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Thursday, September 25th, 2014
| Time | Event |
| 9:55a | Mega Goes Legal, Issues Ultimatum Over Cyberlocker Report
While listing some domains that may well live up to that less-than-flattering billing, the authors of Behind The Cyberlocker Door: A Report How Shadowy Cyberlockers Use Credit Card Companies to Make Millions, also decided to include New Zealand-based Mega. Mega was founded by Kim Dotcom but the site bears little resemblance to his now defunct Megaupload. Perhaps most importantly, Mega was the most-scrutinized file-hosting startup ever, so every single detail simply had to be squeaky clean. As a result the site took extensive legal advice to ensure that it complies with every single facet of the law. Nevertheless, NetNames took the decision to put Mega in its report anyway, bundling the site in with what are described as some of the market’s most dubious players. This was not received well by Mega CEO Graham Gaylard. In a TorrentFreak article he demanded a full apology from NetNames and Digital Citizens Alliance and for his company to be withdrawn from the report. Failure to do so would result in “further action”, he said. TF asked NetNames’ David Price whether his company stood by its allegations. The response suggested that it did and no apology was forthcoming. It’s been a week since that ultimatum and as promised Mega is now making good on its threats. “Mega’s legal counsel has written to NetNames, Digital Citizens Alliance and The Internet Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) stating that the report is clearly defamatory,” Mega CEO Graham Gaylard told TorrentFreak this morning. Given NetNames’ and Digital Citizens Alliance failure to respond, it comes as little surprise that Mega’s formalized demands now go beyond an apology and retraction. Firstly, Mega’s legal team are now demanding the removal of the report, and all references to it, from all channels under the respondents’ control. They also demand that further circulation of the report must be discontinued and no additional references to it should be made in public. That’s a tough one. NetNames’ effort is currently the most-circulated report in the ‘piracy’ space and TorrentFreak is also informed that the paper is set to become the supporting documentation to Hollywood and the labels’ follow-the-money anti-piracy drive. Mega are also demanding a list of everyone who has had a copy of the report made available to them along with details of all locations where the report has been published. Again, that will be an interesting one to see Mega’s targets fulfill. Finally, Mega is demanding a full public apology “to its satisfaction” to be published on the homepages of the respondents’ websites. What form that could take without discrediting the rest of the report is probably up for negotiation, but having Mega in there at all was bound to be a controversial and potentially damaging move. Mega has given the companies seven days to comply with the above requests. No official line has been provided as to what will happen if Mega is met with a refusal, but it seems that the company is serious about protecting its reputation and will do whatever it takes to do that. It’s perhaps of note that to our knowledge none of the other sites listed in the report have come out publicly to protest their inclusion in it. That’s not to say that some weren’t wrongfully included of course, but when a company like Mega stands up in order to protect its brand that should set off alarm bells. Do ‘pirate’ sites with “shadowy” business models ever bother to publicly defend their reputations unless they’re the ones being hauled into court? Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| 3:33p | Google to News Corp: Nobody Fights Piracy Like Us
Thompson began by speaking warmly of Google’s roots as a “wonderfully feisty” Silicon Valley startup, but that developed into warnings over its immense power today as an “often unaccountable bureaucracy”. And, as is so often the case with Google’s rivals, matters soon turned to Google’s attitudes towards online piracy. “The shining vision of Google’s founders has been replaced by a cynical management, which offers advertisers impressively precise data about users and content usage, but has been a platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks, all while driving more traffic and online advertising dollars to Google,” Thompson said. The News Corp statement was never likely to go unanswered and today Google officially returned fire. “Google has done more than almost any other company to help tackle online piracy,” said Rachel Whetstone, Google’s senior vice president of global communications. “In 2013 we removed 222 million web pages from Google Search due to copyright infringement. The average take-down time is now just six hours,” she added. The SVP also underlined Google’s earlier assertions that sites found to repeatedly violate copyright get downgraded in search rankings. It’s something the movie studios and record labels