The Institute for Development of the Internet is an entity created to promote discussion between representatives of the Russian government and Internet-focused companies. Typically the platform is used to iron out differences on contentious issues.

In February 2015 Herman Klimenko became chairman of the Institute but last December was called upon by Russian president Vladimir Putin to become his personal adviser on the development of the Internet. After consulting with his family on what he described as a “big decision”, the 49-year-old accepted Putin’s offer.

This week Putin signed a decree that officially enlisted Klimenko as his
Presidential Adviser on the Internet. It’s a big position for the expert who now has the ear of one of the world’s most powerful men on all Internet related matters from trade through to education and finance.

Not unexpectedly the Internet piracy controversy also falls within Klimenko’s remit and it didn’t take long for the newly-crowned heavyweight to weigh in with his opinions. Surprisingly, those opinions include pouring cold water on aggressive measures for dealing with piracy, website blockades for example.

Speaking with local TV channel Russia 24, Klimenko said that when copyright holders demanded that ‘pirate’ websites should be blocked on a permanent basis, none considered whether it would actually be possible.

“When rights holders pressed for measures such as eternal blocking, I think they did not consider that it would be unfeasible for technical reasons,” he said.

“If a method to carry out such blocking did exist, it’s another question whether it is necessary to use it or not.”

But while website blocking is a controversial issue that even some copyright holders don’t believe in, it’s likely that a few eyebrows would’ve been raised at Klimenko’s suggestion that aggressive anti-piracy measures should be aligned with the state of the economy.

While acknowledging that creators should be able to get a return on their products, Putin’s adviser said now might not be the right time to send in the heavies to “terrorize” the public on the matter.

“There is always the relevance of this issue,” he said.

“In fact, consumption of copyright content increases with economic growth, and when the situation is very serious, I think people do not have to unnecessarily terrorize these issues,” said the presidential adviser.

Turning to copyright holders, Klimenko said that he believes they should consider the economic conditions before demanding more action.

“Pushing hard now on this topic, I think, is not worth it. When the economy improves, you should return to this issue,” he said.

But with relations with the West still strained over Ukraine and all the financial pressures that brings, how long will copyright holders have to wait? According to Deputy Minister of Economic Development Oleg Fomichev, perhaps some time yet.

“The current economic situation is definitely not that good. The Russian economy is not in the best shape, but it is not as bad as it was expected one year ago,” he revealed this week.

“We are now relatively optimistic about economic dynamics for the next several months and the next year because we see from June, and more positively from September, we see an upturn in the Russian economy.”

So everyone will stop complaining about piracy until the fall then? Not a chance…..

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

Faced with an Internet awash with copyrighted movies and music just a few clicks away, some rightsholders have decided to let piracy continue with a view to monetizing it.

One aspect of that approach is the rise of so-called John Doe lawsuits, copyright cases which target individuals said to be responsible for the unlawful sharing of content online. What copyright holders want from these people is a cash settlement, often to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Last year Matthew Sag, Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, published a report titled ‘IP Litigation in United States District Courts: 1994 to 2014′. It provided a review of all IP litigation in U.S. district courts over the past two decades to include copyright, patent and trademark lawsuits.

With 2016 now upon us, Professor Sag has provided an update to include stats from last year. As can be seen from the graph below, in 2010 suits against file-sharers were almost non-existent but year on year grew to dominate all copyright cases filed in the United States.

Indeed, following yet another rise in Doe cases during 2015, this year the record set by the RIAA in 2005 is at risk of being trumped.

In 2015 John Doe litigation made up almost 58% of all copyright cases filed (2930 cases out of 5076) in the United States. And, in common with recent years, a tiny number of plaintiffs are driving the majority of the action.

“In 2015 [porn company] Malibu Media was still the most significant individual copyright plaintiff in the US; in fact, it filed more suits than ever last year,” the report finds.

Malibu Media accounted for 41.5% of all copyright suits filed in the United States in 2014, and just over 39% in 2015. The slight reduction in share was due to other plaintiffs filing more suits than before.

While Malibu Media’s overall share is impressive, their lawyer Michael Keith Lipscomb is involved in an even greater number of cases.

“Lipscomb also represents two of the other plaintiffs on the top five list for last year — Manny Film and Plastic The Movie Limited — as well as two of the top five from 2014 — Good Man Productions, Inc. and Poplar Oaks, Inc,” the report notes.

This consolidation of legal resources suggests a more cost-effective approach to the volume trolling process. Indeed, considering the number of cases now being filed an industrial approach to the business is almost certainly required.

As column two in the table below shows, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of John Doe suits filed in the past five years, from 77 in 2010 to a staggering 2930 in 2015.

However, the massive number of suits filed has not resulted in an exponential growth in file-sharers being targeted, quite the opposite in fact. In 2010 a total of 43,124 ISP account holders were targeted in John Doe lawsuits yet last year that had dropped 84% to ‘just’ 6,700.

The report concludes that this fall is a symptom of increasing intolerance by courts towards single cases that target huge numbers of anonymous file-sharers.

“Filing suits [against thousands of IP addresses] enabled plaintiffs to economize on filing fees but courts have become significantly more skeptical of the legality and desirability of mass joinder in BitTorrent cases. Based on the data from 2015, it seems that the era of mass joinder is almost completely over.”

Nevertheless, by now it’s clear that copyright trolling is all about monetization of BitTorrent piracy and the report notes that despite having to file thousands more cases, the business model is still proving profitable for the plaintiffs.

