With what looked like an unbeatable 8-1 lead, Team New Zealand required just one more win to bring the America’s Cup home. But nothing is guaranteed in sport, a fact underlined by Oracle Team USA this week.

Jimmy Spithill’s team took eight successive wins and captured victory yesterday in San Francisco, an outcome which prompted a single word comment from New Zealand Prime Minister on Twitter that said it all – Bugger.

Of course, in defeat the best thing to do is regroup, reassess and return to fight another day, but sailing is an expensive game and at this point the government won’t commit to another round of funding, which is expected to run to many tens of millions of dollars.

However, when there’s an opportunity to get one over on the government there is one New Zealand resident who is rarely away from the action. Enter stage left Kim Dotcom, ready to show that where Prime Minister John Key falters, there’s a larger-than-life businessman and politician in the making ready to step in.

So with Dotcom suggesting that in the absence of government commitment Mega could bankroll the team, how much money should the fledgling file-hosting business expect to cough up? At last count the investment required is in the region of NZ$36 million (US$30 million), a not inconsiderable sum for any business, let alone one that’s barely eight months old.

But of course, Mega is doing very well. The company has just overtaken rival RapidShare and in terms of files stored is already 50% of the now defunct Megaupload. Nevertheless, $30 million is a huge sum to justify.

To date it has been Dotcom himself almost single-handedly driving the Mega marketing machine but with the company’s stock exchange listing around the corner, it’s certainly possible that the company will be looking to invest some advertising dollars. Whether Mega will be able to match the financial clout behind Team Oracle (Oracle’s Larry Ellison is the United States’ 3rd richest man) is doubtful though.

While the next cup is scheduled for 2017, Mega has more immediate matters in hand. Dotcom says that his file-hosting enterprise will exit beta next week and will launch both a new site and a sync client for Windows. This welcome addition to Mega’s arsenal will make it much more useful to current users of Dropbox and will bring in much-needed revenue as the company enters its second year of operation.

Source: Kim Dotcom Offers to Bankroll Kiwi America’s Cup Team

The Pirate Bay is without doubt one of the most censored websites on the Internet.

Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and this list continues to expand.

This week a coalition of Portuguese copyright trade groups announced they will file for an injunction to prevent ISPs from providing access to The Pirate Bay and other infringing sites.

The groups, backed by the major movie studios, plan to file the necessary paperwork at the Intellectual Property Court in the coming months.

“We still have to solve some technical and legal issues, but we anticipate delivering the injunction to the Intellectual Property Court by the end of 2013,” confirmed Paulo Santos, the leader of the two groups in this matter.

Santos notes that website blocking has proven to be effective abroad, and also in Portugal where blocks are in place to filter out other offensive material.

“Telecom operators and ISPs already use similar filters today to prevent access to pedophile content, or sites that promote violence or racism,” the anti-piracy boss says.

The groups expect that the Internet providers may not be happy with the application, but they are convinced that the court will decide in their favor. This belief is undoubtedly strengthened by court orders against ISPs in other European countries such as the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Italy and Finland.

“I think the court will accept the injunction. Of course there can always be procedural issues, but we have reason and right on our side,” Santos says.

If the court agrees it will be the first time that Internet providers in Portugal are required to block a website on copyright grounds.

Whether such a blockade will be very successful remains to be seen though, as there are plenty of alternatives and circumvention tools available. This includes VPN services, the many proxies that make up 8% of The Pirate Bay’s total traffic, and TPB’s own PirateBrowser.

These tools appear to be widely used to circumvent censorship. Last month researchers from the University of Amsterdam released a report suggesting that the court-ordered Pirate Bay block has had no impact on piracy rates in the Netherlands.

“Blocking access to TPB has had no lasting net impact on the overall number of downloaders from illegal sources, as people learn to use alternatives to TPB,” the report concluded.

Source: Portugal Next in Line to Block The Pirate Bay

During the last couple of years entertainment companies have heavily criticized Google for linking to copyright-infringing material in its search results.

Google has responded by removing many millions of links but apparently that’s just not enough. In the past couple of weeks the world’s largest search engine has become a punching bag for the music and movie industries and today they find themselves battered again, this time by a British House of Commons report.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee comprises MPs from several parties including those from the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government and Labour opposition. Today in a new report aimed at supporting the creative economy, the Committee dedicates an entire section to copyright and piracy issues. It has many targets for criticism but begins with a swipe at the UK’s leading Internet rights groups.

Open Rights Group

“The relationship between the strength of Britain’s creative industries and robust copyright laws is acknowledged by the Open Rights Group which aims radically to liberalise the use and sharing of copyrighted content.

