Last year BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music sued Cox Communications, arguing that the ISP fails to terminate the accounts of subscribers who frequently pirate content.

The companies, which control publishing rights to songs by Katy Perry, The Beatles and David Bowie among others, claim that Cox gave up its DMCA safe harbor protections due to this inaction.

The case is scheduled to go to trial before a jury next month, but an order just issued by District Court Judge Liam O’Grady already puts the Internet provider at a severe disadvantage.

In his order Judge O’Grady ruled on a motion for partial summary judgment from the music companies, which argued that Cox has not met the requirements for safe harbor protection under the DMCA.

Although Cox does have a policy to disconnect accounts of pirating subscribers, it discarded the copyright infringement notices from the plaintiffs. These notices are bundled with settlement requests, something Cox likens to harassment.

After reviewing the arguments from both sides Judge O’Grady has sided with the copyright holders, as HWR first reported.

“The court grants the motion with respect to defendant’s safe-harbor defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants reasonably implemented a repeat-infringer policy as is required…,” the order (pdf) reads.

Judge O’Grady’s order

The judge has yet to publish his full opinion motivating the decision and we will follow this up as soon as it’s handed down. However, the ruling makes it clear that Cox is in a very tough spot.

DMCA safe-harbor is a crucial protection for ISPs against copyright complaints. Aside from the liability Cox faces in the case, it also suggests that ISPs should disconnect subscribers solely based on accusations from copyright holders, which affects the entire industry.

Judge O’Grady, who’s also in charge of the criminal case against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom, doesn’t appear to be concerned about any collateral damage though.

Techdirt reports that he previously lashed out against the EFF and Public Knowledge, which submitted an amicus brief in support of Cox.

“I read the brief. It adds absolutely nothing helpful at all. It is a combination of describing the horrors that one endures from losing the Internet for any length of time,” O’Grady said, rejecting the brief.

“Frankly, it sounded like my son complaining when I took his electronics away when he watched YouTube videos instead of doing homework. And it’s completely hysterical.”

To be continued.

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

Despite criticisms emanating from both sides, it will be difficult to argue that New Zealand has skipped on the amount of time it’s dedicated to the Megaupload case.

Hundreds of hours of legal resources have been expended since the fateful raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion in 2012 and with 2016 just a few short weeks away, it will soon be determined whether the Internet entrepreneur will be shipped to the United States.

That decision now lies with Judge Nevin Dawson, who today listened to the closing submissions in an extradition hearing that has lasted (some say dragged on) for 10 long weeks after being scheduled for just four.

Both sides have demonstrated only one common ground – each feels they have a solid case and that the other is dead wrong.

Prosecutors acting for the United States say that Megaupload was business built from the ground up for illegal purposes. They argue that Dotcom and fellow defendants Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk knew that their users were breaching copyright and even financially rewarded those who infringed the most.

Rather than removing content as the law requires, Megaupload merely removed the links, leaving content intact so that it could live to infringe another day, the U.S. claims. Communications between some of the company’s executives only served to underline the above, with admissions that Megaupload was profiting from 90% infringing files.

The former Megaupload operators see things very differently. From day one they have argued that their Internet business was a legitimate cloud storage service, originally setup to overcome the limitations of sending files via email.

Megaupload was not dissimilar to Dropbox, Dotcom et al argued, and had deals with copyright holders so that any content they wanted removed could be taken down in a timely fashion.

“Not only did Megaupload achieve 99.999% takedown compliance, numerous emails from major content owners thanked us for our compliance,” Dotcom reiterated today.

But despite complying with the laws of the land, Dotcom says that Megaupload was cut down in its prime by an aggressive and malicious U.S. government who from the very beginning has been doing Hollywood’s bidding. Those same authorities closed down his site, seized his funds and then denied him access to a fair trial.

“My defense team has shown how utterly unreliable, malicious and unethical the U.S. case against me is. They have exposed a dirty ugly bully,” Dotcom said this morning.

But allegations of dirty tricks aside, Dotcom and his former associates insist that the very basis of the U.S. case falls on stony ground, that the copyright infringement charges on which all of the other charges are based simply aren’t extraditable offenses. In any event, Internet service providers such as Megaupload can’t be prosecuted for their users’ crimes, they say.

Nevertheless, the reality remains. Dotcom and his former Megaupload operators face charges of copyright infringement, conspiracy, money laundering and racketeering in the United States and after putting up a colossal battle, U.S. prosecutors aren’t likely to be backing down anytime soon.

But for now the fate of the now famous quartet lies in the hands of Judge Nevin Dawson, the man who has sat patiently – sometimes less so – through ten weeks of hearings and hundreds of pages of submissions from both sides in this epic war of words.

“The 10 week extradition hearing has ended. My life is in the hands of Judge Nevin Dawson. He was the Judge who granted me bail. There’s hope!” Dotcom said after the hearing ended today.

When Judge Dawson will deliver his final decision is unclear, but when he does so it will be to an open court in the presence of men facing decades of jail time in the United States.

It will be an agonized wait for both sides but history shows us that no matter which side loses, neither will easily accept defeat. This show is definitely not over yet.

