In 2012, as Megaupload’s servers were being closed down in the U.S. and Dotcom’s New Zealand mansion was being raided by armed police, the entrepreneur’s offices in Hong Kong were being turned over by a reported 100 customs officers.

Under instruction from the U.S. government, HK$330 million (US$42.57m) in assets were seized and have remained restrained in Hong Kong ever since.

In April 2014, Megaupload launched legal action against the Hong Kong government, applying for the restraining order to be set aside while accusing the secretary for justice of procedural failings when the application for seizure was made.

In December 2014 came a breakthrough when a judge in the High Court set aside the restraining order. However, while an almost immediately lock was reapplied to Dotcom’s assets, a revised order granted Dotcom’s legal team the right to contest the asset freeze.

As part of that ongoing process, Dotcom’s lawyers were back in court this week asking for the release of large amounts of funds, the equivalent of US$2.3m to cover legal costs plus US$52,000 per month for his living expenses.

In keeping with argument presented at his recent extradition hearing in New Zealand, Dotcom’s legal team told the Hong Kong court that by restraining his funds and expecting him to mount a defense their client’s hands “were tied behind his back.”

SCMP reports that while Dotcom had a “world-class” legal team in the New Zealand hearing, he had no money left to pay them so had to use “junior lawyers.” Money had now run out in New Zealand, so the funds in Hong Kong were the next best option.

But just like last year when Hong Kong authorities were accused by Dotcom’s team of not making a “full disclosure” of the facts, this week the authorities sought to turn the tables.

Representing the government, prosecutor Wayne Walsh SC claimed Dotcom did the same after starting two new businesses and running transactions “worth hundreds of millions of dollars” through Hong Kong bank accounts. Dotcom was also criticized for not disclosing details of his living costs

Once a staunch supporter of Hong Kong, Dotcom now finds himself at the mercy of the country’s judges who to date have been much less flexible than their counterparts in New Zealand when it comes to releasing funds.

Back in May a New Zealand court released millions in funds to pay for Dotcom’s legal bills, plus $128K per month in living expenses.

A sizable $60K of that money was earmarked to pay the rent on Dotcom’s mansion, which has been reported to cost around $750,000 per annum under a lease signed in February 2013.

However, the terms of the agreement meant that Dotcom would ultimately have to buy the property or move out. It was reported in November that the entrepreneur would be moving to a waterfront penthouse apartment on “fashionable” Princes Wharf instead.

“It’s significantly more humble than what I am used to but that’s okay,” Dotcom said last month. “I am also not living with a partner any more, we have reduced our staff numbers significantly and this place feels a little bit big now.”

The hearing in Hong Kong continues.

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

Considering the amount of publicity a wrongful DMCA notice can generate these days, it’s no surprise that when a gift of a story presents itself, people are happy to jump on board.

Unfortunately, however, some stories are more complex than they first appear and when that complexity is borne out of a deliberate desire to mislead, chaos is bound to ensue.

On November 25 a tantalizing piece appeared in Electronic Beats detailing how in an apparent desire to protect copyright, Soundcloud had finally gone too far. A follow-up piece from YourEDM put meat on the bones.

“Just when you thought Soundcloud couldn’t get any worse, they strike again harder than ever. Now reaching an all time low, Soundcloud has removed a track that is nothing but 4 minutes of pure silence due to ‘Copyright Infringement’ claims,” it declared.

The piece was uploaded to an account operated by DJ Detweiler and consisted of a remix (if one could ever be possible) of the John Cage ‘track’ 4’33”, a famous performance consisting of nothing but silence.

“That’s right, a song that has literally no sound was flagged for removal. How? Because Soundcloud is lazy and takes shortcuts to flag and remove content,” the YourEDM piece continued.

“Instead of crawling the uploaded content for copyright material, which takes a decent amount of CPU power, Soundcloud has resorted into cutting that process out entirely and beginning to flag content based on JUST the track title.”

As recipes for outrage go, this was an absolute doozy and no wonder it was picked up by several publications in the days that followed. However, as is now becoming painfully obvious, the whole thing was a giant stunt. A statement from Soundcloud obtained by Engadget revealed the cringe-worthy truth.

“The upload referenced in the screenshot was not a track of silence and was taken down because it included Justin Bieber’s What Do You Mean without the rightsholder’s permission,” the company said.

“The respective user uploaded the track under the title “4’33”,” which is also the name of John Cage’s famous piece of silence but it was not, in fact, silence.”

So what were DJ Detweiler’s aims? Well, trolling the press appears to be one. In a biting follow-up amid several retweets of regurgitated articles on the same topic, DJ Detweiler posted the following image.