“While we share the Open Rights Group’s attachment to freedom of expression via the internet, we firmly repudiate their laissez-faire attitudes towards copyright infringement,” the Committee says.

Repeating industry claims that film and music piracy results in lost annual sales of £400 million (while noting it could be well in excess of £1 billion) the report says the Open Rights Group’s “quibbles” that the figures “were not based on exact science” should not detract from the damage piracy causes the creative economy.

IP Crime Unit and site blocking

The report goes on to mention the creation of a new City of London Police unit dedicated to cracking down on intellectual property crime and reveals that a first-of-its-kind conference is being planned “to bring players from across the world to London” to discuss enforcement issues.

On the blocking of infringing websites by ISPs the Committee said there were signs that the courts are making it easier, citing comment from the MPAA supporting “improvements to the justice system” to allow site blocking orders to be obtained more efficiently.

“We encourage businesses to use the current law to bring claims wherever it is feasible for them to do so. There nonetheless remains a systemic failure to enforce the existing laws effectively against rife online piracy,” the report notes.

But inevitably the big guns were turned on the messenger.

Google in the firing line again

The Committee begins by quoting Google itself, who at the time were removing around 9 million URLs from its indexes every month at the request of copyright holders. This was countered with information provided by the BPI who said that despite Google’s alleged algorithm changes, the instances of infringing sites turning up in the top 10 results had fallen only marginally, from 63% in August 2012 to 61% a year later. Clearly the Committee are unimpressed.

“We strongly condemn the failure of Google, notable among technology companies, to provide an adequate response to creative industry requests to prevent its search engine directing consumers to copyright-infringing websites,” the report states in emphasized bold type.

“We are unimpressed by their evident reluctance to block infringing websites on the flimsy grounds that some operate under the cover of hosting some legal content. The continuing promotion by search engines of illegal content on the internet is unacceptable. So far, their attempts to remedy this have been derisorily ineffective,” it continues.

“We do not believe it to be beyond the wit of the engineers employed by Google and others to demote and, ideally, remove copyright infringing material from search engine results. Google co-operates with law enforcement agencies to block child pornographic content from search results and it has provided no coherent, responsible answer as to why it cannot do the same for sites which blatantly, and illegally, offer pirated content.”

Turning up the heat further still in an attempt to have Google held accountable through the reporting of a government office, the report has more proposals.

“We recommend that the Intellectual Property Office’s annual reports include an assessment of the degree of online copyright infringement and the extent to which identified search engines and other internet services facilitate this. We further recommend that the Government consider how it might incentivise technology companies to hinder access via the internet to copyright infringing material.”

Of course, while “carrots” are offered to do something about infringement, no document of this nature could conclude without a recommendation to bring out the sticks.

10 years in jail for “serious” online infringement

Citing the successful prosecution of SurftheChannel owner Anton Vickerman, the report notes that while large scale copyright infringement in the offline world can result in harsh penalties, online those punishments are limited to two years. To sidestep this issue a decision was made to prosecute Vickerman on counts of Conspiracy to Defraud which ultimately secured a four year jail sentence. In future the Committee would like to see such maneuvering become unnecessary.

“We recommend that the maximum penalty for serious online copyright theft be extended to ten years’ imprisonment. Criminal offences in the online world should attract the same penalties as those provided for the physical world by the Copyright, etc. and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002,” the Committee notes.

Digital Economy Act

Finally the report criticizes the delay in implementing the controversial Digital Economy Act, stalled now for the best part of three years. In particular, the issuing of warning notices to infringers should come sooner rather than later.

“We recommend that a copyright infringement notification system envisaged by the Digital Economy Act be implemented with far greater speed than the Government currently plans. By targeting information letters to the worst infringers, early implementation will, we believe, serve an important educative purpose which could percolate more widely,” the report states.

However, if the government can’t get its act together, a voluntary scheme between ISPs and copyright holders should be put in place.

“We are encouraged by the progress that has been made towards instituting a voluntary system of warning letters following discussions involving internet service providers and rights owners. If this can be achieved by mutual cooperation rather than legislation, it will be a major step forward.

“However, should voluntary initiatives such as this prove unsuccessful then the Government should ensure that the equivalent measures in the Digital Economy Act are promptly put into effect,” the Committee concludes.

Source: Google “Condemned” By UK Politicians For Linking to Piracy

German Internet subscribers can be held liable for almost everything that goes on via their connections, with or without their knowledge.

