Microsoft's Ballmer finds eggs don't suit him

The first thing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer thought of when a Hungarian student attacked him with eggs this week was that he had to keep his suit clean, he said on Thursday.

The student threw three eggs at Ballmer, the head of the world's largest software maker, while he spoke at a university in Budapest on Monday.

He said on Thursday he was later told the student was angry over a Hungarian government tender in which Microsoft was not involved.

"I thought it was a joke… maybe some prank, some theatre from the university. Then I heard a sound — Boom! And I looked at the board behind me, and I said 'uh oh, I have a problem'," Ballmer said during the Czech leg of his tour through Europe and Israel.

"I thought, 'I have to keep this suit clean' so I ducked under the table because I was worried, egg doesn't clean off very easily."

A video circulated widely on the Internet showed the student shouting and throwing three eggs at Ballmer, who crouched behind the podium. The student then left, escorted by university staff.

Ballmer then continued his speech.

"Oh, he waved to me on the way out, and I waved back," Ballmer said.

It was not the first food attack on a Microsoft executive. Protesters hit company founder Bill Gates with four custard pies in 1999.

Source: Reuters

Pioneering Music Piracy Group Suffers Another Conviction

Yesterday saw Barry Gitarts convicted by a jury in the Eastern District of Virginia of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.


Gitarts, aged 25, of Brooklyn, N.Y, previously operated under the alias ‘Dextro’ within the warez group aPOCALYPSE pRODUCTION cREW (aPC), thought to be first organized group to coordinate the pre-release uploading of mp3 files to the Internet. aPC were particularly successful in obtaining pre-release music CDs from music industry insiders and magazine workers.





According to evidence presented at the trial, between June 2003 and April 2004, Gitarts financed and ran a Texas-based server that the aPC group used to store thousands of music files, movies, software and video games.


“Music piracy is stealing and, unless you want to end up in a federal prison, don’t do it,” said U.S. Attorney Rosenberg.


For his part in the operation of the group, Gitarts is facing a possible five in years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release, however he is not the first aPC member to appear in court. So far, 15 criminal convictions have been handed down to aPC members including Mark Shumaker of Florida (aka ‘MarkAlso’), a previous leader of aPC who already admitted criminal copyright infringement back in 2003. Gitarts is accused of receiving payments from Shumaker.


District Court Judge Liam O’Grady will decide Gitarts’ fate when he sentences him on 8th August 2008.


This is an article from: TorrentFreak


Pioneering Music Piracy Group Suffers Another Conviction

Bell Opens Video Download Store, but Continues to Throttle BitTorrent

In their recently launched video download store Bell offers movies to own for $4.99, and rentals for $1.99.


At the same time however, customers of BitTorrent’s video store - a direct competitor to Bell’s store - and BitTorrent users in general see their traffic being throttled. Why? Bell says there is not enough bandwidth available.


The claim that there is not enough bandwidth to go round is suspicious to say the least, and Bell’s response to this data crisis is even more puzzling. Instead of investing money in their network capacity, they simply slow down the connections of their subscribers while ignoring the source of the problem.


To top it off, Bell decided to launch a competing video download service. So while they throttle customers using the efficient BitTorrent protocol because they supposedly generate too much traffic, Bell launches a bandwidth-hogging download store of their own. Not only does this seem unfair to their own customers, it also negatively affects other video services that base their business model on BitTorrent.


The throttling efforts by Bell and other ISPs actually hurt companies such as BitTorrent Inc and Vuze. These companies both offer products that depend on BitTorrent and they become pretty much worthless when BitTorrent traffic is throttled.


Since Bell now has its own video store, the ISP is actively degrading the service their BitTorrent based competitors offer. That is, Bell users will probably not choose a video download service based on BitTorrent because they can get only a few kilobits per second when the network is “busy”.


Instead of investing in more Internet gateway capacity and peering agreements, Bell instead chooses to launch a video store. Perhaps it’s time for Bell and other ISPs to think ahead - BitTorrent is not going away and there will only be more ‘bandwidth hogging’ services in the future.


Or maybe this just an anti-competitive move by Bell?


