The Pirate Bay's IP Address Belongs To a VPN Provider, ISP Tells Court (torrentfreak.com) 88
An IP address allegedly used by The Pirate Bay and claimed to be owned by a Swedish ISP does not belong to the provider, it's being claimed. According to Obenetwork, the IP address is actually operated by local VPN service OVPN. As a result, the ISP has asked a court to withdraw an information injunction obtained by a pair of Scandinavian movie companies. TorrentFreak reports: [Earlier this month, movie companies Svensk Filmindustri and Nordisk Film] presented Cloudflare with a copyright infringement complaint, stating that The Pirate Bay was connected to mass infringement of their rights. In response, the CDN company revealed that on June 2, 2020, an IP address apparently operated by Swedish ISP Obenetwork was in use by the torrent site. With this information in hand, the companies went to court in Sweden, filing for an information injunction against Obenetwork and demanding that the ISP preserve all records relating to its business with The Pirate Bay. The companies claimed that the matter was so urgent that Obenetwork should not be heard in the matter and fined $10,667 in the event of non-compliance.
The IP address provided by Cloudflare and said to be in use by The Pirate Bay was directly linked to Obenetwork by the studios. In comments to Tarnkappe last week, however, the ISP was crystal clear: this is not their IP address and it actually belongs to someone else. "The IP address that The Pirate Bay uses in our network belongs to the anonymous VPN provider 'OVPN.se,'" the company said in a statement, referring to one of its customers. [...]
Speaking with TorrentFreak this morning, OVPN's David Wibergh confirmed that the IP address in question is indeed owned by OVPN and not Obenetwork. Whether TPB was ever a customer is a question he won't answer though. "As we don't provide information regarding any potential customers, I won't confirm if thepiratebay.org was actually using OVPN or not. I can only confirm that the IP address specified in the injunction was one that OVPN owns and not Obenetwork. I will not confirm whether or not thepiratebay.org was actually using that IP address," Wibergh said.
The IP address provided by Cloudflare and said to be in use by The Pirate Bay was directly linked to Obenetwork by the studios. In comments to Tarnkappe last week, however, the ISP was crystal clear: this is not their IP address and it actually belongs to someone else. "The IP address that The Pirate Bay uses in our network belongs to the anonymous VPN provider 'OVPN.se,'" the company said in a statement, referring to one of its customers. [...]
Speaking with TorrentFreak this morning, OVPN's David Wibergh confirmed that the IP address in question is indeed owned by OVPN and not Obenetwork. Whether TPB was ever a customer is a question he won't answer though. "As we don't provide information regarding any potential customers, I won't confirm if thepiratebay.org was actually using OVPN or not. I can only confirm that the IP address specified in the injunction was one that OVPN owns and not Obenetwork. I will not confirm whether or not thepiratebay.org was actually using that IP address," Wibergh said.
it's not stealing (Score:1)
when will people realise this?
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I was watching a white supremacist give a speech, and did a spit-take when he ended this way: "... And if you refuse to speak English, go the f*ck back where you came from! Seig Heil!"
I am endlessly amused when people try to quote German and get it wrong. "Seig" is not even a German word...
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when will people realise this?
When people stop coming up with excuses why they can't afford to pay the producers for the work they did, or how they wouldn't have watched the movie anyway but went out of their way to find it, or how these evil corporations already make enough money so it's not hurting them, or any of the other thousand and one excuses we hear every time on this subject.
If you don't think people should be paid for the work they produce, unless they are giving their product away, then there isn't really a reason to pay you
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I was wondering :). I had you wrong (Score:2)
It sounds like I misjudged you. I thought you were someone making excuses, really bad excuses, for ripping off all the new releases rsthet than waiting a few weeks to get them for a buck.
I actually misread your typo as saying that Blockbuster put Redbox out of business. Which I thought was odd. Lol
I see Vudu is $2.99 (online). Same price for you in Canada?
Here, Blockbuster put the other big chains and most of the smaller stores out of business, but there is still a smaller chain nearby. There used to be
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Re: I was wondering :). I had you wrong (Score:2)
Unless Canada's different, there's no commitment for Vudu. You buy or rent what you want a la carte. If you rent, the model is almost exactly what it was at Blockbuster. Once you start watching, you have to finish within 72 hours. If you buy, then your content library is tied permanently to that account. That's as deep as the commitment goes.
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FBI Warning ... (Score:2)
Just sayin. You've been warned over and over, so nobody is going to believe you didn't know.
