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According to torrent freak:

http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-united-states-government-120806/

>>> Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators,” the source added.

Smells like a plant to me.

What if the hacker was someone paid off by a MAFIAA friendly contact, and the hacker was paid to plant malware ads on the servers, just to give Ukrainian authorities an excuse to shut them down?

It's just as devious as hacking someone, planting CP on their computer, and then calling the feds on them.

Which by the way has already happened:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/disgruntled-brit-plants-child-porn-on-bosss-computer-calls-cops/

So it wouldn't surprise me at ALL if this the malware ad spewing was a black hat contract paid for by someone friendly to US copyright interests.

The data is being delivered to the US as a gift.

Laws won't work. Even death by torture did stop infringement: http://torrentfreak.com/and-when-even-the-death-penalty-doesnt-deter-copying-what-then-110807/

95% of the people will give something back if given the chance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/interview-dr-love-paul-zak Creating laws that don't work to try to cope with 5% of the population while ignoring, sorry not just ignoring but preventing the 95% from paying you is the fast track to the poor house.

Posner's opinion seems to say that while someone uploading a video is guilty of copyright infringement, the viewers who merely streamed the video are not.

But as long as the visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he is watching, he is not violating the copyright ownerâ(TM)s exclusive right, conferred by the Copyright Act, "to reproduce the copyrighted work in copiesâ and âoedistribute copies . . . of the copyrighted work to the public." 17 U.S.C. ÂÂ 106(1), (3). [...] The infringer is the customer of Flava who copied Flavaâ(TM)s copyrighted video by uploading it to the Internet.

There is only one case I'm aware of where any company attempted to sue someone for simply watching a stream: the UFC lawsuit against Greenfeedz users. In this article, an attorney was skeptical that such claims would hold up, and Posner's judicial opinion seems to provide strong backing for throwing out those lawsuits.

It is not clear to me whether downloading a video (as opposed to streaming it) would be considered making "a copy of the copyrighted video" under the Copyright Act. Has this ever been discussed in any other court case in the United States? Except for the UFC incident, I'm not aware of any lawsuits filed against end users for downloading alone.

I chose one of the providers listed in this article: Which VPN Providers Really Take Anonymity Seriously?. No logs.

If you go on to read the original article as linked from the IT world article http://torrentfreak.com/leaked-riaa-report-sopapipa-ineffective-tool-against-music-piracy-120727/ It appears they currently just plan to go through with some 6 strikes think for p2p.

That is really interesting. Here is some coverage: Music Royalty Society Collects Money For Fake Artists, Bathroom Equipment and Food

The very next day after the article was published, I noticed something interesting when I was using BitTorrent--aside from request overhead, I was uploading zero data. I'm currently watching a 3.1GB torrent--1.79 GB downloaded and 0.0 uploaded. And no, it isn't my client settings. I have checked them several times, nor did I change them any from when I was uploading normally. Seeding a completed torrent does nothing--it just sits there with no activity.

Hasn't Comcast been doing something similar for several years prior to that article being published?

"fairly clear" sounds like a interesting standard for evidence. Where does it rank on the scale from "reasonable suspicion" to "beyond reasonable doubt"?

This is /. and not a court. The courts will judge by their standard for evidence.

Please show the e-mail in which kimble states that what he is doing is illegal in the jurisdiction he lives in.

I assume that you will trust a torrent site as being not on the side of the government or media companies in this case?

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-what-made-it-a-rogue-site-worthy-of-destruction-120120/

Alternatively:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=megaupload+internal+emails

No, Razor and Fairlight seems to be the only old warez groups.

And Paradox. And in a parallel universe, Strider of Fairlight emigrated to the U.S. and became a Republican politician, allegedly continuing to lead Fairlight. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.

https://torrentfreak.com/record-label-infringes-own-copyright-site-pulled-081019/

It cant prove who, but it can prove who's ISP account was used, and you can possibly claim that they are responsible as either they allowed it to happen, or didn't secure their systems properly.

Possibly, possibly not. Being a legal thing, this will vary hugely by jurisdiction, but in general I'm not aware of any contested case where an individual has been found liable, either jointly/vicariously, or through negligence, for the mere actions of another using their Internet connection.

