If you’re a fan True Blood, then you’re familiar with Janina Gavankar and how much nudity is actually featured in the HBO show. As shapeshifter Luna, the 31-year-old actress is required to strip down to almost nothing for her special effects scenes.With the series’ fifth season well on its way — and Luna’s storyline getting more involved — is Gavankar comfortable with the amount of skin she’s showing?
Celebuzz caught up with the star to set the record straight.
As a shapeshifter, you’re required to be almost naked for many of your scenes. Are you comfortable with the amount of nudity on the show?
I am. Besides the fact that it is obviously the most professional environment that you can imagine, I joined in season four so by then they had already seen way worse than what I was about to do. Shifters are naked so much just because we shift into other things that we’re not even connected to. I feel like I’m just as connected to my human form as I am to a horse form. So in that regard, the brain space of nudity is a little different for shifters, and that is something obviously I’m very OK with.
How do you prepare for those racier scenes?We do fittings for a day of nudity, meaning what kind of nude-colored undergarment am I going to tape to my body to make sure that everybody can remain professional. We have really long work days so you’re in these outfits — or non-outfits — with everybody around you doing their job. On one day, my mother was actually in town — and when my mom is in town I take her everywhere — so she was there for the entire fitting watching it all happen.
Was she mortified?It demystified the entire thing for her. She really got to see how it’s very much work. It’s a full work day and she got to see how professional it really was. She was there for the entire fitting watching it all happen — how we’re talking about sizes of underwear and which color matches my skin tone. It’s really very technical. There’s nothing sexy and therefore awkward because of it. There is nothing awkward about it because there is nothing sexy about it either.
How do you feel about seeing yourself on TV?Here’s the truth: They make us look even better than we do in real life, because were in full makeup. We’ve probably been sprayed tanned, made up and the lighting is perfect with wind blowing through your hair. There’s even a film score behind it and the music makes it even cooler. By the time you watch it, it’s all been cut together so beautifully that it looks way better than it did on the day of the shoot.
What can fans expect from Luna this season?
Well, she is going to have to deal with her daughter. In this situation, that’s a really big deal to her. Life gets so complicated for her that she loses control a little bit and that’s really dangerous. When you’re a shifter and you don’t have control over yourself, it’s pretty dangerous for you and the people that you’re around.
How would you describe Luna personally?
She’s a great mom and she’s trying to hold it together, but she is also shifter who came from a pretty rough childhood. She has really been through hell and back. She’s obviously not perfect. She had a messed up dark past, but she is really just trying to do the right thing her and her priority is her daughter.
Well, fans obviously cannot get enough of True Blood.
Thank God! It’s a lot of work. Alan Ball said in our first pilot that we had maybe a few special effects, some blood and it was all very tamed. Now, there is an explosion and blood on on every page. We have come a long long way.
At the end of it all, who do you think Sookie (Anna Paquin) should end up with?
I love Bill (Stephen Moyer) but I think she needs to give Alcide (Joe Manganiello) a real shot. But in the very end? I would say Bill. I feel like whenever she’s crying and she’s with him, I’m always more choked up. Maybe it’s just because of their real life chemistry.
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Time to mourn the demise of Girls Guide to Depravity..........
You can join the twitition drive at http://twitition.com/x8xbh/#.UAWdsC5U_-Z.twitter
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Porn Star James Deen Talks Working With Lindsay Lohan: "She's Really Good"
Lindsay Lohan's been a busy girl, and this time we're not talking about her social calendar.
The comebacking queen (who just wrapped Liz and Dick) has been busy working on her latest film The Canyons costarring none other than porn star James Deen.
E!'s own Ken Baker caught up with the X-rated star to find out exactly what it's like to work with Lindsay Lohan, plus the costars share some interesting props for their steamy sex scenes (and you'll never guess what they are).
"Awesome," is Deen's initial reaction to working with the oft-troubled starlet. "So far it's been a pretty awesome experience, everything's been really fun."
Sounds like smooth sailing so far (no car crashes or ambulance calls!) and Deen reveals how the unusual twosome first met:
"I met her at a production meeting. We had dinner…it was the day the paparazzi were hiding in the trees and saw us smoking cigarettes on break."
Paps in the trees?! Seems like an average day in la vida de LiLo! But now that we know Lindsay's been a delight to work with, how did Deen feel about a less, er, sexually charged role?
"My character is a mid-twenties trust-fund kid, who basically does whatever the f--k he wants," Deen of his character. "I'm definitely not an actor…[but] apparentl,y I'm able to act and I'm decent at it."
Linds, on the other hand, has years of experience up her sleeve:
"She's really professional. She's got great ideas. She's involved in the characters," Deen reveals. "She knows her s--t. She's good. She's really good."
No surprise there, so let's get to the good stuff: Exactly how much sex can we really expect?!
"The only sex scenes in the movie are for plot purposes…there's never a moment where it's like, 'Now random sex scene for the sake of sex,'" Deen explains.
