Ares Connect

A German teenager who has been waiting for five years to find out his fate after being caught sharing two songs on a file sharing site has finally been put out of his misery.

The young man was 16 years old when he took advantage of his father’s internet connection to share two music files via a file sharing site. The rightsholders mounted a case against him and demanded 600 Euros in damages for infringements in copyright. The case has been dragged through the German legal system for five years, but the Court finally published its decision this week.

In what could be a landmark decision, although the Court upheld the complaint against the German teenager, it rejected all of the claims against his father on the basis that he neither carried out the file sharing nor authorised it. As a result, the Court fined the young man a paltry 30 Euros per track on the basis they were old and unpopular, and only made available for a very short time.

This decision could well affect future claims by rightsholders seeking massive damages against alleged file sharers as it looks likely that even new tracks will not be worth a huge amount in fines.

Thousands of unfortunate file sharers have recently been hit by a new scam seeking to take advantage of the unscrupulous methods used to great success by law firms such as ACS:Law.

Scammers have been sending out thousands of emails asking for cash in return for dropping an alleged file sharing lawsuit. On the face of it, the emails appear to be entirely legitimate. They refer to a known German law firm and claim to be acting on behalf of a well-known copyrights holder, Videorama GmBH, and they also cite various pieces of relevant law to great effect. The unfortunate recipient is warned that if they do not pay the 100 Euro fine, the alleged charges against them will be escalated and they could face all kinds of terrible consequences.

To anyone who is not in the know, the emails would at first glance be truly scary, but as in the case of the ACS:Law letters, there is absolutely no substance to the claims. Thankfully, the police are now investigating the scam and the domain associated with the emails has been shut down, but it seems likely that this will not be the last we hear of this particular scam.

A court bid by the four top players in the music industry failed on Monday and the controversial “3 strikes” rule has been tossed out of the window. The record companies had been trying to establish a legal precedent that forces Internet Service Providers to cut of Internet connections to those who have already been given three warnings about file sharing activity.

The court case follows an appeal by Ireland’s largest Internet Service provider, UPC, after it was hit by an injunction forcing it to block access to The Pirate Bay—a well known filesharing website currently fighting a court battle of its own.

After much consideration, the judge has now ruled that any law that threatens customers with disconnection of their Internet connection following three warnings, it not enforceable. This landmark ruling it not only seen as a victory for the ISP, it also strikes a blow against the anti piracy movement. It could also have repercussions in the UK since the Digital Economy Act is trying to use similar methods of tracking and warning customers who download files from Internet file sharing sites.

Representatives from the record companies at the heart of the court case have already expressed their disappointment at the ruling.

The new music file sharing application known as Mulve first appeared in early September and within a very short space of time, news of it spread like wildfire across the Internet, leading to the site crashing as more than 30,000 visitors hit the site in one day.

However, although the site soon came back online again following some upgrades, within days it had once again disappeared. Unfortunately, this disappearance was rather more ominous and the prognosis was not so good. It now turns out that UK police have arrested the Mulve site operators following legal action by RIAA lawyers.

At the moment, it has not been publicly revealed what exactly the Mulve operators are being accused of, but most industry experts are seeing this latest development as ridiculous. The Mulve site only acted as a search engine. It simply allowed users to search for music tracks hosted on servers owned by Russia’s largest social networking site. It could be argued that Apple iTunes does exactly the same thing, which suggests that any potential conviction is likely to be shaky at best, so we can therefore look forward to further embarrassment for the anti-piracy contingent.

ACS:Law has been in headlines a great deal of late, mainly for its dubious methods of targeting file sharers with bullying letters. The company has made millions by threatening people with lawsuits for alleged illegal downloads of copyright protected films.

However, this time, the company hit the headlines for a very different reason. As a result of a co-ordinated DDoS attack on its website, ACS:Law not only saw its website go down in a matter of minutes, it also managed to release a huge amount of confidential data on to the internet through a botched attempt to bring the website back online. The DDoS attack known as ‘Operation Payback’ not only crashed the ACS:Law website, it caused the entire company database of confidential emails and client contact details to be released by hackers on to the infamous file sharing website, The Pirate Bay.

In the aftermath of the attack, this information has been decoded and gleefully copied in juicy snippets all over the Internet. But not only is principle lawyer and owner of ACS:Law now a laughing stock, he is also facing an investigation by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) following the breach of confidential data in direct contravention of the Data Protection Act. This is on top of the investigation into his professional conduct.