"I AM A JOURNALIST FOR AN INTERNET MAGAZINE" STARTER PACK pic.twitter.com/4nBuhZ3RsV

— dj detweiler (@DeeJayDetweiler) November 30, 2015

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

Another aim appears to be recreating the work of Cage to prove a point. Although Cage’s track 4’33” was supposed to be silent, ‘performers’ are expected to be present but not play. Unless done so in a vacuum, the resulting ‘performance’ therefore includes ambient noise. Equally, it appears that DJ Detweiler’s ‘silence’ is now intentionally causing noise around the Internet too.

“We are making a remix of the original performance of John Cage. The only different thing is that we are making it on the internet in 2015, instead of doing it in a space like a theater, like John Cage did. The whole environment around what we’re doing is the performance because everybody’s reacting.”

But trolling and frivolity aside, it does appear that DJ Detweiler have a copyright message to deliver.

“When John Cage wrote that piece, one of the main reasons was because he was trying to ask, who owns the silence? Who has the copyright for the silence?” they ask. “The laws surrounding copyright at this point seem highly outdated and need some sort of reformation, and we just want to push that.”

While the group have certainly achieved their aims, it’s perhaps a bit of a shame that’s been achieved at the expense of publications who mainly appeared to have sympathy with often overreaching copyright law.

That being said, when one looks at DJ Detweiler’s Facebook and homepages (epilepsy warning!), the value of doing more research really starts to pay off.

DJ Detweiler are taking part in a panel discussion about “branding, hype and trends” this Thursday at the 3hd Festival in Berlin. He’s described as an individual there but at this point, who knows?

In the meantime enjoy his/their remix of Sandstorm, Smack My Bitch Up, and my personal favorite, DJ Hazard’s Mr Happy.

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

In an effort to curb online piracy, early last year the movie and music industries reached agreement with the UK’s leading ISPs to send ‘warnings’ to alleged pirates.

Under the new system copyright holders will monitor illegal P2P file-sharing activity with a strong focus on repeat offenders.

The warning program is part of the larger Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative which also includes an educational component. Though various PR campaigns the coalition hopes to change people’s attitudes towards piracy.

CCUK was launched after years of negotiating and the plans were widely discussed in the media. However, when the first campaign launched a few weeks ago there was a remarkable silence.

The first education campaign is called “Get It Right from a Genuine Site.” It encourages people to stay clear from pirate sites and use licensed services instead, so that copyright holders and industry employees are properly compensated.

The campaign was promoted alongside an ad which aired during the UK version of The X-Factor and elsewhere late October. In the high-profile advertising spot, which isn’t cheap, viewers were encouraged to duck dodgy sites and go legit.

“Get the stuff you love from genuine sites and support creativity. Download or stream from dodgy sites and contribute nothing. It’s your choice,” it says.

Get It Right from a Genuine Site

CCUK is encouraging the public to use the hashtag #genuine to promote the initiative. However, thus far the response has been rather underwhelming with only a handful of tweets, mostly from industry insiders.

Today, the hashtag is mostly used in totally unrelated tweets and on other social media the project isn’t really taking off either. The official Facebook page of the campaign has only 114 likes.

The only Facebook comment responding to the campaign ad is not very encouraging either. “It’s not 2003. No one’s getting pirated music from IRC or whatever,” it reads.

In addition to the ad, CCUK is also backing a large street art project. It’s not entirely clear how this offline project relates to online piracy, but perhaps it’s an effort to appeal to the target audience.

TorrentFreak asked CCUK who informed us that they are happy with the progress they’ve made thus far.

‘Get it Right from a Genuine Site’ is a long term campaign which seeks to engage consumers across numerous channels about the wide range of legal sources available and help raise awareness of the value of creative content.”

“We are very pleased with the progress of the campaign to date and as awareness continues to build, we expect to see strong results for the creative sectors in the coming year.”

In the months to come CCUK will release additional campaigns as well as the piracy alerts program, where BT, SKY, TalkTalk and Virgin Media will notify pirating subscribers.

A CCUK spokesperson previously informed us that their ultimate goal is to bring down local piracy rates. During the months following the rollout the file-sharing habits of UK Internet users will be frequently polled to measure the impact of the campaign.

“The aim of Creative Content UK is to encourage greater use of legal content services and to reduce online copyright infringement. There will be regular measurements of legal and illegal consumption of content throughout the duration of the initiative, which will be compared with levels before the launch of the program,” CCUK told TF.

Considering the response and exposure thus far, there’s still a long way to go.

Update: added a response from CCUK

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

The MPAA sees illegally recorded movies as one of the biggest piracy threats and goes to extremes to stop it.

During pre-release screenings and premieres, for example, employees are often equipped with night-vision goggles and other spy tech to closely monitor movie goers.

In some cases members of the public have been instructed to hand over all recording-capable devices including phones and Google glasses.

Through these measures the MPAA hopes to prevent pirates from camcording movies or recording audio in theaters. The underlying policy is drafted in cooperation with the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), and a few days ago the most recent version was released.

