For sale: DVDR-CORE
p2pnet view P2P:- If you’re in the market for a piece of genuine internet history, now’s your chance.
Five years ago the MPAA sued Alex Hanff, the man who later brought data pirate brought Phorm to its knees, for 150 million dollars for owning DVDR-CORE, the DVD bittorrent community.
It attracted more than million hits per day – and the attention of the MPAA.
The fact the Hollywood enforcer is a US outfit and Hanff was in the UK didn’t matter. It became the first BitTorrent site to be targeted by Hollywood outside the US of A.
Said The Register >>>
Alexander Hanff had no idea Hollywood was keeping such a close eye on him. Then, last Saturday morning, a movie studio functionary arrived at his door. Hanff, still in his dressing gown and not yet full of coffee, opened the door, only to be served with a lawsuit by Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros.
You may have already guessed Hanff’s supposed transgression. The movie studios suspect him of running a BitTorrent hub and helping people download copyrighted films via P2P technology. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of American) has gone after numerous BitTorrent hubs on similar charges and managed to shut many of them down. The plot here is a familiar one.
There are, however, a couple of factors that make Hanff’s story unique. For one, the US studios served Hanff papers at his home – in England. Secondly, Hanff, 31, owns the DVDR-Core domain name and pays for its server, but he has never actually administered the site. That’s done by a group of online friends that Hanff has never met in person. Lastly, Hanff plans to fight the movie studios, making him a rarity among BitTorrent hub owners.
Now Alex is selling dvdr-core.org to help him raise funds to continue his privacy work.
He’s also looking to part with a number of other useful domains.
You can contact him here – a.hanff @ ethicalnetworks dot org.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi The Register – Hollywood threatens to sue UK BitTorrent man for millions,March 15, 2005 February, 2010
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There are, however, a couple of factors that make Hanff’s story unique. For one, the US studios served Hanff papers at his home – in England. Secondly, Hanff, 31, owns the DVDR-Core domain name and pays for its server, but he has never actually administered the site. That’s done by a group of online friends that Hanff has never met in person. Lastly, Hanff plans to fight the movie studios, making him a rarity among BitTorrent hub owners.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Thanks Jon.
I just wanted to re-iterate that I am doing this to raise funds to help with my continuing privacy work. This includes my ongoing lobbying against the use of DPI to detect filesharers (Virgin Media/CView in the UK and HADOPI in France) as well as other privacy projects I am currently managing and developing. This work takes a great deal of time, energy and resources and is all unpaid – so whoever buys this will not just be buying a piece of P2P history they will also be supporting my work – which I hope most will agree, is very important.
Thanks,
Alexander Hanff
February 4th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
This was a big story in 2005, with his being sacked from his job and all for running a torrent site, but what has taken place in the 5 years since? Is the MPAA’s lawsuit still ongoing? Is this sale to raise money for legal costs?
Or is Mr. Hanff, possibly bankrupt and permanently unemployed, now living in a cardboard box under a bridge and dumpster-diving to stay alive — to serve as an example to other torrent site admins of what can happen to someone who gets on the wrong side of the Hollywood MAFIAA?
For someone who was once an active *and vocal* part of the torrent and p2p scene, things have been curiously quiet these last few years.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
No the case is not ongoing.
Quiet? On the contrary I have been incredibly busy and incredibly vocal, my energies have been focused on privacy issues not p2p. But thanks for the “support”.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Please rewrite the second paragraph so that it makes some sense.
Purrently it says:
“…the man who later brought data pirate brought Phorm to its knees, for 150 million dollars for owning DVDR-CORE, the DVD bittorrent community.”
***That makes no sense at all.***
February 4th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Currently not purrently
February 4th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
“For someone who was once an active *and vocal* part of the torrent and p2p scene, things have been curiously quiet these last few years.”
Haha!
The troll paid by the corporate parasites and criminal are showing up now!
Interesting!
February 4th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
“Or is Mr. Hanff, possibly bankrupt and permanently unemployed, now living in a cardboard box under a bridge and dumpster-diving to stay alive”
Someone has another plan for your bosses, troll! And this is frightening!
February 6th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
“For someone who was once an active *and vocal* part of the torrent and p2p scene, things have been curiously quiet these last few years.”
HAHA, you obviously don’t live in the UK then do you?.
Alex’s name may not be well known but his battle with Phorm certainly was. I like to think I helped in my own small way through highlighting it on various forums and making sure as many people as possible new the dangers of Phorm. I even had a latter published in the local press and lobbied my MP, but nothing compared to what Alex did. It is because of him that people like me got involved and because of him that it became such a huge issue. Thanks to Alex, and the rest of us in much, much smaller ways, Phorm is dead in the UK, almost went bankrupt, Europe got involved and our Government and BT got themselves in hot water. So good on you Alex and I hope you you stick it Virgin and their DPI plans (even though I’m not with Virgin) as that should also help to derail Lord Mandy’s plans to use DPI to spy on all of us.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
“This was a big story in 2005, with his being sacked from his job and all for running a torrent site, but what has taken place in the 5 years since? Is the MPAA’s lawsuit still ongoing?”
Alexander Hanff can say if it’s wrong, but it looks like according to this article the MPAA basically dropped the case, if not officially then just by failing to pursue it once the offending site was shut down.
