On May 31, 2006, BitTorrent as many people know it came to a grinding halt. The Swedish National Criminal Police raided Rex|Port80, the home of The Pirate Bay and at least 200 other domains. The raid disrupted The Pirate Bay, throwing much of the BitTorrent community into chaos.

However, this bewilderment would prove temporary as The Pirate Bay is once again online. True to its defiant nature, The Pirate Bay is again indexing many of the same .torrent files that made it wildly popular.

News of The Pirate Bay’s resurrection comes as little surprise. The Pirate Bay spokesperson “brokep” promised Slyck.com the site would resolve under a different country’s flag if an immediate resolution could not be reached in Sweden.

Read more »

According to an internal scene notice, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has confiscated dozens of servers belonging to at least four top sites. The release groups FLAMES, DiAMOND, SAGA and HAFVCD, hosted by Layered Technologies in Frisco Texas, are reportedly offline. Several other affiliate sites, hosted by Server Matrix, were also taken down.

According to the scene notice, FBI agents entered Layered Technologies at 9 AM. At that point, the servers were already offline and awaiting FBI confiscation. Simultaneously, the scene notice states FBI agents entered Server Matrix’s facility and confiscated 18-20 servers from yet unnamed top sites.

Read more »

They say “one” is the loneliest number. Luckily for Sharman Networks, the FastTrack network has nearly 2 million individuals online at any given moment. Slowly, FastTrack’s numbers continue to slide as internal and external forces chip away at the once mighty Kazaa.

At its peak in the summer of 2003, FastTrack was a bustling network of over 4.5 million users. The official Kazaa client produced by Sharman Networks was still disliked by many file-sharers, but this wasn’t a terrible concern. Alternatives such as Kazaa Lite, which greatly enhanced the original product and eliminated third party software, faded any ill-memories of the official Kazaa Media Desktop.

Read more »

According to an Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) news briefing, on May 29 a home in Pengang, Malaysia was raided for piracy of optical discs. The raid was carried about by ten Malaysian enforcement officers, accompanied by Motion Picture Association (MPA) represenatives.

The raiding party arrested a 42-year-old man, seized 200 DVD burners, 83 CD burners, as well as 15,800 blank DVD-recordable discs. The MPA estimates that the DVD burning lab was capable of creating 8,760,000 DVDs per year, yielding a revenue over $28million USD.

Of course, this is just a fraction of what the MPA would make if all discs were purchased legally for an average price of $20USD per disc, that would result in a $175,200,000USD payout.

Former head of the RIAA, Hillary Rosen, says she regrets the RIAA’s decision to sue individual downloaders, noting that it the policy simply ignores the reality of an evolving technological landscape.

She’s say that people regularly accuse her “…of suing college students and other “innocents” in my past role as Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America The lawsuits against individuals initiated by the RIAA was (were) started after I left.”

In a blog posting on “The Huffington Post,” she makes plain her opinion that the RIAA’s strategy is altogether wrong and irrational as it fails to address the root causes of the problem or even address the future of technology and media sharing that they have long watched pass by them from the sidelines.

Read more »

Korean record companies got a major boost a few days ago when the association of P2P service providers decided to block the transfer of MP3 files by their customers.
P2P service providers in South Korea like Soribada and Purna had been charging 50 won, (0.0522545 USD), to download an entire album with the actual copyright holder receiving “nada,” nothing.

Though the activity was ruled illegal by South Korean courts last year, the practice apparently continued unabated as a deal between the P2P service providers and record companies could not be agreed upon. Apparently the charging price per song was the major sticking point. Though isn’t some money charged per song better than none at all? I think they must be using the same playbook as those brainiacs at the RIAA here in the United States.

Read more »

The members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel have been trying to wipe AllofMP3.com off the Net for some considerable time. It is, after all, competition.
For its part, AllofMP3.com hasn’t had a lot to say. Until now. In an email statement we received this morning, it declares:

The US government officials and politicians have been demanding lately that the Russian authorities shut down allofmp3.com, alleging the site is pirate. Otherwise, they threaten Russia with sanctions, including blocking its entry to WTO.

Read more »

Peter Jamieson, chairman of the British Phonographic Industry, said consumers would only be penalised if they made duplicates of songs for other people.

Currently anyone transferring music to portable devices breaks copyright laws.

The music industry has traditionally turned a blind eye, however, in favour of targeting “professional” pirates.

“We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties,” said Mr Jamieson, whose organisation represents the UK’s record labels.

Read more »

According to Tiscali, the European recording industry [read the Big Four] is, “virtually impossible to work with”.
Either way, Juke Box is offline, says the BBC, going on, “Mercora, which was a partner in the Juke Box service, had been running the same service in the US for more than a year.”

But, “the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said Juke Box had offered a level of interactvity that breached its licence,” says the story, which has Tiscali.co.uk editor Richard Ayers saying it’s all very disappointing.

Read more »

The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman has ruled that the Apple iTunes service breaks the law, and has given the company two weeks to fix the problem.

In January, the Consumer Council asked the Ombudsman to look at iTunes because of concerns that it breaks consumer protection law.

Today’s decision backs that complaint.

According to the ruling, iTunes breaks section 9a of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act. The regulator said it was not reasonable that the consumer must sign up to a contract regulated by English law, rather than Norwegian law. It also said iTunes must accept responsibility for damage its software may do, and said it is unreasonable to alter terms and conditions after a song has been sold.

Read more »

More than 50 law enforcement officials raided 10 locations, confiscating the computers and detaining three people.

ThePirateBay.org had described itself to be the largest search index for BitTorrent, a system used for sharing large files across the internet.

The entertainment industry welcomed the action against a site it argued was a major source of music and film piracy.

Read more »

A lawsuit filed Wednesday accuses the Motion Picture Association of America of hiring a hacker to steal information from a company that the MPAA has accused of helping copyright violators.The lawsuit (click for PDF), filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by Torrentspy.com parent Valence Media, doesn’t identify the man the company says was approached by an MPAA executive. But the suit calls the man a former associate of one of the plaintiffs and alleges that he was asked to retrieve private information on Torrentspy.com, a search engine that directs people to download links.

Read more »

The mission seems impossible. Hollywood is after all film pirates, people who illegally download first-run flicks and swap them in cyberspace.

Major film studios like Disney, Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures sued three Oahu men for allegedly sharing movies online.

“They oftentimes contact the FBI and highlight individuals who are the top downloaders of their product,” said FBI cyber crimes agent Arnold Laanui.

Read more »

Lala.com — a new website that helps song lovers trade entire compact discs for less than the cost of a single iTunes video download — is either the music industry’s salvation or yet another nail in its coffin.

Read more »

In response to the RIAA’s irrational lawsuit campaign against the tens of millions of American P2P users, EFF set up a petition asking Congress to stop the madness and support ways for artists to get paid without fans getting sued. We’re now close to our goal of 100,000 signatures, and, with your help, we hope to surpass it by a longshot and deliver the petition to Congress. After over 18,000 lawsuits and counting, file sharing has continued to increase rapidly.

Read more »