Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Pirate Bay Sued By Finnish Record Labels

The largest BitTorrent tracker site in the world The Pirate Bay has been sued again. Now the plaintiffs are more than twenty record labels from Finland, desperately attempting to halt piracy in their country. The petition to block The Pirate Bay was sent by the country's Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center on behalf of the IFPI.

Finnish pro-copyright outfit, which claims its goal is to ensure favorable operational conditions for the recording industry in the country, represents 23 record labels that launched a lawsuit at the Helsinki District Court. Like other similar outfits, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in Finland required the court to order telecommunications company called Elisa to deny access to a popular Swedish site providing Internet users with access to copyrighted content like music, films, and other material. The representative of the IFPI claimed that a legitimate online market can’t develop in country if infringing services like The Pirate Bay are allowed to go on with their operations.

In response, the Internet service provider argued that it doesn't condone piracy in the Internet, and refused to block access to The Pirate Bay unless the court orders it to do so.

Founded 8 years ago, the BitTorrent tracker allows millions of people to share copyrighted content through BitTorrent technology, or P2P links offered on the website. Two years ago, the website founders were fined and sentenced to prison for copyright infringement, but The Pirate Bay is still operational. However, the members of the service are still being pursued.

For example, recently the Denmark judge ruled that the website member nicknamed Icenfire should pay over $35,000 in damages for movie upload. The movie in question was Anders Matthesen’s comedy of 2009, “Black balls”, which was released on Blu-ray in the country, but the United States and Canada never saw the movie in the stores. The fine included the cost of the violation itself ($28,000) and associated court costs ($7,500). The individual was singled out by a Danish pro-copyright group, which claimed he was the original uploader. The outfit had raided his home in Denmark back in February, right after the routine analysis revealed the unauthorized upload


Monday, May 23, 2011

Sony PSN Hacked Again; 100-M Users' Info Stolen

NEW YORK — Sony Corp has been hacked again, exposing more security issues for the company less than a month after intruders stole personal information from more than 100 million online user accounts.

A hacked page on a Sony website in Thailand directed users to a fake site posing as an Italian credit card company. The site was designed to steal information from customers, Internet security firm F-Secure disclosed on Friday.

It is the latest in a series of security headaches for Sony, which discovered in April hackers had broken into its PlayStation Network and stole data from more than 77 million accounts. On May 2, Sony disclosed hackers had also stolen data from about 25 million user accounts of the Sony Online Entertainment website, a PC-based games service.

The PlayStation attack, considered the biggest in Internet history, prompted the Japanese electronics giant to shut down its PlayStation Network and other services for close to a month.

"It's a Sony security issue," said Jennifer Kutz, a representative for F-Secure, referring to the fraudulent website.

The latest hacking, which the security company said occurred separately from the April attack, was reported just hours after Sony told customers of another breach on one of its units.

So-Net, the Internet service provider unit of Sony, alerted customers on Thursday that an intruder had broken into its system and stolen virtual points worth $1,225 from account holders.

Critics have slammed the company for not protecting its networks securely and then waiting up to a week before telling its customers of the attack and the possible theft of credit card information, prompting lawmakers and state attorneys general to launch investigations.

Security experts said they were not surprised that the electronics company has not yet fixed weaknesses in its massive global network. Earlier this week, Sony shut down one of its websites set up to help millions of users change their passwords after finding a security flaw.

"Sony is going through a pretty rigorous process and finding the holes to fill," said Josh Shaul, chief technology officer for computer security firm Application Security Inc.

"The hackers are going through the same process and they're putting their fingers in the holes faster than Sony can fill them."

"What we've done is stopped the So-Net points exchanges and told customers to change their passwords," So-Net said in a statement in Japanese to consumers.

About 100,000 yen ($1,225) was stolen from accounts that were attacked. The company said there was no evidence other accounts in the online system had been compromised.

"At this point in our investigations, we have not confirmed any data leakage. We have not found any sign of a possibility that a third party has obtained members' names, address, birth dates and phone numbers."

Security experts have told Reuters Sony's networks around the world remain vulnerable to attack.

Sony's string of security problems could be attracting more hackers to attack its networks.

"I think it's now 'I'm a hacker and I'm bored, let's go after Sony,'" Shaul said.

A Sony representative in the United States could not immediately be reached for comment.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

US Government Sued For Stealing Laptop

According to Washington Post, one of the co-founders of an outfit advocating for Bradley Manning launched a lawsuit against the American government for taking his PC and copying its contents without authorization in order to help a criminal investigation of Wikileaks.

David House, the MIT computer scientist, was at the airport when his laptop was seized by Department of Homeland Security agents. Initially, he thought that his computer was searched just as part of a security check. However, it appeared that the laptop was seized because House was supporting Bradley Manning, the accused leaker.

