Official Ares Free Download

The Video Protection Alliance (VPA) bills itself as a “fast, secure and convenient way to settle your copyright violations online”.

It generously helps “you, the fan, identify copyright violations, pay a nominal settlement fee, and clear your record”.

So how does it achieve this?

By a business method tried and trusted by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA.

And the MAFIA.

Extortion.

Put another way, “VPA wants to provide viable settlement options for fans to help avoid costly civil lawsuits and Internet Service Provider (ISP) disconnections,” it says.

Computer scientists at the University of Washington studying P2P networks reported they’d received more than 400 bogus takedown notices in two months, says Wendy Davis on MediaPost.

That was last year and now, “Mike Freedman, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton, reports that a research system he runs, CoralCDN, recently received around 100 letters alleging copyright infringement,” she says, going on »»»

Freedman says that the infringement allegations were “demonstrably false,” because the IP addresses referenced in the letters weren’t running BitTorrent clients.

What’s worse, the letters, sent by a group called the Video Protection Alliance (which represents adult entertainment companies), didn’t simply request that the infringement cease, but also demanded that the guilty parties pay a “pre-settlement” fee or face litigation.

The notices only identified alleged infringers by their IP address, but didn’t include any names. But the notices instructed recipients to visit a particular site where they could learn the exact amount of their supposed pre-settlement assessment — and, presumably, provide identifying information. Freedman says he didn’t log in, so doesn’t know how much the group intended to charge.

Mediapost has VPA ‘agent’ David Kurzman saying the company typically seeks $10 to $40 to “pre-settle”.

But if it hires a lawyer to “subpoena the name of users, the price of pre-settlement increases to $500,” saysthe story, adding:

“Kurtman also says the group hasn’t yet filed any lawsuits, but plans to in the near future. ‘We just had a lawyer send out a bunch of letters and whoever doesn’t respond to those letters is going to get sued’ … “are

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