A Tokyo district court has found that a service allowing users to store their music online was infringing copyright. Image City allowed users to store their music from CDs on an off-site server, allowing them to later download them to mobile phones while on-the-go. The Japanese music copyright association (JASRAC) attacked the service and claimed it was obviously infringing copyrights.

JASRAC demanded that the service be taken offline. Image City denied any wrong doing, saying that the music stored on its servers was owned by the customer that uploaded it. The company believed that since users and the company were not copying the music for other people’s use, they were essentially doing nothing wrong.

The Judge disagreed and ruled in favor of the Japanese music copyright association.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/9892.cfm

SET was developed by David G. Andersen, a computer scientist and Michael Kaminsky (Intel Research Pittsburgh). SET stands for “Similarity Enhanced transfer”.

The principle: So far a download can only take place in P2P network, if an identical and complete file is present. SET is to make the download possible if a similar file is present, by identifying parts of the files, those is identical with parts of the file the user needs.

The two researchers are sure that by using SET the number of potential download sources rises enormously and again there is an increase in download speeds. As to how much the download speed rises, depends on the size and the popularity of the desired file. It should be possible to increase speeds from between five per cent right up to five times faster.

Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy the 550 square metre principality of Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a ‘micronation’.

The group has set up a campaign to raise money to buy the self-declared sovereign nation. Outside the jurisdiction of the UK or any other country, The Pirate Bays believes it could safely run the world’s largest ‘bit torrent tracker’.

Last year the Pirate Bay was closed down after raids by the Swedish police, and although it returned to a new Swedish server after a short stay in the Netherlands, the Motion Picture Ass. of America, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and the US government have all lobbied for The Pirate Bay’s closure.

Sealand’s royal family, Prince Roy and Princess Joan Bates and their son Prince Michael, Prince Regent, who set up the principality 40 years ago, are willing to sell the platform for £65m.

“If we do not get enough money required to buy the micronation of Sealand, we will try to buy another small island somwhere and claim it as our own country (prices start from $50,000),” the Swedish organisation says.

The claims of Sealand, a former military platform off the coast of Sussex, to nationhood are complete nonsense, a leading international and maritime law expert says. Piratebay, the Swedish file-sharing links site, says it is in negotiations to buy the platform.

The Spanish estate agent acting for the self-proclaimed nation has also declared that Piratebay may not be allowed to buy it because it has pledged not to allow a sale that would damage the interests of or act against the UK.

Piratebay is the focus of a burgeoning political movement in Sweden. The server farm hosting the site was raided last year ,causing popular outcry in a country where file sharing is significantly more socially acceptable than in other European nations. The site provides links to material that is often downloadable without a license or permission.

Piratebay now wants to find a location where it can set itself up as a nation and avoid copyright laws, and says it has started negotiations with the family that has long claimed Sealand as a sovereign nation.

But Professor Robin Churchill, a lecturer in constitutional and international law at Dundee University, says that Sealand’s 1967 claim to sovereignty is absurd. “It is within 12 miles of the coast of Britain and in 1987 the UK extended its territorial waters to 12 miles. That means that UK law applies, including the law of copyright, which could be extended to Sealand without any legal problems whatsoever,” he said.

A 16-year-old from Stavanger in Norway who shared thousands of movies and songs through the P2P program Direct Connect, has been charged with illegal file-sharing, Norwegian Aftenposten reports.

The boy allegedly ran the Stavanger Dragon Hub, from where at least 7,000 movies, 150,000 songs and 20,000 video clips were shared illegaly.

The server was tracked down last year by Norwegian law firm Simonsen, which is acting as regional representatives for the Motion Picture Association (MPA). The hub was closed immediately.

The 16-year-old now faces 60 days in jail and a fine of NOK4,000 ($644) if convicted. His parents could also be hit with “a six figure fine to compensate for lost revenues by the music and film industry”. Lawyer Espen Tøndel still has to determine the exact amount.

Lawyers from our primary ISP decided to pull our plug without any advance notice, as of 14:45 PST. No doubt related to our lawsuit brought by the MPAA, but we don’t have more information at this time until people responsible comes to work tomorrow. We will be back in operation once we sort out this mess with our current ISP, or we get new hardware ready at our new ISP. We’ll update here as the news change.Sit back and enjoy the rest of the internet in the mean time, while it last. For your torrent searching needs, try Google for now by searching for “SEARCH TERMS ext:torrent”.

If you wish to help us out financially, you can donate via Paypal from the button below. Due to prior dis-taste from certain individuals taking donations for their legal defense and run however, this is not a legal defense fund. Your donations will be used for the operational costs of our servers and development of our websites. You have our sincere thanks.

People are downloading more porn for free using P2P networks than downloading legal video downloads, according to research by analysts at the NPD Group.

NPD tracks digital video activity on the home computers of more than 12,500 US house who agree to install NPD’s software.

Figures from this research show that 8% of households are downloading from P2P networks, while only 2% are paying to download video files.

Astonishly, Apple’s iTunes counted for 90% of paid-for video downloads, followed by Vongo, Movielinke, and CinemaNow with less than 1%.

Only 6% is movie content; the majority is TV downloads at over 60%.

From the files downloaded via the 8% who are using P2P sites, 60% are adult-film content, while 20% are TV shows and 5% are mainstream movies.

“While video P2P downloading is less pervasive right now than for music, it is a crucial issue for the film industry to keep track of,” said Russ Crupnick, VP for The NPD Group. “Even though right now the majority of downloaded video content is adult-film content, the amount of intellectual property stolen from mainstream movie studios, networks, and record labels will continue to rise, unless strong and sustained action is taken to prevent piracy.”

www.pocket-lint.co.uk

According to the NPD Group, a consumer and retail information company, for every legally downloaded video file, there are five illegally downloaded ones on P2P networks and BitTorrent sites.

