Motoring giant Toyota is normally ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. The company is known for innovations like the Synergy Drive in the Prius, as well as long term reliability. However, if you take pride in your Toyota, and have it as a wallpaper on your system, Toyota doesn’t want you sharing.
Toyota, one of the biggest car companies in the world, is often a name synonymous with quality. There is even a philosophy of doing business, called “The Toyota Way”, which emphasizes that the right result will come from the right process, and that solving the root problems brings the organization the greatest benefit.
This ‘Way’ is probably not communicated to its lawyers in great detail, which is why Desktopnexus, a site that provides desktop backgrounds, has been contacted by them. In perhaps one of the most wildly arrogant demands in DMCA history, Toyota’s lawyers are demanding the withdrawal of all wallpapers that feature a Toyota, Scion, or Lexus. The site’s owner, Harry Maugans contacted Toyota to clarify. He was told that all images featuring Toyota vehicles should be removed, even images with copyright belonging to others.
Speaking to TorrentFreak, Maugans said: “Their lawyer, Garrett Biggs, told us that if we wanted them to specifically identify their images, we would have to pay for them to do so”. Maugans also said he was afraid it would come to a lawsuit, fearing the attrition effect that is so common now in copyright disputes. Toyota, with cash assets of over $23Billion can surely afford to spin out the legal costs in an attempt to bankrupt the site – the same strategy that is often used to ‘encourage‘ a settlement in RIAA cases.
Yet, Toyota has also been cagey. These demands have not been sent in the form of a DMCA notice. While sending such a notice would require the takedown, it also requires that the person sending the notice legally certify that they are legal representatives for the copyright holders at issue. Making a false statement is ‘punishable under penalty of perjury‘, which is not taken lightly in US courts.
That copyright holders should be properly identified is also not lost on Mr. Maugans. “What if Toyota comes back and says “yes, we own the copyright to all of those [Toyota images on site]“. How can we know if they’re lying to get us to take them all down? How can we prove they do in fact own the copyrights on those wallpapers? Some are very hard to believe, such as this which looks more like Fan Art than a professionally designed marketing photo. Or this one which they’re claiming they own, but it has a “Created by:” line at the bottom by someone who doesn’t seem to have any connection to the actual Toyota company.”
The ‘huh what?’ value of Toyota’s position has been noticed by others as well. On the FreeCulture News site, one comment questions the action saying “What are they trying to accomplish by attacking free advertising?” Indeed, this is what it comes down to. Instead of embracing free advertising and word of mouth, Toyota seems desperate to control and micromanage every aspect of it’s publicity.
At the end of the day, the best question is that asked by Mr Maugans, “Has DMCA abuse really gotten this bad?”
At the time of press, Toyota Inc. did not respond to requests for comment.
Post from: TorrentFreak
14.Nov.08 
TorrentFreak 
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French record labels have received the green light to sue four US-based companies that develop P2P applications, including the BitTorrent client Vuze, Limewire and Morpheus. Shareaza is the fourth application, for which the labels are going after the open source development platform SourceForge.
Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF), an umbrella group for several record labels in France, claims that the four file-sharing applications facilitate mass copyright infringement. Although the companies (and applications) themselves have nothing to do with copyright infringement, SPFF believes it has a strong case.
The record labels argue that the Vuze and the others are knowingly distributing software with the purpose to permit unauthorized access to copyrighted works. In essence they are saying that everything, or every application which allows a user to share files, will be indeed used for illegal purposes. In contrast, in the US, companies that don’t encourage their users to commit copyright infringement with their applications, are not acting illegally.
SPFF had already sued the various companies and organizations last year, but until now it has been unclear whether the US based companies behind the applications could be prosecuted under French law. A French court has now ruled that this is indeed possible, which means that they can proceed to court.
Recent French legislation which inspired the labels to go after the P2P companies, suggests that all P2P applications must have a feature to block the transfer of unauthorized copyright works. The clients that are sued by SPFF obviously don’t have such a feature. In fact, it is questionable whether it would be technically possible to develop such a filter. Nevertheless, SPFF demands it, and is claiming millions of dollars in damages for lost revenue.
Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa stated in a response to TorrentFreak, “While we appreciate the intent of the new French law, we believe SPPF’s complaint is misguided. Vuze is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content using new technology. In that sense, our interests are aligned with the interests of all content owners, including SPPF’s members, against piracy.”
