It’s been a frustrating situation for the millions of affected users and one that has taken a turn for the worst today, with the news that one of Megaupload’s main hosting companies has decided to delete all the data they had stored.

Dutch hosting company Leaseweb has informed Kim Dotcom that all 690 servers have been wiped clean. This means that petabytes of data belonging to Megaupload users is now gone for good.

“This is a huge disaster,” Dotcom tells TorrentFreak, explaining that the servers mainly contained files from European users as well as the associated backups.

Leaseweb’s decision has come as a shock to the New Zealand-based entrepreneur, not least because Megaupload has been trying hard to reconnect users with their data. In fact, Dotcom’s lawyers specifically asked the hosting provider not to delete anything until the U.S. court comes to a decision.

“They deleted petabytes of data and did not warn us at all. Our legal team asked them multiple times not to delete the data while the U.S. court is deciding about the rights of our users,” Dotcom says.

“It’s such a betrayal. They could have given us some warning. We could have informed the court that a deletion is imminent. But Leaseweb did not even give us or our users a fair chance.”

Soon after the raid Megaupload’s legal team started to discuss the option of giving back users their uploaded data, but the U.S. refused all suggestions. Megaupload and the U.S. hosting company Carpathia did come to an agreement to hand over the servers, but the Government blocked this plan in court.

“This is what the U.S. government wanted all along. That’s why they seized all of our assets and would not even release funds to pay our hosting partners,” Dotcom now says.

The fate of the data stored at Carpathia is now in the hand of a U.S. judge, who still has to come to a decision. The hosting provider, meanwhile, is paying $9,000 per day out of its own pocket to store them.

“Carpathia has done the right thing and stored Megaupload servers at their own expense. That’s what Leaseweb should have done after making millions of profits from Megaupload,” Dotcom says.

“This was totally unnecessary and evil.”

Dotcom doesn’t know whether Megaupload can or will take steps against Leaseweb. The lawyers are looking into the matter, but Megaupload’s founder is most of all very sad and disappointed.

“All I can say right now is that everyone is very upset. This is the worst day since the raid for me because I was fighting every day to get users their data back. EVERY DAY!” Dotcom concludes.

Source: Leaseweb Wipes All Megaupload User Data, Dotcom Outraged

In May 2011, things began to change when the Ministry of Culture announced proposed amendments to the Copyright Act aimed at giving rightsholders “they tools they need” in order to tackle online copyright infringement.

Fast forward a little over two years and the Government’s plans are now about to come to fruition. On July 1 a new law will come into effect and change the online file-sharing environment forever.

Previously only a single licensed entity had permission to monitor file-sharers online but from the first of next month any rightsholder or trade group may do so, providing they inform the country’s data inspectorate in advance.

According to Willy Johansen, Secretary General of the Norwegian Videograms Association, a brand new anti-piracy group is currently being formed to make use of the new freedoms available to rightsholders.

“We are in the starting blocks to start a rights alliance in Norway, as we have done in Denmark and Sweden,” Johansen told Tu.

Modeled on the Swedish Antipiratbyran and Danish Rettighedsalliancen, the new group will be a team effort by the major labels of IFPI, the movie industry and other publishers.

“It is intended that the alliance will conduct an investigation of infringement of copyright. We hope this will be a strong organization with many members who own rights,” Johansen said.

Sending “strike” notices to file-sharers aren’t specifically part of the new law, but Johansen says it would be preferable to have this option before being forced to take legal action.

“I hope we can find a way to do this, in the best interests of all parties,” he said.

The anti-piracy group will be supported by infamous pirate-hunting lawfirm Simonsen. The company previously held an exclusive license to monitor file-sharers in Norway and in 2010 tracked down an uploader of a famous local movie after an epic battle.

It is not yet clear what the new anti-piracy group will be called but searches reveal that Simonsen already have a number of suitable domains under their belt including RettigHets-Alliansen.net, RettigHetsAlliansen.no and RettigHetsAlliansen.com.

In addition to the monitoring of individual file-sharers, the blocking of sites deemed to be infringing copyright will now be made possible by the changes in the law.

After years of trying to force ISP Telenor to censor The Pirate Bay ended in failure, Johansen says that rightsholders will soon be back.

“We want all broadband providers to block The Pirate Bay. This has worked effectively in Denmark and Finland,” he says.

“For years we have been working towards this, and we should not stop once The Pirate Bay is blocked. Basically we are interested in blocking all the major sites. We will make it as difficult as possible to download illegally, so people have to choose a legal solution.”

