Thanks to Google and the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, spotting potential abuses of the DMCA takedown process has become easier than ever. Both organizations carefully catalog the notices they receive and as a result it’s possible to bring issues to the attention of the public.

Most of the time problems arise with companies making the odd embarrassing mistake. At other times things get more serious. Today we bring news of another mess that would’ve ordinarily flown under the radar.

On its Twitter account, Total Wipes Music Group claims to work with 800 music labels and cooperates with major digital music stores such as iTunes, Beatport and Juno. Early July the company began sending DMCA notices to Google and out of more than 15,000 URLs sent so far the majority have been rejected.

In an early notice the company asked Google to remove website pages of several of its partners including BeatPortCharts, Napster (UK and Germany), Rhapsody and TraxSource. Other notices targeted both iTunes and Apple.

In this notice, which claims to protect this content, Total Wipes launched a full frontal assault on anyone daring to use any words used in the title of their clients’ track “ROCK THE BASE & BAD FORMAT”. The results are awful.

In April this year DJ E-Z Rock, best known for the track ‘It Takes Two’ with partner Rob Base, sadly passed away. MTV, Rolling Stone and a number of news outlets all wrote about the event but in their notice Total Wipes demand that Google de-list all of their reports. They also attack a wide range of other random sites, some which dared to mention “rock” climbing and others which mentioned a rock festival on a military “base”.

For no apparent reason, another notice targeted The School of Performance and Cultural Industries at Leeds University in the UK, stopping off to admonish music mag Pitchfork Media and the evil PC gaming bloggers over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Perhaps the weirdest notice, currently being processed by Google, sees the music outfit target a wide range of sites with the word ‘coffee’ in their URLs. Cariboucoffee, cartelcoffeelab, clivecoffee, coavacoffee, coffee.org, coffeeandtealtd, coffeebean and coffeegeek are just the tip of a very large iceberg.

Quite what Ikea, Walmart, Fair Trade and Dunkin Donuts did to warrant inclusion is a mystery, but our money is on their connections to coffee. Github’s crime will be revealed in due course.

The end result is that Google has rejected what appears to be the lions’ share of more than 15,000 URLs sent by Total Wipes, even those that appear to target well-known ‘pirate’ sites.

There are far too many URLs for us to check individually but some poor soul at Google is probably going to have to do just that. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

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

While facing an extradition to America for his role in the so-called “Megaupload Conspiracy”, Kim Dotcom launched a new cloud storage venture, Mega. Now, this new service is being indirectly linked to a crime ring by local authorities.

Today Mega announced that one of its major shareholders William Yan, also known as Bill Liu, is suspected of having connections to a large crime ring. Pending further investigation the police has put the 18.8% share held through Yan’s companies under restraining order.

Yan has not been formally charged and through his lawyer denied any wrong-doing. Mega itself is not believed to be connected to the alleged crimes.

“The Police have commented that their action does not affect any innocent third parties (such as Mega) who have had business dealings with Mr Yan,” Mega CEO Graham Gaylard says commenting on the news.

“Mega has been extremely diligent to ensure that all its operations are fully compliant with all legal and regulatory requirements. Mega does not undertake any illegal activities and does not wish to be associated with any such activity,” Gaylard adds.

Kim Dotcom says that William Yan was properly screened before he became a shareholder. The New Zealand entrepreneur, who himself is accused of money laundering by the United States, said that no alarm bells went off at the time.

“He is an investor who put money into Mega because he believed in it. I had no idea he had any problems or issues,” Dotcom told the Herald.

The news comes at an unfortunate time for Mega, which intends to go public on the New Zealand stock exchange through a backdoor listing. As a result of the restraining order the trading in shares of the backdoor listing vehicle TRS has been temporarily halted.

Despite the problems of its shareholder, Mega’s CEO doesn’t believe the company will be affected. Gaylard stresses that all funds received by Mega were paid by Yan’s lawyers through banks that operate under stringent anti money laundering policies.

“Mega has never had any reason to suspect that such funds resulted from any illegal activity, and the Restraining Order will not affect the operations of Mega,” Gaylard says.

“For us it is business as usual.”

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Maleficent is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(1)	Maleficent	7.4 / trailer
2	(9)	Godzilla (Webrip)	7.1 / trailer
3	(2)	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	8.1 / trailer
4	(3)	Divergent	7.2 / trailer
5	(…)	The Fault in Our Stars	8.3 / trailer
6	(4)	X-Men: Days of Future Past (HDrip/TS)	8.4 / trailer
7	(5)	22 Jump Street (TS)	7.8 / trailer
8	(…)	The Prince	4.6 / trailer
9	(…)	Draft Day	6.8 / trailer
10	(6)	The Amazing Spider-Man 2	7.4 / trailer

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

Alleged “super hacker” Gottfrid Svartholm is currently being held in a Danish prison on suspicion of hacking into the computers of IT company CSC.

After being extradited to Denmark from Sweden in 2013, next month he will go to trial.