have being demanding for some time but although Google insists it delivers, few content creators appear pleased with the results. On YouTube, however, things play out somewhat differently. Whetstone reminded News Corp that Google has spent tens of millions of dollars developing technology such as its ContentID, a system that not only combats piracy but enables creators to monetize their content. And hitting back at the accusation that Google has been a platform for the spread of malicious networks, Whetstone said the company is committed to protecting its users’ security. “It’s why we remove malware from our search results and other products, and protect more than 1 billion users every day from phishing and malware with our Safe Browsing warnings,” she said. In response to News Corp accusations that Google undermines the business models of high quality content creators with “egregious aggregation”, Whetstone said that the days of news being controlled by a small number of media organizations were over. “Today, people have far greater choice. That has had a profound impact on newspapers, who face much stiffer competition for people’s attention and for advertising Euros,” the SVP said. “Google has worked hard to help publishers succeed online — both in terms of generating new audiences and also increasing their digital revenues. Our search products drive over 10 billion clicks a month to 60,000 publishers’ websites, and we share billions of dollars annually with advertising publishing partners.” Finally, in a moment of comedy but with a serious point, Whetston held up a mirror to News Corp in response to its argument that Google’s actions could lead to “a less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society” and only add to “the intemperate trends we are already seeing in much of Europe.” By linking to an image of a front page published by Murdoch’s ‘The Sun’ tabloid, Google makes clear that if you’re going to criticize others, getting your own house in order should always come first. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| 7:23p | Lionsgate Hopes Server Logs Will Expose Expendables Leaker
Aside from dragging six file-sharing sites to court, Lionsgate sent out hundreds of thousands of takedown notices to websites that linked to pirated copies of the leaked movie. While this campaign had some success, the studio has yet to identify who first published the leaked copy online. In a new court request filed at a California federal court Lionsgate states that the weblogs of file-hosting service Swankshare.com may provide more details. Swankshare is one of the sites that was targeted in Lionsgate’s lawsuit. Following a preliminary injunction the site’s servers were taken down by its hosting company FDCServers. However, the Expendables makers now want to gain access to the server logs to see who uploaded the leaked copy of the film. “Lions Gate is informed and believes that as the website host for Swankshare, FDCServers is likely to have weblogs and other data evidencing traffic on Swankshare that will be useful to Lions Gate in its investigation of the source of the infringement at issue in this lawsuit,” Lionsgate’s lawyers inform the court. The request suggests that there is reason to believe that Swankshare may have been used by the initial leaker. However, it’s currently unknown whether the movie studio has any concrete leads to proof this or if it’s merely grasping at straws.  The court filing also shows that the movie studio has been able to track down the owner of Swankshare, Mr. Lucas Lim. They are currently trying to resolve their dispute, and as part of these discussions Mr. Lim agreed that Lionsgate can access the sites server logs. “Lions Gate and Mr. Lim have discussed whether a resolution of the dispute between them might be possible, and to further those discussions Mr. Lim has stipulated that Lions Gate may seek authority from the Court to serve a subpoena on FDCServers for the production of weblogs and other data evidencing traffic on Swankshare,” they explain. Hosting provider FDCServers is willing to cooperate but requested clarification from the court that it’s permitted to grant access to the servers, as they were ordered to take them offline in the previous injunction. Whether the server logs will indeed expose the initial leaker has yet to be seen, but Lionsgate has clearly not given up the effort to track down the source. Meanwhile, the movie studio continues to stop the distribution of The Expendables 3 via various file-sharing sites. Earlier this week the court approved a request to add Limetorrents.net and Torrentdownload.biz to the injunction as these sites are connected to the owner of Limetorrents.com. Both sites currently remain online but no longer list any copies of Expendables 3. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
Last week the Digital Citizens Alliance and NetNames released a new report with the aim of shining light on the business models of “shadowy” file-storage sites.
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