“We are disappointed that SPPF has taken this approach, given that our business is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content,” BianRosa added. “SPPF’s claims against Vuze are simply wrong. The Vuze business complies fully with both French and American law. The recent ruling of the French Court was solely on a jurisdictional issue, not on any merits, and we believe it is in error.”
Interestingly, SPFF is also going after Sourceforge, the open source development website, because it hosts the P2P application Shareaza. Putting aside the discussion on the responsibilities of application developers for their users activities, the decision to go after SourceForge for hosting a application that can potentially infringe, is stretching credibility beyond all bounds”
Meanwhile, Vuze has appealed the decision. Separately, the company is suing SPPF for defamation based upon several false and harmful statements made by SPPF about Vuze. A different French Court has denied SPPF’s attempt to derail those claims recently , and is allowing the defamation lawsuit to proceed.
If SPPF succeeds in their case against organizations running the four P2P applications, FTP software and Internet browsers might be next, if they don’t go after Ubuntu and other operating systems first. Perhaps it is even better to shut down the Internet entirely.
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14.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
The chief executive of UK anti-piracy FAST says the chances of a completely voluntary agreement between rights holders and ISPs to tackle file-sharing is “unlikely”. John Lovelock, boss at the Federation Against Software Theft goes on to imply that what his outfit would really like is file-sharers’ names and addresses on demand, with no need for a court order. This would be “gold plating” he said.
After joining the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) back in 2002, John Lovelock is the Chief Executive of the anti-piracy group, responsible for lobbying the government for copyright legislative reform, promoting copyright ‘education’ to students and, of course, taking legal action against those who don’t fall into line.
This blend of ‘education’ backed up by legal action has caused controversy for FAST. The outfit is known to track down people who use company Internet connections to share files. FAST then approaches the company with what many consider to be veiled threats of being raided, audited and/or prosecuted. If the company capitulates, FAST introduces the customer to the ‘commercial arm’ of their ‘non-profit’ outfit which goes about aggressively selling software and licenses to ensure the target company ‘complies’. FAST’s approach is not popular, with a lawyer claiming that FAST actually undermines work to protect copyrights. Many companies that have sought legal advice after being contacted by FAST have been advised by their lawyers not to speak with them.
However, FAST is not limiting itself to putting pressure on businesses, it wants to go after individuals too. FAST (or The Federation as it likes to be known), has just responded to the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s (BERR) ‘Consultation on Legislative Options To Address Illicit Peer-to-peer File Sharing‘, which was launched in July 2008. In a nutshell, this consultation was designed to find a way for ISPs and rights holders to reach agreement on what to do about illicit file-sharing, via “3 strikes” or another mechanism.
Of course, this hasn’t been plain sailing for them, since ISPs don’t really want to start harassing their customers at the behest of copyright lobbyists. FAST CEO John Lovelock clearly believes that a voluntary agreement is unlikely: “A voluntary approach would be the easiest solution but experience has shown that such an approach may well not work, as it is dependent on a full consensus being achieved; to date this has not been successful, despite ongoing dialogue between rights holders and ISPs.”
The fact that ISPs don’t want to go after their own customers isn’t lost on Lovelock, who says that government regulation is ‘inevitable’, since this will “take the decision out of the hands of the ISPs themselves.” He also says that he feels that ISPs should not be able to ‘opt-out’ of any scheme, since this would “undermine the entire arrangement”.
Lovelock is calling for “political will” to force ISPs to take action against illicit file-sharing, whilst conveniently skipping over the legal difficulties this would cause. ISPs are not responsible for the actions of their users and time and time again they have refused to become ‘Internet Police’, and quite rightly so. In the meantime, trying to force ISPs to do things against their will, or taking steps to ensure that they are side-stepped in the decision making process, isn’t going to be appreciated.
More worrying is how organizations like FAST feel that somehow they should be able to shortcut, bypass or change the law to suit their needs. “One argument,” said Lovelock, “is that personal data relating to a given IP-address may be given to the rights holder on request, without a court order being needed, which is arguably gold plating.”
Sure, let’s just scrap due process and the Data Protection Act. They just complicate things.
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13.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
TorrentValley, one of the larger BitTorrent sites with millions of visitors each month, has been shut down by Bulgarian authorities. The site’s servers were seized by a Cyber Crime Unit, which acted based upon evidence provided by the Bulgarian music industry.
In 2007, TorrentFreak featured TorrentValley in a roundup article on lesser known BitTorrent sites. In the months after, the site continued its growth and became one of the larger BitTorrent directories.
The site’s success didn’t last, however, as Bulgarian authorities have just shut down the site after being tipped off by the Bulgarian Association of Musical Producers (BAMP), a music industry lobby group.
