In an October 2014 submission to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), the RIAA bemoaned the existence of several leading ‘pirate’ sites.

All the big named sites were present, including the notorious Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, but also mentioned was Wawa-Mania, a million member strong ‘warez’ forum specializing in a broad range of ‘pirate’ content.

Founded in 2006 by Dimitri Mader, Wawa-Mania became an extremely popular site and in 2009 the Frenchman was detained by the authorities after the Association Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA) identified more than 3,600 films being made available via the site without permission.

The case rolled on and in April this year Mader was sentenced to a year in jail and was fined 20,000 euros for his role on the site. He wasn’t present at the hearing – the 26-year-old remained at home in the Philippines with his family.

Having established the Frenchman’s guilt, the courts were left to decide how much Mader should pay in damages to plaintiffs including Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount, Tristar, Universal, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros.

Following deliberations July 2, 2015, TorrentFreak has now obtained a copy of the ruling and for Mader it will make particularly tough reading.

In varying amounts, each video rightsholder claimed damages per infringing copy, in some cases 5 euros per unit and up to 15 euros per unit in others. In respect of music, claims varied between a few cents per track up to a couple of euros per album/unit. For software, Microsoft claimed a flat sum of one million euros.

Noting that the technological environment made it “particularly difficult” to assess precise damages, the court still held that Wawa-Mania enabled “millions of acts” of infringement. In the end the final awards aren’t quite the $30m in damages that were predicted earlier but it’s nevertheless a punishing schedule.

€ 2,725,260 for Twentieth Century Fox Film ($3,015,813)
€ 1,998,849 for Disney Enterprises ($2,211,956)
€ 1,838,401 for Columbia Pictures ($2,034,402)
€ 1,796,027 for Universal City Studios ($1,987,510)
€ 1,618,388 for Paramount Pictures ($1,790,932)
€ 1,224,348 for Warner Bros. ($1,354,881)
€ 434,699 for Tristar Pictures ($481,044)
€ 2,691,670 for SACEM ($2,978,642)
€ 527,675 for SCPP ($583,933)
€ 684,067 for Microsoft ($756,998)
€ 67,395 for Marc Dorcel ($74,580)

“Counterfeiters maintain that they act in the interests of dissemination of culture, while the analysis of lists of works in the record shows, obviously, a very piecemeal approach to musical culture or global film,” the ruling reads.

“But the imbalances created by downloading this type of work affect not only this but even more generally on all the works including those whose success is not immediate or massive. It is therefore appropriate to recognize significant financial damages and allocate damages accordingly within the limits of the requests by different civil parties.”

TorrenFreak has contacted Dimitri Mader and will update this article with his comments in due course. For now, Wawa-Mania remains operational.

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

This week we have three newcomers and one returnee in our chart.

Mad Max: Fury Road is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(1)	Mad Max: Fury Road (WEB-DL)	8.5 / trailer
2	(2)	Jurassic World (TS)	7.7 / trailer
3	(5)	The Longest Ride	7.1 / trailer
4	(…)	Minions (TS)	7.0 / trailer
5	(3)	Cinderella	7.3 / trailer
6	(4)	Get Hard	6.1 / trailer
7	(…)	Home	6.8 / trailer
8	(8)	Kingsman: The Secret Service	8.1 / trailer
9	(…)	Spy	7.5 / trailer
10	(back)	Furious 7 (HDrip)	7.6 / trailer

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

Fredrik Neij, one of The Pirate Bay’s co-founders, was released early last month after serving a 10-month prison sentence for his involvement with the site.

A few days ago Fredrik arrived back home in Laos, where he’s enjoying his family and an unlimited stock of beer to get his liver back on track.

TF had the chance to catch up with the Swede to see how prison life treated him and the answers we received may surprise some. While it’s never fun to be locked up, Fredrik says it was worth doing time for The Pirate Bay.

“Things were not too bad in prison,” Fredrik tells TF. “It was well worth doing prison time for The Pirate Bay, when you consider how much the site means to people,” Fredrik says.

The prisons in Sweden are nothing like those seen in Hollywood blockbusters. He had plenty of space and privacy and no bars on the door.

“Like most people I only knew about prisons from American movies. Now that I have some firsthand experience I am happy to say it’s quite different. Unlike the barred cages for two persons in the movies, here I have my own private room that’s 10 square meters, with a real door and no bars on the window.”

