Intellectual property crime is an serious offence that is costing the UK economy hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
Canadian operator EasyDNS stands firm against London cops
EasyDNS was the just the first of a number of global DNS operators who will be invited by a London IP crime unit to make one of their customer's domains, er, disappear. But the Canadian operator is standing firm. The City Police's new Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is issuing takedown requests, not orders. It can ask …
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:19 GMT HollyHopDrive
Even if it does cost media companies millions (which it probably doesn't - I've ranted before about a pirated copy is not necessarily a lost sale if they wouldn't have bought it anyway) let's examine the tax behaviour of these big companies and see if they've used the Starbucks route of tax avoidance to steal millions from the UK tax coffers. - yet they still use the (taxpayers) paid for old bill to do their dirty work.
Nuff said.
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Friday 11th October 2013 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
"what happened to the little 'rate this article' thing that used to be at the bottom of each story?"
I don't know about that, but I do remember that a week or three ago someone commented about the ridiculousness in 2009 of having to click thru to a separate page to upvote or downvote something.
It could just have been coincidence of course.
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Friday 11th October 2013 11:10 GMT Ted Treen
Good for EasyDNS
I am a believer in law & order - who in their right mind wouldn't be?
However, I applaud the stand taken by EasyDNS in that when told by Mr Plod to bend over, their response is to remind the authorities that if the police wish to enforce the law, the police must abide by the law, and a company is only obliged to comply with a police request when that request is lawful, backed by the legal system and not because it is the whim or fancy - no matter how justifiable - of an individual officer or group.
Justice must itself be above suspicion, open and transparent - although I would concur with those who might say we're not quite there yet.
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Good for EasyDNS
if the police wish to enforce the law, the police must abide by the law
You're right, because it has another effect if due process is not followed: an innocent organisation may find itself cut off from UK sales on the say-so of an uncontrolled entity. That could get interesting, because that hits international trade agreements and all sorts of diplomatic and trading agreements stuff could start flying.
Tragic, it really is tragic.
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Friday 11th October 2013 11:13 GMT Annihilator
Few things..
1) It's a UK police force trying to get a Canadian company to do something - be interested to see what sort of "court order" would be effective for that
2) The redirect page would have said they were being "investigated", not found guilty of it. This is reason enough to make them disappear off the web?
3) Presumably the UK were trying to block it globally in this instance? Seems pretty far out of their juristiction...
What strange times we live in.
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Few things..
2) The redirect page would have said they were being "investigated", not found guilty of it. This is reason enough to make them disappear off the web?
I can see some "libel + material damages" cases heading this way if they persist in this sort of folly. As a matter of fact, given the heavy handed not not terrible well checked approach this stupidity is probably open to an engineered violation.
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:14 GMT Alexander Hanff 1
FACT talking bollocks
FACT are talking complete bollocks. When I got sued by the MPAA for DVDR-CORE I sent them a very thorough and long business plan to make the site "legit" and pay the industry their dues - they flat out refused - they have zero interest in allowing torrent sites to go legit.
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Friday 11th October 2013 16:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: And so it begins...
America, fark yeah! Comin' again to save the motherfarking day, yeah! America, fark yeah! Freedom is the only way, yeah! Terrorists, your game is through, 'cause now you have to answer to America, fark yeah! So lick my butt and suck on my balls! America, fark yeah! What you gonna do when we come for you now!
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:14 GMT DutchP
just out of curiosity
How is it that there is such a thing as "intellectual property crime" in the first place? Isn't this - by definition - more of an economic dispute between two parties and should hence be covered by civil law?
Sounds like the judicial systems are being abused to do the corporations' dirty work here.
Yeah, now's the time to get cynical and all, but, seriously, how have we let this happen?
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Friday 11th October 2013 23:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: just out of curiosity
> more of an economic dispute between two parties and should hence be covered by civil law?
That's exactly what it is.
Legally, the police have no role in this other than to keep the peace between the legal parties. It's all part of the greater plan to make copyright infringement a criminal act, which puts the onus on the "infringing party" rather than on the "offended party". This is a big deal because copyright exclusivity is something that you can assert against others by choice. By copying something, you are not automatically committing a crime. That's why it is a civil offense.