Are you sure about that, James? Because Linds has posted quite the revealing Twitpic with the caption "It's interesting to orchestrate a sex scene with forks and spoons."_________________________________________
Selena Gomez Bikini on the Set of Spring Breakers
Selena Gomez in a bikini is looking sexy as ever wearing. Selena wore this bikini on the set of her movie ‘Spring Breakers’. What I love about Selena in a bikini is that this shows she is not too skinny, unlike some other stars, but in actual fact she does have such a perfect figure and nice womanly shapes. I really wish I would like like this wearing a bikini.
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Interview With Jena Sims (talks about her topless scene) And Olivia Alexander (Part 1)
SAN DIEGO--Jena Sims and Olivia Alexander, stars of EPIX original movie "Roger Corman's Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader in 3D," shared with journalists Saturday, July 14 their experiences in making the film. Sims and Alexander were in San Diego Saturday to promote their film at Comic-Con. discussed their roles as college cheerleaders, and shared their thoughts on working with Corman, director and producer of cult classics "Little Shop of Horrors" (1960) and "Swamp Women."
The film, produced by Corman and his wife, Julie, follows a college coed who uses an experimental drug to transform herself into a popular beauty.
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Brian McGreevy – Hemlock Grove or: Another ‘review’ where I don’t actually discribe the book, just rant on about other things instead
b keichan / July 15, 2012 /
My entire appreciation of this book was based, mostly, on my appreciation of Tim Burton’s latest film Dark Shadows.Shall we discuss Dark Shadows for a moment? Why not.
Dark Shadows is a terrible film. Where it fails as a film, however, it excels as a soap opera – which shouldn’t be too terribly surprising, because that was the source material. Therefore: if you go into Dark Shadows expecting to watch a film, all you will be able to say about it as you exit the theatre is “Tim Burton used to be good“. If you watch it as a soap opera you will exit the theatre just have finished having the time of your life. It’s supposed to be ridiculously camp and not make any sense. That is part of the fun.
But! It is an excellent soap opera. Or, if you prefer, melodrama. Thankfully I am not the only person who has cottoned on to this, and it is apparently being adapted into a television show for Net Flicks. Which I am pretty sure will be awesome. It will be a much better television show than a novel, I will stake all the money on that.
When I say that Hemlock Grove is not a good novel, I am, by no means, saying that it is a bad novel. I loved it, actually. It is incredibly entertaining, has really excellent characters, and is the most marvellous thing to happen to the paranormal teen genre in probably forever. In my opinion. You just can’t read it like a novel, you need to read it like a soap opera. I know this might be difficult to appreciate, but let me break it down for you:
Novel/Film = non-linear, self contained
Soap Opera/Melodrama/Television = sequential, open ended
When I say that novels are non-linear, and of course some are more obviously non-linear or linear seeming than others, I mean that they often build on a past that we aren’t explicitly shown. A good novel will give us a character and circumstances and make us feel that this story lives inside that while we can’t see, are pretty sure is there. A novel references things that we can’t possibly know about (because we haven’t been shown/told) but we get the reference anyway, or at least understand that it is there, floating around a various points outside the story.
When we get to the melodrama there are things outside the story that we know are there but just can’t see or haven’t been told/shown, but unlike the novel, they only exist in the future. Otherwise known as the “cliff-hanger”. The novel is the lamp that lights in all directions. The melodrama is the flashlight that gives you an idea of what’s ahead.
Naturally this is incredibly simplistic. Incredibly. There are myriad examples of the opposite being true in both cases – like the book that I am ostensibly ‘reviewing’. What I think is important is to realize that there is more than one way to tell a story, and, if you can, adjust accordingly. If I had read Hemlock Grove like I would have read Pride and Prejudice I would have had a less-than-good experience with it. If I had watched Dark Shadows like I would have watched Lawrence of Arabia then I would have left the theatre completely disappointed and, possibly, angry. I think that there are a lot of instances of people disliking books mostly because they’ve just come at them from the wrong angle. Of course I have an interest in coming at things from unique angles because I’m a sap and I want to like the things that I read. This might not be your problem.
Anyway, enough of this! I really liked Hemlock Grove, and I wish I could shove cases of it out of airplanes over high density zones of clever teenagers that are looking for something to read after whatever fashionable vampire story they’ve just finished. And we should ALL watch this television show. I feel pretty certain it will be great.
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'L.A. Complex' creator has high hopes for Season 2 despite ratings struggles
TORONTO - The sudsy Canadian dramedy "The L.A. Complex" made its U.S. debut earlier this year riding a warm wave of network support, advance buzz and critical goodwill. What happened next was a Hollywood worst-case scenario worthy of one of the show's ruefully funny storylines.
The show tanked. Actually, tanked might be putting it mildly. In fact, Entertainment Weekly noted in a widely regurgitated blog post that the show's inaugural bow was the lowest-rated broadcast drama debut of all time.