This case is again a prime example how the music industry and law enforcement agencies work together seamlessly. Investigators from the music industry handed over ‘evidence’ to the Bulgarian authorities, who went on to raid the site in question. Justice is meant to be blind, but it clearly isn’t in this case.
This case is not unique in this regard. IFPI, an anti-piracy lobby group for the music industry has helped gathering evidence against OiNK as well, claiming it was a criminal operation where hundreds and thousands of dollars were made. More recently IFPI was involved in the Italian Pirate Bay blockade, where they assisted the local authorities, and hosted the server where the takedown notice was hosted.
As we’ve pointed out before, in most police investigations, if a police officer is directly involved in a crime, he or she is usually unable to participate in the investigation, as being involved reduces that person’s objectivity. Justice is meant to be blind, not fueled by thoughts of personal redemption or vengeance. It is unfortunate that most authorities seem to be unaware of this principle.
This is not the first time Bulgarian authorities have gone after a BitTorrent site. In 2006, the administrator of Arenabg.com, the largest BitTorrent tracker in the country, was arrested by the police. The admin was later released due to “lack of grounds for his arrest”, but the government ordered an IP-block of the site nevertheless, which led to massive protests.
TorrentValley didn’t have the large fanbase Arenabg.com had, so protests are not to be expected this time. At this point it is also unclear if action has been taken against the administrator of the site.
Post from: TorrentFreak
12.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
A recently published survey on the ‘criminal’ habits among 15 year old Fins has revealed that more than two thirds of the youngsters have used file-sharing applications to downloaded copyrighted material. Online piracy was by far the most prevalent form of ‘criminal behavior’ among Finnish youth.
Anti-piracy lobby groups often point out that downloading copyrighted content equals stealing, most notably in their “You wouldn’t steal…” campaign. We have pointed out before, that stealing is not the right wording, and despite the fact that it’s against the law, many people don’t see it as a problem either.
A new survey, conducted by the The National Research Institute of Legal Policy, looked into the unlawful behavior of Finnish 9th grade youngsters, including their illicit downloading habits. Among other things, the results show that 6% of the 15 year olds smoke marijuana or hash, 11% has participated in a fight and 15% admits they have stolen something from their school.
Unsurprisingly, the most common type of illegal behavior among the group is (illegal) downloading. An overwhelming majority of the surveyed kids (69%) admitted that they have downloaded copyrighted material in the past year. Even more so, 29% reported that they use filesharing applications to download music and movies illegally, every day. However, it is worth pointing out that while bullying, stealing and vandalism might be considered a crime and therefore warrant the attention of the police, personal-use file-sharing is a civil infringement, and does not.
The Finnish news article which reported on the survey resulted in an massive response from readers. A spokesperson from the Finnish pro-piracy group Piraattiliitto told TorrentFreak: “There is an almost unanimous call from the readers to legalize private filesharing. The overwhelming change in the national opinion from anti-piracy to pro-piracy is somewhat surprising, even for us at Piraattiliitto.”
The Finnish copyright lobby on the other hand, says it is ‘alarmed’ at the outcome of the survey. It wants to see new laws that would allow copyright holders to force ISPs to pass their threatening emails to the alleged filesharing customers. The consensus among the readers, however, seems to be that, instead of turning millions of people (including 69% of 15 year-old kids in Finland) into law-breakers, copyright laws should be changed to allow casual piracy.
Post from: TorrentFreak
12.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
Exactly three years ago, November 12, 2005, TorrentFreak first saw the light of day. Since then we have published 1,788 articles, while our readers wrote 88,987 comments. It’s been a great ride so far, thanks to all of you…
When the first article was published on TorrentFreak, I never imagined that the blog would be where it is right now. One of the main purposes of TorrentFreak has always been to cover file-sharing news from the perspective of file-sharers, often to counter the misleading messages that are put into this world by anti-piracy lobbyists.
Initially, I started to write up a few ‘tips and tricks’ type articles, complemented by the occasional news item. Right from the start, TorrentFreak got some decent traffic thanks to the community on Digg.com, which was a real motivator to continue blogging. Over time, TorrentFreak developed into a more serious news outlet, more and more articles were unique and the quality of writing improved.
As the popularity of BitTorrent grew, so did TorrentFreak’s traffic, and with that came the opportunity to meet some great characters, including most of the people who run the BitTorrent sites I love to write about. A few months after TorrentFreak was born, I became we. Smaran was the first writer to join the blog, and although he stopped contributing in 2006, he played his part in the evolution of TorrentFreak.