A spokesman for Telenor said that as far as they are concerned there is already a final judgment on how to deal with blocking requests for The Pirate Bay (i.e the law doesn’t allow for it) but if a new application is made to the courts in light of the new law, the ISP will deal with it accordingly.

Source: New Anti-Piracy Group Will Monitor File-Sharers and Block All Major Torrent Sites

The site, which has around 40,000,000 users every day, is also a huge thorn in the side of the recording industry. VKontakte allows its users to upload music to their accounts for anyone to play and as a result the site has become one of the largest repositories of unlicensed music anywhere in the world.

The site’s operators insist that the responsibility for uploading infringing music lies with its users but music industry groups like IFPI see that as shifting the blame. IFPI insist that something must be done to stop businesses being built on the back of unlicensed content. They may soon get their wish.

As reported yesterday, Russian-hosted services – vKontakte included – will soon face a new legal environment due to a shifting of responsibility for illegal uploads. Following the approval of a new law in the State Duma on Friday, removing infringing content swiftly will soon be a priority matter if services don’t wish to find themselves blocked at the ISP level.

Although it has yet to become law, interesting things started to happen at vKontakte just before the bill received its majority vote on Friday. Site users began to notice that searches for popular artists, which at one time were extremely easy to find, started to throw up notices that the content had been removed.

The scale of the takedowns become apparent when searches for popular artists such as Rihanna, Adele, Beyonce, Amy Winehouse and Coldplay all began to draw blanks. The user backlash was swift and vocal, with some complaining that their entire collections had been deleted.

“We always removed audio and video recordings when we were served the legitimate complaints from copyright holders, it’s just now such applications have increased,” vKontakte spokesman Georgy Lobushkin said in a statement.

The problem stems from complaints sent by the major recording labels. Universal Music told Russia’s Vedomosti that a letter had been sent to vKontakte via IFPI and the Goltsblat BLP lawfirm demanding the takedown of its content. While Sony and Warner have declined to comment, it seems almost certain that this is a coordinated action by the labels.

“We’re not going to remove all the music at all, or just Russian or foreign music, or just rock or just pop music. We will remove the specific compositions of certain artists. Most of the audio will remain on the site,” said Lobushkin for vKontakte.

“The musicians who are not afraid to share their art for free, will not go away. There is a lot of music in this world, and no one can impose their preferences or forbid people from listening to something.”

In the meantime, however, users of vKontakte seem intent on preserving their collections by any means possible.

There are reports in the Russian media that there are efforts underway to impose new naming conventions on files so that they won’t be marked for deletion by copyright holders. The group Coldplay, for example, are now known as “Cold Game”, Selena Gomez has been dubbed “Sweet Dwarf” and Maroon 5 are to be called “5 Dudes”.

The effort seems unlikely to succeed, but there are signs that users may still get access to music via vKontakte if things move in the right direction.

Unlike previous copyright holder actions against Grokster and more recently LimeWire, there doesn’t appear to be any desire to crush vKontakte with expensive lawsuits. In fact, all the signs suggest that the labels want to do business with the social networking giant.

“We would like to see VKontakte agree with us about the legal ways of using music,” says Universal Music Russia CEO Dmitry Konnov.

“Now this is the first step. We hope that it will eventually lead us to the negotiating table.”

Source: Users ‘Encrypt’ Music Uploads As Copyright Holders Blitz Russia’s Facebook

The Nacka District Court has decided that Gottfrid can be extradited to the neighboring country where he is accused of hacking into the mainframes of CSC, a Danish IT company working with the Government.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Gottfrid’s mother Kristina Svartholm confirmed that her son will indeed be extradited. When this will take place is yet to be announced as the 28-year-old must first await the verdict in his Swedish trial which is expected to be handed down later this week.

The accusations of the Danish authorities are very similar to those leveled in Sweden. Both cases involve security breaches of IT companies that work for the government.

In Denmark the alleged hacks of CSC took place between April and August 2012. Among other things, Gottfrid and a 20-year old Danish co-defendant are accused of downloading a large number of files from CSC’s mainframe systems.

According to the authorities the accessed files include information on wanted persons in the Schengen registers. The motivation for the hacks remains unknown, but the police say it can’t be ruled out that changes were made to the records. There are, however, no indications that any of the downloaded files have been exploited.

Commenting on the case, Danish National Police Commissioner Jens Henrik Hojbjerg said the security breach was unacceptable and that an investigation is still ongoing.