Producers might have expected some tittering tweets about the show's provocative sex and drug use or its winning collection of crooked characters — a group of hopeful actors, dancers and comedians who share space in a downtrodden but festive apartment complex — but instead the narrative became exclusively focused on a discussion of the ratings, and exactly how historically horrible they were.
Given that the series is about the limitless desperation of Hollywood hopefuls, one might have expected the creative minds behind the show to plot major, attention-grabbing changes when the show returns for a 13-episode second season Tuesday on MuchMusic and the CW. But creator Martin Gero won't do that — he still believes that "L.A. Complex" can translate to a wide enough audience to bring the show its Hollywood ending.
"We're making the show that we made last year — I think it's just better, it's more confident, it looks a lot better," Gero said in a telephone interview Monday.
"I feel so fortunate that we've been given this opportunity to have people find the show again.... People forget that just a day (before the premiere), we're talking about how it's one of the best shows of that season, and then it starts turning into a discussion of ratings, and that becomes the story....
"The focus is kind of a bummer because I think everyone feels like we're making a really good show."
Yet even amid the headline-grabbing ratings misery of the show's first season, there were enough encouraging signs to help explain why the CW followed MuchMusic in ordering another set of episodes.
For one thing, more viewers actually tuned in Stateside to a rerun of the show's premiere that aired one night later, indicating that the show either benefited from strong word of mouth or was wounded by steep competition the first time around — or both.
And then, there's the enthusiastic response from critics. According to the review aggregator Metacritic.com, "The L.A. Complex" was one of the top five best-reviewed new series of the 2011-12 TV season, besting such bona fide hits as "New Girl," "Revenge" and "Suburgatory." The reception from scribes seemed to only grow warmer as audiences cooled on the series, with a representative write-up from Slate.com announcing: "Surprise! The lowest-rated show in broadcast history is actually great."
Canadian-reared actor Alan Thicke was certainly aware of the show's ratings rep, and it didn't discourage him from signing on for a four-episode season-two arc as the star and producer of an ecclesiastical show-within-a-show called "Saying Grace."
"I've been around the ratings game long enough to know that you have to be a little analytical and see what else is going on," the former "Growing Pains" star said in an interview Monday.
"This show in its first run was on against the finales of every competition show in America. It was on against the finales of 'Dancing with the Stars' and 'The Voice' and 'American Idol,' you know? It was like, this is the War of 1812 — you could burn down the White House and still have to go home.
"It did however get excellent reviews, unanimously good reviews in the States," continued the Kirkland, Ont., native. "So there was plenty to be proud of, and obviously something to build on.
"Hopefully in this relaunch it'll get another look, you know. And it'll probably end up against the fricking Olympics."
The curious thing is that "The L.A. Complex" would seem to have the components of a hit, at least by the relatively lower standards of the CW or MuchMusic.
It's a boundary-baiting drama that deals with sex, drugs and all manner of egregiously irresponsible activity with consistently refreshing frankness. As Thicke succinctly put it in summing up his interest in the program, "all the people are young and attractive and convincing and I thought the show had a great look to it."
The critics, meanwhile, seemed to respond to the show's authenticity and wit. In the series' seedy L.A., any supposed breakthrough achieved by the core group of hopefuls is either undercut by disappointment or comes with strings attached.
This is a world where the series' most outwardly successful character — Jonathan Patrick Moore's Connor, an Aussie rising star who lands a major TV role — is also its most auspiciously crumbling wreck, an alcoholic masochist who wraps up the first season by burning down his freshly purchased mansion.
Each of the show's main characters only seems to be an immediately identifiable TV archetype — Cassie Steele's plucky ingenue, Chelan Simmons' free-spirited dancer and Jewel Staite's bitter, prematurely washed-up has-been, for a few examples — before blossoming into something else entirely. It's TV drama for viewers well-versed in TV drama, Gero says.
"The archetypes and tropes we've all seen before — we endeavour to use them in a funny, clever and fresh way," he said. "I think what people are responding to is the show's wit.... We're going to take those assumptions you're making and turn them on their ear."
And while some of the show's plots eventually veer into the outlandish, Gero says the vast majority of those stories are culled — frighteningly enough — from real life.
"Every year that pot is, unfortunately, replenished by hearing stories about people being desperate in Los Angeles," Gero laughs. "Even if you are successful, that desperation unfortunately in this industry doesn't go away."
While Gero believes in his show, he does understand why it's drawn such poor ratings.
"It struggles from having a not-great log line — the whole, 'bunch of twenty-somethings living in L.A.,' I don't know that I'd run out to see it, much like I was an idiot who didn't watch 'Friday Night Lights' for the first three years because I thought it was just about high-school football," he said.
"(And) for Canadians at least, I don't think a lot of adults are necessarily cool with watching something on Much — like they see that it's on Much and they figure, 'Oh, it must not be for me.'"
He blames himself, too.
