# articles

feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174024
title: Torrent Site YTS Quietly Relocates to .LT Domain Name
uri: Torrent-Site-YTS-Quietly-Relocates-to-LT-Domain-Name
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/as9Z7zMceKE/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174026" src="media/5f6a61f6.ytslt.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ytslt.png" alt="" width="223" height="81" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ytslt.png 223w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/ytslt-220x81.png 220w" sizes="(max-width: 223px) 100vw, 223px">With millions of visitors, YTS is the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2019/">most-visited torrent site</a> on the Internet, beating even the legendary Pirate Bay.</p>
<p>The site ‘unofficially’ took over the YTS brand when the original group threw in the towel in 2015. Since then it has amassed a rather impressive user base of millions of daily visitors.</p>
<p>When the site first entered the scene it was operating from the YTS.ag domain name, which it traded in for YTS.am two years later. This month, the torrent site moved yet again to a new domain, <a href="https://yts.lt/">YTS.lt</a>, using the Lithuanian top-level domain.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s unclear what prompted the sudden move. The site has made no public announcement and the old .am domain name is still operational, redirecting to the new home.</p>
<p>TorrentFreak reached out to the YTS team for a comment on the sudden move but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.</p>
<p>It is possible that the domain change was in part triggered by blocking efforts around the world. The older YTS.am and YTS.ag domains are blocked by many ISPs around the world and with the new domain it will become accessible again, at least for the time being.</p>
<p>Another benefit of a new domain is that all search engine results that have been removed due to takedowns become accessible again. According to Google&#8217;s latest data, 23,106 YTS.am domains were removed in recent years.</p>
<p>However, it appears that rightsholder groups have thought of this as well. In a matter of days, Google has received hundreds of takedown requests for the new domain name.</p>
<p>The most likely explanation, perhaps, is <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/movie-companies-sue-yts-and-yify-site-operators-in-us-court-190527/">the lawsuit several movie companies filed</a> at a Hawaiian federal court last month. The complaint accuses the site&#8217;s operators of inducing massive copyright infringement and puts the domain names at risk.</p>
<p>Specifically, the movie companies request an injunction to prevent third-party intermediaries, including domain registrars, from facilitating access to the YTS.ag and YTS.am domains.</p>
<p>The domain name change took place a few days after we published our article about the lawsuit, so the timing certainly fits.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason, YTS remains readily available for now. And since the old domain automatically redirects users, many people probably didn&#8217;t even notice that anything has changed.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=173973
title: Spain’s Pirate Site Blocklist Expands Following Hollywood Complaint
uri: Spain-s-Pirate-Site-Blocklist-Expands-Following-Hollywood-Complaint
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/B6Z5z3MP84Q/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-143825" src="media/e49204f7.deniedblocked.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/deniedblocked.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="199">ISP blocking has become a prime measure for the entertainment industries to limit the availability of pirate sites on the Internet.</p>
<p>In recent years more than <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/nearly-4000-pirate-sites-are-blocked-by-isps-around-the-world-190210/">4,000 sites have been blocked</a> throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, and even Down Under.</p>
<p>Spain hasn&#8217;t been spared from these blocking efforts. Historically, the country has a high piracy rate. Local pirate sites, in particular, tend to be relatively popular.</p>
<p>This hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed by Hollywood&#8217;s anti-piracy outfit, the Motion Picture Association. Representing major movie studios, the group has been active in courts around the world and a few days ago it welcomed a new blocking victory in Spain.</p>
<p>Following a complaint from Disney, Columbia, Universal, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, and Universal Cable, a Barcelona court ordered four major Internet providers to expand their pirate site blocklists, <a href="https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/06/11/actualidad/1560267882_318885.html">El Pais</a> reports.</p>
<p>The order directs Telefonica, Vodafone, Ono and Orange to prevent users from accessing the Spanish-language sites <em>Exvagos1.com, Seriesdanko.to, Seriespapaya.com, Cinecalidad.to , Repelis.live, Pelispedia.tv, Cliver.tv, Descagasdd.com and Pepecine.me.</em></p>
<p>Stan McCoy, president of the Motion Picture Association’s EMEA division, believes that the blockades are necessary to lower the piracy rate. However, he also stresses that ISPs themselves are not accused of any wrongdoing.</p>
<p>&#8220;The companies are not accused of anything bad in and of themselves, but they are notified because they access unauthorized content through their service,&#8221; McCoy says.</p>
<p>The ISPs are not fiercely protesting the orders but they are not willing to cooperate voluntarily either. They believe that website blockades require judicial oversight.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our position has not changed at all. It simply does not depend on us, but in order to block access [to a site] it is necessary for a judge to rule on the matter&#8221;, Telefónica explains.</p>
<p>&#8220;Any action by an Internet provider must be executed based on a court order,&#8221; a representative from ISP Orange adds.</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t the first Spanish blocking order this year. In March, ISPs were already ordered to prevent subscribers from accessing Elitetorrenz.biz, Mejortorrent1.com, Gnula.nu, Mejortorrent.org and Gnula.se</p>
<p>A few weeks earlier, 1337x.to, Limetorrents.cc Torlock.com and Torrentfunk.com ExtraTorrent.cd &nbsp;Masquetorrent.com, and Isohunt.to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-1337x-limetorrents-and-more-blocked-in-spain-190131/">were blocked</a>.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.genbeta.com/actualidad/repelis-cliver-pepecine-otras-seis-paginas-han-sido-bloqueadas-vodafone-movistar-orange-orden-judicial/">Genbeta</a>, it&#8217;s becoming harder to circumvent such pirate site blockades. Previously people could simply change to a third-party DNS provider, such as Google of Cloudflare, but this isn&#8217;t good enough anymore. That said, a VPN service, proxy, or the Tor browser still do the trick.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=173864
title: Scammers Abuse Steam to Attract Would-Be Movie Pirates
uri: Scammers-Abuse-Steam-to-Attract-Would-Be-Movie-Pirates
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/JbKD6K665Ww/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/de037ddf.steam.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/steam.png" alt="" class="wp-image-101241"/></figure></div>



<p>According to an October 2018 <a href="https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-player-count">report</a>, Steam has around 90 million active monthly users, making it the largest digital distribution platform for PC games.</p>



<p>Steam user accounts overall are many times more numerous. In April, PCGamesN <a href="https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-active-users">indicated</a> that the platform had attracted its billionth account, noting that &#8220;a significant number of these are undoubtedly spam, scam, alt, and bot accounts.&#8221;</p>



<p>Indeed, an activity that appears to have taken root on the platform over the past few months shows that accounts don&#8217;t have to be limited to just one type of the above suspicious activity. Steam is the last place one might expect to find links to pirate movies, but that&#8217;s part of the trap.</p>



<p>As the image below shows, this Steam <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?l=vietnamese&amp;id=1618560872">page</a> is supposedly offering the movie Escape Room &#8220;for FREE online&#8221; but that certainly isn&#8217;t the case. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/5464af96.image-72.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/image-72.png" alt="" class="wp-image-173965" width="600" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-72.png 1214w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-72-220x130.png 220w" sizes="(max-width: 1214px) 100vw, 1214px"><figcaption><em>Beware</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>Users who scroll down to the bottom find extremely lengthy hyperlinks hidden under a pair of &#8220;Watch Now&#8221; and &#8220;Download&#8221; buttons. Since this is clearly some kind of dodgy activity, we truncated those links in order to visit only their final destination.</p>



<p>That led us to another site called &#8220;Daily Movie&#8221; which appeared to begin playing not Escape Room, but Avengers: Infinity War. After viewing what seemed to be a real movie intro (the lion of MGM in this case), neither movie was presented. Instead, we got the following;</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/756288f8.image-73.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/image-73.png" alt="" class="wp-image-173966" width="600"/><figcaption><em>Don&#8217;t give them a penny</em></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Needless to say, in the context of the offer on Steam (recent Hollywood movies) most of the claims in the above statement are a lie. The &#8216;continue&#8217; link goes to a subscription content service (<a href="https://dontra.net">Dontra</a>) that has none of the movies previously promised and will only leave users disappointed &#8211; after earning the Steam spammer some commission, of course.</p>



<p>Another <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1600711770">page</a>, which claims to offer Aquaman for download, contains hyperlinks to what appears to be a full &#8216;pirate&#8217; streaming site called Cinemago. While the links are not directly functional (and Steam helpfully warns that these go to an external site), it does send users to the Cinemago platform, as shown below.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/6d201e91.image-74.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/image-74.png" alt="" class="wp-image-173967" width="600"/><figcaption><em>CinemaNO</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>This site, unsurprisingly, does not offer pirate movies. Instead, when users click any of the film covers they are introduced to a similar &#8220;sign up&#8221; window and are then re-directed to a site called Funwraith. It is absolutely identical to Dontra and as such has none of the movies offered.</p>



<p>This bait-and-switch subscription trap is repeated on dozens of Steam pages too numerous to outline here. However, if readers want to see more of them (not recommended), typing <em>site:steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ &#8220;full movie&#8221;</em>  into Google will bring up pages and pages of results.</p>



<p>While unusual, legitimate platforms have been abused for piracy and scam schemes in the past. <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/scammers-use-facebook-and-google-to-spread-fake-pirate-downloads-181209/">Facebook</a>, Google, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/spammers-populate-google-maps-with-pirate-links-170422/">Google Maps</a> and even <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/change-org-petitions-used-for-pirate-movie-downloads-170212/">Change.org</a> have all been repurposed in similar fashion.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174038
title: Pirate Bay Uploader Faces Debt Collectors After Failing to Pay Settlement
uri: Pirate-Bay-Uploader-Faces-Debt-Collectors-After-Failing-to-Pay-Settlem
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ej-XUp2VAbc/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/e5f2ec44.upload.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/upload.png" alt="" class="wp-image-114664"/></figure></div>



<p>Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN is well known for numerous actions against various players in the piracy ecosystem.</p>



<p>The company&#8217;s targets have included big sites &#8211; The Pirate Bay, for example &#8211; through to various individuals and groups that facilitate access to infringing content online. In 2016, that included Netherlands-based torrent release team, 2Lions.</p>



<p>2Lions uploaded thousands of torrents to several popular sites including The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, 1337x, ExtraTorrent, and Demonoid. This attracted the attention of BREIN which targeted several members of the group.</p>



<p>In a 2016 legal process in which the individuals had no input, BREIN obtained <em>ex parte</em> injunctions which prohibited three members of the 2Lions team from infringing the copyrights of BREIN&#8217;s members on pain of a 2,000 euros per day fine. That led to negotiations with the team.</p>



<p>In addition to removing as many of their uploaded torrents as possible, the three individuals (and two other team members) <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/brein-shuts-down-torrent-release-group-2lions-team-160322/">agreed to pay BREIN 15,000 euros each</a> as part of a settlement agreement. It&#8217;s now been more than three years since that deal was made but according to BREIN, one team member hasn&#8217;t met their obligations.</p>



<p>In a session before the Court of The Hague last week, BREIN sought to force the former uploader to pay up via a collection process, one that is likely to prove even more expensive for the person in question.</p>



<p>According to the anti-piracy group, not only will the individual have to pay the originally agreed amount, he or she will also have to pay for these proceedings and subsequent collection costs. That effectively doubles the amount to be paid to BREIN, a payment it can now enforce following the court process.</p>



<p>Rather than immediately pursue most of its targets through the courts, BREIN has regularly announced that groups, platforms and companies have shut down after reaching settlement agreements. <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/illegal-iptv-vod-provider-settles-with-brein-170504/">IPTV providers</a>, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/large-scale-music-pirate-settles-brein-10000-euros-180309/">music pirates</a>, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/married-torrent-tracker-couple-settles-with-brein-180420/">torrent sites</a>, and <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/brein-shuts-down-usenet-indexing-community-settles-with-operators-180831/">Usenet indexers</a> have all promised to pay up over the past couple of years.</p>



<p>Given the volume of settlements, BREIN is clearly keen to see them honored. During 2018 alone, the Dutch anti-piracy group <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-group-brein-dealt-with-339-pirate-sites-last-year-190119/">reached deals</a> with 31 entities which included promises to settle via payments totaling hundreds of thousands of euros. The action last week suggests BREIN is prepared to enforce such payment, should people fail to meet their obligations.</p>



<p>&#8220;BREIN has been working with bailiffs and a debt collection office for some time now to keep track of non-paying infringers,&#8221; BREIN chief Tim Kuik said in a statement.</p>



<p>&#8220;This can concern payments that have been agreed in settlements or court orders. The results are satisfactory. Those who do not meet their payment obligations will be presented with an extra bill for this.&#8221;</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174051
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 06/24/19
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-on-BitTorrent-06-24-19
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/YCbr9a-f44g/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-173774" src="media/91791e28.dumbo6.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/dumbo6.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="245">This week we have three newcomers in our chart.</p>
<p>Dumbo is the most downloaded movie.</p>
<p>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 Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a>&nbsp;for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.</p>
<h5>This week&#8217;s most downloaded movies are:</h5>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Movie Rank</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>Rank <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-on-bittorrent-06-17-19/">last week</a></strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie name</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">Most downloaded movies via torrents</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">Dumbo</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">6.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWpGdITSR4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7752126">Brightburn</a> (Subbed HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7752126">6.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD1vbhicJUY">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">Escape Plan: The Extractors</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">4.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoipQuCpQ9Y">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">Captain Marvel</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LHxvxdRnYc">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1979376/">Toy Story 4</a> (HDCam)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1979376/">8.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmiIUN-7qhE">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884052/">Pokémon Detective Pikachu</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884052/">6.9</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1roy4o4tqQM">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6857112/">Us</a> (Subbed HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6857112/">7.2</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tzFRIQfwXg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(7)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154796/">Avengers: Endgame</a> (HDCam)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154796/">9.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcMBFSGVi1c">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(10)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6823368">Glass</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6823368">6.9</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBL6COBGjCA">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1618434/">Murder Mystery</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1618434/">6.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YEVQDr2f3Q">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174067
title: Operators of ‘Linking’ Sites Walk Free in Criminal Piracy Case
uri: Operators-of-Linking-Sites-Walk-Free-in-Criminal-Piracy-Case
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/CWO1KPTImyc/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-152325" src="media/8063fa28.seriesyonkis.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/seriesyonkis.png" alt="" width="250" height="205">Founded in 2007, SeriesYonkis was a Spanish site where users could find links to pirated copies of the latest movies and TV-shows.</p>
<p>It was particularly popular in Spanish speaking territories. This caused concern among rightsholders, including Hollywood&#8217;s major movie studios.</p>
<p>A the end of 2013, the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-lists-notorious-pirate-sites-to-u-s-government-111028/">MPAA highlighted SeriesYonkis</a> as one of the most prolific pirate sites on the Internet. This referral was taken on by the office of the US Trade Representative, which put the site on its lists of &#8220;notorious&#8221; pirate sites a few <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/us-government-targets-pirate-bay-notorious-sites-140212/">months later</a>.</p>
<p>In Spain, the pressure was also mounting. Following complaints from rightsholders, local law enforcement picked up the case. This eventually resulted in criminal charges against four men.</p>
<p>All defendants were believed to have a stake in SeriesYonkis, as well as the sister sites PeliculasYonkis and VideosYonkis, at some point.</p>
<p>Defendant Alberto G. S. reportedly operated the sites during the early years. He sold them in 2011 to the second defendant Alexis H., who partnered with the two remaining defendants, Jordi T. and David M., before selling the sites again in 2014.</p>
<p>The case was partly built on evidence gathered by local film industry group EGEDA and the Spanish Anti-Piracy Federation (FAP), which represented the rights of MPAA members including Paramount, Sony, Universal, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros.</p>
<p>The movie companies claimed massive losses of over half a billion dollars ($560m) and following <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/operators-of-three-pirate-sites-face-prison-560-million-in-damages-190409/">a trial in Murcia</a> earlier this year, the prosecutor requested prison sentences of up to two years for the defendants&#8217; involvement as facilitators of copyright infringement.</p>
<p>After months of relative silence, Judge Isabel María Carrillo Sáez of the Criminal Court of Murcia decided not to follow this recommendation. Instead, the Judge acquitted the four defendants, concluding that they are not liable for any of the alleged copyright infringements.</p>
<p>According to the Judge, the described offenses were not considered a crime when they took place.</p>
<p>&#8220;There was no explicit definition of these behaviors before. It was criminalized by the legislator in 2015,&#8221; the verdict reads, adding that the indirect financial benefits the operators received are not enough to warrant a criminal conviction.</p>
<p>As the sentence suggests, linking sites were widely regarded as being legal, or at least in a grey area. That <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/wiziwig-elitetorrent-shut-spanish-anti-piracy-law-150101/">changed in 2015</a> when Spain updated its copyright law. However, the alleged crimes took place before the new legislation took effect. By then, the three sites had already stopped linking, following an agreement with anti-piracy group FAP.</p>
<p>David Maeztu, the lawyer of defendant Alex H. informs TorrentFreak that his client was aware of the changing legal landscape.</p>
<p>In fact, the updated copyright law was one of the reasons why he ultimately sold the website. The sale also included a provision that the future owner wouldn&#8217;t allow users to add links.</p>
<p>The defendants are happy with the outcome, but despite the positive news, their legal battle isn&#8217;t over yet.</p>
<p>The Spanish newspaper El Pais <a href="https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/06/21/actualidad/1561109908_761895.html">reports</a> that movie industry group EGEDA will file an appeal at Murcia&#8217;s Provincial Court. In a statement, the disappointed group says that it hopes to have the verdict overturned.</p>
<p>EGEDA cites jurisprudence from the EU Court of Justice which, based on the 2001 Copyright Directive, ruled that linking can create liability under some circumstances. In addition, the current verdict makes it clear that the sites helped to make pirated content available, the group notes.</p>
<p>&#8220;The sentence recognizes that the defendants made audiovisual content, both movies and TV series, available to the public via the Internet through links, without permission, By doing so, they obtained revenues in excess of 900,000 euros through advertising,&#8221; the statement adds.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.seriesyonkis.com/">SeriesYonkis</a> domain name is still around today. However, it is no longer operated by any of the defendants and doesn&#8217;t link to any copyright infringing content, as it used to.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174091
title: The Pirate Bay Faces Massive ISP Blocks in Spain
uri: The-Pirate-Bay-Faces-Massive-ISP-Blocks-in-Spain
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Z5VOt7Rb9Zo/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/0e036607.pirate-bay.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-bay.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-53470" width="244" height="253"/></figure></div>



<p>While no longer the most visited &#8216;pirate&#8217; site on the Internet, The Pirate Bay arguably remains the most recognizable brand. As a result, the platform has been at the center of dozens of legal processes around the world, each designed to make the platform less accessible to the public.</p>



<p>Aside from direct actions to take the site down, all of which have failed, the torrent index regularly finds itself listed in lawsuits and complaints which aim to force Internet service providers to block consumer access to the site. </p>



<p>Back in 2015, Spain was added to that expanding list when local ISP Vodafone <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/spanish-government-orders-pirate-bay-blockade-150127/">admitted</a> that following a government complaint, it had rendered the site&#8217;s main domain inaccessible.</p>



<p>According to the Ministry of Culture and Sport, procedures took place between June 2014 and November 2018 to block several associated domains, including those ending in .se, .org, .net, and .com. It now appears the government is attempting to finish the job.</p>



<p>Following a procedure initiated by rights holders represented by the Association of Intellectual Rights Management (AGEDI) and music group Promusicae (Productores de Música de España) and a subsequent request from the Commission of Intellectual Property (also known as the Anti-Piracy Commission) the central courts of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court have authorized additional blocking.</p>



<p>The Ministry of Culture and Sport hasn&#8217;t detailed the precise targets but describes them as more than 60 additional domains/sites that are allegedly linked to the notorious torrent site. The site itself isn&#8217;t believed to operate that many alternative domains so it&#8217;s likely they&#8217;re proxies, mirrors and clones that utilize The Pirate Bay&#8217;s familiar branding.</p>



<p>&#8220;This massive blocking of web pages that, under the brand ThePirateBay, were illegally using the rights of our artists and creators, has an exemplary value for us because it shows that even with the greatest pirates who try repeatedly to circumvent the mechanisms of defense of copyright, the system of the Anti-Piracy Commission works,&#8221; says Adriana Moscoso del Prado, general director of Cultural Industries and Cooperation at the Ministry of Culture and Sports. </p>



<p>The government department says the order requires local Internet service providers to block subscriber access to the domains within 72 hours of being notified of the court order. Notifications were sent out yesterday meaning that ISPs should have blockades in place well before the end of the week. It is not yet clear which ISPs have been notified.</p>



<p>The Ministry of Culture notes that the Anti-Piracy Commission has to date targeted 479 sites but the overwhelming majority (92.69%) have removed infringing content once they&#8217;ve been officially notified. The Pirate Bay never removes any infringing content so faced with that intransigence, the authorities targeted it with judicial blocking orders, including the one handed down yesterday.</p>



<p>Following a complaint by several Hollywood studios, a similar order was handed down <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/spains-pirate-site-blocklist-expands-following-hollywood-complaint-190623/">just a few days ago</a> targeting Spanish-language sites Exvagos1.com, Seriesdanko.to, Seriespapaya.com, Cinecalidad.to , Repelis.live, Pelispedia.tv, Cliver.tv, Descagasdd.com and Pepecine.me.</p>



<p>Earlier this year, a local court <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-1337x-limetorrents-and-more-blocked-in-spain-190131/">ordered</a> the country&#8217;s largest Internet service providers to begin blocking seven torrent sites including 1337x and LimeTorrents.</p>



<p></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174101
title: UFC: Online Platforms Should Proactively Prevent Streaming Piracy
uri: UFC-Online-Platforms-Should-Proactively-Prevent-Streaming-Piracy
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/XYqud9RfXAE/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174102" src="media/57df298d.ufc-1.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ufc-1.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="202">With millions of dedicated fans around the world, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) events are extremely popular.</p>
<p>They are also relatively expensive and as a result, unauthorized broadcasts are thriving.</p>
<p>For most popular fight cards, dozens of dedicated pirate streams are queued up via unauthorized IPTV services, streaming torrents, and streaming sites, in the latter case often masked with an overlay of ads. At the same time, unauthorized rebroadcasts also appear on more traditional Internet platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.</p>
<p>This is a thorn in the size of rightsholders, including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Fighting_Championship">UFC</a>, which dominates the MMA fighting scene. To tackle the problem the UFC has employed various anti-piracy strategies. Most recently, it contracted <a href="http://streamenforcement.com/">Stream Enforcement</a>, a company that specializes in taking down pirated broadcasts.</p>
<p>In addition, the MMA promoter also involves itself in the lawmaking process. Just a few weeks ago, UFC General Counsel <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/riche-mcknight-9b0a0735/">Riché McKnight</a>, shared his anti-piracy vision with the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.</p>
<p>One of the main goals for the UFC is to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/nba-and-ufc-urge-u-s-lawmakers-to-criminalize-streaming-piracy-190507/">criminalize unauthorized streaming</a>. Unlike downloading, streaming is currently categorized as a public performance instead of distribution, which is punishable as a misdemeanor, instead of a felony.</p>
<p>The Senators made note of this call, which was shared by another major sports outfit, the NBA. They also had some additional questions, however, which McKnight could answer on paper later, so it could be added to the record.</p>
<p>These answers, which were just published, show that the UFC is not satisfied with how some social media companies and other online services address the pirate streaming issue.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">McKnight explains that the UFC has takedown tool arrangements with several social media companies, but adds that online platforms have neglected its requests to combat illegal streaming more effectively. </span></p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;We believe communication, coordination, and cooperation could be greatly improved. Our general experience is that those subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) use it as a floor and do the minimum required to be in compliance,&#8221; McKnight notes.</span></p>
<p>The UFC notes that Facebook recently bettered its communication and &#8216;slightly&#8217; improved its takedown response but overall, more could be done. However, most online services appear to be reluctant to voluntarily do more than the law requires, which means that in order to trigger change, the law should change.</p>
<p>&#8220;Private, voluntary partnerships [with online platforms] are not sufficient to combat online piracy. Addressing this problem requires a new approach that includes a strong legal framework, a combination of private and public enforcement, and enhanced cooperation with our international partners,&#8221; <span class="fontstyle0">McKnight writes.</span></p>
<p>Criminalizing streaming is a step forward, according to the UFC. However, that doesn&#8217;t affect the platforms that host these streams, as these are protected by the DMCA&#8217;s safe harbor provisions.</p>
<p>According to the UFC&#8217;s General Counsel, Congress should consider other options as well. In particular, changes to the legal framework that will motivate social media companies and other online platforms to proactively prevent piracy.</p>
<p>&#8220;Congress should examine how best to properly incentivize platform providers to protect copyrighted online streaming content,&#8221; McKnight writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Transitioning from a reactive &#8216;take down&#8217; regime to a proactive &#8216;prevention&#8217; regime would better protect and enhance a vibrant online ecosystem,&#8221; he adds.</p>
<p>McKnight specifically mentions policies to effectively ban repeat infringers, which is already part of the DMCA, but not always properly implemented.</p>
<p>While not specifically mentioned, the words &#8220;proactive&#8221; and &#8220;prevention&#8221; are reminiscent of the EU&#8217;s Article 17, which could potentially lead to upload filters.&nbsp; The UFC doesn&#8217;t reference filters here, but other rightsholders have in the past.</p>
<p>Later this year, the US <span class="fontstyle0">Copyright Office is expected to issue a report on the effectiveness of the DMCA&#8217;s safe harbor provisions. This will be based on input from a variety of stakeholders, some of which discussed <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/eff-urges-us-copyright-office-to-reject-proactive-piracy-filters-180213/">filtering requirements</a>.</span></p>
<p>The UFC hopes that the <span class="fontstyle0">Copyright Office</span> report will further help Congress to shape a more effective legal framework to tackle online streaming.</p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p><em>A copy of the written responses to the questions from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary is <a href="media/f6589d13.McKnight-Responses-to-QFRs.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/McKnight-Responses-to-QFRs.pdf">available here (pdf)</a>.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174107
title: Confirmed: Supremacy Kodi Repo Was Indeed Targeted By Police
uri: Confirmed-Supremacy-Kodi-Repo-Was-Indeed-Targeted-By-Police
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/81r33c7eXAs/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/6680eb0f.fact-logo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/fact-logo.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174113" width="256" height="136"/></figure></div>



