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Pirate Bay outs porno copyright trolls: they're the ones pirating their own files

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:15:40 +0000

Yesterday, I wrote about an expert witness's report on Prenda Law (previously), the notorious porno copyright trolls (they send you letters accusing you of downloading porn and demand money on pain of being sued and forever having your name linked with embarrassing pornography). The witness said that he believed that Prenda -- and its principal, John Steele -- had been responsible for seeding and sharing the files they accused others of pirating.

After hearing about this, the administrators for The Pirate Bay dug through their logs and published a damning selection of log entries showing that many of the files that Steele and his firm accused others of pirating were uploaded by Steele himself, or someone with access to his home PC.

The Pirate Bay logs not only link Prenda to the sharing of their own files on BitTorrent, but also tie them directly to the Sharkmp4 user and the uploads of the actual torrent files.
The IP-address 75.72.88.156 was previously used by someone with access to John Steele’s GoDaddy account and was also used by Sharkmp4 to upload various torrents. Several of the other IP-addresses in the log resolve to the Mullvad VPN and are associated with Prenda-related comments on the previously mentioned anti-copyright troll blogs.
The logs provided by The Pirate Bay can be seen as the missing link in the evidence chain, undoubtedly linking Sharkmp4 to Prenda and John Steele. Needless to say, considering the stack of evidence above it’s not outrageous to conclude that the honeypot theory is viable.
While this is certainly not the first time that a copyright troll has been accused of operating a honeypot, the evidence compiled against Prenda and Steel is some of the most damning we’ve seen thus far.

The Pirate Bay Helps to Expose Copyright Troll Honeypot [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Porno copyright trolls Prenda: expert says they pirated their own movies to get victims to download

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 03:00:30 +0000

The saga of porno-copyright-trolls Prenda Law (previously) just keeps getting more tawdry. Prenda is a mysterious extortionate lawsuit-threat-factory that claimed to represent pornographers when it sent thousands (and thousands!) of legal threats to people, telling them they'd get embroiled in ugly litigation that would forever tie their names to embarrassing pornography titles unless they paid hush money.

Their con has unraveled in a series of legal losses. Now, one of their victims has had an expert witness file an affidavit in First Time Videos vs. Paul Oppold, a case in Florida. The expert fields an astonishing accusation: Prenda Law's principle, John Steele, is the person who uploaded the infringing pornography in the first place, listing it on BitTorrent index sites with information inviting people to download it -- people whom he then sent legal threats to for downloading those selfsame movies.

Among other things, sharkmp4 seemed to be able to post these works on The Pirate Bay before the works were even mentioned anywhere else, and in at least one case, "sharkmp4" put a video up on The Pirate Bay three days before Prenda shell company Ingenuity 13 had even filed for the copyright. On top of that, the "forensics" company that Prenda uses -- which is supposedly run by Paul Hansmeier's brother Peter, but which had its domain registered and controlled by (you guessed it) John Steele -- apparently identified "infringements" almost immediately after the videos were placed on The Pirate Bay -- meaning they were likely looking for such infringement in conjunction with the upload.
At the end, however, Neville pulls together really damning evidence, tying together a website set up to distribute Ingenuity 13 porn films with the same exact IP address that was confirmed as being used by John Steele to log into his own GoDaddy account, highlighting how Steele -- or someone with access to his logins -- clearly has full access and control over Ingenuity 13 works. As you read through all of the evidence it appears highly likely that Steele is in control of Ingenuity 13, despite all his protests to the contrary.
As the filing notes:
Prenda Law's business structure is such that it is pirate, forensic pirate hunter, and attorney. It also appears that Prenda Law also wants to/has formed/is forming a corporate structure where it is: pornography producer, copyright holder, pornography pirate, forensic investigator, attorney firm, and debt collector. Other than the omission of appearing in the pornography themselves, this would represent an entire in-house copyright trolling monopoly- not designed to promote their own works for distribution and sale, but to induce infringement of their works and reap profits seen from mass anti-piracy litigation.

New Filing Presents Evidence That John Steele Uploaded Videos To BitTorrent Himself

Movie studios send fraudulent censorship demands over Pirate Bay documentary

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:43:16 +0000

You'll remember last month's news that Fox had sent fraudulent takedown notices regarding my novel Homeland. This is hardly an isolated incident: the studios routinely exhibit depraved indifference to the inaccuracies in their automated censorship threats to search engines and webhosts.