As a result, copyright holders have started hundreds of thousands of lawsuits against alleged pirates, demanding settlements ranging from a few hundred to thousands of euros.

In Germany these “trolling” ventures have attracted the attention of the major Hollywood studios. 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros Entertainment are actively patrolling the Internet for people who download their work without permission.

The studios use similar monitoring tools as they do in the United States, where file-sharers are approached outside of court with a slap on the wrist or a $20 fine. In Germany, however, the stakes are much higher.

For example, 20th Century Fox is sending alleged file-sharers a 726 euro ($980) bill for downloading a single episode of the TV-series Homeland. For several months the Hollywood studio has been tracking unauthorized downloads of Homeland’s second season, which has yet to air in Germany.

20th Century Fox settlements letter

While these downloads are unmistakably unauthorized, it is ironic that these lawsuits target the TV-show’s most engaged fans. In Germany, Homeland’s second season starts airing on TV next week, a full year after the U.S. premiere.

The show has been available on iTunes where a subtitled version of the season costs 26.99 (SD) or 31.99 euro (HD).

Still, the Hollywood studios regularly single out these “delayed” TV releases for their legal efforts. According to Christian Solmecke, a German IT lawyer who has defended hundreds of file-sharers, these shows are regularly targeted.

“The sharing of English-speaking TV series is particularly popular in Germany as these releases are often delayed. As a result, warning letters are regularly received for such copyright infringements,” Solmecke told TorrentFreak.

Unlike in the United States, Internet subscribers have no option to protest a copyright holders’ request to hand over their personal details. Paired with the fact that German ISPs can only store IP-address information for a week, this leads to a situation where personal details of accused subscribers are handed over pretty much automatically.

For the letter TorrentFreak received, the court signed off on handing over the subscriber data within a day of the IP-address being tracked. This is a worrying development according to legal experts and privacy advocates. The low retention periods for IP-addresses are meant to protect the privacy of users, but the opposite may be true in this case.

“I find it shocking when an IP-address is processed by the court on the same day as the infringement takes place,” Solmecke tells TorrentFreak.

“After all, judges should examine each claim on a case-by-case basis. In practice, however, the process is completely automatic and despite this obligation, it is unlikely that the judges properly scrutinize each individual case.”

The Hollywood movie studios, and dozens of copyright holders with them, are more pleased with how the system works. They are literally cashing in on these BitTorrent pirates to the tune of millions of euros every year.

Previously we pointed out that many major music labels and game publishers including CD Projekt have also been involved in the German settlement scheme. After public outcry, mainly targeted at the questionable reliability of the evidence, the latter retired its legal crusade against pirates.

“We value our fans, our supporters, and our community too highly to take the chance that we might ever falsely accuse even one individual,” CD Projekt’s Marcin Iwinski said at the time.

Whether 20th Century Fox and others respect their ‘fans’ just as much is doubtful.

Update: clarified that Homeland season 2 has been available on iTunes.

Source: 20th Century Fox Sues ‘Impatient’ Homeland Pirates

In May 2013, Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm went on trial following allegations that the hacked into Logica, a Swedish IT company working with local tax authorities, and local bank Nordea.

Following a two-week trial during which the Swede protested his innocence, the Nacka District Court handed down its verdict. Gottfrid was found guilty of hacking, aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud, and was handed a two-year jail sentence.

The decision was unpopular with both the defense and prosecution. The latter felt that the sentence was not harsh enough and the former objected on the basis that the District Court didn’t examine the available evidence in enough detail.

“The important thing is to get the higher court to try the evidence in-depth, something that the lower court definitively didn’t do,” Kristina Svartholm, Gottfrid’s mother, previously told TorrentFreak.

In July it was announced that the case would go to appeal and earlier this month the process took place. The Court of Appeal heard testimony from Tor developer and former Wikileaks spokesman Jacob Appelbaum who argued that Gottfrid’s theory – that his computer had been taken over and abused remotely – was a sound one.

A few moments ago the Court of Appeal handed down its decision and it was mixed fortunes for the 28-year-old.

The Court 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.

As a result the two-year jail sentence handed down earlier in 2013 was slashed to just one year.

Update: Danish media is now reporting that Gottfrid will be extradited to Denmark to face charges in another unrelated case. He is one of two men suspected of gaining access to driving records and the social security numbers of millions of Danes.

“We already have an arrest warrant and a request for extradition on the Swedish man, and he will be extradited to Denmark within a few days,” said Police Commissioner Hans Erik Raben of Copenhagen Police. An alleged accomplice, a 20-year-old man, is already in custody.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Hacking Sentence Slashed in Half on Appeal