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

Impatient fans of the popular FX series Fargo got lucky today. At least, those who are used to downloading or streaming it without permission.

The seventh episode of season two is scheduled to air tonight but thousands of people have already grabbed a copy from various torrent sites.

The leak originates from Hulu where the video was made freely available this weekend, by mistake. Hulu offers the second season of Fargo with a select cable subscription but the upcoming episode was reportedly listed under season one.

The error was noticed by several people and after roughly a day Hulu took the video down. But by then it was already too late.

This morning several copies of the leaked episode were uploaded onto torrent sites and since then thousands of people have downloaded it. Although some were skeptical, the episode is indeed real and the full version.

Screenshot of the leaked Fargo episode

The leak is unique as the source of the pre-release is an online streaming service. Most TV-show leaks we’ve seen recently come from so-called screener DVDs which are sent out for promotional purposes.

For Hulu, which is owned by media giants NBCUniversal Television, Fox Broadcasting and Disney–ABC Television, the mistake is quite an embarrassment. However, since it happened less than a day before the official premiere the effect of the leak should be limited.

TorrentFreak has asked Hulu for a comment on the news but at the time of publishing we have yet to receive a reply.

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

In less than two years Popcorn Time has become a piracy icon as well as one of Hollywood’s main nemeses.

Through various enforcement actions around the world the major movie studios hope to eventually contain this threat.

They recently booked a major victory when the MPAA filed a lawsuit against several key developers of the popular popcorntime.io fork in Canada. While this suit took down the associated website, there are several efforts to revive the project.

The problem for the movie studios is that Popcorn Time’s code is open source, allowing anyone to help out or distribute forks of their own. With minimal effort, developers can easily have their own improved version up and running.

While this results in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group BREIN has just announced a win.

The group reports that has tracked down two Dutch developers who helped to keep Popcorn Time alive, and urged them to stop their activities immediately.

“Since the recent action by the MPAA against popcorntime.io, which took the website offline, various parties are breathing new life into the software, as were these two Dutch individuals,” the group says.

According to BREIN the pair used GitHub to submit code and Reddit to share news about their accomplishments.

Preventing a possible court case, the developers signed a settlement with the anti-piracy group in which they agreed to stop their Popcorn Time development. The pair face a fine of €2,000 per day if they breach the agreement.

The Dutch developers don’t seem to be part of the core development team of the .io fork, which could explain why they got off with a relatively mild warning.

The lawsuit against three of the main popcorntime.io developers in Canada is still ongoing. They face millions in damages due to their involvement with the popular application and the associated VPN.ht service, which generated significant revenues.

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

After beginning just beyond the mid-point of September, by now the extradition hearing of Kim Dotcom should be long over.

Instead, the hearing – which will decide the fates not only of the Megaupload founder but also colleagues Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk – has dragged on for some 10 weeks. It’s due to draw to a close sometime tomorrow but as usual things started normally and then went downhill.

“I’m back in court today listening to the last episode of Alice in copyright land. 10 weeks of U.S. copyright fiction are coming to an end,” Dotcom announced before setting off to court this morning.

However, Dotcom’s journey didn’t go smoothly and he was late to arrive after allegedly being detained by the police. The reasons aren’t clear but a report by TVNZ, which has now been deleted, had Judge Nevin Dawson asking if that was for speeding and lawyer Simon Cogan responding “I hope not, sir”.

Eventually Dotcom appeared in time to hear Crown lawyers began summing up their case against the Megaupload defendants. The defense had finished its arguments relatively smoothly last week but today there were surprises in store.

Grant Illingworth, lawyer for Bram van der Kolk and Mathias Ortmann, told the Court he’d been reading through the US summary of the case and had discovered that the prosecution intends to introduce new evidence before the case wraps up tomorrow.

In response to Mr Illingworth describing the 11th hour effort as “an ambush situation”, Christine Gordon for the prosecution offered to make the evidence available immediately. But Illingsworth declined and asked for the evidence to be stood down and the hearing stalled.

After ordering the evidence to be made available, Judge Dawson indicated he wouldn’t yet rule on whether it can be used by the prosecution. Gordon, meanwhile, accused defense lawyers of trying to bog the case down.

“[They’ve tried to do] what has been done in the last three-and-a-half years: to conduct their trial defense through the extradition process,” she said.

But distractions aside, Christine Gordon again reiterated that the aims of the extradition hearing are very simple ones.

While the men might argue on technicalities the Judge does not have to decide whether Dotcom and his former colleagues are guilty of any offense.

Judge Dawson only has to decide whether there is a case for them to answer in the United States covered by the extradition agreement with New Zealand. The threshold for that is low, Gordon said, and attempts to distance copyright infringement with extraditable fraud offenses would not work.

“There are millions of people whose lives are prejudiced by this type of behavior,” she argued, noting that the defendants even used the word “fraud” when talking about their activities among themselves.

So, after more than four years of legal argument, counter argument, appeals and delays (and further surprises aside), the fate of Kim Dotcom and his three co-accused will lie in the hands of Judge Nevin Dawson later this week.

Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato all face extradition to the United States on charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering and together face decades in jail. The stakes could hardly be higher.

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