This is especially troubling when the studios' notices catch media made specifically to criticize them and their legal strategies. When that happens, they haven't caught a few dolphins in the tuna net -- they've caught some rival activists in the net, activists who're trying to get them to take more care with their dragnet techniques.

A case in point: TPB:AFK a brilliantly made documentary about the MPAA-directed attacks on The Pirate Bay's servers in Sweden, funded through a highly successful Kickstarter. The documentary is Creative Commons licensed and can be freely distributed across the Internet, but Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate have been sending takedown notices to services all over the Internet -- notices in which they aver, on penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith basis for asserting that they represent the people who made "TPB:AFK."

Which they don't.

Over the past weeks several movie studios have been trying to suppress the availability of TPB-AFK by asking Google to remove links to the documentary from its search engine. The links are carefully hidden in standard DMCA takedown notices for popular movies and TV-shows.
The silent attacks come from multiple Hollywood sources including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate and are being sent out by multiple anti-piracy outfits.
Fox, with help from six-strikes monitoring company Dtecnet, asked Google to remove a link to TPB-AFK on Mechodownload. Paramount did the same with a link on the Warez.ag forums.

Hollywood Studios Censor Pirate Bay Documentary [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is a candidate for Pirate Party MEP in Finland

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:02:06 +0000

Peter "brokep" Sunde -- who co-founded The Pirate Bay and founded Flattr, a system for allowing fans to directly pay the artists they love -- is standing for the European Parliament in Finland on behalf of the Finnish Pirate Party. Sunde was raised in Sweden, but has Finnish roots, and is able to run there. His platform sounds like an admirable and sensible one, and my personal experience of him is that he's a good, thoughtful and honorable person. If I were in Finland, he'd have my vote:

“Non-commercial file sharing should of course become legal and protected, and must re-think copyright all together. Copyright is not the thing that makes ARTISTS money, it’s only for their brokers and distributors,” Sunde says.
“I’d rather see us sponsor culture by pushing more money to music education, and facilities for your people to create music. It would be much more sane for cultural advancement then extending copyrights.”
If elected Sunde hopes to be aggressive rather than defensive. This means not just responding to treats to Internet freedom, such as ACTA, but ensuring that this type of legislation doesn’t even make it onto the political agenda in the first place.
“I think there’s a huge possibility for us to impact the EU and I would like to be part of it,” Sunde says.
The Pirates are delighted to have the Pirate Bay founder on board. Harri Kivistö, chairman of the the Finnish Pirate Party, says that Sunde’s candidacy will raise the visibility of the party during the upcoming election. Perhaps more importantly, his values fit well within the Pirate Party movement.

Pirate Bay Co-Founder to Run For European Parliament [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

(Image: Peter Sunde, Amphiteater, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from shareconference's photostream)

Pirate Bay calls cops on Finnish copyright enforcement thugs that ripped off its website

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:53:11 +0000

You may have heard that the private Finnish copyright enforcement agency CIAPC (the same creeps who confiscated a 9 year old girl's Winnie the Pooh laptop because she downloaded a song from an artist whose CD, t-shirt and concert tickets she went on to buy) have ripped off the sourcecode for The Pirate Bay in order to launch a website opposed to The Pirate Bay. In response, The Pirate Bay has reported CIAPC to the economics crimes unit of the Finnish police.

The “parody” defense doesn’t apply under Finnish law, TPB argues, citing a recent case in Finland.
“In a similar case, the prosecution and the Helsinki Court of Appeals have found that a parody site can violate the moral rights of the original author. Changing the logo or making slight edits to the text are not enough to remove this liability,” they informed the police...
“While The Pirate Bay may have a positive view on copying, it will not stand by and watch copyright enforcing organizations disrespect copyright,” Pirate Bay’s Winston says in a comment.
“CIAPC is like an ugly high school bully without friends. It’s time to take a stand. Cyber bullying is a serious matter to us all,” Winston continues.
Should The Pirate Bay be awarded damages they won’t keep that money for themselves. Instead, the money will go to the 9-year old girl who was “harassed” last year.
But, even if they “lose” it wouldn’t be a big deal, as that’s a win for the right to parody.
This right to parody is part of a new copyright law proposal in Finland, crowd-sourced by the public. Besides parody exceptions the Common Sense in Copyright campaign also aims to get rid of harsh punishments for non-commercial file-sharers.