“The filing fee for opening civil action in US district courts is now $400, so that means that plaintiffs associated with Mr Lipscomb have paid at least $936,800 in filing fees over the last year. Given the scale of this enterprise it seems reasonable to infer that Lipscomb and his clients have found a way to effectively monetize online infringement,” the report concludes.

The report can be downloaded here.

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

Birthdays are the highlight of the year for most children and what better way to celebrate than with a cake featuring their favorite cartoon character.

Although the parents and local pastry shops may be well-intentioned, there are lurking copyright issues that can easily spoil the party.

This issue is currently on debate in Croatia where nearly all pastry shops have received legal threats for their use of popular cartoon and movie characters. Facing fines in the range of $300 to $1,000 they are urged to stop baking infringing cakes.

The demands come from a law firm hired by the competing pastry chain Fun Cake Factory and target birthday cakes with popular Star Wars, Frozen, Sponge Bob, Peppa Pig and Ninja Turtles characters.

The company is a partner of Finsbury Food Group and has the exclusive rights to sell cakes with Disney characters. In addition the chain also secured the rights to use Nickelodeon, Astley Baker Davies and Universal Studios characters, which covers most popular cartoons.

With the legal claims the pastry chain hopes to prevent the competition from selling “infringing” cakes, so more people will choose to buy their products instead.

Ana Marcelić, owners of Zagreb’s pastry shop Fancy Cake was one of the recipients who received a threatening letter.

“We are appalled by this decision which we consider unfounded and unfair. It is a huge loss for us, because the penalties are terrible, and it is a difficult situation to explain to the customer,” Marcelić told Jutarnji.

“We can inform parents about the situation, but how do you explain the legal situation to children who are screaming because they simply want Elza on their birthday cake?”

Just to clarify what is allowed and what isn’t, a representative of the Association of Pastry Caterers contacted the law firm to get clarification, but thus far it only received an ambiguous response.

There haven’t been any reports of damage claims against disobedient pastry makers yet, however, if the pirated cakes continue to be sold offenders could eventually face a copyright infringement lawsuit.

—

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

While increasing numbers of people are becoming tuned in to the joys of Netflix, growing numbers of subscribers are discovering a whole new world of content beyond what the service offers them as standard.

Netflix serves healthy libraries of content to many regions, but users in countries such as the United States get access to far more content than those located elsewhere. Likewise, not all European countries are served equally, with citizens of Italy falling short on content offered in the UK, for example.

As a result more and more customers of Netflix are bypassing restrictions designed to limit subscribers to content designated to their home countries. This is usually achieved by using a generic VPN or proxy service but some companies offer dedicated products to unlock Netflix on a global basis.

Even though Netflix admits it takes measures to try and limit the use of its service in this manner, the situation has traditionally seemed of minor interest to the company. However, in recent months Netflix has addressed the issue several times in the media and today has given the clearest sign yet that a crackdown is imminent.

In a post to Netflix’s blog today, Vice President of Content Delivery Architecture David Fullagar said that while the company would continue to break down borders in order to offer content to the broadest possible audience, measures will be taken to ensure that content licensing agreements are respected.

That means that circumvention devices – VPNs, proxies and similar tools – will fall further under the company’s spotlight.

“Some members use proxies or ‘unblockers’ to access titles available outside their territory. To address this, we employ the same or similar measures other firms do,” Fullagar says.

“This technology continues to evolve and we are evolving with it. That means in coming weeks, those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to access the service in the country where they currently are.”

The news will come as a blow to those enjoying the best possible Netflix experience, especially those in countries where the local library is limited compared to that of the United States, for example.

However, blocking so-called ‘proxy pirates’ might be more easily said than done. Only this week Netflix’s chief product officer Neil Hunt told the Globe and Mail that while the company uses “industry standard technologies to limit the use of proxies”, it’s effectively a game of cat and mouse.

“Since the goal of the proxy guys is to hide the source it’s not obvious how to make that work well. It’s likely to always be a cat-and-mouse game,” he said.

“We continue to rely on blacklists of VPN exit points maintained by companies that make it their job. Once [VPN providers] are on the blacklist, it’s trivial for them to move to a new IP address and evade.”

Of course, many proxy and VPN providers have customers that only buy their services for the unblocking abilities they provide, so there is a serious commercial interest for these companies to spend time outwitting Netflix.

Only time will tell whether they will be able to do so long term, but history suggests it won’t be an easily won battle for the video service. In the meantime collateral damage is also a possibility if Netflix block the wrong people, but the company feels that won’t happen.

“We are confident this change won’t impact members not using proxies,” Fullagar concludes.

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

The Pirate Bay has had its fair share of domain name issues in recent months.

The site previously burnt through a ‘hydra’ of six domain names after it sailed away from its .se mainstay. Ironically, the Swedish TLD turned out to be more resilient than any of the alternatives.

In an apparent attempt to diversify TPB switched on a new domain name last week. However, the Montserrat-based ThePirateBay.ms didn’t last long either and has already been suspended.

The .MS domain now has the infamous “serverhold” status which suggests that the responsible registry interfered. The status has been used before when domain names were flagged for copyright issues, and strips the domain name of its DNS entries.

“This status code is set by your domain’s Registry Operator. Your domain is not activated in the DNS,” ICANN writes.

As a result of the issue ThePirateBay.ms is no longer accessible. TorrentFreak reached out to the responsible registry for a comment but at the time of writing we haven’t heard back.

The suspension means that TPB is back to square one again, leaving ThePirateBay.org and ThePirateBay.se as the only stable domain names. Whether the Pirate Bay team has any plans to add any new domains is unknown at this point.

The site’s operators previously informed TF that they have plenty of domain names prepared, so it’s likely that one or more will become active in the future.

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