“The police take this matter very seriously. It is of course totally unacceptable that it has been possible to gain access to police records, despite the very high safety standards that we demand and expect from our IT supplier,” Hojbjerg said.

If Gottfrid is found guilty in Sweden the extradition to Denmark is expected to be postponed, depending on the length of his sentence. There is also an option for him to appeal the extradition decision but it hasn’t been announced whether this will be used.

For the time being the Pirate Bay founder remains in custody. He is considered a flight risk and is being kept in solitary confinement upon request of the Danish authorities.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Will be Extradited to Denmark

Unauthorized websites offering all types of media are perceived as operating with impunity which has led to the country being chastised by foreign rightsholders, particularly those from the United States.

In response, Russia has delivered a draft bill detailing the most draconian anti-piracy legislation seen since the demise of the Stop Online Piracy Act. The proposed law is so tough it’s no surprise that critics are labeling it Russia’s SOPA.

One of the main concerns is how the law places site owners in a vulnerable position should copyright-infringing material be found on their services.

The draft envisions copyright holders filing lawsuits against sites carrying infringing content. Site owners are then expected to remove unauthorized content or links to the same within 72 hours. Failure to do so would result in the entire site being blocked by Internet service providers pending the outcome of a court hearing.

“The greatest harm to the Internet – and to hosts, site owners, advertisers and a huge number of legal resources – can be brought about by IP address blocking as it is currently incorporated in the bill,” said Google Russia’s Communication Director Marina Zhunich.

Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine, is also worried by the bill. The company said that only infringing content should be targeted and whole-site blocking should be kept as a last resort should site operators refuse to comply.

Adding to the problems is the language employed by the bill in respect of takedowns.

Under the DMCA a site or service has to remove content once a rightsholder sends a notice containing a precise URL of the infringing content. Under the proposed Russian law no such clarity is required – the name of the artist/creator and the content’s name will suffice, meaning that it is down to service providers to discover the locations for themselves.

“A situation in which an information intermediary is obliged to search his resource for an illegal object among the vast array of data being uploaded every minute is fraught with paralysis of the resource and, as a consequence, can hurt those owners who use this site to earn,” Zhunich said.

The bill, which required 226 votes for approval, received the backing of 257 lawmakers in the State Duma on Friday. Two more readings are required for it to move on. Many tech companies, Google included, hope that amendments can be introduced before it does.

“Google has shared the concerns voiced by other members of the industry, and presented its amendments to the bill. We are convinced that a compromise of the law will benefit all participants, the Internet industry and the content industry, as well as honest users,” Zhunich concludes.

Source: Google Opposes Russia’s ‘SOPA’ as Blocking Legislation Passes First Hurdle

Thus far the number of alerts being sent out under the program appears to be minimal. We previously received a copy of a warning email sent out by Comcast, but today we can add time Time Warner Cable to the list.

The Copyright Alert System’s main goal is to educate the public. People should be informed that their connection is being used to share copyrighted material without permission, and told where they can find legal alternatives. Interestingly, Time Warner Cable is focusing on a different form of education in their copyright alert email.

Before even mentioning legal alternatives, the Internet provider confronts the recipient with the supposed dangers of P2P. Their answer to the question of whether P2P software imposes risks is an unequivocal ‘yes’.

“Yes, P2P programs can pose dangers to your computer and our network,” the email starts.

“A computer can become accessible to a P2P network for an unlimited period of time after a P2P program is downloaded. You may not even be aware that such a program is on your computer as a child or visitor to your home could have downloaded it. Therefore, it is important that you inspect your computer for P2P programs and ensure that you are not either intentionally or inadvertently making copyrighted works available for uploading by others.”

The first part above is not that problematic. File-sharing software can indeed run automatically with each start-up and people may want to disable that functionality when they’re not aware of it. But after this intro (we’ll ignore the fact that “uploading by others” should actually be “downloading by others”) the apparent dangers of P2P get a lot worse.

“These programs allow any anonymous person on the Internet to look at your computer files and copy them for themselves. This could lead to unwelcome activity, such as identity theft. Also, the programs, which use large amounts of memory, can interfere with the functioning of your computer by destabilizing your operating system, leading to general sluggishness at boot up and during operation. Also, P2P programs can contain spyware, adware, malware, viruses and pornography.”

In just three sentences the email dumps a pile of doom and gloom on the recipient that’s misleading to say the least. The Copyright Alert System pretty much exclusively targets BitTorrent transfers, while the above applied to applications that use shared folders such as the now defunct LimeWire.

