Hoax?
LOKI TORRENT LAWSUIT :: A HOAX #1
LOKI TORRENT LAWSUIT :: A HOAX
Written by: SharePro
At the end of December 2004, the RIAA and MPAA began an international rampage in efforts to close down major bit torrent and ed2k file sharing sites.
Some sites like Suprnova.org, Youceff.com, ShareTv.com, and others went down without a fight while other sites, including ShareConnector and Releases4U were closed down by authorities.
The lawsuits set off a wide spread of panic and dismay within the p2p community as many of the veteran ed2k and torrent contributing societys soon found themselves "homeless" and their works "confisquated" by investigative authorities.
During the turmoil, one such MPAA targeted Bit Torrent site claimed it was willing to stand up against the evil powers of motion picture media thugs by fighting the legal issues in a court of law. LokiTorrent.com began accepting donations from the p2p community to support what they called "necessary legal fee's".
According to a Slyck.com - January 3, 2005 (Slyck.com promoted people to donate to Loki Torrent), within two weeks (5 days public) of announcing their fund raising campaign, Loki Torrents was only $710.00 dollars away from reaching their initial goal. At the time of writing Slyck.com's initial article, Loki Torrent claimed to have raised an impressive $29,290.00 from the p2p community.
Today, just weeks after the initial Slyck.com interview with Edward Webber, owner of LokiTorrent.com, the entire p2p file share community is back in turmoil.
Quote:
A) Are the logs of Lokitorrent.com in the hands of the MPAA?
B) Where is the money that was donated to the legal fund?
C) Can P2P'rs who uploaded / downloaded torrents be tracked down via the logs.
The above and more were the initial questions most p2pr's had in mind when news broke that the MPAA had gained control of Loki Torrent.
As the writing of this article began to gain momentum, many inconsistencies began arising that clearly show that Lokitorrent is not in the hands of the MPAA (At least not because of a court order), nor we're the owners fined a million dollars.
1) LokiTorrent never provided the name or details of any lawyer representing the internet site. No federal judge's name has been listed anywhere throughout the so-called proceedings. Texas courts have no record of any filed judicial proceedings on behalf of the MPAA against Loki Torrent and/or Ed Webber.
2) During the same period of time that Loki was making tens of thousands of dollars monthly via donations, the owners of Loki Torrent were also actively trying to sell the domain. LokiTorrent.com for Sale :: Sedo.com
In effort to convince p2p'rs to continue donating and not to believe Loki's intent to sell, this is what the owner published in his defense:
Loki Torrent's Selling on Sedo.com :: Explanation
Quote:
If some guy offers me $75K for the domain name, he's more than welcome to it, and I'll simply move the site to a different domain. Selling the entire site will never happen. I have way too much of myself in this site to sell it for any price (well, 2 million could get me to part with it, lol.. but let's live in reality).
3) The only reports of this so-called "law suit" are based entirely on the front page of the LokiTorrent.com internet site. The MPAA and Texas Federal Court list no public record of a lawsuit nor is the MPAA or the courts willing to back up Lokitorrent claims of being ordered to hand over webserver ip logs and pay a 1 million dollar penalty. J. Borland of News.com (and other related news resources) apparently based their entire news articles by information received directly from Mr. Ed Webber (the owner of LokiTorrent.com). This information was received by calling Mr. Webber directly at telephone number (207) 752-3481.
4) Was LokiTorrent ever actually sued by the MPAA? According to the initial reports published via various websites, most people were led to have believed that the torrent site was "surrendered" to the MPAA.
According to a recent News.com article, Loki was alledgedly sued in Dallas, Texas federal court. Besides the testimony of the owner of Lokitorrent, no other information, public or private, can be found to establish the veracity of that statement.
A quick search to Texas Court Records DOES NOT reveal any court appearances or cases filed on behalf of the MPAA and/or Edward Webber, owner of Loki Torrent.
If LokiTorrent.com had been sued in Dallas Federal Courts, then some type of public record would appear. NO ONLINE RECORD APPEARS WHATSOEVER! ( Texas Court Search Engine )
5) While writing this report, a quick WHOIS for the ownership information of LokiTorrent.com reveals the following info:
Code:
Domain Name: lokitorrent.com IP: 216.32.85.114
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact, Technical Contact:
Webber, E
admin@webbsense.com
WebbSense
PO Box 7662
Portland, ME 04112
US
Phone: +1.2077523481
Why would Edward Webber of LokiTorrent.com still appear as "owner" and "administrator" of Loki Torrent if in fact the MPAA had taken over the site?
Edward Webber is still in full control of Lokitorrent.com. As evidence, I submit the fact that Webbsense.com and Mufftorrent.com
(two additional domains that are registered to Edward Webber) are still ONLINE, and the ping traceroute traffic is directed to the same exact machine lokitorrent.com is hosted on (i.e. 216.32.85.114).
A fast ping / traceroute to the MPAA's official website reveals the hosting IP address MPAA.ORG (the official MPAA Site) to be 66.252.129.187 while the IP address of Lokitorrent.com is 216.32.85.114. In other words, the MPAA and LOKITORRENT are hosted at 2 different hosting locations several thousands of miles apart.
Loki Torrent is not hosted on the MPAA's network, thus the front page warning p2p'rs against file sharing currently posted at LOKITORRENT.COM is a HOAX. Lokitorrent.com is hosted in Washington DC at the ISP "SAWIS" while the MPAA is hosted just South of Glendale, California by Ware.Net
6) In there ongoing efforts to prevent file sharing, The RIAA / MPAA have become notorious for publishing the names and addresses of file shares and webmasters who they sue. The MPAA has not mentioned one single word in any public news release. Official MPAA Internet Site :: Press Releases
While writing this article, it soon became very apparent that besides Ed Webber's claim to have been sued by the MPAA, there is absolutely no public evidence to back up or substantiate his claims. No court records, no MPAA publicity news releases, no federal judge's name on court orders, etc. All we have to go on is Lokitorrent.com hosting a front page "scare tactic" website that Ed Webber hosts on his personal servers. Ed Webber is paying for the bandwidth on behalf of the MPAA? Nah, that doesn't even sound right. Ed Webber allowed the MPAA to re-design his website and then host LokiTorrent as if its a anti p2p site on his own servers? Nah, that doesnt even make sense.
The fact that Lokitorrent.com is still registered under the name Ed Webber and the fact that this and other torrent sites under his name are still hosted on his personal machines have convinced the best of us that this is nothing more than a dirty hoax and that nothing was confisquated or surrendered.
As one top Texas lawyer kindly put it "Dallas courts have no presidence in this case because Lokitorrent.com was never hosted on Texas ISP servers. The owner of Lokitorrent is not a resident of Texas, and the MPAA's main offices are not in Texas. The MPAA has no reason in the world to sue in Dallas, but even if they did have presidence and sued in Dallas, you can be sure that the due dilligence on a case like this would take years. No way in the world could the MPAA have won a court case of this magnitude in just one month"
Quote:
"It seems that the owner of LokiTorrent decided to take the donation money and run, and to cover his tracks, scare the hell out of the entire p2p community. The scare tactic was probably nothing but a decoy to convince intelligent people not to ask the right questions". - Anonymous Filesharer
