Looking back at the past 12 months it’s fair to conclude that 2011 was the year that the entertainment industries focused on piracy-fueled Internet censorship. Domain seizures, DNS blockades, raids and arrests dominated the news, and the threat of the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US left millions of Internet users worried. Let’s see how events unfolded.

At the end of the year when new developments draw to a close, it’s time to take a look back and take stock. Below is our overview of some of the most interesting events we reported during the first half of 2011.

Take a deep breath…

January

After pressure from the entertainment industries, Google started to censor piracy-related keywords from its instant and autocomplete services. Keywords such as ‘torrent,’ ‘BitTorrent’ and ‘RapidShare’ were excluded from the start, and later in the year Google added a wide range of new terms including ‘The Pirate Bay.’

Despite these efforts the RIAA remained dissatisfied, patronizing the search engine with a could-do-much-better “Report Card” in December.

The mass-BitTorrent lawsuits that entered the US during 2010 reached a new milestone in 2011 with the 100,000th person being sued for alleged copyright infringement. In January alone several prominent lawsuits were added. Anime distributor Funimation announced a lawsuit against 1337 alleged BitTorrent downloaders, and the rights holders of “The Expendables” and Paris Hilton sex tape did the same.

One alleged BitTorrent user paid a mysterious settlement of $250,000.

There was also positive news from the UK, when so-called Speculative Invoicing schemes there came to an end, at least for a few months. ACS:Law, the law firm that had terrorized untold thousands of alleged file-sharers in the UK, quit the anti-piracy business and went into bankruptcy a while later. ACS:Law’s Andrew Crossley was honored with the title of “Internet Villain” of the year and will now face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in early 2012.

Two lawyers who were responsible for introducing Speculative Invoicing to the UK were fined and banned from practicing for 3 months. David Gore and former partner Brian Miller of the law firm Davenport Lyons were each told to pay a £20,000 fine and interim costs of £150,000 for their professional misconduct.

Meanwhile, RapidShare and Megaupload fought back against entertainment industry propaganda.

February

Early February, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized several domains belonging to major sports streaming sites. One of the websites was Rojadirecta, an unusual target because two courts in Spain previously ruled that the site operates legally. Rojadirecta appealed the seizure but thus far without result.

In response to domain seizures many people voiced concern that they may be unconstitutional. US Senator Ron Wyden feared that the seizures could stifle free speech, and this indeed turned out to be the case as the US government shut down 84,000 websites by mistake late February.

In Australia, the Federal Court dismissed the movie industry’s appeal against a 2010 ruling which found that Internet service provider iiNet is not responsible for copyright infringements carried out by its file-sharing customers. This decision was appealed once more and is now with the High Court.

Oh, and despite rampant piracy Hollywood box office grosses worldwide surpassed the magic $30 billion mark for the first time in history.

March

Following the February seizure of several domains belonging to major sports streaming sites, the feds arrested the operator of Channelsurfing.net in March. The 32-year-old Texan Bryan McCarthy was taken into custody on suspicion of criminal copyright infringement. In November, McCarthy was indicted on several copyright related charges. Awaiting his trial, the psychologically-troubled operator pleaded not guilty on all counts.

In the same month President Obama’s “IP Czar” Victoria Espinel laid the foundations for PIPA and SOPA, calling on Congress to make changes in order to make it easier to clamp down on copyright infringement. Among the recommendations were calls to turn streaming into a felony alongside authority to wiretap in copyright cases. Music industry expert, book author and Grammy winner Moses Avalon welcomed the plans, which he declared would signal the end of TorrentFreak.

more

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-wars-and-internet-censorship-111231/...