Posted: 16 Oct 2014 05:14 AM PDT

Earlier this month it was revealed that following the lead of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, the BPI would begin their own private prosecution against alleged content pirates.

Their case involves former members of now-defunct file-sharing links forum Dancing Jesus. The site was taken down in 2011 following an investigation carried out by the BPI and IFPI, with assistance from the US Department of Homeland Security.

Two people were arrested by City of London Police, the owner of the site and the forum’s top uploader. Homeland Security assisted UK police by seizing a Dancing Jesus server hosted in the United States.

The trial, which began on October 6, took place at Newcastle Crown Court. One defendant, site owner and admin Kane Robinson of South Shields, had already pleaded guilty to illegally distributing music back in January 2014.

Richard Graham, the site’s alleged top uploader, went into the trial with a “not guilty” plea, but after evidence was presented in court earlier this week the Leicestershire man changed his plea to guilty.

"The guilty verdict confirms that posting illegal online links to music is a criminal offense which economically harms musicians and the labels that support them,” said David Wood, Director of BPI's Copyright Protection Unit.

“Pre-release piracy, in particular, robs musicians of artistic control, leaving them with no say in when and how their music – which has taken blood, sweat and tears to produce – is released.

The case is significant in a number of ways, not least the scale of online infringement connected to the pair’s guilty plea. Add in the fact that Dancing Jesus was particularly well-known as a venue to obtain pre-release content and this becomes the most important UK music industry case since the failed 2010 prosecution of the infamous OiNK BitTorrent tracker.

Graham and Robinson will be sentenced under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Their fate will be determined by Judge Sherwin early next month.

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

Freedom-Friendly Iceland Blocks The Pirate Bay

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 02:36 AM PDT

In 2013, copyright groups including the local equivalents of the RIAA (STEF) and MPAA (SMAIS) reported the operators of The Pirate Bay to Icelandic police. It had zero negative effect on the site.

So, with a public anti-piracy awareness campaign under their belts, STEF and SMAIS embarked on a strategy successfully employed by copyright holders in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and other European countries. The groups issued demands for local ISPs to block not only The Pirate Bay, but also Deildu.net, Iceland’s most popular private torrent tracker.

Modifications to the country’s Copyright Act in 2010 authorized injunctions against intermediaries, so the chances of success seemed good. However, this was Iceland, a country strongly associated with freedom of speech. Could protection of copyrights trump that?

"This action doesn't go against freedom of expression as it aims to prevent copyright infringement and protect the rights and income of authors, artists and producers," the rightsholders insisted.

Initial legal action against ISPs faced issues, with one blocking request rejected on a procedural matter. Another featuring four plaintiffs was reduced to three when in May this year the Supreme Court decided that only music group STEF had the rights to claim injunctive relief.

But despite the setbacks, this week the rightsholders achieved the ruling they had been hoping for. The Reykjavík District Court handed down an injunction to ISPs Vodafone and Hringdu forcing them to block several domains belonging to The Pirate Bay and Deildu.

STEF Director of Policy Gudrun Bjork Bjarnadóttir told local media that the decision of the Court is an important event that will smooth the way for much-needed additional blockades.

“We will never reach a final victory in the battle so it makes sense for people to realize that it’s likely that new sites will spring up. However, following similar actions abroad visitor numbers to such sites have declined significantly,” Bjarnadóttir said.

The domains to be blocked include thepiratebay.se, thepiratebay.sx and thepiratebay.org, plus deildu.net and deildu.com. Currently the injunction applies to just two ISPs and it’s unclear whether there will be an attempt at expansion, but in the meantime the effort is likely to be a symbolic one.

The block against The Pirate Bay will be circumvented almost immediately due to the wide range of reverse proxy sites available and Deildu has already taken evasive action of its own. Within hours the private tracker announced a brand new domain – Iceland.pm – one that isn’t listed in the court order.

ISP Hringdu says that the Court ruling runs counter to company policies.

"It is clear that [the ruling] is not in harmony with Hringdu's policy regarding net freedom," director Kristinn Pétursson told Vísir. "The company has placed great emphasis on the idea that our customers should have unrestricted access to the internet."

