In backroom meetings the MPAA and Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood discussed a plan to bring website blocking and search engine filtering back to the table after the controversial SOPA law failed to pass.

The plan, dubbed “Project Goliath,” became public through various emails that were released during the Sony Pictures leaks. In a response Google said that it was “deeply concerned” about the developments.

To counter the looming threat Google filed a complaint against Hood last December, asking the court to prevent Hood from enforcing a subpoena that addresses Google’s failure to take down or block access to illegal content, including pirate sites.

This resulted in a victory for Google with District Court Judge Henry Wingate putting the subpoena on hold. At the same time Google requested additional details from the Attorney General on his discussions with Hollywood.

During an oral hearing earlier this month Google requested various documents including an email conversation between MPAA’s Senior Vice President State Legislative Affairs Vans Stevenson and the Attorney General.

In addition, Google asked for copies of Word files titled Google can take action, Google must change its behavior, Google’s illegal conduct, CDA, and any documents gathered in response to a request previously submitted by Techdirt’s Mike Masnick .

After a careful review District Court Judge Henry Wingate sided with Google, ordering Attorney General Hood to hand over the requested information before the end of the month.

Judge Wingate’s order

The documents will help Google to get to the bottom of the censorship efforts and to determine what role the MPAA played and what its contributions were.

Various emails that leaked after the Sony hack already revealed that the MPAA’s long-standing law firm Jenner & Block had drafted a subpoena and other communication the Attorney General could use against Google.

Many of the “Project Goliath” emails and documents are readily available after Wikileaks released them late last week, but nearly all details had already been made public after the leaks first surfaced.

Interestingly, in one email the MPAA’s Vans Stevenson linked to a New York Times piece on how lobbyists court State Attorneys to advance their political agendas.

“FYI, first is a series of articles,” Stevenson wrote to several high level executives involved, not knowing that a follow-up would include “Project Goliath.”

Perhaps fittingly, New York Times’ journalist Eric Lipton won a Pulitzer prize for the series yesterday, for reporting “how the influence of lobbyists can sway congressional leaders and state attorneys general, slanting justice toward the wealthy and connected.”

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

Some of the key strategies employed by anti-piracy groups around the world involve attacking the infrastructures of so-called pirate sites.

Pressuring hosting companies to cut off sites is one of the oldest and perhaps easiest method of disrupting activities, but finding a new host – even for the most blatant of infringers – is usually countered in a few hours. It’s a nuisance, but one that can be handled relatively easily.

Blocking domains at the ISP level presents more of a problem for sites but actually seizing a domain or rendering it entirely useless really takes things to the next level. It’s a strategy being actively pursued in a number of cases, most recently by the RIAA in an important case against MP3Skull reported here yesterday.

Next week in a separate action, a Swedish court will be required to decide whether The Pirate Bay will be allowed to keep control of two of its most important domains.

ThePirateBay.se (the site’s main domain) and PirateBay.se (a lesser used alternative) are being targeted by Prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, the man behind the now-famous operation that took the site down in December.

Filed back in 2013 at the District Court of Stockholm, the motion targets Punkt SE, the organization responsible for Sweden’s top level .SE domain.

Ingblad’s position is that since The Pirate Bay has been deemed an illegal site, its domain names are assisting in those crimes and should be subject to action, just like a tool used in any other crime

In a case against both the .SE registry and former Pirate Bay operator Fredrik Neij, Ingblad wants the Court to order the domains to be forfeited.

“That is, in practice, that the state should take them over, or at least that .SE should not rent them out again, Ingblad says.

In parallel The Pirate Bay is also facing its first web blocking action in Sweden. Last November, Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry filed a lawsuit against Swedish service provider Bredbandsbolaget. The ISP intends to fight the demand.

In the meantime the blocking case is certainly one to watch, with Punkt SE CEO Danny Aerts framing the action as unique in Europe.

“There are no previous cases of states suing a registry for abetting criminal activity or breaching copyright law,” Aerts notes.

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

The now three-year cases of Kim Dotcom versus the New Zealand and United States governments have developed into a massive legal grind.

Almost every adverse decision affecting either side finds itself subjected to appeal wherever possible, with neither of the opposing parties prepared to concede defeat.

For Dotcom, the purposes of the battles are obvious. While trying to recoup as much of his seized wealth as possible, the Megaupload founder is determined to avoid extradition to the United States where he faces the largest copyright-focused case in history.

On four occasions the German-born businessman has succeeded in having his extradition hearing delayed but last month his luck appeared to have run out. With a June 2015 hearing looming, Dotcom’s legal team asked the North Shore District Court for an adjournment until October, claiming that the time remaining was not enough to prepare for such a complicated case.

In the event the court refused to grant a delay to a hearing that will decide whether Dotcom and co-defendants Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk should be sent to the United States to stand trial. The decision led to Dotcom’s lawyers applying for a judicial review.

This morning the parties were back in court yet again, arguing that a four-month delay is necessary in order for Dotcom and his associates to prepare their cases. Led by top lawyer Ron Mansfield, the High Court welcomed the German’s legal team to hearing set to last two days

At least for now, Dotcom’s cash situation doesn’t appear to be hindering his defense. According to 3News the German had a 10-strong legal team behind him this morning. The same could not be said about Megaupload co-defendant Finn Batato, however.