Running a blog like TorrentFreak is an impossible talk for one person, and I was more than happy when Enigmax (Andy) joined me in early 2006. For almost two years now, Enigmax and I have been running the daily operations at TorrentFreak, and together we spend most of our free time writing articles. Unlike some people think, TorrentFreak is not a professional operation, that is, Enigmax and I both have full-time jobs aside. TorrentFreak is a hobby project, and we write because we are passionate about BitTorrent and file-sharing, not because we need to, in a job sense.
Although we would love to, it would be impossible to mention everyone who has contributed to TorrentFreak. We’ve had several guest writers and received thousands of tips from readers - they have all contributed to the site in some way or another. Besides Enigmax and myself, Ben Jones is the third regular on TorrentFreak. Although he prefers to do research instead of writing, his contributions can’t be missed.
At TorrentFreak we don’t see ourselves as journalists. We are P2P enthusiasts, who love to document how the Internet, and BitTorrent in particular, is changing how we interact with online media. We also write extensively on how the world, and the law, reacts to this (re)evolution. We write about things that interest us, and hope that others are interested in them too.
We write because it’s our passion. Cnet UK did a piece on us today, and Nate Lanxon sums us up nicely: “The rise of blogging has been fueled less by money, and more by the desire to write about subjects people truly care about. And in the world of news, that often means writing at ungodly hours, for ungodly hours on end.”
Of course, we won’t stop here and we hope to bring you many more articles in the future. Even though our time is limited, we aim to publish at least one article each and every day. In a way our limited time is also a quality check. It’s not that hard to publish 4 or 5 articles a day, but if you only have time for one, you’ll have to make sure it’s unique, and worth it. Of course we are always open to contributions from readers, or aspiring bloggers who want to help out.
Writing for TorrentFreak has been a a great endeavor thus far, most of all thanks to you, our readers We’re here to stay, and hope the next three years will be as much fun as the first.
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12.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
TV shows are by far the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
Prison Break is leading the chart with close to two million downloads for the latest episode only.
The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.
Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.
Top Downloads (Recent Episodes)
Top Downloads (All Episodes)
Post from: TorrentFreak
11.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
Hitting US theaters this week, the latest Bond movie ‘Quantum of Solace’ has already been released in the UK. However, despite searching the bags of paying customers, monitoring movie audiences with Bond-style night vision goggles and proffering misinformation, the industry has failed to stop the movie leaking to the Internet.
There’s no doubt about it, Bond movies are very big business indeed and MGM will be hoping James’ latest outing in ‘Quantum of Solace‘ will prove no different. However, movies of this importance are usually released in the US first and, on the whole, they enjoy the first couple of days at the box office without pirate copies being widely available. Inevitably, and within a short period, copies do appear on the Internet - certainly by the time the movie migrates to other territories. However, Quantum of Solace was released in the UK first, so additional effort has been made to stop the movie appearing online in advance of the US theatrical release.
Last week, the extent of the measures became clear, when reporter Kathryn Carr spoke with Alan Coward, a team leader at Vue Cinemas in the UK. “We have staff going in for the first 20 minutes with the goggles, and the last 15 minutes. They also make regular checks in between,” said Alan, adding, “We have also been searching people’s bags on the way in.”
Spying on theater audiences is not an unusual event - US theater-goers have been subject to this treatment for a while now, but such actions are comparatively rare in the UK. Not that the UK is completely innocent when it comes to being a source for camcorded movies. It has been in the past, with movies such as X-Men: The Last Stand, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pirates of the Carribbean 2 and V for Vendetta, all rumored to have first hit the ‘net from a UK cammer. But despite this handful of high-profile leaks, UK theaters are not a hotbed of camcorder piracy.
The fact that the UK is not a major source of camcorded movies is probably down to most movies being released elsewhere first. ‘Cammers’ like to get the movie quickly, and that usually means recording it from a US or Canadian source, so a UK release is usually unattractive since it comes too late.
However, there are other attractions for those looking to cam a movie in Britain. “If someone is found to be recording the film they would be banned from the cinema for life, and they would probably be arrested,” said Alan Coward. One can’t argue with the ban, but Mr Coward’s assessment of an arrest is fanciful. While criminal law in the UK makes it illegal to offer for sale (or rent) an infringing copy of a copyrighted movie, unlike the United States, Canada and Japan (and much to the disappointment of the MPAA), simply ‘camming’ a movie on its own is not a criminal offense in Britain.