BitTorrent clients only share files that people have downloaded or added themselves, so there is no possibility for anonymous persons to copy other files on people’s computers. We’re also not aware of any mainstream BitTorrent software that destabilizes the operating system, or contains spyware, viruses and pornography.

While we have to assume that Time Warner Cable included the note with the best intentions, most of the language that’s used clearly doesn’t apply to BitTorrent. But perhaps one of the goals is to make file-sharing look more dangerous than it is in reality? That talking point certainly is trending at various anti-piracy groups.

Further down in the “copyright alert” Time Warner Cable lists the name of the file that was allegedly shared without permission, together with other data including an IP-address. The email also lists places where people can download movies and music legally, and informs them that after several of these notices their Internet browsing may be temporarily restricted.

The full email is shown below. If you have received one yourself from Time Warner Cable or any other Internet provider, please let us know at the usual address.

Update: The Center for Copyright Information accidentally made the legal alternatives unfindable.

—–

From:DonotReply@twcable.com

Dear XXXXX (Primary Account Holder),

We have been notified that copyrighted content may have been shared using your internet connection without permission of the copyright owner.

What does that mean?

Content owners (artists, moviemakers, authors) and their representatives routinely monitor peer-2-peer networks to see if their content (like music, movies, and TV shows) is shared without their permission (without it being paid for). If they notice somebody sharing their content without their permission through a Time Warner Cable account they let us know.

As the primary account holder, you are responsible for making sure your account is not used for copyright infringement. Please note that we don’t know which computer or device may be the one to have triggered the notification; it could be any device using your account.

Are there dangers associated with using peer-to-peer (“P2P”) networks?

Yes, P2P program can pose dangers to your computer and our network. A computer can become accessible to a P2P network for an unlimited period of time after a P2P program is downloaded. You may not even be aware that such a program is on your computer as a child or visitor to your home could have downloaded it. Therefore, it is important that you inspect your computer for P2P programs and ensure that you are not either intentionally or inadvertently making copyrighted works available for uploading by others. These programs allow any anonymous person on the Internet to look at your computer files and copy them for themselves. This could lead to unwelcome activity, such as identity theft. Also, the programs, which use large amounts of memory, can interfere with the functioning of your computer by destabilizing your operating system, leading to general sluggishness at boot up and during operation. Also, P2P programs can contain spyware, adware, malware, viruses and pornography. Click here for more information about the various risks:]]> http://xeroxed.yesnowave.com/six-strikes-copyright-alert-warns-subscribers-for-dangerous-p2p-software/feed/ 0 http://xeroxed.yesnowave.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-18/ http://xeroxed.yesnowave.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-18/#comments Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:11:48 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=72169 Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

The Hangover Part 3 is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Week ending June 16, 2013 Ranking (last week) Movie IMDb Rating / Trailer torrentfreak.com 1 (1) The Hangover Part 3 (R6/TS) 6.3 / trailer 2 (2) Dead Man Down 6.6 / trailer 3 (4) Iron Man 3 (R6) 8.0 / trailer 4 (…) We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks 5.4 / trailer 5 (3) Jack The Giant Slayer 6.6 / trailer 6 (…) Phantom 5.8 / trailer 7 (…) Admission 5.3 / trailer 8 (7) Fast and Furious 6 (Cam) 7.7 / trailer 9 (…) The Call 6.5 / trailer 10 (9) Epic (TS) 6.8 / trailer

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week

]]>

Now Stealing Orchestra is celebrating their 15th birthday and are giving digital versions of all of their albums as gifts to the world, including DELIVERANCE.

Happy birthday, Stealing Orchestra, and thank you so much!

This was in the middle of the copyright industry’s “mass disconnection” strategy, where they saw it fit to legislate mass disconnections to protect their obsolete industry.

Fortunately for everybody else, an election interrupted the otherwise-prepared legislative process, and a new European Parliament got to finalize the bills that would have made such disconnections possible throughout Europe. It was obvious that the bill was intended to pass without discussion.

Unfortunately for the copyright industry, the Pirate Party got a seat on the final negotiating committee in the European Parliament, and we were able to – with the help of brilliant activists like Monica Horten – educate everybody else on the parliamentary committee as to what was actually happening. It stopped being a matter of having Parliament steamrolled into just passing the bill without question, and escalated into a matter of Parliament’s dignity. “We’re the Parliament, not a doormat”, as some legislators made very clear.

