DJ Deadmau5 is known all over the world for wearing an oversized headpiece with mouse ears during his live performances.

The ears have become a trademark for the DJ, whose real name is Joel Zimmerman, and in April he wanted to formalize this through an official trademark application at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The logo is already trademarked in dozens of countries, and the U.S. seemed a logical next step.

Disney clearly disagreed and this week the company filed a 171-page opposition to the trademark application, claiming it would hurt the company’s business.

Deadmau5 wasn’t impressed by Disney’s efforts and took his anger to Twitter. The DJ noted that he wouldn’t give in to “a money hungry corporation over some bulls–t,” and questioned their motives.

“Disney thinks you might confuse an established electronic musician / performer with a cartoon mouse. That’s how stupid they think you are,” he wrote on Twitter.

Disney thinks you might confuse an established electronic musician / performer with a cartoon mouse. That's how stupid they think you are.

— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) September 3, 2014

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

The mouse fight was on and a few hours ago Deadmau5 retaliated with a rather surprising counter attack. As it turns out, Disney is hosting a Deadmau5 video on their website, without permission.

Responding to this blatant act of piracy the DJ instructed his legal team to go after the media empire. They sent a cease and desist letter to Disney which Deadmau5 forwarded to the company on Twitter, with a personal note.

… @disney sorry heres the second page! Have a magical fucking day! pic.twitter.com/fGQf6jMOAc

— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) September 4, 2014

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

The letter explains that Disney is using Deadmau5′s work without permission and demands an immediate halt to this infringing behavior.

“The exclusive rights owned by Zimmerman in the Master are being infringed on the Disney website as of September 4, 2014. Specifically, these rights are being infringed via materials being made available at the following URL.”

Deadmau5 on Disney’s site

In addition to copyright infringement, the letter also states that Disney is using Deadmau5′s trademarks without authorization. The lawyers urge the company to stop this unauthorized exploitation of the DJ’s name and likeness as well.

“Disney prominently features the deadmau5 Mark next to the Infringing Video. implying a non-existent endorsement by Zimmerman,” the letter reads.

“Again. we are unaware of any license allowing you the right to reproduce, distribute or otherwise exploit the deadmau5 Mark or to exploit Zimmerman’s name and likeness in connection with same.”

At the time of writing Disney hasn’t complied with the request, but it seems that they have no other option than to comply. Whether it will change anything in their stance towards the DJ’s mouse ear trademark application is doubtful though.

^{Image credit}

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

As more of the submissions to the Australian Federal Government’s call for input on online copyright infringement are published, it’s becoming clear that the music and movie industries have a battle on their hands.

Hollywood in particular is seeking a tightening of the law which would hold ISPs more responsible for the actions of their users, while introducing a graduated response to deal with persistent domestic file-sharers.

Still can’t agree

In 2012, movie and recording companies fought a bloody battle with tech companies over SOPA in the United States but more than two years on it’s evident that the divide over what should be done about piracy is as wide as ever.

In a submission to the Government, a group of tech companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, eBay, Samsung, Motorola and BT largely oppose the wish-list of the entertainment industries.

Mirroring the tendency of Hollywood to state how important its members are to the economy, the Computer & Communications Industry Association begin by stating that its members employ more than 600,000 workers who generate more than $200 billion in revenue.

Launching its key observations, CCIA say that rather than pushing for the introduction of a so-called graduated response scheme, policy makers could achieve better results by focusing on the issues that encourage people to pirate in the first place.

No graduated response: provide content in a timely manner at a fair price

The group describes “high prices” and a “lack of availability of lawful content” as key domestic and international market barriers for consuming online content. But the problems don’t end there.

“Naturally, from this follows that access to on-demand/online content across territories becomes even more cumbersome and restrictive due to territorial copyright restrictions, licensing conduct, geo-blocking, price discrimination holdback and windowing,” CCIA explains.

