Displaying items by tag: RIAA

Gottfrid Svartholm has been imprisoned in Cambodia for over a week and now it looks like authorities have finally arranged his transfer to Sweden. Bertil Olofsson, Head of the International Section of the National Police said that Svartholm is indeed coming back. The problem is that there are no direct flights from Cambodia's capital Penh to Sweden. Because of this they will first have to travel to Bangkok, Thailand and then fly to Sweden. During the flight he will be escorted by a police officer and official from the prison service.

Well, well, well, it seems the plot thickens as things unravel in the case against Megaupload. This morning we noticed a post on Megaupload founder, Kim Dotcom’s Twitter feed asking if there was any truth to the claim that US District Attorney Neil MacBride was still employed by a lobbying agency within one year of his appointment. We took a look and found something rather interesting which could indicate a little bit of bias in the way MacBride is dealing with the case and also may lend a little validation to Dotcom’s claims that the whole case was cooked up by the copyright Lobby.

The art of warfare has evolved over the centuries as each side (attacking and defending) has learned lessons from each battle. When towns were encircled by walls attackers developed methods for bringing them down or simply starving them out. From these tools and techniques the defenders learned to ensure that they could be self-sustaining by maintaining a water and food supply; you get the picture. The same thing has happened with just about any situation where there are two sides to the fight and it certainly is happening in the fight between Megaupload and the US Copyright Lobby. After losing their fight to put exceptionally draconian laws in place such as SOPA and PIPA the copyright industry used their influence to take out possibly the largest file sharing service on the Internet; Megaupload. There was no real evidence to support their attack on a site they (the MPAA and RIAA) once praised, instead it was a clear cut campaign to bankrupt the company and to seriously injure anyone involved with them (including the host and users of Megaupload servers).

Four members of the popular release group IMAGiNE were arrested earlier this year, and this week the last of them, Jeramiah Perkins, admitted that he was breaking copyright law. They were all found guilty and now face a sentence of 5 years in prison, along with $250,000 fine. Their arrests came after they were reported by the MPAA to the feds and after they stopped publishing new movies in September it was pretty obvious that something went wrong. Possibly the main reason that the group was caught is their private BitTorrent tracker, UnleashTheNet. After its launch it became very popular very quickly and probably led to the discovery of the founders true identity

Late last night there was an interesting tweet from the flamboyant owner of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom. The tweet announced in excited tones: “BREAKING NEWS: The High Court just ruled the release of restrained assets to cover our legal fees in New Zealand.” This is a major victor for the besieged Dotcom and Megaupload. It means that the High Courts in New Zealand are seeing the same thing that many legal experts are seeing; the US with the backing of Hollywood has been trying to prevent Dotcom and Megaupload from offering a proper defense.

There was a lot of activity today on Kim Dotcom’s, the famous Megaupload owner, Twitter feed. Dotcom revealed in series of announcements that “We are building a massive global network,  All non-US hosters will be able to connect servers & bandwidth. Get ready. ” and he didn’t forget to put in a word about legal services “They abused the wrong guy. I am going to turn this world upside down. Power to the people. Bye bye Echelon. Hello Freedom.“. After he told us in July that Megaupload will be back bigger, better, faster, free of charge and shielded from attacks, today he asked for “Developers of up/download & file managers, email & fax tools, VOIP & video apps“ to email him in case they are interested in getting early API access.

The latest IRS tax filling for 2010 shows that the MPAA's revenue has been falling for a few years and it continues to do so. Over the last 3 years their anti-piracy budget has been reduced from $92.8 million to $49.6 million. This is a result of major Hollywood studios lowering MPAA funding. Membership dues precipitated from $84.7 million to $41.5 million, making it more than 50% decline in the same period.

Joel Tenenbaum, the guys who was hit with a $675,000 bill for sharing 30 songs though the Kazaa network has had a major setback (again). After being found guilty of infringement back in 2009 the courts ruled that he owed the RIAA (Recording Industry Artists of America) cartel $22,500 per track which amounted to 675,000 in damages. We have talked about the interesting math that the MPAA and RIAA use (which is starting to trickle over into other areas), but still could not find out how they arrived at this figure for their original request for “statutory damages”.

Two days ago, (8-20-2012) we highlighted a new push by the copyright industry to stomp out piracy. It was something that we noticed with recent filings from the MPAA, RIAA and other companies that are interested in maintaining their copyright monopolies around the globe. This was the habit of adding in the words fraud, conspiracy, and anything that can make the case a larger issue and allow for asset seizure and harsher penalties against sites that the entertainment industry has targeted for removal. All of this started with the Megaupload case, which was the apparent test bed for this new push.

Although we have covered many aspects of the ridiculous charges and case against Megaupload and its founder we have only talked about how it could happen in minor detail. However, bolstered on the back of the success at using these tactics the entertainment industry has shifted its focus and is pushing these out across the globe to bring down as many sites as they can. It does not appear to matter if the sites in question are actually guilty of copyright infringement or even if they host any content. All that matters is that they want to prove conspiracy and when possible fraud and/or money laundering.