<p>On June 13, 2019, the Covert Development and Disruption Team of the UK’s North West Regional Organised Crime Unit arrested an individual said to be responsible for an allegedly-infringing Kodi add-on.</p>



<p>The unit revealed that the 40-year-old man was detained in Winsford, Cheshire, following an investigation in cooperation with the Federation Against Copyright Theft. The add-on was unnamed but was reportedly configured to supply illegal online streams.</p>



<p>When TorrentFreak tried to fill in the gaps, considerable circumstantial evidence <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-add-on-developer-arrested-on-same-day-as-popular-repo-goes-down-190619/">pointed to the likelihood</a> that the arrested man was connected to the Supremacy add-on repository. Today we are in a position to confirm that belief following discussion with FACT director general Kieron Sharp.</p>



<p>Since there are limitations on what can be discussed when a case is ongoing, we asked Sharp why the matter had been referred to the authorities. There have been numerous instances of add-on developers in the UK being served with private cease-and-desist notices so why was this case different and why did it warrant an organized crime unit getting involved?</p>



<p>&#8220;This was a decision taken by FACT who advised rights holders such as PL [Premier League], Sky, BT Sport and VM [Virgin Media] that police action was the most proportionate response to the level of damage and harm that was being caused by these entities,&#8221; Sharp explains.</p>



<p>&#8220;Other industry groups have used different tactics which are reasonable in certain circumstances, but FACT have the partnerships in LEA&#8217;s [law enforcement agencies] to enable this type of action to be considered.&#8221;</p>



<p>Sharp says that when FACT presented its evidence to the police, they considered the case serious enough to take action, which resulted in the individual operating as &#8216;Supremacy&#8217; being arrested.</p>



<p>FACT&#8217;s director general rejects the notion that handing a case over to the police is the easy option, insisting that a referral to the authorities requires that an investigation takes place to particular standards.</p>



<p>&#8220;To get any LEA to act in these matters requires a high level of evidence. Given the pressure on LEA resources and many other priorities, FACT are very careful in which cases they will approach LEA&#8217;s with and have many other strategies for disrupting illegal activity which are used constantly,&#8221; Sharp says.</p>



<p>In the wake of the arrest, several other Kodi add-on repositories <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/more-kodi-add-ons-repos-shut-down-in-wake-of-uk-arrest-190620/">shut down</a>, presumably due to fears of similar action. This hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed by FACT, with Sharp noting that several strategies to disrupt piracy are deployed with the results taken on board.</p>



<p>&#8220;[I]t would appear, from their own comments, that the action has panicked the others. This is not uncommon but more often seen after a criminal conviction. It shows that action needs to be taken and that it can have an impact on the piracy problem. There is no one solution so a range of tactics have to be tried and implemented and the outcomes monitored,&#8221; Sharp concludes.</p>



<p>There can be little doubt that the involvement of the police in the shutdown of a Kodi repository and associated add-ons is somewhat of a game-changer in the UK. Where once a sternly-worded letter may have been a warning sign, there is now a worrying precedent for those engaged in similar activity.</p>



<p>What the final charges will be in this case, if any, remain unclear. However, FACT has a history of pursuing convictions under the Fraud Act, which can carry harsher sentences than those actioned under copyright law.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174146
title: Retired Police Officer and ‘Copyright Troll’ Square Off in Court
uri: Retired-Police-Officer-and-Copyright-Troll-Square-Off-in-Court
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/i48naMu0ioc/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-108977" src="media/efd05bc4.trollsign.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/trollsign.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="167">Strike 3 Holdings, one of the most active copyright trolls in the United States, has filed cases against <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/us-online-piracy-lawsuits-hit-a-record-high-last-year-190104/">thousands of alleged BitTorrent pirates</a> in recent years.</p>
<p>While many of the defendants may indeed be guilty, quite a few of the accused Internet subscribers have done nothing wrong.</p>
<p>This is also what a John Doe, known by the IP-address 73.225.38.130, has repeatedly argued before a federal court in Seattle, Washington.</p>
<p>The defendant in question was sued by Strike 3 Holdings late 2017. In common with other defendants, the man was offered a settlement to let the case go, but instead, he went on the offensive.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the adult company picked a fight with a 70+-year-old retired police officer, who lawyered up&nbsp;to fight back.</p>
<p>Following some initial pushback in court, Strike 3 Holdings was ready to let the case go. The company filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss all claims in August, but the former policeman wasn’t willing to let them. At least, not without getting paid.</p>
<p>The defendant moved for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, submitting a counterclaim accusing Strike 3 of abuse of process and &#8220;<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/retired-police-officer-fires-back-at-copyright-troll-190110/">extortion through sham litigation</a>.&#8221; Strike 3, for its part, moved for summary judgment asking the court to dismiss that counterclaim.</p>
<p>Over the past months, both parties have conducted discovery, hoping to bolster their positions ahead of a trial that&#8217;s scheduled for later this year.</p>
<p>The retired police officer, for example, has asked for a copy of the source code of Strike 3&#8217;s BitTorrent tracking software IPP. The court granted this request in part and allowed the defendant to issue a subpoena requesting a copy of the software&#8217;s source code. Thus far, however, that hasn&#8217;t happened.</p>
<p>This week the defendant, therefore, submitted a second motion, requesting a copy of the code. Or if that&#8217;s not an option, the court should exclude any evidence that&#8217;s based on it.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is not Doe’s burden to prove the software is forensically sound. That is Strike 3’s burden. At this point, Strike 3 is playing &#8216;hide the ball&#8217;. If Strike 3 does not comply with the Subpoena, then the IPP Code and any data relying upon it should be excluded as unreliable,&#8221; the motion to <a href="media/25e46aa1.gov.uscourts.wawd.252673.144.0_2.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.252673/gov.uscourts.wawd.252673.144.0_2.pdf">compel (pdf)</a> reads.</p>
<p>In addition, the retired police officer also submitted a supplemental response to Strike 3&#8217;s motion for summary judgment. Among other things, his attorney points out that, instead of naming the defendant, Strike 3 went on a &#8220;fishing expedition&#8221; to find out who else could be the infringer.</p>
<p>The &#8216;initially&#8217; accused alleged pirate points out that, based on the IPP software, Strike 3 can never prove that he downloaded a full copy of its works, accusing the company of abuse of process by going after third parties instead.</p>
<p>The defendant&#8217;s argument is that the complaint was unjustified and that Strike 3 knew this.</p>
<p>&#8220;Despite blatant and unequivocal allegations in their motion for early discovery that Doe is the infringer, and that full copies of Strike 3’s works were downloaded, Strike 3 knew that their investigator could never prove that Doe had downloaded entire films, and that they might not have the right defendant.</p>
<p>&#8220;Both of these facts are material to whether a court might find good cause for early discovery. Yet Strike 3 disclosed neither. Nor did Strike 3 disclose, contrary to their motion, that they intended to investigate third parties other than Doe. Strike 3’s conduct constitutes abuse of process,&#8221; the Doe defendant <a href="media/b7a01698.gov.uscourts.wawd.252673.149.0.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.252673/gov.uscourts.wawd.252673.149.0.pdf">adds (pdf)</a>.</p>
<p>However, the adult content producer disagrees.</p>
<p>The third party, in this case, is the son of the retired police officer. According to Strike 3, this may be the person who downloaded its adult movie. At least, according to information it obtained during discovery, including a deposition of the son.</p>
<p>&#8220;Through the litigation process, Plaintiff has uncovered a substantial amount of evidence confirming the validity of its original Complaint and IPP’s system – evidence which Defendant has improperly sought to withhold from discovery,&#8221; Strike 3 <a href="media/3dc5b536.gov.uscourts.wawd.252673.134.0_2.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.252673/gov.uscourts.wawd.252673.134.0_2.pdf">argues (pdf)</a>.</p>
<p>The aforementioned passage comes from Strike 3&#8217;s motion to compel the defendant to allow one of his hard drives to be images and inspected. The hard drive in question was used by the son and taken out of a computer that was previously sold.</p>
<p>During the deposition, the son admitted that he used the computer, which had uTorrent installed on it, to access The Pirate Bay through which he downloaded adult content. This also happened during the time of the alleged copyright infringement.</p>
<p>According to Strike 3, this could be the &#8220;smoking gun&#8221; which shows that its original complaint, based on IPP&#8217;s evidence, was justified.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Son’s deposition testimony clearly makes this Hard Drive relevant and may, indeed, be the literal &#8216;smoking gun&#8217; demonstrating that Plaintiff’s initial suit was entirely justified, and Defendant’ counterclaims are nothing less than a fraud upon the Court,&#8221; Strike 3 writes.</p>
<p>The various court filings and additional arguments make it clear that both sides are working hard to make this case go in their favor.</p>
<p>The court has yet to review the arguments and rule on the motions. After discovery is completed, the case is expected to go to trial. Both parties have indicated they prefer a bench trial, instead of a trial by jury.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174199
title: ‘Copyright Troll’ Lawyer Appeals 14 Year Prison Sentence
uri: Copyright-Troll-Lawyer-Appeals-14-Year-Prison-Sentence
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ShIlDvuDaaA/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174207" src="media/156f4109.prison.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/prison.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="182">Two weeks ago U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen sentenced Paul Hansmeier to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison-190614/">14 years in prison</a>, to be followed by two years of supervised release.</p>
<p>Hansmeier was a key player in the Prenda Law firm, which pursued cases against people who were suspected of downloading pirated porn videos via BitTorrent.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Hansmeier and fellow attorney John Steele went a step further though. Among other things they lied to the courts, committed identity theft, and concocted a scheme to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-helps-to-expose-copyright-troll-honeypot-130604/">upload their own torrents</a>&nbsp;to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.</p>
<p>Both attorneys pleaded guilty and Hansmeier was the first to be sentenced. However, he is not planning to let the matter go without a fight. This was already made clear in his plea agreement last year, where he reserved the right to appeal.</p>
<p>This week Hansmeier&#8217;s informed the court that he is indeed appealing to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The notice reveals that he is appealing both the sentence and conviction, challenging the reasonableness of the sentencing and the application of the sentencing guidelines.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/adc41a4d.hansappeal.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/hansappeal.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174213"/><figcaption>From the <a href="media/c972f392.gov.uscourts.mnd.160888.149.0_2.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.160888/gov.uscourts.mnd.160888.149.0_2.pdf">appeal notice</a></figcaption></figure></div>


<p>Hansmeier initially hoped to be released pending his planned appeal. Before the sentencing, his attorney put in a request to make this happen, in an effort to keep him out of prison.</p>
<p>The U.S. prosecution objected and asked the court not to allow bail. Among other things, it argued that the Prenda attorney may be a flight risk, considering that he previously lied to courts, created sham entities in order to shield himself, and destroyed evidence when he was found out.</p>
<p>The court sided with the prosecution and denied the bail request. This means that Hansmeier will serve time while his appeal is ongoing.&nbsp;</p>
<p>There was initially also some positive news for the Prenda attorney. Through his bankruptcy trustee, he was awarded a $75,000 settlement for restitution the lawyer previously paid against an accused file-sharer, while not being a named party.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Hansmeier is not going to see any of that money though, as U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald swiftly put in a request to reserve the funds for the victims of the Prenda scheme.</p>
<p>&#8220;Hansmeier is set to receive a substantial amount of money and justice requires an order for its immediate payment towards the restitution he owes his victims,&#8221; MacDonald wrote.</p>
<p>The court agreed and this week <a href="media/cd4def2c.gov.uscourts.mnd.160888.148.0.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.160888/gov.uscourts.mnd.160888.148.0.pdf">ordered</a> that the $75,000 should be reserved for potential victims. The court previously ordered that, in addition to the prison sentence, Hansmeier must pay his victims a total of $1.5 million in restitution.</p>
<p>For now, however, all eyes will be on the appeal.&nbsp;</p>
<p>John Steele, the second defendant in the Prenda case, is scheduled to be sentenced in July. The U.S. prosecutor previously stated that Steele has been very cooperative following his arrest so has recommended an 8-10 year sentence.</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174195
title: BMG Sues Hilton Hotels Over ‘Infringing’ YouTube & Facebook Promo Videos
uri: BMG-Sues-Hilton-Hotels-Over-Infringing-YouTube-Facebook-Promo
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/GEbL3WefEwU/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/3d6122ae.courtorderjustice.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/courtorderjustice.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-147326"/></figure></div>



<p>BMG Production Music, Inc. describes itself as a &#8220;production music house&#8221; engaged in the creation, marketing and delivery of custom music for use in media, including online adverts and promotional material.</p>



<p>Its US <a href="https://bmgmusic.sourceaudio.com/">catalog</a> currently lists close to 247,000 tracks &#8220;spanning all musical genres&#8221; for customers to license for use in their own audio/visual productions. A lawsuit filed in the United States yesterday claims that at least one major company isn&#8217;t playing by the rules.</p>



<p>The complaint, filed in a New York federal court, targets Hilton Worldwide Holdings (Hilton), the company behind the globally-famous hotel chain. BMG says that Hilton exploited several of BMG&#8217;s musical works without obtaining appropriate licensing and continued to infringe BMG&#8217;s copyrights even after being warned by the music company.</p>



<p>At issue are several of the company&#8217;s promotional videos posted to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/hilton/videos">Hilton&#8217;s YouTube channels</a> and Facebook pages, which allegedly used BMG&#8217;s copyrighted works as background music.</p>



<p>The music outfit claims that the track &#8220;Start Moving&#8221; was exploited in nine videos posted to YouTube and six posted to Facebook. The track &#8220;I&#8217;m On It&#8221; allegedly featured in one YouTube video. The track &#8220;Collar Popper Holiday Mix&#8221; is said to have appeared in seven videos on YouTube, with &#8220;Cookie Duster&#8221; appearing in one video on the same site. In total, more than 20 allegedly-infringing videos were posted to various URLs.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/174c932e.image-81.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-81.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174212" width="600" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-81.png 821w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-81-220x130.png 220w" sizes="(max-width: 821px) 100vw, 821px"><figcaption><em>The content and allegedly-infringing video URLs</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>An aggravating factor, BMG says, is that Hilton failed to act despite being warned of the infringements. BMG agent TuneSat, LLC contacted Hilton to warn that its music was being used and asked the company to prove it had appropriate licensing or to resolve the matter.</p>



<p>According to the complaint, that bore no fruit. The videos remained online and the copyright infringement continued.</p>



<p>&#8220;Despite being notified that they were using BMG’s Copyrighted Music and/or Unregistered Music without authorization or license, and despite months of exchanges of correspondence with TuneSat, the Defendants ultimately began willfully and intentionally ignoring TuneSat’s correspondence and continued to use the Copyrighted Music and Unregistered Music without authorization or license from BMG,&#8221; the complaint reads.</p>



<p>While BMG says Hilton continued to infringe, checking each of the URLs listed in the complaint reveals that all of the content in question has now been taken down from both YouTube and Facebook. Nevertheless, BMG is demanding an injunction restraining Hilton Worldwide and all acting in concert with it from engaging in further acts of infringement.</p>



<p>The music company is also seeking compensation for direct copyright infringement from Hilton Worldwide via actual damages (it estimates in excess of $600,000) or in the alternative, $150,000 in damages for each infringed work due to Hilton&#8217;s &#8220;willful copyright infringement.&#8221;</p>



<p>However, BMG owns the copyright in the sound recording and composition for each infringed track so the company claims that Hilton is actually liable for $300,000 in damages for each song used without a license.</p>



<p>BMG repeats the same direct infringement claim against Hilton Domestic Operating Company, Inc and an as-yet-unnamed Hilton business entity, going to also claim damages from all defendants for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.</p>



<p><em>The complaint can be found here (<a href="media/0bca3b10.GEbL3WefEwU" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/GEbL3WefEwU/">pdf</a>)</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174265
title: Video Piracy Rates Drop Sharply, But For How Long?
uri: Video-Piracy-Rates-Drop-Sharply-But-For-How-Long
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/8PGmaNWl5gE/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174267" src="media/d7fa88e1.play.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/play.png" alt="" width="270" height="149">For many people, on-demand streaming services have become the standard for watching movies and TV-shows.</p>
<p>In many countries, the idea of &#8216;on-demand&#8217; video was popularized by piracy. This was often the only way for people to watch what they want, whenever they liked.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Over the past decade, the legal options have gradually improved. More content is available and people have plenty of options to stream the latest hit-series or Hollywood blockbusters.&nbsp;</p>
<p>According to new consumer<span class="fontstyle0">&nbsp;research by <a href="https://www.ampereanalysis.com/">Ampere Analysis</a>, this is one of the reasons why video piracy rates are dropping in several countries, including the United States, France, Spain, and Germany.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>The bar chart below shows the percentage of people who used one or more video piracy services in the previous month. Without exception, video piracy rates declined during the three year period from 2016 to 2019 in all countries that were polled.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The drop was most pronounced in France, the United States, and the Netherlands where the number of people using piracy services in the past month was decreased by more than half. Spain also saw a sharp decline, from 12% to 7%.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/869ab727.amperepiracy.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/amperepiracy.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174268" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/amperepiracy.png 600w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/amperepiracy-220x130.png 220w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"></figure></div>


<p>Richard Broughton, Director at Ampere Analysis, links the changes to the increased availability of on-demand services, such as Netflix, which directly compete with piracy.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">“On average, in markets where either catch-up or SVoD online video viewing has risen the most, piracy has experienced the biggest drop. With the growth in all-you-can-eat legal services, users no longer need to turn to illegitimate sources to get their viewing fix,” Broughton notes.</span></p>
<p>This is backed up by data. In Spain, for example, the use of legal SVoD and catch-up services grew by 47% while the number of people that use piracy services and sites dropped by 45%.</p>
<p>While this is positive news for entertainment companies, there is also reason for concern. Increasingly, the legal video streaming landscape is becoming more fragmented or siloed. This means that people have to pay for more services to see what they want.</p>
<p>These new restrictions could push people in the direction of pirate sites again. </p>
<p>“The on-demand market is moving into a period of ‘siloization’ where producer and distributor brands go direct to the consumer, at the same time restricting the amount of content they license to third party services,&#8221; <span class="fontstyle0">Broughton says.</span></p>
<p>&#8220;If the mainstream OTT players have less of the content users want to watch, when they want to watch it, there’s a genuine risk that usage of these SVoD and catch-up services could begin to slump, something the pirate operators will be quick to capitalize on.”</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t just a hypothetical threat either. Most households have a limited budget for online entertainment, so consumers eventually have to choose which services they want. This is a problem that keeps getting worse, especially now that more services have &#8216;exclusive&#8217; titles.</p>
<p>Recent research by piracy research firm <a href="https://www.muso.com/">MUSO</a> revealed that 80.4% of UK consumers already feel that they’re already paying too much for content streaming. More than half of these said they were<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/fragmented-streaming-landscape-keeps-piracy-relevant-research-suggests-190613/"> likely or very likely to use unlicensed platforms</a> to search for content that’s not available to them.</p>
<p>These people are all willing to pay. However, in order to get everything they want, they are happy to complement their legal viewing with the occasional pirate download or stream.</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174136
title: ‘Pirate’ IPTV Service Simply-TV Responds to DISH Lawsuit
uri: Pirate-IPTV-Service-Simply-TV-Responds-to-DISH-Lawsuit
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Tkr0PrR9--U/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/62b29e54.dishc.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/dishc.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-160937"/></figure></div>



<p>In 2018, DISH Network and encryption partner NagraStar sued several individuals, companies and trusts collectively doing business as SETTV.</p>



<p>As part of its $20 per month IPTV package, SETTV offered numerous TV channels that had been obtained from DISH’s satellite service. These were subsequently retransmitted without authorization on the SETTV streaming service.</p>



<p>Last November, DISH&#8217;s lawsuit <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/settv-iptv-service-ordered-to-pay-dish-90000000-in-piracy-damages-181113/">came to an end</a>, with SETTV&#8217;s operators ordered by a Florida court to pay a settlement of $90 million in statutory damages. However, the fight against similar &#8211; if not identical services &#8211; was not over.</p>



<p>In March 2019, DISH and NagraStar filed another lawsuit in Florida, this time targeting several individuals and companies collectively doing business as Simply-TV, a $20 per month service which several users have described as having many similarities to SETTV.</p>



<p>&#8220;Defendants created a pirate streaming television service they have branded &#8216;Simply-TV&#8217;. Defendants sell Device Codes and Android TV Boxes designed to enable access to the Simply-TV pirate streaming service, which includes numerous television channels that were received without authorization from DISH’s satellite service and were subsequently retransmitted without authorization on the Simply-TV pirate streaming service,&#8221; the complaint reads.</p>



<p>DISH goes on to suggest that the business model cascades down, with Simply-TV&#8217;s operators working together with people who receive the company&#8217;s channels without permission and Simply-TV re-selling service to others. A so-called &#8220;Master Reseller Program&#8221; allowed resellers to resell the service, complete with their own branding and pricing structure.</p>



<p>DISH&#8217;s claims against those allegedly behind Simply-TV are made under the Federal Communications Act, specifically <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/605">47 U.S.C. § 605(a) and 47 U.S.C. § 605(e)(4)</a> which relate to illegal reception/retransmission and selling devices which facilitate access to DISH&#8217;s satellite programming.</p>



<p>While Simply-TV disappeared earlier this year, DISH requested a permanent injunction against the service and the supply of infringing devices. In addition to considerable damages, DISH also asked permission to take possession of and destroy all &#8220;devices, subscriptions, applications, and device codes, as well as all streaming devices, technologies, tools, software, products, components, or parts thereof&#8221; related to the service.</p>



<p>On March 20, 2019, the court issued a temporary restraining order but following a no-show by the defendants at an April 4, 2019 hearing, the court converted that order to a comprehensive preliminary injunction which not only covered Simply-TV, but all those in &#8220;active concert or participation with them&#8221; including affiliates and resellers.</p>



<p>At the end of May the alleged operators of Simply-TV, named as Peter Liberatore and Brandon Wells, filed a response to the DISH complaint. The pair, who are representing themselves, admitted that subscriptions to Simply-TV were sold through various websites.</p>



