Another ISP Gives Up Storing IP Addresses to Protect Customers

April 30, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 
The Sweden's anti-piracy law backfires - ISPs determined to protect their users

The Sweden's anti-piracy law backfires - ISPs determined to protect their users (personal info will be erased)

Tele2 AB, one of the leading Swedish Internet service providers came forward yesterday with a statement definitely not to the liking of record industry. The ISP announced it will no longer store the IP addresses of its customers as a result of the new anti-piracy law the government in Sweden has recently put in force and which allows copyright owners seek court orders to force ISPs reveal confidential data about their subscribers. Less than two weeks ago, Bahnhof, another Swedish ISP,  made a similar announcement.

The new anti-file sharing legislation, which is based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), was implemented on April 1. The Stockholm-based ISP explained that after studying thoroughly the new law it realized there was no legal requirement regarding the storage of customers data.

“It’s good that you’ve got an operator that is willing to defend the rights of the users and is willing to respect that we do have rights,” commented Monica Horten, a U.K.-based Internet policy researcher and also founder of IPtegrity.com.

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Pay to Leech BitTorrent Sites Raided in Hungary

April 30, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

pay-to-leech-bittorrent-sites-raided-in-hungarySeveral Hungarian BitTorrent and Warez sites have been shut down by the authorities after a stormy raid which led to the confiscation of more than 40 servers (hosting about 250TB of data).The action is in conformity with a growing anti-piracy stand in the country. The fact that there are many “pay to leech” sites running in Hungary just pushed officials into taking quick measures.

“It is difficult to energize police and customs officials to investigate Internet cases because Hungarian court decisions are not a deterrent,” says an International Intellectual Property Alliance.

Shortly after the report, Hungarian authorities wanted to prove themselves and raided several BitTorrent trackers among which Bitlove, BitMusic and Indep and also some spam sites. Allegedly ten individuals were arrested, six of them remaining in police custody for further interrogation.

It seems that the reason these sites were targeted expressly is that they were not free. Their members were required to pay for access through premium SMS.

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Santangelo File Sharing Case Over, RIAA Gets $7,000 in Settlement

April 30, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

santangelo-file-sharing-case-over-riaa-gets-7000-in-settlementPatricia Santangelo was sued by RIAA about four years ago. Since then the case has aroused heated public debate. The woman living in New York accused of illegal file sharing refused to reach a settlement (something that the RIAA has got very good at) stating that she was an “Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo” (as a federal judge put it).

But the RIAA didn’t want to the let that one go and after dropping the suit it followed with another filed against Patricia’s kids. The trade group pointed to them as the ones responsible for infringement in the Santangelo household, by having downloaded over 1,000 songs illegally. Thus a settlement which the RIAA love so much has been finally reached and Santangelo will pay damage compensation of $7,000.

RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth answered questions about the cost of this case to the RIAA saying: “We don’t break out costs per case, and it’s not a question of it being `worth it’ or a `victory’.”

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Google & YouTube Could Face Legal Problems Due to Pirate Bay Precedent

April 29, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 
The Pirate Bay Trial Could Offer Ground for Other Legal BAttles

The Pirate Bay Trial Could Offer Ground for Other Legal Battles

We all know by now how the Pirate Bay trial turned out whether the result was to our liking or not. However, few of us got extra-concerned about how this trial could actually affect other big names in the digital world such as Google (or one of its babies – YouTube) and consequently affect us beyond the boundaries of a shut down BitTorrent tracker.

All interested also know that the founders of the Pirate Bay were not actually found guilty of copyright infringement but of assisting in copyright infringement as the site itself did not host any copyrighted content but only linked to such files.

Another aspect, however, is now coming into view – according to lawyer Simon Levine (a practice leader in the IP and technology group at law firm DLA Piper) the court’s decision in the Pirate Bay case may drag some other companies in the same legal issues. The implications this newly created precedent could be huge – the likes of YouTube and Google may be affected, since they as well facilitate access to copyrighted content. The waters have been now stirred and there high expectancy surrounding the future outcome of trials in the United States regarding YouTube’s legitimacy in offering copyright material for free to the general audience.

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App Store Hits One Billion Downloads

April 28, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, Downloads, Tops 

app-store-hits-one-billion-downloadsApple has announced that it has passed the incredible milestone of 1 billion downloads of its applications from what has become the largest applications store in the world. It took only nine months for the App Store to hit that number.

“The revolutionary App Store has been a phenomenal hit with iPhone and iPod touch users around the world, and we’d like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve the astonishing milestone of one billion apps downloaded,” points out Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “In nine months, the App Store has completely revolutionized the mobile industry and this is only the beginning.”

Currently the revolutionary digital store includes over 35,000 applications available to consumers in 77 countries. This makes possible for developers to connect to tens of millions of iPhone™ and iPod touch users worldwide.

Developers are already expecting this summer the iPhone OS 3.0 software update which will offer them more than 1,000 new developer APIs enabling In-App Purchases, P2P (Peer-to-Peer) connections, App control of accessories, and Push Notifications. Apart from that, the iPhone OS 3.0 release will include over 100 customer features among which cut, copy & paste; Spotlight™ search; landscape keyboard and view for all key iPhone apps; MMS support; and expanded parental controls for apps, TV shows, and films from the App Store.

Stay (i)Tuned.

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