In recent years file-sharers all across Europe have been threatened with lawsuits, if they don’t pay a significant settlement fee.

The process was pioneered in Germany where it turned into an industry by itself, but copyright holders have also targeted alleged pirates in the UK, Finland and elsewhere.

Sweden is one of the latest countries where these so-called “copyright trolls” have landed. At the birth ground of The Pirate Bay, media outfit Crystalis Entertainment received permission from the court to identify several BitTorrent users, based on their IP-addresses.

The case, which could be the first of many, was filed against the local ISP TeliaSonera who handed over the requested information without putting up much of a fight.

This prompted the competing Internet provider Bahnhof to issue a warning. The company notes that the copyright holder in question doesn’t have a very strong case, and it criticizes Telia for caving in too easily.

“The Stockholm district court did not even see any evidence showing that these IP addresses were actually used for file sharing. It could basically be one of these Nigerian mail scams,” Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung says.

“I think that Telia folded caved in too easily. Although Crystal Entertainment properly represents certain copyright holders, at Bahnhof we would choose to appeal,” he adds.

The ISP says that they will not hand over any data without urging for a proper review of the evidence.

This is no surprise for a company that’s heavily focused on user privacy. Bahnhof’s tagline is “Internet with privacy” and two years ago the ISP was one of the first to launch a free VPN, responding to a legal requirement that required it to log subscriber activities.

In a press release Bahnhof explains how these extortion-like demands from copyright holders have become commonplace in Germany. It’s exactly this type of witch hunt is something they hope to prevent in Sweden.

This means that if copyright holders demand the same info from Bahnhof, they will fight this in court.

“We have to follow the law and no one can predict the future, but one thing I can guarantee, we’re on the side if our users. We will do everything in our power to prevent the German situation from spreading,” Karlung says.

Bahnhof’s CEO also has some advice for the media companies that are affected by piracy. They should invest their time and money in offering great content, instead of taking their customers to court.

“It is better for copyright holders to put their money into developing services that people want to pay for, like Netflix and Spotify, instead of becoming entrenched in the 1900s,” he concludes.

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

Back in 2006 Opera was the first major browser to include BitTorrent support, and today it releases another feature that will appeal to millions of users.

The company has added a free and unlimited VPN to the developer version of its browser. This means that users can browse the web securely at the flick of a switch.

Privacy aside, the built-in VPN is also an ideal tool to circumvent website blockades. This may come in handy for the aforementioned BitTorrent users as well, as sites such as The Pirate Bay are blocked in many countries.

The VPN connection is provided by the Canadian VPN service SurfEasy, which like many other VPNs keeps no logs. SurfEasy was acquired by Opera last year and VP of Marketing Steve Kelly tells TorrentFreak that privacy and censorship were the main reasons to add the free VPN to Opera.

“Everyone deserves to surf privately online if they want to. Today, it is too difficult to maintain privacy when using the web, and way too many people experience roadblocks online, like blocked content,” Kelly says.

“By releasing an integrated, free and unlimited VPN in the browser, we make it simple for people to enhance their privacy and access the content they want,” he adds.

It is worth highlighting that the VPN connection is limited to the web browser. This means that any content shared outside the browser, through traditional torrent clients for example, is not private.

Opera’s in-browser VPN uses AES-256 encryption and SurfEasy says that the initial response has been very strong. The network is prepared to handle hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections without any problems.

With the addition of a VPN feature Opera hopes to set a new standard for modern browsers. Earlier, it was already the first major browser to include an ad-blocker.

“This is the first VPN option integrated into a major browser. Also, it’s delivered from a company you can trust, with an extensive history of providing reliable and trustworthy internet products,” Kelly told us.

More details about the built-in VPN are available at the Opera blog. People who want to give it a spin should download the latest developer release, as the feature is not available in the regular version yet.

Opera’s VPN feature

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

In early 2015 a study commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) concluded that criminal sanctions for copyright infringement under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) should be amended to bring them into line with offenses such as counterfeiting.

The report triggered a proposal from the UK government that the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement should be increased to ten years. The current maximum of two years is not enough of a deterrent, it was argued.

In July 2015 the government launched a consultation aiming to gauge opinion on boosting penalties to ensure that online piracy is considered as “no less serious” than offline infringements.

This morning the government released its conclusions while confirming it will indeed be asking Parliament for a ten year maximum sentence.

In a published statement, Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe says that more than a thousand responses (pdf) helped to shape the government’s decision to stand by its earlier calls for increased penalties. Demands for additional clarity will also be addressed.