<p>They also admitted that some of the content provided by Simply-TV originated from DISH and acknowledged that the service had not obtained &#8220;explicit authorization&#8221; from the broadcast provider.</p>



<p>It was further admitted that Droid Technology LLC, a company allegedly founded by &#8220;some or all&#8221; of the defendants according to DISH, provided tools for consuming Simply-TV on various devices. It was also accepted that Droid used the previously-mentioned affiliate programs to attract business to Simply-TV.</p>



<p>How the case will progress from here is open to interpretation but if the SETTV judgment is any barometer, things could start to get pretty expensive.</p>



<p><em>The complaint can be viewed <a href="media/0dd5e3b1.dish-v-simply-tv-complaint-3-9-19.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/dish-v-simply-tv-complaint-3-9-19.pdf">here</a>, preliminary injunction <a href="media/c4012832.dish-v-simply-tv-prelim-injunction-4-8-19.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com//images/dish-v-simply-tv-prelim-injunction-4-8-19.pdf">here</a>, response <a href="media/6a023f62.dish-v-simply-tv-answer-5-31-19.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com//images/dish-v-simply-tv-answer-5-31-19.pdf">here</a> (pdf) </em></p>



<p><br></p>



<p>  <br></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174144
title: Bilibili Uses DMCA to Obtain Identities of Source Code Leakers From Github
uri: Bilibili-Uses-DMCA-to-Obtain-Identities-of-Source-Code-Leakers-From-Gi
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/5Lna4GCJICs/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/d92af75f.image-82.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-82.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174243" width="258" height="128"/><figcaption>Credit: Bilibili</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Little known in the West, Bilibili is a China-based video-sharing platform with a focus on anime, comics and games.</p>



<p>Users are able to upload videos to the NASDAQ-listed platform for others to add their own commentary and subtitles. According to <a href="http://ir.bilibili.com/news-releases/news-release-details/bilibili-inc-announces-fourth-quarter-2018-and-fiscal-year-2018">data</a> released by Bilibili in February, the service enjoys in excess of 92 million monthly users. Shortly after, however, the site suffered a setback.</p>



<p>A <a href="https://technode.com/2019/04/23/bilibili-source-code-leaked-on-github-containing-usernames-and-passwords/">report</a> in April indicated that someone had uploaded a large trove of data to Github, reportedly culled from Bilibili, including source code, user names and passwords. The company played down the leak, stating that the data was from an old version of the site and &#8220;defensive steps&#8221; had been taken to ensure user security wasn&#8217;t compromised.</p>



<p>However, Bilibili also promised to investigate the source of the leak and there are now clear signs that it is doing so in the United States, using copyright law.</p>



<p>Documents obtained by TorrentFreak show a China-based law firm writing to Github on April 23, 2019, a letter which appears to indicate the problem may be more serious than it first appeared.</p>



<p>&#8220;On April 22, 2019 (GMT-8), a Github user (user ID: &#8220;openbilibili&#8221;) published a post with the subject of &#8220;openbilibili/go-common&#8221; in the Github website, which contained the comprehensive and detailed information of Bilibili&#8217;s source code and other trade secrets/confidential information,&#8221; the letter reads.</p>



<p>At least one other Github user posted the same information shortly after, which resulted in additional users forking that data. Bilibili&#8217;s law firm said these infringing acts meant that the individuals responsible for them could be held accountable under both civil and criminal law.</p>



<p>The letter indicates that Github had already taken measures to disable access to some of the infringing content. However, Bilibili&#8217;s legal team wanted the platform to go further, by handing over &#8220;any and all personal information&#8221; it holds on the individuals in question, including IP and email addresses, telephone numbers, browsing history, plus upload and download records.</p>



<p>What happened next isn&#8217;t clear but it seems likely that Github refused to comply with Bilibili&#8217;s demands in the absence of a legal document compelling it to cooperate. That probably being the case, this week Bilibili requested a DMCA subpoena at a San Francisco federal court to unmask the Github users.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/922da40d.image-84.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-84.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174248"/></figure></div>



<p>It is not yet clear whether Github has already handed over the personal details of the alleged infringers but Bilibili is talking tough. Earlier documentation suggests that the company was preparing a report so that police in Shangai could &#8220;stop, investigate and punish the suspected crime immediately.&#8221;</p>



<p>Given that the company has used the DMCA to obtain Github users&#8217; identities, it will be interesting to see if it actually pursues a copyright claim in the US or whether the DMCA subpoena route is simply an easy way to get things started in other areas of law.</p>



<p><em>The documents referenced above can be found here <a href="media/0214c1a5.bilibili-1.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com//images/bilibili-1.pdf">1</a>,<a href="media/05e59abd.bilibili-2.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/bilibili-2.pdf">2</a>,<a href="media/33292452.bilibili-3.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com//images/bilibili-3.pdf">3</a>,<a href="media/8c3fa780.bilibili-4.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com//images/bilibili-4.pdf">4</a> (pdf)</em></p>



<p></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174157
title: Google Flags Hundreds of Pirate Sites for ‘Abusive Experiences’
uri: Google-Flags-Hundreds-of-Pirate-Sites-for-Abusive-Experiences
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/m1DRHEkWcTI/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135049" src="media/8776ded3.googlelogo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/googlelogo.png" alt="" width="250" height="83">Online advertising can be quite a nuisance. Flashy and noisy banners, or intrusive pop-ups, are a thorn in the side of many Internet users.</p>
<p>These type of ads are particularly popular on pirate sites. Many users tackle this by installing an ad-blocker. People who don&#8217;t, often have to navigate through a maze of fake download buttons and other misleading ads.</p>
<p>Increasingly, Google is trying to hide such ads from the public. Not just on pirate sites, but everywhere they pop up. The company, which derives most of its income from adverts, is generally not a fan of ad-blocking. However, it does employ various blocking initiatives that target third-party advertisers.</p>
<p>Two years ago the company announced that its Chrome browser would start to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/chromes-default-ad-blocker-is-bad-news-for-torrent-sites-170705/">automatically block ads</a> that don&#8217;t adhere to the&nbsp; <a href="https://www.betterads.org/standards/">Better Ads Standards</a>, for example. This was implemented early last year in several locations, including the US and Europe.</p>
<p>In a separate effort, Google has also started to banish abusive experiences. In Chrome its begun warning users about various deceptive practices, such as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/google-targets-fake-download-and-play-buttons-160204/">fake download and play buttons</a>, while blocking <a href="https://blog.chromium.org/2017/11/expanding-user-protections-on-web.html">unwanted redirects</a> which are prevalent on some pirate streaming sites.</p>
<p>This wasn&#8217;t enough though. Last December, Google upped the ante when it decided to block <em>all ads</em> on a curated selection of sites with persistent <a href="https://support.google.com/webtools/answer/7347327?hl=en">abusive experiences</a>. This includes the aforementioned fake download buttons, but also ads that promote or link to unwanted software.</p>
<p>This is a big step, as sites that have all ads blocked will certainly notice a significant dip in revenue. Thus far, however, little was known about what sites are targeted by Google, or how many there are. That changed recently.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The latest release of the Vivaldi browser, which is based on Chrome, also implemented this blocklist. This was announced in a <a href="https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-blocks-abusive-ads-improves-profile-management-and-more/">blog post</a> by its CEO &nbsp;Jon von Tetzchner.</p>
<p>&#8220;We’ve improved security by blocking advertisements on sites with abusive ad practices,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;We want you to be safe while on the web, and worry less about who’s abusing you with dangerous ads.&#8221;</p>
<p>Google&#8217;s list of abusive sites is available through an API, but not accessible to the public. However, Vivaldi has access to it and maintains a <a href="https://downloads.vivaldi.com/blocklist/current.json">copy on its servers</a>, as highlighted by Techdows which highlighted it in a recent <a href="https://techdows.com/2019/06/google-chrome-blocks-ads-on-these-sites-by-default.html">report</a>.</p>
<p>We should stress that this list of &#8220;abusive&#8221; sites is separate from the list of sites that violate the <a href="https://support.google.com/webtools/answer/7325865?hl=en">&#8220;better ads&#8221; standard</a>, which Chrome&#8217;s built-in ad-blocker uses.</p>
<p>A quick review of the list reveals that it&#8217;s dominated by pirate and porn sites. At the time of writing, there are a total of 7,059 sites on the list including hundreds of pirate sites such as thepiratebay.rocks, eztvtorrent.net, filmytorrents.com, gostream.nu, songsmp3.org, and watchonlinemovies.net.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/b149fce4.abuseblock.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/abuseblock.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174239"/></figure></div>


<p>The targeted pirate sites are mostly smaller proxy sites or copycats, often designed to generate revenue. Interestingly, there are also several Blogspot sites on the list, such as the pirate release blog 4howcracked.blogspot.com.&nbsp; Blogspot is, of course, a blogging platform maintained by Google.</p>
<p>In addition, we noticed that many domains are no longer operational, such as tehmoviez.download, and various others redirect to new URLs, as 0123movies.io does.&nbsp;</p>
<p>When we first saw the list the relatively popular torrent site TorrentDownloads.me was listed as an &#8216;abusive&#8217; site as well. The operator confirmed this and told TorrentFreak that he noticed a decline in revenue when that happened.</p>
<p>&#8220;Revenue dropped a few months ago when they put us on the abusive list. That&#8217;s why we are thinking to move our domain to new TLDs. I will also send a request for Google to review the site again and hope they will unblock it now,&#8221; the operator said.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Apparently, this worked, as the site was unlisted a few hours later. No surprise perhaps, as the site doesn&#8217;t display any ads at the moment, so we must wait and see if this holds when the ads are put back.</p>
<p>Another site owner, who prefers to remain anonymous, informed TorrentFreak that his site was listed previously, but that the issue was resolved after he removed what Google flagged as &#8216;abusive&#8217; code.</p>
<p>With billions of sites on the Internet and just a few thousand on this list of abusive sites, the impact of this measure is relatively minimal. And even on sites that are listed, some ads are still coming through, such as on the adult site 007zeed.com and pirate site Stream-Island.su.&nbsp;</p>
<p>While the measure may not be perfect, Google sees it as an attempt to keep the web safe. While that&#8217;s an honorable motive, there may be a self-serving element to it as well.&nbsp;</p>
<p>As said before, Google doesn&#8217;t want people to install ad-blockers. So, if its own browser blocks flashy ads on sites by default and bans ads on abusive sites completely, fewer people may see the need for a separate ad-blocker.</p>
<p>As a result, Google&#8217;s revenues increase.&nbsp;</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174122
title: Pirates: So You Want to Join ‘The Scene’?
uri: Pirates-So-You-Want-to-Join-The-Scene
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/F4cD64TLi9A/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/65c5ecf6.dark-man-e1545826268958.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/dark-man-e1545826268958.png" alt="" class="wp-image-166170"/></figure></div>



<p>Anyone involved in the piracy ecosystem could stake claim to being &#8216;in the scene&#8217; but for those with a discerning interest in pirate matters, terminology is all important.</p>



<p>After decades of existence, The Scene has attained mythical status among pirates. It&#8217;s not a site, a place, a person, or a group. &#8216;The Scene&#8217; is all of these things, combined in a virtual world to which few people ever gain access.</p>



<p>In basic terms, The Scene is a collection of both loose and tight-knit individuals and groups, using Internet networks as meeting places and storage vessels, in order to quickly leak as much pirated content as possible. From movies, TV shows and music, to software, eBooks and beyond. Almost anything digital is fair game for piracy at the most elite level.</p>



<p>These people &#8211; &#8220;Sceners&#8221; &#8211; are as protective of &#8216;their&#8217; content as they are meticulous of their privacy but that doesn&#8217;t stop huge volumes of &#8216;their&#8217; material leaking out onto the wider Internet. And occasionally &#8211; very occasionally &#8211; one of their members breaking ranks to tell people about it.</p>



<p>TorrentFreak recently made contact with one such individual who indicated a willingness to pull back the veil. However, verifying that &#8216;Sceners&#8217; are who they say they are is inherently difficult. In part, we tackled this problem by agreeing for a pre-determined character string to be planted inside a Scene release.</p>



<p>With a fairly quick turnaround and as promised, the agreed characters appeared in a specific release. That the release had been made was confirmed by the standard accompanying text-based NFO file, which collectively are both widely and publicly available.</p>



<p>In respect of the group&#8217;s identity, we were asked to say that it has been active since 2018, but nothing more. We can confirm, however, that it already has dozens of releases thus far in 2019.</p>



<p>Our contact, who we will call &#8220;Source&#8221;, also claims to work with groups involved with so-called WEB releases, such as video content obtained and decrypted using sources including Netflix and Prime Video.</p>



<p>For security reasons, he wasn&#8217;t prepared to prove membership of that niche in the same fashion. However, the information he provided on those activities (to be covered in an upcoming part 2 of this article) is very interesting indeed. But first, an introduction to the basics, for those unfamiliar with how The Scene operates.</p>



<p><strong>Basics of &#8216;The Scene&#8217; &#8211;  &#8220;Source&#8217;s&#8221; summary (in his own words)</strong></p>



<ul><li><em>Topsites: Top-secret, highly protected FTP servers storing up to hundreds or thousands of terabytes of copyrighted material. Users have to be authorized to the topsite by pre-existing members, and the users can only connect from specific IP-ranges.</em></li><li><em>Topsites usually always have an IRC channel where they announce the releases made on the specific topsite, alongside other things such as newly traded releases, requests and chat. These IRC chatrooms are encrypted using encryption tools on top of SSL.</em></li><li><em>Topsites can either be home hosted or rented. Rented sites are avoided by members of The Scene who are higher up in the food chain, since those are generally riskier due to being located at hosting companies&#8217; datacenters. Users of a topsite are usually one of the following: </em><ul><li><em>Traders / Racers</em></li><li><em>Release Groups (Affiliates)</em></li><li><em>Site Operator: User who owns or administrates a topsite</em></li></ul></li><li><em>Release Groups (Affiliates): A single or group of users, who work together to download/rip, prepare, pack and pre a release. These groups usually compete against each other to get a release out as fast as possible, beating other groups.</em></li><li><em>Traders / Racers: A user who moves releases between topsites. For example: As soon as the group -XYZ releases an MP3 album on topsite -ASD, multiple traders instantly grab the new release and transfer it to their other topsites. When the release lands on the other topsites, traders there start sharing it further and further until every single topsite has the release. In some cases it only takes minutes for every single topsite to have the release in question.</em></li></ul>



<p><strong>Becoming a member of The Scene</strong></p>



<p>Despite &#8220;Source&#8217;s&#8221; own group being relatively new, he says his history with The Scene dates back three years. Intrigued at the possibility of becoming a member but with no prior experience, he contacted a Scene group using an email address inside an NFO, offering his coding skills.</p>



<p>&#8220;I was able to convince the group to slowly adopt me into The Scene by providing them scripts and tools to make their job easier and faster, alongside other programming related tasks. The thing with Scene groups is that they don&#8217;t trust outsiders,&#8221; he explains.</p>



<p>Given that not granting access to the wrong people is fundamental to the security of The Scene, we asked how this &#8220;vetting&#8221; took place. &#8220;Source&#8221; explained that it was conducted over a period of time (around four months), with a particular Scene group carrying out its own investigations to ensure he wasn&#8217;t lying about himself or his abilities.</p>



<p>&#8220;The groups who vet new members also often try their best to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing">dox</a> the recruit, to make sure that the user is secure. If you&#8217;re able to be doxed (based on the info you give, your IP-addresses, anything really) you will lose your chances to join. The group won&#8217;t actually do anything with your personal info,&#8221; he adds, somewhat reassuringly.</p>



<p>Once the group was satisfied with his credentials, &#8220;Source&#8221; gained access to his very first topsite, which he describes as small and tight-knit. Topsites often use IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for communications so from there it was a matter of being patient while simultaneously attempting to gain the trust of others in the channel.</p>



<p>&#8220;Most Sceners are very cautious of new users, even after being vetted in, due to the risk of a user still being insecure, an undercover officer or generally unwanted in terms of behavior. Once you&#8217;ve been idling in the chats and such for months, you slowly start gaining some basic recognition and trust,&#8221; he says.</p>



<p><strong>Branching out</strong></p>



<p>Once he&#8217;d gained access via the first topsite, &#8220;Source&#8221; says he decided to branch out on his own by creating his own Scene group and gathering content to release. From there he communicated with other users on the topsite in an effort to gain access to additional topsites as an affiliate.</p>



<p>As mentioned earlier, his own releases via his own group (the name of which we aren&#8217;t disclosing here) number in the dozens over the past several months alone. They are listed on publicly available &#8216;<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/reporting-when-pirate-releases-hit-the-internet-is-apparently-illegal-now-190101/">pre-databases</a>&#8216; which archive information and NFO files which provide i<em><strong>nfo</strong></em>rmation related to Scene releases.</p>



<p>However, his own group isn&#8217;t the only string to the Source bow. Of particular interest is his involvement with so-called WEB releases, i.e pirate releases of originally protected video content obtained from platforms like Netflix and Prime Video.</p>



<p>&#8220;Content for WEB releases are obtained by downloading the source content.  Whenever you stream a video online, you are downloading chunks of a  video file to your computer. Sceners simply save that content and attempt to decrypt it for non-DRM playback later,&#8221; Source explains.</p>



<p>&#8220;Streams from these sites are protected by DRM. The most common, and hard to crack DRM is called Widevine. The way the Scene handles WEB-releases is by using specialized tools coded by The Scene, for The Scene.&#8221; </p>



<p>This is a particularly sensitive area, not least since Source says he&#8217;s acted as a programmer for multiple Scene groups making these releases. He&#8217;s understandably cautious so until next week (when we&#8217;ll continue with more detail specifically about WEB content) he leaves an early cautionary note for anyone considering joining The Scene.</p>



<p>&#8220;You can become Sceners with friends, but not friends with Sceners,&#8221; he concludes. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=173814
title: “Go Unlimited” Taunts Hollywood With DMCA-Ignore Video Hosting
uri: Go-Unlimited-Taunts-Hollywood-With-DMCA-Ignore-Video-Hosting
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/9XixGR2lyhs/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174002" src="media/76208768.goun.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/goun.png" alt="" width="195" height="101">Video streaming is more popular than ever. This is true for the YouTubes and Netflixes of this world, but also for pirate sites.</p>
<p>The influx of dedicated pirate streaming sites has triggered a cat and mouse game. Pirate sites are constantly trying to find stable hosting platforms, while rightsholders, Hollywood included, work hard to take videos down. </p>
<p>These takedowns can be fairly effective. Most hosting platforms, even those frequently used by shady sites, accept takedown DMCA requests. As a result, the streaming portals often have to replace their videos, which can be quite a frustrating experience. </p>
<p>This is also what Bader, the operator of the popular streaming portal <a href="https://www.fushaar.com/">Fushaar.com</a>, noticed. The Kuwaiti entrepreneur operates several streaming sites which are predominantly popular in Arabic speaking countries. Fushaar, for example, is the 38th most visited website in Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Faced with a lack of stable &#8216;takedown resistant&#8217; hosting providers to stream videos from, Bader decided to start one of his own, <a href="https://gounlimited.to/">GO Unlimited</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;When I launched GO Unlimited in January 2016, I planned to host videos from my own websites, so it was a private video host. At the time my own websites were more than enough to bring in a lot of income for GO Unlimited,&#8221; Bader tells TorrentFreak. </p>
<p>When this went well for a few months, Go Unlimited opened up to others. That started late 2016 when the now-defunct GoMovies.to joined. A major addition, as that was the most popular pirate streaming site on the web at the time. </p>
<p>This also brought the video hosting platform to the attention of major copyright holders, which started to complain.</p>
<p>&#8220;When GoMovies.to joined, the journey started. The DMCA requests became more aggressive and more serious, so we started to use our own techniques to hide the original source of the video, so rightsholders didn&#8217;t have any resources to report,&#8221; Bader says. </p>
<p>While the operator of Go Unlimited doesn&#8217;t go into detail, the site effectively hides where the videos are hosted. Because they are not residing on the website&#8217;s own domain name, the site ignores DMCA takedowns and similar notices. </p>
<p>That didn&#8217;t stop rightsholders from submitting requests via escalating emails with titles such as URGENTLY, LAST WARNING, and LEGAL ACTIONS AHEAD, which kept pouring in. From then on, these were ignored though.</p>
<p>&#8220;Thanks to our techniques, by hiding the original source of the videos and misleading the networks providers, we were able to ignore the DMCA takedown requests for GoMovies,&#8221; Bader says. </p>
<p>While rightsholders, including Hollywood&#8217;s MPAA, will disagree, the site&#8217;s operator believes that he&#8217;s not doing anything wrong here.</p>
<p>&#8220;We’re a licensed company in Kuwait and we’re a 100% legal service since we host nothing illegal at our main domain, nor do transfer copyrighted materials through our public services,&#8221; Bader says. </p>
<p>For the same reason, the operator also believes that the domain name is safe. None of the hosted videos are directly hosted on the Gounlimited.to domain, so there&#8217;s nothing to complain about, the argument goes.</p>
<p>Upon closer inspection, it appears that Go Unlimited does <a href="media/06ac54c9.Alita.Battle.Angel.2019.720p.WEBRip.x264-5BYTS.LT5D.mp4" data-original-source="https://gounlimited.to/k0megdc9nc76/Alita.Battle.Angel.2019.720p.WEBRip.x264-%5BYTS.LT%5D.mp4">disable videos for public viewing</a> on its site on some occasions. However, third-party embeds of the same videos still work. This means that the uploaders can still use them on their own sites.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/75eaac03.gounli.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/gounli.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174255"/><figcaption>Streaming from Go Unlimited</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>Whether the actual videos are stored on or viewed from the official domain or not, rightsholders will point out that under most copyright laws, the site has an obligation to remove them.</p>
<p>Bader disagrees, however, and is not worried about any legal pressure or consequences. While he has had to make some adjustments along the way to keep network providers happy, he hasn&#8217;t run into any trouble personally.</p>
<p>&#8220;I am not afraid of any pressure, I use my personal credit cards to buy the resources and I&#8217;ve provided the network providers with my legal documents many times,&#8221; Bader says. </p>
<p>One of the most significant setbacks has been Cloudflare&#8217;s recent decision to terminate the site&#8217;s account. The US-based CDN provider took this decision following a violation of its terms.</p>
<p>This is similar to what happened with other hosting platforms, such as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-suspends-streaming-sites-and-file-hosters-but-not-over-piracy/">Rapidvideo</a>, which was thrown out for caching a disproportionate amount of non-HTML files. Neither Rapidvideo nor Go Unlimited used Cloudflare to cache video, however.</p>
<p>While Cloudflare didn&#8217;t mention copyright as the reason in this case either, Go Unlimited&#8217;s operator believes that it certainly played a role. </p>
<p>&#8220;Our usage graph at CloudFlare shows less usage than websites with the same size who haven&#8217;t faced any problems so far and we didn’t host any media at their platform or violated their terms in any way,&#8221; Bader says.</p>
<p>&#8220;If it was a matter of resources, why didn’t they contact me first? Or asked me to upgrade my plan?&#8221;</p>
<p>While Go Unlimited suffered a few hours of downtime due to the suspension, the site swiftly returned, and since then it&#8217;s been business as usual.</p>
<div dir="auto">Thus far the DMCA-ignore policy is working well for Go Unlimited. The site is not open to all uploaders but works with &#8220;trusted members&#8221; instead. There are a few hundreds of these now, which have all gone through a thorough vetting process. </div>
<div dir="auto"> </div>
<div dir="auto">The number of actual visitors is impressive though. Bader estimates that Go Unlimited has roughly 150 million visitors per month, which are good for some rather decent ad revenue for the hosting providers as well as the uploaders. </div><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174071
title: New Foxtel Blocking Application Targets Streaming, Torrent & Proxy Sites
uri: New-Foxtel-Blocking-Application-Targets-Streaming-Torrent-Proxy-Sit
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/OtQuZ1Ambgk/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/9eb9cac7.pageblocked.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/pageblocked.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-147564" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pageblocked.jpg 275w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/pageblocked-200x150.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px"></figure></div>



