The Japanese police carried out raids all over the country last week. They managed to arrest 18 people who have allegedly uploaded copyrighted movies, music, games, and software to the Internet.
Anti-Counterfeiting Association (ACA) which consists of many of the influential trade groups had been monitoring the Internet use in Japan for weeks to spot the possible copyright infringements. They handed out the information to police who started the operation last Tuesday.
The police searched a total of 50 locations and found 18 individuals who are waiting to be prosecuted. One of the ACA partners, Recording Industry Association of Japan, has released details of the arrested.
Even though the operation was quite a large one, none of the accused pirates are big time crooks. Even the worst of the bunch shared only a couple games or music tracks.
Result for: recording industry
The BPI, Britain’s largest recording industry association, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google demanding the popular search engine take down links that lead to “one-click hosting” sites such as MegaUpload.
The complaint says there are at least 38 links “available via Google’s search engine, and [requests these] links be removed as soon a possible as they directly link to sound recordings owned by [BPI] members.”
A few of the songs mentioned as being readily available for unauthorized download via Google are K’Naan’s “Wavin’ Flag,” Michael Bublé’s “Haven’t Met You Yet” and Eminem’s “Not Afraid.” While Google does not host any of the infringing sites or songs, searches lead users to MegaUpload, SendSpace, Rapidshare and others.
The BPI, in an example, typed “k’naan wavin’ flag download” into Google and the first couple of pages of results showed off free download sites.
Google has often said they are not liable as they only index sites and list them, while not hosting any files.
Result for: recording industry
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has announced, jointly with the Congressional members of the International Anti-Piracy Caucus (IAPC) the first ever Notorious Illegal Sites list, calling out the six most “notorious” sites used for unauthorized downloads of music, movies and other copyrighted works.
Additionally, the groups named Russia, Mexico, China, Canada and Spain as the “Top Priority Countries” for lax anti-piracy efforts.
The sites to make the list are: China’s Baidu, Canada’s IsoHunt, Ukraine’s mp3fiesta, Germany’s RapidShare, Luxembourg’s RMX4U.com and Sweden’s The Pirate Bay.
The groups say these sites and their services provide little other uses than an exchange of unauthorized copyrighted works.
“The release of this report casts a damning spotlight once again on several nations with lax copyright protections and websites that brazenly traffic in copyright theft. I’m particularly struck by the IAPC decision to identify significant global websites that facilitate massive theft; theft that destroys jobs and cuts short the dreams of creators who find it more difficult to attract the capital they need to build their careers. Just last week, five years after the 9-0 Supreme Court landmark decision against Grokster, we saw a federal judge rule against the most significant theft machine in this country – LimeWire. While it took some time for the judicial process to work, we did see that in a nation of laws, those who set up elegant schemes to profit from theft will be stopped. There is basic accountability, although much work needs to be done to achieve a fully accountable Internet space,” says Mitch Bainwol, Chairman and CEO, RIAA.