Re: FBI Warning ... (Score:2)
Re:it's not stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
or how these evil corporations already make enough money so it's not hurting them
This one's pretty hard to argue against, I mean they're making enough money to pay CEOs 8-digit bonuses and fight over a tiny handful of popular actors with tsunamis of cash, and at the same time, low-level employees get paid mostly in cool points and their reward for a successful movie is the same as for an unsuccessful one - being laid off. This industry doesn't have an income problem, it has a greed problem, why should we expect that more money might fix it?
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I regularly rail against the government handing over my tax dollars to multi-billion dollar corporations who received the largest tax cut in this country's history, who then went on a wild orgy of stock buybacks and executive pay and bonuses, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and start stealing the work the company produced. Instead, I don't buy their product.
The excuse that "they have enough" is just that. An excuse. If you think they have enough, don't buy their products, nor go out and show ther
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So let's say theoretically that there were a darknet file sharing service that was totally untraceable and made it impossible to tell how much a file was being shared, would you have a problem with people pirating a movie on that?
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"why should we expect that more money might fix it?"
Fix what? Someone else's greed? What makes you feel entitled to "fix that"? What makes you think that paying for a product is "to fix a greed problem"?
There is certainly a greed problem here, just not the one you're describing. You know something that's "hard to argue against"? That you have serious entitlement and integrity problems.
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There is certainly a greed problem here, just not the one you're describing. You know something that's "hard to argue against"? That you have serious entitlement and integrity problems.
Not nearly as serious as the CEOs of studios like Disney where the exec pays himself near-9-digit bonuses while everyone around him loses their jobs. Or the people who defend them.
Yep torrents of ... erm bankruptcy? (Score:2, Interesting)
So the Big Five, also known as "the Studios", are:
20th Century Fox
RKO Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Warner Bros.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
RKO went bankrupt
Paramount was starting to get it's head above water, making a small profit for two years before COVID hit
MGM went bankrupt
Of the five major studios, two went bankrupt and one may be gone by the end of the year. Torrents of cash, right?
They DO deal in big budgets they can make or lose millions of dollars on a film. Sometimes they lose make millions, sometimes they
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I don't know where you got that "big five" from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Top five most financially troubled? Some oil companies have gone out of business too.
"Find in page" (Score:2)
Click your link. Click the menu icon at the top right of your browser. Click "find in page". Enter "one of the Big Five studios". Then click next - that text is on your page three times. It's next to:
RKO Pictures
MGM
20th Century
What about the other two? Well let's skip the "find in page" stuff and just read. The page you linked to says:
--
"the so-called Big Five were integrated conglomerates, combining ownership of a production studio, distribution division, and substantial theater chain, and contrac
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Ah so that makes some sense, you chose the majors of the golden age, which is defined as the period from 1928-1949. Obviously put out of business by digital piracy, since as we all know it's normal and healthy for major corporations to last forever. Now if you'll excuse me I must turn off my Zuse and drive my Packard to the Standard Oil station.
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> Now if you'll excuse me I must turn off my Zuse and drive my Packard to the Standard Oil station.
That was funny.
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Going off the Wikipedia article;
> RKO Pictures (RKO) (1928–1959) one of the Big Five studios
I'd say he got it from 1959...
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The reason they have trouble is not copyright infringement. It is greed, stupidity, arrogance, mismanagement and failure to adapt to changed circumstances. All their own doing.
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low-level employees get paid in cool points
And yet they are lining up out the door for the opportunity to work for cool points. If they want to get paid, there are plenty of regular soul-crushing uncool jobs out there. Some people would rather chase their dreams than sell out right out of the gate. Let em be.
Re:it's not stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't think people should be paid and paid and paid and paid and paid and paid and paid over and over again for the next 100+ years for the work they paid the creator only once for, unless they are giving their product away, then there isn't really a reason to pay you for your work.
Fixed that for you.
Re:it's not stealing (Score:5, Informative)
When people stop coming up with excuses why they can't afford to pay the producers for the work they did
Everyone who actually put work into creating a film has already been paid by the time the film is in cinemas, Who hasn't been paid is the people who invested in the movie. They don't have a "right" to make money on it. If they can't make money on the cinematic release or further publishing, perhaps they shouldn't make bad investments. Investment is risk.
or how they wouldn't have watched the movie anyway but went out of their way to find it
Unless you're doing it for fair use purposes, this is just a dumb thing to do.
or how these evil corporations already make enough money so it's not hurting them
Corporations aren't evil, they're amoral. I don't really care whether something hurts them, because they don't really care (and are required NOT to care) how their actions hurt others, except insomuch as it affects their bottom line.
or any of the other thousand and one excuses we hear every time on this subject.
