Author Topic: Blow on Internet Piracy or it's just another feint from the authorities  (Read 4666 times)

Offline balduran

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Here's a quote from a news website about the latest development in the fight against computer piracy in Bulgaria. Sounds like a good beginning, but is the police actually doing anything, or the're just deceiving the society.

Quote
Bulgaria's office for fighting organized crime announced that they are about to hit the pirate industry in the country harder than ever on Monday.

Raids against Internet users, who illegally download and distribute audio and video files have been launched all over the country, media reported.

At present police will only check up people who distribute pirated movies and songs. In time, however all Internet users will be monitored, authorities say. Police vow to probe and arrest everyone, regardless of age and gender. Companies who offer Internet access could also be targeted, if their servers store illegal info.

This is a warning to all the people who deal with such illegal activities, cybercirmes expert Yavor Kolev warns adding that they could establish the identity of all the people who had ever downloaded pirate movies.
On Friday, police busted the three biggest uploaders of one of Bulgaria's most popular torrent website. They had uploaded over 22 terabytes of information, reports say.

What Police actually did, was arrest three individuals under the age of fifteen, who shared some DivX movies. The next day the torrent site made an announcement that almost half of the pirated files are uploaded and downloaded from computers based either in  the facilities of the Internal ministry (which is responsible for the police) or a couple of other national institutions. It appears civil servants use their office hours to watch porn and play video games. Imagine the odds.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2006, 02:21:57 AM by balduran »
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Offline the bigg

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Here's a quote from a news website about the latest development in the fight against computer piracy in Bulgaria. Sounds like a good beginning, but is the police actually doing anything, or the're just deceiving the society.

Quote
Bulgaria's office for fighting organized crime announced that they are about to hit the pirate industry in the country harder than ever on Monday.

Raids against Internet users, who illegally download and distribute audio and video files have been launched all over the country, media reported.

At present police will only check up people who distribute pirated movies and songs. In time, however all Internet users will be monitored, authorities say. Police vow to probe and arrest everyone, regardless of age and gender. Companies who offer Internet access could also be targeted, if their servers store illegal info.

This is a warning to all the people who deal with such illegal activities, cybercirmes expert Yavor Kolev warns adding that they could establish the identity of all the people who had ever downloaded pirate movies.
On Friday, police busted the three biggest uploaders of one of Bulgaria's most popular torrent website. They had uploaded over 22 terabytes of information, reports say.

What Police actually did, was arrest three individuals under the age of fifteen, who shared some DivX movies.
It's the same old, same old bullshit...
[/motley crue]
Quote
The next day the torrent site made an announcement that almost half of the pirated files are uploaded and downloaded from computers based either in  the facilities of the Internal ministry (which is responsible for the police) or a couple of other national institutions. It appears civil servants use their office hours to watch porn and play video games. Imagine the odds.
Well, they had to masquerade as sharers/downloaders to be able to intercept the IPs of those actually downloading stuff. That's what the RIAA/MPAA has been doing for the last, uh, three years.
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Offline SimDing0™

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I think it's incredibly depressing the police are being drawn increasingly into this sort of thing. Tackling copyright infringement is one thing. Fucking about wasting police time for financial gain is quite another.

Offline Shadow n 787

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They should stick to their donuts.  ::)
( Or porn, whatever gets 'em off. )  :P
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Offline balduran

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I think it's incredibly depressing the police are being drawn increasingly into this sort of thing. Tackling copyright infringement is one thing. Fucking about wasting police time for financial gain is quite another.
It's just that they are doing something, but they're something wrong. Police shouldn't go after little boys and girls, most of whom have no idea what copyright means. If the authorities want to tackle piracy, they have to go to the core of the problem and arrest the owners of the tracker systems that allow bittorrent based file sharing. I don't see how you can win a war against 20 to 50 thousand 14-yearolds who want to play the lates PC game without having to save their allowings for a month or two.
Today I had to write an article about the bittorrent sites in Bulgaria and the world practices of arresting torrent peers and seeders. Do you know what I found out? There's only one miserable fellow, who got arrested for peering, and he was in Hong Kong - where you can potentionally be arrested for spitting on the street. All the other cases that I studied for my article involved arrests of individuals who are responsible for torrent tracking sites, except for this guy in Rotchester, who was arrested for using torrents, but on the grounds that he used a "hacking program" on a campus based computer.
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Offline seanas

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I think it's incredibly depressing the police are being drawn increasingly into this sort of thing. Tackling copyright infringement is one thing. Fucking about wasting police time for financial gain is quite another.
It's just that they are doing something, but they're something wrong. Police shouldn't go after little boys and girls, most of whom have no idea what copyright means. If the authorities want to tackle piracy, they have to go to the core of the problem and arrest the owners of the tracker systems that allow bittorrent based file sharing. I don't see how you can win a war against 20 to 50 thousand 14-yearolds who want to play the lates PC game without having to save their allowings for a month or two.

