The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing, the EFF goes for the jugular and shows that the RIAA’s entire approach is wrong.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing (PDF), the EFF goes for the jugular, seeking to show that the RIAA’s entire approach to file-swapping cases is flawed.

Not only does the Copyright Act not grant a “making available” right, the EFF said, but trade groups also shouldn’t be allowed to claim that an actual distribution took place based solely on downloads from their own investigators.

Together, this two-part theory would effectively eviscerate the RIAA’s current legal campaign by making it nearly impossible for copyright holders to show that infringing distributions to the public have taken place over P2P networks.

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In an response to the new wiretapping law that was introduced in Sweden this week, The Pirate Bay will ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, to protect their customers. In addition, the BitTorrent tracker will add SSL encryption to their site, and roll out a new VPN service.

Earlier this week, Swedish parliament had voted in favor of a new “wiretapping” law which invades the privacy of its citizens by allowing the government to monitor Internet traffic and phone calls, without the need for court orders.

Before the law was passed, The Pirate Bay crew spoke out against it, and now they are upping the ante. In an initial response they went out putting “wanted posters” up, of politicians who voted in favor of the law. Their next move is to ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, according to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

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Today, one of Mininova’s users will will have the honor to download the 5 billionth torrent, an impressive figure for a site that has only been around for little over three years.

If Mininova continues to grow at this rate, we might see the 10 billionth download before the year ends.

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The popular BitTorrent site IsoHunt just reached a new milestone, as they now index over 1 million torrents. In total, the torrents on IsoHunt point to 22 million files that all add up to a dazzling 743TB in data.

isoHunt has been around for ages, longer than almost any other BitTorrent site in existence today, and they are still moving forward. Last month they released a new Ajaxy comment and rating system, and today they reached another milestone.

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