<p>Following the introduction of amendments to copyright law in 2018, it is now easier than ever to have &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites blocked by ISPs in Australia.</p>



<p>The new rules mean that regular &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites such as streaming and torrent platforms, as well as any service that has the primary purpose and/or primary effect of facilitating access to infringing content, can be targeted.</p>



<p>On June 18, 2019, Foxtel returned to the Federal Court in Sydney with a new blocking application. The court has yet to make the associated documents public but TorrentFreak was able to obtain them via a third-party source.</p>



<p>They reveal Foxtel writing to ISPs &#8211; TPG, Telstra, Optus, Vocus, Vodafone, plus their subsidiaries (52 in total) &#8211; at the end of May, indicating its intention to file an application to have a total of 35 torrent, streaming and proxy site domains blocked via court order.</p>



<p><strong>Streaming &#8216;Target Online Locations&#8217;</strong></p>



<p>The sites in this category are described as providing Internet users &#8220;with a browsable and/or searchable index or directory of digital (including audiovisual) content from which they can select content of their choice&#8221;.</p>



<p>Transmission of this content from the sites either takes place directly or through a &#8220;frame&#8221; which presents the content from another location. Or, alternatively, the sites provide lists of hyperlinks that allow users to access content after being redirected to another platform.</p>



<p>The sites targeted are ShareMovies, SeriesOnline8, Movie4U, SeeHD, StreamDreams and MoviesOnline.</p>



<p><strong>Torrent &#8216;Target Online Locations&#8217;</strong></p>



<p>Sites under this heading are described as having a browsable or searchable index of digital content or facilitating access to the same on other &#8216;online locations&#8217;. They provide users with access to .torrent files (or links to the same) which provide access to content without charge.</p>



<p>The sites targeted are WatchSoMuch, TorrentKen and SkyTorrents.</p>



<p><strong>Proxy &#8220;Target Online Locations&#8221;</strong></p>



<p>Given the changes to the law last year, proxy sites &#8211; which often exist to enable access to sites that are blocked by court order &#8211; can now be subject to blocking requests since they have the &#8220;primary effect&#8221; of facilitating access to infringing content.</p>



<p>The sites in the Foxtel application are described as providing Internet users with a browsable/searchable index of proxies providing access to streaming and torrent sites, including those sites listed above.</p>



<p>&#8220;[E]ach of the Proxy TOLs provides, or facilitates, free access for Internet users to content which it is not licensed to provide&#8221; the application reads, adding that none have &#8220;legitimate functions&#8221;.</p>



<p>The sites targeted are Unblocked.lol, Unblocked.win, Unblockall, Unblocker, and MyUnblock.</p>



<p>A case management hearing is booked for July 11, 2019.</p>



<p><em>The full list of URLs requested for blocking is as follows: sharemovies.net, seriesonline8.co, seriesonline8.com, movie4u.live, movie4u.cc, movie4u.co, seehd.uno, seehd.biz, streamdreams.org, streamdreams.me, streamdreams.co, streamdreams.online, streamdreams.video, stream-dreams.com, moviesonline.mx, wsmmirror.info, watchsomuch.info, watchsomuch.com, seventorrentsmirror.info, seventorrentsproxy.com, 7tmirror.info, torrentken.site, skytorrents.lol, unblocked.lol, unblocked.is, unblocked.ms, unblocked.win, unblocked.gdn, unblocked.vet, unblocked,sh, unblocked.mx, unblockall.org, unblocker.cc, unblock.win, myunblock.com</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174312
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 07/01/19
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-on-BitTorrent-07-01-19
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/qbsXdVmvGXI/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-172670" src="media/892672cd.shazam.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/shazam.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="210">This week we have five newcomers in our chart.</p>
<p>Dumbo is the most downloaded movie.</p>
<p>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 Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.</p>
<h5>This week&#8217;s most downloaded movies are:</h5>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Movie Rank</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>Rank <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-on-bittorrent-06-24-19/">last week</a></strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie name</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">Most downloaded movies via torrents</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448115/">Shazam!</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448115/">7.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oD7B7oiBtw&amp;t=2s">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837563/">Pet Sematary</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837563/">6.0</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK0LNzU2TQI">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">Dumbo</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">6.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWpGdITSR4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437086/">Alita: Battle Angel</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437086/">7.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7pYhpJaJW8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">Shaft</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">6.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD41XdWcmbY">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">Escape Plan: The Extractors</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">4.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoipQuCpQ9Y">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">Captain Marvel</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LHxvxdRnYc">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126476/">After</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126476/">5.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLta4nDM10">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7752126">Brightburn</a> (Subbed HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7752126">6.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD1vbhicJUY">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884052/">Pokémon Detective Pikachu</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884052/">6.9</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1roy4o4tqQM">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174305
title: Netflix and Hollywood Want Millions in Piracy Damages from SET TV
uri: Netflix-and-Hollywood-Want-Millions-in-Piracy-Damages-from-SET-TV
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/3AGOqutOwrY/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-154559" src="media/12fdf7b4.settv.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/settv.jpg" alt="" width="277" height="181">Last year the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the global anti-piracy alliance featuring several Hollywood studios, Amazon, Netflix, and other entertainment companies, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-amazon-and-hollywood-sue-set-tv-over-iptv-piracy-180422/">sued Florida-based SET Broadcast, LLC</a>.</p>
<p>The company offered a popular software-based IPTV service and also sold pre-loaded set-top boxes.</p>
<p>While it was marketed as a legal service, according to ACE members <a href="https://www.setvnow.com/">SET TV&#8217;s</a> software was little more than a pirate tool, allowing buyers to stream copyright-infringing content.</p>
<p>“Defendants market and sell subscriptions to ‘Setvnow,’ a software application that Defendants urge their customers to use as a tool for the mass infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted motion pictures and television shows,” the complaint read.</p>
<p>Initially, SET TV hired an attorney who <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/set-tv-tells-netflix-amazon-hollywood-that-its-no-longer-available-180620/">informed the court</a> that it had stopped offering its service and subscriptions. At the same time, the copyright infringement allegations were denied. After this initial response, however, things quietened down.</p>
<p>When the copyright holders requested to depose owner SET TV owner Jason Labossiere and its employee Nelson Johnson, who are both listed as defendants, they failed to respond. The same was true for the corporate entity.</p>
<p>Not much later SET TV&#8217;s lawyer withdrew from the case, citing unpaid invoices. This lack of progress eventually prompted the copyright holders to file for an entry of default. This was awarded and a few days ago Netflix, Amazon and the Hollywood studios submitted their demands.</p>
<p>According to a filing at a California Federal court, the rightsholders argue that SET TV (Set Broadcast) is guilty of willful copyright infringement. To compensate their losses, they request the maximum statutory damages for a total of 51 works.</p>
<p>&#8220;Set Broadcast has willfully infringed Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works and, in<br>
doing so, caused Plaintiffs and their entire business model immense damage. The $7,650,000 statutory damages sought here therefore represents only a fraction of the actual damages inflicted by Set Broadcast on Plaintiffs,&#8221; the motion reads.</p>
<p>The motion notes that SET TV had 260,000 monthly users, of which a significant percentage accessed copyright-infringing content. The 51 works that are mentioned in the motion are just the tip of the iceberg, the rightsholders note, which further supports the request for substantial damages.</p>
<p>In addition to monetary relief, the companies also request a permanent injunction to prevent any infringements of their works going forward. This is needed, they argue, because it&#8217;s possible that the infringing activities will continue at a later date.</p>
<p>&#8220;Though the Setvnow service appears to no longer be available, Set Broadcast’s apparent cessation of its willful and flagrant infringement does not and should not prevent this Court from exercising its discretion to permanently enjoin Set Broadcast from infringing Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a significant threat of continuing irreparable injuries to Plaintiffs,&#8221; they add.</p>
<p>With SET TV no longer defending itself, it is likely that the court will side with the copyright holders. However, the question remains whether they will ever see a piece of the millions that they&#8217;re after.</p>
<p>In a similar copyright infringement case,&nbsp; SET TV previously reached a settlement with Dish last November, agreeing to pay more than <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/settv-iptv-service-ordered-to-pay-dish-90000000-in-piracy-damages-181113/">$90 million</a> in damages.&nbsp;Considering this, it’s doubtful that there is much money left to take.</p>
<p><em>&#8211;=</em></p>
<p><em>A copy of the motion for default judgment, submitted on behalf of Amazon, Netflix, Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Television, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios, Universal Cable </em><em>Productions, Universal Television, and Warner Bros. is <a href="media/c1aaf8be.setdefmot.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/setdefmot.pdf">available here (pdf)</a>.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174339
title: Spanish Court Throws Out Copyright Trolling Case
uri: Spanish-Court-Throws-Out-Copyright-Trolling-Case
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/4XalsyLPsJI/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/efd05bc4.trollsign.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/trollsign.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-108977"/></figure></div>



<p>Spanish ISP Euskaltel is one of the few ISPs in the world to be putting up a fight against so-called copyright trolls.</p>



<p>These mostly movie-related companies obtain the IP addresses of computers said to be participating in BitTorrent swarms and then apply to the courts to force related ISPs to hand over their customers&#8217; data for further action.</p>



<p>This usually takes the form of &#8220;pay-up-or-else&#8221; letters, demanding hundreds or even thousands of euros or dollars, to make supposed lawsuits go away. In Spain, however, things aren&#8217;t going as planned.</p>



<p>Euskaltel reports that the Commercial Court No. 2 of Bilbao has dismissed demands by producer She Fighter Ltd against a customer alleged to have downloaded and shared the movie Lady Bloodfight.</p>



<p>According to a detailed <a href="https://digitorium.es/2019/06/28/el-juzgado-de-bilbao-desestima-demanda-por-supuesta-descarga-ilegal-en-redes-p2p/">summary</a> of the case, success rested on three elements: the existence of unlawful action, showing damages, and the causal relationship between the damages and the unlawful action. In respect of the damages element, the rightsholder opted for a &#8220;hypothetical royalty&#8221; but failed to provide evidence to justify why 150 euros was demanded. This is what caused the case to fail.</p>



<p>&#8220;This is one of the first decisions in the trials against those affected after being reported by various film producers for what they considered &#8216;illegal downloading of movies on P2P networks&#8217;,&#8221; Euskaltel said in a statement. </p>



<p>The ruling, which was handed down June 25, denies the producer an opportunity to appeal and requires it to pay the full costs of the process.</p>



<p>While the ISP has welcomed the decision, the battle against copyright trolls appears to be heating up in other areas of the country. Euskaltel is just one of the ISPs being targeted by movie companies and courts in other areas of the country have received similar requests.</p>



<p>&#8220;The fact that the first people affected have been clients of Euskaltel, is due to the fact that the Bilbao Courts &#8211; the headquarters of the Basque operator &#8211; have been the first in the State to meet and resolve these demands, for reasons of distribution and work management, while the Madrid courts &#8211; which deal with the demands of the clients of the operators based in the capital of Spain &#8211; are still in a preliminary phase of the process,&#8221; the ISP explained.</p>



<p>Meanwhile, Euskaltel says it will continue to fight to protect its customers&#8217; rights. As <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/isp-reports-movie-company-to-data-protection-agency-over-piracy-data-190530/">reported</a> last month, the ISP reported copyright troll Venice PI to Spain&#8217;s data protection agency (AEPD) after being forced by a court to hand over the personal details of subscribers said to have downloaded the Bruce Willis movie Once Upon a Time in Venice.</p>



<p>The ISP said that Venice PI&#8217;s use of that data, which involved contacting subscribers with demands to pay a 150 euro settlement, constituted a breach of Spain’s Data Protection regulations. According to Euskaltel, the movie outfit was not &#8220;free to decide what to do with the data&#8221; once it had obtained it. </p>



<p>In addition to the earlier Venice PI referral to the AEPD, Euskaltel says that on June 7 it referred Reliance Entertainment Productions LLC to the data protection watchdog. Then, just three days later, it <a href="https://www.euskaltel.com/CanalOnline/aboutus/press-room/news/20190628131547224">filed</a> a similar complaint against Wind River Production LLC, highlighting potential abuses of customer data.</p>



<p>&#8220;In the latter complaint, in addition to asking the AEPD to analyze the reported facts to verify whether the alleged administrative violations have incurred, the AEPD has also been requested to adopt provisional measures, consisting of ordering the production company to stop sending more letters to users,&#8221; Euskaltel says.</p>



<p>&#8220;In this complaint, as in the two previous ones, the possible criminal responsibility which the producers may have incurred has been placed on the table,&#8221; the ISP concludes.</p>



<p>Euskaltel has published <a href="https://www.euskaltel.com/euskaltel-responde">advice to customers</a> being targeted by copyright trolls, including that they should report potential data protection abuses to the authorities.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174334
title: Encrypted DNS and SNI Make Pirate Site Blocking Much Harder
uri: Encrypted-DNS-and-SNI-Make-Pirate-Site-Blocking-Much-Harder
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/sak5AuGcUdE/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174368" src="media/026c5ca7.encry.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/encry.jpg" alt="" width="277" height="210">Website blocking has become a prime measure for the entertainment industry to target pirate sites on the Internet.</p>
<p>The practice has been around for well over a decade and has gradually expanded to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/nearly-4000-pirate-sites-are-blocked-by-isps-around-the-world-190210/">dozens of countries</a> around the world.</p>
<p>The actual blocking is done by Internet providers, often following a court order. These measures can range from simple DNS blocks to more elaborate schemes involving Server Name Indication (SNI) eavesdropping, or a combination of both.</p>
<p>Thus far, the more thorough blocking efforts have worked relatively well. However, there&#8217;s a growing concern among network specialists that blocking and filtering could become problematic in the future as technology moves forward.</p>
<p>For example, tech companies are increasingly starting to adopt <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_over_HTTPS">DNS over HTTPS</a> (DoH or encrypted DNS). This makes it possible to resolve domain names over the secure HTTPS protocol. As a result, it&#8217;s harder for outsiders, including ISPs, to eavesdrop on which sites people access.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, BT&#8217;s Principal Network Architect, Andy Fidler, warned that encrypted DNS is a potential game changer in the area. In a <a href="media/e3e89671.Potential_ISP_challenges_with_DNS_over_HTTPS_Issue_1A_050419.pdf" data-original-source="https://indico.uknof.org.uk/event/46/contributions/668/attachments/898/1109/UKNOF43_Potential_ISP_challenges_with_DNS_over_HTTPS_Issue_1A_050419.pdf">presentation</a> before several industry specialists, he outlined a variety of concerns, as ITPro <a href="https://www.itpro.co.uk/network-internet/33917/dns-shakeup-could-kill-isp-filters">notes</a>.</p>
<p>Among other things, these new developments will make it harder to block websites and to comply with court orders.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;If UK ISPs are no longer in the DNS path, they may not be able to fulfil certain domain specific court order blocking requests,&#8221; Fidler notes in his presentation.</p>
<p>&#8220;DNS blocking is the most granular tool in the kit box used by UK ISPs to implement Government / Regulation blocking orders,&#8221; he adds.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/5e8db008.blocking-option.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/blocking-option.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174374"/></figure></div>


<p>With regular DNS queries, ISPs such as BT can see which websites users are trying to access, even when people are using a third-party DNS provider. When DNS queries are encrypted, however, Internet providers can no longer see which websites customers visit.&nbsp;</p>
<p>BT&#8217;s Principal Network Architect called on UK Internet providers and the broader industry to see how they can respond to these developments. While increased privacy for users is not a bad thing, ineffective website blockades, useless parental filters, and other issues are seen as problematic.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This stance was also reiterated previously by a spokesperson for the UK&#8217;s Internet Services Providers’ Association, who <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/22/crisis-as-changes-to-google-chrome-threaten-child-safety-and-cybersecurity/#1c99c6dc5704">informed</a> Forbes that encrypted DNS should not break existing protections.</p>
<p>&#8220;If internet browser manufacturers switch on DNS encryption by default, they will put users at serious risk by allowing harmful online content to go unchecked.</p>
<p>&#8220;We would expect Internet browsers to provide the same protections, uphold the same standards and follow the same laws as U.K. ISPs currently do,&#8221; the association&#8217;s spokesperson added.</p>
<p>Advancements like this will be hard to stop though. Cloudflare already offers encrypted DNS through its 1.1.1.1 nameserver and Firefox has enabled support for encrypted lookups since Version 62.</p>
<p>And there&#8217;s more trouble on the horizon.&nbsp;</p>
<p>While encrypted DNS will make it harder for ISPs to block sites, it will certainly not be impossible. SNI eavesdropping is still an option, for example.</p>
<p>This may no longer be as easy in the future either. In tandem with increased support for encrypted DNS, more tech companies are embracing encrypted SNI as well, which prevents ISPs from snooping on SNI handshakes.</p>
<p>Last September, Cloudflare announced that encrypted SNI was <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/esni/">live across Cloudflare&#8217;s network</a> and&nbsp;a few weeks later, Mozilla followed suit by adding <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/10/18/encrypted-sni-comes-to-firefox-nightly/">support for ESNI</a> to its Firefox browser.</p>
<p>This combination of <a href="https://medium.com/@gyiakoumis/esni-dns-over-https-will-change-networking-here-is-why-7387dd580140">encrypted DNS and SNI</a> makes it very hard for ISPs to prevent access to pirate sites. Providers can still use blunt tools such as IP-address blocking, but that could become troublesome when sites move to shared IP-addresses.&nbsp;</p>
<p>While this sounds problematic for site blocking efforts worldwide, it&#8217;s not a major issue just yet. Support from browsers and network providers is still limited, and site owners don&#8217;t appear to see this as a priority either.</p>
<p>For example, when we try to bypass the Pirate Bay blockade with both encrypted DNS and SNI, <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/">as well as support for DNSSEC and TLS 1.3</a>, it still doesn&#8217;t work. Although The Pirate Bay uses Cloudflare&#8217;s compatible network, the domain doesn&#8217;t support DNSSEC, which is another requirement.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The effectiveness will, of course, rely on which blocking methods an ISP uses, but on the more aggressive ones, a lot of boxes have to be ticked in order to effectively bypass a thorough website blockade.&nbsp;</p>
<p>That said, it is still early days, and it wouldn&#8217;t be a surprise to see site operators and users fiddling around with this in the future. Meanwhile, other blocking-busters such as VPNs and the Tor browser remain an option as well.</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174398
title: Kaspersky VPN Now Blocks ‘Pirate’ Sites in Russia
uri: Kaspersky-VPN-Now-Blocks-Pirate-Sites-in-Russia
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/E38GBSht3w8/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/114a07a1.stopstop.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/stopstop.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-81719" width="235" height="157"/></figure></div>



<p>In order to prevent citizens from accessing objectionable content, from pirate sites through to extremist material, Russia operates a national blacklist.</p>



<p>This centralized database of domains, known locally as FGIS (Federal State Information System), is checked by Internet service providers which then block their subscribers from accessing forbidden sites. Of course, services like VPNs, Tor and various anonymizers, are able to circumvent these measures, a point not lost on the authorities.</p>



<p>In 2017, a new bill was signed into law aiming to close the loophole. As a result, if tools with the ability to circumvent the blacklist don&#8217;t play ball by respecting its contents, they also face being blocked by ISPs.</p>



<p>This proposal came to head earlier this year when telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor wrote to several major VPN providers &#8211; NordVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVanish, VPN Unlimited, VyprVPN, Kaspersky Secure Connection, HideMyAss!, Hola VPN, and OpenVPN &#8211; <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/russia-orders-major-vpn-providers-to-block-banned-sites-or-face-blocking-themselves-190328/">demanding compliance</a>.</p>



<p>The VPN services above were given 30 days to respond but most either ignored or flat-out rejected the demands. Only Russia-based Kaspersky offered to cooperate and it now appears the security company is censoring websites as ordered.</p>



<p>According to digital rights group <a href="https://roskomsvoboda.org/47859/">Roskomsvoboda</a>, Kaspersky is now fully respecting the contents of the FGIS database and actively blocking domains, including the many &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites that are permanently blocked in Russia after repeatedly failing to respond to copyright complaints.</p>



<p>Citing tests carried out by various users of Kaspersky Secure Connection, the group says that attempts to access banned domains now result in a warning that the material is inaccessible via the service.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/dd1d23df.kasper-block-screen-2019.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/kasper-block-screen-2019.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-174401" width="600"/><figcaption><em>Credit: Roskomsvoboda.org</em><br></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Users of Kaspersky&#8217;s mobile application are reportedly less-well-informed. Rather than the blocking page above which appears in desktop-based browsers, users are greeted with an &#8216;ERR CONNECTION RESET&#8217; message when they attempt to access a &#8216;banned&#8217; site.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s unclear whether Kaspersky decided to comply simply because it&#8217;s based in Russia or whether being blocked itself would be a step too far for the company. It&#8217;s likely that both played a role but fresh news coming out of the country suggests that earlier claims that non-compliant VPN providers would be blocked themselves may have been a little premature.</p>



<p>At the start of June, telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/russia-says-it-will-soon-begin-blocking-major-vpns/">indicated</a> that the blocking of nine previously-contacted VPN providers was imminent but now, less than a month later, authorities might be pulling back from the brink.</p>



<p>&#8220;We have the right to block VPN services that do not comply with the law, but there is no obligation to do so at any specific time,&#8221; said the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov.</p>



<p>&#8220;There are nine services that do not execute the law. We may wait for fines under a new law. We are not ready to discuss a specific plan for our actions.&#8221;</p>



<p>Last week, Library Genesis (Libgen), a huge online repository of free books and academic articles, became the latest &#8216;pirate&#8217; addition to Russia&#8217;s national blacklist.</p>



<p>Following a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-pirate-bay-of-science-blocked-in-russia-over-medical-studies-181130/">lawsuit</a> filed by Springer Nature in 2018, the platform has now been labeled a repeat infringer, meaning that the domains libgen.io and lgmag.org are now permanently blocked by the country&#8217;s ISPs.</p>



