Daily P2P

Accuses iiNet of being actively involved in copyright infringement itself for refusing to prevent its customers from being able to engage in illegal file-sharing on its network. ISPs in the "land down under" can add copyright infringement by file-sharing customers to the long list of headaches that includes govt plans for mandatory content filtering. For today, seven leading movie studios and a TV network filed a legal action against iiNet, a major Australian ISP, accusing it of copyright infringement for failing to take reasonable steps to prevent iilegal file-sharing by customers on its network. The action was filed by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network.

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Rules that it can continue to throttle P2P and file-sharing programs, but in the future it must notify wholesale customers 30 days in advance before doing so. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) request that Bell Canada cease the traffic shaping practices it has adopted for its wholesale Gateway Access Service. However, in the future, Bell Canada will be required to notify its wholesale customers at least 30 days in advance of making any changes that impact its service. “Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.

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Landmark decision will determine if the telecommunications conglomerate can interfere with the Internet access it sells to wholesale customers. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the independent agency responsible for regulating Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications systems, is scheduled to finally rule on the twice delayed case of Bell Canada, a major Canadian telecommunications company and ISP, who’s been accused of violating the country’s Telecommunications Act by throttling the connection speeds of BitTorrent users after already selling the Internet access wholesale to third parties. These customers are represented by the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) whose main mission is to "foster the growth of a healthy and competitive Internet service industry in Canada." It was CAIP who lodged the complaint with the CRTC back on April 4th of this year. "In addition to the foregoing direct losses, Bell’s manipulation of GAS traffic is making it difficult if not impossible for independent ISPs to properly manage the services that they provide to their end-user customers," it reads.

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Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) calls for equity in sentencing for copyright infringement, saying that online crimes must be punished equally as physical ones.The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), formed in 1984 as the world’s first anti-piracy organization, and dedicated “to promote the legitimate use of software and protect its members. rights through education, enforcement, lobbying and promoting standards and best practice in business,” is now calling on the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to make online copyright offenses as severe as physical ones. The IPO is currently considering changes to criminal sanctions in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 based on the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property that was independently conducted from 2005 to 2006. The review concludes that the UK’s intellectual property system is fundamentally strong but makes 54 concrete recommendations for improvements, broadly covering the areas of: strengthening enforcement; providing additional support to business; and striking a balance between protecting intellectual property and allowing free market competition.

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Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF) uses new law to target those responsible for creating file-sharing programs and and even a site that hosts one of them. France continues to be the frontline in the war on file-sharing it seems. It was just two weeks ago that the French Senate approved a controversial “three strikes” or “graduated response” law for those accused of illegal file-sharing. Now it’s being reported that the Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF), a group that represents French record labels, has gotten the go ahead (GOOGLE TRANSLATION) from the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) in Paris to sue Vuze, Morpheus, Limewire, and even open source software development and hosting site Sourceforge for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement. The lawsuit was initially filed back in 2007, but has been blocked up until now over jurisdictional questions being that all four parties are located in the United States.

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Calculated by multiplying number of music tracks illegally shared on P2P networks and services by the fair market value per track. MultiMedia Intelligence, a market research and consultancy firm, which “specializes on the markets and technologies for delivering and monetizing digital content and services across multiple platforms,” has released a new study claiming that the value of music illegally shared in 2007 was some $69 billion USD. The research,P2P Networking: Content’s “Bad Boy” Becomes Tomorrow’s Distribution Channel, analyzes the P2P market in terms of worldwide broadband penetration, consumer consumption of data, audio and video files and its associated revenue”A US$69 billion figure is staggering to contemplate, but it effectively illustrates the impact of piracy on the music industry,” claims the company’s Rick Sizemore. “It is important to note that piracy has expanded well beyond music. Content owners of TV episodes and full length movies are seeing a growing impact.

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Wants actual evidence of copyright infringement before it forwards pre-litigation “settlement” letters to students. An odd thing has happened on the campus of Duke University. The Office of Student Affairs is now requiring the RIAA and other copyright holder groups to submit evidence that a student committed copyright infringement before it forwards pre-litigation “settlement” letters to them The new policy is a departure from previous policy whereby it forwarded the notices to students no questions asked.”What we’re saying is that in order for us to pass on a settlement letter to a student, we’re going to start requiring evidence that someone actually downloaded from that student,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. “If the RIAA can’t prove that actual illegal behavior occurred, then we’re not going to comply.

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Cyber Crimes Unit acts on evidence collected by the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP). Authorities in Bulgaria have taken down Torrentvalley.com, an apparently major BitTorrent tracker site located in that country. The action was taken by the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ministry of Interior’s serious and organized crime directorate, acting on evidence from the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP), which represents the music industry in Bulgaria. Officers from the Cyber Crime Unit raided TorrentValley’s servers a few days ago on November 11th and shut the site down.

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Requires public and private colleges and universities to ensure that computers connected to their campus network are not being used for illegal file-sharing. RIAA Chairman & CEO Mitch Bainwol, along with several other members of the music community, recently celebrated Country Music Association Day in Nashville by participating in a ceremonial signing of college campus anti-piracy legislation by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen. Senate Bill 3974 requires that Tennessee public and private colleges and universities exercise appropriate means to ensure that computers connected to their campus network are not being abused for the purpose of illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted material through P2P and file-sharing programs. They are required to implement technological support and develop and enforce a computer network usage policy to effectively limit the number illegal sharing copyrighted material.

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University of Wisconsin’s Associate Dean of Student Development Jodi Thesing-Ritter makes the comment in recent article in The Spectator, the university’s student newspaper.There’s a disturbing comment that has been made in the University of Wisconsin’s student newspaper, The Spectator, which confirms our worst fears about the RIAA’s college campus piracy crackdown. The school’s Associate Dean of Student Development Jodi Thesing-Ritter says that some students have dropped out of school to the exorbitant pre-litigation “settlement” fees demanded by the RIAA from those accused of illegal file-sharing. “It’s been really hard to have to be the one to tell them they are facing this lawsuit,” she said. Thesing-Ritter goes on to note that an undisclosed number of students have had to drop out of school in order to come up with the money to pay their legal fees.

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