http://www.filesharinghelp.com Filesharinghelp 1.5 Filesharinghelp.com Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:40:30 +0000enFilesharinghelp.com ©2007lite@filesharinghelp.com lite@filesharinghelp.com http://www.filesharinghelp.com/forums/news.gif http://www.filesharinghelp.com 40 40 Filesharinghelp.com Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:49:26 +0000
While P2P traffic takes up 25.9 per cent of all internet traffic whizzing through ISP PlusNet, this is down from last year.

PlusNet has revealed that while last year the total amount of P2P info was 13.4TB a day last year it has been lowered to 12.2TB a day this year.

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=23748 Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:48:45 +0000
In May 2008, isoHunt received a Cease and Desist letter from the CRIA, in which they demanded that isoHunt founder Gary Fung should take the site offline. If Fung didn’t comply, the CRIA said it would pursue legal action, and demand $20,000 for each sound recording the site has infringed.

A similar tactic worked against Demonoid, but the isoHunt founder didn’t back down so easily. “We have since tried to come to an understanding, but just as with the MPAA in the US, they ignored our offers of cooperation by the take down of .torrent links to their content files, so long as they provide sufficient identification,” Gary Fung told TorrentFreak.

Fung has pointed out that, like most other BitTorrent sites, isoHunt has a Copyright Policy, and takes down .torrent files when they receive an appropriate request. The CRIA simply ignored this, even though they have sent correct takedown notices to isoHunt before (and isoHunt complied), and continued to threaten with legal action.

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=23747 Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:47:55 +0000
US game developer Topware Interactive, the people behind the now infamous ‘Dream Pinball‘ affair, are about to turn up the heat. Operating through London lawyers Davenport Lyons, they have managed to convince the High Court to send out an order demanding that ISPs in the UK start to hand over the details of “several thousand” alleged pirates.

According to Samknows, BT, one of the UK’s largest ISPs and like many, currently caught up in the middle of a Davenport Lyons versus P2P battle, confirmed it had been ordered to hand over details of alleged copyright infringing file-sharers. It could not confirm whether they had already handed over the details or not. However, BT was surprised at the “strong arm” tactics being employed by the games industry, in contrast to the fairly civilized warnings currently touted by the BPI, which were toned-down under duress.

“It does seem a much more strong arm approach compared to the music industry,” said the BT spokesman. “However, it is only one company pursuing a limited number of miscreants at the moment. I doubt the music industry will follow suit as the potential numbers are too great, but who knows.”

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=23746 Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:46:04 +0000
Few of the RIAA's thousands of cases against individual file-swappers ever make it to trial; fewer still reach a judgment, making these awards quite unusual. Howell, who served as his own counsel throughout the trial, did himself no favors by intentionally destroying evidence of his computer activity after being ordered by a judge to preserve it. According to the RIAA, Howell uninstalled KaZaA and deleted everything in the shared folder, reformatted his hard drive, downloaded and used a file-wiping program, and then nuked all the KaZaA logs on his PC. Anyone who has seen even a single episode of Perry Mason knows that this is a huge no-no.

Ruling last week that Howell had acted in bad faith, the judge was forced to call the case to a premature close and issue judgment against Howell. Howell's punishment was to come at a later date, and the judge has now issued his ruling.

Howell is ordered to pay $350 in court costs—an incredible bargain when set against a whopping $40,500 in statutory damages. In addition, he will pay 2.12 percent interest on the unpaid balance until the entire amount is paid off; in essence, Howell has just taken out a pricey new car loan, except that instead of a car, he gets a big pile of nothing to park in his driveway.

The judge also ordered him to stop infringing copyrights, "including without limitation by using the Internet or any online media distribution system to reproduce (i.e., download) any of Plaintiffs' Recordings, or to distribute (i.e., upload) any of Plaintiffs' Recordings."

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=23745 Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:44:09 +0000
The appeal itself is brief: a two-page document, a cover letter, and a $450 check. But the fight that it spawns will no doubt drag on for quite some time, centering on one major question: can the FCC rule against Comcast based on a policy statement that the FCC said was not enforceable at the time?

In a statement today, however, Comcast did admit that the FCC does have the authority to regulate ISPs "in appropriate circumstances and in accordance with appropriate procedures."

As the legal process plays itself out, Comcast has pledged to abide by the order and continue its work to move towards a protocol-agnostic throttling system that could slow "heavy users" down to DSL levels for 20 minutes at a time (another piece of the bandwidth management puzzle, hard bandwidth caps, were also announced last month).