<p> </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174379
title: Charter Profited From Ignoring Piracy, Music Companies Tell Court
uri: Charter-Profited-From-Ignoring-Piracy-Music-Companies-Tell-Court
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/3Z9gCa0KEuM/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-170114" src="media/74ccf2fd.charter.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/charter.png" alt="" width="277" height="151">In March several major music companies <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/music-companies-sue-charter-for-turning-a-blind-eye-to-piracy-190326/">sued Charter Communications</a>, one of the largest Internet providers in the US with <span class="fontstyle0">22 million subscribers.</span></p>
<p>Helped by the RIAA, Capitol Records, Warner Bros, Sony Music, and others accused Charter of deliberately turning a blind eye to its pirating subscribers.</p>
<p>Among other things, they argued that the ISP failed to terminate or otherwise take meaningful action against the accounts of repeat infringers, even though it was well aware of them.</p>
<p>Last month Charter responded to these allegations. The company denied that it plays an active role in any infringing activities and believes the music companies’ arguments are flawed.</p>
<p>The labels sued the ISP for two types of secondary liability for copyright infringement; <span class="fontstyle0">contributory infringement and vicarious liability. While Charter is confident that both claims will ultimately fail, it has only asked the court to dismiss the latter.</span></p>
<p>In its motion, Charter stressed that there is no evidence that it directly <span class="fontstyle0">profits from copyright infringement. In addition, the ISP said that it doesn’t have a right and ability to control any infringements either, which negates another element of vicarious liability.</span></p>
<p>The music companies clearly disagree with Charter&#8217;s arguments. In a new reply submitted this week, they reiterate that the ISP failed to terminate repeat infringers, suggesting that it was motivated by profit.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;Since 2012, hundreds of thousands of defendant Charter Communications, Inc.’s subscribers have illegally distributed Plaintiffs’ music through online file-sharing programs like BitTorrent, with some users pirating hundreds of Plaintiffs’ songs,&#8221; the music outfits start, setting the tone right away.</span></p>
<p>Charter previously argued that it <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/terminating-subscribers-doesnt-stop-pirates-charter-argues-190605/">couldn&#8217;t control or stop piracy</a>. Even if it terminated the accounts of subscribers, this would do little to stop infringement. After all, those people could simply sign up elsewhere and continue their infringing activities there.</p>
<p>The music companies reply that this argument misses the mark. They note that they&#8217;re not holding Charter liable for all hypothetical piracy on the Internet. Instead, their claim applies to a specific subset of pirate activities that previously took place on the ISP&#8217;s network.</p>
<p>At the very least, Charter had the &#8220;contractual right&#8221; and “practical ability” to limit piracy by its subscribers by terminating persistent infringers, the music companies argue.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;Pursuant to its terms of service, Charter reserves the right to terminate users’ accounts if they engage in copyright infringement. As courts have repeatedly held, it does not matter that Charter cannot prevent users from accessing infringing material online through </span><span class="fontstyle2">other </span><span class="fontstyle0">means.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">In addition to the control part, the music companies also state that the Internet provider profited from the alleged infringements, which is another crucial element of vicarious liability.</span></p>
<p>The music companies and other rightsholders sent the ISP many infringement notices, identifying the accounts of specific subscribers. Even though Charter had the ability to terminate the accounts of frequent offenders, it took no action, allegedly for a profit motive.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;The reason for Charter’s refusal to act is simple: by tolerating users’ infringement, Charter reaps millions of dollars in subscription fees that it would have to forgo if it terminated infringing users’ accounts,&#8221; the music companies argue.</span></p>
<p>This failure to terminate pirates then acted as a &#8216;draw&#8217; for other potential pirates, the music companies add.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;From Charter’s failure to act, users came to understand that they could infringe Plaintiffs’ works with impunity, which constituted a further draw to the service,&#8221; they write.</span></p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">Based on the above, the music companies argue that Charter’s motion to dismiss the vicarious liability claims should be denied. This would also allow the rightsholders to obtain further evidence for their arguments during discovery.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>The Colorado federal court will now review the arguments from both sides and make a decision whether the case should continue based on the allegations of both<span class="fontstyle0"> vicarious liability and contributory infringement, or just the latter.</span></p>
<p>In tandem with this case, the music companies have also filed a complaint against Charter subsidiary <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/music-companies-sue-isp-bright-house-for-failing-to-disconnect-pirates-190325/">Bright House</a> in a Florida court. Bright House previously responded to this lawsuit with a near identical motion to dismiss, which was followed with a similar reply from the music companies this week.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><em>A copy of the music companies&#8217; opposition to Charter Communications’ motion to dismiss the claim for vicarious liability is <a href="media/cf77b3b1.charterreply.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/charterreply.pdf">available here (pdf)</a>.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174440
title: BREIN Obtains Court Order to Stop Pirate eBook Sharing on Facebook
uri: BREIN-Obtains-Court-Order-to-Stop-Pirate-eBook-Sharing-on-Facebook
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/FbNgSctkU1Y/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/2bbb7e09.facebook-pirate-1.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/facebook-pirate-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-139520" width="294" height="153"/></figure></div>



<p>Pirated eBooks can be downloaded from dozens if not hundreds of places online. From torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and RARBG to so-called DDL (direct download) platforms, eBooks are both quick and easy to obtain.</p>



<p>Of course, with the rise of social media, it&#8217;s now easier than ever for like-minded individuals to meet up for all kinds of activities, eBook sharing included. This hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed by Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, which says it has recently targeted a prolific group of sharers.</p>



<p>Acting on an anonymous tip-off, BREIN says it was able to infiltrate two &#8220;private and secret&#8221; Facebook groups that were dedicated to the uploading and sharing of unlicensed eBooks. More than 8,000 titles were made available by the groups&#8217; members &#8211; a total of 3,000 people across the two groups.</p>



<p>Armed with its evidence, BREIN said it went to court and obtained an <em>ex parte</em> order, i.e one that didn&#8217;t involve both sides of the dispute to be heard. It subsequently made an agreement with the four managers of the groups, which requires them to cease-and-desist from their activities and pay a settlement to BREIN.</p>



<p>&#8220;They signed a declaration of abstention and have now paid more than 6,000 euros to BREIN. If they go wrong again, this amount goes up to 10,000 euros plus 500 euros per illegally offered e-book,&#8221; BREIN says.</p>



<p>According to the anti-piracy group, the managers of the Facebook groups acknowledged that their activities and those of their users are illegal via the published rules of the groups.</p>



<p>&#8220;Sharing e-books is and remains illegal, that is a choice you make,&#8221; the managers reportedly said. BREIN says that one of the managers, a 49-year-old woman, was a prolific sharer in her own right, having personally upload 1,000 eBooks for download.</p>



<p>While BREIN clearly takes this kind of unlawful sharing seriously, the anti-piracy group does point out that not every illegal download represents a lost sale. Instead, it highlights the existence of studies which indicate that the &#8220;so-called substitution&#8221; rate is around one lost sale per three illegal downloads.</p>



<p>However, BREIN also points out that legal eBook platforms give potential purchasers the ability to sample parts of books before committing to buying them, so lost sales in the eBook sector are &#8220;probably higher&#8221; given the absence of the &#8220;sampling effect&#8221;.</p>



<p></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174447
title: Pirate Party MEP Elected Vice-President of EU Parliament
uri: Pirate-Party-MEP-Elected-Vice-President-of-EU-Parliament
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/1QhfwH0Cqfw/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-49686" src="media/8679efff.pirate_party_logo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate_party_logo.png" alt="" width="175" height="175" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate_party_logo.png 175w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate_party_logo-150x150.png 150w" sizes="(max-width: 175px) 100vw, 175px">When the Swedish Pirate Party was founded in early 2006, the majority of the mainstream press was skeptical, with some simply laughing it away.</p>
<p>But they were wrong to dismiss this political movement right off the bat.</p>
<p>Following their victory at the local elections, the Swedish Pirate Party secured a seat at the European Parliament <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-wins-and-enters-the-european-parliament-090607/">in 2009</a>. The success inspired people in other countries to form their own Pirate parties, and by 2014, the number of Pirate Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) had doubled.</p>
<p>During the last European Election, just a few weeks ago, this number doubled again to four, showing that the movement is certainly no fluke. While the Swedes were on the forefront in the early years, Germany and the Czech Republic now lead the way, with one and three MEPs respectively.</p>
<p>These Pirates in the European Parliament are not sitting idly by. During the last term, <a href="https://twitter.com/Senficon">Julia Reda</a> was at the forefront of many lawmaking discussions, <a href="https://juliareda.eu/2019/04/not-in-vain/">particularly</a> with regard to the new Copyright Directive. While Reda recently left Parliament, the new MEPs obviously have similar ambitions.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s clear that the Pirate Party will continue to play a vital role in the European Parliament. The movement can list another achievement too after the first Pirate was <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190627IPR55411/the-new-european-parliament-vice-presidents">elected</a> as a Vice-President of the European Parliament.</p>
<p>With 426 votes, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Kolaja">Marcel Kolaja</a> was elected with an absolute majority in the second voting round. He will serve as one of the fourteen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice-President_of_the_European_Parliament">Vice-Presidents</a> tasked with replacing the President as chair of the plenary if needed, as well as a variety of other tasks.</p>
<p><a href="https://evropapotrebuje.cz/kandidati/marcel-kolaja/"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174465" src="media/a3ced5b7.kolaja.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/kolaja.png" alt="" width="274" height="175"></a>The 39-year-old Kolaja is a Czech software engineer and activist, who&#8217;s been active in the Pirate Party since the start of the decade.</p>
<p>In his new position, he aims to promote transparency and digitization in the European Parliament.</p>
<p>&#8220;My role of a Vice-President would be to make the European Parliament more open and transparent, to help ensure that the rules of the Parliament are applied equally to all Members and to work on improvements of the rules where they are currently lacking,&#8221; Kolaja says.</p>
<p>The newly elected Vice-President also hopes that this experience in information technology and digitization can be used to benefit the European Parliament.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is my hope that my expertise and insights in these fields will be a valuable contribution in the future Bureau’s discussions on improvement of the work in the European Parliament,” Kolaja adds.</p>
<p>In addition to the vice presidency, Marcel Kolaja will also become a member of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) and a substitute member of the Culture and Education (CULT) Committee.</p>
<p>The three other Pirate Party MEPs were also assigned to various committees. Markéta Gregorová will join the International Trade (INTA) committee. Mikuláš Peksa will be a member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE), while Patrick Breyer joins the Legal Affairs (JURI) committee.</p>
<p>Needless to say, the Pirates have come a long way <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-piratebay-is-down-raided-by-the-swedish-police/">since the first raid on The Pirate Bay</a> in 2016, when they were first propelled into the mainstream.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174521
title: Premier League Seeks Live Sports Blocking Order in Ireland
uri: Premier-League-Seeks-Live-Sports-Blocking-Order-in-Ireland
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ADb1YnuiLUY/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/605213e1.PL-Lion-e1562310432434.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/PL-Lion-e1562310432434.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174523"/></figure></div>



<p>Blocking of pirate websites and services is now a global phenomenon. Mostly carried out by movie and music companies, around 4,000 sites are blocked by ISPs in more than 30 countries.</p>



<p>In the UK, the Premier League has <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-obtains-intriguing-injunction-to-tackle-pirate-streams-170309/">pioneered</a> the blocking of illegal live streams. Using various technologies and under the supervision of the courts, the football league is now able to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/new-uk-kodi-piracy-blocking-injunction-is-a-pretty-scary-beast-170314/">track streams in real-time</a> and have local ISPs such as Sky and Virgin Media block them in an effort to reduce piracy.</p>



<p>The Premier League clearly believes that this mechanism, which has been <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-obtains-piracy-blocking-order-for-2018-19-season-180719/">sanctioned by the courts twice</a>, is having success. According to a report from <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/premier-league-takes-high-court-action-to-block-illegal-streaming-1.3947032">Irish Times</a>, the league is now seeking to expand its blocking program to Ireland.</p>



<p>An application filed at the High Court demands that several ISPs including Eircom, Sky, Virgin Media and Vodafone, begin preventing their customers from accessing illicit services. At this stage details are scarce, but it seems probable that this will be a direct expansion of the program previously established in the UK.</p>



<p>The targeted ISPs have yet to comment but given the cooperation they&#8217;ve offered the Premier League in the UK, it seems unlikely they will put up a serious fight. As suppliers of TV content themselves, some have a vested interest in bringing piracy under control since it could make a difference to their own bottom lines.</p>



<p>Interestingly, Irish Times cites an anonymous source who says that the Premier League, in conjunction with Ireland&#8217;s national police, is already investigating people involved in the supply of pirate streams.</p>



<p>Who these people are is currently unknown but Ireland-sourced streams of TV content are easy to spot on pirate IPTV services due to the advertising in between shows being clearly targeted at Irish customers.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174547
title: “Stranger Things” Leaks Suggest Netflix 4K May Have Been Breached
uri: Stranger-Things-Leaks-Suggest-Netflix-4K-May-Have-Been-Breached
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/zOhkfsuCl0U/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-145677" src="media/97118de6.netflixlogonew.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/netflixlogonew.png" alt="" width="267" height="152"></p>
<p>Pirated copies of movies appear online every day in a variety of formats, such as CAM, DVDRip, WEBRip, and Web-DL.</p>
<p>The latter, which usually come from streaming and download services such as Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes, have proven to be a reliable source for pirates over the years.</p>
<p>In general, that doesn&#8217;t apply to 4K releases. These are protected by the highest encryption standards. In the case of Netflix, this is <a href="https://www.widevine.com/solutions/widevine-drm">Widevine&#8217;s highest level DRM</a>. Cracking this is seen as the holy grail by pirates.</p>
<p>While there is no confirmation that the keys have been cracked, a flurry of new 4K Netflix leaks suggests that there&#8217;s at least some type of vulnerability that allows outsiders to decrypt the original steams.</p>
<p>Over the past 24-hours several 4K releases of prominent Netflix titles spread across various pirate sites. It started with the entire third season of the Netflix exclusive &#8220;Stranger Things,&#8221; which came out yesterday.</p>
<p>The leaked episodes originate from the DEFLATE release group and are all marked as ‘INTERNAL’ releases, such as &#8220;<em>Stranger Things S03E01 INTERNAL 2160p WEB H265-DEFLATE</em>.&#8221;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/e1075c3c.strangerdeflate.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/strangerdeflate.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174558"/></figure></div>


<p>In the past, we have seen several 4K videos being <em>ripped</em> from Netflix. In fact, the first rips came out <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-can-now-rip-4k-content-from-netflix-and-amazon-151127/">four years ago</a>. However, the WEB tags on today&#8217;s releases indicate that these files were directly decrypted from the original files, which means that there&#8217;s no loss in quality.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;Untouched releases must be considered as anything that has been losslessly downloaded by official (offered) or unofficial (backdoor) methods,&#8221; official Scene rules dictate.</p>
<p>These untouched releases are rare. We&#8217;ve only previously seen these types of Netflix leaks for a brief period in 2017. At the time, the releases stopped following a Widevine update, a source informed TorrentFreak.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/bc0d2518.stranl.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/stranl.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174561"/><figcaption>Stranger Things leak (compressed, <a href="media/3b0246b5.strangerscreen.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/strangerscreen.png">36MB untouched</a>)</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>Exactly how the release group was able to pull off these new leaks is unknown. TorrentFreak reached out to Netflix for a comment on the matter, but at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The DEFLATE release group is no stranger to novel 4K leaks. Earlier this year the same group also released several movies from iTunes, including the entire James Bond collection. That was the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/flood-of-4k-james-bond-leaks-confirm-itunes-breach-190320/">first breach of its kind on iTunes</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The first Stranger Things leak was<a href="https://tarnkappe.info/deflate-knackt-kopierschutz-von-netflix/"> pointed out</a> by Tarnkappe but several other titles have appeared online as well. The release group <a href="https://predb.org/search/DEFLATE/all">UHDCANDY</a>, for example, also posted the first episodes from the latest seasons of Marvel&#8217;s Jessica Jones and Black Mirror.</p>
<p>The fact that two groups have been able to decrypt the 4K releases indicates that this &#8216;breach&#8217; is widespread. It wouldn&#8217;t be a surprise to see more titles appear during the coming days, until the hole is patched again.</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174433
title: Police: Scam Streaming Sites Are Exploiting Internet Users
uri: Police-Scam-Streaming-Sites-Are-Exploiting-Internet-Users
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/cjUEh83BZx0/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/c8c81047.warning.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/warning.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109065"/></figure></div>



<p>It is fairly common for anti-piracy outfits to describe pirate sites and devices as &#8220;scams&#8221; but despite being mostly illegal, they deliver what they promise and rarely attempt to defraud the public.</p>



<p>Over in Germany, a much more sinister operation is being reported, one that involves more than a couple of hundred sites that claim to be legal but are actually a huge money-making scheme for fraudsters.</p>



<p>In the example shown below, AsoFlix looks like a regular pirate streaming platform. However, the site claims to be legitimate, despite the fact that the irregular capitalization of its various movie categories suggests an unprofessional offer.</p>



<p>No content can be accessed before registering and when users try to sign up, they are asked to enter all of their personal details. This is where the trouble starts.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/caea028d.image-86.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/image-86.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174469" width="600"/></figure>



<p>In return for handing over their names, addresses, credit card and cellphone numbers, users are given a five-day free trial but according to police, this amounts to a so-called &#8220;subscription trap&#8221;. Buried away in the terms and conditions is a note that if &#8220;users do not unsubscribe during the free trial, your account will automatically be upgraded to a one-year premium account.&#8221;</p>



<p>In the case of Asoflix, that&#8217;s the princely sum of € 395.88 per year, charged in one transaction. Worst still, local news outlet <a href="https://tarnkappe.info/polizei-warnt-streamingdienste-locken-in-die-falle/">Tarnkappe</a> reports that the sites actually have &#8220;little to no works&#8221; on offer, which means a huge bill and no return for those unfortunate enough to sign up. Police add that they cannot say whether any content offered is licensed, although that seems unlikely.</p>



<p>The scam was first uncovered in 2018 but according to police, it is very much ongoing. They have published a <a href="https://www.polizei-praevention.de/aktuelles/abzocke-ueber-gefaelschte-streamingdienste-gigaflixde-und-andere.html">list of the domains</a> involved in the fraud which number around 220 (TF tests reveal that a number are now inactive), alongside warnings not to pay up. </p>



<p>The problem is that many victims are receiving pressure from the sites to do just that via bogus debt collection letters threatening to seize property, pensions, bank deposits, and even unemployment benefits. And in a sign of how sophisticated the scam is, police say that videos have been posted to YouTube supposedly featuring lawyers who advise that the demands for cash are legitimate.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/ecf3878a.csm_gadaflix_youtube2_cd48c2ef07.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/csm_gadaflix_youtube2_cd48c2ef07.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174474" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/csm_gadaflix_youtube2_cd48c2ef07.png 799w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/csm_gadaflix_youtube2_cd48c2ef07-200x150.png 200w" sizes="(max-width: 799px) 100vw, 799px"><figcaption><em>Video advising that the scam on GadaFlix.de is legal (credit: German police)</em></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>It&#8217;s worth noting that AsoFlix and GadaFlix (the site referenced in the YouTube screenshot above) are identical, yet they claim to be owned by different companies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a <a href="https://www.onlinewarnungen.de/warnungsticker/ot-inkasso-e-mail-droht-mit-pfaendungstermin-nicht-zahlen/">report</a> from Germany connects this scam with an earlier one involving bogus copyright infringement notices.</p>



<p>Since we highlighted AsoFlix above, we took a closer look at who might be behind the service. Strangely, given the heat this and similar platforms are under in Germany, the AsoFlix site actually lists its owning company as FOXRUSH FILMS LTD, England.</p>



<p>Whether this is actually the owning company is unknown, but a company by that name does exist in the UK having been incorporated in 2013. It is currently listed as dormant and since its inception has never reported any trading. Google Maps shows the address as a small mid-terrace house in a residential area of Coventry. According to EU databases, the VAT number provided by AsoFlix doesn&#8217;t exist.</p>



<p>TorrentFreak checked a number of the companies listed on these scam sites as their owners and many are incorporated entities in the UK. While it&#8217;s possible the scammers trawled Companies House in search of random companies to blame, further investigation by the authorities is needed to draw a definitive conclusion.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174347
title: MPAA Wants U.S. Govt. to Prosecute Streaming Piracy Operations
uri: MPAA-Wants-U-S-Govt-to-Prosecute-Streaming-Piracy-Operations
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Omiyp-F0C14/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-125426" src="media/fdb4ba62.streamingkey.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/streamingkey.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="167">The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been battling online piracy for years, but the problem remains.</p>
<p>Roughly a decade ago torrent sites were the main threat. In recent years that switched, first to cyberlockers, and then to online streaming.</p>
<p>While the MPAA has pursued civil lawsuits against pirate sites and services throughout the world, it believes that more progress can be made through criminal prosecutions.</p>
<p>In a recent testimony before the&nbsp; <span class="fontstyle0">U.S. House of Representatives, MPAA&#8217;s</span><span class="fontstyle0"> Senior Counsel </span>Neil Fried explains that these criminal cases have a much broader impact, using the Megaupload case as an example.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;Although the U.S. government does not take many such actions, those they do</span> can have a greater deterrent effect than civil suits because criminal cases bring more attention, along with the possibility of jail time for convicted culprits,&#8221; Fried notes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Indeed, a 2012 U.S. action against Megaupload—then the largest piracy &#8216;cyberlocker,&#8217; accounting for 4 percent of all internet traffic—increased lawful digital sales by 6.5 to 8.5 percent for three major studios in 12 countries,&#8221; he adds, citing an <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shutdown-boosted-movie-revenues-130307/">academic study</a> from an MPAA funded research group.</p>
<p>Hollywood&#8217;s anti-piracy outfit hopes that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) will continue to investigate piracy cases. In order to facilitate this, the MPAA says it has already reported several unnamed piracy streaming operations, hoping for a similar effect.</p>
<p>&#8220;The MPAA has pending a number of criminal referrals to DOJ regarding streaming piracy operations, with the goal of replicating a comparable uptick in legitimate consumption,&#8221; Fried notes.</p>
<p>These referrals have not been made public, but it&#8217;s clear that the MPAA would like to see some streaming-related criminal prosecutions. This could be streaming sites, but also illegal IPTV services, or companies that sell pirate streaming boxes.</p>
<p>The MPAA has fed law enforcement with information leading to piracy-related indictments on several previous occasions. The anti-piracy group triggered the criminal prosecution of members of the BitTorrent release group IMAGiNE, as well as the Megaupload and KickassTorrents cases.</p>
<p>The latter two cases are still on hold, pending the outcome of extradition requests in New Zealand and Poland respectively. Considering the slow progress in these cases, it could be that the DoJ is not too eager to take on another online piracy case just yet.</p>
<p>The MPAA&#8217;s criminal referrals are part of its<span class="fontstyle0"> three-pronged approach to combating online piracy. This further involves voluntary anti-piracy initiatives with third-party services, as well as civil lawsuits against copyright-infringing sites and services.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>The voluntary initiatives include agreements with domain name registrars, advertisers, payment processors, which are encouraged to cut their ties with known pirate sites.</p>
<p>On the civil action side, the MPAA&#8217;s activity has recently been coordinated through the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE). This group has filed civil cases against streaming box vendors and IPTV services, and also conducts <span class="fontstyle0">“knock and talks,” <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/ace-sees-piracy-reduction-efforts-pay-off-but-work-is-not-done-yet-190422/">targeting pirate add-on developers</a>.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>In recent years there haven&#8217;t been any criminal cases against streaming piracy outfits. The MPAA, however, urges lawmakers to ensure that the feds expand their horizons and pursue cases against these streaming piracy operations.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;Our hope is that Congress will encourage DOJ to move forward with those cases,&#8221; Fried notes in the testimony.</span></p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><em>The full testimony from the MPAA&#8217;s Neil Fried, was submitted for hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce (<a href="media/d04bac1d.housefried.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/housefried.pdf">pdf</a>) and the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, &amp; Transportation (<a href="media/42c5faf5.senatef.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/senatef.pdf">pdf</a>).</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174182
title: MPAA Now Controls at Least 3 ‘Pirate’ IPTV Domains
uri: MPAA-Now-Controls-at-Least-3-Pirate-IPTV-Domains
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/_1klLDaiSc8/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/b447d2ef.ace-logo.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ace-logo.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-140379" width="284" height="127"/></figure></div>



<p>Unlicensed IPTV services have been running for many years, offering thousands of otherwise premium channels to consumers for a fraction of their market price.</p>



<p>As recently as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/iptv-mass-piracy-thats-flying-largely-under-the-radar-161127/">three years ago</a> such services received little mainstream attention. However, the rise of piracy-focused Kodi add-ons has encouraged countless thousands of pirates to take a step up to sample the experience of a more reliable and generally higher-quality &#8216;pirate&#8217; service.</p>



<p>This rising popularity, which is inextricably linked to large volumes of people looking to stream live content, is being met with increasing resistance by anti-piracy groups. One of the main players is the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global anti-piracy coalition headed up by Hollywood, Netflix, Amazon, and dozens of other huge media companies.</p>



<p>Back in May, we <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-ace-shut-down-pirate-iptv-service-seize-domain-190517/">reported</a> how the domain of OneStepTV, a former &#8216;pirate&#8217; IPTV provider, had been taken over by ACE and the MPAA. No official details have been made available by ACE but it seems likely there may have been some kind of cease-and-desist agreement reached with its operator. We can now report that further domains have also been scooped up.</p>



<p>After being registered in September 2017, TVStreamsNow.com acted as the portal to another &#8216;pirate&#8217; IPTV service. Offering more than 500 channels for &#8216;just&#8217; $25 per month, the service gained traction among users who perhaps didn&#8217;t realize that superior products are available for far less.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/14a14d86.DO22MV7VAAAfFr9.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/DO22MV7VAAAfFr9.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-174421" width="600"/><figcaption><em>TVStreamsNow.com before the takeover</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>While many customers would have enjoyed the content on offer, this &#8216;bargain&#8217; would eventually come to an end. A couple of months ago the service disappeared after telling customers via email that another domain would be handling their transactions in the future.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s unclear whether that shift ever took place but there is clear evidence that the original domain is now in the hands of ACE members. Not only does it redirect to the official ACE website, but WHOIS details also reveal the domain is now controlled by the MPAA.</p>