In September 2007, Dan Glickman of the MPAA visited the UK to have meetings with senior people from the UK government and representatives of the UK Film Council. His mission was to persuade the government to introduce legislation to change ‘camming’ from a civil infringement, to a serious criminal offense. So far, that legislation has not appeared. Since theater staff cannot detain a suspected ‘cammer’ by force because the law simply does not allow it, they instead attempt to disrupt the recording by ‘peaceful means’ and notify FACT for further instruction.
However, all the lobbying, bag searches and James Bond-style night vision goggles in the world don’t seem to make any difference to the availability of pirate material. Quantum of Solace is already available on the Internet in Telesync format (video recorded via a good camcorder, with audio added from a ‘direct’ source, such as a T-Loop). It has been available for a few days in French and maybe even another couple of languages but it is now fully available in English, with what many will consider to be a half-decent picture quality.
I’d end this post with a Bond catchphrase, but for Quantum they banned them all. Shame.
Post from: TorrentFreak
11.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
Last week TorrentFreak reported that South Africa’s answer to the RIAA had taken down the country’s largest torrent site and an affiliated Usenet NZB site. According to the lawyer representing the sites for free, the recording industry had no standing to make a complaint. Furthermore, the actions of the sites’ host were unconstitutional. Both sites, BitFarm and NewsHost, are coming back online.
Following legal threats from the Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA), last week we reported that the country’s biggest torrent site, BitFarm, and its sister site NewsHost (which deals with UseNet NZBs), were both closed. In many similar cases around the world, the threats would’ve been enough to permanently close the sites, but fortunately lawyer Reinhardt Buys, an expert in IP law, noticed their predicament and stepped up to represent them for free.
In order to get the sites closed, RiSA sent copyright complaint letters to ISPA (the South African ISP association) demanding that BitFarm and Newshost should “be taken down with all access to the domain name blocked”, claiming the sites breach Section 27 (1) (b) of the Copyright Act 98/1978. However, according to the site’s lawyer there are several problems, not least that the sites do not host any infringing content.
In fresh correspondence with ISPA, Reinhardt Buys refutes the allegations made against BitFarm and NewsHost. He states that not only did RiSA fail to comply with the Electronic Communications and Transaction Act 25 of 2002 due to the manner in which it presented the takedown requests, but ISPA acted unconstitutionally in dealing with the takedown requests from RiSA. The relevant section from the South African Constitution is highlighted below:
Everyone has the right to have any dispute that can be resolved by the application of law decided in a fair public hearing before a court or, where appropriate, another independent and impartial tribunal or forum.
According to the correspondence, Buys states that it is uncertain if ISPA even considers the legality of takedown requests before initiating the disconnection of a site, and notes that their current takedown procedures seem to be “directed only at the protection of ISPs from possible liability for third party content, regardless of the evident harm done to online free expression, fairness and equality”.
Interestingly, Buys points to a 2004 submission by ISPA itself, on the ‘Proposed Guidelines for Recognition of Industry Representative Bodies’.
ISPA believe that is it critically important for freedom of speech that a service provider be given an option to take stance on content that is of unclear legal status. Clearly, a service provider should not host content that a court of law or some other authority has ruled to be illegal. But in a case where the legal status of content is unclear (perhaps, for example, if an unproven accusation of hate speech had been made against a particular web page), an ISP should not automatically be required to remove the content. Such a requirement would have a chilling effect on free speech.
However, all of this might be considered moot, since it appears that the complainant, RiSA, had no locus standi or ‘legal standing’ to request the takedown of the sites:
In terms of section 24 of the Copyright Act 98 of 1978, only the copyright owner may institute proceedings related to copyright infringement. The Complainant is not a copyright owner and merely a unit within an organisation that claims to represent the South African recording industry
To this end, Buys has advised the administrator of BitFarm and NewsHost to re-enable both sites and to re-engage in their previous activities, while considering claiming for losses, damages and legal costs from both ISPA and RiSA via civil litigation. In the face of further harassment or intimidation from RiSA, the sites may seek a protective interdict from the courts. Buys has also called on ISPA to implement takedown procedures “which are free of constitutional concerns”.
The full legal response can be found here (pdf).
Post from: TorrentFreak
10.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Traitor” tops the chart this week followed by WALL-E and Step Brothers.
We do not link to actual torrent files because linking to files that link to files that may be copyrighted is something that might get us in trouble.
The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.
RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.
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10.Nov.08 TorrentFreak Comments Off
