When Megaupload was raided early 2012, the U.S. Government seized 1,103 servers at Carpathia’s hosting facility in the United States.

Well over two years have passed since and still it remains uncertain if former users will ever be able to retrieve their files.

A reporter who used Megaupload to store work-related files did take legal steps to secure his files. However, despite six requests asking the court to find a solution for the return of his data, there is still no progress.

Hosting provider Carpathia previously estimated that it cost them $9,000 a day to keep the hardware in storage. The company even threatened that without compensation, it could have no other option than to wipe the data. This is also what Dutch hosting company Leaseweb did to the hundreds of Megaupload servers it had stored.

The bulk of Megaupload’s data is stored at Carpathia though, and to learn whether those servers remain intact TF reached out to the hosting company for a status update. Unfortunately, our repeated requests remained unanswered.

Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken was willing to provide some insight into the issue, and says that according to the information they have the servers remain in storage. Not at the original location, but in a warehouse of the hosting company in Virginia.

“Our understanding is that the Megaupload servers previously hosted at Carpathia are stacked in a disconnected state in a secure Carpathia facility in Virginia,” Rothken tells TF.

The U.S. Government is no longer claiming the Megaupload servers as they have copied all crucial data. However, the MPAA and the Department of Justice previously objected to a deal between Carpathia and Megaupload, where the latter would buy their own servers back.

This effort was stopped because the U.S. didn’t want Kim Dotcom to have access to the files. Hoping to get out of this stalemate the Court then suggested that all affected parties should get together and come up with a solution, thus far without success.

“In separate written requests in the past year both Carpathia and Megaupload have asked Magistrate Judge Anderson – who was appointed by Judge O’Grady to mediate the cloud storage server data issue – to preside over follow-up negotiations on data preservation and consumer access,” Rothken tells TF.

“The US DOJ has shown little interest in such negotiations and the Judge has not been inclined to set any additional meetings,” he adds.

In other words, there are no signs that former Megaupload users will get their files back in the near future. The question now is for how long hosting provider Carpathia will keep the servers in storage.

If Carpathia follows the example of Leaseweb and destroys the data, Megaupload’s business will be wiped for good before the criminal proceedings get into the meat of the matter. Perhaps that’s what the U.S. planned all along?

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

If one existed, Antigua would hardly head up a list of countries sympathetic to copyright claims originating from the United States.

A dispute over the imposition of a trade blockade preventing Antigua from offering Internet gambling services has been lingering for some time, eventually resulting in a 2013 WTO ruling which officially allowed the country to ignore U.S. copyright law in order to reclaim lost revenue.

But despite the hostilities, in the background a copyright-related dispute has flourished between U.S.-based AACS LA – the decryption licensing outfit founded by a group of movie studios and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel – and Slysoft Inc, a local company offering DVD and Blu-ray backup tools.

Slysoft is currently labeled a “rogue site” by the USTR but AACS has had the company on its radar for some time. After technical measures introduced by AACS failed to thwart Slysoft’s software, the group looked towards legal action. With the DMCA useless overseas, AACS looked to Antigua’s Copyright Act of 2003 which includes anti-circumvention clauses, as detailed below.

However, a quirk of the law meant that only criminal action could be taken against Slysoft, leaving AACS at the mercy of Antiguan authorities who they hoped would bring a case against company owner, Giancarlo Bettini. Fortunately for the U.S. giants that’s exactly what happened in 2012 and now, 11 years after the anti-circumvention law was introduced, Antigua has its first conviction.

In an Antigua & Barbuda court, Bettini was found guilty of six charges under the 2003 Copyright Act and ordered to pay a find of $5,000 per offense. Bettini was told to settle two of the $5,000 fines immediately, with payment of the other four deadlined for the end of April. Failure to pay carries six months in jail for each offense.

“[SlySoft was] clearly violating Antiguan law, and the court ruled accordingly,” said AACS attorney Bruce Turnbull.

Meanwhile, however, Slysoft continues to do business. TorrentFreak spoke to the company who told us that this decision is not the end of the road.

“Subsequent to the recent ruling against Bettini, his lawyer Dane Hamilton QC immediately filed a notice of appeal so the judgment has been stayed,” Slysoft said, adding that it would not comment further on a pending case.

On the heels of the recent AACS case against DVDFab which saw the company’s US-based assets seized, it appears that AACS may be contemplating further pressure on Slysoft business partners.

“[The Antiguan legal victory] gives us a concrete decision to take to others who facilitate SlySoft and their business. We can say to those who do business with them: ‘This is an illegal activity’,” AACS’s lawyer added.

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

For several years vKontakte, or VK, has been marked as a piracy facilitator by copyright holders and even the U.S. Government.

In several Special 301 Reports published by the United States Trade Representative, Russia’s Facebook equivalent has been criticized for the huge quantities of unauthorized media it hosts. As a result it is currently labeled a “notorious market”, a term usually reserved for piracy’s apparent worst-of-the-worst.

In common with many user-generated sites, VK allows its millions of users to upload anything from movies and TV shows to their entire music collections. Unlike Facebook and other major players, Russia’s social network has been very slow to adopt anti-piracy measures.

Three major record labels – Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music – have now taken their concerns to the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court. The labels accuse VK of running a service that facilitates large-scale copyright infringement and are demanding countermeasures and compensation.