"When you start watching (the pilot), you're like: this is just another teen piece of (crap) that I don't ever have to see," he added, noting that the show's subversiveness wasn't immediately clear.
"If I was not involved in the show, it would take someone telling me: 'Look, this is a great show,' and unfortunately it's super arrogant when I do it."
Still, just like the bent-but-not-broken denizens of the show's home-base apartment block, Gero remains hopeful that "The L.A. Complex" can turn things around. It just needed another opportunity.
"Shows can grow," he said. "Certainly, we have nowhere to go but up."
* Fucking unbelievable. A show about young twentysomethings trying to make it in nasty sleazy Hollywood. You expect some nudity but this is ridiculous. Martin Gero helmed the under-rated Young People Fucking but somehow mellowed out on his latest effort. Should have pitched the show to the likes of Cinemax (HBO) or Starz. They would been interested. The budgetary concerns offset by shooting in Toronto and using local talents. Chelan Simmons is old hands at stripping on-cam and even Cassie Steele could been persuaded into doing nude scenes if done tastefully. Forget about that nudity dodger Jewel Staite. The series has potential to be a cult hit. Pity about the lack of real nudity.
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Meet Total Recall's new three-breasted woman! Kaitlyn Leeb reveals eye-popping prosthetic chest while promoting reboot at Comic-Con
The stunning star, who wears a prosthetic third breast in the movie, donned the appendage to promote the film. 
The likeness to the real deal was astounding in her barely-there outfit, consisting of a red satin floral dress with a mere strap covering her nipples and an asymmetrical hem.
Leeb's outfit was completed with a red plastic trench coat and some black PVC over-the-knee boots.
Leeb's appearance in the film is creating so much buzz that she has almost outshone the movie's two leading ladies, including Wiseman's wife Kate Beckinsale, who plays Lori (Colin Farrell's onscreen wife) and Jessica Biel. 
'I'm so glad that I didn't do that. I mean, she gets more attention than Jessica or me put together,' Kate laughed. 
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I've not sold my soul to the devil, I only displayed my body, says Sherlyn Chopra
Mumbai: Bollywood starlet Sherlyn Chopra, who made it to the headlines by being the first Indian female to pose in the buff for Playboy, has been facing a lot of flak, and getting a few praises too, for her act.In an interview to a Mumbai newspaper, Sherlyn Chopra said: “I know people in India feel that it is no big deal and some have called me a s*** and such things on my account.
"Some of the comments are very nasty and people feel that I have brought shame to the country but some have encouraged me as well. So, I realised that it is not going to be love all the way.”
Sherlyn admitted she loved money. “I have a great love for money and I feel no shame in wanting to have more because wanting a happier life is no crime.
"I have not sold my soul to the devil. I have displayed my naked body but I still feel that I am an Indian.”
Sherlyn says she is yet to find a like-minded Indian male. “It is very hard to find a guy who can embrace you. Most of the guys have the typical Indian mentality. I am hoping that I find somebody who will see my heart and soul.”
On her meeting with Playboy founder-owner Hugh Hefner, Sherlyn said: “I realised that Hefner has a fixed routine. He watches films, eats and sleeps as per his fixed timings. I also met Ava Fabian and other playmates there.”
Sherlyn reveals that the Indian colour festival Hole was used as one of the themes for the Playboy shoot.
"The pictures you see are about me in different colours, as they were quite amused by Holi. There were various themes like vintage jewellery, vintage costumes, the James Bond girl theme and the mystery woman theme.”
Asked whether she ever felt uncomfortable being in the nude in the presence of Playboy crew, she replied: “Not once did I feel awkward or embarrassed. They could not believe that I am an Indian and I could be so candid about my body.”
Sherlyn is ready to do nude scenes in Bollywood flicks, but with a rider. "I don’t mind doing the next season of Swayamvar or a good A-list film or endorsements.
"As far as posing nude in a film is concerned, I won’t mind doing it if I have to do it with a filmmaker who would do it like the Bhatts do.”
So, Sunny Leone, wake up!
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‘House’ Director Greg Yaitanes: Television Must Embrace Silicon Valley
Emmy-Award winning director Greg Yaitanes decried Hollywood’s approach to Silicon Valley in a keynote speech for the Social TV Summit at the Bel-Air Country Club on Wednesday.“We should be working hand-in-hand with Google, Facebook and Twitter,” Yaitanes said. Rather than thinking of Hollywood and Silicon Valley as two separate businesses, Hollywood should recognize "we are in the same business."
Having spoken with the various powers up north, from YouTube to Twitter, Yaitanes has stressed that the process of a new show is similar to that of a start-up in its evolution. Of the two, it is television that has room to improve.
"What TV could learn is the streamlining of trusting the people you hired," Yaitanes said. "On the broadcast side, there is a feeling of a growing group of redundancy -- studios owning networks, networks owning studios."
