One by one the key players behind The Pirate Bay have been captured by police and forced to complete jail sentences previously determined by Swedish authorities.

The most recently detained was Fredrik Neij, a key player in the operations of The Pirate Bay right from the very early days of the site.

After realizing that his fate in Sweden involved a 10 month jail sentence, Neij fled to Laos in Asia where he lived until recently with this young family. He traveled from Laos into bordering Thailand on many occasions but last month his luck ran out.

On November 4, immigration police announced that Neij had been detained while crossing the border into Nong Khai, a city in North-East Thailand. What followed was a very public press conference in which a bewildered looking Neij was paraded before the media while flanked by several officers.

But while the rest of the world had to wait until November 4 to hear the news, leaked emails obtained by TorrentFreak show that the Hollywood studios knew about things well in advance.

In an email dated the day before Neij’s arrest was made public, the MPAA advised chiefs at Disney, Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros, NBC Universal and FOX of the Swede’s arrest. But things went deeper than that.

Already there had been rumors in Thai media that “U.S. movie companies” had hired a lawfirm to track down Neij and that a house on the island of Phuket plus a bank account containing five million baht ($153,000) had been discovered. Emails seen by TF confirm the MPAA’s involvement, but also that they didn’t want that noticed in public.

“Jan Van Voorn [MPA’s Regional Director for Content Protection] and Neil Gane [former policeman, former AFACT boss, now MPA APIC chief in Asia] are in contact with both Swedish and Thai authorities providing additional assistance,” the email reveals.

“Thai Immigration is planning a press conference for tomorrow, November 4. We have alerted our Communications Section, and do not plan to comment to the media.”

Another email confirmed the MPA’s intention to lie low, but that it might already be too late to hide any involvement.

“Huge win! Don’t know if hackers will retaliate,” an email from a studio begins. “MPA is laying low and quiet, but the pirate blogs are attributing the pursuit to movie studios.”

While a brash affair, the press conference itself revealed few details of Neij’s actual arrest other than the time, place, and what he was wearing. However, the correspondence the MPAA had with the studios reveals they knew quite a bit more.

Holding a long-standing belief that Neij was somehow still associated with the running of The Pirate Bay, in 2011 the studios obtained a beefed-up injunction which banned the Swede from being involved with the site.

Not only has their mindset remained the same for three years, but the studios also believe that Neij could be on the hook for other offenses too.

“Neij is facing a 10 month prison sentence in Sweden for his conviction in the Pirate Bay case. Neij may also face new charges for his continuing role in the operation of TPB and two additional charges for computer hacking,” the emails read.

No additional details on any hacking charges were provided or have been released since, but the MPAA are hopeful that items taken from Neij when he was arrested will provide the clues.

“Two laptop computers were seized from Neij at the time of his arrest, and may provide additional evidence against Neij and others in the ongoing TPB investigation in Sweden,” the MPAA writes.

While an investigation into The Pirate Bay is now obvious following the raid two weeks ago, another MPAA email confirms that a criminal referral was also made against “TPB co-founder Frederik Neij and his ISP DCP Networks.”

Fredrik Neij is currently serving his 10 month Pirate Bay related sentence in a Swedish jail but his arrival there from Thailand was never announced publicly. He is the third key Pirate Bay operational figure to be jailed.

Gottfrid Svartholm was the first to be detained after authorities in Cambodia handed him over to Swedish police in 2012. Gottfrid completed his sentence but is currently detained in Denmark following an unrelated hacking case.

Peter Sunde was captured by a special police unit on a farm in Sweden during the summer of 2014. Sunde served his sentence and is now a free man, probably traveling around Europe.

With the imprisonment of Fredrik Neij the MPAA now have the full set, an achievement they were happy to pat themselves on the back for.

“Another excellent example of global cooperation and coordination between our content protection hubs,” a November email concludes.

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

It’s been nearly a year since Hotfile was defeated by the MPAA, resulting in a hefty $80 million dollar settlement.

While the public agreement left room for the file-hosting service to continue its operations by implementing a filtering mechanism, the company quickly shut down after the settlement was announced.

As it now turns out, this was the plan all long. And not just that, the $80 million figure that was touted by the MPAA doesn’t come close to the real settlement Hotfile agreed to pay.

Buried in one of the Sony leaks is an email conversation which confirms that the real settlement payment from Hotfile was just $4 million, just a fraction of the amount widely publicized in the press.

“The studios and Hotfile have reached agreement on settlement, a week before trial was to start. Hotfile has agreed to pay us $4 million, and has entered into a stipulation to have an $80 million judgment entered and the website shut down,” the email from Sony’s SVP Legal reads.

Considering the time and effort that went into the case, it would be no surprise if the movie studios actually lost money on the lawsuit.

The good news for the MPAA is that the money was paid in full. There were some doubts if Hotfile would indeed pay up, but during the first weeks of December last year the $4 million was sent in three separate payments.

The huge difference between the public settlement figure and the amount that was negotiated also puts previous cases in a different light. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the $110 million settlement with isoHunt and the $110 deal with TorrentSpy were just paper tigers too.

Whether or not the Hotfile case resulted in a net loss is probably not that important to the MPAA though. Hollywood mostly hopes that the staggering numbers will serve as a deterrent, preventing others from operating similar sites.

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

The movie industry sees the illegal recording of movies as one of the biggest piracy threats and for years has gone to extremes to stop it.