A while back TorrentFreak looked into this, getting a couple of US lawyers to argue for and against this sort of liability. Unfortunately the "for" one only discusses negligence, and the "against" only looks into indirect and vicarious liability, so both could be perfectly correct...

Sort of like if you left your rifle on the front seat of your car, with the doors unlocked, and then it was stolen and used in a crime. You would be partially responsible too.

This is where the tests for "negligence" come in (ignoring any statute law on the handling of firearms; obviously, where I'm from, possessing a rifle would probably be illegal in the first place). In common law negligence generally requires that there be some duty of care owed by the defendant to the claimant/plaintiff, that the defendant fell below the appropriate standard of care, which caused damage to the claimant that wasn't too remote.

Wrt allowing someone to use your Internet (or not securing it), it seems possible that there may not even be a duty in place (due to a lack of proximity, unless children are involved), and it would be easy to argue that the standard wasn't breached by simply having an unsecured or weakly secured network, or letting someone use a computer unsupervised (that would be far too onerous).

It would be an interesting, if pointlessly expensive, case to argue, and afaik, that hasn't been argued either in the US or the UK (the first article references a case, but I have a strong feeling that may be a summary judgment).

It cant prove who, but it can prove who's ISP account was used, and you can possibly claim that they are responsible as either they allowed it to happen, or didn't secure their systems properly.

Possibly, possibly not. Being a legal thing, this will vary hugely by jurisdiction, but in general I'm not aware of any contested case where an individual has been found liable, either jointly/vicariously, or through negligence, for the mere actions of another using their Internet connection.

A while back TorrentFreak looked into this, getting a couple of US lawyers to argue for and against this sort of liability. Unfortunately the "for" one only discusses negligence, and the "against" only looks into indirect and vicarious liability, so both could be perfectly correct...

Sort of like if you left your rifle on the front seat of your car, with the doors unlocked, and then it was stolen and used in a crime. You would be partially responsible too.

This is where the tests for "negligence" come in (ignoring any statute law on the handling of firearms; obviously, where I'm from, possessing a rifle would probably be illegal in the first place). In common law negligence generally requires that there be some duty of care owed by the defendant to the claimant/plaintiff, that the defendant fell below the appropriate standard of care, which caused damage to the claimant that wasn't too remote.

Wrt allowing someone to use your Internet (or not securing it), it seems possible that there may not even be a duty in place (due to a lack of proximity, unless children are involved), and it would be easy to argue that the standard wasn't breached by simply having an unsecured or weakly secured network, or letting someone use a computer unsupervised (that would be far too onerous).

It would be an interesting, if pointlessly expensive, case to argue, and afaik, that hasn't been argued either in the US or the UK (the first article references a case, but I have a strong feeling that may be a summary judgment).

Even the MPAA has done this for years, and they aren't known for being cutting-edge technologists.

If the pirate sites can't get ad money, donation money, or subscription money, how are they meant to survive? Exactly.

I like this sentence because it highlights a lot of the problem with the music industry.

For companies that are working with "artists" they have a surprisingly large problem with understanding that someone might do something as a hobby rather than only doing anything if they get paid for it.
Pirate Bay Talk: How To Dismantle a Billion Dollar Industry

Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij gave a keynote speech at the Hack In The Box Security Conference 2008, entitled “How to dismantle a billion dollar industry – as a hobby.”

Anyone who is willing to do anything without getting paid for it is an enemy of the music industry, this is true not only for pirates, but also for musicians that have music as a hobby.

So many wise-crack replies to the OP.

What about actually answering the question and THEN giving your two cents guys?

Okay, I'll go first then:
STRONGVPN.com
SWISSVPN.com
are my two options.

Then you could have a look at this recent review of VPN providers for further elaboration on this:
http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

Here is another review site: http://www.vpnhero.com/vpn-reviews/
Good luck on the assignment, and happy surfing!

How interesting that Kim Dotcom has his assets seized and his business killed just a couple of months after announcing a new service called MegaBox that would have competed directly and legally with record labels.

The bad news for those guys is that it's still good to go. I wonder if it will be successful.

http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-artists-rejoice-megabox-is-not-dead-120621/

How interesting really is this? Not very. Bandcamp already does this. Spotify already does this. And, if megaupload was any indication, both services will be much better than megabox.