What about copyright abolitionist/minimalist arguments? There's an awful lot of good economic and principle based arguments there.
If you don't think people should be paid for the work they produce, unless they are giving their product away, then there isn't really a reason to pay you for your work.
As said, the work people did has already been paid for. This is a faulty argument.
Re:it's not stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
when will people realise this?
When people stop coming up with excuses why they can't afford to pay the producers for the work they did, or how they wouldn't have watched the movie anyway but went out of their way to find it, or how these evil corporations already make enough money so it's not hurting them, or any of the other thousand and one excuses we hear every time on this subject.
If you don't think people should be paid for the work they produce, unless they are giving their product away, then there isn't really a reason to pay you for your work.
"Intellectual property" is not actually property, no matter what "right holders" want you to think. It is governed by entirely different laws.
An owner of a physical object can be deprived of it. If you have a spoon and I take it from you, you no longer have it. If I copy your spoon, you have not suffered a loss. It is a natural concept.
Literary or musical works do not fall into that category, so governments offer a "copy right" - a time-limited monopoly on reproduction and copying in exchange for the work reverting to the public domain. A social contract if you will, backed by the force of law, that aimed to strike a balance between compensating creators (actually publishers, but that's a separate discussion) and allowing the populace to participate in their culture. That original balance was set at 14 years.
The problem is that that social contract was unilaterally broken. The copyright term in many countries now stands at life of author + 70 years. So if somebody wrote a popular song at the age of 20 and lived to the age of 90, that song would stay out of the public domain for 140 years - 10 times the length of the original protection.
How many works can you name that are culturally relevant a 100 years after creation?
But that's not all.
I have had several doctors (physicians and surgeons) in my family. Between them they have saved multiple lives. Yet, they got paid a salary from the hospital they worked for, for the work done, and certainly did not continue to be paid for decades afterwards.
I don't know about you, but I consider a human life to be worth more than a song.
But wait, you say, people still enjoy that song for many years, shouldn't they pay for it? Well, firstly not necessarily, that song should have entered the public domain, meaning it should belong to everybody.
Secondly, what if the author of that song had a congenital heart defect that got surgically fixed shortly after his birth? Shouldn't he likewise continue to pay the hospital for the rest of his days for the privilege to enjoy life? And that song, he would not have been able to write it if he was dead, would he? So isn't the hospital entitled to a share of all profits?
No? Well then, the same argument applies to the copyright industry. And if there is any stealing going on, it is they who are guilty of robbing the people of their culture,
Re: it's not stealing (Score:2)
Intellectual property can be owned. It can be gifted. It can be sold. It has the word "property" in it. It is property.
Re: it's not stealing (Score:2)
Wow. Lol. See: Illiteracy and Syllogisms
I see three options for you:
1. You actually can't read.
2. You ignore things you read if they don't fit your preconceived notions.
3. You think people on the Internet care about the ill-formed thoughts going through your head.
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Intellectual property can be owned. It can be gifted. It can be sold.
Property rights are not time-limited. If you own a lawnmower, it is yours in perpetuity.
Property rights have no "fair use/dealing" exclusions. I cannot take your lawnmower without your permission for educational or parody purposes.
It has the word "property" in it.
The USA PATRIOT act has "patriot" in it's name.
Peanuts have the word "nut" in them.
Your point?
It is property
Let's see what the legal experts have to say about it:
the law of intellectual property is separate and distinct from the law of tangible property. Wher
Re: it's not stealing (Score:2)
Funny how that snippet felt the need to use the "tangible" qualifier to distinguish one kind of property from another. You have presented good legal and ontological evidence that undermines your assertion.
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Funny how that snippet felt the need to use the "tangible" qualifier to distinguish one kind of property from another. You have presented good legal and ontological evidence that undermines your assertion.
Before some people started lumping together copyright, trademark, patent, etc. laws and calling them "intellectual property" to blur the distinction between the real and the imaginary, there was no need to qualify property as "tangible". None of the copyright/trademark/patent laws on the books refer to the protected works as "property", and none of ther protections thereof apply to property. Likewise, none of the laws that deal with property include copyrighted/trademarked/patented works in the definition
Re: it's not stealing (Score:2)
prop er ty
noun
1.
a thing or things belonging to someone; possessions collectively.
