Article by George Norman

On 06 Apr 2009

Big media companies do not like people pirating content and sharing files via P2P and torrent sites, as the recent The Pirate Bay trial has shown (Mininova as well). Several online piracy and torrent site related news from several corners of the word need reporting, and we are here to keep you up-to-date.

Starting with Sweden, the base of popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, it must be said that since the authorities introduced IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive), online traffic in the aforementioned country dropped by 30%. According to the experts, this is just a result of the initial scare effect – just to lighten your mood, The Pirate Bay has already announced IPREDATOR, the anonymity service to combat IPRED.


File sharing related arrests have already been made in Sweden as two 29-year old men from the city of Skövde were taken in custody by the authorities and have been charged with copyright infringement. Prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad comments: “The two people in Sweden are suspected of having been part of an international network that have made a large amount of movies available.” The network Fredrik Ingblad is talking about is the Warex scene, or simply The Scene. The arrest was made as part of Operation Carbonite, a joint venture of international police forces lead by Europol. In all likeness the case against the two file sharers was complete before the introduction of IPRED, but if they are found guilty then IPRED could spell a harsher sentence in their case.

France, after much debate, has finally passed the “ three strikes you’re out ” legislation which would have ISPs (internet service providers) boot you off the web the third time you receive a copyright infringement notice. Infringers will be identified by their IP address; if they are found to be sharing copyrighted material online, they will receive two notices; when they receive the third notice, the ISP is forced to deny that user access to the internet. And as if that wasn’t enough, the legislation also states that “any action” can be taken so as to put a stop to copyright infringement. At the time we are aware of the fact that “any action” refers to blocking access to torrent sites.

UPDATE: The "three strikes" bill, having passed the French Parliament went on to the Senate and National Assembly - where it was rejected.

The members of the British alternative rock band Radiohead, have made it quite clear that they have nothing against file sharing. Not only that, but they have decided to testify against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in the case of Joel Tenenbaum (student from Boston University) versus the RIAA.



Tags: File sharing, The Pirate Bay, Sweden, IPREDATOR, IPRED, Radiohead, France

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