Last year the RIAA and MPAA teamed up with five of the largest Internet providers in the U.S. to begin issuing warnings to alleged copyright infringers.

As part of this partnership the ISPs have to store all warnings their customers receive. Opponents feared that this data could be used against these individuals in court, which is specifically permitted under the agreement.

“The Content Owner Representatives [MPAA / RIAA] or any other member of the Participating Content Owners Group may use such reports or data as the basis for seeking a Subscriber’s identity through a subpoena or order or other lawful process,” the agreement reads.

However, as it turns out, the first legal consequences aren’t a result of action taken by Hollywood or the major record labels. They come from the adult video publisher Malibu Media, a so-called copyright troll that has filed over 750 lawsuits against alleged infringers this year alone.

In their case against Kelley Tashiro, a middle-aged female nurse from Indianapolis, the company had trouble proving that an infringement actually took place. But instead of backing down, they put their money on the six-strikes warnings databases.

Malibu asked the court to order Comcast to release all data being held as part of the Copyright Alert System. While Malibu is not part of the program, this data may show that the Internet connection was used to share pirated content on more occasions.

“DMCA notices and six strike notices are relevant because these notices may prove a pattern of infringement or notice that infringement is occurring or both,” Malibu noted in its motion.

A copy of the recorded copyright infringements wasn’t enough for Malibu though, the company also asked for details of Tashiro’s bandwidth consumption, suggesting that this could indicate whether she is an infringer or not.

“Bandwidth usage is relevant because people who are heavy BitTorrent users use significantly more bandwidth than normal internet users,” the company’s sweeping generalization reads.

This week Indiana District Court Judge Mark Dinsmore granted Malibu’s motion, which means that Comcast will be ordered to share the requested evidence.

“Plaintiff’s Motion is GRANTED. Plaintiff may serve a third party subpoena on Comcast and Comcast should comply with Plaintiff’s Subpoena Duces Tecum
for deposition as outlined in Plaintiff’s Motion,” the Judge writes.

Comcast has not yet responded to the order, but considering the sensitivity of the subject the Internet provider is expected to file an appeal.

Currently it’s not known whether Tashiro has ever received a copyright alert, but the RIAA, MPAA and other participants in the Copyright Alerts System will not be pleased with these latest developments.

The Center for Copyright Information, which oversees the program, has always emphasized that the program respects the privacy of Internet subscribers. Having it used against alleged downloaders by copyright holders that are not even part of the scheme is bad PR for them, to say the least.

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

Each year the United States Trade Representative publishes a “notorious markets” report detailing international sites whose services operate below U.S. standards of copyright protection. China regularly has at least one company in the list, sometimes several.

Most recently the USTR indirectly called out the Shenzhen QVOD Technology Co., creator of QVOD, a technology designed to enable businesses to distribute their content online using BitTorrent, P2P, and streaming technology.

Earlier this year the company indicated it was taking steps to stop its service being used for the transfer of protected content after the National Copyright Administration said it was infringing. Just just days later, however, QVOD was raided by the police. Adding to its woes, in May the company was found guilty of allowing the distribution of pornographic content via its service.

But despite its overtures towards licensed content, QVOD now has a sizable copyright-related headache to contend with. Following a hearing earlier this month, an authority in Shenzhen hit QVOD with a record-breaking fine equivalent to $42m after finding the company guilty of distributing local movie and TV show content online without rightsholder permission.

“According to our investigation [QVOD] earned 86.7 million yuan ($13.83m) from illegal practices. The fine levied amounts to three times the illegal gains, an amount the law allows,” a spokesman for the Shenzhen Market Supervision Administration said.

After being formally served on QVOD yesterday, the company was given 15 days to pay the fine. Any delays doing so will prove costly, with the authorities adding an additional 3% ($1.26m) to the fine for each day beyond the deadline.

The company does have the right to appeal the decision, either via administrative review or directly to the court within 90 days, but in the meantime QVOD has been ordered to pay the $42m fine. However, local media reports that the company is intending to mount a legal fight back to avoid paying up as required.

QVOD says it will appeal on three points – that the penalties are “unreasonable”, that the company “caused no great harm to society”, and that the company’s video player had no ads or subscription fees to generate profit from users.

A company insider, who spoke with local media on condition of anonymity, said that accepting the fine would mean not being able to pay 400 to 500 employees.

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

When Spotify launched its first beta in the fall of 2008 it started a small revolution.

With the option to stream millions of tracks supported by an occasional ad, or free of ads for a small subscription fee, Spotify offered something that’s more convenient than piracy.

In the years that followed Spotify rolled out its music service in more than 60 countries, amassing dozens of millions of users. This has led to a decline in music piracy rates in a few countries, but the problem is far from gone yet.

Spotify Australia’s managing director Kate Vale told Cnet that one of the company’s key goals is to convert those who still get their music via unauthorized channels.

“People that are pirating music and not paying for it, they are the ones we want on our platform. It’s important for us to be reaching these individuals that have never paid for music before in their life, and get them onto a service that’s legal and gives money back to the rights holders,” Vale says.

According to Vale, the music industry was in part to blame for the surge in piracy during the last decade, as the legal alternatives were lacking.

