Registrar Says
Flixtor Finds Anti-Piracy Investigator on Its Doorstep, Shuts Down
“No Piracy” Symbol Added to New Unicode Standard

Court Hands Google a Worldwide Site Blocking Injunction

Posted: 18 Jun 2014 03:08 AM PDT

Google’s dominance of the Internet, particularly in search, has seen the company become embroiled in the disputes of countless other companies.

Day after day, Google is expected to take action in third parties’ intellectual property complaints to avoid becoming liable itself. Prime examples can be found in the millions of DMCA-style notices the company processes each week. Google must remove those entries or face being accused of facilitating infringement.

Another case that Google has become involved in, Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack, sees two Canadian entities face off (the latter previous employees of the former) over stolen intellectual property used to manufacture competing products.

While Google has no direct links to the case, the plaintiffs claim that the company’s search engine is helping to direct people to a network of websites operated by the defendants which are selling the unlawful products. Google already removed links from its Google.ca results voluntarily, but that wasn’t enough for Equustek who wanted broader action.

In a ruling handed down in British Columbia, Justice L.A. Fenlon agreed, ordering Google to remove the infringing websites’ listings from its search results. Despite protestations from Google that any injunction should be limited to Canada and Google.ca, the Judge targeted Google’s central database in the United States, meaning that the ruling has worldwide implications.

“I note again that on the record before me, the injunction would compel Google to take steps in California or the state in which its search engine is controlled, and would not therefore direct that steps be taken around the world,” the Judge wrote.

“That the effect of the injunction could reach beyond one state is a separate issue. Even an order mandating or enjoining conduct entirely within British Columbia may have such extraterritorial, or even worldwide effect.”

Noting that Google did not complain that an order requiring it block the websites would “offend” the law in California where it is based, or any other country from where a search could be carried out, the Judge said that the search giant acknowledged that most countries would recognize that dealing in pirated products was “a legal wrong.”

Further detailing her decision, Judge Fenlon compared Google to an innocent warehouse that had been forbidden from shipping out goods for a company subjected to an injunction. That local order not to ship could also have broader geographical implications.

“Could it sensibly be argued that the Court could not grant the injunction because it would have effects worldwide? The impact of an injunction on strangers to the suit or the order itself is a valid consideration in deciding whether to exercise the Court's jurisdiction to grant an injunction. It does not, however, affect the Court's authority to make such an order,” she wrote.

The Judge also touched on the futility of ordering a blockade of results only on Google.ca, when users can simply switch to another variant.

“For example, even if the defendants' websites were blocked from searches conducted through www.google.ca, Canadian users can go to www.google.co.uk or www.google.fr and obtain results including the defendants' websites. On the record before me it appears that to be effective, even within Canada, Google must block search results on all of its websites,” she explained.

The nature of the ruling has raised concerns with lawyer Michael Geist, who notes that despite being issued by a local court, the ruling has attempted to match Google’s global reach.

“The issues raised by the decision date back to the very beginning of the globalization of the Internet and the World Wide Web as many worried about jurisdictional over-reach with courts applying local laws to a global audience,” Geist explains.

“While there is much to be said for asserting jurisdiction over Google – if it does business in the jurisdiction, the law should apply – attempts to extend blocking orders to a global audience has very troubling implications that could lead to a run on court orders that target the company’s global search results.”

While Google has a little under two weeks to comply with the injunction, its representatives told The Globe and Mail that the decision will be appealed.

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

Torrent Domain Suspensions Damage Credibility, Registrar Says

Posted: 17 Jun 2014 01:09 PM PDT

Over the past four years Homeland Security’s ICE division has seized thousands of domains as part of Operation in Our Sites, an initiative set to celebrate its fourth birthday in a couple of weeks’ time. More recently, however, the momentum has shifted to PIPCU, the City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit.

The unit’s most recent and high-profile action was taken against Torrentz.eu, the world’s largest torrent meta-search engine. Despite the site complying with takedowns (clear evidence of which can be seen on the site where dozens of results are marked as deleted by rightsholders), PIPCU approached Torrentz’s registrar requesting a domain suspension.

The company complied, but the effect was only temporary. Confronted with legal argument that the suspension was unlawful, the Torrentz domain was soon operational again.

While it’s easy to see how this kind of result undermines the credibility of the police, there are other considerations too. According to the registrar responsible for Iceland’s top-level .IS domain, suspensions of this kind target the wrong area.

“Domains can hardly be considered illegal any more than a street address. A street address is not illegal even if there is illegal activity in one apartment at the address,” ISNIC says.

“When a domain is suspended the website or the content itself is not, as became apparent when torrentz.eu was suspended. A suspension of a domain does not lead to a total blocking of the website it points to.”

However, while content may indeed remain available (or in the case of Torrentz, links to other sites, that carry links, that link to content), suspensions still have the ability to disrupt other services associated with a website that are outside the realms of the initial dispute.

“Disruption of email communication and service, unrelated to the website that is meant to be closed, is utterly unnecessary and unacceptable in these instances,” ISNIC explains.

“A suspension of a domain is in a way comparable to banning the use of an address of an apartment building depriving everyone at that particular address of their postal service. Additionally, the suspension of individual domains can affect other domains, specially in the situation when domain service is a registered subdomain.”

