Saturday

German file-sharers now have less to worry about

15 August 2008 14:50 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 5 comments

German file-sharers now have less to worry about Citing thousands of file-sharing violation investigations that will take too much of its time, the General Prosecutor’s Office of the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia has said they will no longer prosecute misdemeanor file-sharing and will instead only prosecute "commercial-scale" file-sharing.
In an interview with Jetzt.de, Axel Steel of the office says a "commercial file-sharer is someone who shares over €3,000 of material". He feels that songs are worth one euro a piece and movies are worth €15. That is exactly the way it should be, not $10,000 USD a song, or whatever the RIAA feels like charging per song.
Of course you are steal breaking the law if you pirate music but the Prosecutor’s office does not have the man power to prosecute the expected 50,000 violations for 2008.
The official then went on to compare marijuana to file sharing saying "both are very popular among youths...it is illegal to consume it, but people do it anyway, and the authorities can’t be bothered in frying smaller fish as it’s a waste of time and resources. Going after the big distributors is the way to go."

original article here at afterdawn.com

Wednesday

Jury Convicts Web Site Operator in P2P Case

By GRANT GROSS, IDG News Service\Washington Bureau, IDG Published: June 27, 2008

A former administrator at EliteTorrents.org has been convicted of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement in a Virginia court, the first time in the U.S. that a peer-to-peer user has been convicted by a jury of copyright infringement, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed Friday.

Daniel Dove, 26, formerly of Clintwood, Virginia, faces a maximum sentence in prison for his participation in EliteTorrents.org, a Web site that specialized in releasing copyright works without authorization, the DOJ said. EliteTorrents, which ceased operating in May 2005, used BitTorrent peer-to-peer technology to distribute pirated copies of movies, software, music and video games, the DOJ said.

A jury in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia was presented with evidence that Dove was an administrator of a small group of EliteTorrents members known as "Uploaders," who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group.

Dove recruited members who had high-speed Internet connections, usually at least 50 times faster than a typical high-speed residential Internet connection, to become Uploaders, the DOJ said. Dove operated a high-speed server, which he used to distribute pirated content to the Uploaders, the agency said in a press release.

Dove's conviction is the eighth plea or conviction resulting from Operation D-Elite, a nationwide federal crackdown against the illegal distribution of copyrighted movies, software, games and music over P2P networks using BitTorrent, the DOJ said.

Operation D-Elite targeted leading members of EliteTorrents. At its height, EliteTorrents attracted more than 125,000 members and distributed about 700 movies, which were downloaded a total of 1.1 million times, the DOJ said. In many cases, digital works were available on EliteTorrents before they were released to the public, the DOJ said.

Copyright 2008 IDG News Service. All Rights Reserved.

Found at: 

Tuesday

some comments from Bryan at Chaosmen.com

Some recent comments from Bryan Ockert at Chaosmen.com:
"MediaAbuseLLC is doing great! I think most companies have a small staff..and they think that staff can cover it. Not true..who wants to pay a staff members taxes, unemployment and insurance to comb the net and find stolen content...

We had a conference call on Friday and I mentioned the 85 or so files you had found and had removed, in just 3 days.

I don't think $100-150 bucks a month is too much to have this kind of service. But then again..I am the only employee here, so the idea of paying a small fee for someone to "inhibit" file sharing…seems like a fantastic idea to me! Sign me up!" Bryan Ockert - Chaosmen.com

Anti-Piracy For Gay Movies (YouTube video)

 
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