CyberLaw Blog

Archive for March 7th, 2009

Davenport Lyons Threatens to Sue Wikileaks Over Publication of Extortion Letter – Wikileaks

From Wikileaks, February 20, 2009

By Drew Wilson (Zeropaid)[1]

Claims that the extortion letter is protected by copyright and cannot be posted online.

Late last year, Wikileaks obtained a copy of one of the extortion letters sent by the infamous law firm Davenport Lyons. The law firm, at the time, had been sending tens of thousands of these letters which threatened to take the recipients to court if they don’t pay just over 500 pounds. The original goal was to deter alleged copyright infringers, but in a strange twist of fate, the law firm is now actively trying to censor the letter itself claiming that the letter is protected under British copyright law.

The legal threat letters themselves contain a hash value, and IP address and a time stamp that is being used as evidence – flimsy evidence according to many people who have observed the legal side of file-sharing. The reason it is seen as flimsy is that a filename can be called anything and still have the same hash value. Second of all, there is no evidence provided that verified that the file name matched what the actual work was. For all we know, it could have been a 5 minute porn clip rather than a music video. Thirdly, there’s no evidence to suggest that an IP address is linked to an individual. The computer could be used by someone other than the owner of the connection. There could be a wifi connection that other users, including unauthorized ones, could be using that IP address. Finally, a time stamp doesn’t contribute much into proving that a copyrighted work has been uploaded. The alleged incident in question happened over BitTorrent, but no website was given, so who really knows where the evidence was gathered in the first place?

The turn of events seems to resemble the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) deciding that they don’t want the trial broadcasted over the internet. The copyright industry said that the whole purpose of file-sharing lawsuits is to educate the public, yet objected to idea that the case should be broadcasted over the internet. The same sort of contradiction can be seen in the Davenport case. The whole idea is to educate the public, but now they don’t want their own letters being published, claiming it’s copyright infringement.

One might argue that the reason that Davenport Lyons don’t want the letters published in the first place is because they don’t want their letters subject to public or any real legal scrutiny. It’s much easier to attack a single individual singled out rather than attacking a single individual with the public sphere watching. It’s little wonder why the copyright industry has been seen as a bully throughout the years really. If they truly feel they are in the right, why the need to hide their activities in the first place?

Thanks to Drew Wilson and Zeropaid for covering this document. Reprint rights remain with the aforementioned.

Internet auction fraudster jailed: “A man who conned eBay customers of £23,500 worth of goods they did not receive is jailed for two years.”

(Via BBC News.)

Wikipedia vandals: “The things they say about MPs and the battle to stop them”

(Via BBC News.)

Europeans push for more online rights to privacy: “Members of European Parliaments will push for a rethink of the balance between the need for security and the right to privacy on the Internet.

(Via Macworld.)

Post from: TorrentFreak

Pirate Bay Witness’ Wife Overwhelmed With Flowers: “

Professor and media researcher Roger Wallis appeared as an expert witness at the Pirate Bay trial yesterday. He was questioned on the link between the decline of album sales and filesharing. Wallis told the court that his research has shown that there is no relation between the two.

He was heavily attacked by industry lawyers Danowsky, Pontén and Wadsted who did everything they could to discredit and slander his reputation. When Wallis was asked whether he wanted to be reimbursed for travel expenses etc, he light-heartedly suggested sending some flowers to his wife.

His statement was picked up by the large audience listening in to the live audio from the trial and flowers soon began arriving at the Wallis’ house.

Roger’s wife, Görel Wallis, wasn’t surprised by her husband’s whim in court:

‘We have been married for 38 years. He proposed half an hour after we met and I said maybe. After a day, he had convinced me’, she said.

At a local flower store in Stockholm they had received 100 orders by 20.30 last night. Owner Kristian Skald said that two nearby stores had received an equal amount of orders.

‘Last delivery was 33 bouquets Thursday night. There will be more to come on Friday,’ the owner of the flower shop commented.

Today, Friday, the couple celebrates their wedding day anniversary and on Saturday it’s Görel’s birthday. Roger Wallis feels she is worth all the flowers she gets.

‘She was very worried before the trial. They questioned my competence and that made her very sad. She hadn’t slept for two days,’ Roger said.

A web page has been set up that collects what has been given so far, complete with an ever-growing stack of CDs that show how many sales the music-industry has lost by slandering the Professor.

Thus far, in an amazing show of generosity from a section of society labeled by the music industry as ‘thieves’, more than 4100 Euros worth of flowers, chocolate and gifts have been sent to the couple.

The Wallis’ soon ran out of vases for the flowers but Görel knows that sharing is caring and will distribute the flowers to all residents in their apartment building.

