Month: November 2015

Over the course of several years, adult publisher Perfect 10 became less known for its love of women of a certain size and more for its desire to drag companies to court on dubious copyright grounds.

In fact, the company became so litigious that one of its main sources of ‘business’ was the suing of everyone from Google, Amazon, MasterCard and Visa, to RapidShare, Depositfiles and hosting providers LeaseWeb and OVH.

Like most copyright trolls Perfect 10 prefers private settlements since court wins are harder to come by. However, when the adult publisher took on Usenet provider Giganews, a company that was never likely to fold, things went from bad to worse.

In November 2014 a court found that Giganews was not liable for the infringing activities of its customers and in February this year Perfect 10 received its biggest mauling so far, with a court handing Giganews victory and slamming Perfect 10 for the way it conducted its case.

In March 2015 came the icing on the cake, when the United States District Court for the Central District of California ordered the publisher to pay Giganews $5.6m in attorney’s fees and costs. However, the battle is not over yet.

According to various court filings in recent weeks, Giganews is having trouble getting money out of Perfect 10. In a request for a writ of execution last month, Giganews’ attorney outlined the situation.

“Judgment for $5,637,352.53 was entered on March 24, 2015 on the docket of the above-entitled action in the U.S. District Court, District of California in favor of Giganews, Inc. and Livewire Services, Inc. as Judgment Creditor, and against Perfect 10, Inc. as Judgment Debtor,” the request reads.

While $5.6m is indeed a large amount, the attorney reveals that in the past eight months Perfect 10 hasn’t paid the Usenet provider a single penny.

Furthermore, as Perfect 10 persists with non-payment the company’s bill is increasing. Although in this case limited to a rate of just 0.25%, Perfect 10 already owes an additional $8,610.03 in accrued interest.

With Giganews running out of patience, on Wednesday District Court Judge Andre Birotte JR granted the company’s request to appoint a process-server to serve a writ of execution on Perfect 10. In the meantime the countdown to another important date begins.

Following an order issued by Judge Jean P. Rosenbluth, Perfect 10 is now ordered to appear before the court December 10 to “furnish information” to aid in enforcement of the money judgment the company is currently ignoring.

“If you fail to appear at the time and place specified in this order, you may be subject to arrest and punishment for contempt of court and the court may make an order requiring you to pay the reasonable attorney fees incurred by the judgment creditor in this proceeding,” the order reads.

Whether Perfect 10’s days as a going concern are numbered remains to be seen, but it’s trolling activities in the United States are certainly on life support following the company’s disastrous campaign against Giganews. Should the company launch a similar action in the future, Judge Andre Birotte Jr’s assessment of its business will almost certainly come back to haunt.

“Perfect 10’s undisputed conduct in this action has been inconsistent with a party interested in protecting its copyrights,” the Judge wrote.

“All of the evidence before the Court demonstrates that Perfect 10 is in the business of litigation, not protecting its copyrights or ‘stimulat[ing] artistic creativity for the general public good’.”

Then again, no one ever doubted that.

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

From the old results of a new study to the new format's old movies, read this and other news stories for the week ending 22 November 2015

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Einfach neu starten sollen Anwender ihr iPad Pro, wenn es nach dem Aufladen auf einmal nicht mehr reagiert. Diesen Tipp gibt Apple in seinem Support-Dokument für das große Tablet. Währenddessen berichten Nutzer, dass bei iOS 9.2 Beta der Fehler nicht mehr so oft auftritt. (iPad Pro, Apple)

Last month a New York District Court issued a preliminary injunction against several sites that provide unauthorized access to academic journals.

As a result the operators were ordered to quit offering access to any Elsevier content and the associated registries had to suspend their domain names.

After a few days the registries did indeed disable the domain names mentioned in the lawsuit which are currently all unavailable, much to the disappointment of the sites’ users.

However, the operators of Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen have no intention of complying with the U.S. court order. Instead, they’re rendering the domain suspensions ineffective by switching to several new ones.

At the time of writing LibGen is readily available again via several alternative domains. Except from a new URL, not much has changed and the site is fully operational. Similarly, BookFi is also accessible via various domains including Bookfi.info.

The same is true for Sci-Hub, which changed its address to a .io domain. TF spoke with the site’s operator, Alexandra Elbakyan, who confirmed the move and is still hopeful that she can get the original domain back.

“Several new domains are operating already,” Elbakyan says. “For some reason, I think that in future justice will prevail and all our domains will be unblocked.”

To make sure that the site remains accessible, Sci-Hub also added an .onion address which allows users to access the site via Tor, and bypass any future domain name suspensions.

Despite the domain problems and a disappointing court order, Elbakyan is glad that the case brought attention to the paywall problems academia faces.

“In some sense, this case was helpful: more people now agree that copyright should be destroyed, and that academic publishing needs serious reform,” Sci-Hub’s operator says.

