Danish ISP Blocks The Pirate Bay; But Is It For Legal Reasons... Or Competitive?

from the legal-excuses dept

A year ago, recording industry lobbying group IFPI successfully convinced a Danish court to force ISP Tele2 to block The Pirate Bay. This came after a similar ruling that forced Tele2 to block access to AllofMp3 (which, you'll recall was the big "threat" prior to The Pirate Bay). Of course, these blocks don't work particularly well, and seem incredibly annoying for those content creators who actually want their content distributed through systems like The Pirate Bay.

Tele2 appealed the ruling, and another court found that, indeed, ISPs should be forced to block access to The Pirate Bay. While that case is being appealed to the country's Supreme Court, it appears that other ISPs are being pressured to start blocking as well. Denmark's largest ISP, TDC, is now blocking access to The Pirate Bay.

Torrentfreak suggests that TDC is worried about a similar lawsuit, and did this as a preventative measure, but I have to wonder if some of the thinking is competitive. Last April, TDC announced a deal whereby its customers could download unlimited music... though it was really more of a subscription rental service that included DRM. So, basically, here's a way that TDC gets to block out a "competitor" to its own service, and then blame the legal rulings for being able to do so...

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Did Amazon Force Takedown Of Firefox Pirate Extension?

from the why-bother? dept

Earlier this week, we skipped on writing about the rather silly release of a Firefox user script that would add links to popular torrent trackers for unauthorized downloads of products as you surfed Amazon.com. The whole thing just seemed likely to get folks (on all sides of the debate) riled up. In fact, if anything, I thought the rather amusing response was a separate user script that did the reverse. If you were surfing torrent sites, it would link to Amazon for purchase.

However, now there are reports that Amazon.com has sent its lawyers after the original. It's possible that they have a trademark claim, as the folks behind it used the name "Pirates of the Amazon," and the overly aggressive trademark lawyers will (incorrectly) claim that Amazon needs to send a cease and desist to protect its trademark. In reality, that's only true if the name is being used in a way that's likely to cause confusion, where people might actually think that Amazon supports this. That seems quite difficult to believe.

The end result, though, is that this silly little script is now getting extra attention, and is (of course) still widely available for download at a variety of other sites. If Amazon had just let it be, this would have probably been an amusing little bit of nothing. Sure, some hardcore file sharers would use it, but they're not going to pay for content anyway, so what difference does it make? Update: The folks behind it are now claiming it was an art project to see how people would react. Not sure I believe that, but okay...

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Danish High Court Says ISPs Must Be Internet Policemen; Have To Block The Pirate Bay

from the keep-on-blocking dept

Earlier this year, we noted, with surprise, that a Danish court had ordered Tele2, a large ISP, to block all access to The Pirate Bay website. This followed an earlier ruling requiring Tele2 to block access to AllofMp3.com. It's never been clear why an ISP should take on the responsibility of blocking access to a site, and Tele2 appealed the ruling. Unfortunately, it looks as though the company has lost. The Danish High Court has apparently sided with the IFPI, and says that, indeed, Tele2 must block The Pirate Bay. Of course, this is unlikely to matter. Whenever these blocks are ordered, there are always ways around them, and the attention from the blocks tends to alert more people to the site's existence.

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China Says: If You Must Infringe On Copyrights, Use Baidu

from the interesting-strategy dept

Many people have noted over the years that with all of the effort that China has put into its Great Firewall, the country hasn't done much of anything to crack down on unauthorized file sharing. In fact, at times, it's almost seemed to encourage it. So some people were a bit surprised to find out that China's censors tried blocking traffic to various well known BitTorrent sites, such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay. However, what may be most interesting is that rather than blocking them outright, it appears that the system just redirects all that traffic to popular Chinese search engine Baidu.

This would be the same Baidu that first became really popular when China shifted all Google traffic to its site, and also the site that stayed popular because it made it easy to download unauthorized music. This would be the same Baidu that was also recently exposed to be fairly complicit in the music downloads it offers, potentially hosting the content itself through a revolving series of ever-changing domains. So, this hardly seems like an attempt by the Chinese government to crack down on unauthorized file sharing -- but an attempt to drive it all to a local company. It looks like the redirects only lasted for a few days, and are no longer in place -- but if the past is any indication, those redirects may come back at any time.

