This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

The Equalizer 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	(…)	The Equalizer	7.4 / trailer
2	(1)	The Maze Runner	7.1 / trailer
3	(…)	Horrible Bosses 2	6.9 / trailer
4	(4)	Guardians of the Galaxy	8.5 / trailer
5	(…)	Gone Girl	8.4 / trailer
6	(3)	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles	6.1 / trailer
7	(2)	Nightcrawler (DVDscr)	8.2 / trailer
8	(5)	This Is Where I Leave You	6.7 / trailer
9	(6)	Fury (DVDscr)	8.0 / trailer
10	(…)	The Good Lie	7.1 / trailer

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

In 1999, Napster was a one-time opportunity for the copyright industry to come out on top of the Internet. Napster was the center of attention for people sharing music. (Hard drives weren’t big enough to share movies yet.)

Everybody knew that the copyright industry at the time had two options – they could embrace and extend Napster, in which case they would be the center of culture going forward, or they could try to crush Napster, in which case they would lose the Internet forever as there would not be another centralized point like it.

The copyright industry, having a strong and persistent tradition of trying to obliterate every new technology for the past century, moved to crush Napster. It vanished. DirectConnect, LimeWire, and Kazaa — slightly more decentralized sharing mechanisms – popped up almost immediately, and BitTorrent a year or so later.

This was about as predictable as the behavior of a grandfather clock: the cat wasn’t just out of the bag, but had boarded a random train and travelled halfway cross-country already. People had smelled the scent of sharing, and there was no going back. However, people wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of Napster and have a single point of failure. For the next couple of years, sharing decentralized rapidly to become more impervious and resilient to the onslaught of an obsoleted distribution industry.

It is not a coincidence that The Pirate Bay rose about 2003. That time period was the apex of the post-Napster generation of sharing technologies. With the advent of the first generation of torrent sites, sharing slowly started to re-centralize to focus on these sharing sites. For a few years, DirectConnect hubs were popular, before people transitioned completely to the faster and more decentralized BitTorrent technology.

This week, The Pirate Bay was taken offline in a police raid in Sweden. It may only have been the front-end load balancer that got captured, but it was still a critical box for the overall setup, even if all the other servers are running in random, hidden locations.

Sure, The Pirate Bay was old and venerable, and quite far from up to date with today’s expectations on a website. That tells you so much more, when you consider it was consistently in the top 50 websites globally: if such a… badly maintained site can get to such a ranking, how abysmal mustn’t the copyright industry be?

The copyright industry is so abysmal it hasn’t learned anything in the past 15 years.

In the mere week following the downing of The Pirate Bay, there has been a flurry of innovation. People are doing exactly what they did fifteen years ago, after Napster: everybody is saying “never again”, and going to town inventing more resilience, more decentralization, and more sharing efficiency. The community who are manufacturing our own copies of knowledge and culture had gotten complacent with the rather badly-maintained website and more or less stopped innovating – The Pirate Bay had been good enough for several years, even when its age was showing.

I’ve seen signals from every continent in the past week that the past decade of decentralization technologies is getting pooled into new sharing initiatives. A lot of them seem really hot. Some are just hitting the ball out of the park if they get realized: everything from TOR to blockchain technology to distributed computing – components that weren’t there when BitTorrent first surfaced ten years ago. If realized, they should surface over the next few years, like BitTorrent surfaced three to four years after Napster with a bunch of other technologies in between. As a side bonus, these new initiatives will also protect privacy and free speech, which are both incompatible with enforcement of the copyright monopoly.

So in a way, this was welcome. We need that innovation. We need to not grow complacent. We all need to stay ahead of the crumbling monopolies – a dying tiger is dangerous, even when it’s obviously insane. But The Pirate Bay’s legacy will never die, just like Napster’s legacy won’t.

In the meantime, the copyright industry is a case study in how to really insist on not learning a damn thing from your own monumental mistakes in fifteen full years.

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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

You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a television. You wouldn’t steal a movie.

