torrentlog.com

Mexican Police Bust Nightclubs and DJs for Playing Counterfeit CDs

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:33:31 +0100

Raid 11 locations throughout Mexico City on behalf of Somexfon, the Mexican music licensing agency. Times must be really that tough these days for the music industry for a press release by the International Phonographic Industry (IFPI) praises recent raids conducted by the Mexican Attorney General’s Office (PGR) on behalf of Somexfon, the Mexican music licensing agency, targeting business owners and DJs for playing counterfeit CDs. Between November 7th and 21st police raided some 11 nightclubs in Mexico City between for playing music without authorization from copyright holders. The raids were carried out by around 180 police officers and officials from the Mexican Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and were supported by music industry anti-piracy experts. IFPI’s affiliated national groups are supporting local music licensing agencies in their bid to ensure that all nightclubs operate legally.

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Mexican Police Bust Nightclubs and DJs for Playing Counterfeit CDs torrent downloads.

Danish Appeals Court: 'ISP Must Continue Blocking The Pirate Bay'

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:33:17 +0100

Upholds earlier decision requiring Tele 2 to block access to the BitTorrent tracker site over allegations that it contributes to copyright infringement by allowing customers to access the site. It was a while back that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry(IFPI) won a case in a Danish court requiring ISP Tele 2 to prevent its internet subscribers from accessing Swedish BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. The IFPI accused Tele 2 of contributing to copyright infringement for merely allowing customers to access the site. A judgment delivered a few days by a Danish appeal court upholds that earlier decision requiring access to the Pirate Bay to be blocked. This effort by the IFPI t is the latest step forward in attempts by the entertainment industry to target ISPs in helping stop online P2P piracy.

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Danish Appeals Court: 'ISP Must Continue Blocking The Pirate Bay' torrent downloads.

Elderly UK Couple Accused of Illegally Downloading German Porn

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:00:25 +0100

Once again casts doubt on the identification methods deployed by law firm Davenport Lyons be on behalf of copyright holders. UK-based law firm Davenport Lyons is leading the charge against file-sharers in the UK and once again it seems to have netted an innocent elderly couple, this time for allegedly illegally downloading a German porn movie. A month ago it accused Gill Murdoch and her husband, aged 54 and 66 respectively, of illegally downloading an Atari video game as part of a massive 25,000 person sweep despite the fact that the two "have never had, any computer game or sharing software." The bad publicity is most likely what caused Atari to recently drop plans to use Davenport Lyons to track down those illegally sharing its video game titles. Now, in a 20-page settlement later mailed to a Hertfordshire couple in their 60s, two more elderly people have been seemingly falsely accused of illegal file-sharing, this time for a German porno movie titled "Army Fuckers.

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Elderly UK Couple Accused of Illegally Downloading German Porn torrent downloads.

Sir Paul McCartney Doesn't Object to FileSharing

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:33:06 +0100

Says that unauthorized music downloading "doesn't bother him." The debate over file-sharing and it's implications on art has been around for at least since 2001 when the Napster case made headlines throughout the file-sharing community. It was only the last couple of years that high profile bands like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Bare Naked Ladies, Radio Head, and Sum 41 came out to officially support the movement. Still, there have been bands like Metallica and Nickelback who possessed the opposite position and commented how piracy is hurting the music industry. While high profile artists are still grappling with the file-sharing movement, another high profile artist, Sir Paul McCartney of The Beatles has openly taken a side in the file-sharing debate, saying that people downloading music without paying for it "doesn't bother him.

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Sir Paul McCartney Doesn't Object to FileSharing torrent downloads.

uTorrent for Mac Beta Released

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:33:06 +0100

BitTorrent tracker client now available for Mac users. uTorrent finally has a Mac version available and early reports are that it doesn't disappoint. If you recall, an early "alpha" build was leaked a little more than 2 months ago so this beta version was seen as imminent. For Mac users it's welcome news to have a more stable version though some will still prefer the Transmission BitTorrent client instead. Either way, hat tip to uTorrent for consistently meeting the needs of BitTorrent users.

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uTorrent for Mac Beta Released torrent downloads.

