Although the dream of blocking sites in the United States was completely crushed along with the now-dead SOPA legislation, music and movie companies across Europe have enjoyed a much smoother ride.

Torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents are blocked in several countries around the EU and in the UK, for example, dozens of ‘pirate’ domains are now blocked at the ISP level.

A notable case originating from Austria, however, has been on hold pending a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union. The dispute saw movie companies Constantin Film Verleih and Wega Filmproduktionsgesellschaft complain that local ISP UPC Telekabel Wien had been providing subscriber access to illegal streaming site Kino.to, a site now shuttered following police action.

The movie companies previously obtained interim injunctions to have UPC block the site, despite UPC arguing that it couldn’t be held responsible for a site that it had absolutely nothing to do with. UPC also noted that there was no court ruling indicating its customers had broken the law.

To settle the matter the Austrian Supreme Court asked the Court of Justice to clarify whether a company that provides Internet access to those using an illegal website could be required to block that site. Today the Court of Justice handed down its long-awaited decision.

The Court found that a person who makes copyrighted material available to the public without permission from rightsholders is using the services of the Internet service provider of the people accessing that content. EU law does not require a specific relationship between the person infringing copyright and the intermediary against whom any injunction has been issued, the Court found.

Addressing UPC’s concerns that none of its customers had been deemed by a court to have acted unlawfully, the EU Court said that proof was not necessary as the law is in place not only to bring an end to infringement, but also to prevent it.

The EU Court added that since any ISP targeted by an injunction is free to carry out its obligations in a way that fits its circumstances, blocking orders do not therefore restrict an ISP’s freedom to conduct its business.

Any injunction must, however, must be proportional so as not to unnecessarily stop subscribers from lawfully accessing information. Furthermore, any blocking measures must have the effect of preventing access to copyrighted content or at least make it more difficult. National courts are required to ensure that these conditions are met.

The take-home from today’s ruling, which follows last year’s advice from the Advocate General, is clear: ISPs can be required to block access to infringing sites but any injunction must be balanced and proportional.

_{Photo: Dan Zen}

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

While the music and movie industries are still developing strategies to deal with illegal file-sharing at the end-user level, tackling Internet companies remains a key component of their anti-piracy arsenals.

While pressure is maintained against search engines and sites such as YouTube, not all Internet-based companies are as willing (or indeed easily able) to cooperate due to the way they are setup. One such complication arises from the continued availability of illicit content on the worldwide Usenet (newsgroup) system.

Considering the masses of copyright-infringing content uploaded to Usenet, legal action against companies that provide access to the system is relatively rare. Adult publisher Perfect 10 fought battles against Usenet giant Giganews and five years ago the RIAA crushed Usenet.com in the what was probably the most significant victory of its type.

This week in the latest action against a Usenet supplier, German anti-piracy group GEMA reported a new victory against Aviteo Ltd, the Munich-based operator of UseNeXT.

For years the music-focused rights group has been pressuring UseNeXT claiming that tracks from its repertoire are being made available for illegal download via the company’s services. UseNeXT isn’t responsible for putting the tracks online and they weren’t necessarily placed there by a UseNeXT user, but GEMA wants the company to take responsibility.

This week GEMA obtained an injunction against UseNeXT / Aviteo Ltd at the Hamburg Regional Court in respect of a sample 10 tracks from GEMA’s repertoire. The injunction is the latest development in GEMA’s long-running legal battle with UseNeXT.

The dispute dates back to 2006 and has already resulted in a pair court injunctions issued in 2007 and 2010, each ordering the provider to do more to protect GEMA’s rights.

“The adoption of this [latest] injunction is a positive signal for all rightsowners,” said GEMA CEO Dr. Harald Heker.

“It confirms that services whose business model is based on the illegal downloading of protected works and thereby make a profit, have a duty towards rightsholders.”

The precise details have not yet been made public, but according to GEMA the injunction “extends the responsibility of services providers towards rights holders” in the event that copyright works are continually made available.

“In such a case, the service provider has an obligation to eliminate the danger created by him for illegal use of protected content, through the use of an appropriate filtering system, or if necessary, even the closure of the service,” GEMA said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, UseNeXT have a different interpretation of the decision. The company says that it only provides access to the Usenet system and has no control of the content to be found there. It is common practice, UseNeXT says, for copyright holders to send takedown notices to the actual server operators so that files can be removed from newsgroups.

In a sure sign that this battle is far from over, UseNeXT / Aviteo says it will appeal.

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

For the past six years or so the idea that piracy can be turned into profit has been gaining traction. After Internet users sharing copyrighted material without permission are identified, they can be contacted and pressured into settling what might otherwise be an expensive lawsuit.

Discovering the real-life identities of pirates is not cheap, and that’s where US-based Rightscorp spotted a gap in the market. By attaching settlement demands to DMCA notices that ISPs are compelled to forward to alleged pirates, Rightscorp can reach alleged infringers without even knowing who they are.

Once a warning letter enters the email inbox of an account holder, he or she is invited to visit the Rightscorp website to settle for around $20.00. Some people simply ignore the warnings and nothing else happens. Others choose to pay $20 for say, a single music track, but sometimes discover that Rightscorp has more demands for the rest of the tracks in the album lined up at $20 a pop.

But while collecting $20 for sending an email might sound like a winner, financial results for 2013 just published by Rightscorp paint a pretty miserable picture.