‘We will make sure it will be beautiful here.’

Post from: TorrentFreak

Telenor Wont Block The Pirate Bay: “

While the Pirate Bay was on trial in Sweden, music industry lobbyists were pressuring ISPs in Ireland and Norway to block access to the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker. Last week, the Irish ISP Eircom stated that they don’t plan to do so without a court order, and the Norwegian Internet provider Telenor has followed suit.

Ragnar Kårhus of Telenor said that they follow the law, and not the demands of the music industry. He doesn’t see what law would require them to block sites. ‘This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered,’ he says.

Previously, a Danish judge ruled last year that Tele2 had to block its users from accessing The Pirate Bay. IFPI argued that Tele2 was assisting in mass copyright infringement, and that access to the site therefore had to be blocked. IFPI is now using this decision in an attempt to force ISPs in other countries to do the same.

However, Kårhus points out that there is a huge difference between the situation in Norway and Denmark. There is no court ruling in Norway, he argued, and a letter from the rights holders is not sufficient. ‘It is important that these kind of decisions should be made after handling in the judicial system – namely the police and a court of law,’ Kårhus said.

Interestingly, the Norwegian Minister of Education said recently that the music industry should embrace the Internet instead of fighting it. ‘All previous technology advances have led to fears that the older format would die. But TV did not kill radio, the Web did not kill the book, and the download is not going to kill music,’ he said.

It is uncertain whether IFPI will follow though with their threats and go after Telenor in court. It wouldn’t be the first time that legal threats have been used as a mechanism for applying pressure.

Post from: TorrentFreak

The Pirate Bay – Innocent or Guilty?: “

Yesterday the prosecutor called for jailtime, while the prosecution presented its closing statements. Today the defense had its say and the trial officially ended.

The Pirate Bay trial started on February 16 with lots of press coverage, protesting pirates and people handing out free candy. As the days went by, plenty of information was presented by both the prosecution and defense.

So which elements are most relevant, and which side is ahead in the polls?

On day two of the trial the prosecutor announced that half of the charges against the four defendants had been dropped. The prosecutor couldn’t prove that the .torrent files that were submitted as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker, and he had to let go of all charges that accused the Pirate Bay folks of ‘assisting copyright infringement’.

What remained is the claim that they were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Armed with several screenshots of web pages and torrents downloading films and music albums, the prosecution argued that this was indeed the case. The torrent files hosted on The Pirate Bay allow people to download and share copyrighted material – period – they argued.

The crucial part here of course is whether the defendants actually ‘assisted’ in making any files available, this will eventually be up to the judge to decide. The prosecution has shown that there are indeed torrent files hosted on The Pirate Bay, and that some of these indirectly link to copyrighted material. However, whether the defendants are assisting in making copyright content available remains doubtful.

The defense has argued that they are not ‘assisting’, and dragged a giant primate into court to prove it. On the third day of the trial Carl Lundström’s lawyer, Per E Samuelsson pointed out that the prosecution failed to prove that Lundström had been involved in any transfers of any copyrighted material. This became known as the now famous King Kong defense.

‘The admins of The Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong,’ Samuelsson told the court.

‘According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström has personally interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia,’ the lawyer added.

During the days that followed both sides tried to strengthen their case, but not much that was actually related to the ‘assisting in making available’ charges that are central to the case. The prosecution brought in more screenshots and some actual torrent files as evidence, and tried to get a better grip on the Pirate Bay’s anarchic ‘management’ structure.

The defense on the other hand, argued that there are many ways to share torrent files online. By playing a video in court they showed that The Pirate Bay is just one of many torrent trackers, and a tiny part of the download chain. One of the witnesses, Kristoffer Schollin from Gothenburg University, told the court that the Pirate Bay is an ‘open database’ of .torrent files which he described as simply an advanced type of hyperlink.

In addition to detailing the charges, there was further debate on the damages claims from last week. While music and movie industry insiders claimed that piracy was responsible for a large part of the decline in sales of their respective industries, media professor Wallis told the court that the file-sharing is actually beneficial to the entertainment industry.

It is now up to the judge to review all the information presented by both parties and decide whether the defendants are guilty of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’.

If the decision was based purely on a big win via the media during the trial, there can be no question that The Pirate Bay won a decisive victory and proved to be even more popular than ever expected. However, as it stands, it’s difficult to find anyone – no matter where their preferences lie – who is willing to step out and say who they believe is going to prevail in the case overall.

What is pretty much certain is that this won’t end with the verdict that is due on April 17. No matter what the outcome it seems unthinkable that either side will accept a defeat. An appeal seems almost inevitable.