I love that even if they lose, it will establish the case for a parody exception to Finnish copyright law, which The Pirate Bay supports and which CIAPC vehemently opposes.

The Pirate Bay Reports Anti-Piracy Outfit to the Police [TorrentFreak/Ernesto]

FBI employees love the BitTorrent

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:23:20 +0000

TorrentFreak used the ScanEye BitTorrent monitoring service to check what was being downloaded by IP addresses associated with the FBI. There's a lot:

As can be seen above there is a particular interest in movies and TV-show downloads at the FBI’s largest division.
Some of the titles are relevant to the intelligence community such as “Homeland”, “The Girl Who played With Fire”, “The Good Wife” and “Dexter”. Other titles, including the Aussie soap opera Home and Away, are more general entertainment.
The big question is of course why these FBI IP-addresses are showing up in BitTorrent swarms.
The most likely explanation is that employees were downloading these videos for personal entertainment. This wouldn’t be much of a surprise really, as we’ve seen this before at congressional offices the Department of Justice, national parliaments, record labels and movie studios.

FBI Employees Download Pirated Movies and TV-Shows [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Pirate Bay documentary TPB:AFK ready for download

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 19:25:30 +0000

At long last TPB:AFK, the Kickstarter-funded documentary about the persecution of The Pirate Bay is finished and online, and ready for you to download:

Peter Sunde, one of the three founders followed in the documentary, previously told TorrentFreak that he has mixed feelings about the final TPB AFK cut but that “it tells an important story.”
TPB-AFK highlights a lot of the negative events the three founders went through, ending with the final guilty verdict early last year. Needless to say these events had quite an impact on their lives.
“It’s still a fucked up story and the film makes me think about the past years of my life quite a lot,” Sunde says.
The Pirate Bay founder added that he might have chosen other material to include and that many of the good parts have been left out.
“It’s Simon’s decision what to include and it’s his view of our story. I like that he’s independent from us and that he’s promised to release lots of extra material for some of the things that I might have wanted to have included,” Sunde said.

TPB AFK: Watch and Download The Pirate Bay Documentary NOW [TorrentFreak/Ernesto]

Download via BitTorrent [The Pirate Bay]

Trailer for Pirate Bay documentary

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:56:31 +0000

Evan sez, "Just released: the trailer for the upcoming documentary "TPB:AFK" about the founders of the Pirate Bay. The film will be released for free online at the premiere of a major film festival. Release date to be announced during Jan 2013. Staring Peter Sunde (Flattr Co-founder), Gottfrid Swartholm Warg (PRQ), Fredrik Neij (PRQ) Directed by Simon Klose."

I blogged this back in 2010 and helped support it on Kickstarter. Got a very cool t-shirt!

The Pirate Bay: Away From Keyboard (official trailer) (Thanks, Evan!)

Early Pirate Bay server now in a museum

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:05:28 +0000

The Computer Museum in Linköping, Sweden has a "50 Years of File-Sharing" exhibition on that includes a machine characterized as the first Pirate Bay server, though there's some nuance to that description:

A Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak that the contents of the computer case in question were initially hosted in the blue box pictured here. In the same photo are also the three other servers that were operational at the time, a laptop, tower case and the red server box.

So, in just a few years, the hardware moved from an old blue box to a prominent place at the Computer Museum.

‘First’ Pirate Bay Server on Permanent Display in Computer Museum

UK Pirate Party drops its Pirate Bay proxy after legal bullying; international Pirate Parties take up the slack

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 14:19:41 +0000

The UK Pirate Party abandoned its fight against the BPI -- Britain's answer to the RIAA -- over its proxy for reaching The Pirate Bay, which is blocked by court order in the UK. The Party's executive had been personally threatened with legal action by the BPI and couldn't afford to risk home and family fighting this fight. But other Pirate Parties took up the slack: new, unblocked Pirate Bay proxies have been established by Pirate Party Luxembourg and Pirate Party Argentina:

“Due to pressure from lobbyists, politicians all over Europe are incited to expand the censorship infrastructure to prevent freedom of expression, the right to information and the free exchange of culture. With our proxy, we help to circumvent the Internet censorship of European countries,” Luxembourg Pirate Party President Sven Clement says.
The Argentinian Pirate Party is sending a similar message, and invites those who can’t access The Pirate Bay due to blockades to use their proxy.
“We wish the UK Pirate Party best of luck in their continued fight for free access to culture and knowledge. We have put up our own Pirate Bay proxy which is accessible from anywhere in the world, including the UK and other places where it has been censored.”

