Bogus “Copyright Trademark” Complaint Fails to Censor the BBC

censorshipGoogle receives millions of requests every week to have links delisted from its search results, largely following claims from third parties that the referenced content infringes their rights.

While it’s difficult to say what proportion of these claims are erroneous or duplicate, it’s likely to run into thousands per month. Other claims, like the one we’re highlighting today, underline why we absolutely need Google’s Transparency Report and the DMCA notice archive maintained by Chilling Effects.

The episode began on July 1, 2015 when an individual contacted Google with a complaint about a page hosted by the BBC. Found here, the page carries a news report from 2009 which reveals how a man called Kevin Collinson with two failed disability scooter businesses behind him was allegedly (and potentially illegally) running a third.

The article is a typical “rogue trader” affair, with tales of aggressive sales techniques, broken promises, faulty goods, out-of-pocket customers and companies that dissolve only to reappear debt-free shortly after. Unpleasant to say the least.

So what prompted the complaint to Google that was subsequently published on Chilling Effects? Well, it was sent to the search giant by a gentleman calling himself (you guessed it) Kevin Collinson. Nevertheless, the important thing is this – has the BBC infringed his rights? Collinson thinks so.

The notice sent to Google by Collinson

collinson-dmca

As highlighted by the image above, when asked for the source of the infringed material, Kevin Collinson links to a page on his domain kevincollinson.com. It contains the image below which apparently proves that Collinson owns a “copyright name trademark” to his own name, whatever one of those might be.

copyright-trademark

Reading between the lines, Collinson seems to suggest that since he has a trademark on his name (searches in UK databases draw a blank incidentally), outlets such as the BBC aren’t allowed to report news containing his name. Complete nonsense of course, and Google hasn’t removed the page either.

That said, under UK law people are indeed allowed to trademark their names.

Perhaps surprisingly, trademark UK00002572177 (EU009734096) is registered to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and protects him in the areas of public speaking, news reporting, journalism, publication of texts, education and entertainment services.

Professor Stephen Hawking also has a couple of trademarks protecting his name. Coincidentally (and possibly of interest to Mr Collinson) one of those covers mobility scooters and wheelchairs.

KEVIN JOSEPH COLLINSON did not respond to TorrentFreak’s request for comment.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

CloudFlare Forced to Censor Anti-Censorship Site

notresolvedLast May, Grooveshark shut down after settling with the RIAA. However, within days a new site was launched aiming to take its place.

The RIAA wasn’t happy with this development and quickly obtained an injunction, preventing various Internet service providers from offering their services to the site.

Through the lawsuit the companies hope to prevent further copyright infringements, but there is more at stake. Much more.

The case is also the first major test of how receptive the courts are to the notion of injunctions against hosting companies, domain name services, ISPs and search engines.

Fearing that these attempts may become commonplace several tech companies protested the injunction, including CloudFlare. The court order requires the CDN-service to ban all domain names that use the term “Grooveshark,” which the company believes is too broad.

This week CloudFlare informed the court that the order limits free-speech, impacting legitimate customers who use it for perfectly legitimate websites.

“CloudFlare has already been compelled by the injunction to deny service to at least one website that is plainly non-infringing, and to others that are arguably non-infringing and have no discernible connection with the Defendants in this case,” they write (pdf).

“This harm to CloudFlare’s business and potentially to customer’s businesses, and to the free speech rights of its customers, will continue without a modification of the Preliminary Injunction.”

As an example, CloudFlare says it had to terminate the account of “groovesharkcensorship.cf,” a site which protested the broad injunction as the screenshot below shows.

Groovesharkcensorship.cf, before CloudFlare took it offline

censorcomplaint

Under the injunction CloudFlare had no other option than to disable its services for the domain, rendering it inaccessible.

In an email, the company informed the affected user about its actions explaining that it’s not allowed to provide any services that use the Grooveshark trademark in a domain name.

CloudFlare’s email

censormail

According to CloudFlare many other legitimate sites may be at risk of being censored if the broad injunction is upheld.

Despite these protests, the record labels maintain the position that the measures are “entirely appropriate.” They argue that it’s up to CloudFlare to determine whether a domain name is infringing, and consult the record labels if there’s any doubt.

For its part, CloudFlare wants the court to modify the injunction so that they only have to target domain names which the record labels point out to them, instead of banning the word Grooveshark altogether.

