Month: November 2015

No Pirate Bay Blockade in Sweden, Court Rules

tpbThe Pirate Bay is blocked by dozens of ISPs around Europe but anti-piracy outfits have always hoped that one day the notorious site would be rendered inaccessible in Sweden, its country of origin.

To that end, Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry teamed up in a lawsuit last year designed to force Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget (Broadband Company) to block the site.

They claimed that the ISP should be held liable for the infringements of its customers, unless it blocks Pirate Bay.

Bredbandsbolaget flat out refused to comply, stating categorically that its only role is to provide customers with Internet access while facilitating the free-flow of information. The case went to trial and was heard in the Stockholm District Court during October. After nearly a month the Court has handed down its decision and its a huge win for the ISP and, indirectly, two famous pirate sites.

In a ruling handed down just minutes ago, the Stockholm District Court completely rejected rightsholder demands that Bredbandsbolaget should block its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay and streaming portal Swefilmer.

The Court reports that the case was heard in light of an EU directive which notes that member states shall ensure that rightholders have the possibility to ask for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to commit copyright infringement.

The District Court says that in its opinion Swedish legislation meets the requirements of the Infosoc directive. Furthermore, the Court also considers that the actions of Bredbandsbolaget do not constitute participation in crimes in accordance with Swedish law.

“A unanimous District Court considers, therefore, that it is not in a position to authorize such a ban as the rights holders want and therefore rejects their request,” said presiding Chief Magistrate Anders Dereborg.

Of course, there are higher courts in Sweden and it is very likely that’s where this case will end up. Today’s decision can be taken to the Svea Court of Appeal no later than December 18, 2015.

In the meantime the plaintiffs in the case must pay Bredbandsbolaget’s costs, expected to exceed US$160,000.

Breaking news story, updates to follow

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Huge Security Flaw Can Expose VPN Users’ Real IP-Adresses

ip-addressFor the past several years interest in encrypted and anonymous communications has spread to a much wider audience.

VPN providers are particularly popular among BitTorrent users, who by default broadcast their IP-addresses to hundreds of people when downloading a popular file.

The goal of using a VPN is to hide one’s ISP IP-address, but a newly discovered vulnerability shows that this is easily bypassed on some providers.

The problem, uncovered by VPN provider Perfect Privacy (PP), is a simple port forwarding trick. If an attacker uses the same VPN as the victim the true IP-address can be exposed by forwarding traffic on a specific port.

The security flaw affects all VPN protocols including OpenVPN and IPSec and applies to all operating systems.

“Affected are VPN providers that offer port forwarding and have no protection against this specific attack,” PP notes.

For example, if an attacker activates port forwarding for the default BitTorrent port then a VPN user on the same network will expose his or her real IP-address.

The same is true for regular web traffic, but in that case the attacker has to direct the victim to a page that connects to the forwarded port, as Perfect Privacy explains in detail.

The vulnerability affected the setup of various large VPN providers, who were warned last week. This included Private Internet Access (PIA), Ovpn.to and nVPN, who have all fixed the issue before publication.

PIA informs TorrentFreak that their fix was relatively simple and was implemented swiftly after they were notified.

“We implemented firewall rules at the VPN server level to block access to forwarded ports from clients’ real IP addresses. The fix was deployed on all our servers within 12 hours of the initial report,” PIA’s Amir Malik says.

In addition, PIA complimented Perfect Privacy for responsibly disclosing the vulnerability prior to making it public and awarded their competitor with a $5,000 bounty under its Whitehat Alert Security Program.

Not all VPN providers were tested so it is likely that many others are still vulnerable. Hopefully, these will address the issue in the near future.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Supreme Court Opens Door for Pirate Site Blockades in Germany

stop-blockedDomain name blocking has become one of the entertainment industries’ go-to methods for reducing online copyright infringement.

Blocking requests from both the music and movie sector are widespread around Europe, but until now Germany has been excluded.

However, this may soon change. In a landmark ruling the Supreme Court has today opened the door to German pirate site blockades.

The origin of the ruling dates back seven years when German music rights group GEMA, known for its aggressive anti-piracy stance, found music tracks on major file-hosting sites being distributed via the music linking site 3DL.am.

After GEMA failed in its efforts to contact 3DL’s operators to deal with the infringement, the music group tried another tactic.

In a subsequent complaint, GEMA demanded that in order to reduce further copyright infringement, leading German ISP Deutsche Telekom should take technical steps to stop its customers from accessing 3DL.am.