“Until there’s free, legal and timely ways for people to download content, then they’re going to turn to illegal ways of doing it,” she says.

Today the legal options are there in most countries, but getting people to give up their old habits requires time. According to Vale there are still 2.8 million Australians who pirate music on a monthly basis, sharing a total 1 billion songs a year.

In the years ahead Spotify hopes to convert these people with a product that’s superior to piracy. This would mean more revenue for the music industry, and thus a win-win for all.

“If we can get even half of these people onto Spotify or legal services, it means there’s going to be money back in the industry which is good for artists, streaming services like ourselves,” Vale says.

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

Earlier this year we reported on a controversial anti-piracy campaign operated by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

Representing major software companies, the BSA uses Facebook ads which encourage people to report businesses that use unlicensed software. If one of these reports results in a successful court case, the pirate snitch can look forward to a cash reward.

Below is one of the promoted Facebook posts that has appeared in the timelines of thousands of people, encouraging them to expose software piracy in return for hard cash.

BSA’s Facebook ad

While most responses on Facebook are negative, it appears that the campaign is not without results. In an interview with Radio Prague, the spokesman for the Czech branch of the BSA notes that the informant program has been a great success thus far.

“[The campaign is] very successful. We did it because we wanted to catch big fish. In the past, many informants did not want to disclose who they were, and it was difficult to set up serious communication with them.” the BSA’s Jan Hlaváč says.

“The only way out of this was to offer them something that would motivate them to fully cooperate. That’s why we decided to launch this programme, to reward information that leads not only to identifying illegal software but to bringing the whole case to the end,” he adds.

The cash reward has increased the number of serious tips and in the Czech Republic alone the BSA receives about 30 leads per month. Similar campaigns also run in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia, where hundreds of tips come in every week.

Some of these tips lead to a follow up investigation where BSA offers the alleged infringer a settlement offer. In the Czech Republic alone there are currently several cases pending, worth roughly $500,000. If a settlement is reached, the informant will get a share, ranging from $5,000 to $200,000.

Another BSA Facebook ad

Earlier this week the BSA released new data (pdf) on piracy levels worldwide, with the rate of unlicensed software decreasing in most western countries.

Between 2011 and 2013 the percentage of unlicensed software installed on computers dropped from 19% to 18% in the United States, and similar downward trends were observed in the UK and elsewhere.

In the Czech Republic piracy rates decreased from 37% to 34%, and according to the BSA this is in part due to the snitch campaign.

“Definitely. The programme has helped a great deal convince companies that the legal risks are not worth it,” Hlaváč says.

Despite this success there is still plenty of work to be done. Globally the percentage of pirate software increased slightly, representing a total value of $62.7 billion, so there’s plenty of bounty left.

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

It’s probably fair to say that Village Roadshow and iiNet don’t get on. The pair are so far apart on how to deal with the piracy issue they ended up in court together, a battle that iiNet won when the court found that the ISP could not be held liable for the infringements of its users.

The decision did nothing to change the positions of either company and in recent weeks a very public dispute broke out between iiNet Chief Regulatory Officer Steve Dalby and Village Roadshow co-CEO Graham Burke. The topic? The former’s continued but now legally supported refusal to take responsibility the activities of its customers.

While some may have a level of sympathy with Burke’s predicament, retreading old ground over ISP liability can hardly be the solution. Today even more inflammables were thrown onto the fire.

Should a knife manufacturer be held responsible for what happened in the Psycho shower scene? Should Ford be held liable for a drunk driver piloting one of their vehicles? These rhetorical questions have well-trodden answers, but Burke hasn’t been paying attention.

In a new interview with CNET, Burke again attacked Dalby, accusing him of “distorting the picture” in the face of the Village Roadshow chief’s self-claimed fairness.

“For him to be continuing to distort the picture when he clearly knows otherwise is very depressing,” Burke said. “I’m dealing with it in a transparent and open and honest way and I wished we could get that from iiNet.”

And then the bombshell.

“iiNet are selling a car which happens to kill people on the roads, so they should be paying towards that. It’s the car that’s faulty. In this instance it’s the fault of the car, not the driver. They’re providing a service which enables people to steal other people’s property, so…some of the costs should be theirs,” Burke said.

“All Mr Dalby wants is to continue to have this extraordinary smorgasbord of product that’s made by creative people, with the sweat of their passion and labors, and that he can have a mechanism where he can be the conduit that provides that free and he clips the ticket. He’s complicit.”

Clearly there is nothing inherently faulty with iiNet’s service. It’s essentially an empty pipe that the customer can fill in the manner of his choosing, and one that’s no more broken than the postal or telephone systems that preceded it. Nevertheless, Burke still wants to shoot the messenger and Dalby is having none of it.

There can be no doubt that Village Roadshow and its Hollywood affiliates feel they have a big problem to solve, but with arguments like these it’s easy to see how the dispute with iiNet has gone on for so long. Indeed, there appears to have been no progress made in half a decade.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the government will step in with the three strikes system that Burke is pushing hard for. If that happens, Burke will have “won”, but when that victory will arrive is another matter entirely, raising the specter of yet more out-of-date legislation before it even arrives.

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