Gaming Group to Follow RIAA Lead?

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:00:13 +0100

Letter posted to Slashdot accuses an IP address of copyright infringement. We've all been watching with a combination of derision and disgust as the entertainment industry, the RIAA in particular, has tried to litigate its way out of a failed physical distribution model. Now that path is apparently being mimicked by another copyright stakeholder, the Entertainment Software Association. A letter has been posted to Slashdot by a reader, most likely a network administrator, claiming that an IP address at his organization has been accused of copyright infringement as usually happens courtesy of the RIAA. A user by the name of Cavis writes the following: My organization just received an e-mail from the Intellectual Property enforcement division of the Entertainment Software Association.

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Gaming Group to Follow RIAA Lead? torrent downloads.

The Pirate Bay Celebrates 5th Anniversary

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:33:08 +0100

Popular Sweden-based BitTorrent tracker celebrates a milestone. About a month ago The Pirate Bay, the world's largest BitTorrent tracker site, celebrated the milestone of 23 million connected peers, and then even 25 million soon thereafter. Now The Pirate Bay is celebrating a new milestone--it's 5th anniversary (or so it thinks). Their not sure of the exact date, whether it happened "some weeks or months ago," but it happened sometime recently and they want to observe this important occasion. From a blog posting: Happy birthday to us! Some weeks or months ago (we're not quite sure) we became 5 years old here at The Pirate Bay! The official birth date of the site is not 100% sure.

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The Pirate Bay Celebrates 5th Anniversary torrent downloads.

BSA Poll: 60% of College Students Know Where to Download Software Illegally

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:31:57 +0100

Wants to educate them about the risks posed by pirated software with nearly 74% of respondents expected to purchase or receive computer hardware or software over the next year. The Business Software Alliance, "the leading voice of the world’s software industry, " today announced the results of a national poll analyzing the purchasing intentions of college students. The poll, conducted by Washington, DC-based RT Strategies during the week of November 10, asked 400 currently enrolled college students about their plans to buy computers and software. Nearly 74% of participants expect to purchase or receive computer hardware or software over the next year. An even greater percentage, 79%, expect to be “involved” in such a purchase this holiday season by advising a friend or relative on a purchase, making a purchase for themselves, or buying someone else a gift.

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BSA Poll: 60% of College Students Know Where to Download Software Illegally torrent downloads.

Harvard Law Prof Calls RIAA's CD-R Inquiry 'Immense Triviality'

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:57:16 +0100

Scoffs at RIAA's demands that he disclose details of the "homemade music CD" collection of Joel Tenenbaum, an accused file-sharer, he's representing in court. A few weeks ago I mentioned how an accused file-sharers is going on the offensive against the RIAA by noting that Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson filed an amended counterclaim on behalf of defendant Joel Tenenbaum in Sony BMG Music v. Tenenbaum. The counterclaim fires back against for abuse of process across state and federal jurisdictions. Nesson is challenging both the constitutionality of the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 and the music labels' use of it against Tenenbaum.

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Harvard Law Prof Calls RIAA's CD-R Inquiry 'Immense Triviality' torrent downloads.

Entertainment Industry Trying to Sneak 'Three Strikes' Law into EU?

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:34:25 +0100

Legal experts discover that proposed new European Union laws could lead to controversial 'three-strikes-and-your-out' plans despite previous rejections by the European Parliament. It was just two months ago that the European Parliament rejected "three-strikes" anti-file-sharing proposals to disconnect copyright infringers as well as plans to force ISPs to filter copyrighted material from their networks. All would seem well until recently when Sheffield University professor of internet law Lilian Edwards, and student Simon Bradshaw, began analyzing new European Union telecommunication reform documents and have discovered that proposed new EU laws could lead to a "three-strikes" or "connection sanctions" over the previous rejections by the European Parliament. From their analysis: On the basis of our analysis it is clear that the package does, or at least can provide a mandatory basis for the “warnings” part of a Frenchstyle connection sanctions law (the“strikes”) (see para 12 of brief), and also potentially provides a means by which public CSPs (ISPs and the like)can be compelled by the national regulator to work with (“promoting cooperation”) rightsholders to implement a disconnection scheme. Wording in various places of the latest version seems to confirm that this“cooperation” is a more extensive obligation than simply providing copyrightrelated public interest information.