Yaitanes is not impartial. He was an early investor in companies like Twitter and Foursquare, but his job remains in television.
Echoing progressive marketers in the film business, he argued that Hollywood must embrace social media as a way of better engaging viewers.
One way of doing that is to mandate actors and producers of a show to engage on social networks like Twitter.
“The show is just one part,” Yaitanes said. “Any additional content and interaction socially are now required of you.”
That is one reason he left “House” in the middle of its final season to work on “Banshee” -- Yaitanes felt limited in his ability to push a network show nearing its conclusion to rethink its social approach.
“I was fighting the fight alone and not having people as game for what it wanted to do, where I wanted to push to,” Yaitanes said. “Hugh [Laurie] was in every scene, and I couldn’t tax him anymore.”
That said, he did feel “House” helped pioneer show-related apps. He referenced a "House" app he was involved with, a content-based app that offered fans of the show more information about the characters and plot.
“No one was making such a content-heavy app for a show,” Yaitanes said.
Just because the successful director recognizes the need to adapt to a social-media-obsessed world, he still has a vested interest in keeping live viewers tuned in. Given the appeal of TiVo and the Apple TV, shows must reinforce the idea of “must-watch TV.”
For “Banshee,” a drama that “True Blood” creator Alan Ball is producing, they have created a 75-second title sequence intended to keep viewers glued to the screen.
“We’re making the title sequence be ‘you fast forward if you dare,’” Yaitanes said. "The title sequence will take people into a deeper world."
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BiBi Jones Exits IndustryLOS ANGELES—Digital Playground contract star BiBi Jones has decided to end her performing career.
In a video posted to her Facebook page under her real name, Britney Maclin, a clearly emotional Jones quotes from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and says that she's leaving her performing career behind. Jones' Facebook page was made private earlier this morning.
“I’m only 20-years-old," she says in the video. "The earlier I get out of this industry, the better it’s going to be. I have nothing negative to say about porn or the people involved in it. It’s not for me.”
Jones, who was nominated for Best New Starlet at the 2012 AVN Awards, made her Digital Playground debut last May in Assassins, after signing with the company in December 2010.
Before signing the deal with Digital Playground, Jones worked for a brief time under the name Britney Beth, and shot for Hustler Video, Twistys, JM Productions, Immoral Productions and North Pole Enterprises, among others.
She's appeared on the cover of a plethora of men's magazines and gained mainstream notoriety last year when a photo of her wearing the jersey of New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski (with a shirtless Gronk standing next to her) went viral.
“I guess [I'll] start fresh and try to become a better person," she said. "I’m truly sorry to Digital [Playground], Manwin and everyone I let down.”
Digital Playground did not respond to a request for comment at post time.
Digital Playground contract girl BiBi Jones, one of the breakout stars of 2011, announced her retirement from adult performing in a video she posted on YouTube today.
In the homemade video, the 20-year-old native of Oklahoma explained the reason for her decision.
"I've been extremely unhappy the last couple months," Jones said in the emotional message.
"I'm not happy with me. I need to look at the big picture here and everyone knows that porn doesn’t last forever and family is No. 1. And it hurts my family a lot, so I’m doing it for them and I’m doing it for me. I’m doing it for my health. I guess I’m saying that I’m getting out of the business."
Jones continued, "I was promised a lot of things whenever I got in the industry. I was so excited, I was so happy. But nothing’s happened, and I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to let down anyone. And I’m sorry if I’m making this very dramatic because I wasn’t in the industry for very long at all but I’m only 20 years old and the earlier I get out of this industry the better it’s going to be.
"And I have nothing negative to say about porn or the people involved in it. I fully respect everyone. And I’m happy about the friendships that I’ve made in it, but it’s not for me. I’m going to start fresh and try to be a better person, I’m truly sorry to Digital and to Manwin."
She said in the video that she had been reading "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle for the past couple months and shared a passage from the book that talked about "taking responsibility."
Here's what the cards had to say for her: The fact that the “draw” card in BiBi’s current reading is “The Hermit” is quite paradoxical. Unlike the July 23rd Leo, the cabin-in-the-woods, quiet Hermit enjoys his solitude and does some of his best thinking in the late night or early morning hours over a cup of coffee.
This doesn’t sound like the garrulous BiBi at all, so my suspicion is that BiBi, whose presence on the ‘Net has been controversial to say the least, is being told by a higher authority to tone it down.
Like most female porn performers, BiBi has her Svengali, a master manipulator, and there may be more to this relationship than a professional one. The fact that BiBi’s in more beds than a mattress tag, also means this person really has a hold on her, and he may be the one exhibiting the traits and wisdom of The Hermit. It’s hard to tell in a “cold” reading.
Either way, my guess is the “hold” on BiBi is something incriminating that, if revealed, would really put her on the outs with her family and friends. Again, this is only an educated guess. Perhaps a showdown’s coming in the month of February over another BiBi incident that has yet to play out, but, trust me, it will happen because gossiping and raising eyebrows is in BiBi’s DNA. She can’t help herself.