Shortly before publishing this article the court ruled (pdf) on the dispute, largely in favor of CloudFlare.

In a ruling issued a few hours ago District Court Judge Alison Nathan clarifies that CloudFlare is no longer required to ban all Grooveshark-related domains. Instead, the record labels must alert the company to possibly infringing sites.

However, Judge Nathan adds that if CloudFlare has knowledge of an infringing domain name it is required to take action on its own.

So, in the end it appears that the censored anti-censorship site has served its purpose. At the time of writing it still remains offline, but this may change during the coming hours.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

“Petty Hollywood” Stops Pirate Admin From Going Home

dmitriAfter launching his site Wawa-Mania in 2006, it took just three years for Dimitri Mader to attract the negative attention of the authorities.

After the Association Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA) identified more than 3,600 films being made available via the site without permission, Mader was detained in 2009.

This April, Mader was sentenced to a year in jail and was fined 20,000 euros for his role on the site. The 26-year-old heard the news from his home in the Philippines where he lives with his family.

Earlier this month the Frenchman was bracing for more bad news as a court deliberated on the damages he’d have to pay to mainly Hollywood companies. In the event, claims from Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount, Tristar, Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros and Microsoft were largely upheld by the court and Mader was landed with a $17m bill.

Following the ruling, TorrentFreak caught up with Mader. What’s it like to have a jail sentence pending in another country? How does one react to a multi-million dollar invoice landing on the table and how does that affect the future?

“First I smiled, the amount is far from what I expected,” Mader told TF.

“Then I realized that this penalty wasn’t designed to be a refund [to Hollywood] but only to scare, a final pettiness to make sure that I won’t have a life in France.”

The amount is certainly huge, even beyond the damages currently outstanding in the famous Pirate Bay case, and that’s with nine years of accruing interest tagged on.

But to anyone of limited means, a million dollars may as well be a billion dollars – the amount is never going to get paid. As a result, Mader says he will remove it from his thoughts.

“[The copyright holders] know that to get the full payment or even 10% of it is something impossible. I will just drop that from my mind, the criminal verdict is enough to cause worry,” he says.

“I won’t think about the penalty, it is just beyond any common sense. I will surely not [pay anything] and even if a new court makes the penalty lower, it won’t change anything. Five million, 15 million or 30 million. What’s the difference after all?”

Even if Mader manages to clear the damages from his mind, there is still the serious matter of the one year jail sentence handed down by a French court in April. Will he return home to face the music?

“Returning to France is complicated. I haven’t been back there for four years and now I need to provide some documents that I can’t get easily,” Mader says.

“After three years outside the country, you are automatically removed from the Social security system, it’s a whole process to get back on it and it can’t be done from here.”

And getting that sorted would be a priority. Mader has a wife and child in the Philippines and that only complicates matters when considering a return to France.

“I need also to provide papers for the registration of my wife and kid. It’s a mess. I can’t afford to leave them here alone and I have no guarantee that [French authorities] will let me leave once they have me,” he explains.

“I could become stuck and strangled with a 15 million euro penalty for a very long time before they allow me to leave again. Today I’m not really sure of any future, we’ll have to see what happens.”

Additionally, there’s the not insignificant matter of what happens to Wawa-Mania. The court wants the site closed down but Mader suggests its future could be the subject of a quid pro quo arrangement.

“[Its future] depends on the success of my new development and/or the possibility to come back to France as requested,” he says.

“If I can come back with my family, I will keep my word and definitely close the forum, no more games. The only thing I will do is to release my work and some part of the database. It can be useful to see how that worked and might help some people.”

While Mader faces an uncertain future, his parting comments paint an even more bleak picture for the destiny of the Internet.

“I have no doubt about what the Internet is going to be. A Web 3.0 fully under the control of a few IT giants, regulated by other corporations and government.

“They gonna tell you where to go, what to watch, what to listen to, what to read, what to think and, most importantly, where to enter your credit card number,” he warns.

“I will enjoy the small piece of freedom I have left to try something different, until nothing is possible anymore.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

“Petty Hollywood” Stops Pirate Admin From Going Home

dmitriAfter launching his site Wawa-Mania in 2006, it took just three years for Dimitri Mader to attract the negative attention of the authorities.

After the Association Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA) identified more than 3,600 films being made available via the site without permission, Mader was detained in 2009.