Pirate Bay Censorship Backfires as New Proxies Bloom [TorrentFreak]

UK record industry spokesman wants you to know why his employers are going after Pirate Party execs personally

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 03:55:32 +0000

Last weekend, I posted about the UK record industry lobby's strategy of legally threatening executives of the UK Pirate Party over the party's Pirate Bay proxy. Now, Adam Liversage, BPI Director of Communications, wants you to know that his employers had no choice but to threaten the personal finances of Pirate Party officers:

The facts are that despite our efforts over a number of weeks to resolve the matter amicably, Pirate Party UK continued to make clear that they had no intention of removing the proxy to The Pirate Party.

The Pirate Party claims the opposite. I've never known the Pirate Party to knowingly utter a falsehood. I've never known the record industry to knowingly utter a truth, so you make up your own mind.

Our solicitors then wrote to PPUK's National Executive seeking legal undertakings that they would remove the proxy. 'Pirate Party UK' as an entity cannot give undertakings - it has no form of legal personality and it isn't incorporated - so the proper legal course is to write to the members of PPUK's National Executive personally.
The subsequent allegation made by Loz Kaye that BPI has threatened him or other party officers with "bankruptcy" is completely untrue. We have not "individually sued the party's executives" as you assert - we have asked for undertakings to remove the proxy. At no time have we threatened "bankruptcy", so your subsequent narrative about "corporate bullying" and "terrorising people who organise against them" is, in our view, difficult to justify.

So, they're not threatening bankruptcy, they're just talking personal legal action against individuals under statutes that they wrote, bought, and paid for, where the fines involved are designed to bankrupt the losers. But they're not threatening bankruptcy, oh no.

Finally, Mr Liversage, whose employers are funded by companies that stole $45 million in royalties from musicians using a Canadian legal shell-game, routinely fiddle their accounting to their artists, and who ran off-the-books "third-shift" pressings of CDs that could be sold without ever paying royalties to artists until the Sarbanes-Oxley act made their execs personally criminally liable for the practice, wants you to know that:

There is nothing principled in Pirate Party UK helping The Pirate Bay defraud people who earn their living in the creative industries. They have a right to be paid for their work like anyone else.

UK record industry seeks to financially ruin leaders of the Pirate Party

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:42:34 +0000

Ever since the UK record labels got a court to order our national ISPs to censor The Pirate Bay, the UK Pirate Party has been offering a proxy that allows Britons to connect to the site and all the material it offers, both infringing and non-infringing.

The record industry has finally struck back. Rather than seeking an injunction against the proxy, or suing the party, it has individually sued the party's executives, seeking to personally bankrupt them and their families. It's an underhanded, unethical, and unprecedented threat to democracy -- essentially a bid to use their financial and legal might to destroy a political party itself.

There's a fundraiser, and I've given more than I can afford to it -- £500 -- because this is plain, old fashioned, corporate bullying. I don't always agree with everything the Pirate Parties do, and I'm not a member of the UKPP, but I'm glad the Pirate Party exists, and I believe that hosting a proxy to the Pirate Bay was a political act, and that the record industry has gone after the personal lives of the executive in order to terrorise people who organise against them. They mustn't be allowed to do this.

Instead of targeting just the Pirate Party, the BPI’s solicitors are now threatening legal action against six individual members. Aside from its leader Loz Kaye, the BPI also sent threats to four other members of the National Executive and the party’s head of IT.
“We had been anticipating legal action ever since I received an email from Geoff Taylor of the BPI. What has taken me aback is that this threat is personally directed. I simply can not see what the music industry think can be positively gained by threatening to bankrupt me and other party officers,” Kaye says.
Making the site’s members personally liable is the ultimate pressure, as they then have all their personal belongings – including their family homes – on the line. Kaye is disappointed with the BPI’s move, not least because the music industry group refused to negotiate the issue.
“Throughout, the party and I have been open to dialogue. Contrary to reports I offered to meet Geoff Taylor for discussion, but this has been rebuffed, at this point we are talking with our legal advisers and will respond to the solicitors in due course. The Pirate Party’s political position remains this – site blocking is disproportionate and ineffective.”

