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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.
takes agents off of less important subjects like preventing the next bus bombing to arrest despicable criminals who share unlicensed lyrics!
$10B?! I find this utterly staggering. Mostly because I cannot imagine karaoke being that popular. Second, because most of this, as far as I know, happens in bars. Who would buy/download karaoke for personal use? What is more, why is this a target for the police when there are plenty of other, and larger, trackers out there? Nothing in this story makes any sense.
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.
What's next? Some razzias to throw grannies in jail, who 'illegally' use Disney figures on their embroidering machines for the little ones?
The police going after easy targets, while the city police protect criminal banks who have done well documented money laundering for Mexican drug cartels by the city's own banks. If you do crime, do it big, or give police backhanders to look the other way.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
“The unlicensed BitTorrent site directed users to a catalogue of tens of thousands of copyrighted music files, in particular the latest chart music and karaoke hits,” PIPCU said in a statement.
Directing users is not the same as infringing copyright.
“The public needs to be aware that by accessing sites like this, they are putting money directly in the hands of criminals, which often then funds other serious organized crime, as well as putting their own financial and personal details at risk of being compromised and used for other fraudulent scams,” PIPCU chief Detective Chief Inspector Danny Medlycott said in a statement.
In other words, "this offense is so minor that we need to THROW IN A BUNCH OF MALICIOUS DEMONIZING ALLEGATIONS". They have put no evidence that the site infringed copyright ITSELF, as opposed to its users, or that they are in anyway involved in 'fraudulent scams'.
It's worth examining the Anton Vickerman story. Anton ran a torrent list site for TV programs, he was prosecuted in a very dodgy private case, where the judge heard evidence without the prosecution present. The judge convinced the jury that Vickerman had uploaded the files himself, so the jury extrapolated that to the full site. It's the big problem here, Vickerman could not offer defense against claims and evidence he is not allowed to know.
http://www.jaduncan.com/2012/08/since-surfthechannel.html#more
"On 18 August 2010, a few weeks before the hearing in front of HHJ Evans to hear our dismissal application we were put on notice by FACT Ltd that they intended to request a “Public Interest Immunity” hearing in front of HHJ Evans. A PII hearing is usually used in cases where the CPS need to protect the identity of a covert source such as a super grass or protect covert secret methods that have been used in the obtaining of evidence in a case. I and my legal team did not think it was anything like this, we believed it was simply an attempt to drip poison into HHJ Evans ear about myself without any balance from my side. Because that is the thing about PII hearings, it is the prosecutor and the judge in the room only. No member of the defense team or the defendant is allowed to be present so they never know what is said or what the hearing is about. We were extremely concerned at this attempt by FACT Ltd prosecutors David Groome and his sidekick Ari Alibhai to manipulate Judge Evans. We had already been a victim of Groomes dirty tactics when he passed the “criminal case summary” to the appeal judges without notifying us and I believed this was exactly the same type of trick designed to prejudice myself and my case. We already knew that Groome and Alibhai were dishonest as they had allowed the appeal judges to be misled and lied to about the existence of the CPS letter in the civil trial so we werent about to let the same underhand maneuvering take place again. We lodged a formal complaint to HHJ Evans and asked that he allow a Special Advocate to sit in on the PII hearing in the interest of fairness. It is normal procedure for an independent barrister to sit in on a PII hearing if the Judge wants and their job is just to monitor the hearing to make sure that nothing untoward happens to prejudice the defense. Given the backdrop of accusations by both sides about each other we felt sure that for “justice to be seen to be done” HHJ Evans would order that a Special Advocate be present. He did not; the PII hearing took place on 6 September 2010 between the judge and prosecution only."
Right there is a problem, evidence was told to a judge that Vickerman could not defend against because he wasn't allowed to hear it, and the rest of the hearing really has the judge aggressively negative against Vickerman, and even made a false assumption in his guidance, that linking to infringement is infringement.
For a COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT CASE secret hearings are extreme, but this is a basic principle of justice, that the accused be able to face their accusers. Once that took place the rest of the case is a complete farce. They could have paraded any false evidence in front of a judge, and there would be no person to counter it or even check its validity.
The site was really just the same software/format as The Pirate Bay, only it didn't use any text...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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.
However PRS are the worst for throwing their bullshit around. They actually have zero right to be collecting royalty payments - they just assumed this role.
As I understand it, PRS for Music is like BMI or ASCAP in that it has whatever rights are delegated to it by songwriters through the songwriters' respective music publishers.