In an effort to turn piracy into profit, more than a decade ago enterprising groups centered around lawfirms decided that file-sharers were ripe for a shakedown. Tracking IP addresses back to their users, companies demanded settlements of hundreds to many thousands of dollars each, to make supposed lawsuits go away.

During the last 10 years many companies have gained infamy with this business model, but few stirred up as much hatred as Prenda Law. Prenda and its principals John Steele, Paul Hansmeier and Paul Duffy grabbed dozens of headlines, mostly surrounding negative court rulings which found the outfit to have engaged in everything from vexatious litigation through to identity theft, misrepresentation and even deception.

Underlying this deviant behavior was the disturbing fact that rather than simply monitoring pirates online, Prenda actually uploaded content itself in order to create pirate honeypots on The Pirate Bay and elsewhere, a practice that pushed the company well over the moral line.

Although now defunct, Prenda is still fresh in the minds of its many victims so news last year that the outfit was under investigation by the FBI was well-received. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij confirmed that they had both been interviewed in prison by police acting on behalf of the FBI.

“They wanted to know if I could verify the accuracy of the IP-address logs, how they were stored, and how they could be retrieved,” Neij explained.

But since then another year has passed and memories of Prenda have continued to fade. Will the world’s most hated trolls ever be brought to criminal justice? Well, fresh news from Ken White at Popehat suggests that the FBI still have a keen interest in the case and could be close to their goal.

Operating out of its Minneapolis office, the FBI has continued to seek additional information about Prenda and has reportedly sent out a letter “on a large scale” to attorneys who have represented alleged file-sharers targeted by the law company.

Ken White says he has seen the document and it reveals that the FBI is investigating several entities connected to Prenda including Steele Hansmeier PLLC, LW Systems, Livewire Holdings, AF Holdings, Ingenuity13, and Guava LLC.

“The FBI has devoted substantial resources to soliciting victim impact in a systematic way, and based on its questions about availability to testify is contemplating prosecution,” White explains.

Noting that the letter has gone out in a fairly public fashion, While says he believes that the investigation is probably in its latter stages, with the FBI already in possession of the evidence it needs to prosecute a case of wire and/or mail fraud.

By contacting Prenda’s victims, White believes the FBI is attempting to establish the amount of damages to claim, which could be substantial.

“Bear in mind that under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the more money wrongdoers made, the more time they’re facing. Team Prenda needs federal criminal defense attorneys, and needs them right now,” he concludes.

News that the investigation into Prenda’s activities could be in its final stages will be well received by thousands of victims and the possibility of peering behind the curtain of one of the most hated troll outfits is certainly welcome. The cherry on the top would be a successful prosecution but that could be some time away yet.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

In an effort to appease Hollywood’s major studios, Netflix increased its efforts to block customers who circumvent geo-blockades this year.

As a result it has become harder to use VPN services to access Netflix content from other countries. However, the measures also affect well-intentioned customers who merely use a VPN to protect their privacy.

This broad blocking policy has sparked wide protests and tens of thousands Internet users have signed a petition launched by digital rights group OpenMedia, which asks Netflix to stop the VPN crackdown.

A few weeks ago OpenMedia sent an open letter to Netflix, inviting CEO Reed Hastings to discuss possible alternatives. In absence of a reply, the group is now following up with a new message that’s unmissable.

This week a massive mobile billboard is driving through the streets of Los Gatos, California, where Netflix headquarters are located. The billboard carries the message “We ♥ Our Privacy,” with the URL of the VPN unblocking campaign.

OpenMedia hopes that the billboard will send a clear message. The protests are not going to stop and with thousands of new signers per week the campaign is gaining momentum.

“Right now, Netflix customers are being forced to choose between watching their favorite shows and safeguarding their privacy,” OpenMedia’s digital rights specialist Laura Tribe says.

“Our mobile billboard is one more way we’re working to encourage Netflix to rethink their approach. The company has much better options available to it, than undermining the privacy of over 80 million paying Netflix customers in the post-Snowden world.”

OpenMedia understands that Netflix has to comply with Hollywood’s demands to restrict access, but it believes that there a there are better ways to make sure that geographic restrictions are enforced. For example, by simply linking content libraries to credit card addresses.

Thus far Netflix hasn’t been very receptive to the concerns. During an investor call last month Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the recent crackdown on VPN users hasn’t hurt the company’s results, and that the complaints came from a “small but vocal minority.”

A ‘small’ minority with a huge billboard…

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Running a site offering or even linking to pirated movies and TV shows can be a hazardous occupation. It attracts the attention of copyright holders, the police, and in some cases even governments. For those running them these perils represent an occupational hazard.

But what if a site creates its own content and distributes that online, should that be a crime? That question is about to be answered in a unique case featuring fan-populated subtitling site Undertexter.se.

For ten years Undertexter (‘subtitles’ in Swedish) provided a somewhat useful service. Faced with what they perceived as a dearth of subtitling in local language, members of the site made their own translated subtitles for movies and TV shows. These were made available to all via the site.

However, in the summer of 2013 everything came crashing down. Under pressure from powerful Hollywood-based movie companies, police raided the site and seized its servers.

“The people who work on the site don’t consider their own interpretation of dialog to be something illegal, especially when we’re handing out these interpretations for free,” site founder Eugen Archy said at the time.

The authorities firmly disagreed, Archy was arrested, and the investigation into his site continued. Now, almost three years later, the Undertexter founder has been prosecuted for distributing infringing subtitles.

“I have indicted the person I say is behind the site Undertexter.se which made the dialogue from 74 films available to the public,” says prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson.

