Anti-Piracy Gangs

Hollywood lobbyists are trying to launch an assault on Internet providers and fast track tougher anti-piracy legislation in the United States. Ari Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, says the industry has been discussing these plans with President Obama outside of the public’s eye.

Following raids against a large file-sharing site in December 2009, police in Greece are engaged in an ongoing operation to close down the country’s largest BitTorrent site and arrest its operators. Thus far there have been six arrests, with Interpol chasing two further admins believed to be located in The Netherlands.

Performing rights group GEMA has won an injunction against newsgroup outfit, UseNeXT. A court has forbidden the Usenet company from offering around 100 musical works from the GEMA repertoire and says that in the future, Usenet operators will have to take a greater responsibility for the environments and services they offer.

Faced with difficulties in dealing with those who share movies and music using BitTorrent, in recent months Swedish police have targeted those using more exposed file-sharing systems. As stats are revealed showing just how problematic these prosecutions have become, an anti-piracy group is calling for a change in the law.

The RIAA has published a blog post where they accuse music pirates of stealing from Haitians. In a brilliant piece of propaganda they say that those illegally downloading “We Are The World” are undermining fund raising. However, they leave out the fact that the music industry itself profits big from such charity singles.

After failing to bring ISP iiNet into line with some extremely lengthy and expensive legal action, Hollywood has been left short on options in Australia. Of course, AFACT won’t give in. It is appealing the case and has resorted to sending out messages to scare Internet file-sharers. But does another organization have a different approach up its sleeve?

After mountains of controversy built up in the wake of the ‘pay up or else’ letters sent to thousands of alleged file-sharers, one would think other lawyers might be put off following the same track, but not so. Tilly Bailey & Irvine are the new kids on the block and have just been labeled by a Lord as an “embarrassment to the rest of the creative rights industry.”

Last week, Torrents.ru, a massive Russian BitTorrent site had its domain name suspended by order of the authorities. It quickly returned with a new URL but with accusatory fingers being pointed at Autodesk, questions raised over the .RU domain, DDoS attacks and a petition to the Russian President, the drama isn’t over yet.

Jim Keyzer, a police IT forensics specialist who was leading the Pirate Bay investigation while he was also working for Warner Bros. is back in action. Despite all the controversy he is now leading the IT Crime Unit which is tasked with various anti-piracy efforts.

The PRO-IP Act is a United States law that aims to combat copyright infringement by increasing civil and criminal penalties for offenders. Copyright czar Victoria Espinel is now seeking comments from the public on piracy’s apparent disastrous effect on the economy and health and safety, as well as proposed punishments and enforcement.