This is an article from: TorrentFreak


Bell Opens Video Download Store, but Continues to Throttle BitTorrent

Linking to movies leads to $4 million in fines

Two more sites have been fined some $4 million for enabling copyright infringement by linking to illegal movies and TV shows. The MPAA hails the judgments as a victory, even if the sites weren't hosting the copyrighted material themselves.

Read More...

Court smacks Autodesk, affirms right to sell used software

With the help of Public Citizen, an eBay merchant has won the right to sell used copies of AutoCAD on eBay. Autodesk had sought to block the sale under the software's license agreement, but a court ruled that such sales were legal under copyright's First Sale Doctrine.

Read More...

uTorrent Marked as Trojan by Avast Antivirus

Thousands of uTorrent users got a worrying message from their antivirus software recently. Their favorite BitTorrent client was recognized as a trojan by Avast, and deleted form their computers. Attempts to redownload the software from uTorrent.com resulted in the same trojan warning.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with uTorrent. The application somehow got listed in Avast’s list of trojans, resulting in a false positive. uTorrent 1.7.7 was mistakenly listed as “Win32:Poison-DU [Trj]“, whereas the newer Beta’s were unaffected.

Such ‘false positives’ often happen with other harmless applications - better safe than sorry- but since uTorrent doubled its user base in just 12 months and is installed on millions of computers, this problem affected a sizable number of people. It didn’t take long before the issue was reported to Avast, and after approximately 5 hours the problem was fixed.

Earlier this week it became clear that uTorrent’s WebUI (+ Azureus and TorrentFlux) were vulnerable to several exploits. Apparently the vulnerabilities in the webUI, allow outsiders to take over uTorrent and download random content onto one’s system.

uTorrent developer Greg Hazel told TorrentFreak that he is aware of the issue and working on a fix. For now, the BitTorrent client itself is perfectly safe and secure.

Book Authors See BitTorrent As a Promotional Tool

More and more authors seem to recognize the power of BitTorrent as a means to generate more sales, and actually upload free copies onto BitTorrent themselves.

Best selling author Paulo Coelho posted several of his books on BitTorrent, which boosted his sales significantly. The success of Coelho later inspired Leander Kahney, the author of “The Cult of Mac” and “The Cult of iPod”, to do the same.

A recent discussion on the positives and negatives of piracy confirms changing attitudes towards it. The “behind the scenes” thread on O’Reilly Radar was started by Eric Freeman, who wrote:

“Any thoughts on the rise of Head First titles (mostly HFDP and HTML) on Pirate Bay? I’m trying to just take it as a sign there is strong interest in the books still.”

The consensus among the authors who replied seems to be that having one’s book listed on BitTorrent sites is a good thing, and might actually generate more sales.

Nat Torkington wrote in a reply:

“So long as the royalty checks are strong, take BitTorrent as a sign of success rather than a problem. A wise dog doesn’t let his fleas bother him.”

Phil Torrone of Make magazine added:

“Yup - seeing your books / magazines on Pirate Bay is always a good thing.”

Piracy is less of a threat to book publishers than it is to the music industry though. As Nat Torkington notes, most people still prefer printed copies: “The HF books work really well as books, so at best the torrents act as advertisements for the superior print product.”

For music it’s different, as most people now prefer MP3s. The music that is offered on filesharing networks is superior to the DRMed alternatives that are available through music stores such as iTunes. The only option for the music industry is to adapt to the needs of their customers and start competing with pirates.

In related news, our very own Matt Mason just got his book “The Pirate’s Dilemma” leaked on BitTorrent. Matt announced that an official “free” version will be available for download later, but I’m sure that he doesn’t mind people sharing this pirated copy.

(Via O’Reilly TOC)

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

TorrentSpy Slapped with $110 Million Judgement

This default judgment is the result of an ongoing court case between the MPAA and Valence Media, TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnel’s company, that started early 2006.

It is uncertain at this point whether TorrentSpy will appeal.

Unsurprisingly, MPAA’s Dan Glickman was very pleased with the outcome of the case that lasted over two years, as he said:

“This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of sites. The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

“The claims made by the MPAA in this case don’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny,” says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party in a response. “It is also clear that our judicial system urgently needs some unbiased education in modern technical matters, as anyone that has watched this case knows the judge is out of her depth. What chance does justice have in that situation?”

In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision - and to ensure the privacy of their users - TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic and revenue.