The bad news for those guys is that it's still good to go. I wonder if it will be successful.
http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-artists-rejoice-megabox-is-not-dead-120621/

Just bought a years worth, at only £3.63 per month even a UK unemployed person could afford that.

Screw the governments monitoring, we didn't elect them to act like East Germany's Stasi.

https://www.privatvpn.se/en/
https://www.ipredator.se/
https://privacy.io/
http://mullvad.net/en/
https://www.vpntunnel.se/

VPN reviews:
http://www.bestvpnservice.com/vpn-providers.php
http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

No, he has a point - they followed the court instructions, and the block has already been mitigated entirely:

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-disarms-bt-blockade-within-minutes-120619/

Actually, the worst case is that good music doesn't get made.

Again, big deal. There's more than enough content made just for fun and distributed for free that's just waiting to get some spotlight.

If you RTFA by Lowery, you would have seen the stat that there are 25% fewer musicians in the U.S. than in 2000.

If that's true, it's a problem that seems to be specific to USA. I can throw a similar survey from Norway against that which lists completely opposite numbers between 1999 and 2009: 28% increase in the number of artists, 114% increase in the total revenue of all artists combined and 66% increase in annual per-artist income. I don't have numbers for Czech republic but I can quote top 3 Czech musicians (Karel Gott, Lucie Bila, Jarek Nohavica) saying that piracy is good advertisment. Jarek Nohavica even quit the recording industry, offers his own music for free on his official website and makes money from live concerts.

If you like music, you should pay for it or you can't expect it to get made.

I completely agree.

a completely free(from a libertarian perspective) and uncensored internet connection from a plethora of ISP in the United States and the United Kingdom. [...]

Oh, really? Please define "libertarian".

Right, because there are no exploits in open source software or thin clients, right? Seriously, if a nation state has the capability of finding 0days in Windows (which is actually seriously difficult to exploit with modern mitigation techniques), what makes you think Linux will stop them?

Even North Korea can't stop piracy. Because sharing content is the natural thing to do. Sharing is what turns content into culture. So what makes Hollywood bosses think they can stop it? Or more importantly, how far are they willing to go to stop it? Because even North Korea obviously doesn't go far enough.

That's not how the DMCA works. You need to provide literally no proof that the content is infringing your copyright. Such is the case of Megaupload: http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-video-reinstated-universal-says-you-cant-touch-us-111216/.

And no, the constitution doesn't nullify anything Franklin has said. You may accuse someone of copyright infringement, but they are not guilty UNTIL they are proved to be guilty by due process. The DMCA makes due process look like a joke, allowing corporations like Universal Music to run rampant.

If due process and burden of proof gets in the way of making money then you're free to run your business somewhere that doesn't have those horrid obstacles. I hear North Korea is nice this time of year.

This story about the woes of Bitcoinica is grossly overblown. The amount of money is comparatively very small, and the Bitcoin network itself is nothing to do with this theft and is sound.

To put some perspective on the Bitcoinica incidents, in 2008, the estimated UK bank fraud level was £52.5 million; that is 990.28441 times the amount of this Bitcoin theft:

http://www.themoneystop.co.uk/042009/online-banking-fraud-is-on-the-rise-in-the-uk.html

There are people on many sides who want Bitcoin to fail, and who will do anything to stop it from growing. The banks hate it, because it will disintermediate and replace their business. The Statists dont like it because it will defund their socialist dreams. The gold bugs loathe it because it is not gold. Keynesian journalists bristle at the fact that the money supply in Bitcoin is limited, and dream of seeing it destroyed.

None of these people will matter in the end, and they do not understand Bitcoin.

Bitcoin will continue to grow, and events like this will winnow out the weak services and strengthen the existing ones. Each theft, disaster and problem are iterations that add to the unpublished "how to run a safe Bitcoin service" manual. Bitcoin and the services that will grow up around it cannot be stopped, just like Bittorrent cannot be stopped, and the latter is responsible for 53.3% of upstream traffic:

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-still-dominates-global-internet-traffic-101026/

It doesn't take much to see how important Bitcoin is going to become once the core public facing interfaces are solidified, refined and reliable. Bitcoinica is not Bitcoin, and neither are any of the services that are built on it. Bitcoin is a protocol. Events like this are nothing more than a bump in the road, and a vanishingly small one at that.

