Performing rights group GEMA has won an injunction against newsgroup outfit, UseNeXT. A court has forbidden the Usenet company from offering around 100 musical works from the GEMA repertoire and says that in the future, Usenet operators will have to take a greater responsibility for the environments and services they offer.
Last October the Amsterdam Court ruled that three former Pirate Bay operators had to remove a list of ‘infringing’ torrents from the website and block access to Dutch users. The Pirate Bay trio had to comply with the Court’s demands before today, but nothing has changed and it’s unlikely that the Dutch will be shut out of the site in the near future.
When the operators of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison last year Google quickly distanced itself from the site. Nearly a year later, three of Google’s employees have just received suspended jail sentences in Italy for failing to prevent a video from being uploaded to Google Video, placing them in a similar position as most torrent site admins.
In early February, AFACT, representing several Hollywood movie studios, lost its case against Aussie ISP iiNet after a judge ruled the ISP was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers. Now the anti-piracy group is claiming that Justice Cowdroy was wrong on almost all points and will appeal his decision.
Six book publishers have gained an injunction against file-hosting company, RapidShare. The Swiss-based ‘cyberlocker’ service must monitor user uploads to ensure that around 148 titles, many of them textbooks, are never made available to its users. Failure to do so could result in $339,000 fines, or even jail time for company bosses.
Following widespread objections, New Zealand’s Section92A ‘guilty upon accusation’ anti-piracy law was scrapped last year. Today, The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill will be introduced, which repeals Section 92A and replaces it with a “three-notice” regime, backed up by $15,000 fines and 6 month Internet suspensions.
Last year the BitTorrent search engine isoHunt lost in court against the MPAA. A Californian court ruled that isoHunt was guilty of inducing copyright infringement and granted summary judgment. IsoHunt, however, does not intend to crack so easily as it sets course towards an appeal and launches a ‘Lite’ version of the site.
At the beginning of February, AFACT, representing several Hollywood movie studios, lost its case against iiNet after the court decided that the ISP was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers. Despite being ordered to pay all costs, AFACT says it will now go back to court in an attempt to avoid paying them.
A man who was caught by MPAA investigators camcording the hit movie The Dark Knight in a US theater during July 2008 has been sentenced. The 42 year-old from Grandview, Missouri, was ordered to serve 24 months in federal prison and pay $24,738 in fines.
Last year, the District Court asked the police to investigate their own people after the verdict in The Pirate Bay case leaked to the public hours before it was officially delivered. Today the police announced that they have given up on finding the source of the leak and have closed down the investigation.