Norwegian ISPs Say No to MPAA’s Demand to Cutt off Pirates

March 31, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues

Since he didn’t get quite the attention he was hopping for from the Norwegian police, MPAA lawyer Espen Tøndel (right) has redirected his strategy and is now claiming that ISPs should cut off Norwegian file-sharers from the Internet. As IKT Norway (an interest group for ISPs) stated , the lawyer has forwarded a letter to Norwegian ISPs on the part of The Norwegian branch of the MPAA.

TorrentFreak says that the letter contains Tøndel’s request to the ISPs to inform users who share copyrighted material, and threaten to disconnect them from the internet. Moreover, Tøndel attached a document that allegedly connects the IP-addresses of seeders to copyrighted works.

It looks like Norway is no longer a singular case in this respect; Jim Williams, the MPAA’s senior vice president decided on the same disconnection policy in the USA. However, IKT Norway doesn’t seem too pleased with the letter.

“In a constitutional state, the police and the prosecuting authority have the job of investigating and indicting, not lawyers and communication engineers”, says Hallstein Bjercke from IKT Norway, in a press release.

The representative of IKT wants the ISPs to contact IKT Norway rather than reply to the lawyer’s letter. “In our opinion, Tøndel asks the ISPs to assist them in their private investigation on filesharers. Tøndel’s law firm asks the ISPs to use personal information about their customers in a way that would be a breach on the Norwegian laws on personal information and personal privacy, in addition to breaching the contract between individual customers and their respective ISP.”

Bjercke thinks that what Simonsen actually hunts for is declaration of guilt from those suspected of file-sharing, which can then be used against them if in the eventuality of a lawsuit.

IKT Norway was quite firm when stating that the Norwegian ISPs will not assume the position of investigator and judge against their own customers. The simple claim that the ISPs should take upon themselves the responsibility to control the on line content is seen as absurd.

Currently, IKT Norway is involved into analyzing the legitimacy of the law firm’s private investigation and the legal bounds of linking personal data to the users of Norwegian ISPs.

Tags: copyright, file-sharing, ISP, law, lawsuit, legal, privacy

Test your Broadband Connection for Bittorrent throttling using Web-based tool

March 30, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events

Until now if you wanted to see if your ISP is throttling Bittorrent you would go through some trouble. That’s no longer the case because, fortunately, the EFF found the solution – a guide that, besides other things, requires you to "disable TCP and UDP checksum offloading and TCP segmentation offloading."

Although the previous Live CD made the tests a little simpler, it still needed for you to join forces with another user of the same ISP. According to P2P Blog the latest adjustments are offering a much improved solution using a new web-based tool which was developed at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems located in Saarbruecken, Germany.

On its website you can read:

Our test focuses on the popular BitTorrent protocol as many ISPs are suspected to manipulate BitTorrent traffic. This type of traffic can be identified by the port it is sent on (e.g., TCP port 6881) or by BitTorrent content headers which occur in the packets.
Therefore, we designed our online tool to detect whether your ISP is using one of the following techniques:

Throttling all BitTorrent traffic.

Throttling all traffic at well-known BitTorrent ports.

Throttling BitTorrent traffic only at well-known BitTorrent ports.

Note that some ISPs do not throttle all BitTorrent traffic but only if this traffic exceeds a certain threshold. Thus, passing our tests does not necessary mean that there is no throttling occurring on your link.

If you wonder what you have to do – you need to run a Java applet on your PC that attempts to upload and download data through Bittorrent to and from the Institute’s server. Due to the tool actually testing various ports, you will be able to tell whether their ISP is only preventing some port or interfering with all Bittorrent transfers.

Tags: BitTorrent, BitTorrent port, ISP, throttling, torrent

Small software company sues SonyBMG for piracy

March 29, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues

Sony BMG, whose strong policy against violation of (its) intellectual property rights is well known, is currently the one to be accused of such infringement. As we learn from ZeroPaid the complaining company, PointDev, seized some of Sonys assets which led to the discovery that the pirated software showed up on four of their servers.

