Torrentfreak: “BitTorrent Inc. Now Allows All Artists to Get Paid” plus 3 more

BitTorrent Inc. Now Allows All Artists to Get Paid
Movie Chief Describes University Piracy Fines as “Terrific”
Giganews Not Liable for Pirating Usenet Customers, Court Rules
KickassTorrents Moves to Kickass.so Domain Name

BitTorrent Inc. Now Allows All Artists to Get Paid

Posted: 18 Nov 2014 03:48 AM PST

For years BitTorrent Inc. has been struggling with its image due to the name of the company being identical to that of the world’s most popular file-sharing protocol.

To many BitTorrent is synonymous with piracy and as a result it seemed likely that without a name change BitTorrent Inc. would forever struggle to separate itself in the eyes of the public.

Despite the odds, however, BitTorrent Inc. has put up quite a fight to reposition itself as a friend of the artist. Not only in distribution skills either, but also when it comes to monetizing content and returning unprecedented revenue shares back to creators.

Last month the company enjoyed a big breakthrough when Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke decided to release his new album through BitTorrent Inc.’s ‘Bundle’ project. A special paywalled torrent format allowed Yorke to charge BitTorrent users for his album, a first for BitTorrent Inc.

The experiment did very well, with the collaboration reporting in excess of 4.4 million downloads to date. And now, with that success still ringing, BitTorrent Inc. has announced it will open up the paywall project to content creators everywhere.

"Taylor Swift sparked debate over the state of music in recent weeks; the value of a stream, the value of a record," Matt Mason, BitTorrent's chief content officer, said in a statement.

"The value of art shouldn't be up for debate. It should be up to artists. Our goal with BitTorrent Bundle is to restore control to creators.”

While BitTorrent Bundles have become associated with music, the company is opening up the platform to creators of all content including film, digital books and even software. The company won’t be taking the lion’s share of the revenue either. BitTorrent Inc. will ask for just 10% of sales, returning 90% to the artists and creators.

Following in Yorke’s footsteps, yesterday musician Diplo became the second artist to release a pay-gated BitTorrent Bundle. Featuring his original Florida album and plenty of previously unreleased content, the F10rida digital box set is now available for just $5.

It’s unlikely Diplo will achieve Thom Yorke levels of success when it comes to sales, but even a small percentage should provide a decent return after picking up 90% of the spoils.

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

Movie Chief Describes University Piracy Fines as “Terrific”

Posted: 18 Nov 2014 01:12 AM PST

In addition to their obligations under the DMCA, in 2010 a new requirement was put in place which meant that university funding in the U.S. was placed in jeopardy if establishments didn’t take their anti-piracy responsibilities seriously.

The policy hasn’t been repeated in any other key countries in Europe or elsewhere, but that hasn’t stopped educational institutions from introducing their own policies to deal with on-campus infringement. A particularly harsh example can be found in Australia.

The University of New South Wales, which is ranked among the top five universities in Australia, offers its students free Wi-Fi Internet access. Known as Uniwide, the system was upgraded last year to offer speeds of 1.3 Gigabits per second in order to cope with around 20,000 devices being regularly connected to the network.

With students achieving up to 10 megabits per second on their connections, it’s perhaps no surprise that some use the Wi-Fi network for downloading movies, TV shows and other copyrighted content. In order to curtail the practice the university has put in place tough punishments for those who flout the rules.

While disconnections and up to $1,000 in fines are serious enough, it may come as a surprise that monies collected don’t go to compensate artists. University of New South Wales pumps the money back into “student amenities” instead.

“I just find it disturbing that a university has decided how it will enforce the laws of the Commonwealth,” Michael Speck, an independent anti-piracy investigator and former NSW policeman told The Age. “It’s quite disturbing and without too much natural justice.”

Adding fuel to the fire, two parties embroiled in the general piracy debate currently raging in Australia have also weighed in with their opinions.

Steve Dalby, chief regulatory officer of Internet provider iiNet, called the fines “very strange”. The response from Dalby is predictable. The ISP famously refused to pass on infringement notices to its customers when prompted to by movie company Village Roadshow, a spat that took the pair to court.

On the other hand, comments from Graham Burke, co-chief executive of Village Roadshow, reveal that the rivals are still just as far apart in their views. Burke said it was “terrific” that the university was fining students and being “proactive and taking responsibility for the users of its network.”

“We think it is more important for students to be educated about copyright by the university imposing these fines than it is for the rights holders to collect damages for the breaches that are occurring,” Burke told The Age.

