p2pnet.net News Feature:- As the dust begins to settle on the serious blows dealt to the ED2K and Bittorrent forum sites, details emerge on the actual intentions behind the raids, specifically, the case against Shareconnector and Releases4U in The Netherlands. As p2p vendors rapidly approach what the mainstream media describe as “legitimacy” and general acceptance, the question remains: Does Brein have a case in Holland?

And the answer is No.

For fear of sounding redundant, I’ll refer to my arguments in the articles on Hyperlinks, Copyright Myths, Piracy and P2P. In the end, it’s just a matter of how a judge will view the case in a trial.

That is, if there ever is a trial.

Wag the dog
By itself, Brein couldn’t do anything against the ED2K and Bittorrent sites, other than send messages and C&D notices. When the RIAA and MPAA sent word that a global crackdown was impending, Brein received its orders and with that international backing, and the usual industry propaganda, behind it, it solicited the help of FIOD-ECD.

The FIOD-ECD is the government agency assigned to the criminal pursuit of fiscal, financial and economical fraud. It can by any constitutional means go after hard-core criminals. So, getting access to and information from an ISP isn’t an issue. Simply said, FIOD-ECD can what Brein can’t.

It convinced the FIOD-ECD that Shareconnector and Releases4U where part of much larger and dangerous group of pirates for profit. Citing crime article’s 31 thru 35 of the Dutch Copyright act it, argued these sites were making thousands, maybe millions, by trafficking in copyrighted materials.

Used to dealing with well organized and intricate criminals, FIOD-ECD employed its mafia-style interrogation techniques. But it slowly, it dawned on them that they’d been duped.

Who is Who?
The first hint that somethng might be wrong came when it was found that the suspects, ranging in age18 to 26, barely knew each other.

The FIOD-ECD investigators kept waiving logs and transcripts of communications (so much for online privacy), even using the divide and conquer ‘he said-he said’ tactic. And all but one of the ’suspects’ freely spoke with investigators. According to the law, they’d done nothing illegal and as they repeatedly explained, online, they were known by by their Net nicknames.

Show me the money!!
Most inportant of all, however, there wasn’t any money. Nothing, Nada.

The industry claims it’s lost millions on piracy. So the money had to go somewhere. Right?

Well, it didn’t go to Shareconnector or Releases4U, who were barely scraping by on donations for server time. And yet, during the interrogation one investigator, in obvious frustration, grabbed a random piece of PHP code and offered it up it as a scorecard for keeping tabs on funds.

Internet? What is that?
Finally, it became abundantly clear to all that FIOD-ECD were in way over their heads. They had no clue as to what they were dealing with. Can you imagine how extremely exhausting it was for the victims, trying to explain the concept and complexities of PHP coding, forum administration and internet-nicknames to investigators who were more familiar wioth the street?

The End
FIOD-ECD handled the ‘case’ under the assumption that its investigators would find servers packed with illegal materials and neatly kept balance sheets showing the profits generated by all the ‘illegal’ activities.

To the contrary, however, all they found were dirt-poor kids fiddling around with networks and site building.

All but one of the ’suspects’ were turned loose a mere 24 hours after being detained and so far, none of them has been charged and Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm - the former Kazaa lawyer - confirmed it would be extremely difficult to build a criminal case against them.

The Result

This was an embarrassing display of how public officials were used as corporate lapdogs.

Nevertheless, Brein got what it wanted.

Just as the ‘mothership’ ordered; ED2K and Bittrorrent sites were shut down. Moreover, it got access to enough evidence to at least try to build a civil case against Shareconnector and Releases4U.

The Case
In the US, the DMCA doesn’t allow the RIAA to seek names and address through subpoenas to ISPs [RIAA v. Verizon Internet Services .pdf]. But that’s not the case here in Holland. Rather, a judge recently ordered Lycos ISP to hand over data. Based on this, ISPs are required to play judge and jury on a requests for names.

At least Brein doesn’t have that headache anymore.

Brein head Tim Kuik argues that it’s a crime to post ‘verified’ links of unmistakably illegal materials.

My thoughts
Articles 31a in the Dutch Copyright Act explicitly state that it’s a crime punishable up to four years to traffic in copyrighted materials for profit. If they can’t show profit, their case is weak.

Moreover, the links were verified by the community in the forums. The suspects detained weren’t verifiers; they were webmasters, webhosters or plain sitebuilders. And ‘verified’ doesn’t mean they posted the links, or that the hashes were made by those ‘verifiers’.

Furthermore, there were no files hosted on the seized servers. Just links.

I’m not deaf to what Brein is saying, but their arguments are still misconceptions based on Copyright Myths. To clarify: illegal materials don’t come from ED2K or Bittorrent sites, they come from the industry itself.

I wish you all a merry Christmas and happy downloading.

Raymond Blijd - fk2w

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 23rd, 2004 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 11613 times