I can own intellectual property. Whatever point you're trying to make, you have failed.
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I think what he's getting at is you wouldn't own a tangible thing.
If I own a spoon it's a thing that I have in my possession.
If you own intellectual property you basically own the rights to commercial distribution of an idea which isn't the same as having an object in your possession.
I can't break in to your house and steal your right to distribute something but I can steal your spoon.
Based on these clear differences the law in many countries makes a legal distinction between physical property and the right
Re: it's not stealing (Score:2)
Just because I leave my house doesn't stop me from owning it. Just because I'm holding your spoon doesn't make it my property. Possession has very little to do with property, in spite of the misleading adage that "possession is 9/10 of the law".
It seems to me that you and the other guy are trying to introduce additional personal ideas of what property is.
Just take another look at the definition of property. Either your argument hinges on ideas not being things (idea is a noun; ideas are things), or on owner
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A social contract if you will, backed by the force of law, that aimed to strike a balance between compensating creators (actually publishers, but that's a separate discussion) and allowing the populace to participate in their culture.
And then we have to look at *why* that contract compensates creators - it's to encourage them to continue to create, which ultimately enriches society's collection of "arts and the useful sciences" for the benefit of everyone. Continuing to compensate creators after their own
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So you are saying you don't torrent any movies until 14 years after it was released?
I do not see what my personal behaviour has anything to do with the argument.
Do you think speed limits are a good thing? Have you never once been speeding?
I should know better than feed a troll, but just to humour you: Between the people in my household, we have both Netflix and Amazon Prime, and I personally think that when it comes to movies and TV series released in the past 20 years, Sturgeon was an optimist.
You know, because you honor the original balance of copyright law not the actual current law that is unfair?
Again, what I personally do or don't do is completely irrelevant, but let me ask you this:
If th
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If they broke the contract, why should we still adhere to it?
Hopefully because we are ethical or moral people that live with integrity.
If someone creates something, I don't have the right to just take that from them. If I disagree with their terms for acquiring or using their property, then the ethical answer is for me to do without. Now, do I believe the current length of copyright protection is right? Nope. However, the thing to do is vote for people that are willing to change/fix the law.
Movies, music, games, etc. aren't things that you need to survive. There real
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Hopefully because we are ethical or moral people that live with integrity.
I do not believe that depriving the public of free participation in their culture for a century has anything to do with either morals or integrity.
If someone creates something, I don't have the right to just take that from them.
It is not "taking it from them" if they still have it.
If I disagree with their terms for acquiring or using their property, then the ethical answer is for me to do without.
It is not property. We've been over it, see my previous posts for citations.
Now, do I believe the current length of copyright protection is right? Nope. However, the thing to do is vote for people that are willing to change/fix the law.
Would you say the same to Rosa parks? Or to the Tienanmen square protesters? Or to Mahatma Gandhi? Civil disobedience is a time-honoured tradition.
Even if I was inclined to agree with you in principle, the reality is that the curre
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If someone creates something, I don't have the right to just take that from them.
It is not "taking it from them" if they still have it.
If I disagree with their terms for acquiring or using their property, then the ethical answer is for me to do without.
It is not property. We've been over it, see my previous posts for citations.
By those arguments, would you also say it is perfectly fine for corporations to embed GPL code into their closed-source products? I'm curious if copyright applies at all or just when it protects the things they own/control/create vs. things others have created?
Now, do I believe the current length of copyright protection is right? Nope. However, the thing to do is vote for people that are willing to change/fix the law.
Would you say the same to Rosa parks? Or to the Tienanmen square protesters? Or to Mahatma Gandhi? Civil disobedience is a time-honoured tradition.
Nope, I would never try to equate people pirating entertainment with fights for equality and freedom.
Please suggest who that person is so I could donate to their campaign.
Not an easy thing to google for and I don't know what country you are from. Assuming the US, Wikipedia talks about the limited opposition to the exten
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By those arguments, would you also say it is perfectly fine for corporations to embed GPL code into their closed-source products?
The GPL uses copyright to fight copyright. If there was no copyright, there will be no need for the GPL.
Nope, I would never try to equate people pirating entertainment with fights for equality and freedom.
The ability to freely participate in your culture is a freedom (and an equality)
Not an easy thing to google for and I don't know what country you are from. Assuming the US, Wikipedia talks about the limited opposition to the extension act from 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The US is a good example. My arguments in a prior post about the system being rigged still stand.