For the year ending December 31, 2013, Rightscorp reports total revenue of just $324,016. So, presuming all of that revenue came from $20.00 settlements, around 16,200 infringement notices were paid during the 12 month period, or around 311 per week.

While this might seem like a decent return for just sending emails, they don’t just appear out of thin air. Rightscorp has costs, lots of them in fact.

When an Internet user settles with Rightscorp some of this money goes back to companies such as Warner Bros., who give permission for the anti-piracy company to exploit their content to generate revenue. According to Rightscorp, during 2013 it paid a total of $161,868 to these companies. When we compare that amount with total revenue of $324,016, we can see that Rightscorp gives away $10 from every $20 settlement.

On paper it’s money for nothing for the copyright holders, but Rightscorp’s $10 cut just isn’t balancing the books due to the large costs of running the business. Under ‘General and administrative expenses’ the company says it burnt through $1,663,921 in 2013, with ‘sales and marketing’ and ‘depreciation and amortization’ coming in at $275,616 and $33,438 respectively.

Add those all together and Rightscorp cost $2,134,843 to run in 2013, yet it brought in just $324,016, a shortfall of more than $1.8 million. After other adjustments the bottom line shows a loss of $2,042,779 for the anti-piracy company, an amount that would take their share of another 204,278 settlements to balance, providing no other costs increased.

While the company has expansion plans for Canada and has filed for patents to extend its monitoring services to Europe, China, Israel, Japan, Brazil, and India, the elusive aim of turning piracy into profit is still some way off.

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

The MPAA just released their latest box-office statistics. Despite the continuing threat of online piracy the numbers once again show an increase in revenue worldwide, up to a record-breaking $35.9 billion in 2013.

In addition to the revenue increase, the movie group emphasizes the importance of new technology in expanding its audience. The MPAA stresses that frequent moviegoers are also technology fanatics, with nearly three-quarters owning at least four new devices.

Smartphones are particularly popular among movie fans, and the MPAA notes that the movie industry can do more to use this technology to boost theater attendance even further.

“We need to keep exploring fresh ways of leveraging our new technology to drive traffic to your theaters,” MPAA CEO Chris Dodd said at The Colosseum inside Caesar’s Palace where the findings were presented.

“We can embrace technology, and use it to complement our offerings….A smartphone can make more content available, but it will never be able to surpass the shared experience that you deliver to every person who sits in your theaters,” he added.

Moviegoers own more tech devices (source: mpaa.org)

With the release of these statistics the MPAA wants to show that technology is not just a threat to the movie industry, but also an opportunity. While this is certainly true, the statements are not without conflict.

Using smartphones to drive more people to the movies also presents a problem, as the MPAA doesn’t want them to be used inside the theater.

The MPAA has previously published a set of anti-piracy practices movie theater owners should adhere to. This includes a very skeptical stance against any device that can be used to capture video, including smartphones.

“The MPAA recommends that theaters adopt a Zero Tolerance policy that prohibits the video or audio recording and the taking of photographs of any portion of a movie,” MPAA states.

“Theater managers should immediately alert law enforcement authorities whenever they suspect prohibited activity is taking place. Do not assume that a cell phone or digital camera is being used to take still photographs and not a full-length video recording,” the group adds.

Past anecdotes show that theaters take these recommendations very seriously. A few years ago a girl was arrested for recording a 20 second clip from the movie Transformers on her phone, and more recently a Google Glass wearer was handed over to the authorities, without recording anything.

The above is a classical example of the dual role technology plays for the entertainment industries. Nearly every new invention poses both threats and opportunities, and the challenge is to find the right balance between them.

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

It’s a system that first started in Europe with games and especially pornography, where people were less likely to fight back due to fear of public embarrassment.

The aim for copyright holders is to avoid litigation while generating revenue. Their evidence is often questionable and as a result those that fight back often have their cases dropped – trolls tend to prefer the escape option over the consequences of an adverse verdict.

After moving to the U.S., settlement programs gained prominence through the actions of entities including Prenda and X-Art. These schemes have come under increasing fire in U.S. courts, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a new country is now on the agenda.

Citizens of Finland are now being subjecting to pay-up-or-else letters, but the decision to target this Nordic country isn’t the most obvious one, thanks to less favorable laws than those in the US.

Letters that have recently gone out to some Finnish Internet subscribers (translated example below, from a DNA customer)  accuse them of downloading porn using BitTorrent and include an offer to settle for ‘only 600 euros’ (about US$825). A vague reference to the police is also included,  ratcheting up the pressure to comply.

According to Ville Oksanen, vice chair of the EFFi and Post-doc researcher at Aalto University, under Finnish law the account holder is presumed to be the infringer by the courts, unless the or she can show that someone may have used the account.

In addition, the loser of a case pays the costs, unlike in the U.S. where each side pays its own costs with a few exceptions (such as a baseless case). More and more courts around the world are starting to look closely into these kinds of cases, and in some instances throwing them out. That’s not so good if you’re liable for the substantial cost of defense.

TorrentFreak has been able to confirm that the letters relate to content from the Hustler stable, who committed to “turning piracy into profit”, presumably through these troll tactics, as far back as 2009.

Why this scheme is starting in Finland now is unknown, although the crowdsourced copyright law may make it less profitable in the future. According to Oksanen, the law as written would remove some sections of copyright law, making account-holder identification much harder.

The lawfirm behind this letter, Hedman Partners, did not respond to requests at the time of publication.

With thanks to rehanna, vhautaka and mikachu

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