But the King of Swords, who’s the gunslinger in such confrontations, suggests that this is more than a possibility. This is the test-of-wills guy who takes the misbehaved child to the woodshed, so it’ll be interesting to see how BiBi gets in more hot water over the next couple of months and what's done about it.
* Going to miss her. She's a consummate cum-swallower. Alongside Jenteal, Ashlynn Brooke and Stacy Valentine - BiBi is a rare porn import from the great state of Oklahoma. All four have another thing in common. Interracial dodgers on the cam. Off the cam.....
Oklahoma is reddest state in terms of political affiliation. The state went with Senator John McCain wholeheartedly in 2008. Obama will have a stroke if Oklahomans vote for him instead of Romney. But stranger things have happened and they do detest the Mormon cult.
According to Wikipedia: As part of the Bible Belt, widespread belief in evangelical Christianity makes it one of the most politically conservative states, though Oklahoma has more voters registered with the Democratic Party than with any other party.
Sounds like they're the Alec Baldwin of the states. Loud and proud as a liberal but votes for the other side when it really matters.
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The Pirate Bay's Prosecution Ignites A Political Firestorm
Remember the first time you used Napster?During its brief, digital lifespan, it felt like magic.
You could type in the name of any musical artist in the history of the world and Napster would produce dozens, if not hundreds, of song titles. Click any of them, and within minutes you could listen to the song. When Napster first launched, in the days when CDs and radio still dominated the music scene, this alone was a revelation. But what made it even better, what made it ubiquitous, was that it was free — which also meant that it wouldn't last long.
The music industry marshaled its lawyers and crushed Napster, effectively putting it out of business for buccaneers infringing on its copyrights. Kazaa, Grokster, LimeWire and countless others followed in Napster’s footprints: meteoric rises coupled with throngs of avid users, then rapid downfalls at the hands of established competitors and the courts.
But then along came The Pirate Bay, a service that an 18-year-old Swede named Gottfrid Svartholm founded in 2003. As the other Napster clones fell, TPB grew, and Svartholm recruited two other fellow techies, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, to help him run it. Eventually, its users were exchanging millions of songs and movies, many copyrighted, every month.
Today, TPB is one of the largest illegal file-sharing services on the planet, and its resilience and relative longevity is testimony to the powers of innovation, the merits of defiance, and — on a much more practical level — to the benefits of having your servers located in Sweden and being able to move them elsewhere at the drop of a hat.
Lawyers from movie studios and record labels have sent TPB angry letters asking it to take down material that they said violated copyright protection. The site has traditionally responded with famously rude emails.
“As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe,” read an email TPB posted on its site. “Unless you figured it out by now, U.S. law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated. […] It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are...morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.”
Clearly, the TPB boys weren’t ready to fold simply because industry heavyweights had come out swinging.
“They are very outspoken about the fact that they think what they’re doing isn’t wrong, even though it violates U.S. law. They feel that people should be able to share files,” Ernesto Van Der Sar, co-founder of the blog TorrentFreak, says of TPB. “That made them, if not heroes, then at least vigilantes, to many people.”
As TPB continued to fend off music and movie executives, the Swedish government began to listen more closely to the industry’s concerns and targeting TPB — setting in motion a legal battle in Sweden that is still playing out today. Some of the founders face jail time and hefty fines.
And the scrum enveloping TPB has become a touchstone for a much broader and divisive political debate pitting the merits of copyright protection against individual privacy and the open, free-wheeling nature of the Internet.
Amid this debate, Hollywood and others with high stakes in the copyright battle concede how difficult the web makes it for them to protect their wares. Like TPB’s crew, Robinson is unsparing in how he assesses the opposition.
“It’s a lot more difficult to shut down a physical store and move it to another part of town than it is, in the Internet world, to move your server from the Netherlands to a server in Russia,” says Mike Robinson, who oversees anti-piracy efforts for the Motion Picture Association of America. “There will always be criminals. Whether you’re talking about online piracy, whether you’re talking about physical piracy, whether you’re talking about assault, bank robberies or something else, there’s always a certain segment that will engage in that.”
Rickard Falkvinge is a round-faced, 40-year-old Swede with blue eyes and pin-straight, rust-colored hair. He combs it straight back from his forehead, but a few strands always seem to remain askew. He is a talker, and when he lapses into silence his fleshy lips and wide mouth, unaccustomed to the break, appear poised to jump right into another sentence.
He says he bought his first computer when he was eight — in 1980 — and that he started his first software company when he was 16. He was sharing files years before the World Wide Web even existed. He reminiscences fondly about weekends attending “copy parties,” held in schools and other public buildings, during which he and other techies would gather and dupe one another’s software.
For all of his passion for technology, he said that he had never been particularly political until the summer of 2005, when the Swedish government began siding with the film and music industry in the copyright standoff with TPB by actively considering legislation that would more aggressive safeguard film and music copyrights.
