In an effort to curb online piracy, early last year the movie and music industries reached agreement with the UK’s leading ISPs to send ‘warnings’ to alleged pirates.

As we previously revealed, the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (VCAP) will monitor illegal P2P file-sharing with a strong focus on repeat infringers.

The alerts program is part of the larger Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative, which will kick off with a broad anti-piracy PR campaign targeted at the general public.

This education part is nearly ready for launch and TF is informed that it will officially kick off this summer.

“…work has started on the education component of the campaign, which helps to lay the ground and is designed to inform and raise consumer awareness and to engage with people around their love of content. The first activities are scheduled to start later this summer,” ” a Creative Content UK spokesperson tells TF.

The education part is aimed at steering people away from piracy sites by pointing out how convenient and accessible legal services are.

The associated alerts campaign has no hard start date yet but is also being finalized and will begin at a later date.

“The education campaign will show consumers how to easily access content – such as music, film, TV, books, games, magazines and sport – from authorized online sources which provide a superior user experience. So it makes sense for this to happen before the alerts program starts,” CCUK informs us.

Both programs are supported by the UK Government with millions in funding. The Government justifies this contribution with an expected increase in sales, and thus tax revenue.

The ultimate goal is to bring down local piracy rates and during the months following the rollout the file-sharing habits of UK Internet users will be frequently polled to measure the impact of the campaign.

“The aim of Creative Content UK is to encourage greater use of legal content services and to reduce online copyright infringement. There will be regular measurements of legal and illegal consumption of content throughout the duration of the initiative, which will be compared with levels before the launch of the program,” CCUK tells TF.

To what degree the PR campaign and alerts will convert pirates into paying customers has yet to be seen. In any case, it won’t go by unnoticed.

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

This week we have one newcomer and one returnee in our chart.

Insurgent is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	Insurgent	6.6 / trailer
2	(1)	Jurassic World (TS/Subbed HDrip)	7.7 / trailer
3	(7)	Ted 2 (Subbed HDrip)	6.9 / trailer
4	(3)	Home	6.8 / trailer
5	(2)	Spy (Subbed HDrip)	7.5 / trailer
6	(4)	The Longest Ride	7.1 / trailer
7	(5)	Mad Max: Fury Road (WEB-DL)	8.5 / trailer
8	(8)	Get Hard	6.1 / trailer
9	(10)	Cinderella	7.3 / trailer
10	(back)	Kingsman: The Secret Service	8.1 / trailer

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

Anti-malware software MalwareBytes has proven somewhat of a hit with pirates lately following a rather generous offer.

Rather than punishing people who use unlicensed versions of their software, MalwareBytes’ creators ran an amnesty program through which people could receive a premium product for zero cost.

It’s likely that many of those now using a free key will have accessed their previously unlicensed version from a torrent site. However, a feature present in the premium edition means that at least two of the world’s most popular venues are now completely off-limits to users of the software.

As can be seen from the screenshots below, visitors to Isohunt.to and LimeTorrents.cc – two of the world’s largest torrent sites – are currently rendered inaccessible by MalwareBytes’ “Malicious Website Protection” module.

Puzzled at why the software should take this approach but noting the similarity between the IP addresses used by both sites, TorrentFreak approached MalwareBytes for comment.

“We’re blocking the IPs (amongst others) because there’s a plethora of IPs on the [same network] housing a ton of malvertising and fraud sites,” Malware Intelligence Analyst Steven Burn told TF.

“The ASN involved is thus far unresponsive and has been since March,” he added.

So, while neither Isohunt.to nor LimeTorrents are considered harmful by MalwareBytes, the company has chosen to block their IP addresses due to their proximity to others that are allegedly behaving maliciously.

These two sites are not the only ones affected either. Torrentdownloads.cc, Megafilmeshd.net, ebooks-gratuit.com plus a range of other sites hosted in Ukraine are all blocked by MalwareBytes’ Web Protection module.

While it’s easy to regain access to any blocked site by selecting the appropriate button in the corresponding MalwareBytes popup box, many users are likely to consider blocked sites as dangerous, despite them essentially being victims of someone else’s wrong doing.

Speaking with TF, Isohunt.to told TF that the blocked host in question actually provides a good service.

“These guys webcare360.com provide great hosting that is bulletproofed against different kind of abuses. So a lot of websites around the world use their service,” the site explains.

“Looks like MalwareBytes simply blocked all IP addresses that belong to this hosting provider.”

Another issue that raised its head during our tests is the seemingly random IP addresses MalwareBytes blocks while connecting to certain torrent swarms. On numerous occasions the software flags IP addresses as malicious and denies connections to them. Intrigued, we asked MalwareBytes for an explanation.

“Our main goal is to protect our users from malicious hosts that could either be servers participating in drive-by downloads or even home computers spewing spam,” Jérôme Segura, Senior security researcher at MalwareBytes, told TF.

“So the block of only certain IPs within that pool is simply that. We are blocking the ones that we have identified for malicious activity, which also happen to be torrenting.”

The blocking of these IP addresses raises an interesting dilemma. Due to their connections to suspicious activity elsewhere, MalwareBytes considers them malicious and excludes them. However, it’s worth noting that despite their potential bad deeds elsewhere, peers in a torrent swarm go through a kind of vetting process based on the hash content of the material they’re carrying.