Music Industry Threatens to Bankrupt Pirate Party Members [TorrentFreak]

UK ISPs will unblock The Promo Bay

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:16:34 +0000

Earlier this week, I wrote about how UK ISPs were blocking The Promo Bay, a site launched by The Pirate Bay to promote independent artists who didn't having their material shared. The ISPs had been ordered by a court to block The Pirate Bay, but seemed to have added The Promo Bay on orders from the record industry. Now the UK record industry body, the BPI, has graciously decided that it won't insist on blocking a site dedicated to promoting artists who have the audacity to make music without signing up for one of their awful record deals.

"Until very recently, the domain name 'promobay.org' linked directly to The Pirate Bay and it was therefore a domain name blocked by the ISPs under the court orders," wrote BPI chairman Geoff Taylor.
"The newly reinvented Promobay.org website appears not to be engaged in copyright infringement and we therefore asked the relevant ISPs yesterday to no longer block it."
The BPI could not be reached for further comment on Wednesday, but the BBC understands that Promobay.org will be made available again within 24 hours.

Note how Geoff Taylor implies that when The Promo Bay was associated with The Pirate Bay that it was engaged in copyright infringement, but isn't any longer. Of course, this is utter rubbish -- the site was never engaged in copyright infringement. If the record industry asked to have it censored, the industry was either incredibly cavalier about censorship, or it cynically opted to screw over the artists who had the audacity to go it on their own. Either way, the industry has demonstrated (again) its total unfitness to act as judge, jury and executioner on the Internet.

Pirate Bay spin-off site Promo Bay to be unblocked [Dave Lee/BBC]

Overblocking of The Pirate Bay in the UK blocks perfectly legal, indie artist promotion site

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:04:56 +0000

TorrentFreak reports that UK ISPs aren't just blocking The Pirate Bay, as a court order requires of them -- they're also blocking The Promo Bay, a website set up by the Pirate Bay to promote legal, independent media.

It turns out that the Promo Bay website is being blocked be several Internet providers, showing a similar message people get when they try to access the Pirate Bay site. TorrentFreak was able to confirm the blocks for BT, Virgin Media and BE, but it’s possible that more providers are also blocking the Promo Bay.

UK ISPs Block Pirate Bay’s Artist Promotions

Finnish police confiscate 9-y-o's laptop after she downloads a song from the Pirate Bay

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:50:09 +0000

A nine-year-old Finnish girl's computer was confiscated by the police after she downloaded a track from the Pirate Bay. She was trying to preview the new album by Chisu (she later bought the album and went to the concert). The Finnish TTVK (Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre) demanded 600 Euros in summary fines from her family, along with a gag order, and the family refused, so they sicced the police on them.

Events started when last year's october family's daughter tried to preview to Chisu's new album. According to child's father, searches took her to the Pirate bay. Next spring the father got a letter from TTVK demanding 600 euros. TTVK's letter also demanded a nondisclosure. Father didn't oblige, but instead, wrote a letter back to the attorney. Letter included photographs of the bought album, and the tickets to the concert, which her child attended.

According to a TorrentFreak report, the confiscated machine was a Winnie the Pooh laptop.

9-year old girl prosecuted for Piratism in Finland

Pirate Bay moves to the cloud

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:59:22 +0000

The Pirate Bay has moved its servers into a network of cloud-based hosting services around the world, making it less vulnerable to police raids. I wonder how well this will work, though: cloud providers are very vulnerable to police threats, since the cops can always threaten to take down all the cloud's customers in order to seize a target's processes and data. More from TorrentFreak's Ernesto:

“Running on VMs cuts down operation costs and complexity. For example, we never need anyone to do hands-on work like earlier this month when we were down for two days because someone had to fix a broken power distribution unit,” The Pirate Bay says.
The setup also makes it possible for the BitTorrent site to take their business elsewhere without too much hassle.
“If one cloud-provider cuts us off, goes offline or goes bankrupt, we can just buy new virtual servers from the next provider. Then we only have to upload the VM-images and reconfigure the load-balancer to get the site up and running again.”

Pirate Bay Moves to The Cloud, Becomes Raid-Proof

Finnish band tells its fans how to get around Finland's Pirate Bay block

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:03:59 +0000

Alymysto is a Finnish band that releases its music over BitTorrent, and counts on fans being able to access The Pirate Bay in order to find it. But The Pirate Bay is blocked by court order in Finland. So the band has published info showing its fans how to get around the block. "We don’t want the courts to mess with our Pirate Bay based promotion."