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Entertainment Industry Trying to Sneak 'Three Strikes' Law into EU? torrent downloads.

CRTC: 'Bell Canada Can Throttle BitTorrent - For Now'

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:33:05 +0100

Rules that it can continue to throttle P2P and file-sharing programs, but in the future it must notify wholesale customers 30 days in advance before doing so. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) request that Bell Canada cease the traffic shaping practices it has adopted for its wholesale Gateway Access Service. However, in the future, Bell Canada will be required to notify its wholesale customers at least 30 days in advance of making any changes that impact its service. “Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.

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CRTC: 'Bell Canada Can Throttle BitTorrent - For Now' torrent downloads.

Aussie Movie & TV Industry Sues ISP for Allowing P2P Piracy

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:33:05 +0100

Accuses iiNet of being actively involved in copyright infringement itself for refusing to prevent its customers from being able to engage in illegal file-sharing on its network. ISPs in the "land down under" can add copyright infringement by file-sharing customers to the long list of headaches that includes govt plans for mandatory content filtering. For today, seven leading movie studios and a TV network filed a legal action against iiNet, a major Australian ISP, accusing it of copyright infringement for failing to take reasonable steps to prevent iilegal file-sharing by customers on its network. The action was filed by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network.

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Aussie Movie & TV Industry Sues ISP for Allowing P2P Piracy torrent downloads.

CRTC to Rule on Bell's BitTorrent Throttling Tomorrow

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:00:10 +0100

Landmark decision will determine if the telecommunications conglomerate can interfere with the Internet access it sells to wholesale customers. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the independent agency responsible for regulating Canada's broadcasting and telecommunications systems, is scheduled to finally rule on the twice delayed case of Bell Canada, a major Canadian telecommunications company and ISP, who's been accused of violating the country's Telecommunications Act by throttling the connection speeds of BitTorrent users after already selling the Internet access wholesale to third parties. These customers are represented by the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) whose main mission is to "foster the growth of a healthy and competitive Internet service industry in Canada." It was CAIP who lodged the complaint with the CRTC back on April 4th of this year. "In addition to the foregoing direct losses, Bell’s manipulation of GAS traffic is making it difficult if not impossible for independent ISPs to properly manage the services that they provide to their end-user customers," it reads.

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CRTC to Rule on Bell's BitTorrent Throttling Tomorrow torrent downloads.

Anti-P2P Group: 'Online Piracy Must Equal Physical Piracy'

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:12 +0100

Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) calls for equity in sentencing for copyright infringement, saying that online crimes must be punished equally as physical ones. The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), formed in 1984 as the world's first anti-piracy organization, and dedicated "to promote the legitimate use of software and protect its members. rights through education, enforcement, lobbying and promoting standards and best practice in business," is now calling on the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to make online copyright offenses as severe as physical ones. The IPO is currently considering changes to criminal sanctions in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 based on the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property that was independently conducted from 2005 to 2006. The review concludes that the UK's intellectual property system is fundamentally strong but makes 54 concrete recommendations for improvements, broadly covering the areas of: strengthening enforcement; providing additional support to business; and striking a balance between protecting intellectual property and allowing free market competition.

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Anti-P2P Group: 'Online Piracy Must Equal Physical Piracy' torrent downloads.

French Court Okays Music Industry Lawsuit Targeting P2P Companies, Sourceforge

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:33:08 +0100

Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF) uses new law to target those responsible for creating file-sharing programs and and even a site that hosts one of them. France continues to be the frontline in the war on file-sharing it seems. It was just two weeks ago that the French Senate approved a controversial "three strikes" or "graduated response" law for those accused of illegal file-sharing. Now it's being reported that the Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF), a group that represents French record labels, has gotten the go ahead (GOOGLE TRANSLATION) from the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) in Paris to sue Vuze, Morpheus, Limewire, and even open source software development and hosting site Sourceforge for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement. The lawsuit was initially filed back in 2007, but has been blocked up until now over jurisdictional questions being that all four parties are located in the United States.

