British and Dutch police have shut down a “widely-used” source of illegally-downloaded music.
A flat on Teesside and several properties in Amsterdam were raided as part of an Interpol investigation into the members-only website OiNK.
The UK-run site has leaked 60 major pre-release albums this year alone, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
A 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough was arrested on Tuesday morning.
‘Extremely lucrative’
The IT worker was led from his home in the town’s Grange Road and is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law.
At the same time his employer – a large multi-national company – and his father’s home were also raided.
A Cleveland Police spokesman said: “This extremely lucrative and creative scheme consisted of a private file-sharing website being set up. Membership was by invitation only.
“The site allowed the uploading and downloading of pre-release music and media to thousands of members.”
An IFPI spokesman said: “Once an album had been posted on the OiNK website, the users that download that music then passed the content to other websites, forums and blogs, where multiple copies were made.
“Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found further down the illegal online supply chain.”
The site’s servers, based in Amsterdam, were seized in a series of raids last week.
It followed a two-year investigation by music industry bodies the IFPI and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
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Comcast has been “caught” blocking BitTorrent traffic in some areas, according to tests performed by the Associated Press. The news organization claims to have confirmed that Comcast is blocking—or at least seriously slowing down—BitTorrent transfers, regardless of whether the content is legal or not. If true, Comcast’s actions have serious implications for sharing information online, and by proxy, Net Neutrality.
The AP was tipped off to the possible P2P blockage by a reader who had noticed serious slowdowns on his Comcast connection. The organization then proceeded to perform a number of tests—three, to be exact—on two computers in cities on both the east and west coasts. AP chose to download a copy of the King James Bible through BitTorrent (because it is an uncopyrighted work) and went to work. In two out of its three tests, the downloads were blocked altogether, while in the remaining test, the download started after a 10-minute delay.
AP believes that the reason for the block and delay was due to reset packets being sent back from what claimed to be other torrent users—including the AP’s second computer. “However, the traffic analyzer software running on each computer showed that neither computer actually sent the packets,” wrote the AP, indicating that the packets were sent by a mysterious middle party. Further, the AP says that when it performed traffic analysis on another computer torrenting files over Time Warner Cable, over half of the reset packets came from the addresses of Comcast subscribers. This is curious, since Comcast’s 12.4 million subscribers only make up about 20 percent of US broadband subscribers.
Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas told the AP that the company doesn’t block access to BitTorrent, but did not elaborate on his definition of “access” (.torrent files can be downloaded just fine, for example). However, Douglas also said that Comcast does use something to keep the network running smoothly. “We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure all our customers have the best broadband experience possible,” he said. “This means we use the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers.”
We’re not entirely sure that the AP’s tests are as conclusive as it seems to believe—after all, two tests in three cities does not constitute an exhaustive data set. We do, however, think that the AP—and others who have noticed the issue—are onto something. Everyone has been trying to figure out what, exactly, Comcast is doing to throttle P2P traffic in certain markets, and Comcast sending reset packets on behalf of Comcast subscribers is a probable cause. But doing so is also misleading, and could even be construed as an attack on other torrent users who are not using Comcast. There are other, more direct methods to go about filtering BitTorrent content, such as deep packet inspection. However, it has been argued that overprovisioning a neutral network is still cheaper than investing money on technology to fight such traffic.
Comcast’s actions also have implications for net neutrality. But that’s no secret, as Comcast has been among the plethora of ISPs that regularly oppose net neutrality legislation. The ISPs like to argue that, by allowing all Internet traffic to pass through the pipes equally, they could lose money because of overall network slowdowns. But customers pay for broadband service for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is so that they can get full, high-speed access to the content of their choice.
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Posted in Internet, Security, Torrent | 2 Comments »
It seems that newsgroup users will be the next target of the RIAA’s wrath with a new lawsuit filed on behalf major record labels against Usenet.com. It’s always been hoped that Usenet would stay under the radar while the RIAA, MPAA, and others focused on the more mainstream P2P services like Napster, Aimster, Grokster, and KaZaA, but it seems as though the party may be nearing an end.
Filed on October 12th, the suit claims that the Fargo, North Dakota-based Usenet.com service “…sells access to a body of content from a global network of computers” that “…contains…millions of copyrighted sound recordings” and “…touts its service as a haven for those seeking pirated content.”
The complaint even cites Usenet’s own “about” section with the following:
Today’s hottest way of sharing MP3 files over the Internet is Usenet; forget about all the peer-to-peer software applications, which quickly become outdated. Usenet allows everyone around the world to share their files on a worldwide network of peer servers and make them available to any member of this worldwide network.
A usenet is comprised of a large number of servers that communicate with each other. An individual user reads and posts messages to a company’s local computer server. Messages are stored on that server and then exchanged with other servers.
Usenet.com loads online bulletin boards(newsgroups) obtained from the usenet network onto its server and then sells access to the newsgroups that it has chosen to host on its usenet.com service.
The suit claims that many of the newsgroups that usenet.com chooses to offer “are explicitly dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The complaint continues:
Users of Defendant’s service post copyrighted sound recordings to these newsgroups on Defendant’s services; the works are identified by artist and title so that users can easily find any sound recordings they might want to copy. Those copyrighted works are then propagated worldwide, allowing millions of users of the Usenet network, including Defendant’s own subscribers, to copy copyrighted sound recordings with ease and anonymity – and without authorization.
It sums up its lawsuit with the claim that Usenet.com “provides essentially the same functionality that P2P services such as Napster, Aimster, Grokster, and and did,” and that it even goes further than them by customizing “…its services to make it as convenient and seamless as possible for subscribers to distribute and obtain copyrighted music without authorization and without paying for music.”
It’s too early to tell how things will paly out, but one thing’s for sure – the RIAA is leaving no stoned unturned in its scorched earth legal strategy.
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