Furthermore, according to the registrar the counter-productive effects of domain seizures aren’t limited simply to the technical realm. Perceptions that seizures are unjust persist not only among visitors to the affected domains but also the wider Internet, damaging the reputations of targeted TLDs in the process.

“It should be noted that when registries and registrars are made to suspend domains it can create negative publicity within the internet community, harming the top-level domain and reducing its credibility,” ISNIC says.

“It is difficult to rectify that sort of damage that easily could be avoided with increased awareness and proficiency of the technical workings of the internet.”

It’s worth noting that to date, all attempts at seizing or suspending .IS domains have failed.

“ISNIC has never shut down a domain in response to external requests,” ISNIC’s Björn Róbertsson informs TorrentFreak. “ISNIC however does place domains on hold and automatically re-delegates to parking in case of technical issues – but ISNIC has strict technical requirements for DNS server setup.”

Perhaps finding comfort in this kind security, earlier this month Putlocker.bz moved to an Icelandic domain following pressure from City of London Police. While a court order could potentially force ISNIC to take action against a domain such as this, to date the registrar hasn’t been included in any disputes.

“In case of a court order, the court order would have to be addressed directly to Internet á Íslandi hf. [ISNIC] not to the Registrant. That has never happened,” Róbertsson says.

“Icelandic court orders [regarding domain disputes] have always been addressed to the registrant, and ordered him to stop using or/and to delete the domain.”

In addition to its stance on seizures, Iceland also has a great reputation in respect of privacy, something which prompted Kim Dotcom to announce that the Mega file-storing service could relocate there if local legislation compromises the company’s users.

Whether there will be mass Icelandic domain migrations in the future remains to be seen, but the signs are that ISNIC will put up a fight at the very least, something registrars elsewhere have failed to do.

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

Flixtor Finds Anti-Piracy Investigator on Its Doorstep, Shuts Down

Posted: 17 Jun 2014 07:24 AM PDT

This weekend the website of the movie torrent streaming application Flixtor suddenly went offline, and the same happened to search engine TorrentLookup.com.

Both projects were run by the same team, which is based in Canada, and were slowly but steadily expanding their user bases. This suddenly changed a few days ago when a message posted on both sites announced that the streaming app and search engine were being discontinued.

“We voluntarily decided to close all services of torrentlookup.com. Thanks to everybody that used Flixtor and bought the mobile version. We have reached the finish line,” a message now displays on both sites.

The decision came as a total surprise to users of the site and app. Flixtor, a custom-built Popcorn Time alternative based on the same Peerflix engine, was just a few weeks old.

The Flixtor app had a user interface similar to Popcorn Time, but was not a fork. Instead, it used its own code and the movies/series API from TorrentLookup.com, which claimed to have the latest releases faster.

Flixtor

TorrentFreak got in touch with one of the developers, who informed us that the decision to close was the result of movie industry pressure. The developer in question had an investigator from the MPAA-funded Motion Picture Association Canada come by his house, and it didn’t stop there.

“They were annoying me with phone calls repeatedly, and I talked to them quite a few times,” the developer explained.

The movie industry group only had one goal, and that was to shut down the streaming application and the torrent site. The investigator threatened the developer with legal action if he refused to comply.

“They wanted me to close Flixtor/Torrentlookup and then they would drop the charges against me, which are $20,000 per copyrighted file,” the developer told us.

With the threat of a massive lawsuit on their shoulders, the people behind the two projects decided to pull the plug this weekend. Even if they wanted to, they lack the funds to properly defend themselves in court.

The above shows that, behind the scenes, a lot of pressure is being put on the people who operate torrent sites and related services. It may also explain why some sites simply disappear, or why some of the “Popcorn Time” developers ceased their activities.

TorrentFreak contacted the Motion Picture Association Canada for a comment yesterday, but at the time of publication we were yet to receive a response.

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

“No Piracy” Symbol Added to New Unicode Standard

Posted: 17 Jun 2014 06:46 AM PDT

Unicode is used by billions of people every day, yet most are completely unaware of its existence. This character encoding standard makes it easier to exchange text files and is supported by some of the biggest tech companies around including Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Adobe.

Yesterday the Unicode Consortium released Unicode 7.0, an updated set including 250 new emoji characters.

In addition to dozens of already-familiar emoji, this time around users can look forward to many fresh characters, including brand new mice and webcams, plus various emoji suitable for communicating networking concepts such as linking. A small sample of the new additions is illustrated below.

Also included are several old-style storage mediums, from the antique compact cassette and 5.25 inch floppy disk, to the comparatively modern 3.5 inch floppy and CD. But just in case people were considering putting those mediums to an illegal use, they can now be encouraged by their peers to think again.

Labeled 1F572 in Unicode 7.0 (shown above), a new emoji depicts an eyepatch-wearing individual. While its presence could be construed in any number of ways, it’s called “No Piracy” so it’s fairly clear what the consortium had in mind for it.

Perhaps hoping to provide a little balance, another new character (#1F571) depicts the familiar skull and crossbones. It is labeled “skull and crossbones” too – no “Yes to Piracy” here.

Those interested in viewing the entire set should click here (pdf).

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