Last month Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm had his hacking sentence reduced from two to one year in prison.

The Court of Appeal upheld the guilty verdict in the hacking of IT company Logica, but overturned the guilty verdict handed down in respect of the breach at the Nordea bank.

Following the new verdict Gottfrid is set to be released early next year. However, since he is wanted in Denmark in a separate hacking case the Swedish authorities are planning to extradite the 29-year old next week.

In Denmark, Gottfrid is accused of hacking into the mainframe of IT company CSC and downloading a large number of files, including police records. The Danes successfully requested Gottfrid’s extradition earlier this year when they described the CSC hack as similar to the Nordea one in Sweden.

Gottfrid previously asked the Danish authorities to drop his case. He apologized that his computer was used for the CSC hack, but stressed that this was not his wrongdoing. Thus far this request has been without result and in a final attempt to stop his pending extradition the Pirate Bay founder has now turned to the Swedish Government.

In an open letter he points out that two crucial issues have to be addressed before the extradition can take place.

Firstly, Gottfrid notes that the arrest warrant he received was incomplete. It didn’t include a detailed description of the circumstances of the alleged crime, its location or the nature of his involvement. In addition, he didn’t have the opportunity to read the attachments that were referenced in the warrant, which were in Danish.

The second issue is the question of whether the Danish case is similar to the one Gottfrid has been tried for in Sweden already. The appeals court previously cleared Gottfrid of the Nordea hacking charges and because of the similarity between the cases he believes this should also apply to the Danish charges.

“It was found that my computer could have been controlled remotely, and that it had acted as a ‘computer lab’/ server, accessible to a wider audience. I could therefore not be held responsible for what was found on it. Liability was thus tried in Sweden for something that very closely matches what Denmark wants to hold me responsible for,” Gottfrid writes.

“It must be investigated whether this act should be considered ‘the same offense’ or not,” he adds.

The Pirate Bay founder urges the Swedish Government to keep him in Sweden until these uncertainties have been resolved. If they proceed with the extradition it would be a violation of international law, he notes.

“Overall, I argue that an extradition, if it is executed before [these two issues] have been investigated further, would be contrary to international law and what is to be guaranteed by the European Convention of 4 November 1950 on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.”

Below is a translated copy of the open letter (Swedish original with references).

This Friday the Swedish sentence against Gottfrid will be made final, and if the defense does not appeal, he will be extradited within five days.

Update: A few minutes after we published this article the news broke that Gottfrid will appeal his case at the Supreme Court in Sweden.

This means that the extradition is not going through next week. It’s likely to take months before the Supreme Court will decide on the matter, at which point Gottfrid will have served his sentence.

—

Re.: Possible upcoming Swedish crimes against international law and international agreements

I want to make the Swedish government aware that Sweden is about to violate Nordic, European and international agreements in that the Swedish authorities intend to surrender me to Denmark in accordance with a Nordic arrest order, issued in May 2013.

I would like to state the following :

(1) Formal errors were made in terms of the warrant form, of the information I have received on its contents as well as in terms of my rights to have this presented in the Swedish language:

I have not received any detailed description of whether the circumstances of the crimes I am suspected of in Denmark , the location of it or what my involvement in it could mean .

In the arrest warrant there are references to attachments that I have not had the opportunity to read. In a police interrogation , I could browse through a stack of paper that may possibly have been those attachments, but I do not know. They were also only in the Danish language.

(2) Before any extradition it must be determined whether an earlier indictment against me for hacking and fraud / attempted fraud against the Danish Nordea is considered as an indictment of the ‘same offense’ or not. Here are additional facts emerged since the warrant was issued :

I was cleared of suspicion as above by the Court of Appeals (Svea Hovrätt) on 25 September 2013. It was found that my computer could have been controlled remotely, and that it had acted as a ‘computer lab’/ server , accessible to a wider audience. I could therefore not be held responsible for what was found on it.

Liability was thus tried in Sweden for something that very closely matches what Denmark wants to hold me responsible for. It must be investigated whether this act should be considered ‘ the same offense’ or not.

The liability trial that the Court of Appeals has conducted also brings something that the Nordic governments have agreed about: “The system with a Nordic arrest is based on a high degree of trust between the Nordic States.” This trust should also apply to evidence trials and verdicts in each country.

Overall, I argue that an extradition, if it is executed before (1) and (2) have been investigated further, would be contrary to international law and what is to be guaranteed by the European Convention of 4 November 1950 on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms .

Häktet I Sollentuna
Gottfrid Svartholm Warg

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Urges Sweden to Stop His Extradition (Updated)

As the revelations of Edward Snowden roll on and on the notion that individuals in the United States, or indeed citizens of any country, have any real online privacy is being continually undermined.

As a result, interest in anonymity services such as Tor and VPNs has increased as even regular Internet users balk at the idea of being monitored.

While there are hundreds of providers to choose from, one particular US-based company has decided that the current environment on home soil makes it impossible to offer an effective consumer-focused service.

“With immediate effect as of this notice, CryptoSeal Privacy, our consumer VPN service, is terminated. All cryptographic keys used in the operation of the service have been zerofilled, and while no logs were produced (by design) during operation of the service, all records created incidental to the operation of the service have been deleted to the best of our ability,” the company said in a statement.