It's also why all the calls to YouTube to automatically remove "copyrighted material" is really to radically misunderstand the problem. Copyright holders regularly *do* put their material onto YouTube because *all* creative works are covered by copyright, even that home video you made. Sorting out what is legally there and what is not is not nearly as straightforward as some would have it.
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:14 GMT Vimes
Putting aside the potential for damage that piracy can do - and the questionable figures often quoted by the media industry - the one thing Orlowski conveniently forgets is that this 'invitation' contained thinly veiled threats. The sort of threat you'd expect from a mobster when he enters the shops and starts talking about what a nice place it is and what a shame it would be if anything happened to it.
The potential for involving ICANN also shows that the lack of any legal requirement to comply is meaningless when the police are implying that they have other methods at their disposal to encourage or force compliance.
<shades of 'The Godfather'>It was an offer that the police thought EasyDNS couldn't refuse. They were wrong.
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:16 GMT Wanda Lust
Just wait.....
The next part of the story will portray the 'Internet' as being beyond the law, as evidenced by the inability of UK police forces to enforce UK copyright laws (applicable only within the borders of the UK, just in case that wasn't obvious), and therefore DavCam will be canvassing for heavier web filtering to be mandated for UK based ISPs. Other topics to follow.
The intent is to make the internet as mundane as ITV3 or Channel 5.
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:19 GMT Amorous Cowherder
Stolen IP eh?
I wonder if next time some scumbag decides to clone one of my photos as their own will the Plod leap into action demanding takedowns and such like? I mean my taxes to the HMRC pay their wages, unlike the modern day robber ( medja ) barons who are so wronged by these torrent sites, so surely I'm entitled to some service from Mr Plod when I'm wronged?
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Friday 11th October 2013 12:21 GMT Shasta McNasty
False economics
costing the UK economy hundreds of millions of pounds each year
Can someone explain to me how a US TV show that I might download from a torrent, watch and then delete costs the UK economy "hundreds of millions of pounds each year"?
I'm not going to buy the boxset of something I haven't seen and not all shows are shown in Europe and if they are they're sometimes many months behind.
If it wasn't available on a torrent, I just wouldn't watch it. So the money lost is zero.
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Friday 11th October 2013 23:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: False economics
"Can someone explain to me how a US TV show that I might download from a torrent, watch and then delete costs the UK economy "hundreds of millions of pounds each year"?"
Because you can't use a brain to extrapolate business options?
If demand in the UK, for a US TV show, showed enough demand then a UK broadcaster would license the show for redistribution (read: Breaking Bad). However, BitTorrent use reduces said demand from legitimate sources as the users gain access to the content regardless of legality - therefore, the potential UK broadcaster sees no demand, which loses that market share of potential viewers, which loses that market share of advertizing income due to the lack of commercials that were not run on the non-existent UK rebroadcast.
Simple.
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Monday 14th October 2013 09:47 GMT MrRtd
Re: False economics
What are you talking about?
The a major reason for many to get copies of shows via torrents, is because there are no way to see the show in a reasonable time frame or at a reasonable price. People don't want to wait, shouldn't wait, or need to wait for several months or more to see a show that aired on TV elsewhere in the world.
Like many have said for years. Make distribution of TV and movies simultaneous and quick at a reasonable price, globally and that will cut down on unwanted free content copying or like the industry likes to call it "piracy".
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Monday 14th October 2013 02:42 GMT Adam 1
Re: False economics
I am afraid that the field of copyright math is extraordinarily complicated. We really do need to leave it to the experts. A single iPod full of pirated music has been shown to cause northwards of 8 billion dollars damage to the economy.
So please don't come along with and use your primary school times tables to conclude you have made no damage.
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Tuesday 15th October 2013 08:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: False economics
"A single iPod full of pirated music has been shown to cause northwards of 8 billion dollars damage to the economy."
I remember watching a video about that but can't remember where and don't know how to find it.
Is it downloadable anywhere? Preferably legally, but not too fussed.
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Monday 14th October 2013 08:27 GMT Vic
Re: False economics
Can someone explain to me how a US TV show that I might download from a torrent, watch and then delete costs the UK economy "hundreds of millions of pounds each year"?
Because, y'see, you're supposed to spend all your money with Amazon, who then return those hundreds of millions of pounds to the Treasury in taxes...