Record labels won't share Pirate Bay winnings with artists; they're keeping it for record companies

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 00:35:56 +0000

The record labels that successfully sued The Pirate Bay for millions on the grounds that the network had infringed upon artists' copyrights have announced that it will not share any of the money it receives from the suit with those artists. Instead, the money will be used to bankroll more "enforcement" -- that is, salaries and fees for people who work for the industry association. From TorrentFreak:

According to former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde, one of the people convicted in the case, this shows who the real “thieves” are.
“Regarding the issue that they’ve already divvied up the loot, it’s always fun to see that they call it ‘recovered money’ (i.e. money they’ve lost) but that they’re not going to give the artists in question any of it,” Sunde told TorrentFreak.
“They say that people who download give money to thieves – but if someone actually ends up paying (in this case: three individuals) then it’s been paid for. So who’s the thief when they don’t give the money to the artists?”
According to Sunde the news doesn’t come as a surprise.
“As far as I know, no money ever won in a lawsuit by IFPI or the RIAA has even gone to any actual artist,” Sunde says. “It’s more likely the money will be spent on cocaine than the artists that they’re ‘defending’.”

Music Labels Won’t Share Pirate Bay Loot With Artists

Peter "Brokep" Sunde, railroaded into Swedish prison by Big Content

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 16:17:15 +0000

Peter "Brokep" Sunde was convicted in Sweden's notorious Pirate Bay trial, and now faces prison time and a multimillion-euro fine. As his imprisonment looms, he describes, in detail, the bizarre circumstances of his conviction, which started with an illegal raid ordered by the US trade representative, continued with an investigation led by a prosecutor who'd already accepted a job with Warner Brothers as a copyright enforcer and was just working through his notice period as he pursued Peter; and then a trial that included a judge and multiple jurors who were literally getting paychecks from the large copyright industry associations. Peter was convicted on the thinnest of circumstantial evidence of having configured a load-balancer in a data-centre used by The Pirate Bay (this load-balancer was not plugged in at the time of the raid, and there's no evidence it was ever plugged in).

On the basis of this corrupt, ugly, kangaroo court, the Swedish justice system is ready to put him in jail for an "economic debt to some of the world’s richest corporations," offshore bullies who have perverted the course of justice in Sweden.

Sunde is the co-founder of Flattr, a company whose sole mission is seeing to it that the money fans spend on art goes directly to artists, without any funny record label or movie studio accounting in the middle. He also co-founded IPREDator, an amazing VPN that I use every day to stop my logins and passwords from being harvested by crooks and bad guys. He's one of the good guys, and he's being martyred by Big Content, with the complicity of a corrupt Swedish establishment. It is a shame of global proportion. Poor Peter.

A few months prior, a Swedish prosecutor had arrived at the conclusion that this service could not be sentenced for any crime in Sweden. He sent a memo explaining this to his superiors. After a meeting between representatives from the Justice Department and Sven-Erik Alhem, the over-prosecutor at the time, the prosecutor in question reconsiders. A quick raid was required, with full force. So full a force, in fact, that when the raid is actually conducted, the police have no idea what to grab. They seize hundreds of computers, in several cities, but also loudspeakers, cables, and the like. They don’t know the size of the things they’re supposed to be looking for, and decide – during the raid in session – to rent trucks from local gas stations to ship off all the seized goods. In short, it is stressful, unplanned, and ill considered. So ill considered that the police even missed several locations where the target of the raid had ongoing activities.
Thomas Bodström promised to come clear with what had happened. And yet, over 700 mails between him and the United States regarding this matter were (and remain) classified as secrets of the State. We still haven’t seen them. In the aftermath of the political scandal that was uncovered, Swedish national records were set in charges filed with the Constitutional Committee (Konstitutionsutskottet), Parliamentary Ombudsman (JO) and Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern). The newly-founded Swedish Pirate Party became one of Sweden’s largest in a matter of days. A few weeks later, an election was held. None of the young wanted to vote for the ruling Social Democrats any longer, knowing that the Social Democrats had sold out their interests to rich lobby organizations in the United States. The Social Democrats lost power, partly because of this scandal...
..,Tomas Norström is very interested in copyright cases. So interested, in fact, that he also happened to be a member in the Swedish Association for Copyright, and was a board member of the Swedish Association For Industrial Legal Protection, SFIR[3]. Two organizations that take a very clear stance on copyright issues. The associations are daughter associations of ALAI and AIPPI, two international organizations whose statutes state their goal to strengthen the interests of copyright holders. The chairpeople for these international organizations frequently make statements condemning all kinds of copyright violations, and work for harsher punishment for violations.
Tomas Norström didn’t consider himself to be biased. Besides, he neglected to disclose his engagements since he regarded them as without consequence to the case. There was plenty of opportunity for him to consider his bias before the trial, as I personally had checked the layman judges[4] and found that two of them were biased. When my lawyer officially communicated this, Norström published a press release where he said he had found one biased layman judge (without mentioning the complaint from us). He had found a composer who had been active in the record labels that were suing us. There was another layman judge who got the paycheck from these industries, who Norström did not consider biased.