Now that the new anti piracy Hadopi law is being enforced in France, tens of thousands of file sharers can expect to receive letters warning them of their alleged illegal file sharing activities. Under the terms of the law, Internet Service Providers are obliged to hand over the names, addresses, emails, and telephone numbers of customers to copyright holders. If the ISP refuses to do this, each unidentified IP address will cost the ISP 1500 Euros.

Alleged file sharers will receive three warnings before being reported to a judge, where they will face a number of different penalties, including fines and disconnection of Internet services.

Trident Media Guard is the anti piracy firm tasked with tracking down alleged illegal file sharers. They are already infamous for their work in polluting BitTorrent and other large file sharing sites with fake data. Since the scale of the operation looks set to reach well into the millions, the firm could be swamped with work imminently.

However, it seems unlikely that the Hadopi file sharing law will have any serious repercussions on file sharing in France as file sharers using BitTorrent sites can easily file share anonymously if they choose to.

One of the biggest arguments the music industry uses when talking about Internet file sharing activities is that file sharing damages recording artists’ revenues. However, a recent study by Norwegian students from the Norwegian School of Business Management puts a whole different perspective on things. The thesis study appears to prove that despite the music industry’s claims that artist revenue has decreased with the growth of illicit file sharing, in fact artist revenue has actually increased.

The study looked at music industry revenue streams from 1999 to 2009 and the results were quite startling. The students expected to see that with the rise of the digital age of music, revenue would have shown a marked decrease over the last few years. However, this was not the case. Instead, the music industry in Norway grew from 1.4 billion Kroner in 1999 to 1.9 billion Kroner in 2009. Even when inflation was taken into account, this still represented a 4% increase in revenue.

But this wasn’t the big surprise—the real shock came when artist revenue was examined in greater detail. Taking inflation into account, the increase in revenue was 114%. This illustrates just how little the rise in file sharing activity has affected artist revenue. Even though the music industry is constantly claiming that illegal file sharing is having a catastrophic effect on industry profits, this is clearly not the case at all.

Following years of bullying and intimidation tactics, anti privacy firm, Logistep has finally reached the end of the road in its home country, Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Court has ruled that the company’s method of harvesting IP addresses to obtain personal information is a breech of privacy laws and has banned Logistep from trading in Switzerland any longer.

The company operates by using IP addresses obtained from people who allegedly download files from Logistep’s clients via P2P file sharing sites on the Internet. Once Logistep has enough information, they send out intimidating letters to the persons involved threatening legal action unless a hefty fine is paid.

The company has already tried the same technique in France, but the French lawyer involved was subjected to a disciplinary tribunal brought against her by her own peers. She was subsequently banned from practicing law for six months and disqualified from professional associations for ten years.

The battle to stop the diabolical practices of Logistep has been a long and painful one, but at least some light is now on the horizon as the decision by the Swiss courts is a final one—and therefore not open to appeal.

The news that The Solicitors Regulatory Authority is finally taking action against law firm ACS: Law will be seen as welcome news by many consumer groups who have been dealing with an unprecedented number of complaints.

ACS: Law has become infamous in recent times for its tactics of sending out intimidating letters threatening innocent people with expensive illegal file sharing cases unless they pay a financial settlement. In fact, the problem has become so bad that the SRA has received a staggering 418 complaints in July 2010 alone.

The firm, run by Andrew Cross, is responsible for more complaints and bad press than any other firm in the field of IP cases. Unsurprisingly, this will not be the first time Mr. Cross has appeared before a tribunal after complaints about his methods of practicing.

ACS: Law has ruined the lives of hundreds of people with its sharp practice and bullying tactics. Consumer groups, including Which? have been campaigning for a long time about the way ACS: Law operate and they are applauding the decision to finally take action against the firm. Most people agree that whilst sometimes legal action is appropriate, the methods practiced by ACS: Law are totally unacceptable.

Fans of the hit game, Halo, were recently amazed to discover that the eagerly awaited sequel, Reach, had been uploaded on to many popular file sharing sites for fans to download. Once news of the leak spread across the internet, popular file sharing sites were inundated with opportunistic fans seeking an illegal copy of the much awaited game.

Although the game is not scheduled for release in the UK until September 14th, there was an advanced copy available to press and reviewers on the Xbox website. Unfortunately, hackers managed to find their way through the security blocks and steal a copy of the game.

Initially, the game hijackers claimed they had no intention of releasing copies over the Internet, but since it is now available to all and sundry on file sharing sites, it appears they have since changed their minds.

Microsoft have been quick to come forward and remind users that they take a dim view on the game leak and will be leaving no stones unturned in their investigation into what happened and who was responsible—the implication being that those who might have downloaded a sneaky copy of the game had better watch out.