Today there can be few of us unaware of the origins of those lines since for nearly ten years the anti-piracy PSA in question has been subjected to online ridicule.

Educating people on piracy matters, especially those aged between 15 and 35, is notoriously difficult. It’s all too easy to patronize those of a more mature age with amped up drama and needless scaremongering but that’s easily eclipsed by the chances of appearing terribly “uncool” to the cutting-edge youth.

None of these pitfalls appear to have fazed Creative Future, the huge coalition of entertainment industry companies with a mission to suck profit out of piracy and educate the masses.

When they’re not taking a shot at BitTorrent Inc., the organization supports groups such as iKeepSafe who in turn aim to keep the younger generation safe (and pirate-free) online.

And next year, if all goes to plan, we’ll get the chance to view Creative Future’s anti-piracy PSAs. TorrentFreak obtained a copy of the concepts and scripts and they range from mildly annoying and stereotypical to outrageously daring and hilarious.

Torrent – The Slightly Smug, BitTorrent Veteran Douchebag

One of the campaigns involves a character called “Torrent”. This intriguing fellow, set to played by a young male actor in his late 20s or early 30s, appears to be a bit of a file-sharing veteran since he has “all the answers” when it comes to justifying his piracy.

“Confident and unapologetic”, Torrent isn’t ashamed of what he does because he believes he’s right, in fact he’s so sure of his moral compass “he speaks the opinions of the BitTorrent community word for word.”

However, while Torrent is living up to his billing as a “slightly smug douchebag” with a mantra of “if it’s online, it’s mine”, his actions are affecting people who create content.

“I support art but I don’t pay big corporations for entertainment,” Torrent says, his words overlaying images of production assistants packing vans at 3am and games coders working through the night.

But while the campaign outlined above plays to a specific file-sharing sterotype, there are more exciting plans ahead.

Don’t Be An Asshole

Another PSA campaign, surprisingly titled “Don’t Be An Asshole”, features big name stars filmed on the sets of big movies. We’ve read all the early scripts (featuring everyone from Sandra Bullock to Morgan Freeman) and not only are they pretty funny but they might even turn into a campaign people won’t actually hate. Better than that, they’re a parody goldmine.

The premise is simple – if you download movies illegally, you’re an asshole. While the title of the campaign gives that away, the content of the scripts is nothing short of a huge surprise.

One PSA, set to be filmed on the set of Ted 2, features Mark Wahlberg and Ted (Seth MacFarlane) sitting together chatting on a couch.

—————————-

MARK: “Hey, buddy. Have you ever done anything, like, illegal. You
know…illegal illegal?”

TED: “Oh, ya man. Tons of stuff.”

MARK: “Like what?”

TED: “Alright, uh, top of my head…I once paid two prostitutes to have a boob
fight. Does that count?”

MARK: “That sounds awesome. One time I pooped in the deep fryer at a Doug’s Sr.”

TED: “I kicked a nine year old in the nuts. No reason. And not when I was
younger either, this was like, Tuesday.”

MARK: “One time I punched a blind guy in the face, cause I knew he couldn’t
identify me.”

TED: “I had sex with a Grifford the Dog doll…that was not consensual”

MARK: “I’m guilty of that one, too.”

TED: “I posted those naked pictures of your ex without her permission.”

MARK: “I took ‘em without her permission.”

TED: “Wow. We’ve both done some pretty messed up things.”

– The laughter dies down, but Mark has one last question.

MARK: “Ya. Hey, have you ever illegally downloaded a movie?”

- The tone in the room shifts immediately. Ted is clearly upset by this.

TED: “What? No. I’m not an asshole.”

TITLES: DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE

—————————-

As made clear by the above, this is no ordinary anti-piracy campaign and the scripts we’ve seen reveal there are plenty more surprises where these came from.

We won’t spoil the fun but I for one simply cannot wait to see Morgan Freeman captured on film reciting the lines set down for him in one script….

MORGAN: “If you illegally download movies off of the Internet, you have a tiny, useless penis, and you should be embarrassed to be alive.”

