Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

Boston University graduate student, Joel Tenenbaum, was ordered to pay $675,000 to four record labels. Tenenbaum admitted to downloading and sharing music online. The Providence, RI native admitted that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The jury’s only objective was to determine the monetary damages to be rewarded to the record labels.

Under federal law, recording companies are entitled to $750-$30,000 for each infringement; however, fines can be up to $150,000 if a jury finds that the infringement was “willful.” The maximum fine in the Tenenbaum case was $4.5 million.

The jurors ordered the defendant to pay $22,500 for each incidence of a copyright infringement. Tenenbaum’s lawyer pleaded with the jury to award the minimum damages to “send a message” to the record industry. Tenenbaum explained how he was thankful and, “That to me sends a message of ‘We considered your side with some legitimacy…$4.5 million would have been, ‘We don’t buy it at all.’”

Charles Nesson, Tenenbaum’s lawyer and Harvard Law School Professor, did not agree with the jury’s verdict and plans on appealing the decision.

This year, internet service providers have agreed to work with the recording industry in hopes of defeating illegal file sharing. A senior vice president for Comcast, the nation’s second largest internet service provider, Joe Waz, has said that the company has issued 2 million notices (as of March, 2009) on behalf of copyright owners.

The notices are not a policy but rather a standard practice. In a statement, Comcast said, “Comcast, like other major ISPs, forwards notices of alleged infringement that we receive from music, movie, videogame, and other content owners to our customer… This is the same process we’ve had in place for years–nothing has changed. While we have always supported copyright holders in their efforts to reduce piracy under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and continue to do so, we have no plans to test a so-called ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ policy.”

Waz made his statements while being part of a panel at the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville. An AT&T executive also issued a statement at the same panel that it will also be cooperating with the RIAA by sending notices to customers as a trial program.

Comcast, however, did not state that it will cease customer’s service.

Global Gaming Factory, set to take over the Pirate Bay, is seeking the approval from the entertainment industry by installing a torrent removal and approval system. BREIN, however, the Dutch anti-piracy group does not believe that this is a full-proof plan and wants something better if GGF plans on dodging any legality issues.

GGF has planned on giving copyright holders the chance to remove infringing torrents and approve other to be published in hopes of avoiding possible conflicts. Furthermore, users will have to pay to have access to the site.

BREIN issued a release stating that the plans for the new Pirate Bay are not sufficient to appease copyright holders. BREIN director, Tim Kuik, said, “In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content on the website and remove it. That is insufficient.” He further stated, “The point is that The Pirate Bay is responsible for what happens on the site. They must keep preventive supervision and take care that no illegal torrents become available on the site. The site provides access to content which to an important and even overwhelming extent is illegal.”

Beginning in September, a new anti-filesharing initiative is going to be underway. Called “Share-Do not Steal,” has the support of 1,750 copyright holders and 36 groups which include the record, movie, TV, and game industries. Furthermore, nearly 2,000 artists, musicians, and other copyright holders are in support of the initiative.

The campaign, which begins in Norway, has the hopes to force Norway’s political parties to show their intentions on unauthorized file-sharing. In a statement from the organizers, beginning with, “Legal file sharing is good. Illegal file sharing is theft,” further goes on to say “Currently the systematic and organized piracy of digital media is carried out to the extent that the very existence of the basis for artists, composers, artists, filmmakers, writers and other rights holders are threatened.

According the cnn.com, today, the Pirate Bay, is “under siege like never before.” The largest internet service provider which supplies bandwidth to the site explained that Sweden has not threatened fines unless it discontinues service to the Pirate Bay.

The site did not find an alternative web connection, therefore only having the Pirate Bay working for a brief period of time. This outraged users and prompted social networking sites such as Twitter to post comments such as “Goodbye Pirate Bay, I’ll miss you,” and “Rest in Peace.”

The Pirate Bay was adamant about its return online and yesterday, this goal was achieved. The site’s founders posted on the site a statement given by Winston Churchill

“We have, ourselves, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Internets,” the operators said in a statement, “to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.”

The Pirate Bay also issued this statement:

We have, ourselves, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Internets, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

Even though large parts of Internets and many old and famous trackers have fallen or may fall into the grip of the (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the ef-nets and darknets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internets, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the baywords.org, we shall fight on the /. and on the digg, we shall fight in the courts; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, the Internets or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Anon Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Cerf’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Global Gaming Factory, set to take over the Pirate Bay, is seeking the approval from the entertainment industry by installing a torrent removal and approval system. BREIN, however, the Dutch anti-piracy group does not believe that this is a full-proof plan and wants something better if GGF plans on dodging any legality issues.

GGF has planned on giving copyright holders the chance to remove infringing torrents and approve other to be published in hopes of avoiding possible conflicts. Furthermore, users will have to pay to have access to the site.

