[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View]
Friday, March 29th, 2019
| Time | Event |
| 7:44a | Former Kinox.to & Movie4k.to Admin Freed, Tax Office Retrieves €1.75m  The story of pirate streaming sites Kinox.to and Movie4k.to is one of the most unusual on record. Serving as a replacement for Kino.to, a site that was taken down almost eight years ago in In October 2014, Germany-based investigators acting on behalf of the Attorney General carried out raids in several regions of the country looking for four main suspects Two of those were brothers, Kreshnik and Kastriot Selimi. Then aged 21 and 25-years-old, the pair were said to be the main operators of Kinox.to and Movie4k.to. They immediately went on the run. In 2017, there was a breakthrough. Younger brother Kreshnik, who by this time had reached 24, was detained after handing himself over to authorities in Kosovo. Little has been heard of him since. Now, however, a Handelsblatt report indicates the now 26-year-old has been released from prison after spending just nine months in custody, partly in prisons in the Balkans. For a man who was originally being hounded down for alleged crimes include predatory blackmail, armed robbery, extortion, arson, copyright infringement After making a confession, Kreshnik reportedly helped the German tax office recover around 1.75 million euros. “We have therefore set the procedure for victim-offender compensation,” said prosecutor Wolfgang Klein. In this case, the victim is the tax office, Handelsblatt reports. Kreshnik is now being described as playing the part of an “economically legitimate straw man” of two companies based in Hong Kong, which received funds funneled through Cyprus from advertising companies affiliated with the streaming sites. As highlighted by Tarnkappe, much of the details concerning how the sites operated, under whose control, and when, is still up for debate. Nevertheless, both Kinox.to and Movie4k.to remain stubbornly online today, despite all the chaos several years ago. What is clear, however, is that the authorities have never caught up with Kastriot Selimi, Kreshnik’s older brother. He remains on the run after four years with charges of predatory extortion, coercion, arson and tax evasion still hanging over this head. Whether the police will ever detain the alleged pirate site operator will remain to be seen, but others involved in the site have indeed fallen. In December 2015, Arvit O (aka “Pedro”) who handled technical issues on KinoX, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his involvement in the site. Arvit O was found guilty of copyright infringement by the District Court of Leipzig. The then 29-year-old admitted to infringing 2,889 works. The Court also found that he hacked the computers of two competitors in order to improve Kinox’s market share. KinoX.to made headlines again in February 2018, for being the first pirate site to be blocked by ISPs in Germany. It’s been playing cat and mouse with the authorities ever since, using alternative domains and mirror sites to evade the blockades.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons. |
| 5:34p | France Plans to Add ‘Article 13’ to New Anti-Piracy Law This Summer
While some MEPs state that they mistakenly pushed the wrong button on the close vote to allow changes to the text, the ultimate vote was clear. With 348 votes in favor, 274 against, and 36 abstentions, Parliament adopted the Copyright Directive, unchanged. There is still a small chance that negotiations could be reopened if the Council doesn’t approve, but that’s really the last straw. The French Government, however, is done waiting and is moving full steam ahead. In a speech at the Series Mania Festival in Lille, French Minister of Culture Franck Riester described the outcome of the vote as a breakthrough. Despite fierce protects, Europe stood tall and seized a historic opportunity to bring copyright into the digital age, he said. “Despite intense and unprecedented pressure from the tech giants, despite massive campaigns of misinformation on social networks, Europe has held up well. Europe has not yielded. Europe has resisted.” The Minister sees the Copyright Directive as an essential piece of legislation. It won’t change anything for Internet users, he told the audience, but it will change the lives of millions of creators. Article 13, which was confusingly renamed to Article 17 in the final text, will ensure that Internet platforms, YouTube in particular, will have to pay fair compensation to rightsholders. “This is the first step towards greater accountability of platforms; towards a better sharing of the value that’s linked to the distribution of works online, for the benefit of creators,” Riester said. “In the future, YouTube will have to correctly compensate the creators whose works are broadcast on its platform,” the Minister added. France could have implemented similar legislation without Europe. However, the Minister of Culture stresses that a Europe-wide agreement is important. Large Internet platforms can’t circumvent that by simply blocking a single country. With backing from the European Parliament, France now plans to move forward, without wasting any time. “I want us to transpose the Copyright Directive and enter it into force as soon as possible,” Riester noted. Most of the text will be transposed into the new ‘Audiovisual law,’ an anti-piracy law which the Government expects to present this summer. This includes including Article 13/17. Under the article, many for-profit Internet platforms are required to license content from copyright holders. If that is not possible, they have to ensure that infringing content is taken down and not re-uploaded to their services. While ‘upload filters’ are not specifically mentioned, that’s what most opponents fear. In his speech, the Minister doesn’t mention upload filters either. However, he does reference the Government’s “mission to promote and supervise content recognition technologies.” The French news site NextInpact reports that this mission will be entrusted to Hadopi, the National Film Center, and the Superior Council of Literary and Artistic Property (CSPLA). Interestingly, the mission letter is dated March 1st, long before this week’s vote. Besides transposing the Copyright Directive into national law, the French will also propose a variety of other anti-piracy measures in the new Audiovisual law. According to Riester, it will help to “relaunch the fight against piracy.” France has been on the anti-piracy enforcement frontline for years and was the first country to introduce a ‘three strikes’ system for file-sharers. Today, however, most piracy is streaming related, which requires a different approach. Since classic pirate sites are not going to comply with any laws, France will introduce a national blacklist to target the streaming piracy epidemic. This blacklist will cover clearly infringing sites, while making sure that these are not accessible through mirrors either. The final text of the new anti-piracy law is expected to be introduced this summer. Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons. |
The European Parliament sent a | << Previous Day |
2019/03/29 [Calendar] |
Next Day >> |