At first sight not much has changed. The MPAA still recommends theater owners to keep an eye on suspect movie goers while prohibiting the use of any recording devices including phones.

“Preventative measures should include asking patrons to silence and put away their phones and requiring they turn off and stow all other devices capable of recording, including wearable technology capable of recording.

“If individuals fail or refuse to put any recording device away, managers—per your theater’s policy — can ask them to leave,” the recommendation reads.

There are several subtle changed throughout the document though, especially regarding the involvement of police. Previously, theater employees were encouraged to detain suspect visitors and hand them over to the authorities.

This is explicitly stated in the following snippet taken from the 2014 version of the best practices.

“Theater managers should immediately alert law enforcement authorities whenever they have clear indications that prohibited activity is taking place—the proper authorities will determine what laws may have been violated and what enforcement action should be taken.”

In the new document, however, it’s no longer a requirement to call the police. Instead, this is now optional.

“Theater managers have the option to immediately alert law enforcement authorities whenever they have clear indications that prohibited activity is taking place or managers can the stop the activity without law enforcement assistance.”

Similar changes were made throughout the document. Even reporting incidents to the MPAA no longer appears to be mandatory, which it still was according to last year’s text.

“After your theater manager has contacted the police, your theater manager should immediately call the MPAA 24/7 Anti-Camcording Hot Line to report the incident.”

The language above has now been changed to a less urgent option of simply reporting incidents, should a theater manager deem it appropriate.

“Your theater manager can also call the MPAA 24/7 Anti-Camcording Hot Line to report the incident.”

Aside from the softer tone there’s another significant change to the best practices. The $500 “reward” movie theater employees could get for catching pirates is no longer mentioned.

The old Take Action Award mention

In fact, the entire “take action award” program appears to have been discontinued. The NATO page where it was listed now returns a 404 error and the details on FightFilmTheft have been removed as well.

This stands in stark contrast to the UK where the rewards for a similar program were doubled just a few weeks ago, with officials describing it as a great success.

The question that remains unanswered is why the MPAA and NATO have implemented these changes. Could it be that there were too many false positives being reported to the police, or is there an image problem perhaps?

In recent years several questionable police referrals resulted in a media backlash. A 19-year-old girl was arrested for recording a 20 second clip from the movie “Transformers,” which she wanted to show to her brother, for example.

And just last year the FBI dragged a man from a movie theater in Columbus, Ohio, after theater staff presumed his wearing of Google Glass was a sign that he was engaged in camcorder piracy.

Meanwhile, reports of real pirates being apprehended in a similar fashion have been notable by their absence.

Best Practices to Prevent Film Theft

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

In a growing number of countries around Europe, courts have been overwhelmingly willing to order Internet service providers to block pirate sites. In Sweden, spiritual home of The Pirate Bay, copyright holders hoped to achieve the same.

However, a case brought in 2014 by Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry against local ISP Bredbandsbolaget (Broadband Company) crashed and burned on Friday.

After a month of deliberations a unanimous Stockholm District Court found that Swedish legislation meets the requirements of the EU Infosoc directive. The actions of Bredbandsbolaget do not constitute its participation in infringements carried out by some of its ‘pirating’ subscribers, the Court found.

Considering the momentum around Europe towards blocking the decision in Sweden came as a surprise, not least to the copyright holders behind the case. Per Strömbäck of FTVS, the umbrella group behind the action, believes that illegal sites came out the winners on Friday.

“The ruling is a serious failing for the Swedish judicial system that is already falling behind. Swedish film and music creators deserve better,” Strömbäck says.

However, the movie, TV and record companies behind the action have no intention of giving up and as predicted will take their case to appeal.

“The Court has examined the legislation whose precise purpose is to give rights owners the opportunity to have Internet service providers stop illegal services from reaching Swedish internet users,” says Henrik Bengtsson, legal counsel for the plaintiffs in the case.

“Similar legislation already exists in the rest of Scandinavia as well as in much of Europe. We will appeal.”

The efforts to hold Bredbandsbolaget as accomplices to its subscribers’ ‘crimes’ means that the legal action against the ISP was the first of its kind in the country.

If it had succeeded, other ISPs in Sweden would have been subjected to similar conditions and demands to block other sites would’ve quickly followed. However, as the position stands today Bredbandsbolaget feels its stance as a mere conduit of information has been vindicated.

“We see it as positive that the district court did not consider that Internet operators are accomplices in crimes committed over the Internet. This is important for freedom of expression and the Swedish model of a free and open Internet,” says Anna Byström, Chief Legal Officer at Bredbandsbolaget parent company Telenor.

“We believe that the Court of Appeal will rule in our favor, and hope that this will put an end to this matter that could otherwise lead to ISPs needing to block more sites in the future.”

The plaintiffs will file their case with the Svea Court of Appeal before December 18, 2015.

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