Easy, huh?
Vic.
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Friday 11th October 2013 13:16 GMT Radbruch1929
I am confused by this story:
a) Canada is a member of the TRIPS agreement and has to have criminal procedures and penalties for copyright piracy on a commercial scale (Article 61 TRIPS). Why does the UK police then address a Canadian DNS provider and threatens to report them to ICANN? A complaint to the relevant prosecutorial counterpart in Canada appears to make more sense if they have a case.
b) The DNS provider does not seem to have free choice between the courses of action "fold, ignore, fight": If they infringe Canadian law, they have to fold. If they do not, I assume they are bound by their contracts and have to fight. "Ignore" would only be an option if they have no reason to fear any equivalent of contributory infringement sanctions or sanctions against aiding in the commission of copyright infringements.
c) What is the author's opinion? It is published under "Comment" but I seem to have missed the part where Mr. Orlowski expresses an opinion.
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Friday 11th October 2013 13:17 GMT Loyal Commenter
"City of London Police has begun an initiative to target websites that attract visitors by providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content for criminal gain. These websites are able to operate and profit from advertising or other income on their sites without having licenses or paying the creators and owners of the films, TV programmes, music and publications. The initiative also seeks to protect consumers from malware and other harmful programs that may be downloaded unwittingly from sites that provide illegally offered content. "
So, apart form the 'criminal gain' part, shich I suspect is a rather nebulous term that would be hard to apply to even a torrent indexing site, how is this description different from what any search engine does (no names mentioned). The only way a torrent indexing site differs from a more general search engine is in its specificity, they don't offer any copyrighted material themselves, only the torrent files - it's a bit like prosecuting BT for publishing the phone number of someone conducting criminal activity over the phone, in their phone book. Only copyright infringement is of course a civil, not criminal matter.
Now, you have to understand that I am not suggesting that providing copies of other people's work pro gratis is morally or legally correct, but surely the people to go after are the ones who are ripping the copyrighted material and seeding the torrents, and surely this is down to the copyright owners, and their associations, especially since the ones making the most noise appear to be quite rich enough to be able to do this for themselves. I don't see why millions of pounds of our taxes should be paying for police to go chasing after civil matters like this, especially when it is so obviously out of their jurisdiction, and especially when the poilce are being expected to make cuts to their budgets to get us out of the mess that the Square Mile got us into in the first place.
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Friday 11th October 2013 14:39 GMT JP19
"and surely this is down to the copyright owners, and their associations, especially since the ones making the most noise appear to be quite rich enough to be able to do this for themselves. I don't see why millions of pounds of our taxes should be paying for police to go chasing after civil matters like this"
The copyright owners, and their associations find bribing politicians to make laws which are enforced with tax payers money offers the best return for their cash.
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Friday 11th October 2013 13:19 GMT batfastad
watch out
Watch out eBay, Amazon Marketplace, Discogs and Google. They're coming for you next... Since you enable people to obtain "pirated" (second hand) material.
Oh wait...
I've not bought a brand new DVD/CD for years. I always go 2nd hand on principle though even physical media is out for me these days. My physical storage space is too valuable for me to fill it with the tat that's churned out by these media cartels. Add in the time that it would take to consume their media then I'm at a huge net loss.
Anyone who decides to fund/approve activities like this, presumably diverting any tax money away from the priorities of ensuring a healthy and well-educated population, needs to be punched. Give me a refund.
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Friday 11th October 2013 13:21 GMT Ian 55
"it has not been proven that TorrentPond contains links to infringing material"
Quite - unless I am missing something, it doesn't even appear to be a torrent site. Not only does it not host material, it doesn't even host .torrent files for torrents of the material.
It appears to be a site that enables you to search a selection of torrent sites, one at a time, with the same search. Google / Bing / any other general search engine does more than this: they will give you results from more than one site at the same time.
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Friday 11th October 2013 14:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Benefit to tax-paying public
So are we to believe there is real benefit to the tax-paying public for an arm of the Police to involve it self with policing websites that are neither hosted in the UK nor have their DNS registered with a UK company?
Not to mention the boiler plate page that helpfully lists all the PIPCU's beneficieries, the content industry.
So glad to see my taxes are used in a productive manner.. </sarcasm>
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Friday 11th October 2013 15:47 GMT JeffyPoooh
Hey, I've got an idea...
An IP address (as opposed to a URL for those that might be confused) does not require DNS.
Somebody needs to write an RFC to describe a method to translate words or phrases directly (in the browser or OS) into IP address numbers. Obviously not every possible IP address would translate into a recognizable word or phrase, but many words or phrases would translate into practical IP addresses (especially IPv6). So there might be a scramble for the best IP addresses that match useful words or desired names.
The end result might be something this: "wwd://piratebay" (wwd = direct) translates directly (using the simple translation algoithm defined in the RFC, stored locally) into the required IP address, where The Pirate Bay has made the effort to be on that IP address.
This will provide a subset of new DNS-less "wwd" addresses to allow easy to remember name-based locators that are outside the URL / DNS / Registration system.
I know that there's already most of this in place; I've seen the beginnings of this already, where IP addresses can be typed in in strange formats. It just needs formalizing, expanding, and implementing.
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Friday 11th October 2013 23:21 GMT Fatman
Re: Hey, I've got an idea...
Already done. See /etc/hosts (or the Windows equivalent, if such a thing still exists).
BUT, that supposes that you already have the IP address.
If you don't have it to begin with??
Since an IP(v4) address is only 4 octets, all one needs is a 256 entry "word dictionary"
Example, the City of London's IP address (one of many, perhaps) is 86.54.118.84.
Assume the following word assignments:
54 - yourself
84 - cops
86 - fuck
118 - london
then translating that IP address into words would give us:
fuck.yourself.london.cops
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Friday 11th October 2013 15:57 GMT btrower
Bad player. Block them.
The entity sending those notes is a bad player. An Email message that results in the permanent lost of control of a domain is a particularly odious kind of SPAM. We have mechanisms for dealing with rogue domains on the Internet. They are called Black Hole Lists. I can't think of an entity more deserving of being blocked.
The Internet is an international system that allows extraordinary freedoms, but it has rules. This entity, allegedly the City of London Police, have violated those rules. They may be above the law in the UK, but they are not above law everywhere else.
We have no more right to cut people off from the Internet than they have, but we are not obliged to accept their traffic.
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Friday 11th October 2013 16:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
City of London Police has begun an initiative to target websites that attract visitors by providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content for criminal gain.
Are they accusing EasyDNS of attracting visitors by providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content?
If not what they are they doing talking to EasyDNS at all?
These websites are able to operate and profit from advertising or other income on their sites without having licenses or paying the creators and owners of the films, TV programmes, music and publications
Again their mission statement doesn't seem to apply to EasyDNS at all.
I think EasyDNS maye have grounds for a lawsuit against Mr Pold for implying/suggesting they are involved in any of those nefarious activities.
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Friday 11th October 2013 16:02 GMT btrower
They have plenty of real crimes to pursue internally.
Are these the people we should be trusting to decide which digital information is OK and who should control it?
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/18/police-consider-disciplining-officer-teenage-girl
"The Rees case also comes against the backdrop of concern among senior police officers and the police complaints watchdog about sexual misconduct by officers."
"The Guardian revealed last month that 169 officers and staff are under investigation for inappropriate relationships and sexual misconduct offences."
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Friday 11th October 2013 16:02 GMT Dan 55
Let's count the ways...
1. It's the publisher which alleges copyright infringement or FACT the should be writing the letter, not a police force.
2. Legal action should be taken against company that runs the website in Singapore, not a DNS provider Canada.
3. They (publisher/FACT) could write a formal letter of complaint to EasyDNS and EasyDNS should decide whether to act or not. If they do, trebles all round as it affects the whole world, not just the UK (for a while at least). If not, well, FACT or the publisher can start official proceedings against EasyDNS in the Canadian courts for aiding and abetting or something equally tenuous but that would be like taking legal action against the Yellow Pages for publishing the phone number of an illegal business.
4. Ditto for any advertising networks that TorrentPond uses.
5. If Singaporean courts don't provide redress, well, there's something in the UK invented just for this case which is going to the High Court and getting TorrentPond added to the main UK ISPs blocklists.
6. A police force in the UK is not a rent-a-mob, or at least shouldn't be. The police wanting to seize a DNS entry without following the proper legal framework set up for it and threatening to shop a business to ICANN over something that's happening in two other jurisdictions if they don't get their own way is probably the most worrying thing.
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Friday 11th October 2013 16:10 GMT JaitcH
Police/PIPCU ignorant of UK Law - check the Canada Act 1982 (UK)
This British Act of the British Parliament separated the Dominion of Canada from the mother-ship. I appreciate Plod often doesn't bother about the niceties of law.
City of London is 3.32 kilometres (2.06 miles) from Westminster.
We Canadians also enjoy the protection of the Canadian Constitution - something Britain doesn't have! In fact, Elizabeth II, as Queen of Canada, brought the act into effect with a proclamation she signed in Ottawa on April 17, 1982, with the late Pierre Trudeau doing the honours.
It's why we Canadians can refuse to even acknowledge police, answer questions, demand a lawyer. We can also do certain things with movies and recordings that others can't - all within Canadian law.
Even the FBI recognises there is a border; bounty hunters who have snatched people in Canada have had to return them. And, of course, we happily accommodated political refugees from the USA when it invaded VietNam.
A registration in the .CA domain also has added benefits. And our independence is why Silent Circle, and many others choose to house their servers in Canada.
So City of London Plod/PIPCU, stop doing the FBI trick of trying to push your laws on to other countries.
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Friday 11th October 2013 23:19 GMT Andy Taylor
ICANN slap down
It looks like ICANN has already moved to tell the domain registrars they should reinstate the domains immediately, allow the owner to transfer them to a different registrar or face disciplinary action.
Interestingly, the letter from the City of London Police is marked with a copyright notice and "Not Protectively Marked" all over it. They go on to explain that this means it should be distributed widely within the organisation, but not released further.
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Friday 11th October 2013 23:28 GMT DavidJB
Some hypocrisy on the part of EasyDNS. When it concerns copyright infringement, they insist on a court order from their own local court. But when it comes to other forms of online misconduct - alleged cases of spam, phishing, malware, etc - they reserve the right to boot a client off without any legal process if 'The domain is engaged in network abuse or poses a threat to the stability of the internet (or to easyDNS itself). In this last case, we are the final arbiters of what qualifies. This would include things like spreading malware, running botnets, spamming, phishing, etc. '
So they feel free to act without 'due process' when it suits their own commercial interests (just like Google and other key players) but not when it doesn't.
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Friday 11th October 2013 23:30 GMT David 45
Waste of money
This is a pathetic waste of taxpayers money. It makes me (to say the least) hopping mad! Never mind about REAL crimes like murder, burglary, assault, rape and so on. No - the great music industry has to be appeased - at great cost, it would seem. I fail to see how the police can unilaterally decide what is and what is not a crime without the case having been brought before a court of law. It is NOT their position do do this and any suggestion that they should have carte blanche to make these types of decisions needs be stamped on ASAP. The suggested re-direct (http://83.138.166.114/) is disgusting, containing links to other sites and pages "supported by" British recorded music industry etc. The police are supposed to be impartial, not the puppets of the music industry and all links should be removed forthwith. This situation of a potential police state needs to be sorted in short order as certain people seem to have grandiose ideas of bypassing the courts completely.
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Friday 11th October 2013 23:32 GMT Splendifous
Harumph! The Blasted Colonial Upstarts!
Clearly these lumberjacks and beaver pelt traders are getting a little too big for their breeches! How *dare* they defy the request of their betters! There was a time when those bumpkins at the fur trading post could be horsewhipped for their impertinence! A happier time, when the lower classes knew their place, and did not rise above their station.
Bite my Tim Horton's drinking, hockey loving butt, you silly,silly Bobbies.
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Monday 14th October 2013 09:47 GMT Simon Beckett
PIPCU holding page
That holding page is highly reminiscent of the page used by browser hijacks purporting to be from the Metropolitan Police... All it needs is a "click here to proceed" button.
On a wider note they are on a slippery slope if they start closing off websites because there is an accusation against them; even if a case is in progress this still implies guilty until proven innocent, which is the new backbone of UK law enforcement. Next time Apple and MS get in a spat maybe they should have their sites closed down?