Tag: ifpi
Pirate Bay trial day four – mockery of Windows users
The lols continue at the Pirate Bay “spectrial” in Sweden, with day four of the court case seeing the prosecutors make yet another mis-step. Movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted attempted to introduce completely new, previously-unseen, evidence – something which didn’t go down well with either the defence or the judge.
Most of the morning revolved around questioning defendant Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) individually, with the prosecution trying to link the four administrators to the actions of their users and to advertisers.
At one point, Fredrik was asked whether advertiser Oded Daniel was involved in the technical running of the site – Fredik’s response was “No, he’s not good at that. He uses Windows, so…” and there was a massive burst of laughter through the wall from bloggers next door in the listening lounge.
Fredrik also explained how Anti-p2p companies like MediaDefender manipulate statistics, with their actions making certain torrents appear far more active than in reality. Fredrik claimed that he had no ideological connection with the site – he simply wanted to play with the Bittorrent technology.
Later on, a crucial point was elaborated upon in detail – how .torrent files can be shared in many different ways – via email or FTP, for example. This is important, because the role that the Pirate Bay performs in the Bittorrent process could just as easily be done by Google. In fact, here‘s a how-to.
The story’s still developing today, and in the latest developments the prosecutors have tried to link the Pirate Bay to child pornography – a favourite tactic of anti-p2p activists. Gottfrid said that they report the ones they spot to the police, but that it isn’t up to the site to investigate: “We can’t do investigations of our own. And if the police says we should remove a torrent, we will”.
More tomorrow. In the meantime, hackers have been defacing sites owned by the IFPI, playing the following message on ifpi.se:
Stop lying HÅKAN ROSWALL!:
The ruthless hunt conducted by the IFPI, Anti-Piracy Office, Warner Bros., and all the other companies with a pawn in the game has now resulted in a trial in which four innocent men are accused of copyright infringement. This is a declaration of war against anti-piracy outfits and the industry players behind them, and we urge the public to boycott and lynch those responsible. IFPI is just the beginning. To be Continued.
The New Generation
The defendants in the trial, however, aren’t too happy about it, with Peter Sunde (brokep) saying:
“Our case is going quite well as most of you have noticed. In the light of that it feels very bad that people are hacking web sites which actually puts us in a worse light than we need to be in. If anyone involved in the acts going on is reading this – please stop, for our sake. We don’t need that kind of support.”
All IFPI sites are now back online.
Ireland gets 'three-strikes' policy for music downloads
Meanwhile, over the Irish Sea, the four major music labels have just come to an agreement with Eircom (Ireland’s equivalent of BT) to cut off persistent downloaders after two warnings – the famous “three strikes” approach to music piracy.
Ireland joins France in being the only countries in the world to implement the system, which alienates ISP customers, especially as people get accused of things they’ve not done on a regular basis. The labels say that they’re going to take “all necessary steps” to get other ISPs to follow suit, though I anticipate there’ll be a considerable amount of resistance, especially when they see customers deserting Eircom in their droves.
(via Irish Times)
Related posts: MEPs vote in favour of new telecoms law, could lead to universal “three strikes” | Digital Britain
95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal, says IFPI
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, is basically an international version of the RIAA and BPI, who claim to act as a trade body for record labels, but seem to only exist in reality to head up the music industry’s anti-piracy campaign. True to that role, last night it released a statement claiming that 95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal.
However, there’s some bright news for the labels hidden in there too – download sales are up 25% on last year, and now make up a fifth of all recorded music sales. The IFPI reckons that it’s worth £2.5 billion.