Fredrik compares his cell to a cabin on a cruise ship, but one with a shitty view. Instead of seeing beautiful coastlines and picturesque bays, he was looking at a prison wall with barbed wire on top, and agricultural fields in the distance.

The cell itself had a private toilet and shower as well as some space for personal items. There were two bulletin boards as well, one with photos of his kids and family and another one for all the fan mail he received.

Although the prison management denied him access to his classic 8-bit Nintendo console, there was plenty of entertainment around. The room came equipped with a Samsung smart TV and Fredrik was also allowed to have newer game consoles.

As a Sci-Fi addict, Fredrik was also happy that “some people” managed to smuggle digital content inside.

“I watched a lot of TV-series and movies on smuggled in USB sticks and MicroSD cards, which is a nice way to kill some time, watching Archer, Futurama, Firefly and other Sci-Fi,” Fredrik says.

On the music front Pirate Bay’s co-founder was thrown back two decades, spinning CDs in an ancient Discman. Music he actually had to pay for.

“Listening to music on a Discman gave me flashbacks to how life was before MP3s, with short battery-life and having to change CD to listen to different artists. Also it was probably the first legal music I bought this millennium.”

The lockup hours were between 7am and 7pm and inmates were allowed to put out their own lights, so games could be played all night. During weekdays Fredrik had to work for three hours as well, putting pieces of wood into a laser etching machine.

The best times of the week were without a doubt the visiting hours, especially when they overlapped with work. Talking to friends and family was a welcome distraction, either in person or on the phone, which Fredrik could have in his room a few times per week.

There were also a lot of people writing in. Not just with words of support, but also to keep him updated on news in the real world, including TF articles.

“To keep up to date with the outside world, friends and family sent me newspapers, magazines and printouts of online media such as TorrentFreak! I also spent a lot of time reading all news-clippings, books and tech- science- and computer magazines I received from fans.”

Fredrik was locked up in the medium security prison in Skänninge where he was the only convict doing time for a “virtual” crime.

“Most other guys were in for drug-related offenses, robberies, manslaughter, aggravated assault. No-one had ever heard of someone being placed at that prison for such a low severity, nonviolent, white-collar crime as ‘assisted copyright infringement,’ but I guess the MAFIAA get what they pay for,” he says.

Surprisingly enough, Fredrik could cope relatively well without 24/7 access to a keyboard and the Internet.

“I didn’t miss computers and the Internet as much as I would have expected. I mostly just missed having instant access to information like I am used to. Inside I used TEXT-TV and newscasts instead of web-sites,

“You only notice how dependent we are on the Internet when are forced off it and have to do things like it was the early 90s again,” Fredrik adds.

Looking ahead Fredrik is hoping to catch up life where he left off.

“It’s great to be back home with the kids. Family aside I was mostly looking forward to catching up on Doctor Who and Archer. And to put an end to my liver’s well deserved vacation with a large beer!”

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

The recent BASCA case has raised some interesting questions about the legal status of the private copying exception to UK copyright law introduced in 2014.

Broadly speaking, the new law is found in s28B of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988, and introduced a limited defense to a copyright infringement claim where an individual makes a copy of a work he legitimately already owns, for example for the purpose of format shifting. Ripping a music file from a CD to .MP3 format for playing on a smartphone or tablet being one typical example.

This exception does not allow copying of copyright protected material for family and friends, neither does it legitimize downloading files from the Internet, as in most cases the downloader will not already own a legitimate licensed copy.

So really, you might well think, “that is a pretty limited situation, why all the fuss?”

Why indeed.

The issue turns around the meaning of “fair compensation”. BASCA and the other claimants claim they are due some fair compensation for this as required by EU Directive 2001/29 which UK law has to comply with. The UK Government contended, in this particular instance, that no compensation is fair compensation.

The agenda for the claimant is that if they succeed, a blank media levy on storage would likely be introduced to provide their fair compensation, which already exists in many other European Countries. This will of course increase costs for consumers, and profits for copyright owners.

It is therefore a quite high stakes game, and means that immediate settlement in this case (the government lost a judicial review earlier this month) is probably quite unlikely. The key issues are whether the UK’s new private copying exception was itself legal under EU law and secondly, whether the process it was adopted under was procedurally legal.

The case can hardly be touted as a victory for the Claimants – BASCA et al. Of several grounds put forward by the claimants regarding the compliance with EU law, the judge rejected each in turn, not one being upheld. The only ground of the claimant’s case which was upheld, was that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, in introducing section 28B had not taken all relevant evidence and information into account before introducing this section.

