A Virginia judge sentenced a spammer to nine years in prison Friday in the nation's first felony prosecution for sending junk e-mail, though the sentence was postponed while the case is appealed.

A jury had recommended the nine-year prison term after convicting Jeremy Jaynes of pumping out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need.

Jaynes, of Raleigh, N.C., told the judge that regardless of how the appeal turns out, "I can guarantee the court I will not be involved in the e-mail marketing business again."

Easytree.org, a popular Bittorrent tracking site also known as EZT, shut down today after their ISP received threatening letters from attorneys. Unlike sites like Lokitorrent that have been shut down in the past, torrents on EasyTree were usually unreleased live musical performances rather than commercial product. Is a site that shares old Stevie Nicks, Frank Sinatra, and Ian Hunter live shows really that much of a threat to the music industry?

In the legal dispute (reference: 21 O 3220/05) between eight companies from the music industry and German publisher Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, the first-instance district court of Munich I has just presented its written ruling. The matter in dispute was a report by heise online on a new version of software to make copies of DVDs. In the original version, this report not only took a critical view of software vendor Slysoft's claims, but also provided a link to the company's web site.

The Munich court ruled that, by providing a link to the company's homepage, heise online had intentionally provided assistance in the fulfillment of unlawful acts and is thus liable as an aider and abettor in accordance with Section 830 of the German Civil Code just as the vendor in itself is.

In its ruling, the court explained that the news ticker report neither constitutes "advertising for the sale of illegal goods" as defined in Section 95a of the German Copyright Act (UrhG), nor does it provide instructions on how to get around technical measures. Instead, this type of reporting is justified by the freedom of the press and is in the public interest. In other words, the court ruled that the press has the right to mention the name of the product, the name of the vendor, and the name of copy protection systems affected by the product.

The court specified the amount in dispute at 500,000 euros. This amount, the court found, reflects the "considerable profit losses" of the music industry and the "great publicity" due to the prominence of heise online among readers of IT information.

Swedish ISP Bahnhof is considering legal action after it emerged that illegal material uncovered in a raid on its premises was placed there by a paid informant of the antipiracy group that mounted the operation.

Speaking to The Register, Jon Karlung, Banhof's CEO, claimed that the pirated materials found on its servers were placed there by Rouge. "He logged in from outside," he said.

Bahnhof was "the victim of a badly arranged ambush", said Karlung, which had only resulted in what Swedish police viewed as "a low priority case".

Whether Bahnhof had been an unwitting victim of Rouge, illegal activity in Sweden had dropped since the raid, said Ponten. "The scene in Sweden is totally quiet right now."

This may in part be because Sweden's digital underworld has turned its attention to Antipiratbyran.

Ponten confirmed the organization's web site has been under attack since the raids. In addition, he said, Antipiratbyran's office had come under physical attack and he had received death threats.

If you're familiar with the word "haptics," you're familiar with the company Immersion. They're the company that seems to own every possible patent having to do with the haptics space, and any kind of tactile response or force feedback device usually involves patents that were first licensed from the company. So, in some ways, it's pretty impressive that Sony has gotten as far as it has apparently without licensing patents from the company. A court has found, however, that Sony's force feedback controllers for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 violate Immersion's patents and not only have they ordered the company to pay $90 million in damages, but also told Sony it can no longer sell either console in the US. Sony, of course, will appeal the ruling, which will allow them to keep selling the consoles in the meantime. Of course, this is the same Sony that keeps insisting on the importance of stricter intellectual property enforcement to teach violators a lesson. Funny what comes back to bite you...

A raid by Swedish authorities last week against Bahnhof, Sweden's oldest and largest ISP, has been hailed by Hollywood as a major blow against movie piracy. But questions have been raised about whether the 10 March raid, orchestrated by Swedish anti-piracy organisation Antipiratbyran, and involving the seizure of data involving thousands of users, might have violated the country's strict data privacy laws.

Bahnhof has issued a statement (in Swedish) expressing concerns that data involving as many as 20,000 users was seized during the raid. The raid against Bahnhof is not the first anti-piracy bust in the country but it's reportedly the first to take place without any advance notice.

Reg readers inform us that the Swedish Data Inspection Board is to investigate alleged collection and computation of personal data conducted by the Swedish antipiracy office in connection with the Bahnhof raid. This remains unconfirmed since we were unable to reach anyone at the board for comment.

The entertainment industry certainly loves to raid ISPs these days. Perhaps it's payback for all those recent court rulings saying that ISPs shouldn't just roll over and hand out private data every time the entertainment industry suspects wrongdoing. Last week, they raided an Australian ISP and a Swedish one. The Swedish one was with the help of authorities (the Australian one wasn't), but it was still organized by the entertainment industry. However, in raiding the ISP and carting away lots of info, some are wondering if the raid violated strict data privacy laws in that country. It certainly raises some interesting questions in the light of all of the many, many data leaks over the past couple of weeks. If your data happens to be stored on the same server as someone who is breaking the law, does that mean your data is open to review from private sources?

Yesterday the French security researcher Guillame Tena, aka Guillermito, has been fined a suspended fine of 5000 euros by a French court for publishing a vulnerability in the Viguard anti-virus software of the company Tegam.

That the fine is suspended means that Guillermito will have to pay up if he continues to publish about the vulnerability and other software vulnerabilities. As a result he has taken the Tegam publication, and a dozen others, from his website. He writes:

No more demonstration of security software weaknesses. It's now forbidden in my country. On march 8 2005 I've been condemned for exposing flaws in the anti-virus software and publishing proof of concept programs to demonstrate them. That's exactly what I did for a dozen or so steganography program, which often contained security holes so big you could pass a truck through.

So now you have to believe the editors marketing. Welcome in DisneyWorld. All steganography programs are perfect, super-solid, unbreakable, undetectable, without bugs nor flaws. They are all perfect. Use them. Hahaha. What a joke.

"A student at Kent State University sold a copy of two Microsoft software packages on eBay. He was then sued in federal court by Microsoft, who threw four lawyers at the case, making a number of claims and allegations. The student is representing himself and appears to be winning his case. Microsoft now wants to back out of the lawsuit, but the student won't let them out." The story linked there is fairly brief. A much more in-depth story includes all the gory details, but is BugMeNot required. The basic story is that he bought these two pieces of software legally, and was then sued for selling them on eBay. He spent time researching the legal claims, realized they were baseless and has countersued Microsoft. It's good to see someone not bullied and pushed aside once the high-priced lawyers come calling.

A bill under consideration in Washington state would hold videogame developers accountable for violent acts ostensibly inspired by a particular game.

Currently under review by the state legislature, House Bill 2178 would hold game retailers and manufacturers accountable for "injury or wrongful death" committed by a person under age 17, if the game "was a factor in creating conditions that assisted or encouraged" the perpetrator.

While the bill is still in committee stage and far from becoming law, its dramatic interpretation of criminal responsibility reflects growing concern and controversy about the effects of violent video games.