In 2008, Newzbin received complaints from the MPA who later in the year filed for an injunction against the site. (case background here)

The case began in London’s High Court last week and since then a chaotic view of the proceedings has been painted by Newzbin in a couple of daily updates.

Since then Newzbin claims that the MPA has tried to use these updates against them in court, but will continue to provide them anyway in order to keep their users updated.

There’s unlikely to be many more for a while though, since the case has been adjourned for 2 weeks. Newzbin asked for more time to go hire more lawyers, an application the MPA contested. In the end Newzbin prevailed.

The Usenet indexing company now says it expects closing submissions in early March 2010.

Article from: FreakBits

In 2008, Newzbin received complaints from the MPA who later in the year filed for an injunction against the site. (case background here)

The showdown in London’s High Court before Mr Justice Kitchin began last week but after the first day, reporting by Newzbin went a little quiet.

Since then there have been two updates by the company. Day 3 first;

There have been bizarre side issues which have emerged. To be fair to the MPA (god, we never thought we’d ever say that!) it was out of their control and down to internal Newzbin issues. Combined with Caesium falling ill during cross-examination by the opposing barrister, this has caused a delay and things are a bit of a shambles at the moment.

Quite what happens next week when the trial restarts is unclear and there may be more delays. Times are getting interesting: in a Chinese sense.

Caesium’s health aside, the update for Day 4 paints a pretty gloomy picture.

A refreshed Caesium finished cross examination today.

We may be being paranoid, but at the moment our hunch is that things are looking less positive for us than last week. We hope we are wrong.

Other than these updates, Newzbin isn’t commenting on the case directly and the MPA told us they could not comment on an ongoing case, so providing more detailed coverage is proving problematic.

Article from: FreakBits

Last year several movie studios including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network (all under the umbrella of AFACT) took legal action against Aussie ISP, iiNet.

They claimed that iiNet did nothing to stop its customers from sharing their copyright media via BitTorrent. The ISP refuted the claim with a multi-layered defense, and the case was adjourned in November 2009.

It’s believed that Justice Dennis Cowdroy will deliver his judgment next week. Check out TorrentFreak for a full report.

In the meantime, those wishing to brush up on the history of the case can find our detailed coverage here, here, here, here and here.

Article from: FreakBits

According to Judge Michael Davis the damages are lowered because the initial fine was “so grossly excessive as to shock the conscience of the court. A verdict is not considered excessive unless there is plain injustice or a monstrous or shocking result.”

The result is that, if Thomas is able to pay anything at all, the RIAA will have ‘only’ $54,000 to add to their anti-piracy funds instead of the $1.92 million it was awarded initially.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously informed us that the ‘damages’ will not go to any of the artists, but to more anti-piracy campaigns. “Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs,” he said.

The RIAA has 7 days to challenge the reduced verdict and request for a new trial.

Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston student hit with $650,000 in damages back in July 2009, has filed for a new trial earlier this month, also because of excessive damages.

Article from: FreakBits

“Site Down F**ked over by some Jealous d**khead”

According to those present in IRC, the site owner, RikT, was awoken at 3am with a police raid. RikT was taken to the police station, and his desktop confiscated. He was then bailed until November 15th.

The buzz around the channel, including amongst some of the ops, was that someone jealous of how well the site had been doing in tracker racing, had ‘ratted’ to the police, causing the raid (but such claims should always be taken lightly). Scene-base carried, as the name implies, mostly scene releases, always a high-priority target for Copyright Enforcers.

However, all may not be as it seems. Today, RikT told FreakBits that it was nothing to do with the site at all, but was to do with an aquintance fingering him for counterfeit CDs. He has been bailed for another 28 days while investigations continue.

However there is no confirmation from any other sources. Enquires to the police have, as yet, gone un-answered, and the actions of Lokitorrent in 2005 has meant that any such investigation must contain outside confirmation. Some of the Scene-base admins also said they would start a new tracker, but no news on that. Either way, it brings into question again the percieved ‘safety’ of private trackers.

In the mean time, RikT has a message for the community, that he “dont want any publicity… …[and will] just let it all go and take it as a lesson learend[sic].”

Article from: FreakBits

In 2006, the Kyoto District Court handed out a fine equivalent to around $17,000 to Isamu Kaneko, the creator of the popular Winny software.

Today the Osaka High Court acquitted the 39 year old, overturning the earlier verdict.

Kaneko, a former tutor at the University of Tokyo, was arrested in 2004 after being accused of helping users distribute copyrighted material on the Internet with the software he created.

“Today’s ruling helps not only myself but also other computer engineers in pursuing the development of computer technology,” said Kanecko.

Article from: FreakBits

However, today it was concluded that the three founders of the site are not the registered owners anymore. The site is in fact owned by and registered to a company called “Reservella” which is registered in Seychelles, and not any of the defendants named in the case.

It was further concluded that Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter are broke, and that there are no assets that the record labels or any other the other plaintiffs can claim. This April the three were ordered to pay $905,000 in damages to compensate the entertainment industries, but it seems unlikely that the media moguls will see much of that.

Article from: FreakBits

The entertainment industry has been going after Telenor for several months already. After the ISP refused to block the site voluntarily, the copyright holders announced in June that they would take legal action to force a blockade.

“We believe Telenor contributes to a violation of copyright law. We have not demanded compensation from Telenor, but we believe that they have a duty to stop customers from using Pirate Bay,” Cato Strøm, the CEO of the local music licensing outfit said in a response.

Atle Lessum of Telenor said that the ISPs respects the rights of artists, but that blocking one site would be useless, since users would simply move on to the next site.

Instead, the entertainment industry should focus on offering services that compete with sites such as The Pirate Bay, Lessum argues. “If done correctly, with good quality and the right price, we believe customers will choose the legal way,” he said.

The question remains how relevant this case will be in October. The Pirate Bay is expected to be legalized next week, nullifying the claims of the music and movie companies.

Article from: FreakBits

The man from Finland was earlier accused of sharing music files totaling 768Mb on the Internet – around 164 albums. A search of his computer turned up 1,850 tracks which had been downloaded from unauthorized sources.

In February 2008, the Porvoo District Court found the man guilty of copyright infringement and ordered him to pay approximately 3,000 euros in fines.

However, the man disagreed with the verdict and took the case to appeal. In his defense he admitted that illegal sharing had taken place from his computer and although it wasn’t him who was responsible, he was aware of it. Not a particularly wise move.

The Court of Appeal decided that his explanation wasn’t credible, and instead found him personally responsible for the copyright infringement which took place from his computer, upholding the decision of the original court and fining him 3,000 euros.

Article from: FreakBits

After a case lasting a year, a San Francisco court has ruled that RealNetworks violated copyright laws with its software and is now on the tough end of an injunction, banning it from further sales.

The ruling is a victory for the MPAA who brought the action.

Judge Marilyn Hall Patel noted that while it is not illegal for customers to copy their own DVDs, it is illegal for someone to make a piece of software to do the same – go figure.

Article from: FreakBits