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The Pirate Bay Threatens To Sue Over Copyright Violations

from the want-to-see-copyright-abuse?-we'll-show-you-copyright-abuse... dept

The folks who run The Pirate Bay sure do seem to have quite a bit of fun. The latest is that, in response to a report from Swedish book publishers about how they scraped TPB's results for a period of time and noticed that 85% of Sweden's best sellers could be found on the site, the folks from TPB are threatening to sue the publishers for copyright infringement. Hypocritical? Yes. But, clearly, the TPB guys are merely making the point of just how silly copyright laws are. The TPB guys aren't big believers in copyright, obviously, so any such lawsuit isn't so much hypocritical as it is pointing out the absurdities of such a system to those who seem to think that copyright systems make perfect sense.

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Court Says Italy Can't Block The Pirate Bay

from the ah,-pesky-laws dept

Lots of people were surprised back in August when a prosecutor in Italy told Italian ISPs they needed to start blocking The Pirate Bay. That was problematic for a variety of reasons -- from why ISPs should be responsible for filtering content to why The Pirate Bay had no chance to tell its side of the story to (the most questionable of all) the fact that ISPs were told to redirect people to a site run by the record labels. But, of course, as with any of these blocks, the attention only served to drive more traffic to The Pirate Bay in Italy.

Still, even ordering the blocks in the first place seemed highly questionable, so The Pirate Bay asked an Italian court to reverse the order -- and that's exactly what's happened. The court has ordered that the bans be lifted. So, it appears that all the Italian prosecutor did was drive a lot more traffic to The Pirate Bay by getting it a lot more attention, without being able to actually ban the site.

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Why Did Italian ISPs Redirect Pirate Bay Traffic To IFPI Site?

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

We've already talked about how Italy's plan to have ISPs block all access to The Pirate Bay has failed by getting more people to visit the site. However, TorrentFreak points out another oddity in this whole ordeal. For the sites that did redirect The Pirate Bay, they pointed people to an IFPI-owned website. That seems highly questionable. Why should ISPs direct traffic intended for one private site to another private site -- allowing that second private organization to collect IP address info from folks intending to go to The Pirate Bay? If they really had to block the site, why not point them to a gov't explanation or, at the very least, a neutral site. Handing The Pirate Bay's traffic over to music industry lobbyists makes very little sense.

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Once Again, Blocking The Pirate Bay Leads To More Traffic In Italy

from the thanks-for-the-promotion! dept

Earlier this week, when we wrote about attempts by Italian officials to have ISPs block The Pirate Bay, we noted that just about every similar attempt had resulted in giving a lot of free publicity to The Pirate Bay, leading to traffic growth. So, it should come as no surprise that the Pirate Bay has seen a nice boost in traffic coming from Italy this week.

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Italy Tries, Fails To Ban The Pirate Bay

from the how-many-examples-do-you-need? dept

A few years back, with the help of some pressure from US gov't officials, Sweden tried to shut down The Pirate Bay. It worked for about a day until the site was back up. And, of course, the resulting publicity from the failed raid only brought The Pirate Bay much more attention. Earlier this year, a court in Denmark tried to get major ISPs to block access to the Pirate Bay. And, once again, all that really did was generate much more interest in the site.

At some point, you might think that officials would recognize that every time they try to shut down or block The Pirate Bay, it just ends up getting the site that much more traffic. But it looks like we still have a long way to go until that day comes. A prosecutor in Italy has told ISPs that they need to start blocking access to The Pirate Bay. Of course, such bans are totally ineffective, as The Pirate Bay has already set up routes around the blocks. So, nice work Italy. You've now helped to promote The Pirate Bay by trying to "ban" access to it.