Noting that there is “an inverted relationship” between lawful and unlawful access to content, the tech group underlines their point with a quote from Kevin Spacey.

“Audience wants the freedom.. they want control…give consumers what they want, when they want it and in the format they want it and at reasonable price,” they write.

Don’t believe their lies

A couple of points raised by the CCIA will sting their entertainment industry adversaries more than most. Noting that there “is little or no evidence” that graduated response schemes are successful (but plenty to the contrary), enforcement policies should be based only on facts, not on the claims of those determined to introduce them.

“It is also absolutely essential that enforcement debate and policy is not based on manufactured claims, exaggerations and deceptions that will in the long run risk resulting in a negative public sentiment concerning intellectual property,” CCIA writes.

“Empirical data on the impact of copyright infringement over the last two decades is deeply contested and in some cases to such a level that it is
being ridiculed. This is a highly undesirable development for the perception of copyright and by extension intellectual property in general by the broader public.”

Copyright is a “moral hazard”

In another interesting statement the CCIA suggest that when supported by legislation, companies will fall back on that to maintain business models that are no longer viable.

“Economists have expressed concerns that copyright has a moral hazard effect on incumbent creative firms, by encouraging them to rely on enforcement of the law rather than adopt new technologies and business models to deal with new technologies,” the tech firms continue.

“Hence, enforcement should not become a tool to protect businesses from competition, changing business realities and changes in consumer exactions, hereby allowing them to continue to hold on to outdated business models.”

Conclusion

Summing up, CCIA director Jakob Kucharczyk says that any new scheme should employ a “holistic end-to-end approach” and be coupled with efforts by content providers to give customers the content they need at a fair price.

On the issue of ISPs, the CCIA is clear. There must be a level playing field, legal protection from liability must be enshrined in law, and rightsholders must be held responsible for their actions when making allegations of infringement.

“If all parties are willing to look at equitable, cooperative programs that include a focus on the key issues outlined above, we believe that a better, more balanced and more effective outcome is achievable than that which is likely to result from the Government’s present proposals,” Kucharczyk concludes.

How the conflicting approaches of the technology companies, ISPs and the entertainment industries can ever be reconciled will be a topic for heated debate in the coming months, not only in Australia, but across the world.

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

Acting on a lead from the entertainment industry, the U.S. Government shut down Megaupload early 2012.

Since then the case hasn’t progressed much. Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing has been delayed until 2015 and most of the recent court proceedings dealt with how the seized assets should be handled.

Dotcom tried to regain his possessions but this effort failed last month. Meanwhile, both the MPAA and RIAA have protected their claims on the Megaupload millions, and now the U.S. Government has joined in as well.

In a complaint submitted at a federal court in Virginia the Department of Justice asks for a forfeiture of the bank accounts, cars and other seized possessions, claiming they were obtained through copyright and money laundering crimes.

The filing starts with a brief summary of the indictment that was brought against Dotcom and his colleagues. According to the Government, Megaupload was a criminal organization set up to profit from copyright infringement.

“The members of the Mega Conspiracy described themselves as ‘modern day pirates’ and virtually every aspect of the Mega Sites was carefully designed to encourage and facilitate wide-scale copyright infringement,” the U.S. attorney writes.

The Government wants the seized properties to be handed over to the authorities, and claims it’s permitted under U.S. law. This includes the bank account that was used by Megaupload for PayPal payouts.

The account, described as “DSB 0320,” had a balance of roughly $4.7 million (36 million Hong Kong Dollars) at the time of the seizure, but processed more than $160 million over the years.

“Records indicate that from August 2007 through January 2012 there were 1,403 deposits into the DBS 0320 account totaling HKD 1,260,508,432.01 from a PayPal account. These funds represent proceeds of crime and property involved in money laundering as more fully set out herein,” the complaint reads.

One of Megaupload’s bank accounts

More than a dozen bank accounts are listed in total including some of the property they were used for to buy.

