Waleed Gadelkareem, the owner of Torrent-Finder who had its domain name seized by the US Government last year was interviewed by NBC News.
“The USA government is trying to shut it down,” Gadelkareem said, “for the sake of a group of rich businessmen. That’s what I think. That’s (what) everybody thinks.”
His American lawyer, David Snead, who represents and advises online service providers who distribute content on copyright issues, agrees.
“The government is doing industry’s bidding here,” Snead said. “I think that it is wrong for prosecutorial resources to be used on behalf of any one industry.”
Dominating the month’s activities was the seizure of servers belonging to the German Pirate Party, just days before elections in some parts of Germany. Not that they were the only Pirate Party contesting an election, as pirates in Canada, the UK, and Spain also ran for office.
So now, a quick chronological breakdown of the month, politically.
May 2nd
First up, the Canadian Pirate Party ran it’s first federal election campaign. Across 10 ridings (districts) they managed around 0.6%. (PPCanada)
May 5th
On the other side of the Atlantic, The UK party ran several candidates on the party list system in Scotland, getting 0.3% – a typical figure for first time pirate party election campaigns. Meanwhile down in Bury, Graeme Lambert scored a very respectable 3.7% in a local election, the best result for the UK, and one of the best results in a first-past-the-post election for any pirate party candidate. (PPUK)
May 13th
The Tunisian Pirate Party files for recognition as a political party. (PPTunisia)
May 20th
The servers of the German Pirate Party were raided by the police. The sites were taken down after a complaint by French authorities, concerning the use of one of the services. The service was allegedly being used to plan a ‘cyber attack’. The raid, dubbed ‘ServerGate’ was controversial as it disrupted the activities of the Bremen state Pirate Party, who were contesting an election 2 days later. The case is still ongoing. (PPDE)
May 22nd
Despite the raids, The Bremen Pirate Party took 5 seats in local elections, meaning there are now around 48 Pirates in elected office across Germany, spanning 9 states. (PPDE-Bremen)
Also, Pirates in Spain contested elections, in two parties. The Spanish Pirate Party ran candidates in their first elections, getting 0.3% in both Madrid and Granada. (PIRATA)
Meanwhile, the separate Catalonia Pirate Party got between 0.8% and 1.2% in the region, with two members elected, one in Sant Fruitos de Bages, and the other in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. (Pirata-Cat)
May 23rd
Well known Pirate party supporter, and blogger Slim Amarou, resigned from the Tunisian Government. After the revolution earlier this year, the blogger and pirate party supporter took a position in the new Tunisian government as State Secretary of Youth and Sports. He resigned his office over concerns of censorship and other topics. (PPTunisia)
May 31st
Finally, In New Zealand, the Pirate Party has been awarded $20,000NZ ($16,300US/€11,150) and 2 minutes of air time for it’s November election campaign. In order to receive it though, the party needs to be on the Register of Political parties by October 20th having the support of over 500 voters. (PPNZ)
For a short while the makers of The Expendables had the questionable honor of having started the biggest file-sharing lawsuit the world has ever witnessed.
A massive list of 23,322 U.S. Internet users were targeted by the film studio NU Image, all suspected of downloading the Hollywood blockbuster on BitTorrent.
Although the makers of The Hurt Locker recently targeted an even bigger group, The Expendables case is still very significant. However, this may soon change due to a recent order from Judge Robert Wilkins.
It appears that the Judge, who previously granted the copyright holders to send subpoenas to obtain the personal information of the defendants, is starting to backpedal.
Apparently, the lawyers haven’t sent out a single subpoena as of yet, and the Judge is growing impatient.
“…over two months later, Plaintiff has informed the Court that not a single subpoena has been served in this case. The Court finds this especially surprising given the fact that one of Plaintiff’s stated reasons for “good cause” for the expedited discovery was that the ISPs typically retain the information that Plaintiff seeks for only a limited period of time, and if this information is erased, Plaintiff will be unable to pursue its lawsuit.”
Wilkins feels that his time is wasted as and wants the plaintiffs to now show whether the court has jurisdiction over the defendants, and if it’s appropriate to join these thousands of alleged downloaders in one lawsuit.
“The Court finds it inappropriate and a waste of scarce judicial resources to allow and oversee discovery on claims or relating to defendants that cannot be prosecuted in this lawsuit. If venue is improper in this district, the Court must either dismiss the case or transfer it to a court in which venue is proper.”
The Expendables makers have until June 21 to resolve these issues, and if they don’t the case may very well be binned.
The big question is of course why no subpoenas have been sent out yet. In other cases handled by the same lawyers this doesn’t seem to be a problem. Perhaps something’s going on behind the scenes that has to be resolved first?
ARS quotes Colorado lawyer David Kerr who has his own theory on the issue, claiming that there’s more money to be made in porn cases.
“the settlement rate for porn films is about 80 percent, whereas for legitimate films it is usually less then 50 percent. Plus, all settlements for porn films are usually several hundred to thousand dollars more than for legit films. You can go to the public docket and see that all of Dunlap’s [the lawyer group] other cases besides the porn films are totally dead.”
However, this makes little sense, as targeting 23,322 defendants in a mainstream case would still be more profitable than a few hundred in a porn case.
Whatever the true reason is, so far it’s good news for the 23,322 alleged expendables downloaders.
Dominating the month’s activities was the seizure of servers belonging to the German Pirate Party, just days before elections in some parts of Germany. Not that they were the only Pirate Party contesting an election, as pirates in Canada, the UK, and Spain also ran for office.
It appears that the Judge, who previously granted the copyright holders to send subpoenas to obtain the personal information of the defendants, is starting to backpedal.