Running alongside the incredibly popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, Dreamfilm was a Swedish portal that offered content in the increasingly popular streaming format.

With no fancy software needed, the site enjoyed considerable growth, particularly among locals seeking quick and easy access to the latest local and Hollywood movies.

In January 2015 and after capturing millions of visitors, Dreamfilm announced it would close down after one of its administrators was detained by the authorities.

A month later, apparently in response to the upheaval at Dreamfilm, several other sites fell including the country’s second largest torrent site Tankefetast, torrent site PirateHub, and streaming portal Tankefetast Play (TFPlay). Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance described the four linked sites as Europe’s leading players in file-sharing and streaming.

Four men, aged in their 20s and 30s, were eventually hauled to court, with each admitting involvement but confessing no crimes.

The Linköping District Court found them all guilty of copyright infringement offenses and sentenced them to between six to 10 months in jail. They were also ordered to pay a fine of SEK 1,000,0000 (US$109,500) to plaintiffs including the Swedish Film Industry, Nordisk Film, and Walt Disney.

With all parties dissatisfied with the outcome – sentences too harsh for the defendants and not aggressive enough for the plaintiffs – the case went to appeal. Citing recent clarifications of EU law, the defendants argued that the content offered on the sites was already online and could be accessed in other ways. This, they said, meant the content had not been “made available to a new audience”.

The Court of Appeal, however, sided with the District Court, agreeing that the links on the site targeted a new and unauthorized audience and therefore amounted to copyright infringement. The samples detailed in the case meant that the men committed between 45 and 188 infringements each and were motivated by profit, as determined by the advertising present on the platforms.

Where the Court of Appeal differed in its opinion was on the punishments that should be handed down. The financial penalty was more than quadrupled from SEK 1,000,000 to SEK 4,250,000 (US$465,500) but the immediate jail sentences pressed for and then obtained by the plaintiffs were removed.

Due to the fact that the men were all relatively young, had never been in trouble with the authorities, and were unlikely to offend again, the Court of Appeal wiped out their custodial sentences, replacing them with conditional ones instead.

While this was welcomed by the defendants, the hugely increased damages bill was hard to swallow, despite the movie companies in question originally demanding more than SEK 9,000,000 (US$985,800). The four million damages award, the Court of Appeal ruled, was the amount a hypothetical license to distribute would have cost.

DagensJuridik reports that two out of the four men have now taken their case to the highest court in the land, the Högsta Domstolen (Supreme Court).

Unlike the lower court, the Supreme Court will not determine the guilt or otherwise of the defendants. The hearing will only concern whether the damages award and compensation for the film industry was reasonable when it was set at SEK 4,250,000 (US$465,500).

The Supreme Court will also have no involvement in the conditional sentences previously handed down by the Göta Hovrätt (Court of Appeal). They will stand as previously ordered, with two of the defendants paying daily fines, penalties based on the offender’s daily personal income.

Also under consideration by the Supreme Court is the ruling handed down in the Swefilmer case. In March this year, two men had their sentences increased by the Court of Appeal in Sweden.

After originally being told to serve three years in prison, the main operator of the site had his sentence increased to four years with additional damages on top. The second man’s conditional sentence was augmented with a fine.

Swedish anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance has long campaigned for harsher sentences for copyright infringement offenses in Sweden, particularly those handed down in connection with file-sharing platforms. It argues that when courts go soft on offenders, it only encourages others to set up similar operations in what is then perceived as a safe(r) haven.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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There’s a bit of a trend emerging in which gaming companies use copyright legislation against cheaters.

Take-Two Interactive Software, the company behind ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (GTA V), is one of the players. The company has filed several lawsuits in the US targeting alleged cheaters.

In one case, a New York court recently issued a preliminary injunction ordering a man to stop working on and distributing the ‘Menyoo’ and ‘Absolute’ cheats.

The defendant, Georgia resident David Zipperer, didn’t deny his involvement and said he had already ceased working on the cheats. However, he had to find a lawyer as Take-Two was not letting the case go easily.

Following a referral from the EFF, Zipperer received “pro bono” help from attorney Joel Rothman. That didn’t last long. After a failed attempt to transfer the case to another district or otherwise resolve the case, the attorney is withdrawing from the case.

According to the attorney, Take-Two is increasing the costs and time for Zipperer’s defense, to “shake him free” of his pro bono counsel.

“I do not have the resources to go up against Kirkland & Ellis in scorched-earth discovery in a pro bono case. I cannot afford the time and money to fly around the country taking the depositions of Take-Two employees,” Rothman wrote to the court.