Now David House is backed by the US Civil Liberties Union, which claims that the country’s government employs too aggressive border search policies in order to gather data about political activities of the citizens and aid criminal investigations. American Civil Liberties Union argues that House's laptop seizure was unconstitutional, as the device contained a lot of personal content like private membership lists. The Union even claimed that reviewing the latter is a thought crime.

Instead, before seizing laptops, the government should have provided a suspicion of a crime, as well as a "border related" justification to perform such searches. If you are leaving the United States, a search warrant based on cause of a crime is necessary for examining someone’s laptop. But if a person is entering the country, government believes that it needs neither a warrant nor even any reason for suspicion.

As for the Supreme Court, it believes that if a search is routine or reasonable, then it doesn’t matter what the intent of it is. But at the same time the government didn’t say if searching a PC with plenty of personal information is reasonable at all without any suspicion of a crime.

The authorities held the laptop in question for 49 days. House was neither charged, nor allowed to see a lawyer all this time. After 49 days, the US government released the device without any explanation.

The device, among many other, contained a few years' worth of personal e-mails with relatives, friends and colleagues, as well as passwords to House’s bank account and workplace PC, and the most suspicious part – confidential messages of the Bradley Manning Support Network over further strategy and fund-raising.

Monday, May 9, 2011

CBS And CNET Sued For LimeWire Distribution

Alki David, the owner of FilmOn.com, has organized a coalition of music and movie artists claiming that CBS Interactive Inc., as well as CNET Networks, Inc., were the largest source for LimeWire and other peer-to-peer clients, which means that they are therefore responsible for the “mass-scale copyright violation” P2P clients are liable for.

FilmOn.com owner is now leading a coalition of artists in another class action lawsuit against CBS and CNET for massive copyright violation. The lawsuit was filed in LA federal court, claiming that CBS Interactive Inc. and CNET Networks, Inc. directly participate in massive copyright violation on peer-to-peer systems, committed through the now defunct LimeWire.

The lawsuit mentions that back in 2010 District Judge ruled that LimeWire had committed copyright violation, had been engaged in unfair competition, and even encouraged others to violate the law. In October 2010, the P2P application faced permanent injunction, as well as responsibility for billions of dollars in damages.

Alki David accused CBS Interactive and CNET of acting as the “major distributor” of LimeWire file-sharing client and of promoting other peer-to-peer systems in order to profit from massive copyright violation. The first allegations were made in December 2010, and then were followed by the announcement of the formation of a class action lawsuit in 2011. David admitted that he saw nothing illegal about file-sharing software, but did see illegal in distributing such applications in order to infringe on copyright. He also pointed at video clips featuring a number of CNET representatives (and “paid employees of CBS”) advocating the use of unauthorized DRM-circumvention software.

The lawsuit claims that CBS and CNET have been the largest source for such P2P clients as LimeWire and FrostWire, which makes them responsible for the infringement theses the clients are liable for. The plaintiffs complain that unauthorized file-sharing via LimeWire has led to huge damage to the entertainment community. Currently more and more creative content owners are reported to join the lawsuit in question, turning it into the most significant copyright violation case around that will make sure that such large corporations as CBS Interactive and CNET won’t profit from copyright infringement.


Thursday, May 5, 2011

ACTA Might Harm National Security

The letter sent by the Department of Homeland Security said that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement turned out to be a potential national security risk back three years ago. 

One of the outfits following the ACTA development has received very interesting information over the agreement way back in 2008. When the treaty was first discovered, it was the worst that ever happened to copyright legislation. The agreement included a global “three-strikes” regime, which demanded that all digital devices including laptops and MP3 players be seized at borders and checked for infringing content. Moreover, it featured DMCA-style anti-circumvention provisions, and any negotiations over the treaty were entirely secret. It actually became known thanks to Wikileaks, which blew the lid off the treaty.

Ever since the information leaked online, there were many criticisms of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, one of them being that it represents a national security risk due to containing a “three-strikes” provision. France, which has already introduced the similar regime, was “yelled” at by the NSA for that. That’s what Homeland Security pointed out back then.

It turned out that the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to the US ambassador, where it expressed concerns over the treaty negotiations. More specifically, the concern was about border security, or the priority IP Enforcement had as compared to other national security threats. The Department of Homeland Security asked where all the extra resources needed for seizing and searching all staff at borders would come from. What is more important, the letter was sent before the stock market crashed and the country considered tightening the belt. You can imagine what costs it would be today, if 3 years ago it was a matter of concern already. How does this relate to national security? Easy. Now ACTA would demand Homeland Security to do more with less resources, and if it tries to allocate all its resources to searching though every mobile phone and MP3 player at borders, then national security would be put at risk.

In other words, it looks like there’s a choice between huge national security risks and counterfeiters. That would be weird if the governments prefer corporate interests to issues of national security, but this war on copyright infringement is really getting out of hand.