The list of assets further includes several luxury cars, such as a 2011 Mercedes-Benz G55 AMG with a “Wow” license plate, TVs including a 108″ Sharp LCD TV and artwork in the form of Olaf Mueller photographs.

The Government claims that the possessions can be forfeited since they were obtained through criminal copyright infringement and money laundering, but Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken disagrees.

“Kim Dotcom and Megaupload will vigorously oppose the US Department of Justice’s civil forfeiture action,” Rothken tells TF.

“The DOJ’s efforts to use lopsided procedures over substance to destroy a cloud storage company is both offensive to the rights of Megaupload and to the rights of millions of consumers worldwide who stored personal data with the service,” he adds.

According to Rothken the U.S. ignores several crucial issues, including the Sony Doctrine and the fact that criminal secondary copyright infringement no longer exists.

“The DOJ’s forfeiture complaint ignores the US Supreme Court’s protection called the Sony Doctrine provided to dual use technologies like cloud storage, ignores substantial non infringing uses of such cloud storage including by DOJ users themselves, and ignores the fact that Congress removed criminal secondary copyright infringement from the copyright statute in 1976,” Rothken says.

Which side the District Court judge will agree with has yet to be seen, but with so many parties claiming their cut of the Megaupload assets it’s certainly not getting easier for Dotcom to reclaim his property.

To be continued.

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

Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks are a relatively common occurrence in the file-sharing community and something that many sites are subjected to throughout the course of a year. They disrupt service and can often cost money to mitigate.

Those carrying out the attacks have a variety of motives, from extortion and blackmail to “the lulz“, and a dozen reasons in between. Often the reasons are never discovered.

During the past few days several sites involved in the unauthorized sharing of anime have been targeted by DDoS-style attacks. Swaps4 reported that Haruhichan, Tokyo Toshokan and AnimeTake were under assault from assailants unknown, although all now appear to be back online.

A far more serious situation has played out at NYAA.se, however. The site is probably the largest public dedicated anime torrent index around and after being hit with an attack last weekend it remains offline today. The attack on NYAA had wider effects too.

NYAA and leading fan-subbing site HorribleSubs reportedly shared the same hosting infrastructure so the DDoS attack took down both sites. That’s significant, not least since at the end of August HorribleSubs reported that their titles had been downloaded half a billion times.

As the image above shows it now appears that HorribleSubs has recovered (and added torrent magnet links) but the same cannot be said about NYAA. The site’s extended downtime continues with no apparent end in sight. This has resulted in a backlash from the site’s fans and somewhat inevitably accusatory fingers are being pointed at potential DDoS suspects.

As far-fetched as it might sound, one of the early suspects was the Japanese government itself. The launch of a brand new anti-piracy campaign last month in partnership with 15 producers certainly provided a motive, but a nation carrying out this kind of assault seems unlikely in the extreme.

Quickly, however, an announcement from HorribleSubs turned attentions elsewhere.

“Chill down. It’s not just us. Every famous anime sites [are] getting DDoS attacks, but that doesn’t mean this is the end,” the site’s operator wrote on Facebook.

“We have located where DDoS are coming from. It’s from ‪#‎Crunchyroll‬ and ‪#‎Funimation‬ Employees.”

Update: HorribleSubs inform TF that the Facebook page listed is “in no way managed nor affiliated with HorribleSubs and as such all opinions and views expressed on that page does not reflect the views and opinions of the HorribleSubs management.”

Funimation is an US television and film production company best known for its distribution of anime while Crunchyroll is a website and community focused on, among other things, Asian anime and manga. While both could at least have a motive to carry out a DDoS, no evidence has been produced to back up the HorribleSubs claims. That said, HorribleSubs admits that its key motivation is to annoy Crunchyroll.

“We do not translate our own shows because we rip from Crunchyroll, FUNimation, Hulu, The Anime Network, Niconico, and Daisuki,” the site’s about page reads, adding: “We aren’t doing this for e-penis but for the sole reason of pissing off Crunchyroll.”

