Denmark Kills File-Sharing Warnings, Launches Legal Services Initiative

[nsane.forums]

After years of deliberations, today Denmark’s government will officially announce its new strategy for dealing with the issue of unauthorized file-sharing online.

Although pushed for heavily by rightsholders, the so-called “letter model” in which errant internet subscribers are sent a series of warnings informing them that their habits are illegal, is now officially off the table.

According to a Ministry of Culture document seen by TorrentFreak, the government will today announce its “Pirate Package”, an anti-piracy initiative that moves the emphasis away from punishing end users and towards the development and creation of better legal offerings. It consists of a number of components.

The first is the ‘Innovation Forum’ which will provide a platform for “dialog and innovation” for those looking to create and develop digital business models in various creative fields.

“The ambition is that the innovation forum will help to create a foundation for future collaboration across industries and backgrounds with the common goal to ensure that consumers have equal and easy access to as much creative content as possible,” the government writes.

The common theme raised in a number of the initiative’s components is the education of consumers. The Ministry of Culture says it will team up with the telecoms industry, rightsholders and the Consumer Council to launch a joint awareness project later this year to inform consumers which services are legal and which are not.

Additionally, the Ministry believes that one of the problems with the consumption of infringing music and movies is that the public does not understand its “significance and consequences.” It appears that rightsholders will step in to educate the masses on this issue.

“Rightsholders have stated that they will take the initiative to create an information task force that will pro-actively target and communicate with Internet users on relevant sites and forums,” the Ministry writes.

The rightsholders will reportedly seek to change Internet users’ attitudes by various methods, including contacting and initiating dialog with individuals on file-sharing sites “who upload and use illegal material.”

Another effort in the education of consumers will relate to securing existing open WiFi networks and having manufacturers build automatic technical solutions into hardware of the future.

On the ISPs end, outgoing customer bills will include notices warning users to secure their connections and stressing the importance of choosing legal media consumption offers over pirate networks.

The Ministry document also notes that there will be increased effort to remove infringing material from the Internet but perhaps a more controversial element of the Pirate Package relates to the ISP-level blocking of websites such as The Pirate Bay. The initiative hopes to pave the way for a smoother blocking process.

According to the Ministry, Denmark’s ISPs and rightsholders have reached an agreement on censoring sites which will be formalized into a written Code of Conduct.

In practice what this means is that if rightsholders want a site blocked they will only have to take legal action against a single ISP. Once a court decides the outcome (to block or not to block) that ISP agrees to be bound by “the final decision of the court.” Whether this means they agree not to launch an appeal as many ISPs have done in the past remains unclear.

“This is an automated process where the rights holders need only contact one organization / one telephone company, which will then make sure to communicate this decision to the other telcos,” the Ministry writes.

While rightsholders will be pleased at the formalization of the site-blocking procedures, they will be universally unhappy at the lack of any kind of end-user punishment, such as the provisions currently available in France or those forthcoming in watered-down form in the US.

However, opponents of 3 strikes-style regimes are cautiously happy with the outcome.

“We are all very happy that the letter model has been pronounced dead by the Ministry of Culture. It is a huge victory for the internet and for the users,” says Troels Møller, co-founder of Internet-political think tank and digital rights group Bitbureauet.

“The anti-piracy outfits and copyright organizations didn’t get their way this time. I think it’s a brave decision by the politicians,” Møller told TorrentFreak.

“It is a good idea to focus on operating legal services in ways that ensure users actually want to use them, and to facilitate forums to work out new business models.”

Early indications are that rightsholders still want more, with suggestions that they will now lobby for the police to become more active in pursuing uploaders of copyright material.