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French Court Okays Music Industry Lawsuit Targeting P2P Companies, Sourceforge torrent downloads.

STUDY: Pirated Music on P2P Networks Valued at $69 Billion in 2007

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:33:08 +0100

Calculated by multiplying number of music tracks illegally shared on P2P networks and services by the fair market value per track. MultiMedia Intelligence, a market research and consultancy firm, which "specializes on the markets and technologies for delivering and monetizing digital content and services across multiple platforms," has released a new study claiming that the value of music illegally shared in 2007 was some $69 billion USD. The research,P2P Networking: Content's "Bad Boy" Becomes Tomorrow's Distribution Channel, analyzes the P2P market in terms of worldwide broadband penetration, consumer consumption of data, audio and video files and its associated revenue "A US$69 billion figure is staggering to contemplate, but it effectively illustrates the impact of piracy on the music industry," claims the company's Rick Sizemore. "It is important to note that piracy has expanded well beyond music. Content owners of TV episodes and full length movies are seeing a growing impact.

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STUDY: Pirated Music on P2P Networks Valued at $69 Billion in 2007 torrent downloads.

Duke Now Requires RIAA to Have Proof of Illegal File-Sharing

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:00:24 +0100

Wants actual evidence of copyright infringement before it forwards pre-litigation "settlement" letters to students. An odd thing has happened on the campus of Duke University. The Office of Student Affairs is now requiring the RIAA and other copyright holder groups to submit evidence that a student committed copyright infringement before it forwards pre-litigation "settlement" letters to them The new policy is a departure from previous policy whereby it forwarded the notices to students no questions asked. "What we're saying is that in order for us to pass on a settlement letter to a student, we're going to start requiring evidence that someone actually downloaded from that student," said Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. "If the RIAA can't prove that actual illegal behavior occurred, then we're not going to comply.

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Duke Now Requires RIAA to Have Proof of Illegal File-Sharing torrent downloads.

Duke Now Requires RIAA Have Proof of Illegal File-Sharing

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:00:14 +0100

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Duke Now Requires RIAA Have Proof of Illegal File-Sharing torrent downloads.

Tennessee Governor Signs Campus Piracy Bill into Law

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:33:07 +0100

Requires public and private colleges and universities to ensure that computers connected to their campus network are not being used for illegal file-sharing. RIAA Chairman & CEO Mitch Bainwol, along with several other members of the music community, recently celebrated Country Music Association Day in Nashville by participating in a ceremonial signing of college campus anti-piracy legislation by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen. Senate Bill 3974 requires that Tennessee public and private colleges and universities exercise appropriate means to ensure that computers connected to their campus network are not being abused for the purpose of illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted material through P2P and file-sharing programs. They are required to implement technological support and develop and enforce a computer network usage policy to effectively limit the number illegal sharing copyrighted material.

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Tennessee Governor Signs Campus Piracy Bill into Law torrent downloads.

TorrentValley BitTorrent Tracker Site Shutdown by Bulgarian Authorities

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:00:10 +0100

Cyber Crimes Unit acts on evidence collected by the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP). Authorities in Bulgaria have taken down Torrentvalley.com, an apparently major BitTorrent tracker site located in that country. The action was taken by the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ministry of Interior’s serious and organized crime directorate, acting on evidence from the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP), which represents the music industry in Bulgaria. Officers from the Cyber Crime Unit raided TorrentValley's servers a few days ago on November 11th and shut the site down.

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TorrentValley BitTorrent Tracker Site Shutdown by Bulgarian Authorities torrent downloads.

Students Dropping Out of School to Pay RIAA Legal Fees

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:00:09 +0100

University of Wisconsin's Associate Dean of Student Development Jodi Thesing-Ritter makes the comment in recent article in The Spectator, the university's student newspaper. There's a disturbing comment that has been made in the University of Wisconsin's student newspaper, The Spectator, which confirms our worst fears about the RIAA's college campus piracy crackdown. The school's Associate Dean of Student Development Jodi Thesing-Ritter says that some students have dropped out of school to the exorbitant pre-litigation "settlement" fees demanded by the RIAA from those accused of illegal file-sharing. "It's been really hard to have to be the one to tell them they are facing this lawsuit," she said. Thesing-Ritter goes on to note that an undisclosed number of students have had to drop out of school in order to come up with the money to pay their legal fees.