Of particular interest is the nature of the 74 movies referenced by the prosecution. Rather than tackle all of the subtitles on the site, the prosecution appears to have hand-picked a few dozen that gives them the strongest case, i.e those that relate to movies that weren’t commercially available in Sweden at the time.

The underlying suggestion is that those who created the subtitles either managed to legally view them in other regions or more likely carried out their translation work from pirate copies available online. Also, since the majority of Undertexter’s traffic came from Sweden, it’s likely that users of the site married the subtitles up with pirate copies.

Archy does not deny that he founded and operated the site, nor does he refute claims that he made some money from his activities, largely through on-site advertising. However, he does believe that offering fan-created subtitles is not a crime.

Unsurprisingly, Rasmusson strongly disagrees and even suggests that a prison sentence could be a possible outcome of this prosecution.

“This particular type of case, with pirate subtitles for pirate movies, has not been tried before. But the scale is at such a level that the penalty does not stop at fines, but imprisonment. It could be a suspended sentence,” Rasmusson says.

Soon it will be up to the court to decide whether distributing fan-created subtitles is a crime in Sweden. Experts have already weighed in on the case with Sanna Wolk, an associate professor of civil law at Uppsala University, noting that the devil could be in the detail.

“The core issue is whether the lyrics count as independent works or pure translations. If they follow the script, it’s a copyright violation to distribute them without permission, but if they’re self-published, it is not,” Wolk noted earlier.

“It is difficult to say where the exact line is. Subtitles need to be considered on their own merits to make an assessment.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

For more than a decade researchers have been looking into the effects of online music piracy on the revenues of the record industry, with mixed results.

Both positive or negative effects have been reported, often varying based on the type of artist, music genre and media, among other variables.

That said, research has more often found that piracy hurts overall music sales, and an extensive new report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) confirms this trend.

The new study uses an elaborate model to quantify the effect of piracy on music sales, which it puts at 5.2% for the EU as a whole in 2014. This means that piracy resulted in €170 million in lost revenue across the EU.

The effects on digital sales are the most pronounced, €113 million compared to €57 million for physical products.

In addition to the direct effect on the music industry, there is also a secondary loss of €166 million in other sectors, and a €63 million loss in government revenue through direct and indirect taxes. The study doesn’t look at any positive effects, such as a possible increase in media player sales.

Interestingly, the estimated piracy losses are not equal across the EU. In absolute numbers they are the highest in the UK, with €48.6 in direct losses. This makes sense as it’s one of the largest music markets.

Relatively speaking the piracy effects are the most pronounced in Spain and Greece, with losses of 8.2% and 8% respectively. Croatia and Hungary are least affected, with both under 4%.

Commenting on the results, EUIPO’s Executive Director António Campinos says that the current findings offer additional evidence in the ongoing piracy debate.

“The question of whether piracy reduces or increases sales of recorded music has been the subject of many studies with contradictory results,” he says.

“Our study’s results are in line with the prevailing consensus and find that piracy reduces the revenue of legitimate industry in both digital and physical formats,” Campinos adds.

Interestingly, the findings presented this week contradict an earlier EU study which revealed that online piracy doesn’t hurt digital music revenues. So, whether this week’s study will be the end of the ongoing debate about the effects of piracy remains to be seen.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a proposal that will allow consumers to swap expensive cable boxes for third-party devices and apps.

The rules are meant to promote competition and get rid of the inflated rates cable TV viewers have to pay for using the devices that their providers typically supply.

The proposal was welcomed by President Obama, but is meeting fierce resistance from copyright holders and cable providers, who fear a piracy surge and brand devaluation.

“Devices and applications to facilitate piracy exist today, but the proposal would make them more attractive and more harmful,” the MPAA writes this week, noting that pirate sites will use changes to their advantage.

“It would endanger the entire video distribution ecosystem by disregarding licensing requirements, jeopardizing content security, and promoting piracy and theft of service,” NBC Universal and Comcast adds in their reply comment.

While the positions above are typical of the copyright industry, there is a notable exception. Comments submitted by the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) this week suggest that piracy fears are being overblown.

This is an unexpected stance from a labor union represents thousands of screen writers in Hollywood and Southern California, many of whom work for the major movie and TV studios.

Instead of repeating the piracy concerns, the writers believe that it’s crucial to offer the public more choice and they expect that the proposal will benefit both consumers and content creators.

“While fears of piracy have been raised in this proceeding, the WGAW’s careful analysis is that the Commission’s rules can promote competition and protect content,” WGAW writes.

Soon?

The proposed rules strike a balance between promoting competition and protecting content, the union argues. By promoting competition, increased availability and cheaper alternatives, piracy may actually diminish.

“While new technology can create some business uncertainty, there is strong evidence that pro-consumer developments that make legal content more accessible to viewers benefits both consumers and content creators,” the writers note.

“The current pay-TV set-top box market is controlled by incumbent distributors who charge consumers high fees and exercise their gatekeeping power to limit content competition.”

WGAW suggests that the piracy fears of many rightsholders are overblown. They point out that on the “open Internet” piracy is also possible, but that hasn’t stopped innovative legal services from flourishing.

“A competitive navigation device market poses no greater risk of piracy than the open Internet, where the legal video streaming market has become lucrative and dominates Internet traffic.”

The new FCC rules would encourage innovation, much as the open Internet has done. As a result WGAW believes that consumers will be able to have broader access to entertainment at a reasonable price, which should benefit the industry as a whole.

“With the open Internet we are beginning to see what is possible in a more competitive landscape. The proposed rules for a competitive navigation device market are a logical and necessary next step in giving consumers more choice and further opening the content market to competition,” the writers union concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.