Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

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.

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,”

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.