An often heard excuse from pirates is that they can’t find the content they’re looking for in their home country, at least not for a decent price.

The movie industry has repeatedly attacked what they see as a myth, pointing out that movies and TV-shows are more widely available than ever before.

In addition, they are putting action behind their words. In the US, Hollywood’s MPAA launched the movie and TV search engine WhereToWatch, to help people finding legal content. An interesting service, but also hard to find in search engines, especially when it first launched.

Yesterday, several major players in the Dutch film industry came out with a similar initiative. They’ve apparently learned from the mistakes others made, as the legal Film.nl search engine was built with pirates in mind.

Like other “legal” search engines, the site returns a number of options where people can watch the movies or TV-shows they search for. However, those who scroll down long enough will notice that each page has a targeted message for pirates as well.

The descriptions come in a few variations but all mention prominent keywords such as “torrents” and reference “illegal downloading” and unauthorized streaming.

The original descriptions (in Dutch)

This includes the following (translated) message for torrent users, which appears under the heading “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story torrent”

“Don’t Wrestle With Nasty Torrents. Ignore the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story torrent. Just go for the safe, fast and legal alternative. Film.nl gives you access to all providers of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Very easy. And then you can make your own choice.”

Another description targets unauthorized downloading in general.

“Do you feel like watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story? Don’t download it illegally then. There really are other ways to watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” it reads.

And finally, those who are interested in streaming the movie, are inaccurately informed that a legal “Rogue One” stream is available.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is also available for streaming, but make sure to use the offerings of real providers. They provide good streams so you Rogue One: A Star Wars Story can enjoy it legally, without any worries,” it reads, adding that nothing in life comes free.

There are of course no legal streams for the movie yet, but that’s the downside of these automated descriptions. The upside is that it will bring in quite a bit of traffic to the site.

While the piracy related messaging is unusual, it’s actually quite clever. Since a lot of people are searching for “torrent,” “streaming” and “download” related terms combined with movie and TV-show titles, it helps to keep search traffic away from pirate sites.

In other words, it’s a smart search engine optimization trick, helping it to directly compete with pirate sites on this front.

The big question is whether people who search for “Movie X torrent” will be satisfied with the results Film.nl offers. That said, from a movie industry perspective, it definitely beats doing nothing at all.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Anti-piracy operations come in all shapes and sizes but it’s movies, music and TV shows that grab the majority of the headlines. Games, software, and eBooks trail closely behind, but it’s rare that other types of digital print see enforcement action.

Italy, one of the most aggressive countries when it comes to sweeping anti-piracy actions, has just changed all that with one of the largest enforcement operations ever seen in the publishing niche.

Following an investigation carried by rightsholders and the Public Prosecutor of Rome, a total of 50 domains involved in the unlawful distribution of news and magazine content have been seized by the country’s Special Unit for Broadcasting and Publishing.

According to an announcement by the authorities, all of the sites have now gone dark after offering “vast quantities” of material originally published by major newspapers and periodicals including Cosmopolitan, Fashion Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

The operation, dubbed “Odyssey 2”, was carried out under the directives of the Special Command Units of the Guardia di Finanza, a militarized police force under the authority of the Minister of Economy and Finance.

Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners who specializes in Internet and copyright disputes, says that the sites were probably under the control of separate entities.

“The variety of sites and the diversity of hosting and domain registrations leads me to think that these are different cases,” Sarzana informs TorrentFreak.

“The methods vary but generally the digital kiosks work this way; someone buys the paper or digital versions of newspapers through a duly registered account and then makes them available on the website.”

Until now, Italy has employed the same “follow-the-money” approach used by authorities in other jurisdictions, whereby site owners are identified via payments made by advertisers and similar business partners. Now, however, it claims to have developed a ‘new’ “follow-the-hosting” approach, which allows it to identify site operators, even when they use Cloudflare to hide the location of their servers.

While details on the techniques used by the authorities are thin, uncloaking server locations in this way is nothing new and can be achieved when Cloudflare is ordered to do so by a competent court.

The sites in question, which were not named by the authorities, are said to have served millions of users with pirated content. This, to a background of national media groups losing a third of their turnover over the past five years.

Big anti-piracy operations to protect publishers are extremely rare but with their market closing in and ad revenues falling, more could certainly follow in the future.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

With tens of thousands of visitors per day, torrent site Ahashare has built a decent sized community in recent years.

The site has an active team of uploaders and many regular visitors, or should we say had? For the past few days, the site has been unreachable on its regular Ahashare.com domain.

Roughly a week ago the site vanished without a trace. After some digging, it appears that the site’s domain name has been suspended by Public Domain Registry (PDR), with a “clienthold” status.

We have seen this status on suspended domains before. According to ICANN the clienthold tag is uncommon and “usually enacted during legal disputes, non-payment, or when your domain is subject to deletion.”

Clienthold….

TorrentFreak contacted the site’s team via the publicly listed address hoping to find out more, but we have yet to hear back.

The site’s operators are quiet on social media as well. The Twitter account posted the last site update more than five years ago. Two weeks ago a new tweet was posted linking to what seems to be a counterfeit sunglasses site, suggesting that it’s compromised.

