Turning lead into gold used to be the business of the alchemist, but today the Internet is awash with ‘proven’ techniques allowing anyone to go from rags to riches, if only they have the right knowledge.

One person prepared to share his skills with the world is Timothy Sykes. In 1999, while still in school, Sykes reportedly took just over $12,000 in Bar Mitzvah money and began trading penny stocks, transforming his investment into $1.65m before he hit 21.

With dozens of articles documenting his fame and fortune, in 2011 Sykes launched his own website, TimothySykes.com. It is here that others wishing to emulate his success are brought onboard with tempting offers such as the one below.

Of course, the kind of knowledge that enables people to get rich super quick doesn’t come cheap. A few initial ‘lessons’ aside, Sykes sells DVD titles such as “TIMfundamentals” for $397+ shipping. TIMTactics weighs in at a few bucks shy of $500, as do others. Sykes promises that by following his techniques the money invested can be recouped with single good trade, but there are people out there who prefer to make money without the initial outlay.

These people find happiness on The Pirate Bay where all Sykes’ content can be found just by searching for his name. But the money man is unhappy with people getting rich without the appropriate investment so he’s cooked up a new money-making scheme of his own in response.

In a series of lawsuits filed at the Illinois Northern District Court, Sykes’ Millionaire Media, LLC is now suing eleven BitTorrent users who allegedly downloaded and shared his works without permission. Currently, all targets appear to be Comcast users.

One of the lawsuits reveals that an individual was tracked by German anti-piracy company Excipio. He or she is accused of copyright infringement in the most aggressive terms.

“Defendant is an egregious online infringer of Plaintiff's copyrights. Indeed,
Defendant's IP address….was used without authorization to illegally distribute seven different copyrighted works owned by Plaintiff…,” the court filing reads.

The seven files – PennyStocking, PennyStocking Part Deux, ShortStocking, TIMFundamentals, TIMFundamentals Part Deux, TIMRaw and TIMTactics – were all wrapped up a single torrent. The court papers don’t provide evidence of distribution of all of those titles but note that the defendant distributed a small “bit” of the whole package in “multiple infringing transactions.”

Mps 230s propane smoker users manual. “Through each transaction, Defendant distributed a ‘bit’ of the Infringing File. The PCAP shows Defendant's IP address, and the ‘bit’ that was distributed. Excipio verified that the ‘bit’ that was distributed belongs to the Infringing File by calculating its hash value,” the papers read.

Interestingly the hash of the file – 4f7fa6edd6bb1e13b5af478fbae4daafab968f51 – reveals an error in the evidence presented to the court.

“The Infringing File is a zip file that contains a variety of both text and video files owned by Plaintiff,” adding “Excipio further downloaded a full copy of the Infringing File, unzipped it, and reviewed each of the seven works contained in it.”

However, a cursory view of the hash in question reveals there are no ZIP files whatsoever inside the torrent, just plain video, audio and documents.

Technicalities aside, it seems fairly clear what will happen next. Sykes’ chosen lawfirm – Schulz Law – are well known in copyright trolling circles. In fact, lawyer Mary Schulz was sanctioned by the court in a Malibu Media case, something she is now required to report to courts in which she is admitted to practice.

For each infringed work, Sykes’ Millionaire Media, LLC demand statutory damages, attorneys' fees and costs. While the company “demands a trial by jury on all issues so triable” it seems likely that they’ll actually be looking for settlements from the 11 individuals they’ve targeted so far.

Another way to turn a small investment into big money, then.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Over the past few months City of London’s PIPCU anti-piracy unit has been working together with copyright holders to topple sites that provide or link to pirated content.

One of the most-used tactics is to contact domain name registrars, asking them to suspend allegedly infringing domain names. This has resulted in the “shutdown” of a few pirate sites, with the MP3 search engine MP3Juices one of the most recent targets.

With millions of visitors each month MP3Juices was one of the largest sites of its kind, but that changed in September when the site lost its domain name. After the suspension weeks went by without a sign of life from the operators, until this weekend.

Yesterday MP3Juices returned using a new .to domain name. The surprise comeback was announced through the site’s official Facebook page. “We are back:) www.mp3juices.to. Have fun, post any errors/problems below,” the status update reads.

The unexpected resurrection was welcomed by many of the site’s followers, who were delighted to see their favorite MP3 search engine back in action.

At the moment it’s unclear why it took more than a month for the site to move to a new domain. TorrentFreak asked the MP3Juices team for a comment on the comeback and their future plans, but they have yet to respond.

While PIPCU’s domain name suspension was bypassed by MP3Juices, it certainly wasn’t without damage. The site has lost most of its users, with many going to MP3Juices.cc, a site that launched last month.

The MP3Juices.cc team informed TF that they created their site for those who miss the old site. It offers a search engine similar to the original service, and has grown to 150,000 daily visitors in just a few weeks.

So the end result of PIPCU’s actions is that they damaged one site, but inspired the launch of another. Whether the actions of the police have actually resulted in less copyright infringement is doubtful, as availability of pirated content has increased.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.