View: Original Article

[Ambrocious]

(I posted this in another forum post but I thought it would be useful here. I can't recall if I posted it here in the tut's yet but here it is)

How To Protect Your Uploaded Files From Being Deleted During Internet Censorship [TUT]

It looks more grim every day: news of websites getting taken down and content being deleted from online. Things such as MP3's and videos that have known pieces of information can be easily put into a blacklist during internet censorship. In this tutorial, I will teach you how to AVOID having your music and content targeted and deleted. Hopefully this method will prove to be very helpful to anyone who reads it.

This is sort of an advanced tutorial for some of you but I assure you, once you get the hang of it, you may be using this method more and more, especially if internet censorship blooms in full.

Things you will need:

* HJSplit

* Long Path Tool

* WinRAR x32 or x64

Make sure that you have those 3 programs downloaded and installed (Long Path Tool and HJSplit do not install as they are stand alone applications).

The very next step is for you to find any MP3 that you might have. Now open up HJSplit and tell it to "Split" then click on "Input" to look for your music file (or other file) that you want to split. You can choose to split file by Kbytes or Mbytes. For files larger than 3 MB (megabytes) I suggest using the Mbytes option when splitting your files.

Make sure that your file has been split into different parts. You will notice that you now have some files ending with .001

These files can later on be joined together with HJSplit also, so be sure to KEEP HJSplit and even pack it up with the file that you are sharing online (inside the RAR file) to make it easier for others to use the program.

Now you need to make a new folder, name it whatever you want. Place all of the newly created files starting with .001 (and all of the others, whatever number it stops at, include a copy of HJSplit inside as well) into the folder. Now, right click on the folder and choose the "add to archive" option which WinRAR should then open up and allow you to choose where you would like to set the RAR file at.

Once you have created the RAR file, now is the time to open up Long Path Tool. Please make sure that you have registered the program as the _README specified.

Navigate to where the RAR file is and click on it, rename it's last part, for example, it's last 3 digits are a rar. Rename that last part to something else ASIDE from .rar.

Now the file will probably not appear to work right since you have changed the last 3 digits. If you want to make it appear harmless, you can rename the file to "My kitties playing" and have the last 3 digits changed to 3gp.

FULL LIST OF FILE FORMATS YOU CAN USE

NOW THE FILE HAS BEEN CHANGED.

Your file will now be seen as though it were a mobile media file!

VLC Player

"I want to share this file with other people. How do I get it to work AFTER I changed it so much?"

The first thing that will throw off the other person that you are sharing the file with is that the file looks like a media file but it doesn't seem to work!

This next tutorial will explain how to get it to work.

DOWNLOAD THIS for your convenience or go to the following locations for the online tutorials:

For Windows 7

For Windows XP

These methods should help in stealthing your files that you upload so that they will not be deleted in the event of mass internet censorship.

HJSplit

Long Path Tool

WinRAR x32 or x64

*Download Tutorial .docx*

Don't Have Microsoft Office?

Download Kingsoft Office Suite Free

[Ambrocious]

Sorry, that wasn't mean to be spam above. I thought it was appropriate considering all that is happening.

[chilly]

Thanks for the info

[chilly]

I could not get to any of the links provided? Do not know if the problem is with comcast (blocking) or ???.

Pale Moon can't establish a connection to the server at epirate.net.

[keyman]

Very useful info, thanks Ambrocious!

[Ambrocious]

I could not get to any of the links provided? Do not know if the problem is with comcast (blocking) or ???.

Pale Moon can't establish a connection to the server at epirate.net.

Comcast is one of the major internet companies engaged in internet censorship. It will spread to ALL ISP's in the most worse way soon. My guess is that when IPv6 is put in place, they will be able to censor a lot easier but I could be very mistaken.

Since you can't seem to get the downloads to work, do you know which file sharing websites work for you? Let me know and I'll upload the programs in a .RAR for you if you want them.

UPDATE: Updated links. Let me know if they work now.

[chilly]

4 shared, mediafire, rapidshare. I think that the one above is the first one that I have not been able to navigate to.

Thank you & sorry it took so long to get back here but I have been working way too many hours.

Have a fantastic day