Neither of the ISPs has yet indicated an appeal to the Supreme Court.

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

Google Removes Pirate Bay Search Box and Links

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:54 AM PDT

About a month ago Google announced its new and improved "sitelinks" sections.

This section appears when searching for keywords related to large sites, including YouTube and Twitter, and lists links to popular parts of the site.

Last week TorrentFreak reported that The Pirate Bay had also been added to this list. This allowed people to use Google to search Pirate Bay pages, complete with a pirate-themed AutoComplete function.

While this unusual addition was the work of algorithms, it was bound to upset some entertainment industry groups. After all, many copyright holders have been asking to make sites such as The Pirate Bay less visible in the search results, and this change was doing the opposite.

This is how a search for The Pirate Bay looked like until yesterday, complete with a search box and prominent sitelinks.

Pirate Bay search box and sitelinks

Now, less than a week later the search bar no longer appears for Pirate Bay related content. Even more so, other prominent sitelinks which have been in place for more than a year are gone too.

Today, the only things left are a few rather small sitelinks under the site description, as shown below.

Pirate Bay ….

TorrentFreak has confirmed that the sitelinks features were removed for several torrent sites including Isohunt.to and Torrentz.eu. For Google, Twitter and other sites the new search box remains online.

The removal of the search box and prominent links appears to be intentional. TorrentFreak learned that Google was not happy with the unintended feature for The Pirate Bay, and must have felt the need to take action.

While the removal may be a well intended move to keep copyright holders pleased, it places Google in a difficult position. It could be argued that if the sitelinks features have been removed due to the “infringing” aspects of a site, why still keep the site in search results at all?

To find out more TorrentFreak contacted Google, but the company didn’t wish to comment on the recent changes. Google did stress that the placing of the sitelinks is determined automatically.

“Not every site will get the sitelinks search box; it’s determined automatically based on a number of factors. As always, we’ll keep working to improve the quality of our search results,” a Google spokesperson says.

The comment evades the issue at hand, but it appears that these factors were changed recently to exclude The Pirate Bay and other “pirate” sites.

For now, however, all Pirate Bay pages remain indexed as usual. In that regard the recent change is mostly interesting from a political perspective, as a possible result on the entertainment’s continuing pressure on the search engine.

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

Pirates Become Biggest Political Party in Local Czech Election

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 07:29 AM PDT

Last weekend there were local elections in the Czech Republic, and the local Pirate Party has dozens of candidates on the ballots.

The Pirates campaigned with a program that advocates more Government transparency, more involvement for citizens, less copyright monopolies and the use of free software.

This message was received well by the public as 21 Pirate Party representatives were voted into regional parliaments. In addition, several other Pirates gained seats through the lists of other local parties.

One of the biggest victories was booked in Mariánské lázně where the Pirates came out as the biggest party with 21% of the total vote. This means that the Czech town may soon have its first Pirate mayor.

Pirate Party seats in Mariánské lázně

The Pirate Party also did well in the capital city of Prague where it received 5.3% of the vote. This translates to four seats in the local parliament.

Despite the successes the Pirates don’t expect that they will govern in many regions. This may happen in a few places, but only if they can agree on a good program with the other parties.

“Generally we are against coalitions, especially in Prague, but in some regions with parties and people who are closer to our program we might govern,” Pirate Party’s Markéta Gregorová tells TorrentFreak.

According to Maša Čorak, co-chairperson of Pirate Parties International, the Czech success was welcomed after several disappointing results in other European countries. Talking to the Pirate Times, she says that the victory will carry over to other countries.

'I have no doubt that every single Czech pirate that succeeds in being an elected official will do a tremendous job in promoting our core goals and ideas and putting them back in the public spotlight. That is, after all, the beauty of this movement; a victory in just one country can be and will be a huge step forward throughout entire Europe,” she says.

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

PirateBay

Torrentfreak: “Pre-Release Music Pirate Plead Guilty in Landmark Case” plus 3 more

Torrentfreak: “Pre-Release Music Pirate Plead Guilty in Landmark Case” plus 3 more