PointDev’s complaint resulted in one of Sony BMGs buildings being the subject of a raid about two months ago. During the raid four servers belonging to the Sony BMG were found containing the pirated software.

Apparently the company came to know this when an IT department employee asked for assistance for the use of a product called Ideal Migration. As technical support examined the situation, to their surprise they could see that the key used to start up the software was not a licensed one.

A French report whose translation came via Google Translation tells about PointDev’s determination to reveal to the public how giant companies are keen on abiding law only when it serves their interests:

"We are not interested in an amicable settlement. It is not just a question of money but more importantly in principle, storm Agustoni Paul-Henry, CEO of PointDev. The rate of software piracy in the company is very high. "According to the Business Software Alliance, a association of the major publishers in the market, 47% of programs used in the company would be unlawfully in France …

Basically, the PointDev CEO says that according to the BSA, Sony presents a software piracy rate of 47%. This seems to extend the gravity of the matter as CEO also stated that piracy Sony may include piracy in its business policy – if you can’t afford it, pirate it. The rumor has it that at the time of the episode Sony was in the middle of establishing the merger with BMG.

Zeropaid says that Sony did not want La Province to reveal anything about the present investigation making it obvious that the big company wishes this case hadn’t gone public.

Tags: infringement, law, piracy, Sony BMG

Resume Game! Cool DLC for Gamers

March 27, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games

How’s a gamer getting by these days?

Perhaps Downloadable content or DLC is the “vaccine”. As any gamer knows there are a lot of popular games with extra content which you can get by downloading it through your console’s network (Xbox LIVE, Playstation Network), sometimes free of charge other times checking your piggy bank.

Here are the coolest extras out there:

Sky’s the battle field – Mass Effect (Xbox LIVE)
It will cost you five dollars to try to prevent a giant asteroid from wiping out a planet. The villain – the wicked antihuman Batarians. Similarly to the original, BDtS abounds in great notch voice-overs, starts an entertaining story and it offers plenty of action throughout those nearly two hours you’ll need to finish it.

Rock Band – updated tunes (Xbox LIVE/PlayStation Store)
The craze for Rock is not over and there are not signs it’ll soon be. What’s certain is an updated set list for each band. You can now get those classics from David Bowie, the Monkees, Nine Inch Nails and Garbage; for those a bit nostalgic or craving for the oldies, there’s even a Grateful Dead pack available. You’ll pay from 99 cents to $5.49 for a three song pack.

Eerie enough? Folklore (PlayStation Store)
This one’s quite picturesque. A sleeper hit for Playstation 3, this action-RPG’s got everything weird enough a game should have – an eerie circus, dead relatives and talking scarecrows is one of the most peculiar games on the market (having, of course, extras just as peculiar). So far, there are six packs you can purchase from the Playstation Store (priced between $3-6). The extras feature new costumes, new missions and new Folks. So folklore lovers get hold of this.

Get your trigger finger ready ! (Xbox LIVE/PlayStation Store)
Loads of brand new maps for Call of Duty 4,Halo 3, Lost Planet available.

Tags: DLC, game, games, gaming, playstation, rock band, Xbox

Limewire getting closer to integrate store in P2P client

March 26, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events

Since we informed you about Limewire entering the digital music business, the company has been constantly working on getting that on line music store integrated into the Limewire ‘s popular P2P file-sharing program. This can be seen from a recent version of the software (4.16.6) which features an entry in its Options menu that let you enable a download directory destined to purchased tracks.

Limewire download store

Limewire has previously made known its intention of providing context-relevant links to content from its download store into the p2p program. In fact, this menu entry indicates that Limewire client is likely to function as a download manager for the store. For now the store’s Terms of Use don’t make available any download manager for potential customers.

Additionally, the aforementioned terms don’t allow any sharing of the content from the download store via the client; however, the application doesn’t prevent you from sharing the directory for store purchases manually.

Finally, Limewire’s copyright filter doesn’t appear to perform a total filtering out of the whole store catalogue.

Tags: file-sharing, limewire, music, online music store, p2p