Following up on Torrent Shutdowns

dantheman82 and others have submitted a number of links about the recent closure of torrent mega sites like suprnova and torrentbits. The Unofficial Suprnova Closure FAQ comments that some torrent site maintainers have been arrested and that Suprnova was closed over fear of similiar fate. DeHavilland notes that the finnish police raided an unnamed torrent site. There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.

Comments

What does mobilizing foreign police actually mean?

[enoraM]

> There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is
> that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.
This would be scary, if you think that taking sites down was not just and legitimate. I don't know the facts about finish rights, but under german right suprnova could have been shut down.
It's not always the US pushing and picking on people and maybe it is not in this case. At least I believe, that the finnish police made it's own independent decision.
With Indymedia It actually seemed to be some tougher mobilizing:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/10/07/204217.shtml? tid=153&tid=219 This may or may not be the case with suprnova.

numbers??

[usernotfound]

Someone should put up some stats about the change in internet traffic due to these sites being down. I'm sure somebody is in charge of a university network or something?

If BT was accounting for 35% of traffic, what's it at now? Still declining?

Did anyone NOT expect this?

[mOoZik]

I mean, c'mon. They were ostentatiously peddling links to illegal stuff. It was only a matter of time until the MPAA got its act together to scare these sites into shutting down, with little more than a threat. The submission of these sites (pun unintended) is what's scary.

Not that scary

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding."

Well, I'm not sure how it's scary. If I'm the owner of some digital item that has a copyright on it and some other country where copyrights are valid has people breaking it I hope the police would do something about it.

Doing their bidding

[nwbvt]

Thats what law enforcement agents exist for. To enforce the law. If in these cases the law was indeed broken (I don't personally know the details), then they were doing their job.

What did you think they were paid to do, pull over and beat minorities?

Re:Doing their bidding

[Martin Blank]

There is the issue of civil vs. criminal law. Police should not, IMHO, be involved in enforcing civil law to any greater extent than ensuring compliance with court orders (sheriffs or marshals accompanying people seeking to get property returned, for example, if violence is a reasonable possibility).

Until recently, copyright law in the US was a purely civil matter (I cannot speak for other nations). While I shed no tears for the sites that have shut down whether under actual or possible threat of litigation, I do object to using the police to enforce these kinds of things. They should be working on other things related to public safety, and even in the safe cities of Europe, I'm sure there are open cases, and even cold cases, that could be worked rather than sending them to do what the lawyers should be doing.

unnamed finish site

[f4k3r]

the "unnamed site" that was raided was FinReactor, there was a video (of something) about it on thepiratebay a few days ago

Re:unnamed finish site

[Keruo]

and despite of MPAA claims, it had absolutely nothing to do with the raid
National Bureau of Investigation(KRP) made announcement that they(MPAA) were trying to fish off free publicity from their investigations, and had nothing to do with the shutdown

all of your police are belonged to U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.

all of your police are belonged to U.S.!!!!

MPAA had nothing to do with the finnish raids

[edgrale]

Actually it has been reported that MPAA had NOTHING to do with the finnish raids.
The KRP (Keskusrikospoliisi = FBI?) has publicly said that the MPAA has not been in contact with the finnish authorities. Here is a site (in finnish) that says it all.

Re:What does mobilizing foreign police actually me

[ultrabot]

At least I believe, that the finnish police made it's own independent decision.

That's what the Finnish police themselves say. What's interesting is that MPAA has been attempting to take the "credit" for the raid. Sure, everyone knows they are lying bastards, but one would expect them to pick lies that are not so easy to check...

copyright is not american only

[harlows_monkeys]

There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding

Generally, those "American copyright owners" are also the German copyright owners, and the French copyright owners, and the Japanese copyright owners, and the Russian copyright owners. About the only place they aren't the copyright owners is Gilligan's Island.

Freenet?

[caffeine_monkey]

Freenet is probably too slow to recreate a site like Suprnova, but how about this. Instead of using Freenet to distribute each individual torrent, could you publish on Freenet a torrent that contains other torrents? For instance, a torrent for each category of files, like what was on Suprnova - a "Movies-Drama" torrent that contained a zipped file of all torrents in that category? This way, you wouldn't be relying on Freenet to distribute every torrent file, just a much smaller index of torrents.

If somebody wanted to take ownership of this, they could create a Freenet page with an anonymous feedback form. When somebody has a torrent to publish, they could submit the info to the anonymous form, and then the publisher would compile all the new torrents into the next version of the index.

Sound feasible?

Slippery Slope

[BalorTFL]

I've seen a lot of comments on this around "the internets" (yep, all of them ;), and most of them seem to be of the "noooooo... not my warez! Come back!" variety. To me, though, the better question is where the line is drawn. When the sites that -link- to trackers that -allow- people to download -possibly illegal- files from -each other- get shut down, I get worried. How long will it be until any technology that is used for illegal deeds is at risk?

Re:Irony?

