We've had a few requests about starting parties in countries without one at present, That includes Canada and the UK. If you're interested, post on the forums, or join the IRC channel.

Lets get things going!

Andrew Norton
Coordinator
Pirate Party International

It's not every day that record companies are accused of behaving like goblins in a book by JK Rowling.

But that is just one of the more colourful accusations being bandied around in a US legal battle that could have implications for many people's private CD and LP collections.

It all began in May 2007 when Universal Music Group (UMG), the largest of the Big Four companies that dominate the music industry worldwide, sued a Los Angeles-based trader on the eBay online auction site.

The target of the legal action, Troy Augusto, runs a business called Roast Beast Music Collectables.

He makes his living by snapping up rare albums in second-hand record shops and selling them on eBay.

A network printer should not be the target of a DMCA takedown notice from US copyright holders, but researchers at the University of Washington have shown just how simple it is to "frame" any particular IP address as an infringing BitTorrent user. The researchers used their technique to attract nearly 500 DMCA takedown notices, all of them bogus and some of them targeting nonsensical devices. Their work shows how difficult it can be to pin down Internet "pirates."

In a recent paper (PDF), Michael Piatek, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Arvind Krishnamurthy set out to attract bad DMCA takedown notices. In the course of doing earlier research on BitTorrent in 2007, the researchers attracted 206 complaints by accident, even though none of their machines were transferring illegal files. After that experiment ended, they realized that it might be an interesting experiment in itself to try to attract the notices; if they could be hit with 200 bogus complaints, how easy would it be to "frame" someone else on the Internet? Another month of testing brought in 281 more complaints.

MediaDefender, a company best known for their work for the MPAA has apparently admitted to being responsible for a massive Denial of Service (DoS) attack that occured last weekend in which a server used to host BitTorrent trackers was effectively shut down. The server, which belongs to a company called Revision3, is used for legal distribution of video files.

According to Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback, the problem started when someone at the company noticed that their server was being used by an outside party to provide unauthorized BitTorrent trackers. He later found out that the outside party in question was, in fact, MediaDefender. Once they cut off access to these trackers, and also to the back door which allowed MediaDefender to illegally use their server they were hit with the DoS attack. This effectively shut them down for a good part of the weekend, and due to the Memorial Day holiday on Monday they weren't able to recover until Tuesday.

To catch college students trading copyrighted songs online, the Recording Industry Association of America uses the same file-sharing software that online pirates love, an RIAA representative told The Chronicle at the organization's offices during a private demonstration of how it catches alleged music pirates. He also said the group does not single out specific colleges in its investigations.

The demonstration was given by an RIAA employee who would speak only on condition of anonymity because of concern that he would receive hate e-mail.

The official explained that one way the RIAA identifies pirates is by using LimeWire, a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program that is free online and used by many college students (there is also a more-robust version of the program sold for a small fee).

Together with the charity Childnet, IFPI recently launched a campaign to educate kids, teachers and parents about the dangers of filesharing. Ironically, the legal alternatives they suggest direct the kids to LimeWire, Kazaa and sites that sell hardcore adult movies.

The campaign’s leaflet (pdf) is distributed through schools and colleges, libraries, record stores, teaching portals and websites in 21 countries. It advises kids and parents about the dangers of filesharing, and advises them to use the legal music online stores, which are listed on pro-music.org, with the aim of keeping kids safe online.

These days, the Recording Industry Association of America is arguably best known for its legal campaign against P2P users—filing over 25,000 copyright infringement lawsuits in a few short years will do that, I guess. But as a music industry trade group, the group has several other responsibilities. One of those is lobbying Congress for tougher copyright laws, an endeavor that the group spent nearly $2.1 million on in 2007.

Each year, groups that lobby Congress are required to report on how much they spent convincing lawmakers to pass legislation. During 2007, the RIAA spent $2.08 million lobbing Congress on three pieces of legislation near and dear to its heart: The PRO-IP Act, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act, college funding bill The College Opportunity and Affordability Act, and legislation relating to royalties paid by terrestrial and Internet broadcasters.

The German parliament has ratified a new copyright extension aimed at fighting file sharing a few days ago. The law was supposed to make it easier for the entertainment industry to get the identities of file sharers, but it's unclear yet what the real effect on the country's millions of P2P users will be.

Rights holders will now be able to get a simple court order to force ISPs to give up their customers names, similar to what record companies are already doing in the US. Simple acts of infringement will however only result in a 100 Euro fine.

Germany's tough privacy laws and a recent court decision against data retention will also make it hard to get the names of infringers in time, since most ISPs are forced to erase such data within seven days. Finally, rights holders will have to front the costs of these lawsuits, making them much more expensive than previous enforcement actions.