Shortly after, attention turned to anti-piracy outfit Remove Your Media (RYM). The company works with anime companies Funimation and Viz Media, which includes the sending of millions of DMCA notices to Google. The spark came when the company published a tweet (now removed) which threatened to send “thousands” of warning letters to NYAA users once the site was back online.

This doesn’t seem like an idle threat. A few weeks ago the company posted a screenshot on Twitter containing an unredacted list of Comcast, Charter and CenturyLink IP addresses said to have been monitored infringing copyright. Due to the NYAA downtime, RYM later indicated it had switched to warning users of Kickass.to.

This involvement with anime companies combined with the warning notice statement led to DDoS accusations being directed at RYM. TorrentFreak spoke to the company’s Eric Green and asked if they knew anything about the attacks.

“The short answer is No. In fact we were waiting for [NYAA] to go back
online to begin monitoring illegal transfers again. Sorry to disappoint but we
had no involvement,” Green told TF.

Just a couple of hours ago RYM made a new announcement on Twitter, stating that the original tweet had been removed due to false accusations.

“Nyaa post deleted due to all the Ddos libel directed at this account. Infringement notices continue to ISPs, for piracy, regardless of tracker,” they conclude.

Although it’s impossible to say who is behind the attacks, it does seem improbable that an anti-piracy company getting paid to send notices would do something that is a) seriously illegal and b) counter-productive to getting paid for sending notices.

That said, it seems likely that someone who doesn’t appreciate unofficial anime sites operating smoothly is behind the attack. Who that might be will remain a mystery, at least for now.

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

Mega, the cloud hosting service founded by Kim Dotcom, has been growing steadily since its spectacular launch last year.

Considering the controversial reputation of its predecessor Megaupload, copyright holders have been keeping a close eye on the site. Thus far, however, the number of takedown requests received by the company has been relatively small.

Perhaps not completely unexpectedly, among the takedown requests that do come in are many that wrongfully request the takedown of perfectly legitimate files. This was illustrated earlier this week when Kim Dotcom’s official album Good Times was removed following a complaint.

The album was released by Dotcom earlier this year and he has been sharing it via his website ever since. The link in question points to Mega where people can download it for free, but a few days ago it suddenly disappeared.

To find out why the album was removed we contacted Mega for an explanation. The company informed us that music industry group IFPI requested the removal of Dotcom’s album through a takedown request sent on September 1.

Representing the major record labels, IFPI claimed that the link infringed on the copyrights of one of their artists. IFPI listed several musicians but Kim Dotcom was not one of them.

“It’s clearly an incorrect takedown request,” Mega’s Chief Compliance Officer Stephan Hall tells us.

TorrentFreak also contacted Kim Dotcom, who asked Mega to reinstate the album, which they did. All in all the album was unavailable for about a day.

While a mistake is easily made, this is not the first time that IFPI has tried to remove Dotcom’s album from Mega. A similar request was sent on August 18, this time claiming that it was a copyright infringement of Kimbra’s “The Golden Echo.”

IFPI’s actions have been sloppy, to say the least, and Mega’s Chief Compliance Officer has little faith in the accuracy of the music group’s other takedown requests.

“This is an indication that someone at the IFPI is not doing their homework and that their takedown notices in general cannot be trusted,” Hall tells TorrentFreak.

Unfortunately these kind of mistakes are not an isolated incident. For example, before Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload was shutdown early 2012 the site received many erroneous takedown notices.

“During the Megaupload days over 20% of all takedown notices were bogus,” Dotcom told us previously.

“We analyzed big samples of notices and most were automated keyword based takedowns that affected a lot of legitimate files. The abuse of the takedown system is so severe that no service provider can rely on takedown notices for a fair repeat infringer policy.”

A policy to punish copyright holders who make repeated mistakes, on the other hand, might be worth considering.

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