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When Everything On The Internet Is Encrypted...

from the things-may-change-a-bit dept

For years, we've been pointing out that as the entertainment industry, telcos and the government increase efforts to spy on the activities of users (for various reasons, good or bad), all it's going to do is speed the adoption of encryption technologies. Well, that appears to be happening. Thanks to governments increasing the ability to spy on citizens combined with ISPs capitulating to entertainment industry and government demands to start acting as copyright cops, monitoring usage, more and more people are getting interested in encrypting their internet activity. While it's unclear if it will go anywhere (and some argue it's guaranteed to fail), the folks behind the Pirate Bay are the latest to jump into the game, promising a system that will "encrypt the entire internet."

Whether accomplished by The Pirate Bay or others, this is the near inevitable end result of this cat and mouse game. Even if you believe the entertainment industry, broadband providers and the government have both the best of intentions and the absolute right to do these kinds of monitoring activity, the fact that encryption will make it so those who don't want to monitored can hide means that it's only going to become more popular. And, at that point, it only makes the efforts by the entertainment industry, the broadband providers and the government that much more useless -- because all that monitoring they've pushed to do will not only be nearly impossible, but they've also lost the trust and respect of all those users/customers/constituents. It's a true lesson in the unintended consequences of getting what you wished for.

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Warner Music Admits It Hired Police Investigator Before The Pirate Bay Investigation Was Complete

from the that's-not-good dept

Back in April, we wrote about the fact that a police investigator in Sweden who had been in charge of the case against The Pirate Bay had been hired by Warner Brothers. At the time, there was no proof that he had been hired during the investigation. In fact, it appeared otherwise. Based on this, I didn't see why this was such a problem -- though many people in the comments felt I was being naive. And, indeed, it turns out that a further investigation has now turned up the news that, in fact, the guy was hired while the investigation was ongoing. Though he's now left that job, this does call into question the entire investigation against The Pirate Bay.

And while it turned out that I was wrong about what happened, based on the evidence at the time, I still believe that it was wrong to jump to conclusions about what Warner Music did without actual evidence. Jumping to conclusions without evidence is what the industry does. We should be above that. When the actual evidence is there, then we should be clear and call it out -- and indeed, finding out that Warner hired the guy in the middle of the investigation is a huge problem and should throw the entire case into question. But, let's hold ourselves to a higher standard than the entertainment industry, rather than stoop to their level.

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Debunking The Faulty Premises Of The Pirate Bay-Criminalization Treaty

from the this-again? dept

The entertainment industry's lobbying efforts for stronger intellectual property laws is incredibly sophisticated. The more you follow their efforts, the more impressive you realize they are. Every time one aspect is somehow blocked, another almost immediately pops up somewhere else that has been simmering below the surface for months. While many more are aware of efforts to directly lobby politicians to change copyright laws, what gets less attention is the work that's put into various "international trade" treaties. Two years ago we wrote about how this was a favorite tactic of the copyright lobby. They basically write up a treaty for the government, who then signs the treaty with a bunch of countries, without anyone realizing all of the details. Then the copyright lobby starts using the crutch that all of the countries involved have to strengthen their copyright laws in order to "comply with our international treaty obligations."

Kevin Stapp writes in to let us know about the latest such proposed treaty that has been leaked to Wikileaks. The document is (not surprisingly) a wishlist for the entertainment industry and, as Wikileaks notes, it was distributed only to pro-stronger-copyright lobbyists for comment, and not to any consumer rights groups or those who recognize that stronger copyright can be quite damaging. Slashdot talks about what Wikileaks calls the "Pirate Bay Killer" clause that would force countries to criminalize significant facilitation of infringement, even if it's not for profit. Why countries should be criminalizing what is, in actuality, a business model question is never explained.

However, there are many more problems with the paper, including the fact that many of its most basic assumptions are either untrue or unproven. When you base an entire international trade treaty on questionable (or outright incorrect) assumptions, bad things will result. It starts out by noting:

The proliferation of infringements of intellectual property rights ("IPR") particularly in the context of counterfeiting and piracy poises an ever-increasing threat to the sustainable development of the world economy

Except that two recent government studies have shown no such thing. Both the GAO and the OECD have noted that both the magnitude and the impact of counterfeiting is greatly exaggerated by lobbyists. The paper goes on:

The consequences of such IPR infringements includes (1) depriving legitimate businesses and their workers of income; (2) discouraging innovation and creativity; (3) threatens consumer health and safety; (4) providing an easy source of revenue for organized crime; and (5) loss of tax revenue.

