Post Cyber Monday

Who's the Pirate, Exactly?

Warner Bros. Sued for Pirating Anti-Piracy Technology

Warner Bros. has been sued by a German technology firm which claims the movie and television production company pirated its anti-piracy technology.

German firm Medien Patent Verwaltung claims that in 2003, it revealed a new kind of anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. that marks films with specific codes so pirated copies can be traced back to their theaters of origin. But like a great, hilariously-ironic DRM Ouroborus, the company claims that Warner began using the system throughout Europe in 2004 but hasn't actually paid a dime for it.

"We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly," the company said in a statement. "Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us."

Medien Patent Verwaltung originally claimed that Warner was infringing on patent 7,187,633, called "Motion Picture and Anti-Piracy Coding," but as The Hollywood Reporter discovered, the patent going by that particular name actually bears a different number and is held by none other than Warner Bros. MPV's attorney in New York acknowledged the error and said that the suit will be refiled with the proper information.

Warner Bros. for (allegedly) using pirated anti-piracy technology you're our:

BLASPHEMES HYPOCRITE OF THE WEEK!

Bad Week in Piracy

Just when you thought the NEW story about an American taken hostage by another group of Somali pirates would be the only pirate-related news this week, the four founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison.

After an entertaining trial replete with posturing, theatrics and serious cockiness, the four co-founders of the torrent site were found to have been accessories to copyright infringement, each face a year in prison, and must pay $3.5m in damages to Sony, Warner Bros, Columbia Pictures and others.

They even Tweeted (twote?) their verdict before anyone else could get the drop on the story.

In a video on thepiratebay.org, Kolmsioppi reacted to the monetary portion of the sentence, saying, “Even if we had the money I would rather burn everything I owned and not even give them the final dust from the burning.”

I'm sure this isn't the end, since their servers are still up at another undisclosed location.

Meanwhile, President Obama tapped RIAA attorney Ian Gershengorn to join the Department of Justice’s Civil Division. This is the 5th RIAA attorney to join the DOJ —not a promising precedent for file-sharing proponents.

Again, not a good week for pirates.

Pirate Bay Half Way There

50% of Charges Against Pirate Bay Dropped

Good news, copyright bandits: due to an error by the prosecution in misunderstanding exactly how BitTorrent trackers work, all charges related to "assisting copyright infringement" have been dropped. They're halfway there!

The mixup came when the prosecution attempted to tie several .torrent files to the Pirate Bay's tracking servers, which called for Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij to point out that, hey, that's not quite how it works. All of that evidence linking actual torrents to the Pirate Bay has now been thrown out, leaving only the charges related to "assisting in making available" copyrighted works.

The prosecution is shrugging this off, saying that it in fact "simplifies the prosecutor's case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works." Of course the defense is taking quite the opposite stance: On Twitter, the message from Bay honcho Peter Sunde is, appropriately, this: EPIC WINNING LOL.

We'll be following more news from the 13-day trial as it hits.