Aftermath of The Pirate Bay Trial: Peter Sunde’s Plea – In His Own Words - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

HOWTO access The Pirate Bay in the UK

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 05:31:33 +0000

If you (like me) are in the UK, and if you (like me), find that your ISP is complying with the court order to censor access to The Pirate Bay, here are two new IP addresses added by TPB, which are not blocked. Now that IPv6 is a reality, there are likely several billion more at their disposal. There's also a Pirate Party UK proxy (and the UK Pirates are getting lots of new members from this action). Information may not want to be free, but people surely do. (via TorrentFreak)

Pirate Bay announces new IP address, proxy-friendly design

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:56:57 +0000

Courts around the world have instituted censorship regimes that require ISPs to block the Pirate Bay. In response, TPB has added a new IP address (194.71.107.80) by which it can be reached. It also has a new design that is especially friendly to proxies who wish to provide local, unblocked access. TorrentFreak explains:

In most countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked it’s done by a domain and IP-address filter. But, since TPB added a new IP-address at 194.71.107.80, blocked subscribers can access the site again without problems. At least for now that is, since in some cases the copyright holders have the power to add new domains and addresses upon request.
The Pirate Bay team is no stranger to this. However, circumventing the blockades directly is not the main reason the IP-address was added. Regular users of TPB will notice that the site hosted on the new address is slightly different from the standard site.
The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that the new site is setup to guarantee maximum compatibility with the many proxy sites that are out there.
“It is made so the people who setup proxies can use the new IP-address instead of coming up with complicated rewrites for static content and stuff. Instead of pointing their proxies to thepiratebay.se they should point it to that IP-address,” we were told.

Pirate Bay Simplifies Circumvention of ISP Blockades

Pirate Bay to Anonymous: DDoS is censorship, cut it out

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:36:49 +0000

A good-tempered rebuke from The Pirate Bay to the Anons who staged a raid on Virgin Media in protest of the ISP's participation in blocking The Pirate Bay for its customers:

Seems like some random Anonymous groups have run a DDOS campaign against Virgin media and some other sites. We'd like to be clear about our view on this:
We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us.
So don't fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.
If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists or just be a nice person and give your mom a call to tell her you love her.

DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship. (via /.)

Pirate Bay enjoys 12m extra visitors on day one of court-ordered UK censorship

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:48:38 +0000

Several major UK ISPs began blocking requests for The Pirate Bay this week, thanks to a court order coming into effect. The Pirate Bay reports that it saw an extra 12 million visitors on the first day of the block, and is pleased by all the publicity. They offer the following tips for anyone looking to circumvent a national Pirate Bay block. From TorrentFreak:

“Another thing that’s good with the traffic surge is that we now have time to teach even more people how to circumvent Internet censorship,” the insider added...
First off they advise that the most simple solution is to use a VPN, such as iPredator or other similar services that carry no logs.
These VPN providers cost money but there are free solutions too. Companies such as VPNReactor offer a free service that is time limited to around 30 mins per session, but that’s plenty of time for users to get on Pirate Bay and download the torrent files they need. Once users have the torrents in their client, the blocking has been bypassed and even with the VPN turned off, downloads will still complete.
Pirate Bay are also recommending the use of TOR but only for the initial accessing of their website and the downloading of the .torrent files. Torrent clients themselves should never be run over TOR, the system isn’t designed for it and besides, transfers will be pitifully slow. TPB also point to I2P as a further unblocking option.
While the above options will cut straight through any kind of blocking with zero problems, Pirate Bay are also advising people to change their DNS provider. By permanently switching to a DNS offered by the likes of OpenDNS and Google, users of UK ISPs that censor The Pirate Bay purely by DNS will have a free and effective work around.