Let's go through those one by one. On point (1), this is simply untrue. As we've pointed out in the past, there's no such thing as "depriving" someone else of income -- otherwise convincing someone to go to a pizza shop instead of a deli would be considered a crime (you've "deprived" the deli of income). Where money goes is a marketing issue, not a legal one. If companies are having trouble convincing people to pay them for their products, that's their business model problem. Nothing is being taken from them.

On point (2), this is also simply untrue. Study after study have shown no corresponding decrease in innovation or creativity when intellectual property laws are weakened (or even removed entirely). In this day and age when so much creativity takes place outside of traditional intellectual property realms, it seems ridiculous to even suggest that creativity is somehow impacted.

The closest the paper comes to having a reasonable point is on point (3), but that really only applies in very narrowly defined cases (specifically involving dangerous counterfeit products that may not be safe). Yet, that's an extremely narrow area, and can be dealt with via other means, including anti-fraud law. And, when dealing with international trade issue, it seems like the sort of thing that ought to be handled by customs, rather than with some big intellectual property treaty.

Point (4) is a favorite claim by the industry, but it's never been backed up with any significant evidence. I'm sure there are some organized crime groups that traffic in counterfeit products -- but again, that can and should be dealt with by other laws. Strengthening intellectual property laws to combat organized crime is a misuse of intellectual property laws.

The question of tax revenue (5) is also a favorite of the industry that relies on only counting the ripple effects in one direction. That is, it assumes that the lost tax dollars come from things like the sales tax on software products that would be bought, but fails to count the economic growth and additional tax from businesses who are able to more rapidly grow the economy through the use of cheaper software.

So the entire underpinning for the argument in favor of these "trade agreements" is a house of cards (if that much). But for those who aren't all that familiar with the space (or whose political campaigns are funded by the entertainment industry), these claims are all taken as a given. That should be seen as a serious problem.

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How The RIAA/MPAA Helped Catapult The Pirate Bay Into Being One Of The World's Most Popular Sites

from the nice-work,-guys dept

It's been almost exactly two years since the entertainment industry had the US government push Swedish officials into shutting down The Pirate Bay. At the time, entertainment officials went on and on about what a "significant blow" the takedown was against all those folks using the site for unauthorized copies of entertainment content. Of course, as we all know, the site was back up within days -- and thanks to all the media attention about the raid and the takedown, the site's traffic shot upwards to the point that it's now considered to be one of the top 100 sites in terms of traffic. Quite a "significant blow," huh?

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Warner Brothers Hires Lead Police Investigator On The Pirate Bay Lawsuit

from the conflicts-of-interest dept

Stephen Holthaus writes in to point us to a press release from The Pirate Bay about the fact that the chief police inspector who built the case against the Pirate Bay in Sweden has now been hired by Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, it seems like the folks at the Pirate Bay may be overplaying this news, implying that he was employed by Warner Brothers while conducting the investigation. Instead, the details show that he merely switched jobs last month. That's not as scandalous as the Pirate Bay folks make it out to be. While they do have a point in suggesting that some of his investigative work may have been part of the "job interview," it's not unreasonable that Warner Brothers would decide to hire someone who had the experience this investigator had. After all, the RIAA and all of the major record labels have a history of hiring former law enforcement officials (no matter how pointless their "anti-piracy" efforts are). So, while it may call into question the guy's objectivity during the trial, the guys at the Pirate Bay probably should tone down the moral outrage on this one.

