An amendment designed to protect Internet users from the anti-piracy lobby has been rejected by President Sarkozy of the European Council. The rejection goes against the will of the European Parliament, where 88% of the members already voted in favor of the amendment, which was originally destined to protect file-sharers from Internet disconnection under the ‘3 strikes’ framework.

When the European Parliament accepted the amendment this September, it did so to protect the rights and freedoms of Internet users. This was much needed, as in recent years, anti-piracy lobby groups have called for tougher monitoring of Internet users and are actively working to erode their rights further.

The amendment, drafted by Guy Bono and other members of the European Parliament, was supposed to put a halt to the march of the anti-piracy lobby. However, despite the fact that is was adopted by an overwhelming majority, with 573 parliament members voting in favor with just 74 rejections, the European Council went against this democratic vote.

In September, Bono stated in a response to the vote: “You do not play with individual freedoms like that,” going on to say that the French government should review its three-strikes law. Sarkozy had other plans though, and in his position of President of the European Council, he convinced his friends this Thursday to reject the proposal.

The rejection also goes against conclusions from the EU culture ministers last week, who sided with the more balanced view of the European Commission, by encouraging copyright holders to work on offering “high quality, accessible, easy to use and consumer friendly” content online – instead of chasing pirates.

Guy Bono was appalled by the recent decision of the Council, which he referred to as “an arrangement between friends.” Not all is lost though, the amendment might pass in January or February 2009, when it will be proposed again. However, as Bono noted, this initial rejection is likely to result in a negative image of European democracy.

It seems that the lobbying efforts of the MPAA, RIAA and others have paid off, and for France and other European member states the road to a ‘three-strikes law’ for alleged pirates is now wide open again.

In France, Sarkozy will now go forward with implementing his controversial three-strikes law. We can only hope that other European countries wont follow this example. What a great demokarzy Europe has.

Post from: TorrentFreak

A week ago today, customers of the ISP Orange across the UK and France found that they could no longer access The Pirate Bay. Many of them fired off emails to the service provider, worried that Orange was censoring their access to the Internet. Now, a week later, Orange have answered officially – its customers should have no further difficulty accessing the world’s largest tracker.

When reports from last Friday started to escalate over the weekend, BitTorrent users with the ISP Orange grew more and more concerned. Out of nowhere it appeared that The Pirate Bay was off limits and they could no longer access the site.

Reports coming in from France told the same story – no Pirate Bay and no helpful explanation from Orange, despite many complaints. Many believed that Orange had taken the decision to block the Swedish tracker and they began voicing displeasure.

TorrentFreak picked up the story on Monday, contacting Orange PR for an explanation. After a reminder on Tuesday, we published the response from Orange who said: “Our understanding is that Orange doesn’t block access to any sites other than those identified by the Internet Watch Foundation, that relate to illegal child abuse imagery. However, we’re looking into this and will update you again as soon as we can.”

File-sharers live in uncertain times and when organizations such as the IFPI actively take steps to force ISPs to censor the Internet, it’s little wonder that people come to the conclusions they do. So we asked Orange customers to tell us directly if they could access The Pirate Bay or not. An overwhelming majority said they couldn’t, but a few explained that they could, which cast some doubt on the ISP-wide block theory. However, with nothing official coming back from Orange, lingering suspicions remained.

Finally today, an Orange spokesperson responded officially, thanking TorrentFreak for bringing the matter to their attention and offering the following message:

We can confirm that we have not actively stopped customers accessing the web sites reportedly affected. However, following investigation by our network partners, a small section of our Internet traffic was rerouted by one of them which has now restored access to the sites concerned.

As has always been the case, it is Orange UK’s policy to not block customer access to websites, other than to those containing images of child abuse as identified by the IWF.

So there it is in black and white – Orange customers can officially access The Pirate Bay again. As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we encourage feedback in the comments – are you an Orange customer and has the site returned for you?

