The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) representing Hollywood's major film studio has won a very important case against movie pirates. They have brought down LokiTorrent.com.
LokiTorrent, which was owned by Edward Webber, directed people to downloadable copies of copyrighted movies. Webber is finned $1-million in a judgment issued by a Dallas court. An MPAA notice has replaced the home page of the site.
The court has also ordered the site owners to handover the records such as IP addresses of those who downloaded movies through the site. The records will help investigators to pinpoint thousands of people who downloaded unauthorized copies of movies, TV programme etc.
John G. Malcolm, head of the MPAA's anti-piracy efforts said, "It will have a lot of records as to who these people are and what they provided, and that information will be of great interest to our members. The MPAA would turn over information to prosecutors in appropriate cases."
The site Lokitorrent.com was serving as a tracker that allows people who want to download files to connect with those who have them and want to swap them.
The site works on software like BitTorrent. BitTorrent is a simple protocol designed for transferring files. It is peer-to-peer in nature where users connect to each other directly to send and receive portions of the file. It is the tracker, like LokiTorrent.com, which coordinates the action of all such peers. The tracker only manages connections, it does not have any knowledge of the contents of the files being distributed, and therefore a large number of users can be supported with relatively limited tracker bandwidth.
The key philosophy of BitTorrent is that users should upload (transmit outbound) at the same time they are downloading (receiving inbound.) In this manner, network bandwidth is utilized as efficiently as possible.
Although the file sharing network operators claim that they don’t have any idea or control on what is being transferred on their network, movie makers feel otherwise. After all if your site boasts to be one that fastest downloads and keeps a track of what is available where, then you cant pretend to be an innocent bystander.
Source: EARTHtimes.org
Full Version: You can click but you can't hide [news]
Thx, I heard about the site closing last week.
Luckily, there are others to take its place... I do use P2p, BT on regular basis for file sharing... so it's shame that's being targeted by MPAA. I am safe for now, but just matter of time when more tracker sites get closed down.
Luckily, there are others to take its place... I do use P2p, BT on regular basis for file sharing... so it's shame that's being targeted by MPAA. I am safe for now, but just matter of time when more tracker sites get closed down.
If i was you/anyone else, i would watch the sites one downloads from. As you can see, they are trying to find people who downloaded from the site... even though it is obvious they wont go through each one of them, the information COULD be used in court... and if say im a developer, and someone sues me for whatever reason, they (the court) could bring up the info that i for instance, was downloading pirated files. In this case, not only the company goes broke (not that i even have anything now) but i would also shame my name.
So i would watch it. This stuff is starting to scare me a tidbit. Do u think same could happen to P2P progs? like kazaa, ares, etc?
Tim
So i would watch it. This stuff is starting to scare me a tidbit. Do u think same could happen to P2P progs? like kazaa, ares, etc?
Tim
Things are complicated in this case... 
Some more news:
As unknown facts continue to reveal themselves in the MPAA vs. LokiTorrent case, we feel a need to update the community with the following facts.
Please note: Attributing to the confusion surrounding this case, we have established that Ed Webber was not sued directly by the MPAA, rather was sued by individual media corporations such as Columbia, Disney, & Fox. Since the "MPAA" (Motion Picture Association of America) does not appear anywhere in the actual court filing, any search query for "MPAA" via the Texas Court Search Engine came up empty. In other words, the MPAA did not officially sue Ed Webber, rather the individual media companies, in a joint case, sued Ed Webber. We apologize for any confusion.
1) In several p2p interviews and on Lokitorrent.com website, Ed Webber accepted a responsibility to fight the MPAA in court on behalf of both his website(s) and the p2p community. By accepting such a task and responsibility, Ed Webber received not only the trust of millions of p2pr's worldwide, but also tens of thousands of dollars monthly to support legal fee's.
2) Ed Webber did not fight a case in court and it is doubtful whether he ever intended to. Mr. Webber settled his case in the preliminary stages of a court filing outside of court.
The title of our original article, "LOKITORRENT COURT CASE :: HOAX" is and remains to be TRUE. No judge or jury of our peers ever had the chance to review the facts of this case as it was never deliberated in a court of law. The "court order" is nothing more than a private agreement between the MPAA and Ed Webber, which was given legal standing by a judge.
Ed Webber knowingly manipulated the p2p community into donating a large amount of funds while during the same exact time, without the knowledge or agreement of the p2p community, closed a deal that potentially puts each and everyone of his supporting bit torrent community and website visiting members at risk.
During the time that Mr. Webber was accepting funds from the p2p community, and also instructing his lawyers to screw the p2p community, he also found time to try and secretly sell the domain on Sedo.com
January 3, 2005, Slyck.com reported Lokitorrent.com required funds to support "legal fees". Most lawsuits, such as the Kazaa vs. RIAA case in California, take years to reveal themselves yet the p2p community was very willing to support this legal endeavor. Exactly one month after the Slyck.com article, all funds raised by Ed Webber via Lokitorrent.com were transferred to the MPAA.
3) Ed Webber accepted donations while in fact his lawyers were busy selling out the p2p file share community whose funds were being used to support the court case. Ed Webber failed to update the p2p community with the necessary details of the legal proceedings, thus everybody was left in the dark. We do not know the exact details of when or how Ed Webber and the MPAA made a deal, however, the fundraising began on January 3, 2005 and the deal between the MPAA vs. Ed Webber was signed by a judge on Feb 15, 2005.