<p>Another ACE victim can be found when visiting DoozerIPTV.com. As the image below shows, the platform offered &#8220;all the content you could ever want&#8221; while &#8220;eliminating extortionate monthly bills and contractual agreements.&#8221;</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/5db29e8f.image-80.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-80.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174189" width="600"/><figcaption><em>DoozerIPTV &#8211; how it used to look</em></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Unfortunately for its former operators, DoozerIPTV no longer offers these services, at least from this domain. After being registered in July 2018, last month it appears to have been taken over by the MPAA.</p>



<p>It currently redirects to the Alliance&#8217;s website like the other domains, along with a message that it&#8217;s no longer available &#8220;due to copyright infringement.&#8221;</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/8d8fde29.image-75.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-75.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174184" width="600"/></figure></div>



<p>Quite how many more of these takeovers have taken place isn&#8217;t clear. However, it seems likely that these three services won&#8217;t be the last to hand their domains to the MPAA following threats from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174350
title: The Scene: Pirates Ripping Content From Amazon & Netflix
uri: The-Scene-Pirates-Ripping-Content-From-Amazon-Netflix
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/oCsEbToNPtQ/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/65c5ecf6.dark-man-e1545826268958.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/dark-man-e1545826268958.png" alt=""/></figure></div>



<p>In recent weeks, TF was able to speak to a member of The Scene, the shadowy network of individuals and groups sitting right at the apex of the so-called &#8216;piracy pyramid&#8217;.</p>



<p>If the tip of this polyhedron represents the exclusive few, the progressively larger and lower portions constitute the increasing masses, all enjoying the pirated content flooding down, albeit without the consent of those at the very top.</p>



<p>Our <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-so-you-want-to-join-the-scene-part-1-190630/">introduction</a> dealt with a selection of the basics, from how The Scene is structured to who takes on various roles. Our contact &#8211; &#8220;Source&#8221; &#8211; runs his own release group, something we were able to verify by having a unique marker placed in a Scene release. However, he also touched on something that&#8217;s rarely discussed in public.</p>



<p>So-called WEB releases are videos obtained from streaming services, particularly Netflix and Amazon. Not to be confused with WEBRip content, which is obtained using technology such as hardware capture cards or software-based &#8216;capping&#8217; tools, WEB releases involve downloading the raw video files to a computer or server.</p>



<p>&#8220;Source&#8221; describes himself as a programmer with involvement with WEB releases. For security reasons he wasn&#8217;t prepared to identify which groups he&#8217;s affiliated with but he did provide an overview of the process.</p>



<p>&#8220;Content for WEB releases are obtained by downloading the source content. Whenever you stream a video online, you are downloading chunks of a video file to your computer. Sceners simply save that content and attempt to decrypt it for non-DRM playback later,&#8221; he says.</p>



<p>When accessing the content, legitimate premium accounts are used, often paid for using prepaid credit cards supported by bogus identities. It takes just a few minutes to download a video file since they&#8217;re served by CDNs with gigabits of bandwidth.</p>



<p>&#8220;Once files are downloaded from the streaming platform, however, they are encrypted in the .mp4 container. Attempting to view such video will usually result in a blank screen and nothing else &#8211; streams from these sites are protected by DRM.</p>



<p>&#8220;The most common, and hard to crack DRM is called <a href="https://www.widevine.com/">Widevine</a>. The way the Scene handles WEB-releases is by using specialized tools coded by The Scene, for The Scene. These tools are extremely private, and only a handful of people in the world have access to the latest version(s),&#8221; &#8220;Source&#8221; notes.</p>



<p>&#8220;Without these tools, releasing Widevine content is extremely difficult, if not impossible for most. The tools work by downloading the encrypted video stream from the streaming site, and reverse engineering the encryption.&#8221;</p>



<p>Our contact says that decryption is a surprisingly quick process, taking just a few minutes. After starting with a large raw file, the finalized version ready for release is around 30% smaller, around 7GB for a 1080p file. Subtitle files, which can be numerous on a typical WEB release, are not encrypted, meaning there&#8217;s nothing further to do.</p>



<p>Although evasive over the name of the WEB groups he&#8217;s affiliated with, &#8220;Source&#8221; told us his role involves creating scripts for downloading content in an automated manner from Widevine-protected sites.</p>



<p>&#8220;A simple example is a bot, where you feed a stream URL and a release gets downloaded, packed and uploaded to topsites fully automatically, with no human interaction needed,&#8221; he explains.</p>



<p>&#8220;Source&#8221; says that the decryption tools he&#8217;s familiar with mainly target protected content using Windows tools and Google Chrome. He also mentioned exploits for Smart TVs and other platforms but wasn&#8217;t able to provide additional details on those or the apparent exploit of iTunes which saw <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/flood-of-4k-james-bond-leaks-confirm-itunes-breach-190320/">4K content leak online</a> earlier this year.</p>



<p>However, he did reveal that, in an attempt to ensure that Scene decryption tools don&#8217;t leak out to the wider public, some versions of the Scene&#8217;s tools only work server-side and are protected by Hardware ID (HWID). The aim here is to restrict which machines are capable of running the software.</p>



<p>Perhaps surprisingly, &#8220;Source&#8221; went on to send us screenshots of what he said were two Widevine decrypter tools in action. One of them, which has been redacted to hide some sensitive information, is shown below.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/3aa46632.wvdecrypter.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/wvdecrypter.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174406" width="600"/></figure></div>



<p>Since we&#8217;re always protective of our sources, the supply of these screenshots raised alarm bells with us. If these decryption tools are so secretive, why would he put himself at risk by allowing us to publish images of them?</p>



<p>It transpires that in common with other &#8216;pirate&#8217; content, Scene-only tools sometimes leak out too. &#8220;Source&#8221; told us that the screenshots he provided were culled from older tools that were leaked and subsequently offered for sale on the wider Internet, so that&#8217;s why he is comfortable with them being published.</p>



<p>&#8220;There are countless other tools,&#8221; he added, &#8220;but I can’t publicly say about them.&#8221;</p>



<p>He did, however, point us to an online platform where the tools had been offered in exchange for bitcoin.</p>



<p>We spent some time looking around but couldn&#8217;t immediately match the screenshots to any specific software on offer. Surprisingly, part of the problem was the sheer number of Netflix and Amazon ripping tools being offered by various anonymous parties.</p>



<p>Given the high prices being attached to these products and their illegal nature (circumvention, in this case, would constitute a breach of the DMCA), we weren&#8217;t prepared to buy or test them.  However, it is clear that this is an area ripe for exploitation, with several buyers claiming that supplied tools do not work as advertised.</p>



<p>As a result, we can&#8217;t say for sure whether any of the software being offered in public is real, currently works, or indeed ever worked. It is obvious, considering the number of releases being made, that tools inside The Scene are working as intended, something that may have been underlined by the recent release of <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/stranger-things-leaks-suggest-netflix-4k-may-have-been-breached-190705/">4K video sourced from Netflix</a>.</p>



<p>But for pirates, this may not be the case for much longer. &#8220;Source&#8221; says that the flood of WEB releases (also known as WEB-DL in the P2P arena) may start to dry up &#8211; at least for a while.</p>



<p>&#8220;Widevine is expected to update their DRM, and the only working Windows-based crack (I&#8217;m aware of) is strictly regulated, and most groups won&#8217;t get access to it, compared to the current older tools not requiring any sort of server-side or hardware verification for use,&#8221; he concludes.</p>



<p><em>Part 3 of this series, dealing with the technical aspects of The Scene, is a work in progress.</em></p>



<p> </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174491
title: WIPO Aims to Cut Revenue to Pirate Sites With Newly Launched Database
uri: WIPO-Aims-to-Cut-Revenue-to-Pirate-Sites-With-Newly-Launched-Database
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/d_fNEiZlkA8/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-106368" src="media/e32a206f.piratefish.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/piratefish.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="136">In recent years, various copyright holder groups embraced a “follow-the-money” approach in the hope of cutting off funding to so-called pirate sites.</p>
<p>Thus far this has resulted in some notable developments. In the UK, hundreds of advertising agencies began banning pirate sites&nbsp;<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/city-of-london-police-launches-pirate-site-blacklist-for-advertisers-140331/">in 2014</a> and in <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/danes-deploy-disruption-machine-to-curb-online-piracy-171119/">Denmark</a> and elsewhere there are similar initiatives.</p>
<p>While many rightsholders and advertisers are positive about these developments, there is little international coordination. This is a gap the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) hopes to bridge with a new project.&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wipo.int/">WIPO</a>, which is part of the United Nations, was founded more than 50 years ago with the aim of protecting intellectual property. This includes combating online piracy, something it hopes to facilitate with its&nbsp; &#8216;<span class="fontstyle0">BRIP&#8217; Database, short for &#8220;Building Respect for Intellectual Property.&#8221;<br></span></p>
<p>The goal of the project is simple: allow <span class="fontstyle0">stakeholders from member states to report problematic sites and share this list with advertisers, so they can block bad apples. </span>This will result in less money going to pirate sites, making it harder for them to generate profit.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The idea for such a global database was first introduced by WIPO in 2017 and, behind the scenes, it was developed into a fully operational resource. According to a document released in preparation for a future WIPO&#8217;s Advisory Committee on Enforcement meeting, it is now ready to go public.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;The BRIP Database is now open for the acceptance of Authorized Contributors from WIPO Member States and Authorized Users from the advertising sector,&#8221; WIPO writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;It comprises a secure, access-controlled online platform, to which authorized agencies in WIPO Member States may upload lists of websites which deliberately facilitate the infringement of copyright.&#8221;</p>
<p>The BRIP database aims to cut revenue to pirate sites. In addition, it&#8217;s also useful to major brands who don&#8217;t want their products or services appearing on copyright-infringing websites.</p>
<p>&#8220;The intention is to reduce the flow of money to illegal website operators, to protect brands from tarnishment and to reduce the risk that legitimate advertising may lend an appearance of legality to illegal websites, to the confusion of consumers,&#8221; WIPO clarifies.</p>
<p>Each member state may appoint their own designated submitters who can add suspected pirate sites to the database. The Italian telecom regulator <span class="fontstyle0">AGCOM and the Korean copyright protection agency</span>&nbsp;<span class="fontstyle0">KCOPA have already tested it in advance of the official launch.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>In other countries, trade organizations and copyright enforcement bodies will likely join in as well. In the UK, for example, the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is likely to join, as they already maintain a similar list.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/000b0f41.bripoperandi.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/bripoperandi.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174497"/><figcaption>How it works (sourse: WIPO)</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>According to WIPO, international cooperation will ensure that stakeholders from all over the world can benefit from each other&#8217;s work. This is also helpful in order to block foreign pirate sites, which may not always be easy to identify due to language barriers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Another advantage is that local member states don&#8217;t have to set up their own blocklist systems. They can simply use the BRIP system and get going right away.&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/9a15abdf.flagspercountry.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/flagspercountry.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174499"/><figcaption>Flagged &#8216;dummy&#8217; sites (source: WIPO)</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>There are downsides to the BRIP database as well. For example, it appears that there is little transparency, as the public at large doesn&#8217;t have access to the lists of blocked sites. This could be a concern, as WIPO itself states that not all blocked sites are clearly copyright-infringing.&nbsp;</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;The operation of the BRIP Database is not based on any assertion by WIPO that any particular site has, as a matter of law, infringed copyright. Rather, the qualification for inclusion of a national list on the platform is that the list contains &#8216;sites of concern&#8217;,&#8221; WIPO writes.</span></p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;WIPO defines a site of concern as &#8216;an online location which is reasonably suspected by an Authorized Contributor of deliberately infringing or facilitating the infringement of copyright and related rights, whether in its country of establishment or elsewhere.”</span></p>
<p>Since the BRIP database doesn&#8217;t include any comprehensive information on why a site is included, this could potentially lead to over-blocking.</p>
<p>WIPO clarifies that it won&#8217;t get involved in any infringement related decisions. Its role is to administer the technical platform, to assist contributors and users, and to promote the BRIP database to a broad audience.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;The project responds to increased interest among policy-makers in methods of building respect for intellectual property which rely on voluntary cooperation, rather than on judicial or other compulsory measures,&#8221; WIPO notes.</span></p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;Its success will, however, depend on the extent to which it is adopted by Member State agencies and the advertising sector.&#8221;</span></p>
<p>The latter part is crucial. While higher-tier advertisers and major brands would like to avoid pirate sites, there are also plenty of advertising outfits that still <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-sites-and-copyright-holders-can-both-profit-from-advertising/">love to work with pirate sites</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In fact, there are many players in the advertising industry that <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/plenty-of-ad-networks-still-love-pirate-sites-150926/">specifically target them</a>.</p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p><em>More information on the BRIP database is available <a href="media/c22672c4.wipo_ace_14_9.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/wipo_ace_14_9.pdf">here (pdf)</a>, courtesy of the WIPO secretariat.</em></p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174600
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 07/08/19
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-on-BitTorrent-07-08-19
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/QmS0BNUAraM/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-172670" src="media/892672cd.shazam.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/shazam.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="210">This week we have one newcomer in our chart.</p>
<p>Shazam! is the most downloaded movie.</p>
<p>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 Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a>&nbsp;for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.</p>
<h5>This week&#8217;s most downloaded movies are:</h5>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Movie Rank</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>Rank <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-on-bittorrent-07-01-19/">last week</a></strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie name</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">Most downloaded movies via torrents</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448115/">Shazam!</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448115/">7.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oD7B7oiBtw&amp;t=2s">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437086/">Alita: Battle Angel</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437086/">7.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7pYhpJaJW8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2274648/">Hellboy</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2274648/">5.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsBO4b3tyZg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">Shaft</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">6.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD41XdWcmbY">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837563/">Pet Sematary</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837563/">6.0</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK0LNzU2TQI">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">Dumbo</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">6.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWpGdITSR4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(8)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">Captain Marvel</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LHxvxdRnYc">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">Escape Plan: The Extractors</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">4.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoipQuCpQ9Y">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(8)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126476/">After</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126476/">5.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLta4nDM10">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(10)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884052/">Pokémon Detective Pikachu</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884052/">6.9</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1roy4o4tqQM">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174140
title: Worldwide Torrents Suffers Extended Downtime, Again
uri: Worldwide-Torrents-Suffers-Extended-Downtime-Again
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/tFKqCWPSzhE/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-160202" src="media/7f3addb6.wwt.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/wwt.png" alt="" width="277" height="168">Worldwide Torrents was launched roughly three years ago, after the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-kickasstorrents-shutdown-one-year-later-170720/">demise of KickassTorrents</a>.</p>
<p>The site certainly isn&#8217;t the biggest torrent site out there, but it has a dedicated following and an active community.</p>
<p>Several users and uploaders of&nbsp; KAT have made the site their new home and they were later joined by people from ExtraTorrent, who had to abandon ship when their favorite site <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-shuts-down-for-good-170517/">shut down</a>.</p>
<p>Given this history, it&#8217;s easy to understand that Worldwide Torrents (<a href="http://worldwidetorrents.to/">WWT</a>) users get an uneasy feeling when the site does down. And when that downtime continues for weeks, as is happening now, people start to fear the worst.</p>
<p>Users who try to access the site, currently operating from the WorldwideTorrents.to domain name, are welcomed by a Cloudflare error message instead of the usual search box.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/08bb78bf.wwtclo9.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/wwtclo9.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-174609"/><figcaption>WWT error</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>WWT&#8217;s trouble started mid-June when the site first went offline. After roughly two weeks it returned briefly, but over the past week the downtime continued.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In an effort to find out more, TorrentFreak reached out to the operator of the site. Thus far, however, we haven&#8217;t received a reply.</p>
<p>We were able to get a hold of Nemesis43, a prolific uploader of comic books at WWT, who suspects that personal issues of the site operator may be playing a role. In the meantime, Nemesis43 has begun uploading to his backup <a href="https://www.ettv.to/">ETTV</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>For now, this backup is a temporary solution but the uploader notes that this could become a more permanent fixture.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t the first time that WWT has suffered extended downtime. The same happened <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/worldwide-torrents-suffers-extended-downtime-180822/">last summer</a>. After several weeks without an official update, the site eventually returned after switching to a new hosting provider.</p>
<p>There is currently no known ETA for WWT&#8217;s return, or if that will happen at all.</p>
<p></p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174618
title: BT Sport Subscribers Test Pirate Sites After UFC PPV Decision
uri: BT-Sport-Subscribers-Test-Pirate-Sites-After-UFC-PPV-Decision
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/X4BvPibatLI/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/57df298d.ufc-1.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ufc-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-174102"/></figure></div>



<p>The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the world&#8217;s leading mixed martial arts promotion in the world.</p>



<p>It is based in the United States and as a result, the majority of its events take place there, meaning that fans in Europe face having to stay awake all night if they are to watch live UFC events.</p>



<p>Since 2013, this has been possible for subscribers to BT Sport, who have enjoyed all live shows as part of their regular subscriptions. However, that all changed on Saturday night with UFC 239, which BT Sport recently decided shouldn&#8217;t be included in customers&#8217; packages after all.</p>



<p>Instead, people were told they&#8217;d have to pay out an extra £19.95 to view the admittedly-stacked card on BT Sport Box Office, a decision that went down like a lead balloon with fans, especially those who&#8217;d taken out a subscription solely for UFC events.</p>



<p>In the weeks leading up to the fight, there were long discussion threads on various forums (including BT Sport&#8217;s own) complaining about the move and suggesting a boycott.</p>



<p>Whether this took place at scale on Sunday morning UK/Ireland time isn&#8217;t yet known but fan outrage was clear to see on social media, including in a poll conducted by MMA reporter Niall McGrath.</p>



<center><figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">?? &amp; ?? fans! Will you be buying the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UFC239?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#UFC239</a> PPV on BT Sport?! (Share &amp; RT)</p>&mdash; Niall McGrath (@niallmcgrath4) <a href="https://twitter.com/niallmcgrath4/status/1146825864409210880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 4, 2019</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure></center>



<p>Of course, a boycott of PPV buying doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean a boycott on watching the event. Indeed, if fans&#8217; claims leading up to the event were anything to go by, many would be hitting the pirate high seas Saturday/Sunday to express their displeasure at BT Sport&#8217;s decision.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/95c56cab.boycottBT.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/boycottBT.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-174621"/><figcaption><em>Widely circulated &#8216;boycott&#8217; poster</em></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Since live events are mainly streamed from &#8216;pirate&#8217; websites, obtaining viewing figures is not as easy as tracking users in torrent swarms, for example. However, we spoke to a seller of &#8216;pirate&#8217; IPTV services before and after the event to see if there had been any greater uptake than usual.</p>



<p>&#8220;No more orders than we usually get on a Friday/Saturday/Sunday but more people definitely asked if we could get BT Sport Box Office for the fights. We couldn&#8217;t promise that channel in advance but we have others that give the same thing. Good enough,&#8221; the seller explained.</p>



<p>A long <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MMA/comments/ca5cbi/shoutout_to_everyone_in_the_uk_that_boycotted_the/">thread on Reddit</a>, which appeared after the fights finished on Sunday, patted everyone on the back who took part in the boycott. As expected, it&#8217;s littered with comments about BT Sport screwing over dedicated fans and, of course, people turning to piracy.</p>



<p>&#8220;It literally took me 40 seconds on my first duckduckgo search (because google censors a lot of this kind of stuff) to find a site where I was able to watch the entire event live in HD with no interruptions. Hard for a pathetic business model to compete with that,&#8221; one commenter wrote.</p>



<p>&#8220;Cancelled my bt sports and got an IPTV set up,&#8221; said another. &#8220;Probably the smoothest viewing experience I&#8217;ve had watching any UFC event. No commercials and no cutting the sound on interviews every time someone swears.&#8221;</p>



<p>And then things descended to the bottom, quickly.</p>



<p>With another fan declaring that this is the first time &#8220;in years&#8221; he&#8217;d pirated an event, the discussions continued with how that&#8217;s possible, where to do it, and the inevitable private messages where one can only guess at the content but draw an obvious conclusion. And this isn&#8217;t even a piracy-focused sub-Reddit, it&#8217;s /r/mma with close to 780K members.</p>



<p>While people will rightly point that this is a mere subset of BT Sport&#8217;s customers not paying an extra £19.95, the people who turned to a pirate IPTV service on Saturday/Sunday will have immediately discovered that ALL of BT Sport&#8217;s live content is also available for less than £10 per month.</p>



<p>If pirate IPTV gains traction with them (and their friends, and their friends&#8217; friends), £30 to £40 per month regular subscriptions to BT Sports could get boycotted too, along with those paid to Sky Sports and other companies.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2019/7/4/20681595/opinion-ufc-venture-into-the-uk-ppv-game-came-far-too-soon-mma-editorial">Bloody Elbow&#8217;s piece</a> on why BT Sport&#8217;s decision to go PPV with UFC 239 was wrong really hits the spot but only time will tell if the PPV model in the UK will persist &#8211; or if it will <a href="https://www.mmafighting.com/2019/7/7/20684904/dana-white-offers-update-on-ben-askrens-condition-following-brutal-five-second-ko-loss">go down with a huge headache</a> quicker than previously undefeated Ben Askren did during the red-eye hours of Sunday morning.</p>



<p> </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174641
title: uTorrent Now Includes Tokenized BitTorrent Speed
uri: uTorrent-Now-Includes-Tokenized-BitTorrent-Speed
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/25L5wTpm0lE/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/31e15d02.prohectatlas.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/prohectatlas.png" alt="" class="wp-image-161994"/></figure></div>



<p>More than a year ago, TF <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/tron-founder-plans-to-buy-bittorrent-inc-180525/">revealed</a> that Justin Sun, founder of cryptocurrency TRON, was planning to buy BitTorrent Inc.</p>



<p>The sale was completed in 2018 and was followed by an <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-unveils-new-token-to-pay-for-faster-downloads-190103/">announcement</a> this January that the company planned to augment the BitTorrent protocol with a method to speed up downloads using a new token called BTT.</p>



<p>The idea is that people can earn BTT by seeding content for longer, thus providing more bandwidth for the swarm. This bandwidth can then be purchased using BTT by those who want faster downloads.</p>



<p>A few hours ago, BitTorrent Inc. released a new version of the Windows uTorrent client &#8211; version 3.5.5 (build 45287) &#8211; with an early implementation of the promised features. The interface is largely the same as before but with the inclusion of a BitTorrent Speed button on the left pane. Pressing it reveals the following;</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/625d7044.speed4.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/speed4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174647" width="600"/><figcaption><em>The BitTorrent Speed dashboard</em></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>As indicated in the &#8216;balance&#8217; section, all new users are gifted 10 BTT. An AMA conducted on YouTube by TRON founder and BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun and BitTorrent&#8217;s VP of Product Justin Knoll revealed that this was to &#8220;bootstrap&#8221; BitTorrent Speed. The idea is to reward early adopters and create a little bit of supply so that people are able to use tokens to experience faster downloads.</p>



<p>The next step of the setup is to create a wallet in which to store users&#8217; BTT. The process is very simple indeed and only requires the user to input a secure password. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/f573ca57.speed6.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/speed6.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174650" width="600"/><figcaption><em>Enter a secure password</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>The process is very straightforward and once complete, it&#8217;s then up to the user to load up their uTorrent software with a torrent file of their choice. The fact that BitTorrent Inc. doesn&#8217;t get involved in this process was underlined during the AMA, with Knoll indicating that people should simply head off onto the web and find torrents themselves.</p>



<p>Tests shared with TF on a random torrent with several hundred active peers quickly revealed around 9 other peers offering a BitTorrent Speed &#8220;boost&#8221;, a fact revealed in the dashboard. With the &#8216;Speed Increase&#8217; toggle turned on, it was claimed that the download was 219.2% faster than usual. Any &#8216;bidding&#8217; for this claimed additional speed currently takes place automatically.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/0913b23f.speed9.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/speed9.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174653" width="600"/><figcaption><em>Alleged speed-boost</em></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>While the torrent speed would no doubt have gained momentum as more seeds and peers were found, switching the toggle back and forth didn&#8217;t seem to make much difference to actual download speeds in the client. Occasionally, pressing the button from off to on did increase the download speed but at times, switching the toggle the other way also had the same effect.</p>



