Torrentvalley is different from other BitTorrent services in that it’s not a file tracker like Pirate Bay. Instead, it’s a torrent indexer. That means Torrentvalley does not host any torrents itself. Rather, it acts like a search engine and attempts to locate the torrent across different trackers.

Another interesting fact is that Torrentvalley’s servers are located in Bulgaria, a country not particularly noted for targeting file-sharers. Unfortunately, that hasn’t lasted very long. Acting on the advice of the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP), the Cyber Crime Unit raided Torrentvalley’s premises and shut down its servers.

The charge laid against Torrentvalley was copyright infringement. To quote Ina Kileva, the executive director of BAMP: “Torrentvalley was a major international source of copyright infringing material. This site was a gate towards more than 5 000 torrent-trackers from all over the world. The decisive action by the authorities shows that Bulgaria is no haven for copyright abuse in Internet and makes efforts to protect the rights of those involved in the creative industries.”

Torrentvalley certainly wasn’t the largest BitTorrent network out there. They had about 150,000 registered users but a fair number of people probably used the indexing service without registering. This does reinforce the fact that the authorities are always on the lookout for those that share copyrighted content.

Have you ever used Torrentvalley.com? What do you think about the site being shut down? Who do you think the next target will be? Let me know in the comments.

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The website lists a screenshot and the name of the video, the category that it appeared in at Youtube and the views that it received. The interesting information is probably the company or individual that asked for the takedown of the video. Lastly the date of the takedown and the time the video was available at Youtube is also mentioned.

The statistics page lists all the reasons why a video was taken down. Exactly 4413 videos have been taken down due to alleged copyright violations while the remaining 13424 videos have been taken down for other reasons including adult content and TOS violations.

The site makes it possible to take a look at all videos taken down by a specific company and it would probably make a nice research project to identify the reasons behind the takedowns.

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The so called Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 would for instance:

• Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright.
• Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software
• Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations
• Allow computers to be seized more readily
• Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anticircumvention regulations
• Add penalties for “intended” copyright crimes
• Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America

You do find a in depth report by following the link mentioned above or read the summary of the act here. What’s next, Death Penalty for someone who copies the newest Britney Spears album ?

Thanks Jan for sending me the information per email.

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CopyRightLeft is a Open-Source application that has two processing modes. The first is an image by image mode that manipulates one image at a time. You can use the tool to open an image in many known formats including jpg, gif, bmp, tiff and png and save the image in the same formats except gif. You can then enter a text, define the font size, color and many other options. It is for instance possible to add the copyright notice at the bottom of the image, in the center or rotate it to place it diagonal.

Instead of opening and manipulating every image by itself you could use batch processing to process a number of images at once. It is possible to select a number of files, a directory or a file list from a text document and process them one after the other. CopyRightLeft can be run in most Windows versions. I was able to run it in Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows XP without problems.

Many normal users who visit your website will probably dislike that all images on your website have a copyright notice thus preventing the full view of the image. It is up to you to decide whether to use it to fight content theft.

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GEMA’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Harald Heker commented: “The Court’s decision confirms that it cannot be the task of the rights owners to control at their own cost the continued operation of services, which generate commercial profit from unlawful use of their works. This decision will also send out a major signal to all services enlisting the help of the individual users to create a comprehensive illegal offer and then in the end to use this offer for generating revenue for themselves”.

Rapidshare announced the same day that they would appeal the ruling. The current ruling would have a drastic impact on every company that would operate from Germany (Europe) offering free disk space to their users. It is also important to note that it would be technically impossible to check every uploaded file if it would violate a copyright. It is for instance perfectly legal to upload a private copy of album to make it available to close friends. How would Rapidshare be able to verify if the uploaded file would violate copyright ?

It is in my opinion ridiculous to demand that Rapidshare, or any other company or individual who are providing webspace, is responsible for the copyright infringements of users who upload copyrighted files to the service. This would essentially mean that every webspace provider could be held responsible of a user would upload copyrighted files to rented webspace.

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Buying Sealand looks more like a publicity stunt to me than a real en devour that would result in the creation of a country that would have no laws against piracy whatsoever. Everyone who would donate money to “the cause” will receive citizenship which leads to the question where they want to accommodate all their citizens if the purchase would indeed take place.

The initiators even think one step ahead. If they can’t collect enough money to buy Sealand they intend to buy a small island somewhere in this world. Here is a quote from the official piratebay blog.

“The price for Sealand is probably about $2.000.000.000. We don’t really care. We’re going for it anyhow! We really want to see what the community can do – with it’s own island. Since we are all for sharing the country would be shared amongst us all.”

What is your take on the matter ? Great idea or bogus one ?

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ISPs should be charged for their role in the distribution process which could come in the form of a collective license just like the one for radio or tv in many countries. They could as well demand a copyright shift for the post as well, because lots of burned cds are traded this way. And they could demand it for the railway, the interstates, airlines, streets, schools, university and every other place as well. Sounds like a good bargain to me.

I think they become more and more desperate and try everything in their power to influence politics with all they lobbying power. Is this the way to treat the own customers ? Make them pay many times for the same service ? Let them pay for radio, for blank CDs and DVDs, for printers, for burners, for internet access. Whats next, for their own memory ? It´s definatly time to take a stance and write or call your local representative and demand a change in politics to a consumer friendly one.

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“When enough people feel that it’s OK to do a thing, that thing ceases to be wrong in their own cultural context. You can complain about moral relativism all you like, but the facts are inescapable”

That’s pretty self-explanatory, if enough people are doing something it will become common use and therefor legal. You can´t put millions of people into jail because of something like this. Therefor the law has to change to reflect this.

He uses this premise to analyse the current situation of file trading and comes to the conclusion that the lawsuits, the spyware and the DMCA are the death struggles of an outdated business model.

The last part of his essay looks at the possible future, at different models that could be used if there would be no copyright. If you are interested head over to gamasutra and take a look for yourself.

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