authorities
Court Shuts ShareConnector Down For Good
Five years ago, when most BitTorrent sites had only a handful of visitors, ShareConnector was serving eDonkey links to millions of file-sharers every month. This popularity didn’t go unnoticed by the local authorities, who were tipped off by BREIN and started a criminal investigation into the operator of the site, as well as the people behind the site Releases4U. What followed was more than 5 years of legal battles in both civil and criminal court cases.
Continue reading »Music Biz Gives Up Trying to Block Pirate Bay in Norway
Had been trying to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to prevent customer from being able to access BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. It’s been a long time coming, but at last TONO , a Norwegian royalty collecting group founded back in 1928, and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) have given up their bid to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to prevent subscribers from being able to access BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. The affair first began in earnest last March when Telenor refused to block the Pirate Bay, reminding the copyright holders that “ISPs are not complicit in the actions of its customers on the Internet.” Then in November the country’s Norway’s Asker and Bærum District Court ruled in favor of Telenor , finding that it is not illegally contributing to any copyright violations by The Pirate Bay and that there is subsequently no legal basis for forcing it to block the site.
Continue reading »IsoHunt Stuck Behind China’s Great Firewall
China is no stranger to Internet censorship. The country’s Great Firewall includes many well known sites, but up until now BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. There was a short blocking incident two years ago when Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay were hijacked and redirected to the leading Chinese search engine, Baidu.
Continue reading »Pirate Bay Users Outside Italy Suffer Collateral Damage
In the summer of 2008, The Pirate Bay was censored in Italy when the country’s ISPs were ordered to prevent their subscribers from accessing the site. The decision was appealed and The Pirate Bay won their case, with the Court of Bergamo ruling that no foreign website could be censored for alleged copyright infringement. The block was lifted temporarily as the case again went to appeal.
Continue reading »File Sharing Losing Ground to Streaming? The Duel Continues
Some months ago we were discussing some reports, rising questions and making predictions in the debate file sharing over streaming . Now we bring the issue back to your attention. Despite still being expected to gain some ground, file sharing in Sweden seems to be no match for increasingly popular online streaming of TV shows and films, the Internet company Cisco informs in a report.
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