Battle

It seems carefree existence torrents and sharing services comes to an end. And the question here is not even on nabivshem nauseam The Pirate Bay. This year, the torrent trackers were persecuted all over the world - even in countries where nothing like this has never happened - for example, in Russia. But the most unpleasant - fighters for copyrights launched a massive attack on users of torrents, presenting the tens of thousands of lawsuits. Downloading files with torrents? Then they come to you!


Start hostilities

"Full-scale hostilities" began in late 2009. In November worn harassment The Pirate Bay tracker is closed and moved to the technology ligament (magnet-links + DHT). At the same time the largest torrent tracker Mininova court decision had to be removed from its database all the illegal content. Creator torrent tracker isoHunt judged by threatening to jail. Anti-piracy group BREIN of the Netherlands announced that during 2009 she was able through the courts to close 393 torrent tracker. But the volume of traffic pirated content decreased towards the end of the year is very small - in fact, experts estimate that only existed in the world of 30 thousand to 50 thousand torrent trackers.


Shooting windows

February 16 this year, the investigation department of Chertanovskaya district of the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office decided to suspend the domain delegation Torrents.ru. The formal reason - a case that occurred just before. Then, prosecutors detained in Moscow, a young computer geeks, who tried to sell to customers (figurehead, as it turned out) a pirated copy of the package Autodesk AutoCAD 2009. The young man asked for the installation of "pirates" of 1.500 rubles, while the official cost of licenses - more than 100 thousand Russian rubles. During the interrogation, the young man admitted that he downloaded the hacked distro with Torrents.ru.

Feb. 19 at the site of the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor's Office (UPC), Russia appeared official announcement: "Torrents.ru was closed under a criminal investigation of illegal use of copyright instituted for the crime under Article 146 of the Criminal Code. Aggrieved parties in the case are companies 1C and Autodesk. [...] According to the results of the preliminary investigation the prosecutor's office concluded that the torrent tracker repeatedly in large and very large amount of infringing the copyrights of companies-software developers. " Formally Torrents.ru was closed "at the time of the preliminary investigation."

For Russia this is a precedent. Blogosphere literally exploded on the protection Torrents.ru were thrown all forces, including an open letter to the president asking to restore the domain delegation. Under the treatment the first day signed by more than 12 thousand people.

It seems that the least experienced administration Torrents.ru. A few hours after the closure of service fully started work on a new address Rutracker.org. This was reported in a special mailing list, and 10 million users of the BitTorrent tracker again have access to free software, music and movies.

Soon, a similar attack law enforcers held in respect RGhost iFolder.ru. Just arrived to remove the server - and embarrassed to learn that these servers a lot, and take out all at once just physically impossible. It was then decided to seal them. However, in the near future and this RGhost regained its work.

A March 10 in Russia Expert Council Culture Ministry rejected the draft amendments to the Civil Code, providing for sanctions for ISPs for providing access to illegal content. Actually, the Russian Code of Administrative Offences and the Criminal Code now allows to prosecute providers, through a network which will download illegal content. But for this we must prove that the provider condone the offense with intent, and the first to warn him. And access to the resources of counterfeit content can be blocked only by court.

However, supporters rejoice in the free exchange of information was too early.


Carpet bombing

Failing to achieve the desired result of the attack on torrents.ru and iFolder.ru, Internal Affairs of Moscow has decided to transfer the focus of attack on ordinary users who download free pirated content with the torrent of resources. At a press conference on 24 March, the Chief Economic Crimes Division of Internal Affairs of Moscow Nikolay Nazimok said: "The web dangerous that form a network of networks. Downloading movies from the resource, you become distributors of these products to other users.

However, Russian law enforcers while clearly quite weak imagine how they will pursue the simple users of torrents. But the model of such a mass attack on users of torrents already piloted in the United States. Organization US Copyright Group (represents the interests of independent film producers) filed charges against 20 thousand direct American users sharing services. Interestingly, all of them were charged with illegal distribution of all five films. And not some blockbusters (as you would expect), but low-budget movies, which you are unlikely to go to the cinema. This "Steam Experiment", "Uncross the Stars", "Gray Man", "Call of the Wild 3D" and "Far Cry".

Each of the 20 thousand respondents were presented with five statements of claim - for each of the tapes. Plaintiffs need to remove from the PC illegal copies of downloaded movies and cover court costs. And in the case of a court order - to pay compensation producers. In addition, lawyers US Copyright Group promised in case of successful completion of 20 thousand direct proceedings in the courts of claims relating to the other five films, against the other 30 thousand users.

Observers have noted that this is more like a kind of rehearsal or, rather, on developing the technology of legal prosecution (I should say - of terror) users of torrent trackers. Here, however, raises some critical issues. For example, this: suits brought against individual users. But where does US Copyright Group of private data? Are they all true? How can I prove that these people downloaded and distributed pirated media content?

According to U.S. media, experts US Copyright Group to identify users, pirates have used technology developed by German company GuardaLey IT. It allows you to track the flow of data and records the IP-address file-sharing participants. Yet until now the practice of determining the user name by IP-address is quite questionable. In general, it comes in this case the matter to court and how it can result - is completely unclear.

Clearly more. The new strategy of fighters with torrents - the legal prosecution of users of these services.


Frightened

Trying to avoid reprisals, some Internet companies themselves are beginning to act in a manner like the defenders of copyright. For example, the popular file-hosting service RapidShare has recently started to close the accounts of users who laid out and download pirated content. Formally, this happens as a result of violations of the rules of resource utilization.

This is very disturbing news just because RapidShare - one of the largest repositories of files on the web. Indeed, many users often use it for posting content that is copyrighted - music, movies, computer games and software. Accordingly, against RapidShare has repeatedly been allegations of copyright infringement. And some courts have lost the file hosting. But until now to volunteer hunting is not reached.


Summary

Finally give opinions Magnus Eriksson - founder Piratbyran, a Swedish NGO, which created The Pirate Bay:

- Copyright and deception associated with this concept and created a battle front, where the conflict takes place at various levels. My prediction: This fight would go beyond the two current members - rights holders and file-sharing participants. For example, a conflict with Google Books, or the question of how to divide the money, which brings kollaboratsionnye projects - all conflicts in the area of copyright. Now there are so many opportunities for file sharing, that this issue will not be unambiguously resolved in the near future.

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