MOVIE PIRATES EVADE U.S. AUTHORITIES

Two of the nine file-sharing websites that were raided and shut down by federal authorities ast week are already back in business, according to TorrentFreak.com. TVShack.net and Movies-Links.tv had begun operating “immediately” after the crackdown, the website, which tracks the activities of BitTorrent sites, said on Monday. It reported that similar sites have developed emergency plans to recover quickly from such raids. “By treating raids and ISP shutdowns as a disaster recovery situation no different than a hardware failure, file-sharing sites can in many cases mitigate the effects of action with careful planning, a handful of emails and a few minutes of keystrokes,” TorrentFreak observed. Meanwhile, college campuses throughout the country have implemented controls against piracy in compliance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, which went into effect on July 1. Under provisions of the rule, colleges and universities are required to adopt procedures to “combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution’s network.” But Steven Worona, an executive at the advocacy group Educause, told the Associated Press Monday that the task is formidable. “Every fall, a new cadre of students arrives on campuses who have been engaging in infringing activity since the third grade,” he said.