This was not enough for the MPAA, who argued that TorrentSpy had ignored the court decision. The legal battle continued, and this lead to a preventative closure of the site by Justin, to protect the privacy of its users.

UPDATE - Wired have the judgement available in their coverage here

UPDATE - TorrentSpy will appeal the decision.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

The Pirate Bay File Police Bribery Complaints

The Pirate Bay case hasn’t even got to trial yet and already the controversy surrounding it is building up like some Hollywood plot.

Not only was the police star witness against the Pirate Bay previously employed return to his job as a police officer. Highly suspect to say the least, but not unusual in this case - the IFPI’s expert witness used to work for them too. by one of the plaintiffs, Warner Bros., but it was revealed that after this work he would

Various media and anti-piracy agencies all want a large piece of the Pirate Bay crew and between them are demanding millions of dollars in compensation, a point that is contested by Brokep: “In fact, they owe us a shitload of money. All the time we’ve spent on being called criminals and hunted down by private investigators and getting our stuff stolen by them - it’s gonna be expensive for them.”

Brokep says their initial target is police officer and IT forensics expert Jim Keyzer, who they clearly see as corrupt:

“We reported the police officer yesterday. For a lot of different reasons, at least three criminal complaints were filed. But you know what? It’s illegal to bribe the police as well. So more people have been reported to the police.”

The Pirate Bay crew say that when the case is over, they will demand compensation for all the time and money they have invested in this “media circus”.

Brokep is clearly in defiant mood: “So who’s the fucking criminals really? Hey Hollywood assholes - Be afraid. Very afraid. The law is coming to serve justice.”

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

MPAA Demands $15 Million from The Pirate Bay

The movie titles they are claiming damages for are Harry Potter, Syriana, The Pink Panther and Walk the Line and the 13 episodes of the popular TV-show Prison Break. MPAA demands 222,50 kronor ($37) for each download. For Harry Potter, 261,50 kronor ($43) and for the first season of Prison Break 416 kronor ($68).


‘The Pink Panther’ is the most popular title among Pirate Bay users; the least popular, by a mile, is ‘Syriana’. The movies have been downloaded 49,593 and 3,679 times respectively, according to MAQS, the law firm which represents MPAA.”


Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde (Brokep) is not impressed by Hollywood’s claims, he told TorrentFreak in a response: “They know they are losing, and try to make us look like big criminals by adding some zeros to a claim for a made-up crime.”


“The worst thing is that I lost 100 kronor on a bet on the number they would come up with,” Sunde added. “And, it sucks that they didn’t claim more than for Napster and the other sites. It’s cooler to break the record.”


When Monique Wadsted, MPAA’s lawyer and a talkshow host, was asked whether the MPAA really thinks every download is a lost sale, she said: “We don’t know that, but the copyright law doesn’t care about that. It says that if you have downloaded something illegally, you must pay regardless if you had bought it or not.”


Wadsted expects the worst now she has announced the claims, even being hacked by Pirate Bay fanboys: “I know that they have an increased interest in my person and that they try to ridicule me. I also count on having my computer hacked. As a business lawyer, I’m not used to these kinds of reactions.”


MPAA is not the only organization claiming damages. A month ago, IFPI claimed $2.5milion in damages and earlier today Antipiratbyrån asked for (1.1 million. This January, prosecutor Håkan Roswall asked the court for a $188,000 fine for four individuals - Fredrik Neij (”TiAMO”), Gottfrid Svartholm (”Anakata”), Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström.


There is no date set for the court case yet, but it will probably take a few more months before the trial starts.


To be continued.


This is an article from: TorrentFreak


MPAA Demands $15 Million from The Pirate Bay

Best-Selling Author Turns Piracy into Profit

“Since the dawn of time, human beings have felt the need to share - from food to art. Sharing is part of the human condition. A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone,” Coelho told TorrentFreak, explaining why he decided to share his books for free.


His urge to share received quite a lot of attention after Coelho started a weblog with the name Pirate Coelho a few months ago. His motivation? He wanted people to have the opportunity to ‘try’ his books for free, but he knew some of his publishers wouldn’t agree right away. So, he took matters into his own hands and put his own books onto BitTorrent, FTP sites and Rapidshare.


