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Thursday, December 4th, 2014
| Time | Event |
| 10:55a | Police Shut Down Spain’s Top ‘Pirate’ Streaming Sites
The latest action involves two of the region’s largest streaming sites, peliculaspepito.com seriespepito.com. The portals had a combined audience of 2.5 million visits per month, with Seriespepito.com taking the larger share as Spain’s 69th most popular site. A court injunction served on ISPs including Telefónica, Ono, Jazztel. Orange and Vodafone and R Cable blocked access to the sites yesterday. Two men were arrested by police and taken away for questioning. The investigation into the sites began in May after a complaint was filed at Court No.3 of Elche by anti-piracy group FAP and major film producers including 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures. The movie companies complained that the sites provided links to other sites where it was possible to stream or download thousands of movies and TV shows without permission, generating thousands of euros in advertising revenue along the way.  An investigation found that the sites were both owned by Zeniox Media SL, a company founded in 2007 and headquartered in the coastal city of Elche. Police uncovered several bank and PayPal accounts which revealed that over the past three years the company generated revenues of 1,085,000 euros. The individuals targeted yesterday were the company’s operators. Detained following raids in the cities of Madrid and Alicante, the men aged 20 and 30 were questioned and subsequently charged with intellectual property crime offenses. “Through these popular websites an act of public communication is made, being the means by which a number of people can access protected audiovisual content. The large amount of unauthorized content brings immense losses to the film industry,” police said in a statement. But while the police seem confident that crimes have been committed, the men’s lawyer sees things rather differently. Citing an October 2014 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, Carlos Sánchez Almeida says that judges have “ruled repeatedly” that offering links to content does not amount to communicating a work to the public. Almeida also describes police claims of more than a million euros generated from advertising and premium accounts as “bloated” since not all of the men’s business activities were Internet related. The raids on his clients came as no surprise, however. “This is typical of the complaints these websites have been suffering since 2003,” Almeida says. “We don’t find this strange at all. Every December there is always a spectacular operation.” Police say that both men face penalties of hundreds of thousands of euros or even prison sentences. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| 2:59p | Kim Dotcom’s Hong Kong Millions Unfrozen.. Momentarily
At the behest of the U.S. government, HK$330 million (US$42.55m) in assets were seized and have remained frozen ever since. Earlier this year Dotcom and his associates took legal action against the Hong Kong government and in October applied for the restraining order to be set aside, accusing the secretary for justice of failing to provide a “full and frank disclosure” of the facts when the application for seizure was made. According to Dotcom’s lawyers the prosecution withheld important information from the court when applying for the restraining order, including the fact that Megaupload could not be served with a criminal complaint in the United States as it was based entirely abroad. In a new hearing in the High Court this morning, Deputy High Court Judge Mr Garry Tallentire set aside the restraining order. Celebrations, however, were short-lived. At his discretion Tallentire immediately re-instated the lock on Dotcom’s assets, but it was not all bad news for the Megaupload founder. The original restraining order was granted ex parte, meaning that the defendants in the case were not allowed to put their side of the story. The new modified order gives Dotcom’s legal team the right to contest the asset freeze. The Judge also ordered the U.S. government to pay Dotcom’s legal fees as he continues his fight to have his assets unfrozen. The ruling pleased Dotcom, who took to Twitter to celebrate. “Two court victories against the US government in a week. Glad that Hong Kong isn’t part of the US puppet show. This is the turning point!” he declared. Earlier this week Dotcom maintained his freedom after the U.S. government failed to have his bail revoked following a three-day hearing. He now faces an extradition hearing in June 2015. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| 7:04p | Court Orders French ISPs to Block The Pirate Bay
Faced with an adversary that to date has proven impossible to kill, entertainment companies have chosen what they believe to be the next best course of action. If the site itself can’t be stopped, then users must be stopped from reaching the site. This has been achieved by court-ordered ISP blockades in various regions of the world, notably Europe. Today comes news of yet another blocking injunction, this time in France. The legal process was initiated earlier this year by collection society and anti-piracy group La Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques, or SCPP as it’s more commonly known. Late Thursday the organization, which represents in excess of 2,000 labels including Warner, Universal and Sony, announced victory in a short statement. Welcoming a decision handed down by the Paris Court, SCPP said that French service providers will soon be required to “implement all necessary measures” to prevent consumer access not only to The Pirate Bay, but also “its proxy and mirror sites”. “This decision is another step in the fight against music piracy and one that strengthens existing similar decisions in the EU and worldwide,” SCPP said. Although the details of the injunction are still to be published, the introduction of a clause which orders the blocking of proxy and mirror sites could be a significant achievement for the labels. Guillaume Champeau of French news outlet Numerama informs TorrentFreak that SCPP previously pushed for automatic proxy-accommodating court orders, but without success. While no announcements have yet been made, it’s likely that this action against The Pirate Bay and its mirrors won’t be the last for the French labels and their counterparts in the movie and TV industries. If earlier predictions hold out, more sites will quickly move onto the radars of outfits such as SCPP. For an indication of what can happen one only needs to look a couple of dozen miles north to the UK. After several years of court action, all major ISPs are required to block most major torrent sites and even some private trackers. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
In 2012, as Megaupload’s servers were being shuttered in the U.S. and Dotcom’s New Zealand mansion was raided by armed police, the German’s Hong Kong offices were being turned over by a reported 100 customs officers.
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