The attorney discussed a possible settlement with Take-Two, but the “tens of thousands” of dollars the company wants is not something his client can pay, he says.

“My client has no money. He swore to this Court that the money he earned from selling ‘cheat menus’ was used to support his family, that the money is gone, and that he has none left.

“He is an unemployed day laborer with a ninth-grade education who taught himself to write code. I have told this over and over to Take-Two’s lawyers, but they continue to demand a pound of flesh from Zipperer.”

Rothman, therefore, asked the Court to halt the discovery proceedings for thirty days so his client can find a new attorney, or prepare to represent himself.

Take-Two clearly sees things differently. A day after the attorney’s request was filed the company submitted a scathing reply, painting an opposing picture. According to the company, Zipperer has repeatedly misled the Court regarding his financial situation.

Through a subpoena, they learned that the defendant’s profits exceed $100,000 and that the most recent payment only dates a few months back. Some of the profits were spent on expensive electronic equipment and other personal purchases.

“Mr. Zipperer clearly has significantly more resources than he has repeatedly represented to this Court. We believe that these PayPal records reflect only a small fraction of the proceeds Mr. Zipperer has received from his illegal businesses,” the company writes.

Take-Two says that the case should not be delayed any further, also because there’s a chance that this will help the defendant to hide his assets.

“There are many litigants who need legal services and who legitimately do not have the means to pay for them. Mr. Zipperer is not one of them,” the company informs the Court.

“He is a man that has collected over a hundred thousand dollars by distributing an infringing work that harmed Take-Two and its customers who wanted to play Take-Two’s game without being ‘griefed’.”

After reviewing the submissions from both sides the Court sided with Take-Two (pdf), which means that the case won’t be delayed.

While Take-Two’s approach, in this case, may seem aggressive, it’s not always that way. Earlier this week it settled its case with Christopher Pei, who worked on the Infamous and Menyoo cheats. While Pei admits the infringing activities, both parties agreed to pay their own costs.

Meanwhile, Take-Two also filed a new lawsuit late last week. The company sued (pdf) Florida resident Jhonny Perez, accusing him of copyright infringement by creating and distributing the cheating tool “Elusive.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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The DMCA’s “repeat infringer” issue is a hot topic in US courts, leading to much uncertainty among various Internet services.

Under the DMCA, companies are required to implement a reasonable policy to deal with frequent offenders.

This applies to residential ISPs but also to websites that host user-uploaded content, such as video and image hosting platforms. Services that fail to implement a repeat infringer policy risk being held liable for the piracy activities of their users.

This is what happened to Cox previously. While the ISP settled its case last week, the issue is not off the agenda. In fact, a related matter is currently before the US Supreme Court.

The petition was submitted by adult content producer Ventura Content. The company previously lost its case against the video upload site Motherless.com, through which hundreds of thousands of copyright infringing videos were made public.

Ventura argued that the sole operator of the site was liable, as he failed to write down the details of the site’s repeat infringer termination policy. However, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed.

The fact that the details of the policy were not spelled out doesn’t mean that Motherless has no safe harbor protection, the Court concluded, noting that this may be different for large companies. In addition, Motherless was not required to keep a log of all infringements, as long as the operator keeps track of these in his head.

The adult company was obviously not happy with this outcome. It requested an ‘en banc’ rehearing review of the published opinion, but that was denied as well. The next logical step, therefore, was to take the matter to the Supreme Court.

“Plain and simple, the lower courts are in a state of DMCA disarray,” Ventura writes in its recent Supreme Court petition.

“The result of the DMCA disarray is that abject bootlegging in the offline, brick-and-mortar world remains unlawful, but the same conduct online by an OSP-turned publisher garners absolute summary judgment immunity.”

From the petition

The adult company is asking the Supreme Court to take on the case, noting that various circuit courts have issued conflicting decisions. For example, in the present case an “I Know It When I See It” policy was good enough for a summary judgment in its favor, while MP3tunes was previously denied the same because it failed to monitor users.

Ventura asks the Supreme Court to clearly define a standard which can be uniformly applied by lower courts. At the moment it appears that there is too much room for interpretation, which causes confusion and seemingly conflicting decisions.

This vagueness has been recognized in previous “repeat infringer” cases. To illustrate this, even judges themselves are not clear what a repeat infringer actually is, as the DMCA doesn’t clearly define it.

“How does somebody know a third party is an infringer? ‘Cause you say so?” Judge Shedd previously said in a BMG vs. Cox hearing.