While it’s not unusual for a provider to leave the marketplace, CryptoSeal says that the ground has recently shifted beneath its feet, meaning that the legal basis on which the company was founded can no longer be relied upon.

“Essentially, the service was created and operated under a certain understanding of current US law, and that understanding may not currently be valid. As we are a US company and comply fully with US law, but wish to protect the privacy of our users, it is impossible for us to continue offering the CryptoSeal Privacy consumer VPN product,” the company says.

The problem, CryptoSeal says, relates back to the recent Lavabit case. The now-shuttered email service used by Edward Snowden closed down in August, with founder Ladar Levison saying that he had been “forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.”

Lavabit had been targeted by U.S. authorities but rather than compromise the privacy of his users, Levison decided to close the service down instead. He is currently tied up in a legal battle with U.S. authorities and it’s a document from this case that has caused CryptoSeal to shut down its consumer service.

“The Lavabit case, with filings released by Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com reveals a Government theory that if a pen register order is made on a provider, and the provider’s systems do not readily facilitate full monitoring of pen register information and delivery to the Government in realtime, the Government can compel production of cryptographic keys via a warrant to support a government-provided pen trap device,” CryptoSeal state.

A pen register is a device originally created in the 1800′s for recording telegraph signals on paper but more recently the term has been used to describe devices that can monitor telephone lines and Internet communications. Since VPN communications are encrypted, CryptoSeal believes that the only way it would be able to comply with a pen register order would be to do the unthinkable – hand over its encryption keys.

“Our system does not support recording any of the information commonly requested in a pen register order, and it would be technically infeasible for us to add this in a prompt manner. The consequence, being forced to turn over cryptographic keys to our entire system on the strength of a pen register order, is unreasonable in our opinion, and likely unconstitutional, but until this matter is settled, we are unable to proceed with our service,” the company informs.

While encouraging customers to donate to Lavabit’s defense fund, CryptoSeal says it is currently investigating whether it will be able to provide a consumer VPN service in the future without compromising user privacy. The company signs off with the following call.

“For anyone operating a VPN, mail, or other communications provider in the US, we believe it would be prudent to evaluate whether a pen register order could be used to compel you to divulge SSL keys protecting message contents, and if so, to take appropriate action,” CryptoSeal concludes.

Source: VPN Provider Shuts Down After Lavabit Case Undermines Security

After a legal battle of nearly eight years isoHunt founder Gary Fung announced the site’s closure last week.

Fung signed a $110 million settlement with the MPAA and planned to shut down the site Tuesday night as stipulated in the agreement with the movie studios.

The unexpected settlement took many of the site’s users by surprise, and yesterday we reported that a group of “rogue archivists” was working on a full backup to preserve a piece of Internet history. Unfortunately for them, isoHunt’s founder didn’t think that this was a very good idea.

A few hours after the news broke, isoHunt took down the server where the torrents were stored. By early Monday morning the entire site had been replaced with a farewell note to the site’s visitors.

“This is it. We are shutting down isoHunt services a little early,” Fung wrote.

IsoHunt’s owner explained that the early exit was a direct response to ArchiveTeam’s backup attempt, but it’s unclear if it was his own decision or whether the MPAA’s lawyers pushed for it.

“I’m told there was this Internet archival team that wants to make historical copy of our .torrent files, I’m honored that people think our site is worthy of historical preservation, but the truth is about 95% of those .torrent files can be found off Google regardless and mostly have been indexed from other BitTorrent sites in the first place,” Fung notes.

Fung is right and of course all isoHunt torrents are also backed up by the torrent cache services Torrage and Zoink. However, all other metadata and comments appear to be gone for good. The ArchiveTeam managed to grab 242 gigabytes of data, but most is still missing.

ArchiveTeam’s ‘joepie91′ told TorrentFreak that the main goal of the backup was not to copy the torrents, but all the metadata surrounding it including user comments and file-info. He is nonetheless proud of what the team of volunteers got done in such a short time-span.

“I’m disappointed to see that we didn’t manage to archive all of isoHunt, of course, but I am quite happy to see how many people helped out, and what kind of a result it has had – 29 million IDs checked in some two days is still incredible,” joepie91 says.

This partial backup will be posted on the Internet archive in the near future and announced on the #archiveteam IRC channel.

“One last but quite important remark I want to make, is that I think Gary might have misunderstood the purpose of the archiving project; he basically states that “the .torrent files can be found elsewhere too” – but this completely misses the point, being the archiving of the metadata *around* those torrents, such as user comments. These cannot be replicated from other sources…

Fung, meanwhile, used the early shutdown to deliver a “proper send-off” to the people who’ve used his site for many years.

“It’s been an adventure in the last 10.5 years working on isoHunt, a privilege working with some of the smartest guys I’ve worked with, and my life won’t be the same without it. For what I’m working on next, please look up my blog on Google and follow me there.

“Because as the Terminator would say with a German accent, ‘I’ll be backkk’,” Fung said, before Rickrolling the already distressed users….

