Torrentfreak: “Torrent Site Admin Sentenced to Five Months Prison” plus 1 more |
| Torrent Site Admin Sentenced to Five Months Prison Posted: 30 Nov 2014 01:33 AM PST
This Thursday a case running since 2012 came to an end, with a particularly miserable outcome for the man involved. It began two years ago when anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance filed a complaint against a man they believed to be the owner of torrent site Tankaner. Local police launched an investigation and the man was later arrested. In April 2014 the man was prosecuted for copyright infringement related to the illegal distribution of 32 movies during 2012 and 2013. At the time prosecutor Fredrik Inglad said that since there were ads on the site he would be pushing for a prison sentence. In his defense the 40-year-old claimed that he’d disposed of the site four years ago. But according to Rights Alliance lawyer Henrik Pontén, the court didn’t buy that version of events. “There was extensive evidence against the man in the form of signed contracts for the piracy server, login information, book keeping, e-mails and a photo in which he is posing in a T-shirt with ‘Tankaner’ printed on it,” Pontén told TF. “The man argued that he was innocent and that he had transferred the operation from him to unknown persons who had made alterations to his encrypted computer while he was asleep. The court did not accept this version of events.” Pontén says that the Court applied principles from the Svensson case previously referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union by Sweden's Court of Appeal. “In the case the suspect argued similar stand points to the ones argued by the suspects in the Pirate Bay case and they were dismissed on the same merits. However a difference from the Pirate Bay case is that the man was convicted as a direct infringer and not for contributory infringement,” Pontén adds. On Thursday the Uppsala District Court sentenced the man to five months in prison. Rights Alliance are now seeking damages for one of the movies made available to the public. Meanwhile, Tankaner remains online. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.    |
| Sony Movies Leak Online After Hack Attack Posted: 29 Nov 2014 09:34 AM PST
Hacked on Monday by a group calling themselves the Guardians of Peace, Sony Pictures’ systems remain down today, a sign of the situation’s gravity. While the attack appears to be aimed at punishing Sony for its actions in the past, reports suggest that the attackers also made off with an estimated 11,000 gigabytes of files. Seriously upping the ante, the hackers warned Sony that “sensitive” data would be released into the wild if their demands were not met.  A thread on Reddit has been piecing together details of what information could have been obtained and it’s not pretty. Documents containing passport and visa information for cast and crew working on Sony movies, Outlook inboxes, documents detailing the company’s IT systems plus accounting and research information appear to be just the tip of what could be a gigantic data iceberg. Since this is Sony Pictures it will come as no surprise that video files are also reported as being part of the hackers’ booty. Interestingly the first reports detailed pirated TV shows which may have been downloaded by Sony staff.
But while Sony desperately tried to get its systems back online and figure out what had been taken, mid-week and within minutes of each other, DVD screener copies of four Sony movies began appearing online. Making matters worse, just one has been officially released in the United States. They are: ‘Still Alice‘ starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin (US date: Jan 16, 2015) ‘Mr Turner‘ starring Timothy Spall. (US date: Dec 19, 2014) ‘Annie‘ starring Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. (US date: Dec 19, 2014) ‘Fury‘ starring Brad Pitt (US date: Oct 17, 2014) In the absence of any useful comment from Sony there’s little to officially link the leaks with Monday’s hack attack. However, a page on popular torrent site 1337x reveals that a user uploaded these and another upcoming Sony movie (‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ – US release date March 2015) on Wednesday or Thursday with a naming convention highlighting Sony.  While all of the leaked titles are proving popular, the Sony-watermarked ‘Fury’ is way out in front and currently the second most downloaded movie among Pirate Bay users.  Finally, among the thousands of files taken from Sony there are other items of interest to piracy watchers. The files detailed below appear to relate to the automatic content recognition systems operated by anti-piracy company Audible Magic.
Whether more Sony movies will appear online in the days to come remains to be seen, but the fallout from this week’s hack will send shockwaves through the company for months to come. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   |
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