Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

The oldest BitTorrent site, FileSoup, has recently been targeted by police as well as anti-piracy officers. FilesSoups owner was arrested and further denied his phone call and legal representation for more than seven hours. His warrant was gained on July 27 and was backed up by the MPAA-funded UK anti-piracy group FACT. A raid on his home was then conducted. He was subsequently charged with Suspicion of downloading copyrighted movies.

The owner of FileSoup, known as The Geeker, said “I asked them [police] while still at home if I could contact a member of my family so that someone could come and make sure my dog was catered for, they said that I couldn’t. On the way to the police station I asked if they could contact someone to take care of the dog or if I could make a phone call, they again said I could not,”

FileSoup was founded in 2003 and is considered one of the original torrent sites. Although keeping a low profile, the site has built a solid reputation, and had survived the other popular torrent site, the Pirate Bay.

The warrant was issued under Section 109 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988. It allows the gathering of any evidence related to the illegal file distribution or file-sharing of copyright films. Although FileSoup has never hosted any copyright material, it has links to metadata which links to material hosted elsewhere.

To date, FileSoup still remains operable.

According the Wall Street Journal, movie studios began to drastically increase the prices of DVDs that came with the right to download a digital copy of a movie to one’s computer. However, it is now up to a federal judge to decide the legality of this issue questioning whether or not the studios are the only ones to profit. In April, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of U.S. District Court in San Francisco opened up a hearing to assess whether RealNetworks are allowed to sell a computer program named RealDVD which allows consumer to copy purchased DVDs onto personal computers. Prior to this issue, the studios won the temporary right to ban the sale of RealDVD; if the program is allowed back on the market, studios may lose their efforts to gain profit from the digital copies of DVDs. The question is whether or not it is worth it now for consumers to purchase high priced DVDs, when there is a piece of software which allows someone to get the same thing for free.

Most importantly, studios wish to keep control of their own products and do not want outside companies to become involved with a piece of the profit. With studios earning over $13 million in profit from the sale of DVDs last year, this issue becomes imperative for the studios to be proactive on the ban of Real sales. Furthermore, the studios claim that this is an infringement of the DMCA because nobody can make copies of a movie without the permission of the copyright holder. Although Real claims that its product is only for personal use, a spokeswoman for the MPAA claims, “What Real is actually doing is usurping our product.”

Legal representative for BitTorrent site TorrentSpy deceided to appeal the $111M copyright infrigment judgement the site have been striked in May 2008 by the Motion Picture Association of Americain.  They claim that the court erred in its procedures and its judgment.

“The case was not decided on the merits of copyright issues whatsoever. U.S. rules of evidence conflict with European privacy standards, resulting in the judge ruling from the bench instead of letting the case go to trial.”

The judge ruled that TorrentSpy was guilty of vicarious copyright infringement, along with inducing and contributing to such acts, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The court issued an order barring TorrentSpy from operation.

They are asking the 9th Circuit of Appeals in Northern California to overturn the judge’s ruling and set a trial.