No, really……

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

Last week the popular media search engine FilesTube transformed itself into a licensed video aggregator.

The site, which was once branded one of the top pirate sites by the entertainment industry, hopes that the move will bring in new revenue opportunities.

First, however, the site had to get rid of various remnants from its “pirate” history. The site is still blocked in the UK, for example, as the High Court previously declared that FilesTube infringed music rights.

Earlier, FilesTube informed TF that it planned to challenge the blockade at the High Court, but it turns out that this is no longer needed. Music industry group BPI, who were the driving force behind FilesTube’s blockade, followed recent developments and decided to unblock the site.

This is the first time that the list of blocked pirate sites in the UK has become shorter, although it may not be for long.

The BPI believes that FilesTube is a good example of how High Court orders can motivate websites to go legit and hopes that others will follow the example.

“We are pleased that the block has encouraged FilesTube to change its business model so that it no longer appears to infringe music rights,” BPI’s General Counsel Kiaron Whitehead tells TF.

“Accordingly, we have agreed to un-block the site, which the ISPs will implement over the next few weeks. We hope that other sites which are subject to blocking orders will follow suit and help to support the development of legal digital entertainment.”

TF also spoke with Maciej Zawisza from FilesTube, who is happy with BPI’s swift response. Since the music group can amend the blocklists without a court order, this saves the trouble of going through court.

“We used to be a media search engine for content on cyberlocker sites. Now we operate as a free VOD aggregator with licensed content only. We are grateful to BPI for agreeing to lift the blocks and we look forward to the growth of the new FilesTube,” Maciej Zawisza informed TF.

In addition to the lifted blockade, FilesTube’s Facebook page was also unblocked recently. The page was taken down by the movie industry FACT, but is now accessible again.

Meanwhile, many of FilesTube’s former users are disappointed with the change. Apparently “going legit” also has its downsides, but the site hopes to rebuild a new community during the months to come.

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

Copyright holders have a wide range of options they can employ to counter online piracy. Takedown notices are best known and sent out in their millions every day. However, the people at Sony Pictures’ TV network AXN thought that uploading content to torrent sites could help their business.

Sony’s AXN in Central Europe developed an ad campaign for the show “Hannibal” which proposed posting torrents of the first minute of the show on popular torrent sites such as Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents.

The revelations are part of the Sony Pictures leaks which contain a discussion on the plan, framing it as a “brilliant anti­piracy social campaign.” The AXN employee describes the idea as follows.

“The idea is simple. We made a promo dedicated to Hannibal which is convincing people in very creative and no­invasive way to watch Hannibal legally on AXN instead downloading it from torrents.

“[T]his promo is supposed to be downloaded on the torrents sites, imitating the first episode of Hannibal season 2 but in reality would be only a 60 sec promo. The torrents sites are exactly the place where people just after [the] US premier would be searching for the first episode of season 2. So the success of this project is more than 100% sure.”

Unfortunately for the AXN Central Europe team the advertising campaign wasn’t well received at Sony Pictures’ headquarters in Los Angeles. The Hollywood execs showed great concern about the sites where these promos would end up, a view that wasn’t widely shared by the team in Europe.

“From the legal point of view in many CE countries the torrents sites itself are legal. Only sharing and downloading the illegal stuff there is not. This project is to support anti­piracy strategy not against,” the AXN employee writes.

“From my perspective this would be something really unconventional, something to be shared and presented in case studies presentations. Great story for be presented at the panel discussions. This could really help us to show AXN CE is actively fighting against piracy.”

Part of the promo email

The discussion eventually landed on the desk of a Sony Pictures Executive Vice President, who emphasized that it was a no go. Populating torrent sites with promos could risk current efforts to disrupt those same websites.

“I called [XXX] and restated that this is simply a long road to ‘no’ because it so severely undercuts our efforts not only in CE, but all we have accomplished elsewhere.

“Forget about a site blocking strategy if we start putting legitimate PSAs or promos on sites we’ve flagged to governments as having no legitimate purpose other than theft… PSAs being for public good, etc…”

And so it never happened…

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