This April, Mader was sentenced to a year in jail and was fined 20,000 euros for his role on the site. The 26-year-old heard the news from his home in the Philippines where he lives with his family.

Earlier this month the Frenchman was bracing for more bad news as a court deliberated on the damages he’d have to pay to mainly Hollywood companies. In the event, claims from Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount, Tristar, Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros and Microsoft were largely upheld by the court and Mader was landed with a $17m bill.

Following the ruling, TorrentFreak caught up with Mader. What’s it like to have a jail sentence pending in another country? How does one react to a multi-million dollar invoice landing on the table and how does that affect the future?

“First I smiled, the amount is far from what I expected,” Mader told TF.

“Then I realized that this penalty wasn’t designed to be a refund [to Hollywood] but only to scare, a final pettiness to make sure that I won’t have a life in France.”

The amount is certainly huge, even beyond the damages currently outstanding in the famous Pirate Bay case, and that’s with nine years of accruing interest tagged on.

But to anyone of limited means, a million dollars may as well be a billion dollars – the amount is never going to get paid. As a result, Mader says he will remove it from his thoughts.

“[The copyright holders] know that to get the full payment or even 10% of it is something impossible. I will just drop that from my mind, the criminal verdict is enough to cause worry,” he says.

“I won’t think about the penalty, it is just beyond any common sense. I will surely not [pay anything] and even if a new court makes the penalty lower, it won’t change anything. Five million, 15 million or 30 million. What’s the difference after all?”

Even if Mader manages to clear the damages from his mind, there is still the serious matter of the one year jail sentence handed down by a French court in April. Will he return home to face the music?

“Returning to France is complicated. I haven’t been back there for four years and now I need to provide some documents that I can’t get easily,” Mader says.

“After three years outside the country, you are automatically removed from the Social security system, it’s a whole process to get back on it and it can’t be done from here.”

And getting that sorted would be a priority. Mader has a wife and child in the Philippines and that only complicates matters when considering a return to France.

“I need also to provide papers for the registration of my wife and kid. It’s a mess. I can’t afford to leave them here alone and I have no guarantee that [French authorities] will let me leave once they have me,” he explains.

“I could become stuck and strangled with a 15 million euro penalty for a very long time before they allow me to leave again. Today I’m not really sure of any future, we’ll have to see what happens.”

Additionally, there’s the not insignificant matter of what happens to Wawa-Mania. The court wants the site closed down but Mader suggests its future could be the subject of a quid pro quo arrangement.

“[Its future] depends on the success of my new development and/or the possibility to come back to France as requested,” he says.

“If I can come back with my family, I will keep my word and definitely close the forum, no more games. The only thing I will do is to release my work and some part of the database. It can be useful to see how that worked and might help some people.”

While Mader faces an uncertain future, his parting comments paint an even more bleak picture for the destiny of the Internet.

“I have no doubt about what the Internet is going to be. A Web 3.0 fully under the control of a few IT giants, regulated by other corporations and government.

“They gonna tell you where to go, what to watch, what to listen to, what to read, what to think and, most importantly, where to enter your credit card number,” he warns.

“I will enjoy the small piece of freedom I have left to try something different, until nothing is possible anymore.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

Chrome Blocks Major Torrent Sites Over “Harmful Programs”

chromeThere’s a slight panic breaking out among Google Chrome users. Over the past few hours the browser has started to block access to several of the most popular torrent sites including KickassTorrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorrent and RARBG.

Instead of a page filled with the latest torrents, visitors are presented with an ominous red warning banner.

“The site ahead contains harmful programs,” Google Chrome informs its users.

“Attackers on kat.cr might attempt to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit),” the warning adds.

harm

Google doesn’t specify what the issue is with the sites in question. The “Safe Browsing” diagnostics pages only list the sites as “suspicious” and note that “third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites.” in some cases.

nomalice

The owners of the sites in question are clueless about the source of the problem. RARBG’s operator informs TF that there is no additional information available in Google’s Webmaster tools either.

“I hope Google comes to its senses and actually allows webmasters to see what the issue is in their webmasters tools,” RARBG’s operator informs us (update: after publication some more information did appear in webmaster tools).

ExtraTorrent is not aware of any issues either and notes that the malware Google reportedly found are false positives.

“There is no malicious software and you are still able to load ExtraTorrent in Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Chromium and other browsers,” the ExtraTorrent team says.

