3 Count: Catch Up

This is daily column on Plagiarism Today where the site brings you three of the days biggest, most important copyright and plagiarism news links. If you want to offer your feedback on the column, use the contact form or just follow me on Twitter at @plagiarismtoday.

1: File-Sharing Site Admin Sentenced to 6 Months Jail

Thanks to a slightly slower news day and a brief outage at Diigo, we’re going to take the opportunity to play catch up on some of the news missed over the long weekend.

First off today, Adrián Gómez Llorente of Spain was sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to pay almost 5 thousand Euros in damages for running a popular file sharing site. Though Llorente did not host any actual infringing material on his site, instead he linked to other locations where it could be found, his case fell apart since he profited from the infringement.

It is unlikely that Llorente will actually serve his jail sentence but the case raises questions about how other Spanish file sharing sites will be treated. Since the case against Sharemula fell apart due to lack of hosting infringing material, Spain was seen as a safe haven for torrent sites. That, however, appears likely to change.

2: The Pirate Bay’s Anonymity Service Signs 100,000 Users Pre-Launch

In other news, The Pirate Bay has announced that it has over 100,000 users queued up for its IPREDATOR anonymity service, which is due to launch publicly soon. IPREDATOR is essentially a VPN service that provides users protection from investigation for file sharing by making their public IP appear to be from The Pirate Bay’s servers.

According to The Pirate Bay, approximately 80% of of the people who have registered are from its native Sweden, likely due in large part to the new IPRED law (which IPREDATOR is named for), which allows copyright holders to force IPSs to give up information on subscribers suspected of infringement.

The service is currently in beta but a note on the site says it may be released this week.

3: Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.

Finally today, despite pressures from various public interest groups to stop filling the Department of Justice with former RIAA attorneys, President Obama has filled a fifth DOJ position with just such a candidate.

Ian Gershengorn is due to become the department’s deputy assistant attorney of the Civil Division. Previously he represented the labels in the Grokster case.

Gershengorn will also head the DOJ Federal Programs Branch, which recently offered pleadings to support the current statutory damages system.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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