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=23744 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:18:55 +0000
The order in Atlantic v. Howell was issued at the end of a pretrial conference held in an Arizona courtroom. Jeffery Howell, the defendant who represented himself throughout the case, was accused of copyright infringement for sharing music over the KaZaA P2P network. Howell denied the charges, saying that the music MediaSentry saw in his shared folder was for his own private use.

Howell won a major victory against the RIAA this past April, when a judge rejected the RIAA's cornerstone legal theory that simply making a file available on P2P network constituted copyright infringement. Judge Neil V. Wake denied the RIAA's motion for summary judgment, ruling that "a distribution must involve a 'sale or other transfer of ownership' or a 'rental, lease, or lending' of a copy of the work. The recording companies have not proved an actual distribution of 42 of the copyrighted sound recordings at issue, so their motion for summary judgement fails as to those recordings."

After that ruling, it appeared as though Atlantic v. Howell was headed for a bench trial this fall, but at the end of July, the record labels filed a motion seeking judgment in their favor due to what they characterized as Howell's attempts to cover his tracks. According to the RIAA's brief, Howell destroyed evidence on four separate occasions after first receiving the prelitigation settlement letter and later being served with the lawsuit. The RIAA's forensics experts found that Howell uninstalled KaZaA and deleted everything in the shared folder, reformatted his hard drive, downloaded and used a file-wiping program, and then nuked all the KaZaA logs on his PC. "Defendant's intentional spoliation of computer evidence significantly prejudices Plaintiffs because it puts the most relevant evidence of their claim permanently beyond their reach," argued the RIAA. "The deliberate destruction... by itself, compels the conclusion that such evidence supported Plaintiffs' case."

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=23180 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:17:51 +0000
The high volume of file sharing in the residence halls has led to a recent restriction of p2p applications on all of ISU's on-campus networks.

According to Mark Walbert, associate vice president of Academic Information Technology, 42 percent of the file sharing that occurred throughout campus last year was used for movies, while the remaining 58 percent was used for games and music. "We receive 130 DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] complaints per month...if we get a DMCA compliant, it means you were infringing someone's copyright," Walbert said.

ISU has also enacted other efforts like the Digital Citizens Project and bandwidth management to monitor its on-campus network and educate students about violating copyright laws.

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=23179 Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:14:40 +0000
View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=22066 Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:13:26 +0000
The complaint (PDF) was filed in mid-July and was just uncovered by attorney Ray Beckerman on his blog. In it, MediaSentry is accused of continuing its "unlicensed and illegal actions" in Michigan even after being informed by the DLEG in February 2008 that its activities could be in violation of state law.

Under Michigan state law, a private investigator is defined as an entity that investigates "the identity, habits, conduct, business, occupation,... activity,... transactions, acts,... or character of a person" or secures "evidence to be used before a court."

CMU points out in its complaint that the fruit of MediaSentry's labor is exhibits attached to RIAA complaints, and CMU lists eight Doe cases involving 99 suspected P2P users filed in Michigan federal courts between May 3, 2007 and May 28, 2008. In each of the lawsuits, the RIAA referred to MediaSentry as a "third-party investigator" that gathers evidence of copyright infringement.

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=22065 Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:51:08 +0000
These provisions have strong support from the content industry, but have been targeted with widespread criticism from the academic community and advocacy groups such as Educause. The push for mandatory filtering at universities began in 2007 when the RIAA published a list of top piracy schools and the MPAA claimed that piracy on university campuses accounts for 44 percent of the movie industry's annual losses to piracy. The group later retracted this claim when it was discovered that the numbers were grossly inflated. The RIAA followed up its top piracy school list with a litigation and propaganda campaign which included the development of a web site to handle automated settlements, but soon faced serious setbacks in court.

The MPAA also developed an Ubuntu-based software toolkit for detecting file-sharing on university networks, but was forced to discontinue distribution of the software when they were hit with a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notice. The MPAA had violated copyright law by failing to adhere to the General Public License under which Ubuntu is distributed.

The RIAA and MPAA have vigorously lobbied for a legislative solution at both the state and federal levels. Pressure from the content industry compelled Congress to begin investigating the issue.

View: Original Article ]]> http://www.filesharinghelp.com/internationalforums/index.php?showtopic=21668