Stay tuned.

Post from: TorrentFreak

MPAA Study Links Piracy to Gangs and Terrorists: “

On reading the report’s summary, there is a strong wave of deja-vu. It hardly seems like 4 years have passed similar claims put out by a UK industry group were debunked. Worse still, the same old tricks are being used again to cloud the issue. The only difference is that instead of just concentrating on the situation in UK and Ireland, they’ve now gone global.

The MPAA funded report report titled ‘Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism’ claims that terrorist groups use film piracy to finance their activities, while organized gangs see it as a significant revenue stream. Selling pirated goods is a ‘low-risk, high-profit enterprise’ which attracts criminals of all sorts according to the report. And, as if that is not bad enough, in some areas the influence of these pirating gangs extends into law enforcement and political leaders, who are bought, intimidated, or induced to create ‘protected spaces’ where crime flourishes.

Something that jumped out during the first glance at the report is the blurring of terms. On page 3 of the report, one of the reasons things can, and are, overstated is explained as a footnote.

‘The terms ‘piracy’ and ‘counterfeiting’ are used interchangeably in this report, although they can mean different things.’

Unfortunately for the study, they do mean VERY different things. ‘Piracy’ in this context tends to refer mostly to digitally representable items, while counterfeit goods can run the gamut from aircraft parts, to cigarettes. In France, you can’t sell certain brands of handbag on eBay easily, because they might be counterfeit. Fake aircraft parts (which don’t meet specs) are a major problem for the airline industry (also counterfeiting) and fake cigarettes are a commonly seized item at international borders. If you want another example, just look no further than your spam folder – count the number of Viagra, and other medications you are offered – all counterfeit.

It only goes downhill from there. Early in the report, it moves on to talk about definitions of organized crime, including some that are so loose it’s hard to see anything except a lone person’s opportunistic crime as being ‘organized’. In fact, by the definitions given, the RIAA may be an organised crime gang, or the UMP party in France, making 3-strike Sarkozy, the head of a crime syndicate.

Digression aside, the case studies that underpin these findings also fail to pass scrutiny. The very first one mentions a seizure of 9400 discs in a shipment. Using a standard weight of a DVD (60g, with box), it comes to about half a ton, and assuming each disc can be sold for $10 (a high price) that’s only $94,000. A kilo of cocaine has a higher street value (about $160,000 right now, according to Cleveland Police), and is much easier to transport. In addition, drugs don’t tend to suffer from the ‘do it yourself’ aspect that gives sites like the Pirate Bay and Mininova such heavy traffic. No value is ever given for the ‘profit’ made either, only..

The combined proceeds from CD/DVD piracy and drug sales were estimated, for the purpose of assigning asset forfeiture, at $3 million.

Throughout many of the case studies listed, there is little hard evidence to actually link crimes. One cites packages arriving at a location containing copied DVDs, and when the police arrived, several men with false papers attempted to run. This leads the author to the assumption of using immigrants to work a copying operation, despite the only evidence mentioned being a single person trafficked.

If movies are the easy, safe and profitable way, as the report suggests, then someone’s not telling these gangs. A little chart is even produced, which lists gangs worldwide and the work they’re involved in.  There are no prizes for guessing that they all apparently participate in DVD copying, but more surprisingly, its the only activity they all share.

The true purpose of the report is of course to force authorities worldwide to do something about piracy, or criminal gangs and terrorist groups will take over. We have no doubt that the MPAA will cite this study in nearly every press release they issue from now on, and bring it onto the political agenda. Here are a few recommendations the report gives.

* Piracy should be made a priority offense within anti-gang strategies.
* Laws should be enacted to grant investigators greater authority to sustain investigations, conduct surveillance, and obtain search warrants.
* Key piracy cases should be fought in the organized-crime or money-laundering divisions of prosecutors’ offices.
* Governments should share intelligence with industry-led anti-piracy efforts.

It is likely that the MPAA will use these findings to get tougher anti-piracy laws. This wouldn’t really be a problem if it would only affect commercial piracy. However, as a side-effect people might have to prove that the music on their iPod is legit when they go through customs, and at home their ISP might be looking into their download behavior.

Unsurprisingly, a large percentage of sources given in footnotes, happen to be the very groups that have funded the story, the MPA(A) and FACT, which should seriously dent the credibility of the report. However, it is to be expected that this report will be given the same credibility as other MPAA-financed studies, despite their dubiousness. As a result, expect more laws to tackle this ‘threat’, which will only ever be used against everyday citizens, and that’s just how the likes of the MPAA like it.