FACT - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand

DSI says key figure caught
KING-OUA LAOHONG
Bangkok Post: May 14, 2008

http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/14May2008_news14.php

A major producer of pirated movies and music was arrested in Bangkok yesterday. About 500,000 pirated CDs and DVDs of Thai and Western movies and songs, worth more than 50 million baht, were seized…The suspect was alleged to be a major producer of pirated products, even though he had not been arrested before…A group of internet cafe operators plan to petition the Royal Thai Police Office to look into the frequent raids by low-ranking police on internet shops, purportedly searching for pirated goods.

Throttle 5 million P2P users with $800K DPI monster
By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica: May 12, 2008

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080512-throttle-5m-p2p-users-in-real-time-with-800000-dpi-monster.html

Procera Networks will announce today a new standard in deep packet inspection (DPI) gear: an 80Gbps monster called the PacketLogic PL10000 that is targeted at tier-1 network operators. At up to $800,000 a unit, these aren’t cheap, but when you want to throttle, inspect, and shape traffic in real-time on a major network, this is now the fastest thing on the market (and by a large margin).

[FACT comments: The entire campaign by corporate interests against copying and piracy is based solely on protecting their profits. Now we see how low they will stoop to deceive the public.]

The True Story of a Bogus Blog
Adweek: May 5, 2008

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i26f1bfd408799a20a6278840774a1176?pn=1

The “International AntiCounterfeiting Campaign” (IACC) sought to discourage people from buying knockoff handbags. As part of the campaign, Coach persuaded Hunter College in New York to offer a public relations class which invented a fictional student named “Heidi Cee.” They created blog postings, a YouTube video and MySpace pages in which Heidi Cee complained that she had been ripped off when she bought a fake Coach handbag. The campaign also claimed that counterfeit products are linked to criminal activity, child labor and terrorism…”If there was anybody who could have stopped it, it would have been Coach.”

Test Your ISP for BitTorrent Shenanigans
Broadband Reports, May 7, 2008

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Test-Your-ISP-For-BitTorrent-Shenanigans-94205?nocomment=1

Torrentfreak directs our attention to the Glasnost Project, <http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency/> a new Java applet project aimed at testing whether ISPs are fiddling with user BitTorrent traffic. A growing number of ISPs are deploying a variety of monitoring and traffic shaping hardware but aren’t willing to talk about it. That makes shopping for a broadband connection a more difficult affair.
As a result, a growing number of outfits are trying to make these practices more transparent to the end user, who may not have the networking knowhow to test their own connection with applications like Wireshark <http://www.wireshark.org/> …Preliminary results show widespread blocking of BitTorrent transfers only in the U.S. and Singapore. The results highlight throttling, as well as the number of times that transfers to the Glasnost Project servers are interrupted by RST packets generated by some ISP along the path…So far the project has only tested 5358 nodes across 78 countries, so I imagine they’d welcome your data. A more detailed explanation of their test can be found here <http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency/howwedetect.html> which explains precisely how they determine a BitTorrent connection to be “blocked.”

Lawmakers Introduce New Net Neutrality Billdf
By GRANT GROSS
IDG News Service: May 8, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C40069388000257443006A5D55.html

Two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would subject broadband providers to antitrust violations if they block or slow Internet traffic…Any ISPs that do not follow these net neutrality rules would be subject to antitrust enforcement…”The bill squarely addresses the issue of the enormous market power of the telephone and cable companies as the providers of 98 percent of the broadband service in the country. The bill restores the principle of nondiscrimination that allowed the Internet to flourish in the dial-up era, making certain that the same freedom and innovation will flourish in the broadband era without burdensome regulation.”…”Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone. The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available.”

[FACT comments: The operative concept here is "legal content" as such a law, if passed (unlikely) will be challenged by commercial copyright police.Are the courts perceptive enough to gauge the public interests?]

New Net Neutrality Bill Prohibits Blocking, Degrading
by Wendy Davis
Online Media Daily: May 9, 2008

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=82270

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced a net neutrality bill Wednesday that would prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or degrading access to any “lawful content.”…”It shall be unlawful for any broadband network provider … to block, to impair, to discriminate against, or to interfere with the ability of any person to use a broadband network service,” states the proposed measure, The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (H.R. 5994)…The bill would allow ISPs to manage traffic, provided they don’t discriminate between their own content and content by unaffiliated companies.

Comcast mulling Net usage cap to discourage ‘excessive’ use
By DEBORAH YAO
Associated Press:May 7, 2008

http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/C/COMCAST_INTERNET_CAP?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-05-07-17-42-22

Comcast Corp., the nation’s second-largest Internet service provider, is considering setting an official limit on the amount of data that subscribers can download per month and charging a fee for those who go over…”Once you’re on an unlimited plan, it’s hard to go back,” he said. “On the wireline side, it’s almost an inalienable right to use as much bandwidth as you want for a set price.”

Isohunt Founder at Center of U.S. Torrent-Tracking Legal Battle
By David Kravets
Wired: May 06, 2008

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/isohunt-founder.html

25-year-old Gary Fung heads the popular BitTorrent search engine Isohunt and two tracking sites, Podtropolis and Torrentbox…The Motion Picture Association of America claims in a lawsuit that Fung is a copyright scofflaw of the highest order — facilitating the theft of millions of its copyrighted works hosted in tiny  pieces resting on servers and individuals’ computers worldwide. The case, which is awaiting a ruling on Fung’s dismissal motion, is likely to set legal precedent in the United States and perhaps abroad about the legality of torrent-tracking services…”This is more than just about us,” said Fung.

TorrentSpy Won’t Pay $111 Million Court Order, Lawyer Says
By David Kravets
Wired: May 08, 2008

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/torrentspy-wont.html

Nevis-based Valence Media, the owner of TorrentSpy, filed for bankruptcy protection in England last week “and has no appreciable assets,” attorney Ira Rothken said. “This was a Hollywood publicity stunt.”
The Motion Picture Association of America sued the search engine in Los Angeles federal court, alleging the site facilitated copyright infringement of Hollywood movies. The MPAA won a default judgment last year after TorrentSpy refused to turn over internal documents, and a federal judge levied the $111 million penalty and ordered the site never to return online.

Torrentspy Dinged $111 Million in MPAA Lawsuit
By David Kravets
Wired: May 07, 2008

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/torrentspy-ding.html#previouspost

A federal judge is hitting the shuttered TorrentSpy service with a $111 million penalty for facilitating the infringement of thousands of copyrighted works…Site operator Justin Bunnell and associates must pay the maximum $30,000 for “each of the 3,699 infringements shown.”..The case, producing what is among the largest fines in copyright history, was bolstered after the MPAA allegedly paid a hacker $15,000 for internal TorrentSpy e-mails and correspondence.