The record labels have asked for an order requiring VK to implement fingerprinting technology to delete copyrighted works and prevent them from being re-uploaded. In addition, Sony, Warner and Universal are demanding 50 million rubles ($1.4 million) from the social networking site to compensate for losses suffered.

“VK’s music service, unlike others in Russia, is an unlicensed file-sharing service that is designed for copyright infringement on a large-scale,” IFPI’s Frances Moore says in a comment.

“We have repeatedly highlighted this problem over a long period of time. We have encouraged VK to cease its infringements and negotiate with record companies to become a licensed service. To date the company has taken no meaningful steps to tackle the problem, so today legal proceedings are being commenced,” Moore adds.

VK has yet to respond to the accusations. Russia’s telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor previously said that VK was trying very hard to better their anti-piracy practices, but these efforts apparently came too late.

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

Last month the Public Prosecutor of Rome ordered Italian Internet providers to block access to 46 torrent, streaming and other file-sharing portals.

The crackdown was the largest enforcement action against copyright-infringing sites in Italy, and local authorities hinted that it wouldn’t be the last.

One of the sites affected by the blockades was Filmakerz.org, a video streaming portal that offers a variety of movies and TV-shows for free. Mainly popular among Italians, the site’s traffic plummeted as a result of the ban.

But while most blocked sites are quick to throw in the towel, Filmakerz.org decided to appeal the case, with success. This week the Court of Appeals overturned the blocking order against the site, ruling that it was too broad.

The panel of judges clarified that each blocking request should specify under what exact URLs copyrighted works are being infringed, instead of submitting a single domain name. Without the exact location of the infringing content, the court can’t verify the validity of the blocking request.

According to Fulvio Sarzana, the lawyer who represented Filmakerz.org, the ruling is a clear blow against the increasing censorship efforts in Italy. Sarzana says that the court specified two important ground rules.

“The first is that the Public Prosecutor must prove the existence of a for-profit motivation to get the blocking order,” the lawyer tells TF.

“The second is that parts of the site that contain legitimate content must not affected. This means that a partial seizure of an individual URL is preferred over the seizure of the entire site,” Sarzana adds.

The ruling comes at a crucial time, a few days after Italy’s independent Electronic Communications Authority (AGCOM) implemented new regulations that would allow foreign sites to be blocked more easily.

“The verdict is important because it shows that the order to block a site should be carefully decided, and is also important in the light of AGCOM rules,” Sarzana told us, adding that the regulation to block entire domains contradicts with European and Italian jurisprudence.

Following the Court of Appeals verdict, local ISPs have been instructed to unblock Filmakerz.org, which is expected to be accessible again soon. It is unclear whether any of the other blocked sites also plan to appeal the blockade, but with the appeal decision in Filmakerz’s favor it might be worth a shot.

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

For several months City of London Police have been working with the music and movie industries to develop “Operation Creative”, a campaign designed to make life difficult for sites that provide access to unauthorized copyrighted content.

The latest stage, announced this Monday, will see the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit team up with partners including the BPI, FACT, IFPI, The Publishers Association, and the Internet Advertising Bureau UK.

The product of their toils is the Infringing Website List (IWL), a database containing domains that companies and brands should avoid when placing their advertising online. The idea is simple – by throttling advertising revenue to these sites they will no longer be able to operate.

In the music and movie industries’ ideal world the likes of The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents will eventually wither and die, but before they do the police have another trick up their sleeve.

The plan, revealed yesterday by Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe during Adweek Europe, will see the police reaching out directly to users of piracy sites in the hope they will change their ways. The police will do that by ‘advertising’ on the sites themselves.

According to the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) who first reported the development, City of London Police intend to take over banner advertising on ‘pirate’ sites with the aim of influencing consumer behavior. Or, to put it more directly, they will try to encourage people using file-sharing sites to stop doing so.

The Pirate Bay, UK Police edition?

Speaking with TorrentFreak, FACT said the precise details of how this will work will have to come from PIPCU, but the aim is straightforward.

“What is clear is that [the police] are looking to find new and effective ways of reducing criminal profits and also inform and educate consumers,” said FACT Director of Communications Eddy Leviten.

PIPCU did not immediately respond to our requests for comment, but taking over banner adverts on ‘pirate’ sites raises some interesting questions, not least one at the very core of the current issue – revenue.

The police will need to find a way to advertise on sites without paying money, or the campaign itself will end up financing the very sites they aim to close. Furthermore, sites probably won’t have much interest in running free ads, particularly those that aim to take their users away, so how long these ‘rogue’ ads will remain live is up for debate.

While a traditionally aggressive anti-piracy campaign could be on the cards, a more considered positive reinforcement of legitimate services may have more longevity. Where the ads will appear is not clear either as the Infringing Website List is being kept a secret, but FACT says that sites are being told of their inclusion in advance.

“I want to clarify that all site owners are contacted before being placed on the IWL, giving them the chance to change their behavior,” FACT’s Eddy Leviten explains.

This latest stage in Operation Creative follows two initiatives last year. The first, during late summer 2013, saw police writing to site owners in the hope of securing voluntary shutdowns. This effort was followed by the police targeting registrars with the aim of forcing the seizure or suspension of ‘pirate’ domains.

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