BREIN issued a release stating that the plans for the new Pirate Bay are not sufficient to appease copyright holders. BREIN director, Tim Kuik, said, “In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content on the website and remove it. That is insufficient.” He further stated, “The point is that The Pirate Bay is responsible for what happens on the site. They must keep preventive supervision and take care that no illegal torrents become available on the site. The site provides access to content which to an important and even overwhelming extent is illegal.”

The Pirate Bay acquisition is supposed to take place next week; however, the board of Global Gaming Factory has laid out plans for its shareholders to the site. If the deal works out successfully for all parties involved, Global Gaming Factory has made plans to install a torrent management system for the right’s holders, allowing them to remove infringing files or, in other words, authorize them.

In June, Global Gaming Factory made its surprising announcement that it would obtain the Pirate Bay and make it a legal file-sharing site. As planned, everything is still on schedule and the only obstacle to now overcome is attaining the approval from the company’s shareholders.

Global Gaming Factory just laid out the plans with the shareholders, and next week the definitive decision will be made. The site has confirmed that the new Pirate Bay site will become a pay site. Additionally, to appease the entertainment industry, GGF will also install a system that allows the copyright holders to either authorize the illegal torrent or have it removed from the site. In the first option, the copyright holder will be compensated every single time a file is downloaded. The GGF board stated, “The holder will be able to leave the file and obtain compensation or ask for removal of the file. GGF will also pay any penalties that may arise.”

If the shareholders agree to these plans, GGF will acquire the Pirate Bay on August 27.

Five years after the administrator of the eDonkey link site ShareConnector was found innocent in a criminal trial that was lead by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, the Department of Justice announced that it will appeal this verdict.

In 2004, when most of the BitTorrent sites only had regular visitors, ShareConnector was extremely popular as it served eDonkey links to millions of file-sharers every month. BREIN did not let this go unnoticed, however, which lead to a criminal investigation. This also headed into an investigation into the admin of ShareConnector and the people behind the site Release4U.

Both sites were eventually shut down with the assistance of BRIEN convincing the FIOD-ECD, a Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police. The sites were not only shut down but the servers were placed under police custody for inspection in hopes of finding trace

BREIN had successfully convinced the FIOD-ECD – Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police – to shut down both sites and take the servers into custody for a thorough inspection, hoping to discover criminal activities.

After the case went to court, the administrator of ShareConnector was found innocent and only handed a couple of small monetary fines. The ruling stated that FIOD-ECD did not provide evidence to support that ShareConnector was involved in copyright infringement or that the organizations were criminal in nature.

Although the Department did say in 2007 that it would appeal this verdict, nothing happened until this week when the Department finally filed the appeal.

Gottfrid Svarholm, founder of the Pirate Bay came across Tim Kuik, the head of the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN recently.  The two encountered each other at Random, a hacker conference that takes place in the Netherlands.  It was a few mere months ago that BREIN took the Pirate Bay founder to court to have the site shut down; BREIN won the civil case.

Currently, the verdict on the case has been put on hold, which is allowing the three defendants of the Pirate Bay to appeal the verdict.  The meeting between Svarhalm and Kuik occurred during a panel discussion on copyright laws and the future of media distribution at the conference.  Although Svarholm was in the audience, he took the opportunity to address Kuik.

Asking Kuik, “Can you please tell me where that profit is, because I’d like some of it,” which included an overwhelming applause from the audience.  Swarholm wanted to know if there was evidentiary support that the Pirate Bay is making money from distributed copyright works.

Kuik replied, “You tell me, you’re here, somebody paid for your trip,” implying that the revenue from the Pirate Bay had paid for his trip to The Netherlands.  Swartholm, who is currently working as a software programmer in Asia said, “I paid for this trip by developing computer software for my customers,” again with cheers from the audience.

Kuik’s ultimate rebuttal went on to back up the fact that a Swedish investigative journalist earned hundreds of thousands of kroner in one year due to advertisements, however, this may not even be enough money to cover the hardware and bandwidth costs.

The largest torrent site in the Asian country, Kyrgyzstan, Torrent.kg, was shut down on allegations of copyright infringement. The site’s servers were seized pending the investigation; however, the country now has a version of OpenBitTorrent so that torrents are able to keep flowing.

Although Kyrgyzstan is a rather small country of 5.5 million, it does have a flourishing torrent community, mostly smaller sites which in turn use the Torrent.kg. Last week, however, the inhabitants were discouraged to read a message in Russian which read on the site, “For reason beyond our control the site is temporarily suspended. The administration hopes for a speedy solution to all problems. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.” Later it was confirmed that the site was shut down by the authorities. A temporary forum is currently available for concerned users.

Tolkun Umaraliev, a blogger from Kyrgystan, said that the suspension of Torrent.kg would have little impact on the availability of pirated material. He explaind, “Piracy cannot be stopped in Kyrgyzstan, because people – consumers – do not really know what piracy is, and that it is illegal. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, our market has been filled with underground VHS cassettes of Hollywood movies poorly translated into Russian and underground audio cassettes of western singers. And their prices were reasonable – consumers could afford them,”