“As a result we are now proposing changes that include increasing the maximum sentence, but at the same time addressing concerns about the scope of the offense,” Neville-Rolfe says.

“The revised provisions will help protect rights holders, while making the boundaries of the offense clearer, so that everyone can understand how the rules should be applied.”

The minister says that a number of safeguards are already in place to “limit the risk” that a “very low level” infringer could be subjected to a high penalty, including that infringement must be proven to the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

Addressing concerns raised by the consultation that unwitting infringers might find themselves subjected to draconian sentences when they had no intent to cause any harm, the government references a system that has been in place for some time at the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU).

Without mentioning them by name, the report notes that “enforcement agencies and private prosecutors have a staged response system, encompassing education, ‘cease and desist’ notices, and domain suspension.”

In other words, those likely to be targeted by the ten year sentence are given advance warning by the likes of PIPCU, FACT and the BPI, that they’re treading on thin ice.

The government also addresses concerns that the term “affect prejudicially” is too vague when used to describe the extent to which a copyright holder needs to be affected before an offense is committed.

“It was argued that a single infringing file could fulfil this requirement in some circumstances (if widely shared subsequent to the infringement for example) therefore setting an unacceptably low threshold for committing the offense,” the government explains.

The government’s position is that minor infringement does not lead to a criminal prosecution but it does concede that the term “affect prejudicially” has the potential to “give rise to an element of ambiguity.”

Perhaps predictably the consultation raised concerns that a maximum sentence of ten years would place infringement alongside serious offenses such as rape, firearms offenses and child cruelty.

Nevertheless, the government feels the sentence is warranted and uses the case brought against several release group members last year as an indicator that while ten years is a maximum, it would only be utilized in the rarest of cases.

“The Government believes that a maximum sentence of 10 years allows the courts to apply an appropriate sentence to reflect the scale of the offending. An example where copyright infringement was deemed to warrant longer than a 2 year sentence is where five defendants received sentences totaling 17 years for releasing more than 2,500 of the latest films onto the internet,” the government writes.

“They were prosecuted under the Fraud Act, where the highest sentence was four and a half years. Capping the maximum available sentence at a lower level would unnecessarily limit the ability of the courts to apply appropriate sentences in the more serious cases of copyright infringement.”

The government says it will now introduce its re-drafted offense provisions to Parliament at the “earliest available legislative opportunity.”

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

In 2012, a combined effort by the United States and New Zealand governments brought Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload empire to its knees. Coordinated raids in multiple locations carried out by heavily armed officers ensured that a clear message was sent to copyright infringers.

But despite the overwhelming show of force, Dotcom refused to lie down and just a year later he launched a brand new file-hosting service. Known simply as ‘Mega’, the platform launched to great fanfare in 2013.

Mega quickly became a force to be reckoned with in the hosting market, with Dotcom promoting the platform at every turn. Nevertheless, controversy was never far away.

In September 2014, Mega was branded a “piracy haven” in a Digital Citizens Alliance report into the activities of “shadowy cyberlockers.”

As a direct consequence and under pressure from the U.S. government, in early 2015 PayPal stopped processing payments for Mega. There can be little doubt that hurt the site.

But behind the scenes other matters were becoming a distraction. In May 2015, Mega’s bid for a stock listing fell through and just two months later Dotcom’s earlier praise for the company turned sour.

“Mega has experienced a hostile takeover and is no longer in the control of people who care about Internet Freedom. The New Zealand Government and Hollywood have seized a significant share of the company,” Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

“The combined shares seized by the NZ government and Hollywood were significant enough to stop our listing on the New Zealand stock exchange.”

Dotcom had already resigned as a director of Mega in September 2013 but now he was publicly warning people against using the site.

Today Dotcom repeated those calls, warning users of Mega over what he sees as the precarious position of the company.

“Mega had to survive without a credit card payment processor for almost 2 years now. The air is getting thin. Backup your Mega files,” he told users via Twitter.

But while a lack of payment processing options certainly won’t be helping Mega, Dotcom sees more danger in the reported controller of Mega, Chinese national and New Zealand citizen Bill Liu.

Back in 2009, Liu made headlines when it was revealed that despite being wanted for fraud in China, he was granted citizenship in New Zealand. Now it’s been revealed by kiwi Prime Minister John Key that Liu is ranked number five on China’s “Top 100” extradition list.

“I haven’t seen the list, but there is a list,” Key said.