“We’ll contact Google to resolve the issue shortly,” they add.

Interestingly, several proxy sites, such as torrentz-proxy.com, still work fine and don’t show the warning screen in Google Chrome.

Since Google doesn’t mention “malicious software” as the reason for the warning, it was most likely triggered by the “unsafe” ads many torrent sites run. These are typically linked to toolbar software or other unwanted programs.

We reached out to Google to find out more about the sudden torrent site blocks, but we have yet to receive a response.

Chrome users who want to bypass the warning can do so by clicking the details link, or disable Chrome’s malware warnings altogether.

Update: Some people report that Firefox also started blocking access to several torrent sites.

Update: ExtraTorrent says it successfully resolved the issue with Google through webmaster tools. RARBG is also unblocked.

Update: Google didn’t comment on this specific situation and referred us to a recent blog post.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

Chrome Blocks Major Torrent Sites Over “Harmful Programs”

chromeThere’s a slight panic breaking out among Google Chrome users. Over the past few hours the browser has started to block access to several of the most popular torrent sites including KickassTorrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorrent and RARBG.

Instead of a page filled with the latest torrents, visitors are presented with an ominous red warning banner.

“The site ahead contains harmful programs,” Google Chrome informs its users.

“Attackers on kat.cr might attempt to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit),” the warning adds.

harm

Google doesn’t specify what the issue is with the sites in question. The “Safe Browsing” diagnostics pages only list the sites as “suspicious” and note that “third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites.” in some cases.

nomalice

The owners of the sites in question are clueless about the source of the problem. RARBG’s operator informs TF that there is no additional information available in Google’s Webmaster tools either.

“I hope Google comes to its senses and actually allows webmasters to see what the issue is in their webmasters tools,” RARBG’s operator informs us (update: after publication some more information did appear in webmaster tools).

ExtraTorrent is not aware of any issues either and notes that the malware Google reportedly found are false positives.

“There is no malicious software and you are still able to load ExtraTorrent in Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Chromium and other browsers,” the ExtraTorrent team says.

“We’ll contact Google to resolve the issue shortly,” they add.

Interestingly, several proxy sites, such as torrentz-proxy.com, still work fine and don’t show the warning screen in Google Chrome.

Since Google doesn’t mention “malicious software” as the reason for the warning, it was most likely triggered by the “unsafe” ads many torrent sites run. These are typically linked to toolbar software or other unwanted programs.

We reached out to Google to find out more about the sudden torrent site blocks, but we have yet to receive a response.

Chrome users who want to bypass the warning can do so by clicking the details link, or disable Chrome’s malware warnings altogether.

Update: Some people report that Firefox also started blocking access to several torrent sites.

Update: ExtraTorrent says it successfully resolved the issue with Google through webmaster tools. RARBG is also unblocked.

Update: Google didn’t comment on this specific situation and referred us to a recent blog post.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

Pirate Bay Founders Acquitted in Criminal Copyright Case

tpb-logoThere can be little doubt that The Pirate Bay is the most infamous torrent site of all time. Its attitude towards copyright and related laws has landed the site and its operators in endless legal trouble for more than a decade, conflict that continues today.

Following the convictions of The Pirate Bay Four – co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, former site spokesman Peter Sunde, and site financier Carl Lundström – most legal matters involving the site have been connected to local ISP blocking injunctions. Nevertheless, a separate legal process against the men themselves has persisted in Belgium.

Unusually, the case was based in criminal law, with Svartholm, Neij, Sunde and Lundström all standing accused of a range of crimes including criminal copyright infringement and abuse of electronic communications. However, the case itself has always experienced problems.

All four defendants deny having had anything to do with the site since its reported sale to a Seychelles-based company called Reservella in 2006. That has proven problematic, since the period in which the four allegedly committed the crimes detailed in the Belgian case spans September 2011 and November 2013.

Having failed to connect the quartet with the site’s operations during that period, the case has now fallen apart. Yesterday a judge at the Mechelse Court ruled that it could not be proven that the four were involved in the site during the period in question.

Indeed, for at least a year of that period, Svartholm was in jail in Sweden while connecting Lundström to the site a decade after his last involvement (which was purely financial) has always been somewhat ridiculous.

In the end, even the site’s anti-piracy adversaries in the case agreed with the decision.

“Technically speaking, we agree with the court,” said Olivier Maeterlinck, director of the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA).

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak