ShareConnector blog

The collection of copyrights levy in the Netherlands must be taken into reconsideration according to the confederation of Netherlands industry and employers VNO-NCW and the Royal association MKB Netherlands who wrote an official letter of complaint to the minister of justice Mr. Hirsch Balling. To many organizations act as representatives of the authors, and the collecting of copyright levy. The Dutch copyright law is insufficiently aimed at the interest of the claimant, and unnecessarily cranking up the prices of media content. Employers organizations VNO-NCW and MKB Netherlands want the present implementing bodies who are collecting the money for the artists, like Buma and Sena to be replaced by one new organization, to obtain an huge administrative reduction in the tax burden of the overhead and implementation. Making sure the money from levy income will go to the rightful owners of copyrighted content, and the consumers, instead of ending up in the pockets of all these organizations that interfere with the levy collection.

Entrepreneurs have had it with the organizations (of which some not even are under legal supervision) collecting money that belongs to the rightful owners. “We observe moreover that there is a very strong price increase” thus the company cupolas. Thereby the collection organizations would make abuse of their monopoly position.

Businesses plead for adaptation of the authors law and the law on adjoining rights. “The protection of the rights of the individual claimant, thereby must stand on the first place.” This main point in practice is frequently far from reality, entrepreneurs complaining. It happens that an artist must pay levies for the use of its own work. “The same applies to artists who play their own repertoire at a concert.”

The promises which the minister of justice Hirsch Ballin already did, would not go far enough. The minister had dismissed the (by the collectors) planned levies on music carriers like; MP3 players, iPod’s and hard-disk recorders last month. He also works on a proposal which extends the legal supervision of the organizations concerned.

Source: Dutch government news bulletin.

Copyright infringement monitors are the latest target of a well-organized, motivated hacking group.

The group calling itself the MediaDefender-Defenders (MDD) has, as promised, struck again, this time leaking what appears to be the full, uncompiled source code to anti-piracy watchdog MediaDefender’s toolset.

MediaDefender’s software is used internally on behalf of clients like the RIAA and Sony BMG to control the illegal distribution of copyright movies, music and other media online. One company e-mail, leaked last Saturday, detailed the performance of the company’s attempts to poison the distribution of pirated copies of “Spiderman 3″ just days after its theatrical release.

“The [leak] is complete for their operations regarding Kazaa, bittorrent, gnutella etc. This system is … released for the public in order to identify the decoys [MediaDefender] set up,” states the leak’s accompanying NFO file.

The leak is a treasure trove of information for anyone seeking to better understand the anti-piracy operations of MediaDefender and its ilk. Judging by the sheer quantity of different programs written for each network, BitTorrent seems to be MediaDefender’s largest target, with the leak containing 16 different tools target it. In addition to software for creating bogus media files, the leak includes tools for to control the who’s who of filesharing networks: Ares, DirectConnect, eDonkey2000, FastTrack/Kazaa, Gnutella, Kademlia, Overnet, Piolet, SoulSeek and WinMX networks, among others.

Unlike the previous two leaks, MDD claims it received the leaked source code directly from a MediaDefender employee. and the NFO file ends with “a special thanks to the MD employee that gave this to us.”

While DailyTech has been unable to verify the authenticity of any of the leaked materials, MediaDefender has indirectly validated them through a series of cease-and-desist notices sent to various BitTorrent trackers earlier this week; the letters admit that “despite security precautions by our client, a person or persons illegally accessed MediaDefender’s email and other files,” and that the sites in question “immediately and permanently cease and desist from posting, distributing or otherwise making available MediaDefender’s trade secrets and confidential information.”

Responses have varied, ranging from compliance to outright mockery. In one case, Meganova.com replied publicly in a profanity-laden tirade against MediaDefender’s legal firm.

MediaDefender’s woes began last Saturday, when almost 700MB of the company’s e-mails hit the underground. The following day, MDD released copies of a VOIP conversation between MediaDefender and the New York Attorney General. In a previous NFO file, MDD promised that there was “more to come,” and it looks like the group will continue to make good on its claim.

Source: dailytech.com

Tuesday July 24 2007: R4U and SC crew mainly cleared from piracy and copyright infringement.

The court in Rotterdam last Tuesday have mainly cleared the five crew members of the websites Releases4U and ShareConnector, and there host (Mindlab) of copyright infringement, piracy on a large scale and membership of an criminal organization. The DOJ public prosecutor Mrs. A. Drogt had just two weeks ago demanded a fine of 5000 euro and 6 months conditional in jail to all defendants.

Judge Mr. van Klaveren considered the following facts NOT proved:

1. Spreading of copyright protected materials on a large scale, the defendants were cleared of this accusation.
2. Piracy and copyright infringement, the defendants were cleared of this accusation.
3. Membership of a criminal organization, the defendants were cleared of this accusation.

Three of the fife defendants (Releases4U) had admitted they spread a few films within the closed FTP community of the release group DVD-EU, and / or uploaded a few films on the eDonkey2000 network. They where sentenced a fine of 250 euro or 5 days in jail. A lot more to reality, and a wise decision by judge van Klaveren.

Adi and the host (Mindlab) where cleared of all charges, and the judge ordered to return all confiscated computers and equipment immediately. A big disappointment to the prosecutor and BREIN. This test case was just ended a bit different then BREIN had hoped for. Finally BREIN was stopped accusing the p2p community of criminal activities. This leaves 1 to the p2p community and 0 to the entertainment mafia. But don’t think we won yet, although this case was won and showed BREIN was indeed trying to let the DOJ doing the dirty job for them. This case did not really come to an end.

On August 4 2007 the DOJ public prosecutor Mrs. A. Drogt used the media to let the world know she had filed a protection order against Judge van Klaveren’s verdict. Mrs. Drogt thinks she has enough evidence to take the case to a higher level and bring it to high court soon. So the struggle is not over yet, unfortunately i am not convinced Mrs. Drogt has anything of relevance, a new judge will probably come to the same conclusion. We keep you guys informed of the never ending story BREIN against the common (file sharing) people.

To be continued in the near future.

Zocor.

After the demonstration of Ithaca the defendant Mufasa had to answer the questions of the judge. Mufasa however had (as he said) not really much to do with copyright infringement, he was just taking care of the financial part of the website R4U. He was paying the bills and took care of the sponsored money which was used to pay hosting Releases4U. According to the defendant the income mostly was not enough to play even, so the crew was paying the shortcomings from there own pocket. Mufasa was no more then about one hour a day busy with the finances and had not much time to spend on the website. He admitted that he had shared some files himself but it was no more than a few films. Sharing is a violation of the Dutch anti piracy laws because it means downloading as well as uploading, and it is the uploading part that is unlawful. Also Mufasa had to answer some relevant questions but not much new compared to the rest of the defendants.
Next and last the hosting provider (Mindlab) had to take the stand. Mindlab was a small one mans business who hosted Releases4U and ShareConnector at the time they got busted. It seemed that Mindlab also had an Administrator account on Releases4U which in my opinion was not a wise thing to do. The judge asked why he had an Administrator account if he was just hosting the websites. The Mindlab representative answered it was just used to help the R4U crew if there were problems related to the website, and if that was the case he had an Admin account to solve problems if the R4U crew was not able to solve them themselves. The judge was not really convinced about Mindlabs innocence in this matter, it felt to me as if the judge did not believe in Mindlabs explanation. Now i had personally spoken to the man during the coffee and lunch brakes, and am convinced he really has nothing to do with Releases4U as a crew member, but it was not me to decide.

At the end of this first trial day (it was 16:00 hour local time) after a recess of one hour the word was to the DOJ public prosecutor Mrs. A. Drogt. Because it was kind of late (i had to travel in rush hour) i decided to leave the court and hear the prosecutors sentence requirements in the news later that day. About an hour later when i got home, the sentence was already in the press. The prosecutor had claimed a 5000 euro fine and 6 months conditional in jail to all defendants. She considered proved all charges, meaning professional copyright infringement, membership of an criminal organization, and violation of article 31a and 31b of the Dutch copyright law from 1912. But a sentence requirement was not yet a sentence. The case was dismissed and continued the next day, that was the day the lawyers could hold there defense requisitory. Unfortunately i was not able to be present that day, but i knew the outcome could only be positive considering the poor and amateurish proof in this case, that was based of lies and deceive by BREIN who got the DOJ to do there dirty job for them. A big money saver because now the DOJ should pay for all costs on behalf of the Dutch tax payer.

What prove do you have when a hash link name says it is the latest Disney film? The way to find out is to download it and play the movie to make sure it is that film the ED2K file name implied. If BREIN claims they know for sure, they had to have downloaded the file and on p2p that means “no downloading without uploading” (as BREIN themselves claim), which is a crime as the Dutch law says. BREIN itself must have been spreading the film to, to prove it was the film as the file name implied. Would that not make BREIN guilty of copyright infringement themselves? And what if the entertainment mafia is spreading hundred thousands of bogus files like they still do on the KaaZaa network? Would spreading these files with real existing film file names be infringement? And so there’s more to say about the way BREIN lies and deceives the DOJ to get what they want. Only this time Mr. Tim Kuik found ShareConnector, Liquidtorrent and Releases4U on its way, three fighters who do not let BREIN go on whit there lies, deceive and intimidation of the common (file sharing) people. Just let it be clear to everyone; indexing hash links is no crime according to the Dutch law and that’s the only thing that was done on the websites. Nothing but a bunch of hash links where found on the servers, links that could just as easily be coming from Google.

July 24 2007, the date of the verdict.

To be continued …..

According to anti-piracy.nl, 12 “BigBang” eD2k servers are being offline for 2 weeks already, after their hosting provider received a cease and desist letter from the dutch anti piracy organization BREIN.

Once again, it shows that their news report is full of deception and misinformation.
BREIN claims that those eDonkey servers facilitate and provide illegal content which they offer by payment. Now how ridiculous is that!

Also, DonkeyServer 1-6 are down/offline, along with Byte Devils and some other servers which were the major ones. It’s unclear if it has anything to do with BREINs action. It could also mean that other servers decided to shutdown so people would move on to the serverless Kademlia (Kad) network.
This is good news only, no more servers is no more centralization. Kad is a completely decentralized network, which enables searches without the use of an eDonkey server.

Because of this BREINless action, users will move much quicker to the better Kad network, which is of course a good thing.
From now on it’s recommended only to use the Kad network in applications like eMule, aMule and MLDonkey. Forget the eD2k servers, many of them left are fake, setup by anti piracy organizations to monitor you.