It is assumed that the deal between Ed Webber and the MPAA deal was being "cooked" at least 30 days prior to the actual court order which means that Ed Webber began (from the get go) accepting funds from the p2p community when in fact he already knew that he was going to close a deal with the MPAA. In other words, Ed Webber committed FRAUD.
4) Ultimately, Ed Webber accepted the MPAA's position that BIT TORRENT sites are financially responsible for providing "illegal files" and folded before any legal lawsuit could realize themselves in a court of law. Ed, as trustee of tens of thousands of file sharers dollars, not only sold out the file share community that he represented, but also set a very dangerous precedent for future file share sites who are interested in encouraging community members to donate money to fight the RIAA & MPAA.
5) According to todays WHOIS domain command feature, LokiTorrent.com, Webbsense.com, Torrentstop.com, and Mufftorrent.com are still registered and owned by Ed Webber and are still hosted on his personal servers.
Mufftorrent.com and Websense.com continue to display their original website homepage features (without the torrents) while Lokitorrent.com & Torrentstop.com display an MPAA message warning potential file sharer's "you can click but you cant hide". At first this confused the best of us.
After reviewing Section 4, Article "C", of the LOKITORRENT AGREEMENT WITH MPAA, please note the following text: "Shall affirmatively monitor and patrol for, and preclude access to...". In other words, Ed Webber has agreed to become an affirmative informant for the MPAA. That explains why the site is still owned and controlled by Ed Webber.
Source: earthreactor.com
Some more news:As unknown facts continue to reveal themselves in the MPAA vs. LokiTorrent case, we feel a need to update the community with the following facts.
Please note: Attributing to the confusion surrounding this case, we have established that Ed Webber was not sued directly by the MPAA, rather was sued by individual media corporations such as Columbia, Disney, & Fox. Since the "MPAA" (Motion Picture Association of America) does not appear anywhere in the actual court filing, any search query for "MPAA" via the Texas Court Search Engine came up empty. In other words, the MPAA did not officially sue Ed Webber, rather the individual media companies, in a joint case, sued Ed Webber. We apologize for any confusion.
1) In several p2p interviews and on Lokitorrent.com website, Ed Webber accepted a responsibility to fight the MPAA in court on behalf of both his website(s) and the p2p community. By accepting such a task and responsibility, Ed Webber received not only the trust of millions of p2pr's worldwide, but also tens of thousands of dollars monthly to support legal fee's.
2) Ed Webber did not fight a case in court and it is doubtful whether he ever intended to. Mr. Webber settled his case in the preliminary stages of a court filing outside of court.
The title of our original article, "LOKITORRENT COURT CASE :: HOAX" is and remains to be TRUE. No judge or jury of our peers ever had the chance to review the facts of this case as it was never deliberated in a court of law. The "court order" is nothing more than a private agreement between the MPAA and Ed Webber, which was given legal standing by a judge.
Ed Webber knowingly manipulated the p2p community into donating a large amount of funds while during the same exact time, without the knowledge or agreement of the p2p community, closed a deal that potentially puts each and everyone of his supporting bit torrent community and website visiting members at risk.
During the time that Mr. Webber was accepting funds from the p2p community, and also instructing his lawyers to screw the p2p community, he also found time to try and secretly sell the domain on Sedo.com
January 3, 2005, Slyck.com reported Lokitorrent.com required funds to support "legal fees". Most lawsuits, such as the Kazaa vs. RIAA case in California, take years to reveal themselves yet the p2p community was very willing to support this legal endeavor. Exactly one month after the Slyck.com article, all funds raised by Ed Webber via Lokitorrent.com were transferred to the MPAA.
3) Ed Webber accepted donations while in fact his lawyers were busy selling out the p2p file share community whose funds were being used to support the court case. Ed Webber failed to update the p2p community with the necessary details of the legal proceedings, thus everybody was left in the dark. We do not know the exact details of when or how Ed Webber and the MPAA made a deal, however, the fundraising began on January 3, 2005 and the deal between the MPAA vs. Ed Webber was signed by a judge on Feb 15, 2005.
It is assumed that the deal between Ed Webber and the MPAA deal was being "cooked" at least 30 days prior to the actual court order which means that Ed Webber began (from the get go) accepting funds from the p2p community when in fact he already knew that he was going to close a deal with the MPAA. In other words, Ed Webber committed FRAUD.
4) Ultimately, Ed Webber accepted the MPAA's position that BIT TORRENT sites are financially responsible for providing "illegal files" and folded before any legal lawsuit could realize themselves in a court of law. Ed, as trustee of tens of thousands of file sharers dollars, not only sold out the file share community that he represented, but also set a very dangerous precedent for future file share sites who are interested in encouraging community members to donate money to fight the RIAA & MPAA.
5) According to todays WHOIS domain command feature, LokiTorrent.com, Webbsense.com, Torrentstop.com, and Mufftorrent.com are still registered and owned by Ed Webber and are still hosted on his personal servers.
Mufftorrent.com and Websense.com continue to display their original website homepage features (without the torrents) while Lokitorrent.com & Torrentstop.com display an MPAA message warning potential file sharer's "you can click but you cant hide". At first this confused the best of us.
After reviewing Section 4, Article "C", of the LOKITORRENT AGREEMENT WITH MPAA, please note the following text: "Shall affirmatively monitor and patrol for, and preclude access to...". In other words, Ed Webber has agreed to become an affirmative informant for the MPAA. That explains why the site is still owned and controlled by Ed Webber.
Source: earthreactor.com
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.