Falkvinge says that Stockholm’s cafes were buzzing about the law that entire summer. Swedes, he says, were concerned that so much of the culture was being locked up by corporate monopolies, and worried that enforcing copyright effectively would require a serious invasion of their privacy online.
“Everybody took part in these discussions — and basically said that the politicians were stupid,” Falkvinge recalls. “Everybody except the politicians. It was like they were completely unaware that this discussion even existed.”
So, on New Year’s Day of 2006, the technologist became an activist. He launched a new political party — the Pirate Party — online with the mission of advocating the benefits of free information and reduced copyright protection in the Swedish parliament. Within a day or so, his site had already gotten a million page views. News of the party coursed through the light-speed channels of the Internet, attracting more followers.
“I wasn’t surprised that there were people interested in this movement; I had done the math, and I knew that there were 1.2 million in Sweden sharing culture at the time, so I knew there was the potential for a significant movement,” Falkvinge recalls. “But I was surprised at how quickly people found out about us.”
To qualify as an official political party in time for the Swedish elections the following fall, they needed to get 1500 signatures by the end of February. They thought they could save time by collecting them electronically, but election authorities informed them that they needed physical signatures.
“It actually turned out to be a good thing,” Falkvinge says. “Because it gave us a reason to meet, organize and gel as a group.”
Within days, Falkvinge’s group had registered as a political party.
Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay was in trouble. Swedish officials raided its servers in the summer of 2006, shutting down the site. The founders restored service to The Pirate Bay using a backup three days later, but in 2007, the Swedish Prosecution Authority told the founders — and Carl Lundstrom, the heir to a cracker fortune, who had underwritten the site — that they were under investigation for copyright infringement.
Lundstrom and the founders lawyered up and a trial got underway in early 2009.
Jonas Nilsson, Neij’s attorney, said that the defense claimed that TPB’s founders couldn’t be held liable for copyright infringement because their site was a “passive, automatic service.” All it did, the defendants said, was tell users where to find information about downloading files (files which might or might not have been copyrighted).
The court didn’t buy it. It sentenced Neij to a year in prison and demanded that he pay damages of 30 million Swedish kronor. Other defendants got similar sentences.
Falkvinge, who attended the trial, said that the courtroom was packed with reporters eager to cover the biggest piracy trial in years and he encouraged members and supporters of the Pirate Party to protest the trial every day. The media seized on the protests as emblematic of young Swedes’ support of TPB. And the coverage reached a fever pitch when the court announced the guilty verdicts.
“There was an outcry over this grossly unfair injustice; there were huge protests the next day in some large squares in Stockholm,” Falkvinge says. “We knew that that was our ticket to the European Parliament.”
It was indeed. Sweden held elections for the European Parliament in June 2009, and the Pirate Party stunned political analysts by snaring 7 percent of the vote, netting them two delegates in the European Parliament.
The party’s success in Sweden also emboldened budding Pirate Parties overseas — most notably in Germany, where the local Pirate Party eventually made significant inroads in the parliaments of four different German states.
There are now Pirate Parties at some stage of development in more than 50 countries. Though the movement hasn’t yet replicated its Swedish and German successes elsewhere, Falkvinge said he’s optimistic about its prospects in Finland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland in the near future.
Pirate Parties now even exist in the United States. Despite obstacles for third parties domestically, the parties have presences in Massachusetts, New York and California.
Tethering the entire movement is a goal of relaxing or eliminating what it sees as a “copyright monopoly” that hinders the spread of culture and information. They say that because file-sharing involves “copying,” not “taking,” it’s disingenuous to call it stealing — and, perhaps more significantly, that the benefits of free information for society outweigh the potential costs to the artist.
“We’ve now made it possible to access and contribute to all of humanity’s knowledge and culture, 24/7, by being a connected human being on the planet,” says Falkvinge. “That is such a huge leap ahead for civilization that if it means that some business models will cease to be successful, then, frankly, those businesses will have to start selling mustard, or doing something else to make money, because there’s no place for them.”
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its allies in the content industry see the attacks on copyright as a threat to the livelihoods of those who work in the music and film industries. For them, piracy is nothing more than theft.
“What that analogy misses is that it takes hundreds of people to create a film,” MPAA spokesperson Kate Bedingfield says of Falkvinge’s point of view. “And when it’s stolen, and that product doesn’t come back to the people who created the film, that’s lost wages, that’s lost revenue.”
Ted Shapiro, the MPAA’s general counsel in Europe added that he believes that the most ardent philosophical defenders of piracy have also profited off the practice.
“It’s very clever,” he says. “It’s a cynical attempt to make this all about free speech and piracy… but I find that normally, these are only cynical moneymakers who want to trade on other people’s content, and they will use excuses like this in order to protect their sites.”