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-drops-bittorrent-case-080503/
I’m sure they ran a cost/benefit analysis and came to the conclusion that they had already achieved their major objective, which was to get the site offline, and it wasn’t worth the effort to pursue the matter in a foreign court for punitive damages.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:24 am
The “offending” site wasn’t shut down. I took the site offline several months before I was made aware of any MPAA action because the Data Centre where our servers were located got raided by Brein who shut down another site hosted in the same facility. I wanted to make sure that our users identities would remain safe so I immediately had everything shut down and wiped.
I didn’t hear from the MPAA until several months later in 2005 they wanted me to give them all our server logs and identify staff as part of a settlement – I refused – they took me to court. They were looking for 150 million USD in damages – in December 2005 the court awarded them damages of 40 000 USD by default (because I refused to defend the case on jurisdictional grounds). They are completely unable to enforce that judgement on jurisdictional grounds because a judgement by a US judge in a US court cannot be enforced against a UK citizen living in the UK.
The article you linked too was an assumption the case had been dropped because I had heard nothing for over 3 years. I found out just last year that a default judgement had been made – I was never made aware of the judgement by either the MPAA Lawyers or the Court that made the judgement.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:30 am
It should be noted that I actually made the MPAA a counter-settlement offer to set up an authorised dvd download site – with a full business plan (so not just dropped into the middle of a conversation) which would have seen them make significant revenues (remember dvdr-core was the biggest dvd torrent community in the world at the time) – but as is the way with the entertainment industry they could not see beyond their own egos and turned my offer down flat. Now 5 years later there still is no European based authorised dvd download site (that I am aware of) so the industry only has itself to blame for any losses.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:37 am
And just to clarify I offered them 2 models:
1. A fixed cost per title of 3-5 euros
2. A flat rate tiered subscription based service where users paid a set amount each month, each tier would allow them to download more movies.
I offered ALL direct revenues to the MPAA (whether they chose the cost per title or the subscription model) on the condition that I would be permitted to keep any revenues raised by putting ads on the site. So they were made a pretty good deal in my opinion. But like I said, they were (and still are) too short sighted to accept it.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:39 am
Correction I offered all direct revenues to the MPAA members (the individual movie studios) can’t edit on here unfortunately.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Interesting story. It was several years after the Napster stomping that the RIAA’s ‘wisemen’ finally gave up their scorched-earth policy of dealing with P2P operators and acknowledged the reality of that failed strategy, and allowed the conversion of former unauthorized download sites into sanctioned digital music retailers. The MPAA today seems to have a similar “take no prisoners” mindset that the RIAA had in 2000, in which any offer by a targeted file sharing entity to ‘go legit’ will be rejected out of hand.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Alexander Hanff is a wannabe politician. That is his life’s ambition. I remember him from his postings at Slyck – pompous, arrogant and his quixotic manner. He got lucky with the Phorm issue!
Alex’s dream is to become a MP in the House of Commons…..
February 11th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
On the contrary, I have no plans to become an MP as I would have to give up my privacy work due to issues with managing my time. As an MP my work would involve all issues currently being debated in Parliament as well as constituency work – that would leave no time for my privacy work, which I am passionate about.
If I wanted to become an MP I would have stood for election 4 years ago when a seat became available in my area.
I don’t know who you are but you obviously have an axe to grind – that entirely your right I have plenty of critics, but I can assure you I wouldn’t have put the amount of time, energy and resources into my privacy work if I had some hidden agenda.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:24 am
Your privacy work? Who has an axe to grind? You certainly do! I have always failed to see what your true motivation is, other than your self-promotion. You certainly revelled in the limelight when the MPAA came after you. I remember watching your interview on the BBC – it left me very little sympathy… and that is where I started to follow your issue on Slyck – and you certainly did a lot to reinforce my perception of you…
And you do talk BS when you say that you don’t want to be a MP – because your involvement in the Lib Dems is very well known. I just think that the party does not want you there…
February 12th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Anon,
It is one thing not liking someone and as i said it is entirely your right. But to run around telling blatant lies about someone is simply unacceptable. You seem to think or at least your comments illustrate this, that the only thing I have done is campaign against Phorm. You are wrong – I spend around 12-16 hours a day 7 days a week dealing with dozens of companies for which I have received complaints about. I spend dozens of hours a month giving press interviews on various issues I am working on. I spent scores of hours a month writing papers for various government inquiries or for research purposes. So no, I don’t have an axe to grind, I work for Privacy International, it is my job to work on privacy issues – I would have thought that much would be obvious.
As for my “involvement with the Lib Dems” you must be hallucinating. I have no involvement with any political party – I was once a card holding member of the Lib Dem party but that was over 5 years ago, I currently am not a member of any political party but even if I was what business is that of yours and exactly what relevance does it have with regards to my work?
Now as I said, it is clear you don’t like me and that is entirely your right, but if you want to try and discredit me please use facts rather than just making stuff up. I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I have many flaws just like everyone else – but for over 2 years now I have been committed to Privacy work, work I don’t get paid for, so to suggest I am in it for any reason other than because I want to be is truly laughable. People don’t give up over 40k GBP to support their work unless they are truly passionate about it; people don’t turn down 6 figure salary offers so they can continue their work if they are not passionate about it. I turned down 8 high paid job offers last years, 3 of which offered 6 figure salaries – but I didn’t sell out.
Anon, what have you done for the greater good of society in the last 2 years?