Source: isoHunt Shuts Down Early to Block Backup Plan

A lot of music genres wouldn’t exist without samples, but too much sampling can sometimes fray tempers.

Interestingly, new research suggests that this shouldn’t necessarily be the case as the use of samples may actually boost sales of the original tracks.

These findings come from an article titled “Fair Use, Girl Talk, and Digital Sampling: An Empirical Study of Music Sampling’s Effect on the Market for Copyrighted Works,” of which a draft version was published a few days ago.

At the center of the study is Girl Talk‘s album All Day. Girl Talk is the stage name of Gregg Gillis, who is renowned for sampling the works of hundreds of other artists without obtaining licenses.

As a result, many music platforms refuse to carry Girl Talk’s music, even though Gillis argues that his sampling is fair use. Whether the fair use argument holds up has yet to be seen, as none of the sampled artists has taken Girl Talk to court.

In the new study, patent attorney Mike Schuster examines the effect Girl Talk’s sampling has on actual sales. With 374 sampled songs, All Day is an interesting example to assess whether the samples help or hurt sales, and the results are quite clear.

“This study found that within the bounds of Girl Talk’s All Day, the unlicensed sampling actually benefited sales of the sampled songs,” Schuster writes.

The findings are valid at a 92.5% degree of statistical significance and appear to be unrelated to factors such as sample length and previous success. While Schuster recognizes that his research is just an initial step, he hopes that it will make courts recognize the positive effects of sampling.

“Beyond supporting the premise that digital sampling may constitute fair use, the results of this study raise several notable issues and subjects for future study. One such issue is that courts only address an alleged fair use’s effect on the market for the original as a binary system, wherein the only options are harm to the market (disfavoring fair use) or no harm to the market (favoring fair use).”

The study notes that in this case both the original artists and Girl Talk would benefit from considering the samples as fair use. This is something the courts should take into account.

“There is no accepted rule on how to treat a market benefit. The failure to address this issue is questionable because a market benefit actually furthers the utilitarian goal of copyright by incentivizing the creation of new works through economic gain,” Schuster writes.

Whether the major record labels will agree with this stance has yet to be seen. For now, Girl Talk will continue his trademark use of samples and his new album is expected to drop soon on Illegal Art.

Girl Talk – Oh No

Source: Getting Sampled by Girl Talk Boosts Sales, Research Finds

In recent years YouTube has become a wonderful platform for individuals to create a product and generate revenue from it, often from the comfort of their own homes. Many provide services such as hints, tips and tutorials on anything from baking to flying a plane, but growing in popularity are YouTube-based reviewers.

One guy who has gone down that particular route is John Bain, an Englishman known online as TotalBiscuit. Bain is a great success and has almost 1.3 million subscribers to his PC gaming YouTube channel. However he now finds himself in a copyright takedown controversy sparked by his review of Wild Games Studio’s first-person survival game Day One: Garry’s Incident.

There’s no way to sugar-coat Bain’s review – he hated it, and quite rightly so. The 21 minute review ripped apart the graphics, gameplay and presentation of the game and it was quite obvious from Bain’s tone this wasn’t going to end well. Aside from the odd element receiving a lukewarm reception, the review concluded that the game is a complete turkey.

The astonishing graphical excesses of Day One: Garry’s Incident

The video review became highly viewed very quickly, topping search results for the game on YouTube. But without warning it suddenly disappeared, only to be replaced by a copyright infringement notice, issued by none other than Wild Games Studio themselves.

At this point it’s worth pointing out that Bain is no stranger to the studio. They gave him a free key to access a review copy of the game on Steam and asked Bain to place a link in his review to where the game could be bought. It was perhaps appropriate then that the CEO of the studio decided to justify their takedown actions on the Stream forums themselves.

Well aware of the circumstances behind the review and his protections under copyright law to critique the game if he so chooses, Bain summed up the mess on Twitter.

“Long story short. Dev sends code, code used to make critique, dev dislikes critique, dev abuses system to censor critique,” he said.

“This happened 2 days ago, we contacted [Wild Games] for an explanation and have heard nothing. Giving them til Monday to respond before going nuclear. It should be pointed out that US Fair Use doctrine exists in particular to protect criticism from being censored in such a way.”

While Bain may have had the intention of not “goin nuclear” until today, things are now largely out of his hands. His follow-up video (embedded below) which explains events to date has already received more than 500,000 views and the backlash on Metacritic is something to behold, with the game currently receiving 0.6 out of 10 after 683 votes. It is very clear from the comments that the Metacritic reviewers know what the developer did to Bain.

“This highlights a wider problem and an issue that must be addressed. Look at how easily a company was able to censor the most-watched and prominent critique of their game by abusing YouTube’s copyright claim system,” Bain says. “Look at how they were able to completely flaunt the notion of networks policing their partners and using a shoot first, ask questions later form, to deny revenue to someone who they didn’t like.”

In order to draw attention to the issue, Bain says he will be donating all YouTube revenue generated by the ‘incident’ to the EFF.

In the meantime, anyone wanting to see the original review can find it on here on DailyMotion, ironically now being monetized by someone else.

Source: Game Devs Abuse Copyright to Censor Negative YouTube Review