File Sharers Look Out for the So Called Law-Abiding Citizens!

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

Techdirt puts forward quite an interesting case and through it addresses a most fire-starting question – Are Copyright Holders Purposely Putting Content On P2P In Order To Demand Money?

The UK law firm Davenport Lyons, mentioned in another P2POn post from today, comes again to our attention due to what appears to be a dedicated effort to shake money out of people disguised as a copyrights protecting act. The firm is even ahead of potential file sharers and is actually the one doing the uploading of the files downloaders could prove interested in so as to catch them red-handed.

Masnick from Techdirt was writing about a month ago: “It was quite clear from the beginning that this never had anything to do with copyright. It was just a straight up shakedown. The firm would send threatening letters claiming that it had evidence (even if it did not) and then demand a settlement fee be paid to avoid an actual lawsuit.”

Here’s the leading thread as traced by TechDirt: “Basically, copyright holders are licensing the copyright on various movies to a firm called DigiProtect. DigiProtect, in turn, hires Davenport Lyons to send out the pre-settlement letters. But in a leaked contract between DigiProtect and one copyright holder, it’s made quite clear in the contractual language that DigiProtect is expected to upload the movies as widely as possible prior to having a law firm send out the pre-settlement letters… ”

Well, this is definitely meant to open our eyes and hopefully others too, especially that the hypocritical walls around the claims and practices of the recording industry and some legal companies tend to get thicker.

Supportive as always, the TorrentFreak gives users a hand in keeping away from these people and offers a link to a list of DigiProtect-owned titles.

Tags: file-sharing, legal, p2p, UK

Atari Learns from Experience: “Think Before Acting!”

November 29, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games

Video game producer Atari has ceased going after alleged video game file sharers in the UK for the time being as it’s no longer collaborating with London-based Davenport Lyons law firm, CDfreaks reports.

The law firm aforementioned was representing the game company in the lawsuits the latter had filled against file sharers suspected of illegally trading Race07 and other Atari video games via BitTorrent.

Davenport Lyons has sent many letters to alleged pirates who had to choose between paying £500 in compensation and face legal action.

Atari revealed some details to The Register in an e-mail:”In relation to file sharing, our position is that we always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy. Whilst we are no longer working with Davenport Lyons, we continue to work with legal advisers to protect our rights.”

In a recent case against a Scottish couple the game company successfully put itself in an embarrassing situation (read here our coverage of the event).

It’s to be expected that Atari and other similar companies will continue their pursuit after illegal file sharers but they will probably have to develop a more decent and efficient way of doing it since so far they mainly got bad press out of their latest attempts.

Tags: Atari, copyright infringement, games, gaming industry, illegal file sharing, legal

File sharing Law Gets Further Delay

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

The Swedish Government still has to make efforts in coming forward with a decision that would keep things in a balance with respect to piracy and copyright as it has postponed such a decision based on the proposition on an anti-piracy law.

About two weeks ago P2POn was writing “that a cloud of controversies is about to spread due to a new law proposal against illegal file-sharing. The two factors that will stand opposed are the protection of intellectual property vs. the protection of personal integrity”. Well the two factors kept things on a standstill. The Ministry of Justice intended to have a law proposition against illegal file sharing in the hands of the Parliament this month. However, the session held two days ago didn’t end with the passing of the bill as hoped.

What will follow will be further discussions between the four centre-right parties regarding all the aspects that formulating such a law imply. Time seems to be a main priority since there are so many expectations (that differ) related to the controversial law bill and a final decision in this respect.

The opinions are divided – on one side we have those engaged in the music and film industry, a number a celebrities who’ve spoken in support of the law proposal and on the other side there are those adhering to the pro-integrity opinion against the law proposal.

The disagreement is also maintained at a political level between persons inside the four governing parties.

The situation kept government politicians busy over the last two weeks finding a solution that would equally respect both the protection of intellectual and the protection of personal integrity.

Tags: anti-piracy, copyright, copyright law, file-sharing law, legal, Sweden

uTorrent for Mac Users Is Finally Out

November 28, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, Downloads, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services

The Mac version of uTorrent whose early “alpha” leaking we covered a couple of months ago is finally here as beta.

This is really good news for Mac users who will now enjoy have a more stable version though some will stick with the Transmission BitTorrent client.

The site says: Now the lightweight power and performance of µTorrent available for your Mac.
This is beta software, and may contain serious bugs. We think it’s stable enough to share and hope your feedback will help us improve it.

Congratulations to uTorrent team for their efforts and keep up the good work (first impressions about the app seem good)!

Tags: file sharing applications, p2p clients, uTorrent

New Updates: BitComet 20081127 Beta

November 28, 2008 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services

BitComet is a powerful peer-to-peer file-sharing program which supports Bittorrent, one of the most popular p2p protocol created for high-speed distribution of large files. The app comes with many features including simultaneous downloads, selected downloads in torrent package, download queue, disk cache, fast-resume, chatting, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, ip-filter and many more.

BitComet offers a very clean and intuitive interface through which you have access to detailed information related to the peers, torrent and trackers. The program includes built-in links to different torrent sites and torrent search sites as well.

What we present here is the latest beta version of this software which you can get here and for which the changelog says – GUI Improved: start download immediately after open a BC link from Webpage;
GUI Improved: program crash when install/uninstall IE plugin under Windows Vista.

You can download the latest stable version v1.06 by clicking below.