Generally speaking, domain name suspensions are easily countered if sites switch to a new domain. Thus far it looks like the Ahashare team hasn’t done this yet, so it’s possible that more is going on.

Ahashare.com in better times

Ahashare registered its domain through the Indian domain registrar PDR, which is no stranger when it comes to suspensions.

The company previously seized the domains of ExtraTorrent and several other popular torrent sites. However, in recent years there might have been less compliance. The MPAA now lists PDR as a non-cooperative registrar in a recent recommendation to the Government, but it’s possible this doesn’t apply universally.

Whether Ahashare will return in the future is unknown, but in the meantime, the site’s users will have to look elsewhere for their daily torrent fix.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

When most country’s copyright laws were first laid down, the Internet simply did not exist. So, when the world-changing network began to develop, the law was often left playing catch-up.

Through various amendments and interpretations, many developed countries have found a way to shoehorn existing legislation to apply to the Internet era. But the fit is rarely perfect and for copyright holders keen to protect their interests, not nearly tight enough to deal with the rise of pirate sites.

Among others, Sweden is now considering its options when it comes to its future prosecutions of large-scale copyright infringement cases. As part of a review now underway, the government is accessing the powers it needs to deal with more serious cases of copyright infringement.

Police national coordinator for intellectual property crimes Paul Pintér hopes that any changes will enable police to operate more efficiently in the future.

“If you have a felony, you can get access to a whole new toolkit. In the terms of reference for the inquiry, the government mentions almost all of the points that we have previously proposed,” he told IDG.

Considering the way anti-piracy enforcement has developed over the past several years, few of the suggestions from the police come as a surprise.

At the top of the tree is treating pirate site operators as more than just large-scale copyright infringers. The Justice Department says that due to the manner in which sites are organized and the subsequent development of revenue, treating them as self-contained crime operations may be appropriate.

“With the help of well-organized sites, infringement is made fast, easy, and both openly and more or less anonymous,” says Anna Enbert, legal adviser at the Department of Justice.

“Not infrequently, there is a business motive for the major players, which is roughly comparable to organized crime. This has made infringement more extensive, difficult to investigate, and harmful in relation to both rights holders, consumers, and society at large.”

Like the UK, the current maximum sentence for online copyright infringement in Sweden is two years in prison. The UK is about to boost this to ten years via the Digital Economy Act but in recent years has seen many prosecutions carried out under fraud legislation.

This kind of amendment has caught the eyes of Sweden. By viewing ‘pirate’ sites as platforms for commercial and organized crime, harsher sentences may also become available. Currently, punishments are often limited to fines and suspended sentences.

Also on the table for discussion are domain seizures and site-blocking. In a memorandum submitted to the government last year, Pintér said that websites that violate copyright or trademark law should be blocked by ISPs. Furthermore, while preliminary investigations are underway, domain names should be seized by the authorities.

While specific provisions in law for both blockades and seizures would undoubtedly be welcomed by both police and rightsholders, current law may yet be up to the job. Attempts to seize The Pirate Bay’s domains are still ongoing and ISPs are digging in over demands to block the site. Nevertheless, both could still succeed.

In the meantime, however, the review will press ahead, although not at a speed that pleases the police. IDG notes that the investigation is to presented in February 2018, a time-scale that Paul Pintér finds unacceptable.

“The only thing is, is that the review will take far too long. It should be completed faster than a year,” he concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

VideoLAN’s VLC Media Player^(*) is installed on hundreds of millions of devices around the world.

It’s widely regarded as the best tool to play videos and audio in just about any format. When something can’t be played, VLC Media Player almost always provides the answer.

The application has a wide variety of legal uses, but pirates are also pretty keen on the tool. In fact, some sites actively recommend it to their users, including the French torrent site Torrent9 who list it in their help section.

Of course, these type of links are only a one-way endorsement. However, for some reason the National Tax Investigation Branch of the French Ministry for the Economy and Finance, was concerned that something more was up.

A few hours ago, Next INpact reported that VideoLAN had received a letter from the tax authority, asking for detailed information on Torrent9.biz.

The reason for the inquiry is that the site in question, also accessible via Torrent9.me, has a help section that explains how people can download torrents. This guide ends with a link to the VLC Media Player, as can be seen below.

Torrent9’s help page

While the Internet is full of links, the National Tax Investigation Branch suspected that VideoLAN was closely involved with the torrent site, asking the organization to hand over all sorts of documentation.

Specifically, they requested “complete customer details,” “bank details,” “payment methods of the customer and date of last payment,” and a copy of the “referencing contract” for the Torrent9.biz and Torrent9.me domains.

When confronted with the usual request by a reporter, the Ministry of Economy and Finance didn’t give in. Instead, it reportedly stated that “if they have a link to your website, it’s because you pay them: SEO is not free..,” suggesting some kind of active cooperation.

VideoLAN received quite a bit of support after the news broke as many people had trouble wrapping their head around the absurd situation.

After a storm of protests, the authorities eventually decided to back down. In a response on Twitter, the ministry described the situation as an ‘error of judgment,’ adding that failures like this can always happen.

For VideoLAN this means everything will return to normal now. They initially planned to reply to the request with a blank piece of paper, but even that’s no longer needed.

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^{* Disclaimer: VideoLAN did not compensate TorrentFreak for the link in this article.}

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.