y'know, i have a friend who has spent much of the last 18 months in bulgaria as part of a team teaching bulgarian police and customs officials about intellectual property law and IP law enforcement. it's one of the requirements of bulgaria's EU accession treaty, apparently. and i guess going after downloaders and end-users allows the bulgarian authorities to say to the EU 'we're donig something about IP piracy' without actually going after the ppl running the DVD-copying factories that the EU is really worried about.
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Offline Veloxyll

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And it's the DVD copy factories that actually cost the business money.
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Offline balduran

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y'know, i have a friend who has spent much of the last 18 months in bulgaria as part of a team teaching bulgarian police and customs officials about intellectual property law and IP law enforcement. it's one of the requirements of bulgaria's EU accession treaty, apparently. and i guess going after downloaders and end-users allows the bulgarian authorities to say to the EU 'we're donig something about IP piracy' without actually going after the ppl running the DVD-copying factories that the EU is really worried about.

You're absolutely correct. And this is actually what most of the people here think - authorities don't want to get in the way of the organised mafia that is responsible for the whole piracy thing and in the same time they want to show the EU Commission that they are "fighting crime". So what happens in the end? - "Sorry Mrs. Teacher! Bobby won't be able to attend school today because he's in jail for downloading mp3s."
« Last Edit: May 12, 2006, 02:07:03 AM by balduran »
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Offline seanas

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two things to add to this thread:
1. i spoke with my freind over the weekend, who said the crackdown had nothing to do with them or their work.
2. the EU released a report about the preparations of Romania and Bulgaria for accession in 2007 - or rather, those errors where Romania and Bulgaria are seriously behind in their accession preparations. i suspect the crackdown was driven by point 2. i also suspect it was pointless, as the EU aren't idiots. from today's Guardian:
Quote from: The Guardian - EU says Bulgaria must tackle organised crime
The six reforms demanded in Bulgaria are: "tangible results" in prosecuting organised crime networks; more efficient measures to stamp out corruption and fraud; stepping up the fight against money laundering; strengthening controls over structural and cohesion funds; guaranteeing that agricultural funds will be spent properly; and improving the safety of animal byproducts.

links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,,1776403,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,,1776385,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,,1776205,00.html
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Offline balduran

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What can I say? We've got more problems than we can solve in a few months time. And instead of taking care of real problems, they try to pretend they're doing sth that they're actually not. I haven't read the commission's report yet, but I suspect there will be a more critical one (in both senses) in the autumn.
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Offline jester

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Offline Zyraen

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Balduran - are you bulgarian by any chance?
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Suddenly I love France and Canada.

I now have a reason to.
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Offline balduran

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Balduran - are you bulgarian by any chance?

Bingo!
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Offline balduran

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.... meanwhile in France:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39243632,00.htm

I don't see how this law is going to pass through the French Senate.
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Offline the bigg

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It didn't - the law recently approved regarding that sanctions download with 30 euros, sharing with 150 euros, and circumventing anti-copy protection (program cracks, music/dvd DRM...) with up to 750 euros. Still better than the 10.000s of euros you get threatened with in Italy.
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Offline balduran

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Here's some new development on the story. The article is from Reuters.

Quote
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgarian police charged two men on Saturday for illegally distributing music and films in what officials called one of Europe's largest Internet pirate groups.

They arrested an administrator and systems operator for putting download links to 20 million songs -- or roughly 3 million albums -- and hundreds of films on the web site www.arenabg.com, one of Bulgaria's most popular pages.

Users could download as many of the songs and films as they liked after paying a four lev ($2.50) monthly fee. Authorities estimate the damage to the entertainment industry at around $30 million.

"These people are among the biggest Internet pirates in Europe," said Liliana Yosifova, spokeswoman for the Sofia Investigators' Office. "We are talking about big losses here."

Police also found three satellite receivers and 200 CDs with pirated movies at the suspects' homes, part of what the Interior Ministry said was a high-speed network used to download new movies and songs from foreign pirate sites.

The site was no longer functioning on Saturday afternoon. The men, who were released on 10,000 levs bail, were not immediately available for comment.

Software, music and movie piracy is widespread in the poor Black Sea country of 7.7 million. Analysts say it is linked to rampant organized crime, the biggest stumbling block to Bulgaria's efforts to join the European Union next year.

Brussels has warned Sofia to fix its intellectual property legislation and crack down on piracy, other types of organized crime and high-level corruption, or see its entry into the bloc delayed until at least 2008.

According to an article published in today's issue of my newspaper, www.arenabg.com was the second largest network for distributing  illegal softwear in the world.
« Last Edit: May 29, 2006, 03:37:17 AM by balduran »
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Offline Veloxyll

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See, that I can understand them cracking down on (I'd never heard of it! Some "major" source, feh).

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Offline balduran

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The site, actually, is still active, despite what they've written. And my guess is that the two who got arrested won't even be convicted for piracy, because there are some major lapses in the legislation consernig copyright.
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Offline Lu

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  Copyrights suck. Abolish them, and the problem's solved