That derailed the intended process of enabling “Three Strikes” disconnections across Europe. The very opposite became law, in no small part thanks to the footwork of the Pirate Party in the European Parliament and that negotiation committee.

The civil rights violations that the French Hadopi agency intended to carry out – disenfranchising people from most of their civil liberties – was specifically targeted when writing the language for the Telecoms Package bills. The language of the bills was not good enough until it made super clear that disconnecting anybody from the net without a prior fair and full adversarial court proceeding – exactly the thing the copyright industry had intended to bypass and cut citizens off en masse – was completely illegal across all of the European Union, and by extension, through the European Economic Area.

The text in the Telecoms Package bill had to pass the “Hadopi Test”, as it was actually called in the European Parliament – making it absolutely clear that what Hadopi intended to do was to be made completely illegal.

For today, we exercise all our fundamental liberties – freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of expression – through the net. Therefore, the net has itself become just as fundamental a liberty as all the other fundamental liberties we exercise through it.

It shouldn’t even be a matter of discussion that you can’t cut anybody off from the net, not any more than you can order them to not read newspapers, not meet anybody, or not speak.

But alas, the copyright industry is infamous for ignoring the law completely when they don’t like what it says, and throwing loud tantrums when anybody else doesn’t do what they demand (sometimes regardless of law). They seem to be stuck in the “mine, mine, mine, waaaaaah” mindset of a three-year-old, and what’s worse, they’re completely oblivious to the concept of equality before the law.

The Hadopi bureaucrats who made the decision of cutting somebody off from the net and their fundamental rights this week deserve to go to jail for a considerable time, so they can contemplate the concept of being equal before the law; how the law isn’t intended to protect the copyright industry against the people but never the other way around. Unfortunately, that will not happen under French law, but the Hadopi can and should still be sued for ridiculously punitive amounts in European courts for this deed. There is no way they can claim ignorance of the law in this matter, and even if they are arguably ignorant, that’s still not a defense.

As a final note, it seems copyright monopoly lobbyists think they can get this disconnection scheme in Britain now, too. I would encourage anybody in the affected countries – France and Britain – to sue the shirt off their backs. What they’re attempting to do is illegal. Not “maybe illegal”, not “possibly in a grey area”, but “deliberately targeted behavior written into law as specifically illegal”.

Update: In response to the opinion above some commenters rightfully point out that the disconnection order comes from a judge. These and other issues are discussed below, feel free to add yours.

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

Book Falkvinge as speaker?

Follow @Falkvinge

Source: Hey Hadopi, You’re Breaking The Law. We Made “Three Strikes” Illegal Across All Europe.

To counter this threat, publishers are constantly looking for new forms of DRM. With financial support from the Government and backing from the publishing industry, researchers at the Darmstadt Technical University in Germany launched SiDiM, a project to find DRM innovations.

One of the solutions being worked on at the moment aims to make individual ebooks unique through so-called “text watermarks.” The researchers have developed a technology that will make small changes to book texts so each buyer gets a unique copy. If the book is later uploaded to the Internet it can be easily traced back to the source.

“The goal of the SiDiM project is to develop new protection measures for eBooks and electronic documents. Texts in digital format are particularly threatened by unauthorized copying, for example via the Internet,” SiDiM’s Dr. Martin Steinebach explains.

“A solution to this problem is to alter documents with visible and invisible marks that make a single copy distinguishable. Users are encouraged to take responsibility their their copy and it will deter illegal file-sharing, as copies can be traced using these marks,” the researcher adds.

While the general story-line will remain intact, the DRM shuffles some words around, inserts synonyms, changes the paragraph format or the punctuation. For example, the word “unsympathetic” could be changed to “not sympathetic,” and so forth.

The researchers see this as a ‘consumer-friendly’ form of DRM as it doesn’t lock the book to an account or prevent copying between devices.

SiDiM

Whether readers will be equally enthusiastic remains to be seen. Since the process is completely automated there is a risk that errors will occur. For example, sentences may no longer carry the nuances intended by the author.

To see what kind of reception the text alterations might receive, publishers and authors have been sent a list of 15 “text watermark” examples along with a request to assess the changes.

The researchers don’t explain how they intend to deal with creative pirates, who might add in their own alterations, so it’s unsure whether the system is foolproof.

While the “text watermarks” are not particularly intrusive for readers, the assumption that all consumers are potential criminals may not sit well with everyone. Additionally, most book fanatics will probably want to read the book the way the author intended.

Source: New DRM Changes Text of eBooks to Catch Pirates