<p>Without longer-term detailed network analysis, it is extremely difficult to see whether any positive fluctuations are a result of BitTorrent Speed or just regular peers and seeds ebbing and flowing as they usually do. For now, the new system can only be taken at face value and even then with caveats. </p>



<p>Certainly, sudden claims in the client that a 25,000%+ speed boost was taking place simply cannot be true, unless it suddenly stopped most transfers and then calculated from there. The fact is that not enough information is currently provided in the client to draw any accurate conclusions.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s also worth considering that before this feature was made available, the same bandwidth would have been available in the swarm without discrimination, so the only possible boost for uTorrent users this morning would have been obtained to the detriment of others in the swarm using a different client. Unless people were immediately seeding more. </p>



<p>Nevertheless, this is very early days for the system, something that was underlined in the AMA several times. Indeed, some users may notice that their gifted 10 BTT balance doesn&#8217;t seem to change in their client, a point addressed by Knoll.</p>



<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re probably unlikely to see [your BTT run out] with this early build, you&#8217;re more likely to see increased download speeds and a balance that stays approximately the same as when you install it. If you do run out, the way you can refill the wallet is by connecting it to another wallet or seeding torrents,&#8221; he explained.</p>



<p>Of course, the big push has surrounded the ability of users to earn BTT for seeding. However, that doesn&#8217;t seem particularly likely in the version just released.</p>



<p>&#8220;In this early build while we&#8217;re still evolving the product and getting a larger and larger userbase of BitTorrent Speed users, you should expect to see much more speed improvements and less earning for seeding,&#8221; Knoll said.</p>



<p>&#8220;The earnings you can expect depend on a variety of factors. Demand for the file is part of it, how many seeds are already available is part of it. It&#8217;s easier to earn if you&#8217;re seeding a file where you&#8217;re one of a smaller number of seeds than when there&#8217;s a lot of users who are trying to download it. You want to be in a file where a lot of wallet users are trying to get it.&#8221;</p>



<p>Finding those torrents is currently down to the skill of the user but BitTorrent Inc. suggests that in the future there could be a system that is able to &#8220;find files that are under-provisioned&#8221; in order to assist those looking to earn tokens.</p>



<p>One of the questions raised in the AMA is whether BitTorrent Speed is anonymous, something that was initially answered by Sun. The quality of his audio on the live stream was particularly weak compared to that of Knoll but he responded as follows;</p>



<p>&#8220;Sure, I think BitTorrent Speed isn&#8217;t changing anything over our existing product, so for BitTorrent clients and uTorrent clients we don&#8217;t collect any people&#8217;s name, their data, so we know who they are. So right now BitTorrent Speed is the same, so you can spend (inaudible) your BTT (inaudible) and we don&#8217;t have control over your assets and any identity,&#8221; he said.</p>



<p>Knoll then chimed in with a more detailed response that more accurately describes what will going on from a technical perspective.</p>



<p>&#8220;The BitTorrent protocol, I would say, is not entirely anonymous, in the sense that when you join swarms the other participants in that swarm have knowledge of your IP address. So in designing BitTorrent Speed, we didn&#8217;t really change things too much from that point of view.</p>



<p>&#8220;The only change being that you connect to another peer and are making a payment to that peer in terms of BTT payment, so there&#8217;s additional activity there that didn&#8217;t exist in the BitTorrent protocol. Like Justin said, that activity is not connected directly to an email address or other personally identifiable information, it&#8217;s just connected to a public key basically, that&#8217;s created as part of the BitTorrent Speed creation process.</p>



<p>&#8220;If you take it from your Speed wallet and put it on the blockchain, then it becomes subject to the anonymity guarantees of the blockchain which means that things are understood by pseudonyms,&#8221; he added.</p>



<p>&#8220;So it&#8217;s a publicly inspectable ledger and if you tell somebody &#8216;hey, my public key is XYZ&#8217;, then they can go back and look at your entire transaction history and that would start to apply if you take your BTT onto the TRON blockchain and disclose to someone else what your account ID is.&#8221;</p>



<p>As mentioned earlier, this implementation of BitTorrent Speed is only available on uTorrent for Windows but there are plans to expand this to Mac and Linux users in the future. Additionally, there&#8217;s also a possibility that users of other torrent clients could get involved.</p>



<p>&#8220;There are a lot of open source torrent clients that are based on common libraries so if we&#8217;re able to get support for BitTorrent Speed into those libraries then you could see support on a number of different clients that are more or less white labels of existing open source torrent libraries,&#8221; Knoll said.</p>



<p>Users interested in testing out the new uTorrent can do so <a href="https://www.bittorrent.com/speed/">here</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174648
title: Cooperative ‘Copyright Troll’ Lawyer Sentenced to Five Years in Prison
uri: Cooperative-Copyright-Troll-Lawyer-Sentenced-to-Five-Years-in-Pr
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/lTqv8T0tf2Q/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-108977" src="media/efd05bc4.trollsign.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/trollsign.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="167"></p>
<p>Over the years, copyright trolls have been accused of involvement in various dubious schemes and actions, but there’s one group that has gone above and beyond.</p>
<p><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/?s=prenda">Prenda</a> Law grabbed dozens of headlines, mostly surrounding negative court rulings over <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/prenda-spoofs-identity-wants-case-sealed-130815/">identity theft</a>, misrepresentation, and even deception.</p>
<p>Most controversial were the shocking revelations that Prenda itself produced adult videos and <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-helps-to-expose-copyright-troll-honeypot-130604/">uploaded their own torrents</a> to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirate downloads.</p>
<p>The allegations also raised the interest of the U.S. Department of Justice, which indicted Prenda principals John Steele and Paul Hansmeier <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/prenda-copyright-trolls-arrested-and-charged-with-fraud-and-extortion-161216/">late 2016</a>. The US Government accused the pair of various crimes, including money laundering, perjury, and wire fraud.</p>
<p>As the case progressed both defendants signed plea agreements, admitting their guilt in the fraudulent scheme. Last month this resulted in a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison-190614/">14 year prison term</a> for Hansmeier, and today,  John Steele learned of his fate.</p>
<p>During a hearing this morning, U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen convicted Steele to a five-year prison sentence. In addition, the disbarred attorney must pay his victims little over $1.5 million in restitution.</p>
<p>Today&#8217;s sentencing ironically comes 11 years after Steele was first admitted to the bar.</p>
<p>The lower sentence, compared to Hansmeier, comes as no surprise. It was specifically recommended by the prosecution, which stressed that Steele didn&#8217;t shy away from the ugly truth of his crimes and was very cooperative following the indictment.</p>
<p>&#8220;Unlike co-defendant Hansmeier, Mr. Steele accepted responsibility for his actions and immediately began zealously and passionately cooperating with the Government,&#8221; the prosecution said previously.</p>
<p>&#8220;Even before the Government shared the evidence with the defense, Mr. Steele was in their office speaking to numerous law enforcement agents<br>
and prosecutors about everything he did. He never lied and never minimized his actions.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to the US Department of Justice, Steele deserved a significant prison term. However, his cooperation and genuine remorse should be taken into account.</p>
<p>Based on the sentencing guidelines Steele faced a potential prison sentence of more than 12 years, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Langner recommended five years in prison instead.</p>
<p>Judge Ericksen went along with this recommendation. The Judge noted that courts “are not a tool in the box for anybody’s hustle,” adding that the five-year sentence was &#8220;imminently fair,&#8221; as the <a href="http://www.startribune.com/former-illinois-attorney-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison-for-porn-troll-scheme/512478682/">Star Tribune</a> report.</p>
<p>“I condemn the actions that you took in committing this crime. I congratulate you, however, on the actions you took” in responding to the charges, Judge Ericksen said.</p>
<p>Although both Hansmeier and Steele have been sentenced, the Prenda saga is not completely over yet.</p>
<p>Hansmeier <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-appeals-14-year-prison-sentence-190627/">previously informed</a> the court that he is appealing both the sentence and conviction. The Prenda principal challenges the reasonableness of the sentencing and the application of the sentencing guidelines.</p>
<p>A request from Hansmeier to await the result of the appeal as a free man was previously denied.</p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174667
title: Alleged Mastermind of Giant Pirate Manga Site Arrested in Manilla
uri: Alleged-Mastermind-of-Giant-Pirate-Manga-Site-Arrested-in-Manilla
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/K8ypSmPrm8g/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/68673fe7.anime-pirate.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/anime-pirate.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31311" width="261" height="186"/></figure></div>



<p>During April 2018, the Japanese government <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/police-launch-investigation-into-huge-pirate-manga-site-mangamura-180514/">introduced</a> emergency website-blocking measures aimed at reducing levels of copyright infringement in the country.</p>



<p>Several ISPs responded by blocking three leading pirate sites including Mangamura, AniTube! and MioMio, all of which had huge followings in Japan.</p>



<p>As the largest player, Mangamura was of particular interest. Founded in 2016, the manga-focused site was blamed for facilitating huge volumes of pirate downloads. Using a one-visit, one-infringement calculation, local anti-piracy group CODA estimated damages to the manga industry of around $2.91 billion.</p>



<p>Just days after the web-blocking announcement Mangamura disappeared, but police in Japan said they were still focused on catching its operator. Authorities in the Philippines say that person is now in custody.</p>



<p>According to an announcement from the Bureau of Immigration, on Sunday its agents arrested a Japanese-German-Israeli fugitive wanted by Japanese authorities for breaches of copyright law.</p>



<p>An intelligence officer of the Bureau&#8217;s Fugitive Search Unit (FSU) is said to have identified 28-year-old Romi Hoshinko (aka Zakay/Sakay Romi) at Ninoy Aquino International Airport as the person wanted in connection with running Mangamura between January 2016 and April 2018.</p>



<p>ABS-CBN published a photo of the arrested man on Twitter.</p>



<center><figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">PH Immigration Bureau releases photo of Romi Hoshino, alias Sakay Romi, who operated Manga-Mura. BI says Assn of Copyrights of Japan estimates cost of damages to be approx 320 billion yen (2.9 billion USD), worst violation of copyright law in Japan’s history. | via <a href="https://twitter.com/mikenavallo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mikenavallo</a> <a href="https://t.co/98OGAzE7T0">pic.twitter.com/98OGAzE7T0</a></p>&mdash; ABS-CBN News (@ABSCBNNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABSCBNNews/status/1148449826155057152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2019</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure></center



<p>The allegations of infringement against Hoshino are several times greater than those leveled at Kim Dotcom and Megaupload. In this case, however, there won&#8217;t be a drawn-out extradition battle when expelling Hoshino, a foreign national, from the country.</p>



<p>Philippines authorities say that after acting on a request from the Embassy of Japan in Manilla, the arrest of Hoshino was carried out in coordination with police in Tokyo. This will now lead to his deportation from the country.</p>



<p>“His presence in the country is a risk to public safety and security,” said  Bureau of Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente.</p>



<p>&#8220;We are in close coordination with our foreign counterparts who send us information about criminals who might be hiding in the Philippines. Upon knowledge, we immediately seek, arrest, and deport these fugitives.<br></p>



<p>&#8220;The Japanese embassy informed us that they will conduct the necessary coordination with the Israeli and German Embassy regarding the fugitive&#8217;s deportation to Japan,” he concluded.</p>



<p>In the meantime, Hoshino will be detained at a detention facility in Taguig City.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174732
title: YouTube ‘Blocks’ Popular MP3 Stream-Ripping Sites
uri: YouTube-Blocks-Popular-MP3-Stream-Ripping-Sites
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/tReA2i4tNQ8/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-117196" src="media/72389cbc.sadyoutube.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/sadyoutube.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="196">Free music is easy to find nowadays. Just head over to YouTube and you can find millions of tracks, including many of the most recent releases.</p>
<p>While some artists happily share their work, the major record labels don’t want tracks to leak outside YouTube’s ecosystem. For this reason, they see YouTube-to-MP3-rippers as a major threat.</p>
<p>Several prominent music companies have already taken legal action against key players in recent years. They managed to shut down sites such as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-mp3-settles-with-riaa-site-will-shut-down-170904/">YouTube-MP3, </a>blocked <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/aussie-music-industry-wins-first-ever-stream-ripping-site-blocks-190516/">others</a>, and are currently involved in a civil lawsuit against&nbsp;<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/major-labels-sue-more-youtube-ripper-sites-180806/">FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com</a> in the US.</p>
<p>At the same time, music companies have repeatedly asked YouTube to step up as well. While the streaming site threatened several stream-ripping sites with tough language in the past, it hasn&#8217;t taken any strong countermeasures.&nbsp;</p>
<p>However, it appears that this position may have changed. Several operators of YouTube-to-MP3 rippers have confirmed that the streaming service is actively blocking requests from their sites.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;All my servers are blocked with error &#8216;HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests&#8217;,&#8221; the operator of <a href="https://www.dlnowsoft.com/youtube-mp3">Dlnowsoft.com</a> informs TorrentFreak. As a result, the stream-ripping site currently displays a &#8220;service temporarily unavailable, we will come back soon&#8221; error message.&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/8d2ea49a.youtunavail.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/youtunavail.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174736"/></figure></div>


<p>The site in question is not alone. <a href="https://mp3-youtube.download/">Mp3-youtube.download</a>, another stream-ripper, is facing a similar issue. According to its operator, something changed yesterday evening and users now see a &#8216;this URL does not exist&#8217; error message when they try to convert a YouTube clip.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The massively popular <a href="https://www.onlinevideoconverter.com/">Onlinevideoconverter.com</a>, which is among the top 200 most-visited sites on the Internet, appears to be affected as well. While videos from sites such as Vimeo can still be converted, YouTube links now return the following error message.&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/9e097d3e.erroronlineconv.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/erroronlineconv.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174738"/></figure></div>


<p>None of the site operators we heard from was warned by YouTube in advance.</p>
<p>We also reached out to the video streaming service for a comment and further details, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.</p>
<p>While YouTube&#8217;s efforts, intentional or not, are effective, they will likely trigger a cat-and-mouse game. The operator of a popular stream-ripper, who prefers to remain anonymous, managed to get around the blockade by deploying several proxy servers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Many other stream-rippers and YouTube converters such as FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com are still working fine as well, but it&#8217;s not clear whether they were actively targeted by YouTube.&nbsp;</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174629
title: Sports Streaming Piracy Is Worth Millions to Sponsors
uri: Sports-Streaming-Piracy-Is-Worth-Millions-to-Sponsors
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/t2mZ99ZPhYo/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-116272" src="media/28facc52.premierleague.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/premierleague.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="199">The Premier League has been battling streaming piracy for a long time.</p>
<p>In recent years, the prestigious football league successfully obtained court orders to block sites and streams, for example. In addition, it&#8217;s been involved in several prosecutions.</p>
<p>This anti-piracy activity is no surprise as there&#8217;s a lot at stake. The broadcast rights for the Premier League are sold for billions of pounds. And when fewer people watch the games legally, the value of these rights goes down.</p>
<p>Interestingly, however, not all companies that are involved with the Premier League, or sports broadcasts in general, are hurt by piracy. In fact, for sponsors, these unauthorized viewers are free eyeballs as they are generally not factored into their contracts.</p>
<p>The scale of this uncaptured sponsorship value via pirate audiences has never been measured, but new research conducted by <a href="https://gumgum.com/sports" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://gumgum.com/sports&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1562669699161000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGQIS58H0mGZqtPxEIQd7rCoAzGQA">GumGum Sports</a>, in partnership with <a href="https://www.muso.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.muso.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1562669699161000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGCt16nXAEfDFvLYiSwjDoIOh8AlA"><span class="il">MUSO</span></a><span class="il">, aims to fill this gap.</span></p>
<p><span class="il">The latter company is known for measuring piracy across the world and paired with GumGum&#8217;s sponsorship and marketing analysis, they were able to quantify the value of this rogue audience.</span></p>
<p><span class="il">In their study, the companies looked at</span> eight matches of the previous Premier League season. They found that these matches had an average pirate audience of 7.1 million viewers across as many as 149 countries.</p>
<p>Most of these unauthorized viewers came from China, where nearly a million people tuned in per match, followed by Vietnam, Kenya, India and Nigeria. The U.S. and the U.K. took 10th and 11th places among the piracy audience.</p>
<p>These numbers were complemented with GumGum&#8217;s marketing and sponsorship insights. After factoring in the exposure of different brands in various regions, they came to the conclusion that there is £1 million in uncaptured sponsorship media value per match.</p>
<p>The majority of value is linked to field-side LED advertising and the sponsorship placements on the front of the players&#8217; jerseys. While pirates may not pay, they definitely see these sponsored messages.</p>
<p>Jeff Katz, VP of Partnerships &amp; Strategy at GumGum Sports, says that this research shows that there is a massive amount of sponsorship revenue which is currently overlooked.</p>
<p>“Clubs and sponsors have never been able to quantify media exposure from unauthorized streaming, which over the years amounts to billions of dollars in unrealized value.</p>
<p>“Now we have a unique data set that gives an advantage to brand sponsors while also enabling clubs to better demonstrate the value they’re driving on behalf of corporate partners,” Katz adds.</p>
<p>The question remains who stands to benefit from these findings. Sponsors now know that they&#8217;ve had a lot of free eyeballs over the years, which is positive.</p>
<p>However, they may end up paying more as a result, if the pirate audience is factored into future price negotiations for sponsorships. Although clubs may like the prospect, that&#8217;s obviously not what sponsors want.</p>
<p>The real winners, perhaps, are the pirates. While we doubt that the findings will stop the Premier League and other sports rightsholders from cracking down on sports piracy, it shows that pirates do bring some value to the table.</p>
<p>MUSO co-founder and CEO Andy Chatterley hopes that the findings will change the perception of pirates. He emphasizes that this audience should certainly not be disregarded.</p>
<p>“Piracy audiences have too long been disregarded as offering no real value to rights holders and distributors, but the reality is that these huge audiences still see the same shirt sponsors and commercials as people watching the game via a licensed channel,” Chatterley says.</p>
<p>In theory, it&#8217;s possible that the added value from sports streaming pirates might even outweigh the losses. But, to answer that question, one has to know how many pirate viewers would pay if unauthorized streams were not available. Perhaps that&#8217;s a good avenue to research next.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174699
title: Court Orders Cloudflare to Terminate Accounts of Pirate Sites
uri: Court-Orders-Cloudflare-to-Terminate-Accounts-of-Pirate-Sites
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/NRXAFlLpTcU/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-137767" src="media/c84f558d.cloudflarelogo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/cloudflarelogo.png" alt="" width="260" height="135">As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare</a> is used by millions of websites across the globe. This includes many pirate sites.</p>
<p>In recent years many copyright holders have complained about Cloudflare’s involvement with these platforms. RTI, a company owned by the Italian mass media giant <a href="https://www.mediasetplay.mediaset.it/">Mediaset</a>, took things a step further and went to court.</p>
<p>RTI complained that Cloudflare offered its services to various pirate sites, which made available its TV-shows, including Grande Fratello (Big Brother), and L’isola dei Famosi (The Celebrity Island ).</p>
<p>The broadcaster argued that Cloudflare could be seen, among other things, as a hosting provider under the e-Commerce directive (Directive 2000/31/CE) . And, since it was made explicitly aware of the infringing actions of its clients but failed to take action, the company could be held liable.</p>
<p>US-based Cloudflare disagreed. It countered that the Italian court didn&#8217;t have jurisdiction and that the e-Commerce directive didn&#8217;t apply to foreign companies, but those objections were rejected.</p>
<p>In a ruling handed down by the Commercial Court of Rome late last month, Cloudflare was ordered to immediately terminate the accounts of the contested pirate sites. These include filmpertutti.uno, italiaserie.tv, piratestreaming.watch, cinemalibero.red, and various others.</p>
<p>In addition, Cloudflare was ordered to share the personal details of the site owners and their hosting companies with RTI.</p>
<p>If Cloudflare fails to comply with any of the above, it must pay a fine of €1,000 for each day the infringements continue.</p>
<p>While Cloudflare doesn&#8217;t see itself as a hosting provider, the Court concluded that it can be seen as such, under European law. Among other things, its &#8220;Always Online&#8221; service hosts various website resources even when the site&#8217;s servers go offline.</p>
<p>This means that unlike an ISP, which merely passes on traffic, Cloudflare can be held liable for the infringements of its customers, if it deliberately fails to respond properly to copyright takedown notices or similar complaints.</p>
<p>Interestingly, most of the pirate sites listed in the complaint are still online today. Some are redirecting to new domains, but Italiaserie.org is still operational using Cloudflare. We couldn&#8217;t see any RTI content on the site, however.</p>
<p>According to RTI&#8217;s attorney Alessandro La Rosa, Cloudflare would violate the court order if any of the mentioned sites make RTI content available through its service. This would mean that Cloudflare is liable to pay €1,000 per day.</p>
<p>The ruling from the Court of Rome can&#8217;t be appealed and there are also two similar proceedings against the company before the same Court. These were filed by RTI and Medusa Film (both companies of the Mediaset Group) and remain ongoing.</p>
<p>Cloudflare did not immediately reply to our request for comment.</p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p><em>The full list of affected domains as mentioned in the complaint reads as follows: filmpertutti.uno,&nbsp; piratestreaming.watch, cinemalibero.red, altadefinizione.review, guardaserie.watch, serietvu.club, casacinema.news, italiaserie.org, italiaserie.tv, cinemasubito.org, and ctrlhits.online.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174766
title: Two Pirate Site Operators Jailed For a Total of 66 Months
uri: Two-Pirate-Site-Operators-Jailed-For-a-Total-of-66-Months
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/XW-Br1plnHM/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/c0a09f60.server-raid.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/server-raid.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="192"/></figure></div>



<p>The popularity of Usenet &#8211; sometimes known as the newsgroups &#8211; has been on the wane for some years now.</p>



<p>Nevertheless, the worldwide system is still home to astonishing quantities of pirated media, including movies, TV shows, music, games and software.</p>



<p>In November 2017, following an investigation by local anti-piracy group GVU, authorities in Germany revealed that they hadn&#8217;t taken their eyes off this significant avenue of pirate supply.</p>



<p>Sharing sites Town.ag and Usenet-Town were said to be at the center of the Usenet scene in the region, together facilitating access to well over a million copyright-infringing works. However, following raids in Germany, Spain, Netherlands, San Marino, Switzerland and Canada &#8211; carried out by a reported 182 officers from various agencies &#8211; the sites were shuttered.</p>



<p>One of the key men behind Town.ag, who was arrested in Spain and extradited to Germany, has already been in custody for almost 18 months. He and another suspect went on trial in Dresden last month. According to GVU, 16 trial days were set aside, in part due to the &#8220;persistent silence&#8221; of one of the men.</p>



<p>GVU announced this week that the pair have now been convicted, with the alleged head of Town.ag (Gerrit G) sentenced to three years and eight months in prison and the site&#8217;s technical administrator (Matthias E) receiving a prison sentence of one year and 10 months.</p>



<p>&#8220;[Gerrit G) had the idea for Town.ag, which he implemented himself and with the help of other accomplices,&#8221; GVU said in a statement.</p>



<p>&#8220;One of these accomplices was also in the dock in Dresden: Matthias E. was responsible for the technical side of the lucrative portal operation and carried out, for example, the server maintenance, but also provided copyrighted material on Town.ag.&#8221;</p>



<p>GVU says it has been closely monitoring the local Usenet scene since 2015, noting that around 4.5 million visitors per month flocked to various portal sites in search of movies, TV shows, games, and eBooks. Interestingly, it also claims that two dedicated Usenet providers helped to fund the &#8220;criminal network&#8221; with sponsorship deals.</p>



<p>The anti-piracy group says the massive raids in 2017 shook up the Usenet scene, with 20 Usenet portals shutting up shop in response. According to GVU, the effect was long-term, with all of the portals remaining offline today. Meanwhile, GVU says that its investigations will continue as criminal proceedings are ongoing.</p>



<p> </p>



<p> </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174838
title: Apple Needs to Tackle ‘Pirate’ Music Apps, Labels Insist
uri: Apple-Needs-to-Tackle-Pirate-Music-Apps-Labels-Insist
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/d4aUxu5f4sg/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/8b8ae225.pirateapple.gif" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pirateapple.gif" alt="" class="wp-image-29587" width="216" height="192"/></figure></div>