“There was a strong reaction when I mentioned the site at Digital Life Design, back in January 2008,” Coelho explains. “The blog was out there for a while, but it seems that nobody from the publishing world was paying attention to it. When I spoke about it, all eyes were aimed at the site. From that moment on, based on actual numbers, the publishers not only accepted it, but helped me.”


“Harper Collins, for example, decided to offer a new book of mine every month, for free reading.” This, together with the pirated copies worked out really well, and the book sales went up. “If you go to the New York Times Bestseller list, you’ll see that the Alchemist jumped to the #6, and the Witch of Portobello is in the extended list.”


BitTorrent is one of the filesharing networks Coelho uses to share his books. “I am using it now, while doing this interview,” he says, and he encourages other authors to follow his lead. “The ultimate goal of a writer is to be read. Money comes later.” This is of course easy to say for an author who has already sold millions of copies, but Coelho goes even further, and argues that ’sharing’ books will actually help upcoming authors to sell more books. It is a win-win situation.


“I do think that when a reader has the possibility to read some chapters, he or she can always decide to buy the book later,” Coelho says, indicating that it is not a lost sale. On the other hand, the Internet makes it easier for new authors to publish content, and get people to read their work. “Nowadays, people are being encouraged to write, and start blogs, the book industry already found a few new talents on Internet,” Coelho says.


When we asked Paulo about the difference between book piracy and the unauthorized copying of music and movies, he told us that it is difficult to compare, since it is easier to consume movies and music digitally. Most people still prefer to read a real book however, pirated ebooks are more often used to preview. This can always change in the future, but for now Coelho is not impressed by the ebook reading devices that are out there, and many of his readers seem to agree.


“A (real) book is easy to carry, easy to read anywhere. Reading a book on a monitor on the other hand is very tiresome, and it would be even more expensive to print (considering cartridge prices) than to buy a paperback,” he says. What the movie and music industry can learn from Coelho, however, is that availability is of the essence, and restrictions will only lead to reactance.


Coelho fully adopted all the possibilities the Internet offers, as he uses his weblog, Myspace, FaceBook, Flickr and even Twitter to interact with his readers. “I want to share everything I write, from my books to my blogs.”


He recently started a new experiment, as he encouraged his readers to make a movie based on one of his books. When “The Witch of Portobello” was released, Hollywood came rushing in with movie deals, but Coelho told his agent: “it is time to start a new adventure!”


This is an article from: TorrentFreak


Best-Selling Author Turns Piracy into Profit

BitTorrent Community Mourns as Tracker Founder Passes Away

During April, TorrentFreak interviewed Merrin after his site was shutdown in error following a blunder by an anti-piracy outfit. Despite this setback, Merrin appeared full of optimism for the future so it’s particularly sad that we hand over to ‘Eazbak’ from MVGroup to bring us tragic news:


“It is with a heavy heart that I write this, Merrin the founder of MVGroup.org passed away suddenly on Monday 5th May. He had been ill for sometime but the extent of his illness was not known to the staff , his family or his personal friends. His passing will leave an enormous void at MVGroup.


I was asked me to write something here about Merrin, but to be honest I just can’t face it, the thought of doing so is just too painful. So I’ll simply add an abridged version of a post Merrin made at MVGroup some time long, long ago, it will give you a much better insight into who he was and what he was all about than anything I could have written.”

How did MVGroup start and what are our aims, hmm, perhaps a potted history is in order.


Summer 2001 was when I did my first rip, it wasn’t MVGroup back then it was just under my tag. Went well, was released onto the edonkey network with some success. It happened to be Walking With Beasts. I had been given the DVD’s as a present. I always made a point of watching what I could on BBC on tv, but realised after the reaction I got to my first release that there was very little of this kind of thing floating around on the net back then. Don’t get me wrong, I love ST or 24 as much as the next person but I knew that I wanted to give something back to the community that I had taken from for so long. The best way to do this seemed to be to me to release the things that I enjoyed, but couldn’t find, working on the principle that if I liked them there had to be more people out there that did too.


MVGroup was formed in about October of 2002. I talked DarkRain (Vittorio in those days, hence MVGroup, MVGroup also being a tag we had affected once or twice on game rips we had done) into helping me out with rips and supplying DVD’s, we were initially nothing more than a loose association releasing rips on FileNexus.