Well first of all, your link has nothing to do with copyright; it was a censorship law.

Actually, it has everything to do with copyright. Copyright started as a censorship law in the first place.

There are some things people are willing to die for, so obviously no penalty will dissuade them. In every other instance, there is a penalty which will do so.

If you really believe that death penalty would deter everybody except religious and political martyrs from copying, you're completely wrong. The same thing repeated about two centuries later again in France, this time with fabric patterns. Surely, nobody would risk their lives for a piece of colored cloth, would they? Well, actually, a whole lot of people did and were executed for it.

People don't stop doing harmless activities just because they're forbidden by law under harsh penalty. They just take better care not to get caught. Let's make a little experiment: What kind of penalty would dissuade you from using your legs to walk and make you handwalk all the time, even when nobody's around?

Yeh, like copying music & films is having a detrimental impact on the music & movie industries...

http://torrentfreak.com/the-avengers-why-pirates-failed-to-prevent-a-box-office-record-120508/

And since you want to play the wikipedia game, anything you say to make this article invalid is [citation needed], no arguments of your own only reliable third party sources.

I guess you missed the link in your own article that debunks the study? Cliffs notes version: They only looked at the files with the most seeds, which already skews the results, and pirated stuff has a huge list of fake seeds to screw up lazy anti-piracy enforcers, which means that choosing the torrents with the most seeds invalidates the entire study because the ones with the most (fake) seeds are the pirated ones.

I would also add that relying on 'this one public BitTorrent tracker we found somewhere' is not statistically valid, because it's just one tracker. You have to get a statistically valid sample of all the trackers or you can't conclude anything. For example, if they included these these trackers instead, I would expect different results -- and by failing to consider them, they naturally get totally invalid numbers.

Why are you so sure it was them? They are not the only ones using these methods.

Postsing as AC obvious reasons:

This order has been passed on only some ISP's without getting any direct order from court. List of ISP's Blocked/Unblocked info.

- Reliance Communications Data Card: Yes, both blocked
- Reliance Wireline, Mumbai/Gujarat: Yes, both blocked
- MTNL Delhi/Mumbai: No
- Airtel Delhi/Bangalore/Mumbai/Pune/Chennai: No
- BSNL Bangalore/Pune/Andhra Pradesh/Gurgaon: No
- Tata Pune: No
- Sify Pune: No
- Hathway Mumbai: No
- Syscon Infoway: Yes, both blocked
- Zylog Wi5: Yes, both blocked
- Aircel Ahmedabad: Yes
- Vodafone 3G, Ahmedabad/Maharashtra: Yes, both blocked.
- Tikona, Mumbai: Yes, both blocked.
- You Broadband: No
- 24Online Kolkatta: Yes
- Connect, Punjab : Yes, only torrents.

I will be more worried, if two biggest ISP Airtel and Tata communincation started to block site. Every other small isp goes through either TATA or Airtel In India.

The solution is simple switch DNS (a list of free dns provider is here http://theos.in/windows-xp/free-fast-public-dns-server-list/ ) and use VPN / proxy site. More info is posted at http://torrentfreak.com/india-orders-blackout-of-vimeo-the-pirate-bay-and-more-120504/

MTNL has also blocked almost all the torrents this is insane

Lithuania.

The relevant article: http://torrentfreak.com/court-acquits-bittorrent-user-citing-faulty-evidence-100315/

As I understand it, the police would have to use software that has been certified for evidence gathering, the creators would also have to approve it for such use. Because, you know, the one thing that software creators like to claim is that their software is not suited for anything (most of the EULAs state so) and that there are no guarantees.

Also, a few authors chose that tracker to promote their work. Pretty much like some use TPB for that.

Wait a minute - I thought we were all agreed that an IP address is not a person ...

http://torrentfreak.com/judge-an-ip-address-doesnt-identify-a-person-120503/

Postsing as AC obvious reasons:

This order has been passed on only some ISP's without getting any direct order from court. List of ISP's Blocked/Unblocked info.