Put simply, while they possibly cause mischief elsewhere, these peers can’t do any real harm to the swarm. Blocking them won’t cause any really serious problems either (unless they’re the only seeder) but since they don’t need to be blocked we asked MalwareBytes about their policy.

“You bring up a very valid comment and something that many people might wonder about. I will pass this information along to see how we can manage this in a better way,” Jérôme Segura notes.

In conclusion, both scenarios (site and peer blocking) are caused by the blocking of IP addresses either directly or loosely connected to malicious activity elsewhere. MalwareBytes users will have to use their discretion when deciding whether to block or allow those connections in future.

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

In advance of the release of their latest album ‘Four’, One Direction invited remixers and producers from the UK to remix their track Steal My Girl.

“This is a huge opportunity to work with the music and vocals of Harry, Niall, Louis, Liam and Zayn,” said artist network TalentHouse in its introduction.

“After getting involved in remixing himself, Liam Payne wanted to give other people the opportunity. He, and their guest judges including senior A&R and Radio executives from Sony Music, will select one artist to receive a prize of £1,500. The selected remix will be posted to millions of music fans across the band’s official channels and potentially played on radio as an exclusive premiere,” TalentHouse continued.

The competition attracted the attention of UK-based producer and songwriter Lee Adams who took on the remix challenge after using the track stems uploaded to Soundcloud by TalentHouse themselves. Things didn’t go to plan, however.

Even though the stems were put on Soundcloud and entrants were told to upload their remixes there [“Artists must submit their remix via Talenthouse by pasting in their SoundCloud link”], the automated anti-piracy engines of the music site apparently weren’t informed.

“I made my remix, put it on Soundcloud about a week before the contest closing date. About two days later, it was taken down as it had been detected by SoundCloud’s own copyright system as infringement,” Lee informs TorrentFreak.

According to several other complaints left on the competition’s official page, Lee wasn’t the only one affected either. It’s not clear what happened in the other cases but Lee was left to negotiate with SoundCloud over the strike on his account. That didn’t go well either.

“I messaged SoundCloud back saying it was part of a remix contest. Then they told me that doesn’t mean I own the copyright,” Lee says.

“I then explained that if the stems had been put out by the record company officially, then they had given permission. They still argued that I didn’t own the copyright.”

Undeterred, Lee contacted the company running the competition on Sony’s behalf.

“As it was only a couple of days before the contest closed, I emailed TalentHouse themselves to see if they could do anything,” Lee explains.

“They were very good and after a couple of emails SoundCloud reinstated my track. Interestingly, TalentHouse made the comment that ‘this kind of thing happens all the time with SoundCloud’.”

But following months of silence and the ‘infringement’ episode now a fading memory, SoundCloud copyright complaints are again back on the agenda.

“We’ve received a report that your track ‘One Direction – Steal My Girl (Lee Adams Remix)’ contains copyrighted content. As a result, your track has been removed from your profile for the time being,” SoundCloud informed Lee this week.

Having a second complaint filed against his remix upset Lee, who took to Twitter to vent his frustration.

“I only remix a song if I am asked to or a public contest is put out officially by a label. If I had just remixed this song unofficially because I wanted to, I think that would be a good claim that I had infringed the copyright,” Lee explains.

It must be noted that the competition rules make it clear that “all rights in materials that are created by entrants using the stems are assigned to Sony Music” but filing copyright infringement complaints against remix competition entrants seems like a particularly poor way to deal with fans.

“To me this is just a poor decision by Sony, maybe they shouldn’t do remix competitions of their artists if they don’t want problems like this. To me it’s a good marketing decision to do a remix competition in the first place but everything that has gone on after has been poor,” Lee concludes.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the original One Direction stems uploaded for the competition are still being offered on SoundCloud for people to remix. However, those tempted to do so should be warned, since re-uploading finished tracks back to SoundCloud risks a potential infringement strike against their account.

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

In an effort to deter online piracy the UK Government is proposing to increase the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement to ten years.

The current maximum of two years is not enough to deter infringers, lawmakers argue.

The new proposal follows a suggestion put forward in a study commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) earlier this year.

The study concluded that the criminal sanctions for copyright infringement available under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) could be amended to bring them into line with related offenses, such as counterfeiting.

According to the Government it’s important that online piracy is seen as “no less serious” than offline infringements, and the increased sentence will put both offenses on par.

“By toughening penalties for commercial-scale online offending we are offering greater protections to businesses and sending a clear message to deter criminals,” says Intellectual Property Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe.

The proposal is being welcomed by copyright holders who have lobbied extensively to increase penalties for online piracy.

“This consultation is very welcome as we feel there is a clear anomaly in the way that online copyright infringement by criminal enterprises is treated by the justice system,” Eddy Leviten, Director General of the Alliance for Intellectual Property, says.

Although targeted at online piracy, casual file-sharers have little to worry about. The new legislation will be targeted at those involved in organized and commercial copyright infringement. This would include operators of large piracy sites, but not their users.

Before going forward with the proposal the Government is seeking input from the public. A consultation launched today invites supporters and opponents of the plan to chime in, which is likely to trigger a heated debate.

The consultation will run until the end of August and the Government will release the individual responses and publish a summary report afterwards.

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