We then started to generate a bit of interest and we were given (alright I nagged the FN admins) our own section to call home on the FN forums.


Myself and DarkRain had drifted further apart both in real-life and online and MVGroup was looking like it was about to die from lack of time, interest, and releases. It was at this point that I, for want of something better to do, decided that maybe I would put some of our old releases out using the Bitttorrent protocol rather than ed2k. I quickly put a few releases out that way and generated some interest from the BT community. My interest re-piqued I realised that there was no way of releasing on BT using our sections on either FN or FTi that we had by now. The answer was our own webpage.


I got to work on a simple HTML based site on my ISP webspace, that was enough to relight DarkRain’s interest in MVG too and we started cranking releases out again on both BT and ed2k. Funnily enough it didn’t take long before my ISP were getting unhappy with a p2p site on their space. It was then that this current site started to evolve. I decided I better learn how to use proper website tools like php and sql db backends etc. The whole site was put together to a first usable state in about 24 hours straight by just myself lol, that was a day and a no mistake..


Then we started recruiting like-minded individuals that would help us to release and spread the material that we were now known for.


So, what are we trying to achieve, well it isn’t notoriety, it isn’t fame, it isn’t anything other than a sincere desire to make sure that as many people as possible have their horizons broadened by the quality material that we release.


After all we do have a tagline ‘An education in p2p’


….and it ain’t just there because it’s snappy.

So what of the future of the MVGroup tracker? m06166, a close friend of Merrin, explains: “There will be no closing down and no major changes are intended. We will not change the policy of MVGroup of sharing knowledge with the world without ratios for free. Ever.”


The final word from Eazbak: “Our mission now is to make sure that Merrin’s legacy continues, not just this year or the next but for as long as we can possibly do so, the staff is united, we have DVDs ready to rip, files ready to seed, watch out for an MVGroup tagged file on a tracker near you soon!”


Anyone wishing to pay their respects may do so here (registration needed, tracker signups open)


In memory of Merrin - 1976-2008


This is an article from: TorrentFreak


BitTorrent Community Mourns as Tracker Founder Passes Away

This is what I call 'talent'

The Pirate Bay Enters List of 100 Most Popular Webites

The Pirate Bay is the second BitTorrent site that has managed to get a spot among the 100 most visited (97) domains on the Internet. The BitTorrent tracker has good company in this prestigious list, as it brushes shoulders with sites such as Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia.


Of all BitTorrent sites, Mininova is currently in the lead, ranked 52th according to Alexa’s new and improved statistics. The Piratebay comes second, before isoHunt, Torrentz.com and btjunkie. It is estimated that The Pirate Bay has close to 100 million unique visitors per month.


It is not only the web traffic that got a traffic boost, the number of people using the Pirate Bay tracker has quadrupled compared to the population in December 2006, and is now at 12 million. The number of torrents has grown from 600,000 to 1,200,000 in the same period.


Hollywood is doing all it can to force The Pirate Bay offline, but it seems that the site only grows more and more, perhaps because of the extra publicity generated by anti-piracy activities. We saw a similar pattern two years ago, when the Pirate Bay nearly doubled their traffic after the raid by the Swedish police.


The expansion of The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites shows that BitTorrent’s popularity continues to grow, and there is no sign that this will stop anytime soon.





This is an article from: TorrentFreak


The Pirate Bay Enters List of 100 Most Popular Webites

Michael Jackson to Take on The Pirate Bay

The Web Sheriff announced today that Michael Jackson joined the Village People, UB40 and the rights holders of Bob Marley’s music, in an attempt to get compensation for the losses they allegedly suffered at the hands of the popular BitTorrent website.


Pirate Bay’s Brokep commented on the announcement by saying: “The common thing for all of these artists of course is that no one listens to them anymore.”


This is not the first time the Sheriff, aka John Giacobbi, has clashed with the Pirate Bay folks. Last November he announced that he planned to sue them in the U.S., France and Sweden for infringing the rights of Prince.


Web Sheriff will demand $100 million dollars in compensation, slightly less than the MPAA asked for last week. Adding them both together amounts to a record breaking claim. “The good thing about this is that we just broke TorrentSpy’s lawsuit. Maybe time to call Guinness, we like to break world records and we just broke one I think,” Brokep writes.