In recent weeks Danish authorities have been attempting to round up witnesses to ensure they attend the Frederiksberg court during September. It’s unclear how many there are, but TorrentFreak has learned at least one won’t be attending.

John, who has asked us not to use his real name, is a former colleague of Gottfrid who lives and works in Cambodia. TorrentFreak previously confirmed his identity and the fact that he and Gottfrid did business together. In April he received a surprise telephone call which led to an unsettling series of events involving Danish police.

Several months later and John is again being put under pressure. Following suspicions he was being watched, John received an anonymous tipoff that he had been placed on the prosecution’s witness list against Gottfrid. Sure enough, on Wednesday Jens Jorgensen from the Danish police, one of the people who traveled to Cambodia to question John, telephoned John to register him as a witness.

John and Jorgensen then exchanged emails in which the former expressed bemusement at why the prosecution would want to use his evidence when it actually supports the position of Gottfrid Svartholm.

“I fail to see how anything I previously said to you could be used in this case against [Gottfrid]. As I told you, lots of people had access to [Gottfrid's] computer,” John wrote.

“Why on earth would you want me to testify against him when you know full well that I don’t believe he committed this crime based on what little information I have?”

In his early days of detention Gottfrid was kept in solitary confinement, something which enraged Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and prompted complaints from Gottfrid’s mother Kristina to Amnesty. This treatment is also a big issue with John.

“Gottfrid’s previous prolonged, extrajudicial solitary confinement in your country very clearly meets the United Nations definition of torture, and I find it utterly troubling,” John told Jorgensen.

“With that in mind, I am deeply concerned about the prospect of being a part of something that is so clearly unethical if not outright illegal. Is there some sort of legal equivalent of being a conscientious objector to trials? If so, I would consider myself a conscientious objector to this one, the whole thing disgusts me whether he committed the crime or not.”

Clearly, traveling half way around the world to assist the prosecution in a high profile trial against someone you believe is innocent is problematic enough, but John also has serious concerns about the legal issues involved.

“Will I be offered access to a lawyer at any point during all of this? he asked Jorgensen.

“So far I’ve been threatened with force by a man claiming to be a Swedish policeman, made to answer a bunch of questions, and now I’m being asked to make a decision about legal matters. I’d really like access to a lawyer so I can make informed decisions about this, but I can’t afford one as I got fired from my job the day after you came to see me.”

In addition to visiting John, Danish police also visited John’s employer when they visited Cambodia earlier this year. He was fired less than 24 hours later but was fortunate to find new employment.

In his response, Jorgensen confirmed that attending the trial is a voluntary act and no one will force John to attend. He also informed John that if he needs legal advice, he’ll have to pay for it himself. Nevertheless, the summons was issued.

The summons states that traveling expenses will be reimbursed and if necessary John will be provided with a hotel room in Denmark. He is also offered DKK 40 for every two hours he’s away from home or work – that’s roughly $3.50 per hour. If that isn’t enough the police say that more money may be available, but in John’s case that probably won’t be needed.

“I respectfully refuse your invitation and can confirm that I have no intention of appearing in court, at least until you clarify your motives for requesting me to do so, and until you provide access to appropriate legal advice so that I can make an informed decision,” John concludes.

A copy of the summons can be found below – note that while Gottfrid Svartholm is accused of only “white collar” offenses, the contact address is the Public Prosecutor’s Department of Violent Crime.

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

Thanks to the UK’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) the public is able to check what the government is up to, and hold it accountable. At least, that’s what it’s intended for.

FOIA requests are a helpful tool for journalists and at TorrentFreak we previously used this right to uncover the scope of City of London Police’s anti-piracy efforts.

There is more to reveal though. It is widely known that the police work in tandem with entertainment industry groups such as FACT and the BPI, so we also attempted to find out what’s being discussed behind closed doors.

Since asking for all information shared between City of London Police and entertainment industry groups might be a bit much, we focused our FOIA request on The Pirate Bay.

More specifically, we requested police correspondence with representatives of the creative industry “regarding the pirate bay also known as TPB, thepiratebay.se, thepiratebay.sx, thepiratebay.org, or Pirate Bay.”

On Friday we heard back from the responsible Information Access Officer, but no documents were provided. Instead, we were told that the request can’t be processed as the cost would exceed the statutory limit of £450.

“In order to establish the existence of any correspondence of this kind it would be necessary to examine all mail systems, all call logs and all files/documents held by the force,” the reply read.

“The cost of completing this work would exceed the limit prescribed by the Secretary of State in accordance with powers contained in Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. The limit is currently set at £450 and the hourly rate is set at £25.”

Apparently the police estimate that it would take more than 18 hours to locate the information we asked for. That would make sense if none of the documents are organized, but we assume that the force has some type of archiving system.

The above response leaves us with no other option than to limit the request to electronic information only, specifying a narrow time frame. Whether this will fall within the desired cost projection has yet to be seen though. Let’s hope there’s no hard drive crash in the meantime.

To be continued…

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