“They’ve also put out a list worldwide of the Top 100. Bill Liu is number five on it,” he said of the Chinese government.

New Zealand police have already seized millions of dollars of assets that are believed to belong to Liu, including some held in Mega, although Liu denies all wrong doing. Dotcom, however, remains unconvinced.

“The 5th most wanted criminal in China is in control of Mega and he wants to float the business in HK? Good luck,” he said this morning.

As these situations go, the short history of Mega is utterly unique. Never before has a platform in the file-sharing space had two entrepreneurs each worth millions of dollars being pursued for extradition by two of the world’s most powerful governments for entirely different reasons.

It’s currently very late evening in New Zealand so we’re not expecting an immediate response from Mega to our requests for comment. We’ll add them here as soon as they arrive.

Update: Statement from Mega chairman Stephen Hall

“Mega has significant funding and strong support from shareholders so its financial position is certainly not precarious. Dotcom’s comment is factually incorrect and the motive is unknown,” Hall informs TF.

“Mega continues to experience strong growth which illustrates the global appreciation of the quality of its services. Mr Liu has a shareholding interest but has no management or board position so he certainly doesn’t control Mega.”

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

After signing up to Spotify several years ago one of my first tasks was to begin hand-crafting playlists of the thousands of 1980s and 1990s dance tracks I had previously bought on vinyl.

Once lovingly stacked and indexed in a spare room, these much-loved relics of a bygone era are now gathering dust in the attic, probably never to be played again. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Slowly but surely, tracks have been disappearing from my Spotify playlists with no explanation, including a rare Prodigy remix of a Praga Khan track that finally triggered me to sign up to Spotify in the first place. If Spotify had that they must have everything, I assured myself at the time.

While the disappearance of some music from the service is to be expected, it doesn’t make it any less of a disappointment when it happens. It also undermines confidence in the product. After all, if one had bought the track instead of streaming it, it would still be here today. It’s a situation that’s familiar to The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde who in a new interview with Germany’s FutureZone recalls similar experiences.

“I stopped using Spotify when suddenly overnight several titles disappeared from my playlist because the licenses for them were revoked. Someone else had decided which music I could listen to and which I could not. I had no backup, so I lost the music. I do not want that,” Sunde says.

To hear that Peter Sunde (by all accounts one of the world’s most infamous pirates) had placed his trust and his money with a legitimate content provider indicates that at its core Spotify had something good to offer. After all, it’s hardly an argument that Sunde was unable to obtain the music from elsewhere.

But what is perhaps most remarkable is that Sunde actually patronized a service which at its very core is the complete opposite of what The Pirate Bay stood for. Forget for a moment the notion of paying or not paying for media, that’s a distraction.

What the Pirate Bay did was empower its users to participate in a somewhat decentralized communications infrastructure which allowed them to build archives of music, movies, TV shows and software in their own homes. Not only did they ‘own’ that content but much more importantly they exercised complete, physical control over it. Licenses getting revoked? Not a chance.

For all their great qualities (and they have them by the bucket load), Spotify and other streaming services such as Netflix offer something quite different – total centralization and a complete lack of user control over the content they’re buying renting.

“When we look at the development of Netflix it is exactly the same as a Spotify for movies,” Sunde says. “What streaming has done is centralize the ownership of culture.”

And of course Sunde is absolutely right. At any point Spotify, Netflix and any other streaming service has the power to remove content, modify it, restrict access to it geographically or – heaven forbid – go bankrupt, shut down, and deny access to it altogether.

However unlikely, it is possible that people invested in these services could be blasted back to a world without music and movies in an instant, should economic (or Internet disaster) circumstances dictate it. Unless people have physical access to that content they are done. Sunde wonders whether people will continue to put up with this scenario in the future.

“Maybe in five years time we’ll have a new file-sharing fight because anyone who uses these services will consider that while having access to the content is good, it is not so great having no control and actually owning none of it,” Sunde says.

So the big question remains: what can be done about it?

In keeping with Sunde’s previous assertion that he believes that torrent technology has stagnated, the Pirate Bay co-founder doesn’t really offer much hope for those inclined to obtain their content from unofficial sources.

“I have more interesting things to do. One can not eat indefinitely a cake. It may be the best cake in the world, but at some point you have to throw up,” he says.

“I do not know how to fight it. Perhaps with better streaming piracy.”

With that an unlikely prospect, at least in music, legitimate streaming consumption will continue to grow, and with it the pitfalls of borrowing rather than buying music.

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