“The Pirate Party started out as a protest movement against the copyright industry’s effort to clamp down on sharing, but we’re starting to see the same pattern occurring in the rest of politics,” says 22-year-old animator Zacqary Adam-Green, who is second-in-command in the New York branch of the Pirate Party. “So we’re also working on increasing participation in democracy and introducing more peer-to-peer principles in the economy.”
Many Pirates, for example, believe that information technology should be used to make government more transparent; they suggest that the laws being considered in legislatures be posted online throughout the entire process of debate and amendment. Most of them also believe that services like Wi-Fi, education and health care should be freely accessible, without corporate interference.
Falkvinge is now a roving ambassador for the Pirate Party and his successor in Sweden, Anna Troberg, runs the party itself. Troberg is a convert to the pro-piracy camp; she long worked as a book publisher and a translator, and saw piracy as a threat to the livelihoods of artists like herself.
She began to second-guess herself after writing a blog post attacking piracy, and finding the responses she got persuasive. After researching the issue for the next two weeks she changed her position.
“At the time, everyone in publishing was very negative; they were always complaining that new technology was going to destroy culture,” she says. “Once I started talking to the Pirates, I saw that they were much more positive — they were trying to find new solutions using technology.”
No matter how quickly the party spreads from here, though, and no matter how much they eventually change intellectual property laws, it will be too slow for the founders of The Pirate Bay.
Although they finally lost an appeal of their case in Sweden’s highest courts earlier this year, the founders had already fled the country. Authorities also haven’t been able to collect the fines levied against the founders, according to Shapiro.
Meanwhile, Nilsson says he is working with the other defense lawyers to try to bring a case against the nation of Sweden to the European Union’s Court of Human Rights.
“In the European Convention for Human Rights, there are certain rules, and certain articles, about the right to take, give and spread information,” Nilsson says. “It’s a very important rule.”
Still, it won’t become clear until the end of this year, at the earliest, whether the Court will agree to hear the case.
TPB remains fully operational. Its servers were moved out of Sweden, and are now presumed to be located in the Netherlands and Russia, outside the purview of Swedish law enforcement agents, according to Robinson, the MPAA’s head of antipiracy activities. And the TPB trials, with all of their attendant publicity, simply served to raise the site’s profile internationally.
“When they first raided The Pirate Bay in 2006, it was pretty small. There were maybe 200,000 or 300,000 users,” says TorrentFreak’s Van Der Sar. “Today, there are about 5 million unique visitors a day.”
That, as much as anything, illustrates the difficulty of enforcing copyright law in the digital era.
Alexandre Montagu, a New York attorney who specializes in intellectual property, notes that copyright law was designed to protect book publishers, not electronic information.
“This is not a war that they’re going to win through legal battles,” he says of big content companies like film and music studios.
Montagu said that he thinks better antipiracy technology, and a more forceful pursuit of paid online video on the part of the studios, would probably be more effective than all their lawsuits. But he also said that he thinks that the legal challenges presented by the Internet will eventually require a truly innovative solution, perhaps in the form of a new international convention on digital law.
The Pirate Party agrees that intellectual property laws need to be rethought to accommodate the Internet, but it would go much further than Montagu by eliminating penalties for copyright infringement within the home — if not altogether. After all, some party members say, the battle over copyrights and digital piracy is only a skirmish in a broader and inevitable war over how technology is continuing to change and challenge the foundations of the global economy.
“When there is an abundance of anything, capitalism seizes up; it’s meant to allocate scarce resources,” argues Adam-Green. “In that sense, piracy is a dress rehearsal for the new economy. Because art and culture have become like tap water — it’s abundant, it’s infinite and, as it turns out, the traditional system has no idea what to do when that happens.”
Pirate Bay block "didn't hurt P2P traffic"
by Nicole KobiePosted on 16 Jul 2012
An ISP has reported that blocking The Pirate Bay has had no effect on P2P traffic in the UK. A court ordered most major ISPs to block the file-sharing site in April, although BT didn't implement its block until a few weeks ago. Immediately after the block, The Pirate Bay opened up new addresses for the site, immediately circumventing the ban.
An ISP anonymously told the BBC that P2P traffic on its network fell 11% immediately after the block was put in place, but has since rebounded.
"We saw a fall at the time of the block, made more dramatic by the increasing amount of such traffic in the weeks leading up to it," the source told the BBC. "But volumes are already pretty much back to where they were before."
The ISP told the BBC there was no way of knowing what site its users were downloading from, so it couldn't say if The Pirate Bay itself was back to usual traffic levels, or if users were moving to different sites.
The news won't come as a surprise to many who use the site, as immediately after it was blocked, mirror sites - including one hosted by the UK Pirate Party - were set up to offer access.
The court action was brought by lobby group the BPI, which claimed the site had fallen from one of the top 50 in the UK to number 282 since the block. "The goal of our action was to reduce UK use of The Pirate Bay, which was causing particular harm to British musicians and labels," CEO Geoff Taylor told the BBC. "W
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