So what happens now?

For the time being at least s28B remains with its limited format shifting defense. We are, for the moment, still free to format shift.

The Secretary of State could merely carry out the review in the proper manner identified by the court, gather sufficient evidence supporting s28B and that would satisfy the procedural requirement.

Either party could also appeal, the Claimant against the judge’s ruling against them on several points of law, or the defendant against the judge’s finding against the Secretary of State that insufficient evidence had been gathered or taken into account.

If this were to occur, it would be to the Court of Appeal, and possibly from there to the Supreme Court. For such appeals timescales of years rather than months are usually appropriate.

The other option which exists, which is not an appeal as such, is the court could refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a ruling on a point of Law. As the UK law in dispute is derived from EU Law, it is the CJEU who has the ultimate say on what the EU law means in those circumstances.

Here the UK court would ask a specific set of questions as to what the correct interpretation of the law is, but the CJEU does not strictly speaking decide for the claimant or defendant, though in effect the ruling will usually strongly be favorable to one of the parties. This process will often take at least three or more years.

What might appeal courts or the CJEU rule ? Impossible to say with any certainty, but the CJEU has said in the recent Copydan case that in circumstances where there is minimal prejudice to the copyright owner, no compensation can indeed be fair compensation.

In this instance, as the user has already paid a copyright license fee when buying the original CD from which files are ripped, do the copyright owners suffer anything more than minor prejudice? I would suggest not, and it is apparent that this is the opinion of the judge Mr Justice Green, in BASCA. The claimants in BASCA of course contend differently, but well they would wouldn’t they?

A final parting point. If it were the case that through a CJEU ruling against format shifting a blank media levy was introduced (and this can be compelled by the EU, although this would be a long several year process of CJEU Ruling, UK failure to comply, negotiations, warnings etc before any action was taken by the Commission) the UK Government could quite legitimately contend that since many other EU countries which allow private copying with such levies also allow private copies for family members, the UK should now do the same.

This would widen the ambit of the current s28B a significant amount, and would to some extent offset increased costs to consumers of a blank media levy.

—

About the author: Camden is an IP lawyer practicing in the UK

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

Last year BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music sued Cox Communications, arguing that the ISP fails to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

As part of the discovery process the music outfits requested details on the accounts which they caught downloading their content.

In total there are 150,000 alleged pirates, but the court limited the initial disclosure to the top 250 infringing IP-addresses in the six months before the lawsuit was filed.

A few weeks ago Cox started informing its customers that their information would be handed over to the music companies. In a response, dozens of subscribers asked the court not to expose their identities.

Some argued that they should be dismissed because they have did not share the mentioned files. Another group explained to the court that they were wrongfully included, because they weren’t Cox subscribers at the time of the alleged offense.

The latter issue is due to Cox’s broad reading of an earlier court order. Instead of handing over details of subscribers who used the IP-addresses at the time of the infringements, the ISP also included the current IP-address holders.

Objection from a Cox subscriber

This week U.S. Magistrate Judge John Anderson ruled on the objections (pdf), concluding that the subscribers who did not use the IP-address at the time should be dropped.

“Several of the persons submitting objections have provided information to the court that is sufficient to establish that they were not assigned the IP addresses that are the subject of the court’s ruling at the time of the alleged infringing activity.

“The court sustains the objections raised by those individuals,” the order adds.

The other group of subscribers who merely claimed that they did not share any of the copyright infringing files, were less successful. Their requests were denied and Cox will share their personal details with the music companies.

“The mere denial of any infringing activity is an insufficient reason to justify quashing the subpoena to Cox. In addition, any concerns these individuals may have relating to privacy are addressed adequately by the provisions of the Protective Order entered in this action,” the order reads.

The last part is important because many subscribers fear that the music companies will come after their money. However, the court assures them that their personal information can only be used as evidence in this lawsuit, not to demand settlements.

“The subscriber information produced in this action is to be used solely for the purposes of litigating the claims raised in this action between BMG/Round Hill and Cox and will not be used by BMG/Round Hill to solicit payments directly from Cox subscribers.”

For the music companies this shouldn’t be a problem. They previously said that they don’t intend to pursue any individual subscribers in the lawsuit. How they do plan to use the personal details of the subscribers will become clear as the case proceeds.

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