In the meantime, The Web Sheriff is still trying to get ABBA on board. “It would also be good/appropriate if the members of ABBA could take up the fight against these pirates, as they personify the Swedish music industry’s successes and are renowned ambassadors for Sweden, contrary to The Pirate Bay.” he said previously.


Again, Brokep disagrees, he sees The Pirate Bay as Sweden’s true ambassadors. “All over digg.com and other cool social networks there is always the comment “last place on earth with true freedom is Sweden” or ‘I really want to move to Sweden’,” he wrote a few months ago.


It will be interesting to see how this develops, for now, all the Web Sheriff has ever done is making threats. You would think that he must know by now that this has no effect on The Pirate Bay team.


This is an article from: TorrentFreak


Michael Jackson to Take on The Pirate Bay

Company cheesed off at Apple, CBS over Mighty Mouse mark

A Maryland company called Man & Machine has filed a lawsuit against Apple and CBS over the Mighty Mouse trademark. The suit accuses Apple of knowingly violating the trademark by creating its own Mighty Mouse, and also says that CBS should not have licensed its own trademark to Apple. Heeeerreeee I come to save the day!

Read More...

Lawsuit over text messages ignores SMS off switches

AT&T, Sprint, Alltel, Cellular South, Verizon, US Cellular, and Virgin Mobile are on the wrong end of a class-action lawsuit related to text messaging. The plaintiffs accuse the companies of forcing users to pay for SMSs they don't want and refusing to turn off the feature—even though most carriers make shutting off SMS functionality quite easy.

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YouTube rebuffs senators's demands to remove Islamist videos

On Monday, Sen. Joe Lieberman demanded that Google remove videos created by Islamist organizations from YouTube. Google responded that it had removed videos depicting or advocating violence, but argued that removing all videos originating from Islamist groups would run counter to Google's commitment to free speech.

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Maybe a little evil: Google outs Indian man to authorities

An Indian man was arrested over the weekend for allegedly posting vulgar comments about Indian politician Sonia Gandhi. Google handed over the info, as part of its compliance with local law enforcement.

An Indian man was arrested over the weekend for allegedly posting derogatory and vulgar content about Indian politician Sonia Gandhi on Google's social networking site, Orkut. 22-year-old Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid had posted his comments in an Orkut community called "I hate Sonia Gandhi" through an Orkut account associated with his Gmail account. With Google's help, local authorities were able to verify Vaid's identity and make the arrest.

Read More...

Mininova Faces Legal Action: Filter or Else

BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit responsible for shuttering or forcing torrent sites such as Demonoid overseas, has announced that it will take BitTorrent-behemoth Mininova to court. BREIN hopes the court will force Mininova to filter its search results, so that all .torrent files which may point to unauthorized content are removed.


Mininova is currently the largest BitTorrent site with over 30 million unique visitors per month. Mininova displays user submitted torrents and carries legitimate premium content from publishers such as CBC. Unlike The Pirate Bay, the site does not have their own BitTorrent tracker.


It transpires that BREIN and Mininova have been secretly trying to reach a mutually beneficial agreement for more than a year now, but when one side believes they are acting within the law and the other side believes the opposite, a legal clash seems inevitable.


Erik Dubbelboer, one of the co-founders of Mininova, told TorrentFreak that Mininova will not cave in to pressure from BREIN. He expects to have more details about the upcoming lawsuit later this week: “We will proceed to court with full confidence. We operate within the law, as we maintain our ‘notice and take down’ policy. That is, we remove search results if a copyright holder asks us to.”


Sites like YouTube operate in a similar manner - if the site receives a demand from a copyright holder that it should take content down, it does so under its DMCA obligations and there is no further action. Mininova doesn’t even host any unauthorized content, only .torrent files, which should make it even less of a target than YouTube. Typically, BREIN doesn’t see it that way.


The announced legal action will focus on the question whether Mininova has to filter their search results or not. BREIN wants Mininova to install such a filter, Mininova on the other hand doesn’t want to censor the search results. The outcome of the case is likely to have a huge impact on the future of other BitTorrent sites, and even sites such as Google and YouTube.


BREIN has been asked for a comment, but they have yet to respond.


This is an article from: TorrentFreak


Mininova Faces Legal Action: Filter or Else