It started well over a decade ago when visitors began sneaking handheld camcorders into theaters. These big clunkers were easy to spot, but as time passed the recording devices became smaller and easier to hide.

While recording a movie for strictly personal use is not illegal in UK cinemas (despite industry efforts to have the law changed), theaters continue to outlaw the use of recording devices. Most recently, Google Glass was banned, and phones and tablets need to be switched off as well.

In a code of conduct the movie industry and cinemas have agreed that employees will take immediate action when they spot someone with a recording device, but some cinema staff take these obligations way too far.

At a Cineworld cinema in Brighton Marina, UK, employees dialed the national 999 emergency number after they spotted a group of 12-year-old girls with iPhones and iPads at a showing of The Hunger Games.

The girls, accused of recording parts of the movie, were hauled outside where two police cars rushed towards the scene with flashing lights.

Although recording movies is not a crime in the UK (as long as there’s no intent to distribute), the officers still carefully inspected the devices for ‘bootleg’ material. After their search turned up nothing the girls were allowed back in. However, the teens decided to wait outside, reportedly in tears, until their parents came to pick them up.

Louise Lawrence, the mother of one of the girls, is outraged by the treatment. Not just the false piracy accusation, but also the fact that they were left out in the cold afterwards.

“Our girls were falsely accused, had the police called on them and then just left in tears. It’s outrageous. If they have done this to our children they will do it again,” she says.

A Cineworld spokesperson stresses that they apologized to the parents for the mistake, adding that it’s common procedure to take these actions.

“While we regret that the customers felt distressed, we are confident that the correct procedures were followed. If our staff see such behavior we expect them to notify the cinema management immediately and to call the police. However, we have taken on board the concerns expressed by the parents and we are reviewing how the policy is applied to younger customers,” she adds.

While movie theater staff could indeed call the police if they suspect that a commercial pirate is in their midst, a group of 12-year-old girls with iPhones hardly falls into the category.

And calling the national emergency number certainly seems to be taking things too far.

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

Almost three years ago, New Zealand police carried out a spectacular and aggressive armed raid against individuals accused only of copyright infringement.

Acting on allegations from the United States government and its Hollywood partners, officers of STG, New Zealand’s elite counter-terrorist force, raided Kim Dotcom’s mansion. The German-born businessman was detained along with his wife Mona and their children.

Mid 2012, a High Court judge found that the warrants used in the raid were overbroad and therefore illegal, but a February 2014 Court of Appeal reached a different conclusion.

While acknowledging that the warrants contained flaws, a panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal found that overall the warrants were legal.
Dissatisfied with the ruling, Dotcom took the case all the way to the Supreme Court complaining that the warrants were overbroad and lacked detail. The verdict was handed down today.

In another disappointing ruling for the Megaupload founder, this morning the Supreme Court found that the 2012 raids on Dotcom’s home were carried out legally.

The raids on Kim Dotcom’s mansion. Legal, says Supreme Court

Four Justices – John McGrath, William Young, Susan Glazebrook and Terence Arnold – dismissed Dotcom’s appeal while agreeing that the 2012 warrants were not unreasonably vague and general. Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias dissented, but her determination that there had been a miscarriage of justice was overruled.

One judge aside, the Court acknowledged that while the original search warrants were indeed deficient when detailing the alleged offenses, those shortcomings did not result in damage for Dotcom and his associates.

“The majority of the Court has decided that, although the search warrants were deficient in their description of the offenses to which they related, these defects did not result in any miscarriage of justice to the appellants,” the Court wrote in its summary.

“While the search warrants did not specify that the offenses were against United States law, or that the offenses were punishable by two or more years’ imprisonment, this did not cause any significant prejudice to the appellants.”

When taking all circumstances into account, including the explanations given to Dotcom by police carrying out the raid, the Court found that Dotcom (and fellow claimants Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram Van Der Kolk) were given enough detail about the alleged offenses to which the search warrants related.

Dotcom, who along with his co-appellants will have to pay court costs of $35,000, aired his disappointment on Twitter.

“New Zealand Chief Justice Dame Elias got it right in both Supreme Court decisions in my case. She must be as frustrated as I am,” Dotcom wrote.

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

Nearly two weeks ago Swedish police raided a center in the city of Nacka, close to Stockholm.

The Pirate Bay was the main target of the raid, but collateral damage caused several other torrent sites to go down as well. These included EZTV, the go-to place for many torrenting TV fans.

Shortly after the raid TF spoke with the EZTV crew, who quickly managed to recover several servers so proxies could serve the latest torrents again.

Getting the entire site up and running proved to be more challenging, but today it appears to have fully recovered. This means that EZTV is accessible from its original EZTV.it domain once again.

The site is loading intermittently at the time of writing, but if it doesn’t pop up right away it should be visible after a few refreshes.

While the EZTV website was down for 13 days, the TV-torrent distribution group only stopped releasing torrents for a day or so. During the downtime fresh content was still shared on other torrent sites, such as ExtraTorrent.cc and Kickass.so

Curiously, coinciding with the comeback some proxies including Eztv-proxy.net have stopped working, most likely because they have to change a few settings to connect to EZTV’s backend.

While EZTV may have fully recovered, many other sites hit by the raid are still experiencing problems.

The Pirate Bay has put up a pirate flag and a counter, but no index or torrents. The torrent cache Zoink.it and the popular Istole.it tracker previously returned, but are currently offline again.

For now, however, it appears that EZTV is here to stay.

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