The research carried out by the group shows that 8 percent of all U.S. households (6 million) illegally downloaded at least 1 copyrighted video from a P2P network in the past 3 months, whereas only 2 percent of U.S. households purchased a video legally.

Legal video downloads took place largely on Apple’s iTunes Store with 9 in 10 downloads occurring on that site, followed by Vongo (5 percent), Movielink (3 percent) and less than 1 percent for CinemaNow.

It’s hardly surprising that almost 60 percent of all illegally downloaded video files were “adult-oriented”. TV shows were the second most popular at 20 percent, and only 5 percent were “mainstream movie content”. With regards to legal video downloads, sixty-two percent were TV shows, 24 percent were music videos and 6 percent were movies.

Russ Crupnick, the vice president of the NDP Group wants the movie industry to take the issue of illegal video downloads seriously, even though only a fraction of the video downloads were feature films, and the percentage of legal movie downloads was higher than that of illegal ones. “Even though right now the majority of downloaded video content is adult-film content, the amount of intellectual property stolen from mainstream movie studios, networks, and record labels will continue to rise, unless strong and sustained action is taken to prevent piracy,” he says.

The world’s first convicted internet movie pirate has started a three-month jail sentence in Hong Kong after his appeal against the conviction was rejected, a media report said Wednesday.

Chan Nai-ming, 38, also known by his internet alias, ‘Big Crook,’ had been on bail since being found guilty last November, the Standard reported.

He was convicted for attempting to distribute three Hollywood movies - Daredevil, Miss Congeniality and Red Planet - using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing technology. Chan created and activated files for the movies that enabled other BitTorrent users to download the movies on January 10 and 11, 2005.

Chan’s counsel, Kevin Pun, told the Hong Kong’s appeal court that allowing the films to be available on the internet was not the same as distributing copies of the films. Pun said this was done by other internet users when they downloaded the films.

GigaOM is reporting that there’s a rumor going around that Google is investing a major stake in a Chinese P2P startup called Xunlei (or Thunderbolt P2P network) Translated Website for Xunlei

More from The AlarmClock

Word on the street of Shangai is that Google and Shanghai-based venture capital firm Ceyuan Ventures plan to invest in Chinese download accelerator and peer-to-peer file sharing network operator Thunder Network Technology aka Xunlei, according to a rumor reported by eNet. A spokesperson for Shenzhen-based Thunder or Xunlei, told eNet that the start-up will close its third round of investment in two weeks. Previous rounds were for $1M and $10M from from IDG and Morningside Technologies. Xunlei’s peer-to-peer file sharing software has been downloaded 75M times. The start-up was founded by two Chinese-born techs working in Silicon Valley who moved back to China.

This type of investment would make lots of sense given the growing bandwidth costs of YouTube and Google Video.

Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman made a startling admission when he sat down for a Second Life interview with Reuters: his kids have pirated music. Well, they’ve probably pirated music—Bronfman doesn’t sound too sure. “I’m fairly certain that they have, and I’m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences,” he said, though he later confirmed that he had caught at least one Bronfman child using P2P software. Naturally, his kids were forced to cough up thousands of dollars to the RIAA to keep from getting sued. Right?

Of course not; Bronfman told the reporter that he disciplined his child, but that he would prefer to keep the details of the punishment “within the family.” He also gave his offending offspring a little talk about morality. “I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle involved is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child, a bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.”

http://arstechnica.com/

In the US, peer-to-peer file-swappers have had two choices when it comes to dealing with RIAA prosecutions: cough up a few thousand dollars to make the problem go away, or claim that IP numbers don’t prove a thing and have your case dismissed. But what happens in, say, France? 29-year-old Anne-Sophie Lainnemé just found out.

Lainnemé was one of 50 consumers charged with copyright infringement back in 2004 for illicitly downloading hundreds of files using P2P networks. Instead of facing her trial quietly, Lainnemé became a poster girl for the P2P generation, appearing in magazines and newspapers to defend her actions.

She was still doing so at her trial in October of this year, according to France 2. Lainnemé told reporters, “I downloaded albums to discover new artists and to buy their albums or to go see them in concert,” adding that she had no intention of causing harm.

http://arstechnica.com/

Without getting into the quagmire that is the debate over P2P, fronted on one side by sane technologically able people and on the other by a dying breed of middlemen with an outdated business model (ok, so I dipped a toe into the marsh), the use of the technology aptly includes both legitimate claims of copyright infringement and illegitimate claims that this is all the technology is good for. In fact, P2P is rapidly becoming the de-facto mechanism distribution of all sorts of content on the Internet.But I digress — if you use P2P software, and this can include programs that use it for distribution (which may not be immediately apparent to you), whether you like it or not you’re putting your IP address and machine on the global invitation list. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got a firewall — for while it does its job at the protocol and port level, it can’t protect you from the applications you run that openly share information about you or your machine.

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Allpeers for Firefox appeared in the new beta version 0.53. The most important innovation is that Firefox 2.0 is now supported. With the Firefox extension Allpeers can provide a private P2P-Network. Dispatching and receiving the data anonymously. The developers have now made the beta available 0.53 for download,  the extension is now fully compaitble with Firefox 2.0. In addition further improvements have been made.

Thus for example with downloads it now gives a transmission rate and the estimated download time in the transfer side are indicated. With the photo album function a pre and a back button were added and Allpeers refer the user now on the summary page.