The adult producer obviously hopes that if the Supreme Court takes on the case, which is far from certain, it will work out in its favor. If not, they fear that things will only get worse.

“The lower courts, acting out of a fear of derailing the internet’s development have instead given birth to a new monster: the OSP publisher that is brazenly rich only from others’ content, never pays for any content it publishes, knows the content is infringing, has full control over what is published on its platform, does not have to terminate known repeat infringers because unwritten ‘I Know Repeat Infringement When I See It’ policies suffice, and thus enjoys full immunity from copyright law,” Ventura writes.

“It is time for this Court to bring balance to the DMCA, which never intended, nor facially permits, such staggering dissonance between online and offline liability standards,” the company concludes.

—

A copy of Ventura Content’s petition to the US Supreme Court is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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A dramatic situation is developing around billion dollar Internet company Yandex and several major Russian broadcasters.

Gazprom-Media and others claim that Yandex isn’t doing enough to keep ‘pirate’ content out of its search results. After reaching a brick wall with the search company, the broadcasters filed a copyright infringement complaint with the Moscow City Court, the entity responsible for handling ISP blocking requests.

Late last week, the Court handed down a decision compelling Yandex to remove links to pirated TV shows belonging to Gazprom-Media outlets including TNT, TV-3, 2×2, and Super. The Court gave Yandex until the end of today to remove the content or find itself blocked throughout Russia. It’s now clear that Yandex will not comply.

According to a statement from the company, Yandex believes that the law is being misinterpreted. While under current legislation pirate content must be removed from sites hosting it, the removal of links to such content on search engines falls outside its scope.

“In accordance with the Federal Law On Information, Information Technologies, and Information Protection, the mechanics are as follows: pirated content should be blocked by site owners and on the so-called mirrors of these sites,” Yandex says.

“We consider the claims against us to be unreasonable and not in accordance with the law and we will appeal the decision of the Moscow City Court.”

A Yandex spokesperson told Interfax that the company works in “full compliance” with the law and is open to finding a cooperative solution.

“We will work with market participants to find a solution within the existing legal framework,” Yandex said.

In the midst of this serious situation, Yandex insists that it stands for an “honest Internet” in which legal content is made available and rightsholders earn their rightful share from it. Now, however, the action by the TV companies and the Court has undermined that.

“In response to the TV channels’ complaint, the Moscow City Court has passed rulings that are fundamentally contrary to its own previous practice on this issue. Worse still, they do not solve the problem of unauthorized content, since resources with such content will be available in other search systems, social networks and so on,” Yandex says.

But despite Yandex filing an appeal against the Court’s decision, there appears to be no escape from it being wiped from the Russian Internet in a matter of hours. Telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor says that it is obliged to act on the instructions of the Court and will instruct ISPs around the country to disabled access to Yandex.

“Roskomnadzor is required to comply with the court’s decision, which introduced preliminary provisional [blocking] measures against Yandex’s resource, regardless of the company’s appeal against this decision,” a spokesperson said.

But while executing a potentially devastating block on the one hand, Roscomnadzor is also offering to help mediate a peaceful solution to this growing dispute.

“We are ready to assist in finding points of interaction between companies,” Deputy Head of Roskomnadzor Vadim Subbotin told Interfax.

“I hope that in the pre-trial procedure, Yandex will take steps to resolve this conflict before the blockade, I very much hope that this will be done in cooperation with the rights holders,” he said.

Absent some last-minute miracle, it seems Yandex is doomed to preliminary blocking measures sometime today. While these usually last for an initial 15 days, the big question is how they will be carried out.

It’s unclear if a precise element of the service can or will be targeted (i.e Yandex.ru/video/ and/or Yandex.video) or whether Roscomnadzor will go down the Telegram route and block everything.

Ominously, Rosomnadzor is already warning that it doesn’t know what effect the blocks will have on Yandex’s other services.

Update: Fearing a complete block of its entire service, Yandex has complied with the order of the Moscow City Court. The company’s statement can be found below (translated from Russian)

Today, August 30, 2018, the deadline for the execution of instructions, which Roscomnadzor sent to Yandex on the basis of the Moscow City Court’s rulings, expires. In the instructions we are required to remove from yandex.ru “illegally posted information” – TV shows, the rights to which belong to the TV channels of the group “Gazprom-Media”.

A good solution to the piracy problem must satisfy two principles: transparency and balance. We ourselves are copyright holders and we will work with other rights holders, regulators and other industry players to create a system in which both these principles will be observed.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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