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Students Dropping Out of School to Pay RIAA Legal Fees torrent downloads.

Australian Web Filter to Block More than 10,000 'Unwanted' Sites

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:33:07 +0100

New mandatory filter will begin with 1300 and grow to a range of about 10,000, but many are questioning who gets to decide what sites should included and why. As Australia gears up for the testing phase of its new plan to have ISPs filter the Internet of "inappropriate content" and "offensive and illegal material," it's now being reported that the govt blacklist has already been compiled and will begin with some 1300 sites. "The pilot will specifically test filtering against the ACMA blacklist of prohibited content, which is mostly child pornography, as well as filtering of other unwanted content," Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy told Parliament today. "While the ACMA blacklist is currently around 1300 URLs, the pilot will test against this list - as well as filtering for a range of URLs to around 10,000 - so that the impacts on network performance of a larger blacklist can be examined." Many are rightly upset with the plan because not only is the plan mandatory, but it also means that a govt bureaucrat will be the one determining what sites ar included.

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Australian Web Filter to Block More than 10,000 'Unwanted' Sites torrent downloads.

New 'MP3 100% Compatible' Logo Identifies DRM-Free Music

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:33:07 +0100

UK music download sites create new means of identifying music that can played on any portable media player device. Many consumers are still unaware if the music downloads they purchase from a given site will be compatible with the PC, Mac, or portable music players they may own. Ask any of your friends about their iTunes purchases and they seem oblivious to the fact that Apple has essentially locked them in for life to a proprietary system that makes their purchases worthless outside without time consuming conversion operations. Enter HMV, Woolworths, 7digital, Digitalstores, Tescodigital, Tunetribe, and Play.com, seven of the UK's largest digital music download sites who have banded together to create a new "MP3 100% Compatible" logo that allows consumers to accurately identify songs that will play on any given digital player they choose.

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New 'MP3 100% Compatible' Logo Identifies DRM-Free Music torrent downloads.

Pres-Elect Obama: What Does it Mean for P2P?

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:33:07 +0100

He is for net-neutrality and non-interference with specific applications and services like BitTorrent, but his new VP is the co-founder and chair of the Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus. With Barack Hussein Obama now elected to become the 44th President of the United States it's important that we take stock of what his comments and positions have been on important technology and file-sharing related issues. From BitTorrent throttling to network neutrality it's important to see where our new President stands so that we know what to expect in the future. I've been sort of worried about what a Democrat President may hold in store being that it usually has much stronger ties to Hollywood and other entertainment industry interests, but so far his rhetoric has made me hopeful. BitTorrent Throttling In November of last year an aide to Barack Obama was asked to clarify the Senator's technology policy and whether or not he would have made it illegal for Comcast to throttle BitTorrent.

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Pres-Elect Obama: What Does it Mean for P2P? torrent downloads.

AT&T Begins 20-150GB Data Cap Trials in Reno, NV

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:33:07 +0100

New DSL customers face caps from 20-150GB p/mo, existing customers will later join the trial automatically if they exceed 150GB p/mo, with overage fees pegged at $1 USD p/GB. After the FCC determined that Comcast violated the agency's principles by throttling BitTorrent in order to ease network traffic congestion, ISPs around the country began testing out new methods of doing so that didn't "selectively target and interfere with connections of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications" and data caps have become the most popular tool for deployment in their efforts. Comcast and Time Warner have both rolled out monthly data usage limits and now it appears that AT&T is following their lead with an announced trial for the city of Reno, NV. From an FCC filing: As AT&T has previously explained, a small minority of our broadband Internet access customers consume a disproportionately large amount of the total bandwidth available to all of the customers on our network. In order to ensure that we can continue to equitably provide affordable broadband services to all of our customers, we are exploring potential changes to the manner in which we offer and charge for those services.

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AT&T Begins 20-150GB Data Cap Trials in Reno, NV torrent downloads.