Greek authorities have taken down the large torrent tracker Gamato.info, accusing the site of facilitating copyright infringement of music, games, movies, and books.
Six admins of the site were also arrested in raids of their homes in Athens, Salonika, Larissa and Aridaia.
The police officials were working on tips from IFPI Greece, the local branch of the industry group.
Gamato.info was a top 20 most visited site in Greece, with an estimated 155,000 daily visitors. The site had around 13,000 movies, 6500 games and over 35,000 music albums available.
Says Jeremy Banks, director of anti-piracy at IFPI: “Gamato.info was facilitating the illegal distribution of music, film, games and books. It is the perfect illustration of how such illegal operations are damaging a wide range of creative industries in Europe. The Hellenic Police swiftly recognized this was not a victimless crime and took action against those who sought to shamelessly profit off the back of others’ creative work. This skilfully executed action by a highly knowledgeable police force should act as a real deterrent to others in Greece considering engaging in online piracy.”
Result for: industry group
Apple shipped 24.89 million iPhone units in 2009, making it the top shipped smartphone for the year.
The numbers come from industry group Gartner, which showed off smartphone market share.
Phones with the Symbian OS remained on top with 80.88 million units shipped, with RIM second at 34.35 million smartphones shipped for the year. Finishing off the list are Windows Mobile, Linux, Android, and WebOS.
Percentage-wise, Symbian controlled 46.9 percent, RIM followed at 19.9 percent, Apple with 14.4 percent, WinMo at 8.7 percent, Linux at 4.7 percent, Android at 3.9 percent and WebOS at 0.7 percent.
Overall, 1.211 billion phones were shipped in 2009, down from 1.222 billion in 2008.
Result for: industry group
Why doesn’t the RIAA want you to see their lawyers in action? That’s the question being asked by bloggers and journalists around the US and across the world as the recording industry group fights to deny The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University permission to record and stream a hearing in one of their infamous P2P copyright infringement cases.
Leaving aside the lawyers’ arguments about courtroom rules, their basic issue with Judge Nancy Gertner’s decision allowing the recording and distribution is an alleged bias by the Berkman Center. In an appeal filed last week they point out that the center’s website isn’t impartial and includes information that they consider prejudicial against the labels and their lawsuit.
Even though it’s true that the video would only be available from the Berkman Center’s website at the time of the hearing, what the RIAA fails to mention is that it will subsequently be available for anyone to use in part or in full. The RIAA could even use it themselves.
It’s an odd position given the RIAA’s previous statements that the P2P lawsuits are intended to call attention to their rights and remedies as copyright holders rather than simply punishing individuals. And yet when given the chance to reach the exact demographic they’re targetting it becomes a problem.
