OpenBitTorrent is a non-commercial BitTorrent tracker that doesn’t host or link to torrent files. Despite this seemingly neutral setup, both Hollywood and the music industry have declared war against what they see as an illegal service. After Hollywood won its case against the former provider of OpenBitTorrent, IFPI is now going after its new host in Spain.
Two ISPs have won their court battle against an anti-piracy group which had demanded that they block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. Yesterday a judge at the Antwerp Commercial Court rejected the blocking demands and labeled them “disproportionate”. The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation has reacted angrily, accusing the ISPs of siding with The Pirate Bay.
Another break happened today in the RIAA’s case against Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum, as the $675k fine was reduced by 90%. The judge in the case criticised the RIAA and held that the jury’s damages were unconstitutional. Even the reduced fine is described as “severe, even harsh” by the District Judge.
Despite a pending lawsuit against 5,000 Hurt Locker downloaders and the promises from its makers to sue even more, the film is still being downloaded by thousands of people every day. Interestingly, the makers do not seem to be sending takedown notices to torrent sites, most likely because that would ruin their business plan.
During the last few weeks many file-sharing sites have been taken down by threats, legal action and police raids. From the mighty Pirate Bay to lesser known torrent sites across Europe and streaming giants around the world, the theme isn’t capitulation after a setback, but getting back online as quickly as possible.
In less than two years the RIAA has sent copyright infringement notices to 1.8 million Internet subscribers and 269,609 to colleges and universities. Despite this staggering average of more than a million infringement notices every year from the recording industry alone, the effect on file-sharing levels seems unnoticeable.
After two appeals, a file-sharing case in Norway with important privacy implications has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. The whole process has been shrouded in secrecy, with the results of each stage kept from the public. Now the final decision has been made available and for both file-sharers and privacy advocates alike, the result is unwelcome.
As part of a new initiative cracking down on Internet piracy and counterfeiting, yesterday the U.S. government took action against nine web portals suspected of streaming of first-run movies. Not only were domain names targeted, but assets seized from bank, PayPal and other accounts. One site, NinjaVideo, was warned by TorrentFreak months ago they were being watched.
BitAudit is by far the most elaborate tool to track communications between BitTorrent users we’ve seen to date. Although its creator built the application to give BitTorrent users insight into the inner workings of the protocol and the public nature of it, anti-piracy outfits might use it as inspiration to update their own tracking systems which are usually pretty weak.
Last month one of three injunctions obtained by Hollywood lawyers required that Swedish ISP Black Internet must stop providing access to the world’s most famous BitTorrent site. The provider has just complied with the court order and in turn became the first in Sweden to cut their customers off from the site. Whether this opens the floodgates for other ISP blocks remains to be seen.