UGA police arrested the 37-year-old security analyst Monday on a felony extortion charge for trying to shake down a student who downloaded music in return for not turning her in to the UGA Office of Judicial Programs, according to university police.

UGA immediately fired him, police said.

Dehelean, who worked for UGA’s Enterprise Information Technology Services, called the student Jan. 25 to let her know that she’d been caught downloading copyrighted material - a violation of university policy - and “offered to make the situation go away in exchange for money,” UGA police Chief Jimmy Williamson said.

“All he was doing was (offering) to keep the information from going to Judicial Programs,” Williamson said, which could have leveled sanctions on the student ranging from a reprimand and suspension of computer privileges to probation.

The student told Dehelean she didn’t have the money and she told an official in her academic area, who in turn notified police.

99 per cent of files accessed through a Torrent network are unlicensed copyright material, according to a survey by an American undergraduate.

Only 10 of the 1021 files in the survey could be distributed over the Mainline network without infringing copyright. The ten works licensed for distribution included two Linux distros, game pack add-ons and trial software. Only 1 of the 145 pornographic files was considered non-infringing, student Sauhard Sahi found.

Judge Michael Davis is the senior federal jurist in Minnesota. He presides over the gleaming 15th floor courtroom where, earlier this year, P2P user Jammie Thomas-Rasset was slapped with $1.92 million in damages for sharing 24 songs. Davis made no comment on the amount of the award and showed no emotion as it was read out.

But now we know how he rely feels about the jury’s work in that case: it led to a “monstrous and shocking” damage award that veered into “the realm of gross injustice.”

Davis used his power of remittitur today to slash the damage award by 97.2 percent, from $1.92 million down to $54,000—and he suggested that even this lower amount was too high.

Mini music label Blue Destiny Records has sued both Google and Microsoft for allegedly “facilitating and enabling” the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs.

Filed on Monday with a US federal court in Northern Florida, the suit is an attempt to choke off the distribution of Blue Destiny tunes on the Germany-based file-sharing service RapidShare. It accuses RapidShare of knowingly running “a distribution center for unlawful copies of copyrighted works,” while claiming that Google and Microsoft are propping the company up.

According to the suit, RapidShare benefits from ad relationships with the two search giants. “RapidShare generates revenue by selling subscriptions for its high-speed download services, and through advertising dollars generated by its advertising partnerships with Google and Microsoft,” the suit reads. “RapidShare’s business success is accomplished only with the knowing assistance of these two top search engines - Google and Microsoft’s Bing.”

But the overarching claim is that RapidShare is able to “achieve consistent prominent ranking in search engine results that direct users to websites where illegal ‘free’ copies of [Blue Destiny’s] recordings may be stolen.” US copyright law exempts companies from liability if they’re merely linking to infringing content - but only if they’re unaware of the infringement and don’t receive financial benefit.

The suits insists that Google and Microsoft benefit financially because they generate ad revenue from search results. And both companies have received DMCA takedown notices requesting removal of the links in question.

A graduate student who must pay four record labels a combined $675,000 in damages for downloading and sharing songs online has been ordered to destroy his illegal music files - but a judge declined to force him to stop promoting the activity that got him in trouble.

Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University student from Providence, R.I., was ordered Monday to refrain from future copyright violations and to destroy copies of recordings he downloaded without authorization.

Record companies wanted U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner to go further. They claimed Tenenbaum has been encouraging people to visit a Swedish Web site where they can illegally download the songs he was sued for sharing.

Tenenbaum said he had nothing to do with the Web site, and Gertner said she would not attempt to silence Tenenbaum’s criticism of the recording industry and copyright laws.

Tomorrow morning Lord Mandelson will present the Digital Economy Bill to the public, which among other things is aimed at reducing illicit file-sharing. According to parts of the bill that leaked today, the legislation could lead to jail terms for file-sharers and unprecedented power for the entertainment industries.

Many, especially those associated with making money out of music, feel that pirates who share files should be made to walk the plank to the rhythm of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.”

However, a survey commissioned by the professional cogitators at Demos in the U.K., suggests that just because one might download illegally, it doesn’t mean one never spends money on music.

Indeed, according to the Independent, this survey, performed by the omeletteheads at Ipsos MORI, showed that those who share files spend 75 percent more on music than those who have allegedly clean hands.

Another omelettehead, Mark Mulligan of Forrester Research, told the Independent that those who share files are simply more interested in music.

BitTorrent Inc. is about to launch a completely improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol that will benefit both users and ISPs. uTorrent 2.0, which is currently being tested by thousands of people, will eliminate the need for ISPs to throttle or stop BitTorrent traffic, and will optimize the download experience for its users.

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay should be closed, and if it isn’t, two of the founders will each have to pay a fine of 500,000 Swedish kronor (US$71,500), according to a verdict in the Stockholm District Court on Wednesday.

Back in May, the entertainment industry — represented by companies such as Sony, Universal, Disney and Paramount — filed a motion with the court to fine the people behind the Pirate Bay operation as long as the site’s users can access copyright-protected material.

Previously, ISP (Internet service provider) Black Internet was fined for providing data access to the site. That verdict resulted in the site going down for a brief period, and has since been appealed.

But this time it’s Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg who are in the court’s crosshairs. They have been forced to shut down the site or pay the fine.

The court has stated that the site will have to remain closed unless Neij and Warg are exonerated on another similar case they’re involved in, which is now on appeal.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum captured the nation’s attention when they were defendants in the RIAA’s first two trials against accused online infringers. But here’s the mind-warping reality: both defendants would have been far better off monetarily if they had simply ignored the complaint altogether and failed to show up in court.

That counterintuitive logic played out again this week in Massachusetts, where federal judge Nancy Gertner issued four default judgments against accused P2P file-swappers who never bothered to respond to the charges against them. Their failure to appear meant an automatic loss, and though the judge does have some discretion in setting penalties, judges often pick the minimum awards in such cases.

That was true in all four cases, where Gertner accepted the record labels’ claims and awarded them the minimum statutory damages of $750 per song. The defendants were accused of downloading an average of ten songs, putting total awards in the $7,500 range, in addition to a few hundred more for court costs.

File-sharing sites haven t had a great year, especially in court, but on Wednesday they received a smidgen of good news.

The Motion Picture Association of America asked a federal court to rule that Isohunt was liable for copyright violations committed by its users, but the judge in the case was unconvinced. In his order, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson said the studios had yet to prove that the Isohunt s users had broken U.S. law.

Lawyers for the MPAA, the trade group representing the six major Hollywood film studios, are trying to convince the judge that Isohunt encouraged and contributed to the infringing activity of users. Wilson gave the MPAA until Sept. 15 to file a brief that convinces him direct infringement at the site was committed by those in the U.S. Apparently, Wilson has questions about whether U.S. residents have pirated content using Isohunt.

United States copyright laws do not reach acts of infringement that take place entirely abroad, Wilson, wrote in his order.

A spokeswoman for the MPAA did not immediately have a response.

The significance of the judge s order, at least from the point of view of Ira Rothken, Isohunt s attorney, is that MPAA s investigators have struggled to draw specific examples of infringement occurring in the U.S.

Mininova has lost its civil dispute with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringement, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.