[lothar97]

Isn't it slightly ironic a site, outlining the demise of a site to enable IP violations, is worried about someone stealing their IP?

No it's not. Getting the word out that the 'official' FAQ is located at one address, then it's made known that other versions located elsewhere could be modified, changed, etc. I imagine there's a lot of disinformation flying around about this topic right now, and they want to make sure everyone knows where the proper resource is located.

Re:What does mobilizing foreign police actually me

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be scary, if you think that taking sites down was not just and legitimate.

No, it's scary full-stop. The problem isn't that the sites were shut down, it's that police have been arrseting people. This should be a civil matter, not a criminal one. I was under the impression that copyright infringement was only a criminal matter in the USA - what are local police doing getting involved? It should be lawyer letters to their ISP, not people with guns coming to take you away.

Re:Irony?

[Aphexian]

I put the blame squarely on Alanis Morrissette.

Re:What does mobilizing foreign police actually me

[SlayerofGods]

I don't know the facts about finish rights, but under german right suprnova could have been shut down.

That's kind of funny, because under American law (yes the dreaded DMCA) suprnova was safe from lawsuits because it just acted like google as a clearing house for information and didn't actually run the trackers with infringing material.

Re:BooHoo

[DeathFlame]

Last time I checked, US law doesn't apply everywhere.

So they are not CLEARLY offering illegal content, as...

Wait a minute. Let me actually look this up. I'm applying patent law thinking to this...

*looks it up*

Oh fuck. Okay, so copyright protection usually DOES apply in foreign countries, assuming they signed the Berne Convention, are members of the WTO or signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.

Re:What does mobilizing foreign police actually me

[gilesjuk]

What? people involved in the Hollywood taking a factual story and twisting it around to make it more exciting but factually incorrect? Wow, that's heavy :)

Criminal copyright law is not entirely new

[Kaseijin]

Until recently, copyright law in the US was a purely civil matter....

The bar has been repeatedly and drastically lowered in recent years, but copyright infringement for commercial gain has been criminal since the 1800s.

Re:Irony?

[Tassach]

If you wish to make the point that "copyright infringement" is less worse than "stealing", use your time to say *why*.

If I steal your CD, you no longer have it. I've deprived you of the use of your property.

If I copy your CD without your permission, YOU STILL HAVE IT. You've been deprived of *nothing*, except the highly speculative "loss" a sale (which presumes that I would have paid your asking price in the first place, and that I won't buy a "legitimate" copy later)

Checking a book out of the library and scanning the contents is fair use.

Capturing a song or TV show off the air neither stealing nor copyright infringement, it's fair use.

Giving away your fair-use copies CAN also be legal fair use as well in some circumstances; it can also be illegal copyright infringement in others. It is a legal grey area -- giving a copy to a relative is unquestionably OK. Giving a copy to 10 casual accquaintances is probably OK. Giving a copy to everyone in a class you are teaching might be OK. *SELLING* a copy is *NOT* OK.

Annan has not been accused of taking money.

[ChessHacker]

then ask why Kofi Annan and company were personally involved in the Oil for Food scandal.

There is absolutely no evidence that Kofi Annan has personally profited from the oil-for-food program.

Remember, this program was set up at the behest of the US, with support from the UK and was, according to UNICEF, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=15&ItemID=6861

Wrong

[DarkMan]

This particular fallacy needs to die.

Under the DMCA, specifically the section 512(d), sets out the criteria under which the 'search engine ' examption applies. The following key points are worthy of note:

Section 512, paragraph (d),
A service provider shall not be liable ... if the service provider :

part (1)(A) does not have actual knowledge that the material or activity is infringing;

(B) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or

(C) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;

Thus, this can only apply if the site owners are never aware that the material they are indexing is infringing.

A simple look at the front page of Suprnova.org is enough to belie that.

If a site wished to claim 512(d) as a defense, they would have to demonstrate to the court that they did not know any of the material they indexed was infringing.

Now, there might be a defense, under the multiple layers of abstraction, in that Suprnova indexed .torrents, which were merely pointers to the infringing data. That's nothing like a 'I'm just a search engine like Google' defense, however.

Simple rule of thumb: If it's common knowledge that a site is were to look to find infringing materials, and is of little other use, 512(d) won't apply (on the grounds that it beggers belief that a site owner would have no grasp on _why_ so many people were using thier site).

Disclaimer: You're not paying for this, this is not legal advice. If you want legal advice, contact a lawyer in your juristriction.

Re:What does mobilizing foreign police actually me

[Keruo]

the main reason for Finnish police acting was donate button on their page,
which made under finnish law, the copyright infrigment into copyright crime, since they were making money with piracy.
True that the money was spent on paying their expenses running the dedicated server abroad, but it was still income from distributing copyrighted material.
Point being you're not allowed to receive any income or donations from illegal material or byproducts of such, no matter what your expenses are while getting the material.
You're allowed to download such material under current fair use laws for personal use, as long there's no intention for profit.
The line of intention was crossed on this occasion because of the donate button.