- Reliance Communications Data Card: Yes, both blocked
- Reliance Wireline, Mumbai/Gujarat: Yes, both blocked
- MTNL Delhi/Mumbai: No
- Airtel Delhi/Bangalore/Mumbai/Pune/Chennai: No
- BSNL Bangalore/Pune/Andhra Pradesh/Gurgaon: No
- Tata Pune: No
- Sify Pune: No
- Hathway Mumbai: No
- Syscon Infoway: Yes, both blocked
- Zylog Wi5: Yes, both blocked
- Aircel Ahmedabad: Yes
- Vodafone 3G, Ahmedabad/Maharashtra: Yes, both blocked.
- Tikona, Mumbai: Yes, both blocked.
- You Broadband: No
- 24Online Kolkatta: Yes
- Connect, Punjab : Yes, only torrents.

I will be more worried, if two biggest ISP Airtel and Tata communincation started to block site. Every other small isp goes through either TATA or Airtel In India.

The solution is simple switch DNS (a list of free dns provider is here http://theos.in/windows-xp/free-fast-public-dns-server-list/ ) and use VPN / proxy site. More info is posted at http://torrentfreak.com/india-orders-blackout-of-vimeo-the-pirate-bay-and-more-120504/

You realize that you're pretty much describing the history of Hollywood, right? Excessive IP laws were making it expensive to operate in one region, so people up and left that region to work in an area with more relaxed laws. Yeah, that is pretty unthinkable.

http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-unblock-the-pirate-bay-111004/ nuff said?

Since internet traffic itself is routed through the ISP's line's, are they sophisticated enough to block the IP ranges of the Pirate Bay, or would it be simple DNS blocking?

http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-unblock-the-pirate-bay-111004/
nuff said?

Arrest the un-American terrorist-supporter!

I bet if you are Wiley & Sons they would love more people to sue for goodwill settlement bribes.

Isn't this cut and dried that the DoJ to pay for the hosting? Or maybe the servers should be handed over to megaupload in a New Zealand data center if they don't want to pay up.

Interestingly, we've now established that most downloads from Hotfiles were open source software, certainly the DoJ claims that MegaUpload actively pursued Pirate uploads, but it's clear that MegaUpload has "significant non-infringing uses". It follows they should actually be returned to operation but still face the charges for encouraging piracy.

In reality, the DoJ wants all those non-infringing files deleted because they'll hurt their case. The DoJ has also repeatedly tried to prevent MegaUpload from hiring good lawyers.

Isn't this cut and dried that the DoJ to pay for the hosting? Or maybe the servers should be handed over to megaupload in a New Zealand data center if they don't want to pay up.

Interestingly, we've now established that most downloads from Hotfiles were open source software, certainly the DoJ claims that MegaUpload actively pursued Pirate uploads, but it's clear that MegaUpload has "significant non-infringing uses". It follows they should actually be returned to operation but still face the charges for encouraging piracy.

In reality, the DoJ wants all those non-infringing files deleted because they'll hurt their case. The DoJ has also repeatedly tried to prevent MegaUpload from hiring good lawyers.

But it begs the question if anyone has ever been jailed for copyright infringement.

Yep: Kino.to Admin Gets 2,5 Years Prison Sentence.

That's not in the U.S., which I assume the GP was asking about. That said, it's yes here, too, under 17 U.S.C. 506:

(a) Criminal Infringement. —
(1) In general. — Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed —
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.

And for a recent case, see NinjaVideo.net.

But it begs the question if anyone has ever been jailed for copyright infringement.

Yep: Kino.to Admin Gets 2,5 Years Prison Sentence.

http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

Here is a list of several and the logging policies they admit to using. http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

Another list here if you do not want to use BitCoin. http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

So you need a VPN that can not do that. Look here... http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

Why when there are so many services? And to answer the OPs question, look at the review here. http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

Piracy is only illegal because the law says copying and distributing music is illegal.

Exactly. I remember reading of a US study here on /. concerning sharing music being socially acceptable (I can't fucking find it no matter what I search, so here's the link to the Danish one) that found that something like 70% of people did not see anything wrong with sharing music with family and friends. The study I'd read dialed it down even further into more specific scenarios, but that one statistic stood out.

My point is, if the vast majority of people have no moral issues sharing music online, then perhaps it's not the people that are the problem, but the law itself. The laws are supposed to reflect the social mores of the day, are they not?

Here's a link to the article on TorrentFreak.