“Before, many people would say: why bother acting against copyright laws if they can be so easily bypassed? Or what is the point in an open access movement if anyone can download any paid article for free?”

Elsevier may have the law on their side, but the largest academic publisher can’t count on universal support from the academic community.

In recent weeks many scientists and scholars have come out in support of Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen, arguing that access to academic research should be free and universal.

For Elbakyan and others this support offers enough motivation to continue what they do.

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

Steal This Show (STS) is a TF-supported initiative produced by Jamie King, who’s known for the Steal This Film documentaries and the independent filmmaker platform VODO.

STS plans to release high quality episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the big innovators and minds, one-on-one.

Below is the first pilot of STS’s first discussion show, we hope you enjoy it.

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STEAL THIS SHOW E1: Fight For The Future

Host: Jamie King

Guests: Tiffiniy Cheng and Holmes Wilson

Download MP3

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Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Eric Bouthiller
Original Music by David Triana

Topics being discussed this week:

Fight For The Future

Popcorn Time’s Alive, Full Comeback In the Works

Anne Frank Scandal: An Underreported Copyright Monopoly Abuse

EU Court of Justice to Decide on Legality of Pirate Bay Blockades

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

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

Leitung tot, Internet tot: Am Vormittag des 21. November 2015 hat ein Stromausfall in einem Rechenzentrum zu Störungen im Telefonnetz und im Internet geführt. (Telekommunikation)

BlackBerry’s first Android smartphone is now available, and not surprisingly, the $699 BlackBerry Priv feels a bit like a mix between a classic BlackBerry phone and a modern Android device. It has a large touchscreen display, support for over a million Android apps, and decent camera. But it also has a physical keyboard that hides behind […]

Closer look at the BlackBerry Priv (video) is a post from: Liliputing

Gäste von Hotels der Kette Starwood sollten ihre Kreditkartenabrechnungen überprüfen: Kassensysteme in mehr als 50 Hotels in Nordamerika wurden mit einer Schadsoftware infiziert. (Security, Malware)

Keine Post für Werbeblocker: Yahoo will Adblock-Nutzer aussperren. Ein entsprechender Test läuft derzeit in den USA. (AdBlocker, Yahoo)

The Internet today is awash with millions of items of infringing content and links to the same and as long as Internet users have free will that position is unlikely to change.

Nevertheless, the situation for copyright holders is far from hopeless and those who feel their rights are being abused have remedies available. Provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allow copyright owners to order hosts, websites and search engines to take down infringing content. And, to avoid being held liable, those providers must do so quickly.

However, copyright holders feel that the DMCA lets them down. They complain that despite sending millions of notices, sooner or later the same content reappears, having been reuploaded by humans or reindexed by automated systems. What is needed, they argue, is a system that requires content to remain down once it has been taken down.

The ‘Take Down, Stay Down’ movement even has its own website but campaigning for legislative change that erodes safe harbors for legitimate service providers is an extremely sensitive topic for all in the technology sector. Nevertheless, that’s what Hollywood and the major record labels want long-term.

So as companies including Google come under continued pressure to move towards a ‘take down, stay down’ response to copyright complaints, just how willing will they be to accommodate such a regime? Well, if comments made this week by a Google counsel are anything to go by, not very keen at all.

Speaking at the Academy of European Law’s Annual Copyright Conference, Google copyright counsel Cédric Manara poured cold water on the idea.

Manara told the conference that takedowns have a limited effect and when applied to search engines a ‘Take Down, Stay Down’ regime is “not a solution and just does not work,” IP Magazine reports.

Importantly, Manara explained that applying such a regime to search engines is problematic, since such intermediaries can’t block content they don’t host.

“The Internet is a game of ‘whack-a-mole’. Blocked and removed content will be reposted back online, which is a key problem. When one road is cut off, other roads will appear leading to other directions,” he said.

Also of interest is the whole concept of content staying down on a permanent basis following a copyright complaint. While content might be unauthorized today, it’s possible that it may not be so in the future. Equally, the process isn’t flexible enough to accommodate everyone’s legal status when it comes to using content.

“Take down stay down doesn’t understand an authorized user, so it can have an overreaching effect and go too far,” Manara said. “Additionally, stay down is forever, whereas copyright has a term.”

While it may not prove popular with frustrated copyright holders desperate to stop whacking moles, Manara has an excellent point. While Disney might be well within its rights to protect its content today, removing it from any number of providers on an infinite basis clearly has implications when such content falls into the public domain, for example.

Of course, stifling the future and legal use of copyright works probably isn’t what most small copyright holders are trying to achieve when they ask for content to stay down once taken down. However, the current conversation is very broad in scope and definitely has the potential to cause unintended consequences that some corporate giants will be happy to exploit.

As the discussion develops, Google and other stakeholders will be keen to tread very carefully.

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