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UK Police and PRS Shut Down Karaoke Torrent Site
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Torrent Freak, from which he quotes: The City of London's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and copyright and royalty group PRS for Music have teamed up for what appears to be a first-of-its-kind action. Arresting a 46-year-old man, this week police shut down one of the Internet's few karaoke-focused BitTorrent trackers. While at some stages wildly popular in the East, to most in the West a night at a karaoke bar is probably more closely associated with too many beers and individuals belting out classics wearing the aural equivalent of beer goggles. The pastime is considered by some as a bit of a joke but karaoke is big business. According to the people behind the web-based Playstation software SingOn, the global karaoke market could be worth as much as $10 billion.
Two, some forms of IP crime are used to fund terrorism.
Do you really believe that there is a single person who reads this site who is dumb enough to believe that? Even one?
NO IP crime is not used to fund terrorism. That is just complete BS that the MPAA came up with to have politicians say to help get attention. It was also quickly dropped once someone asked for real numbers. There are no huge operations even in china or india where no IP is safe. In some countries like Russia, it is organized but only in the sense everyone pays for protection there. In general it is just some guy making some quick bucks and that is IF he is selling copies on the street. And he likely torrented them now instead of pirating them himself. Almost all piracy is done for free.
City of London Police are not Scotland Yard. They are a small police force covering the Square Mile (City of London) and specialised in investigating financial crime. They are a completely separate force from the Metropolitan Police, based at Scotland Yard in Westminster, and covering the rest of metropolitan London.
TF keeps calling them "police" so they keep answering their inquiries. We're talking here about "The City of London Corporation, officially and legally the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, is the municipal governing body of the City of London" (source: Wikipedia). Part of this is PIPCU, which is funded with taxpayer money.
"Since at least 2011 the BPI (= the british branch/version of RIAA, C.) had built close ties with the City of London Police's National Fraud Intelligence Bureau as well as advertising agencies to remove payment channels from pirate sites. The dedicated unit itself was first announced in December 2012 by Vince Cable MP. It was funded by £2.5m over two years of public money via the Intellectual Property Office and became operational in September 2013. In April 2014 Mike Weatherley, the Prime Minister's Intellectual Property Advisor called on the Prime Minister to commit to the permanent funding of the unit to extend its existence beyond 2015. In October 2014 additional funding was revived to operate until 2017."
Don't be as dependent on scraps like TF and stop referring to them as "City of London Police" which might to the ininitiated be the metropolitan police of the British capital, while in fact it's some corporate task force that abuses the old City situation to give themselves public powers. Think of them like a Omni Consumer Products enforcement group, by Big Business, for Big Business, and paid for by the taxpayer. Can it get any better?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.