The ISP refused, stating that as a mere ‘dumb pipe’ it has nothing to do with the infringement on the site. Furthermore, blocking one site would simply lead to increasing numbers of similar demands, the ISP argued.

Together with a similar lawsuit against the site Goldesel.to, the case eventually ended up at the Supreme Court which ruled on the issue today.

In its order the court argues that an ISP blockade is warranted if copyright holders have exhausted all their options to identify the operators or hosting providers of pirate sites.

The court also noted that it doesn’t matter if users can circumvent blockades. Simply rendering sites more difficult for the general public to access is sufficient.

GEMA is delighted with the decision and says it will be a great tool to combat online piracy.

“We welcome the judgment of the Supreme Court. This landmark decision was long overdue, since it leads the way in protecting our copyrights in the digital music market,” GEMA CEO Harald Heker says.

“At last we have legal clarity about the fact that ISP blockades of websites that offer illegal copyrighted music works en masse, are permitted. An important step to combat Internet piracy,” he adds.

It’s expected that the first blocking requests will be filed in the near future. While 3DL.am is no longer online, other high-profile pirate sites including The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents are probably high on GEMA’s wish list.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Judge Worries That Piracy Lawsuits Will Flood Courts

So-called ‘copyright-trolling’ is quite clearly big business as 2015 comes to a close. Often portrayed by content owners as a necessary evil designed to send a deterrent message to pirates, overall the practice is lucrative for the many companies involved.

The whole system relies on intimidating people into paying a ‘fine’ or settlement fee, often between a few hundred and a few thousand euros or dollars. The threat is to take cases to court if people don’t pay, alongside a clear suggestion that things will get more costly thereon in.

Over in Finland, Hedman Partners – a law firm acting on behalf of several movie, TV show and adult distributors – has been employing this exact tactic and after failing to get the desired number of pirates to pay, is now taking people to court.

Lawyer Joni Hatanmaa announced the first three cases against Finnish citizens last month and as previously promised, those people are now being told to expect big bills. However, according to the law firm things could get substantially worse.

Speaking with state-owned YLE, Hatanmaa now warns that his company is hoping to obtain the personal details of more than 10,000 alleged pirates in the coming year and if necessary will eventually take up to hundreds of cases to court.

The prospect of these kinds of copyright cases bogging down the legal system hasn’t been well received and already there a worries over where capacity to handle them will be found. Such cases are filed at the Market Court, a specialist venue hearing IP, competition and market law disputes, and its chief judge says a flood could prove problematic.

“If these cases become this plentiful, then how can we organize them with our existing resources? We already have an abundance of pending things here,” says Chief Judge Kimmo Mikkola.

While the Judge is right to express concern, history shows that in Europe there is less willingness to take cases to court than there is in the U.S., for example. Statutory damages in the United States mean that defendants could face bills of $150,000 for a single infringement if found guilty, an amount that serves to encourage early settlement.

In Europe the position is somewhat different, with alleged pirates more willing to take a chance on ignoring threatening letters while hoping the whole matter simply disappears. That does indeed happen in some cases, but precise and current numbers are impossible to come by. However, since ‘trolls’ keep coming back for more, the suggestion is that enough pay to keep the scheme going – and profitable.

In Finland it does appear that at least in limited numbers, Hedman Partners are prepared to take some cases to court to prove their point. However, some experts believe that it won’t be an easy ride.

Copyright specialist Herkko Hietanen of the Turre Legal law firm says that guilt will be difficult to prove since the court will require the copyright holder to show that the Internet account holder is the person liable for the infringement, since that’s who their claims are addressed to.

Judge Kimmo Mikkola agrees that identifying the precise infringer could be an issue.

“There is a problem of showing who has used the Internet connection. We can get clarity on these issues when we start to deal with them,” the Judge concludes.

That was certainly an issue for the Salminen family, who two years ago were accused of downloading and sharing thousands of songs. They’ve had an uphill struggle but have finally cleared their names after Mr Salminen, an IT expert, went all out to prove the case brought against them was false.

This week the family got the recognition they deserved when it was reported in local media that the anti-piracy group involved admitted that somewhere in the chain there had been an error and the wrong people had been accused.

“We had a lot of watertight, technical evidence backing us up that would be impossible for anyone other than someone in the IT field to gain access to,” Salminen said.

“If a letter like this would be delivered to a little old grandmother, how would she ever get this resolved?”

The truth is, people like this don’t have much of a chance. And trolls know it.

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


Source: TorrentFreak