Month: April 2016

Judge Allows Popcorn Time “Pirate” to Keep on Torrenting

popcorntLawsuits against alleged file-sharers are a common occurrence in United States federal courts.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been accused in recent years, most after using standard BitTorrent clients.

More recently there’s been a specific focus on Popcorn Time users. They were targeted in a series of lawsuits this summer.

One of the cases was filed by the makers of The Cobbler, who listed the IP-addresses of several Popcorn Time users in their complaint. The goal of the filmmakers is to identify the account holders and settle the dispute out of court, which many have done already.

Recently, another Popcorn Time user settled with the movie studio. While the scale of the agreement was not disclosed they usually range between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.

The defendant in question was allowed to remain anonymous but admitted that her IP-address was indeed used to download and distribute the movie in question. To end the lawsuit, both parties agreed to a ‘consent judgment’ which was signed off by a District Court judge.

While this is a common procedure, Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman decided to make several crucial changes to the proposed permanent injunction, even though both parties already agreed on it.

Among the stricken parts is a line that would order the defendant to remove all BitTorrent clients from her computer and observe a ban on P2P software in the future (order: pdf).

“DOE-73.180.17.189 is hereby directed to immediately delete all unlicensed content in which Voltage has any rights or interest including plaintiffs motion picture, together with any and all BitTorrent clients on any computer(s) she owns or controls together with all other software used to obtain media through the Internet by peer-to-peer exchange,” it read.

In recent cases many other judges left this language intact, but for Judge Beckerman it appears to have gone too far.

In addition, the Judge also removed the line preventing the defendant from engaging in any infringing BitTorrent transfers in the future, limiting the scope of the permanent injunction only to titles to which Voltage Pictures holds the copyrights.

While the defendant still has to pay, the changes are important as it allows her to keep using BitTorrent and P2P software in general, which of course have many legitimate purposes as well.

It’s also good to see that judges are not blindly signing off on any order they see before them.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

vKontakte Appears to Be Cracking Down on eBook Piracy

e-booksWhile movies, music and TV show downloading grabs most of the headlines, a growing subset of Internet pirates like to obtain eBooks online for free.

With the growth of dedicated readers such as Kindle and eBook-capable hardware such as iPads, tablets and smartphones, eBooks are easily downloaded from torrent and file-hosting sites in a few seconds and consumed on the go.

One site where eBooks are particularly easy to find is Russian social networking platform vKontakte. The site often appears in searches for popular book titles and downloads are mostly direct and speedy. For this reason vKontakte has found itself embroiled in various copyright-related disputes.

Now, however, there are signs that the platform is taking steps to do something about the phenomenon.

According to a report coming out of Russia, vKontakte has introduced a system that not only takes content down following rightsholder complaints, but also stops that same content becoming available for download in the future. Users are reportedly able to upload previously-flagged content but it is not made available for download.

At the moment vKontakte is refusing to comment on the reports but according to Izvestia the existence of the system has been confirmed by both rightsholders and operators of social network-based eBook communities.

Any user of vKontakte is allowed to upload eBooks in a range of formats and embed these in their pages. These can then be downloaded directly from vKontakte’s servers. However, according to the report there are increasing problems with content disappearing, with VK reporting that files have been deleted following requests from copyright holders.

Interestingly the development is having an impact externally too, with a prominent anti-piracy outfit reporting a shift in availability.

“We have noticed that our monitoring service is sending fewer claims [to VK] and we are now analyzing the cause to discover the reason,” says Maxim Ryabyko, Director General of the Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (AZAPO).

Back in February, AZAPO reported vKontakte to the Moscow City Court after the platform allegedly failed to take solid measures to protect copyright. AZAPO’s aim was to force the social network into negotiations.

“Our goal is to urge vKontakte to adequately interact with the book industry,” Ryabyko said at the time.

What has prompted the disappearance of books from the platform remains unclear but Ryabyko says that he doesn’t rule out a link between recent developments and AZAPO’s legal action against vKontakte. Another possibility is that some kind of deal has been reached with book owners.

Last year publishers offered several opportunities for VK to monetize content on its platform, including via an all-you-can-eat subscription model. Other offers included an ad-supported mechanism and a partner program, which would see samples of books diverting to publisher platforms.

It is not clear whether these offers were attractive to VK but if pirate content is disappearing from the site, publishers will be happy.

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


Source: TorrentFreak