Voting only works when you have viable options to vote for. Neither the D's nor the R's have any incentive to fix the issue, and the first-past-the-post system prevents any group from having influence unless it gets the majority
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How many studios have put their films from 2006 into the public domain? Perhaps we could agree not to pirate films from studios who are following the law, do you have any examples?
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Yet, they got paid a salary from the hospital they worked for, for the work done, and certainly did not continue to be paid for decades afterwards.
Are you sure? Most jobs like that will ensure they get pensions, which is effectively "getting paid for decades afterwards"
Shouldn't he likewise continue to pay the hospital for the rest of his days for the privilege to enjoy life?
Paying of something in small increments instead of paying the full sum upfront is not exactly a strange concept.
Other than that, I completely agree with the rest of your post.
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Yet, they got paid a salary from the hospital they worked for, for the work done, and certainly did not continue to be paid for decades afterwards.
Are you sure? Most jobs like that will ensure they get pensions, which is effectively "getting paid for decades afterwards"
I am sure. They contributed to their own "pension" fund, and the employer did as well (by law all employers in that country are required to do so) but that can just be considered a part of their salary.
Shouldn't he likewise continue to pay the hospital for the rest of his days for the privilege to enjoy life?
Paying of something in small increments instead of paying the full sum upfront is not exactly a strange concept.
There is a difference between buying an item for $100 and paying for it in ten instalments of $10, and paying $100 (or even $10) per use.
Re:it's not stealing (Score:5, Interesting)
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the main issues in your line of thoughts are :
* the producers only finance the movies, they don't actually do any work on them
* by the time they finish their run on the international market, most movies break even. thus, the producers got their money back and the people have all been paid for their work...
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Debunked and debunked, and then debunked again. Your position has no base in reality.
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Do you feel that way about format shifting? Should I be forced to buy a ebook for a book that is public domain and sitting on my book shelf? Should I be forced to buy the AAC after the MP3 after the DVD after the CD after the cassette after the record? How much should I pay to listen to the white album?
I haven't stolen content in years due to subscription services like spotify and amazon video. But I understand why people will steal, the system is broken.
Quick reminder of alternate domain (Score:2)
piratebayztemzmv.onion
Good luck taking that down :-)
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that's an onion v2 link, it's going down because this level of the protocol won't be supported in a few days
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Huh didn't even know about v3 links. With that length I think the days of brute-forcing pretty addresses is over.
Oops. It's a VPN... unmask next layer... (Score:2)
This is like the quixotic Slashdot reporting during the Napster-era Wac-A-Mole game. Tracing it back to the start involved some lawsuits that just revealed the next person to be sued, and on it went. We'll get to these guys sometime.
Why SUMMARY keep repeating the same stuff 5 times? (Score:3)
Give it up already (Score:2)
If you're a film distributor is it considered a test by the other companies that you have to prove your worth by suing "the pirate bay"? I mean it has Pirate right in the name!
"Oh you have to sue them but what we won't tell you is it hasn't been a cohesive site for years, it's just a disparate grouping of mirrors and proxies. Also they are not even the most popular public tracker, and we won't mention the many many private trackers? What's Usenet? Don't worry about it. "
At this point the group of people
I WILL not confirm (Score:2)
"I will not confirm"
not as good as "I can not confirm".
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technically, he took the page out of the CIA's playbook...
"I will not confirm, nor deny, the fact of TBP is a client of ours"
Good thing they had the right guy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sadly they are probably "covered" - they obtained information in good faith from Cloudflare, so it's not lawyer's fault but rather Cloudflare's fault.
Obviously an engineer would double-check and verify to make sure his information is correct, rather than just keep "whom to blame" list.
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Actually, it is their fault. They neither had the expertise to understand what Cloudflare gave them, nor did they involve an expert. I think they should at least be fined for this in the height of the fine they were asking for. Arrogance and incompetence at work, the old fatal combination so often found in big-ego people.
VPN's Is Cloudflare snitching? (Score:2)
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Someone needs to expand what Cloudflare did, and the deeper implications
Respond with the name of the owner of an IP to a court request? Yeah deep implications there. The system did exactly what it was supposed to. A VPN provider who is maintaining privacy of clients was implicated as the end point of a data pipe during a discovery process in a court proceeding.
I think I'll put more effort into the deeper implications of what I'm eating for dinner tonight.
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Chances are all the ISP could recover is their legal fees, as I don't think Sweden (or most European countries) has punitive damages.