The UK Pirate Party is offering its own proxy for The Pirate Bay.

Pirate Bay Enjoys 12 Million Traffic Boost, Shares Unblocking Tips

Pirate Bay's "Promo Bay" flooded with submissions from hopeful artists

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 01:14:11 +0000

Torrenfreak covers The Pirate Bay's new "Promo Bay" service, which has been flooded by 5,000+ submissions from artists who want to have their work promoted on The Pirate Bay -- mostly musicians, but also writers like Paolo Coelho.

“Thus far we’ve done 14 regular campaigns in 3 countries each and 8 worldwide promotions,” Pirate Bay’s Winston told TorrentFreak, who added that the initial plan has changed a bit due to the massive success.
“When we started the project the plan was to do a few worldwide promotions a year, but the submissions have been too good. So now we’re gonna do the worldwide promos every weekend and some regulars every now and then.”
For the artists the promotion campaigns are paying off as well. George Barnett added 4,000 new Facebook fans during the campaign and his video was viewed 85,000 times in total. And Tomás Vergara, the maker of short film The Chase, got 250,000 views of his video in just three days.
“When I had a reply saying that they liked it and I’d have a worldwide display on The Pirate Bay homepage, I pulled off my hair. I think its been a while since I’ve opened my eyes that wide,” Vergara said looking back at receiving the good news.
“Now The Chase is having massive exposure. I’m so damn happy. This is the kind of things you were not expecting in life, I guess,” he added.

5000+ Artists Line Up For a Pirate Bay Promotion

The Promo Bay [The Pirate Bay]

(via The Command Line)

London thinktank has already lofted a fleet of swarming file-sharing drones

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:46:42 +0000

Earlier this week, I blogged the Pirate Bay's announcement of a plan to set up mirrors of its servers in high-altitude aerial drones with wireless Internet links. TorrentFreak has a discussion of Electronic Countermeasures, a project from Tomorrow's Thoughts Today, a London thinktank. Electronic Countermeasures does much of what TPB proposes, creating an "aerial napster" that uses autonomic swarm formation to create, disperse, and reform high-throughput temporary networks in the sky.b

Liam Young, co-founder of Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, was amazed to read the announcement, not so much because of the technology, because his group has already built a swarm of file-sharing drones.
“I thought hold on, we are already doing that,” Young told TorrentFreak.
Their starting point for project “Electronic Countermeasures” was to create something akin to an ‘aerial Napster’ or ‘airborne Pirate Bay’, but it became much more than that.
“Part nomadic infrastructure and part robotic swarm, we have rebuilt and programmed the drones to broadcast their own local Wi-Fi network as a form of aerial Napster. They swarm into formation, broadcasting their pirate network, and then disperse, escaping detection, only to reform elsewhere,” says the group describing their creation.

World’s First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action

(Image: Claus Langer)

The Pirate Bay moves towards torrent-free database

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:17:45 +0000

The Pirate Bay has moved away from serving torrent files. Now it serves "magnet links," which are the addresses of Internet users whose computers have Torrent files; when you want to download a file, you first download its torrent from other users, then the file itself. This means that the Pirate Bay is no longer serving links to files that may infringe copyright -- now it serves links to links to files that might infringe copyright. This also has the effect of shrinking TPB's database to 90MB -- small enough to fit on a ZIP cartridge, and trivial to torrent, mirror or proxy in places where TPB is blocked.

While a torrent-less Pirate Bay may sound like small disaster, in reality not much is going to change.
“It shouldn’t make much of a difference for the average user. At most it will take a few more seconds before a torrent shows the size and files,” The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak today.
“Just click the red button instead of the green one and all will be fine”
Torrents that are only shared by a handful of people (<10 ) will remain available for now, to ensure that the files remain accessible. For magnet links to work at least one person in the swarm should have the complete .torrent file and a BitTorrent client that supports magnet links.
"We put the 10 peer limit in just in case someone who created a torrent has an outdated client that doesn't support magnets. By now all common torrent clients support magnets," TorrentFreak was told.

The Pirate Bay, Now Without Torrents