Post from: TorrentFreak

After Atari received some bad press recently for mistakenly accusing an elderly couple of pirating one of its games, the company has now stopped the anti-piracy campaign in question. The “witch-hunt”, carried out by the UK law firm Davenport Lyons on behalf of Atari, based on spreadsheets full of IPs gathered by a company named Logistep, continues to lose credibility.

For regular readers of TorrentFreak, Davenport Lyons and Logistep are familiar names. For more than a year now we have reported on their missteps, threatening tactics, and especially their reluctance to have their evidence challenged in court.

Recently their efforts to make money from alleged pirates was picked up by the mainstream press, because an elderly couple was incorrectly accused by them of pirating an Atari game, Test Drive Unlimited. It is of course a stereotype to think that people over fifty don’t play games, but with the help of consumer magazine, Which? Computing, the lawyers were forced to drop the case.

If anything, this suggests that the evidence they gather for use against alleged sharers is not as strong as it should be. In fact, this is not the first time that a case has dropped before it went to court. Apparently, the lawyers that represent the various copyright holders will only make their case when they have a sure win – that is, when the defendants fail to show up. Others who dig in their heels and refuse to pay learn that the consequences aren’t nearly as bad as the law firm would have everyone believe.

Meanwhile, thousands of UK citizens are receiving letters in which they are accused of downloading music, games or more recently, adult entertainment. In these letters, they are asked to pay a few hundred pounds, or else they are threatened with the prospect of being dragged through court, where the fine – if the law firm is to be believed – will be multiplied several times over.

There aren’t any precise figure on how many alleged pirates have paid up, but based on earlier comments from the law firm itself, it’s believed to be between 40 and 60%. It’s not unthinkable that some copyright owners are making more from this type of pirate-chasing than they do from sales of their actual products. Quite an innovative business model actually, especially since in many cases it guarantees a revenue stream for sub-standard products that otherwise simply wouldn’t sell.

But now, according to The Register, computer game manufacturer Atari has had enough, as they have canceled their collaboration with Davenport Lyons and Logistep. Exactly why is open to speculation, but it is difficult to find a single positive article about the activities of these companies, particularly when recent and rather more potentially embarrassing actions are taken into consideration. It’s not surprising that they choose to distance themselves from the operation.

In a comment to El Reg, Atari said that it will “always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy.” An interesting comment, since cashing in on alleged piracy happens after the offense, and has nothing to do with protection. However, this statement seems more of an attempt to show that this withdrawal doesn’t indicate that Atari is going soft on piracy.

Of course, copyright holders have every right to protect their material, or even make up for the losses they claim to suffer. Whether it is the right thing to do is questionable though, especially when the tactics are as aggressive as they are in these cases.

The complete lack of transparency in respect of the evidence gathering techniques just makes matters worse, and every negative aspect is compounded when people like Simon Davies of Privacy International speak about facets of the operation in very unfavorable terms. “This is appalling, it breaches a number of fundamental human rights,” he said. “They risk bringing the law into disrepute – just because lawyers can do something it doesn’t mean that they should.”

A great example of where copyright has gone wrong has emerged recently. In a leaked contract between DigiProtect (copyright protection outfit) and Evil Angel (content producer), the copyright was actually transferred in order for DigiProtect to make it available on filesharing networks.

“LICENSOR grants DIGIPROTECT the exclusive right to make the movies listed in Appendix 1 worldwide available to the public via remote computer networks, so-called peer-2-peer and internet file sharing networks such as e-Donkey, Kazaa, Bitorrent, etc. for the duration of this agreement.”

So, DigiProtect makes the files available to cash in on the people who attempt to download the files, but not to protect their intellectual property in a way copyright law was put in place for. In fact, this has nothing to do with copyright protection, they are simply exploiting the system. Probably a good thing that Atari got out before it all falls apart.

The question now is how are the other publishers feeling now that Atari has had enough? Since they are based in the UK, the focus now falls on CodeMasters, who are still pursuing people over Colin McRae Dirt, but does the return on the project cancel out the mountains of bad PR it generates? Time will tell.

Post from: TorrentFreak