A fellow German and former chief marketing officer at Megaupload, Batato arrived at the High Court this morning without a lawyer in tow. Famously filmed tearing around the Nürburgring circuit with Dotcom and racing driving Kimi Raikkonen, Batato told the court he would be representing himself.

After allowing Batato to move from the public gallery to sit among Dotcom’s lawyers, the Court heard that Batato had made an application for legal aid, a system of government funding designed to ensure people aren’t denied justice because they can’t afford a lawyer.

Grant Illingworth, QC, a 30-year legal veteran with more than 30 Court of Appeal cases under his belt, argued that the complexity of the extradition and Batato’s legal position meant that the hearing should be delayed.

“Mr Batato is waiting on a legal aid application. He has no lawyer and won’t have one unless legal aid is granted,” he said.

According to NZHerald, Illingworth told the Court that not enough information had been supplied relating to how charges from the US matched with crimes under New Zealand law .

“We’re in a hopeless position as far as complying with the timetable… we can’t comply with it,” he said.

If the appeal is successful it will be the fifth time that the extradition hearing has been delayed since the now-infamous Megaupload shutdown of 2012. In the meantime Dotcom awaits a decision on whether an undisclosed dangerous driving offense will affect his residency in New Zealand.

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

Unauthorized MP3 download sites have been a thorn in the side of the music industry for many years, and a group of well-known labels are now targeting one of the biggest players in the market.

The coalition of record labels including Capitol Records, Sony Music, Warner Bros. Records and Universal Music Group have filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull, currently operating from the Tonga based .to domain name.

In the complaint filed at a Florida District Court (pdf) the studios describe MP3Skull as a business that’s designed and operated to promote copyright infringement on a commercial scale.

“MP3Skull is a website that is devoted to the infringement of copyrighted sound recordings on a massive scale, from which Defendants derive substantial revenue every year,” the complaint reads.

“At the core of MP3Skull is a database that, according to Defendants, contains millions of links to MP3 music files from around the Internet,” it adds.

MP3Skull has been around for several years and lists links to popular music tracks scattered around the web, free of charge. The operators of the site are not publicly known but the labels note that the Russian Monica Vasilenko was previously listed in the site’s Whois information.

Besides offering a comprehensive database of links to music tracks, the labels also accuse the site’s operators of actively promoting piracy through social media. Among other things, MP3Skull helped users to find pirated tracks after a takedown notice purge.

“MP3Skull’s official Twitter and Facebook pages contain several communications from Defendants openly encouraging users to download obviously infringing files, links to which were removed following takedown requests from copyright owners,” the labels write.

“On several occasions, Defendants outlined various workarounds that users could employ to download MP3 files because the site was ‘forced’ to ‘remove a huge amount of our searches’ following takedown requests from copyright organizations,” the add.

As a result of its allegedly infringing activities the site has gathered a broad audience of millions of users, resulting in significant losses from the record labels.

“As a direct result of Defendants’ widespread and brazen infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, MP3Skull has become one of the most popular illicit music download sites on the Internet, attracting millions of users from the United States and generating significant revenue for Defendants.”

The complaint list more than 100 popular tracks that are freely available on MP3Skull. This means that the site’s operators face over $15 million in statutory damages.

Perhaps more importantly, given the anonymous nature of the site’s operators, is the broad preliminary injunction the record labels request.

Among other things, the proposed measures would prevent domain registrars, domain registries, hosting companies, advertisers and other third-party outfits from doing business with the site. If granted, the MP3Skull operators will have a hard time keeping the site afloat in its current form.

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

In an effort to gain more subscribers HBO launched its standalone “HBO Now” service earlier this year.

The subscription allows Americans to access HBO’s content, including Game of Thrones, without the need to have a television subscription.

With the offer HBO hopes to drive people away from pirate sites, but it also created a new form of unauthorized use. As with Netflix and Hulu, many people outside the U.S. signed up for the service through VPNs and other geo-unblocking tools.

Although they are paying customers, using HBO Now from outside the U.S. is not permitted under the company’s terms of use.

While Netflix is still fairly lax about geo-unblocking, HBO is now cracking down on the practice. A few days ago thousands of VPN and proxy “pirates” started to receive worrying email warnings.

“It has come to our attention that you may have signed up for and viewed video content on the HBO NOW streaming service from outside of the authorized service area (the United States, including D.C. and certain US territories),” HBO writes.

“We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that the HBO NOW streaming service is only available to residents of the United States, for use within the United States. Any other access is prohibited by our Terms of Use.”

HBO Now warning

The emails in question target users all over the world, including Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia. Unless they were flagged by mistake, HBO will terminate the accounts of affected subscribers within days and without the option of a refund.

HBO is cracking down on VPN and proxy pirates to protect the value of their licensing deals. If millions of foreigners use the U.S. version, local partners in these countries are going to complain.

However, since legal options are often lacking there’s little doubt that many ‘unauthorized’ viewers will find less official ways to access the shows they love to watch. This time, however, HBO will not get a dime.

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