“In fact the more I think about it this action by the university is helping the future of good citizenship of its many students.”

There can be little doubt that traditionally poor students would find themselves thinking deeply about copyright when landed with a $1,000 fine but whether that would put money back in the artists’ pockets long-term is another matter.

Fortunately not too many WiFi users are falling foul of the rules. According to the university, three students and one staff member have received punishments this year. All had their access suspended and two of the students were fined $480 each.

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

Giganews Not Liable for Pirating Usenet Customers, Court Rules

Posted: 17 Nov 2014 01:55 PM PST

Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 has made a business out of suing online services for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement.

Over the past several years the company has targeted a dozen high-profile companies including Google, Amazon, Yandex, MasterCard, Visa, RapidShare, Giganews and Depositfiles.

Aside from a few private settlements the company has yet to score its first victory in court. The company was confident that this would happen in their prolonged battle with Usenet provider Giganews, but late last week these hopes were shattered.

On Friday the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled on several motions (^{1, 2, 3}) regarding Giganews’ liability for copyright infringement, as well as the nature of its DMCA takedown process.

In its order the court confirms that there is no evidence that Giganews is directly involved in any infringing practices.

“A claim for direct copyright liability demands evidence that the defendant had a direct hand in causing the infringement. The undisputed evidence before the Court, however, demonstrates that Defendants had no direct causal role in the alleged infringement,” the order reads.

According to the Court, Perfect 10 confuses direct and indirect copyright infringement, as the company has presented no evidence that Giganews employees are engaged in distributing pirated content.

Furthermore, claims of indirect copyright infringement also failed. The Court didn’t accept that Giganews is liable for the alleged copyright infringements of its users, as there is no proof that the company enjoyed direct financial benefit from any Perfect 10 images its subscribers may have distributed.

“[T]he ‘direct financial benefit’ requirement demands more than evidence that customers were ‘drawn’ to Giganews to obtain access to infringing material in general. Perfect 10 must prove with competent evidence that at least some of Giganews' customers were ‘drawn’ to Giganews' services, in part, to obtain access to infringing Perfect 10 material.”

“This action is a specific lawsuit by a specific plaintiff against a specific defendant about specific copyrighted images; it is not a lawsuit against copyright infringement in general on the Usenet,” the order adds.

In addition to their infringement claims Perfect 10 also argued that Giganews didn’t respond properly to takedown requests. While the court doesn’t dispute that proper takedown notices would give Giganews actual knowledge of infringements, the publisher’s notices were not proper.

Instead of listing message-IDs that could identify specific content, Perfect 10 sent in screenshots of a newsreader window, instructing Giganew "to conduct searches of specific names within certain newsgroups" and remove all results that were returned “on a certain date.” These notices do not comply with the DMCA’s standards, the court argues.

All in all the orders mean that Giganews is not liable for the infringements Perfect 10 claimed, and as a result the company can put the case to rest after three years.

However, as noted by Techdirt, it’s unlikely that Perfect 10 will stop its legal campaigns anytime soon. Just this summer the company initiated a new suit against hosting service OVH, who thanks to Giganews now have some additional ammunition to fight back.

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

KickassTorrents Moves to Kickass.so Domain Name

Posted: 17 Nov 2014 08:41 AM PST

With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) is one of the most used torrent sites. In recent months it has even rivaled The Pirate Bay in terms of traffic.

Over the years KAT has moved from domain to domain on a few occasions, to evade law enforcement and pressure from the entertainment industries. Most recently the site had been operating from the Kickass.to domain.

Starting today however, the site is serving its pages from the Somalian TLD Kickass.so.

Wondering whether the site may have run into issues with the .to registry we contacted the KAT team for further details. “It's just annual domain rotation,” we were told in a brief reply.

An additional announcement posted on the site today assures the site’s users that there is nothing to worry about.

“We are moving to kickass.so now. As you know we change our domain regularly. Nothing more has been changed for you, so don’t worry, you can use Kickass as usually, it’s automatically redirected,” the KAT team writes.

Intended or not, the domain change will have some consequences on the anti-piracy front. For example, the site will become accessible again in most countries where it has been blocked previously.

In addition all the URLs that were blocked by Google through DMCA notices, more than 1.6 million, will become accessible again under the new domain. This also means that Google’s new downranking algorithm will be bypassed, at least temporarily.

In recent weeks KAT has lost a significant amount of traffic due to Google’s new anti-piracy measure, so intended or not, that may be an extra incentive to keep the yearly domain rotations going.

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