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Musician Upset That He's Being Used In Lawsuit Against Pirate Bay

from the not-against-it-at-all dept

Earlier this year, Swedish prosecutors finally filed charges against the Pirate Bay, using some of the evidence given to them by the IFPI. Among that "evidence" was a list of Swedish musicians supposedly "hurt" by file sharing. Apparently the IFPI didn't bother to check with those musicians to see how they felt about this. One Swedish hip hop star stood up to the IFPI pointing out that he has nothing against the Pirate Bay and, in fact, is "pro-file sharing," which is even represented in his music. On top of that, the IFPI doesn't own the rights to his music. Because of this, the IFPI has now had to cut back on how much money they're claiming the Pirate Bay owes them. However, if they did that with one artist, it makes you wonder how careful the IFPI was with other musicians as well.

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The Pirate Bay Launches Blog System For Those Worried About Censorship

from the standing-up dept

You have to hand it to the folks who run The Pirate Bay. They certainly don't hesitate to stand up for themselves and refuse to be pushed around. They've spent so much time fighting back against attempts to take them down and sue them, that they figured they might as well make use of that "core competence" in other areas. So, apparently, they're setting up a censorship-free blogging platform, which they claim will be available for those who don't want to worry about weak-willed hosting firms pulling down a blog at the first legal threat. There have been a few hosting firms who have advertised similar services, but the Pirate Bay guys have the reputation to live up to their word.

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Pirate Bay Wants IFPI To Pay Up For Danish ISP Block

from the poking-ifpi-with-a-stick dept

The folks behind the Pirate Bay certainly aren't ones to shy away from a fight. In fact, they seem to enjoy it. The latest is that they're demanding compensation from the IFPI for downtime associated with the IFPI's successful efforts to force Danish ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay says it will ask for a "reasonable" sum, rather than an extraordinary amount as is typical of the entertainment industry. It also says it will use any money it gets from the IFPI to fund Danish artists who want to give away their works online. While the guys at the Pirate Bay reasonably complain that the entire lawsuit between the IFPI and Danish ISPs never involved The Pirate Bay or gave the site a chance to make its own argument (despite being entirely about the site), this request for compensation may be pushing the boundaries a bit -- especially considering that even The Pirate Bay folks have admitted that the ban eventually resulted in more traffic. Perhaps they should send some money to the IFPI to thank them for all that "free" advertising.

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Sweden Becoming Less Friendly To File Sharing

from the all-that-lobbying-pays-off dept

Despite having politicians who seem to actually understand the real issues at stake surrounding file sharing (hint: it's not a legal problem having to do with "pirates"), it appears that some in the country are getting fed up with the entertainment industry trying to portray Sweden as a "haven for pirates" thanks to the Pirate Bay (which isn't even hosted in Sweden any more). Earlier this year charges were filed against The Pirate Bay, even though it's still not clear if they actually violated any laws. And, now, some Swedish politicians are saying that ISPs should be required to cough up the information of those accused of sharing files. Oddly, this comes so soon after the EU decided that IP addresses are private info and various other countries in Europe have ruled that ISPs shouldn't hand over info, as user privacy is much more important than propping up the entertainment industry's business model.

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Did Yahoo Delete The Pirate Bay From Search Results?

from the making-friends?--or-enemies? dept

There's a lot of buzz going around concerning reports that Yahoo has deleted The Pirate Bay from its search index, though it appears not everyone is seeing it. There hasn't been an official explanation just yet -- and it could be an accidental move or simply a hiccup, but it raises some questions about Yahoo's search index when such a site disappears. This is especially true given the controversial (deserved or not) nature of The Pirate Bay, and the efforts by the entertainment industry to shut the site down. Initially, we're willing to give Yahoo the benefit of the doubt, but a full explanation of what happened would be useful at this point.

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Danish Block Of The Pirate Bay Leads To Even More Traffic

from the nice-publicity-stunt,-IFPI dept

We've noted in the past that every time the RIAA or the IFPI scores a "significant blow" against an operation they accuse of piracy, it only seems to drive more attention to those sites. That appears to be happening once again. Since the IFPI convinced a Danish court to block users from accessing the Pirate Bay, traffic from Denmark to the Pirate Bay has actually increased, thanks mainly to the news coverage of the story. So, for such a significant blow, it appears that all the IFPI has succeeded in doing is providing free advertising for the Pirate Bay.

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