<p>The popularity of smartphones and their accompanying software ecosystems have given rise to large volumes of applications that appear to infringe copyright.</p>



<p>With its side-loading ability, Android is by far the most affected platform, with apps easily installable on millions of devices granting access to unlicensed content, including music, movies, and TV shows.</p>



<p>However, even when apps are pre-vetted for availability on Google Play or Apple&#8217;s App Store, some rogue tools slip through the net. This situation is unacceptable to most rightsholders but given the manner in which music is often consumed these days, recording labels tend to be the most dissatisfied.</p>



<p>This has prompted a large coalition of music-focused industry groups, headed up by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), to write to Apple demanding change.</p>



<p>In a joint request the RIAJ, the Japan Association of Music Enterprises, the Music Publishers Association of Japan, and the Federation of Music Producers Japan, to name just four, seek assurances from the US-based tech giant that it will &#8220;tighten up&#8221; its processes to prevent &#8220;unauthorized&#8221; streaming apps ending up on its platform.</p>



<p>According to the industry groups, &#8220;unauthorized&#8221; means any app that allows a user to stream music in &#8220;ways that fall beyond the intention of the music&#8217;s copyright and neighboring right holders.&#8221;</p>



<p>The groups don&#8217;t offer any specifics but it seems extremely likely that given the pressure on sites and tools that rip, source, or otherwise cull content from YouTube, these are prime candidates for Apple&#8217;s attention.</p>



<p>&#8220;The recent torrent of Unauthorized Music Apps flooding the industry is enabling users to listen to music for free, resulting in these app operators to gain unfair profits through advertising sales,&#8221; the groups write.</p>



<p>&#8220;These operators are not only committing copyright infringement, but also stealing profit from the music&#8217;s rightful copyright owners and legitimate service providers—profit that they would have otherwise gained through CD sales, downloads, and streaming.&#8221;</p>



<p>That CD sales are placed at the head of the list is unsurprising. Despite much of the world ditching plastic discs in favor of digital streaming, Japan still has a love affair with the format, albeit one that&#8217;s on the wane.</p>



<p>According to figures published by the RIAJ, 88.65 million CDs were produced in Japan during 2018, <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/08/national/japans-cd-album-output-fell-100-million-first-time-2018-industry-data-shows/">down</a> 13 percent on the previous year. That&#8217;s compared to 52 million units sold across the entire US during 2018. In 2014, around 85% of music sales in Japan came from CDs. Around 54% of consumption now comes from streaming.</p>



<p>The RIAJ acknowledges that Apple removes &#8220;unlicensed apps&#8221; from its App Store in response to takedown requests. However, removed apps sometimes reappear on the platform after being disguised as new tools. As a result, the RIAJ wants to be involved in the app approval process, to ensure that rogue software doesn&#8217;t appear on the App Store.</p>



<p>Calling for Apple to &#8220;strengthen its review process&#8221;, the RIAJ says the US company should begin &#8220;contacting and working with RIAJ for apps suspected to be Unauthorized Music Apps&#8221; while expediting takedowns for tools that violate Apple&#8217;s own terms and conditions.</p>



<p>&#8220;The music industry associations and music streaming service providers will continue to discuss and engage in efforts to tighten control over Unauthorized Music Apps, strive to build an honest and fair market, and demand speedy amendment of the Copyright Act that regulates leeching sites and apps,&#8221; the RIAJ concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174780
title: Judge Denies $10K Default Judgment Against Alleged Pirate
uri: Judge-Denies-10K-Default-Judgment-Against-Alleged-Pirate
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/6ECAXZl-9nw/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174854" src="media/c5fa4ecf.denied.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/denied.jpg" alt="" width="277" height="191">In recent years, file-sharers around the world have been pressured to pay significant settlement fees, or face legal repercussions.</p>
<p>As the most active copyright litigant in the United States, adult entertainment outfit Malibu Media has been on the frontline of these efforts in recent years..</p>
<p>The company, widely known for its popular “X-Art” brand, has gone after thousands of alleged offenders. Many of its targets eventually pay up and those who fail to respond can face costly default judgments.</p>
<p>New Jersey resident Joe Park found himself in the latter category. The man was named in a Malibu Media lawsuit last year and failed to respond. Not just to the settlement requests, but also to the lawsuit filed at the New Jersey District Court.</p>
<p>Without a response, the complaining party can request a default judgment. This is exactly what Malibu Media did. It submitted a motion arguing that it’s entitled to $10,500.00 in statutory damages for copyright infringement and an additional $559.99 in costs.</p>
<p>In many cases, courts grant default judgment requests, as there is no defense. This has allowed Malibu Media to collect dozens, if not hundreds of default judgments. However, in the present matter, U.S. District Court Judge John Michael Vazquez decided otherwise.</p>
<p>In an opinion released this week, Judge Vazquez denied the motion, concluding that Malibu Media isn’t entitled to anything.</p>
<p>The denial is based on a culmination of rulings in similar BitTorrent piracy cases. While Malibu Media portrayed the defendant as a persistent copyright infringer, the Court is far from convinced.</p>
<p>“The Court is not satisfied that Plaintiff has sufficiently demonstrated that the named Defendant actually committed the complained of acts of infringement,” Judge Vazquez writes.</p>
<p>The Court doesn’t deny that it has jurisdiction or that the defendant was properly served, as it required. However, after reviewing several relevant decisions in similar cases, it is not convinced that there is enough evidence to show that the defendant is liable.</p>
<p>Among other things, the opinion cites a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/us-judge-slams-copyright-troll-for-using-his-court-like-an-atm-181123/">ruling</a> from U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who previously denied a subpoena requested in a similar case filed by Strike 3. This highlighted that the IP-address evidence used in these cases is “famously flawed” and not trustworthy.</p>
<p>Judge Lamberth also criticized the litigation effort in general, accusing the “copyright troll” practice as a “high-tech shakedown” where courts are used “as an ATM.”</p>
<p>Judge Vazquez further cites last year’s <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/courts-want-something-more-than-an-ip-address-to-catch-pirates-181217/">Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzales</a> case. Here, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address by itself is not enough to plausibly claim that this person is also the infringer.</p>
<p>“Plaintiff will have to show something more than merely tying Defendant to an IP address in order to sufficiently establish copyright infringement,” Judge Vazquez notes.</p>
<p>This ‘something more’ can be quite a stumbling block for these cases, as the rightsholders often have little or no evidence to tie the infringements to a person, other than an IP-address.</p>
<p>The Court realizes that this puts Malibu Media in a tough spot, but sees no other option than to deny the motion for a default judgment.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">The ruling is significant in the sense that, without any defense arguments from the accused pirate, a court refused to grant a default judgment. While this is by no means the end of these type of lawsuits, it certainly represents another setback for the &#8216;copyright troll&#8217; efforts.</span></p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p><em>A copy of U.S. District Court Judge <span class="fontstyle0">John Michael Vazquez&#8217;s order is <a href="media/d9422084.trolldenied.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/trolldenied.pdf">available here (pdf)</a></span></em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174635
title: DISH Sues Hosting Company & ‘Pirate’ IPTV Customer
uri: DISH-Sues-Hosting-Company-Pirate-IPTV-Customer
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ODhtOAbdddo/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/62b29e54.dishc.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/dishc.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-160937" width="273" height="168"/></figure></div>



<p>Broadcaster DISH Networks is emerging as one of the most litigious companies in the world when it comes to tackling unlicensed IPTV providers.</p>



<p>A lawsuit filed this week in a Delaware federal court has the company targeting Serverlogy Corporation and several John Does, &#8220;together doing business&#8221; as East IPTV.</p>



<p>The twist here is that <a href="http://www.serverlogy.com/">Serverlogy Corporation</a> is a hosting company, reportedly offering bandwidth to a client running an IPTV service, but one that failed to act following numerous copyright infringement complaints regarding its customer.</p>



<p>East IPTV&#8217;s website is a professional affair, giving visitors the impression that it&#8217;s a legitimate service. DISH sees things differently, however, stating that the service is guilty of direct copyright infringement due to channels licensed to DISH being illegally broadcasted via the East IPTV service.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/bf670c43.image-87.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-87.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174714" width="600"/></figure>



<p>The suit claims that the people behind East IPTV capture live DISH programming and transcode it for streaming over the Internet, shifting it to other servers operated by the company for delivery to end-users. Customers can buy a set-top box with a one-year subscription for $199.99 and additional $99.99 subscriptions for each subsequent year.  </p>



<p>The lawsuit states that DISH has been sending infringement notices concerning East IPTV to content delivery networks (CDNs) for some time, with at least two CDNs removing DISH&#8217;s content in March and June 2018. However, the broadcaster says that East IPTV interfered with these efforts by moving their channel offerings to other providers.</p>



<p>Overall, 34 infringement notices demanding that East IPTV cease and desist its activities were sent by DISH between January 2017 and the date of the lawsuit. This means that East IPTV as &#8220;actual knowledge&#8221; of its infringements, DISH says.</p>



<p>Shifting to Serverlogy, DISH describes the company as a CDN that markets and sells hosting solutions, through which is has &#8220;knowingly contributed to, and reaped profits from, copyright infringement committed by East,&#8221; causing great harm to the broadcaster.</p>



<p>&#8220;Since September 11, 2018, Serverlogy has deliberately refused to take reasonable measures to stop East from using its services and servers to infringe on DISH’s copyrights —even after Serverlogy became aware of East’s specific and repeated acts of infringement,&#8221; the lawsuit reads.</p>



<p>&#8220;DISH and Networks sent eight notices of infringement to Serverlogy advising Serverlogy of East’s blatant and systematic use of Serverlogy’s services and servers to transmit, distribute, and publicly perform the Protected Channels to Service Users.</p>



<p>&#8220;Rather than work with DISH to curb this infringement, Serverlogy willfully blinded itself to East’s repeat infringement, failing to terminate them or take any action to remove or disable the infringing content.&#8221;</p>



<p>As a result, DISH says Serverlogy cannot rely on the DMCA&#8217;s &#8216;safe harbor&#8217; provisions. Not only did it fail to take steps in response to copyright complaints, the hosting provider does not have a registered DMCA agent either. On top, it has failed to adopt and reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy, DISH says.</p>



<p>In summary, DISH is suing East IPTV for direct infringement and Serverlogy for contributory and vicarious infringement, while describing the hosting company&#8217;s actions as &#8220;willful, malicious, intentional, purposeful, and in disregard of and with indifference to the rights of DISH.&#8221;</p>



<p>Alongside, DISH demands a permanent injunction against all defendants and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per registered work infringed, plus legal fees. At the time of writing, the East IPTV website remains in operation.</p>



<p><em>The complaint filed by DISH can be downloaded </em><a href="media/e8910993.ish-Network-L.L.C.-v.-Serverlogy-Corporation-et-al-complaint.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/Dish-Network-L.L.C.-v.-Serverlogy-Corporation-et-al-complaint.pdf"><em>here</em></a><em> (pdf)</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174550
title: Aptoide Removes ‘Popcorn Time’ and ‘Showbox’ Apps Following Piracy Lawsuit
uri: Aptoide-Removes-Popcorn-Time-and-Showbox-Apps-Following-Pi
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/JGRFYiwfAek/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174710" src="media/17358223.aptoide.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/aptoide.png" alt="" width="240" height="89">Aptoide is a third-party alternative to Google&#8217;s official Play Store. Among other things, it allows users to install a variety of apps on their Android devices.</p>
<p>The marketplace, which is operated from Portugal, recently accused Google of anti-competitive behavior after is was flagged as being insecure.</p>
<p>The brawl with Google is not Aptoide&#8217;s only concern though. A few weeks ago the company was sued by two movie outfits; TBV Productions and Hunter Killer Productions. These are the companies behind the movies &#8220;<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6791096/">I Feel Pretty</a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1846589/">Hunter Killer</a>&#8221; respectively.</p>
<p>The movie outfits, which are not new to piracy-related lawsuits, accuse Aptoide of facilitating massive piracy. Specifically, the complaint states that the company <span class="fontstyle0">induces, encourages and promotes the use of Popcorn Time and Showbox for blatant copyright infringement.</span></p>
<p>Popcorn Time and Showbox are free applications that allow users to stream video. They both support BitTorrent streaming and are regularly linked to piracy. This has led to legal issues for developers in the past, and the two movie companies are now expanding this to the app marketplace.</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;Plaintiffs bring this action to stop the massive piracy of their motion pictures brought on by the software applications Show Box app and Popcorn Time,&#8221; the complaint reads.</span></p>
<p>The movie companies note that Aptoide marks both apps as &#8220;Trusted&#8221; which means that they are &#8220;100% safe.&#8221; While that refers to potential security issues, the Plaintiffs see it as an endorsement.&nbsp;</p>
<p>According to Aptoide&#8217;s stats the two apps are quite popular. Popcorn Time was reportedly downloaded between 500,000 and 3 million times, while Showbox is credited with <span class="fontstyle0">5 to 25 million downloads. No surprise, perhaps, as both apps are described as great sources to get free movies.</span></p>
<p>The Showbox app is described as &#8220;all you’ll ever need to watch movies and tv shows for free” and “The app supports torrent downloads…&#8221; Popcorn Time&#8217;s description reads <span class="fontstyle0">“The legendary app lets you stream and watch movies and TV shows for free…”</span></p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/fca6e1ca.showbox-5.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/showbox-5.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174804"/><figcaption>Showbox on Aptoide</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>According to the movie companies, it&#8217;s clear that Aptoide promotes the apps for infringing uses.&nbsp;</p>
<p><span class="fontstyle0">&#8220;Defendant Aptoide promotes Popcorn Time and the Show Box app<br>overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, for purposes of infringing Copyright protected content, including Plaintiffs’,&#8221; they write.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p></p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/0ade74ca.apttrust.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/apttrust.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174800"/><figcaption>From the complaint</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>As such, the rightsholders demand statutory damages for the alleged infringing activities, which could reach $150,000 per work, as well as an injunction to stop Aptoide from offering these apps to the public.&nbsp;</p>
<p>However, it seems that the injunction is no longer required as Aptoide has already removed the apps from its marketplace. The original <a href="https://showbox.en.aptoide.com/">Showbox</a> and <a href="https://popcorntime.en.aptoide.com/">Popcorn Time</a> URLs, which are listed in the complaint, now return <a href="media/d8e22bd0.aptoide404.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/aptoide404.png">an error</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;We could not find the App you are looking for. Try to use the search form above to find your App,&#8221; the error reads.</p>
<p>Several other Popcorn Time apps were removed as well, even though they were not listed in the complaint.&nbsp;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not clear when the apps were removed but it happened after the lawsuit was filed. The movie companies mention that <span class="fontstyle0">TBV Productions, Inc. tried to get the apps removed before the complaint was filed, but to no avail.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>It appears that the legal action may have motivated Aptoide to spring into action. We reached out to the company for a comment on the app removal and the lawsuit, but at the time of writing we haven&#8217;t heard back.&nbsp;</p>
<p>While the case remains ongoing for now, Aptoide&#8217;s recent actions suggest that it&#8217;s willing to resolve the matter. However, that likely means that they will have to keep a close eye on other apps as well, because a <a href="https://guide-for-sb.en.aptoide.com/">new Showbox</a> was just added to their repository.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p><em>A copy of the complaint TBV Productions and Hunter Killer Productions filed against against Aptoide is <a href="media/7d843474.01-main.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/01-main.pdf">available here (pdf)</a>.</em></p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174677
title: Fake MPAA Asks Google to Remove Thousands of URLs, Including MPAA.org
uri: Fake-MPAA-Asks-Google-to-Remove-Thousands-of-URLs-Including-MPAA-org
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/qx1WujTstu0/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-158950" src="media/e4aaf19f.mpaa-new.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/mpaa-new.png" alt="" width="252" height="182">In 2012, Google first published a Transparency Report for search-related copyright takedown notices.</p>
<p>This rather enlightening <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/overview">database</a> allows outsiders to check what URLs copyright holders want removed from the search engine.</p>
<p>In recent years Google has processed more than four billion URLs. While most of these requests are legitimate, there have also been plenty of errors, mistakes, and in some instances; clear abuse.</p>
<p>Most of the cases we covered in the past dealt with rightsholders targeting perfectly legal content, ranging from <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/trolls-try-to-censor-torrentfreaks-copyright-trolls-coverage-161113/">news articles</a>, through <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-worlds-most-idiotic-copyright-complaint-150222/">open-source software</a>, to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-asks-google-to-take-down-facebooks-homepage-170429/">Facebook&#8217;s homepage</a>. Over the past year, however, we&#8217;ve noticed a different but equally disturbing trend.</p>
<p>Among the millions of notices Google receives on a weekly basis, there are now quite a few &#8216;fake&#8217; submissions. Fake, in this case, means that the submitter pretends to be or represent someone else. Someone who it clearly isn&#8217;t.</p>
<p>We first spotted this <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/scammers-hit-pirate-game-sites-with-irreversible-google-takedowns-181130/">late last year</a> when imposters targeted many pirate sites with suspicious takedown requests. These were presumably sent by competing pirate sites, trying to remove the competition from Google&#8217;s search results. More recently, imposters even tried to remove a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-flags-netflix-com-as-a-pirate-site-or-does-it-190602/">Netflix listing</a>.</p>
<p>Today we have another example that&#8217;s perhaps even more blatant. It involves the name of Hollywood&#8217;s very own anti-piracy group, the MPAA.</p>
<p>In recent weeks Google received a flood of notices claiming to be from the Hollywood group. While the MPAA is based in the U.S., the notices in question are sent on behalf of &#8220;MPAA UK&#8221; and &#8220;MPAA Member Studios DE&#8221;.&nbsp;</p>
<p>However, none of the listings below, including &#8220;MPAA Member Studios US,&#8221; are legitimate. It appears that someone is pretending to be the MPAA, sending takedown requests for tens of thousands of URLs.&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/8d24a9be.mpaafake.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/mpaafake.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174864"/><figcaption>Fake MPAA&#8217;s</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>Looking more closely at the takedown requests, we see a familar pattern emerge. The notices mainly target a small group of &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites. For example, over 10,000 URLs of the Turkish movie streaming site Filmifullizle.tv were targeted in just one week, with most notices coming from fake MPAA&#8217;s.</p>
<p>Filmmodu.com, and other Turkish streaming portals such as Yabancidizi.org, Fullhdfilmizleten.org, and Filmionlineizle.tv, get the same treatment, either by a fake MPAA or another scammer.</p>
<p>Interestingly, these imposters are rather sloppy at times. On several occasions they put the infringing URLs in the &#8220;original works&#8221; box, labeling the MPAA&#8217;s homepage <a href="https://lumendatabase.org/notices/18808168">as the infringing content</a>. Luckily for the real MPAA, Google didn&#8217;t remove it.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/2da5c4db.infringingmpaa.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/infringingmpaa.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174865"/><figcaption>Pirate MPAA?</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>As we have highlighted in the past, these imposters are likely to be competing pirate sites, who want to take out the competition by making their opponents&#8217; sites unfindable in Google&#8217;s search results. A clear case of abuse.&nbsp;</p>
<p>At the time of writing, Google has complied with several of the fake takedown requests, <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/owners/276371">removing</a> the allegedly-infringing URLs. However, the search engine does appear to be aware of the problem, and has labeled some submissions as being fake.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The imposter situation definitely doesn&#8217;t help the credibility of the takedown process. Google has its hands full and we imagine that the MPAA isn&#8217;t happy with the misuse of its name either.&nbsp;</p>
<p>That said, the Hollywood group certainly isn&#8217;t alone in this. Several other rightsholders and anti-piracy organizations have imposters as well, including <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/request/7517143">Marvel</a>, <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/request/7516537">Warner Bros.</a>, <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/request/7553282">MarkMonitor</a>, <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/reporters/234355">DigiGuardians</a>, <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/request/7546845">Marketly</a>, and many others.</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174810
title: Magnificent BitTorrent Speed or Half-Baked Magic Beans?
uri: Magnificent-BitTorrent-Speed-or-Half-Baked-Magic-Beans
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/3iM7I0bl0h0/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/c0516a31.prohectatlas.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/prohectatlas.png" alt="" class="wp-image-161994"/></figure></div>



<p>By now most people will be familiar with <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-now-includes-tokenized-bittorrent-speed-190709/">the news</a> that BitTorrent Inc. recently released a new version of its dominant uTorrent client.</p>



<p>The claims are that this will revolutionize torrenting, with people able to earn BTT in exchange for seeding. The plan is that this will make swarms more healthy because there is more bandwidth available. This, in turn, should speed up downloads &#8211; for BTT-spending uTorrent users, at least.</p>



<p>The idea of a torrent client allocating bandwidth to peers via financial discrimination is contrary to the broad aims of the original BitTorrent protocol. As such it is a divisive and sensitive topic. Nevertheless, we wanted to find out more because if it does work, loyalty to tradition might be a thing of the past.</p>



<p>As reported during launch week, all downloaders of the new uTorrent were gifted 10 BTT to bootstrap the system. One way or another, we were determined to make this value change. However, despite extensive seeding of in-demand and low-seeded torrents alike, it stubbornly remained the same, despite the client insisting that there were plenty of BTT-enabled peers in the swarms.</p>



<p>Meanwhile, crypto-focused people appearing in BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun&#8217;s Twitter feed were apparently having huge success, raking in more than a dollar&#8217;s worth of BTT after seeding dozens of torrents during the first day.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Not far from my first 1000 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BTT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BTT</a> earned <a href="https://twitter.com/justinsuntron?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@justinsuntron</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Tron?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Tron</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Trx?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Trx</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TronSociety?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TronSociety</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TronBlocks?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TronBlocks</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BitTorrentSpeed?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BitTorrentSpeed</a> <a href="https://t.co/Br6csPQvb4">pic.twitter.com/Br6csPQvb4</a></p>&mdash; Dave [Tron-Society] (@redpillblue1) <a href="https://twitter.com/redpillblue1/status/1148611047814848516?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2019</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<p>This success raised a few eyebrows because one of our sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told us July 10 that after running two instances of the software, one with 6.5TB seeded and another with 1.1TB downloaded, he hadn&#8217;t made or lost a penny, with his BTT stubbornly sitting at 10 BTT. Some people just can&#8217;t catch a break, it seems.</p>



<p>Of course, these uploads and downloads have to be made to and from BTT-enabled peers to count, so it&#8217;s possible (although a little improbable) that not a single uTorrent user with the feature enabled entered any of the swarms being serviced by the expert torrent user mentioned above.</p>



<p>However, the crypto-minded Twitter user in Sun&#8217;s feed was kind enough to hand out some advice, including getting torrents from BitTorrent&#8217;s own &#8216;<a href="https://now.bt.co/">Now</a>&#8216; index. That felt like a good idea since users of that resource might be more likely to be running uTorrent with BTT enabled than random torrent users elsewhere. Particularly those who prefer open-source software rather than the proprietary offering from BitTorrent.</p>



<p>To allow us to do some tests over a number of minutes, we needed a reasonably-sized torrent from the Now resource. We picked a 416MB file called &#8220;Live From Brixton and Beyond&#8221; since most of the other files were too small to measure beyond a few seconds.</p>



<p>Our aim was to find plenty of BTT-powered uTorrent users ready to boost our download speeds, spend some of our own BTT, potentially earn some BTT back, and test out exactly how much faster these downloads can go with this new system promising to change the world.</p>



<p>To do this we downloaded the file detailed above six times in total &#8211; three times with BitTorrent Speed enabled and three times without. Each Speed-enabled download was followed by a non-Speed transfer directly after, to ensure that the swarm conditions stayed roughly the same throughout.</p>



<p>Each &#8216;Speed&#8217; download initiated would enable us to see the number of BTT-enabled peers in the swarm prepared to connect to us (the client provides this number), see the promised speed boost (it also provides that), then compare the promised boosts with the results of an equal number of downloads with everything turned off.</p>



<p>The rough images below show the following: Our download reference number at the top, BTT balance, promised Speed boost in MB/s, number of peers (we allowed this to reach a minimum of 15 before taking a screenshot) followed by the percentage Speed boost. </p>



<p>Underneath that are two further screenshots showing stats from the uTorrent client. The first reveals the download time elapsed with Speed turned on, the second with Speed turned off. All screenshots of transfers were taken as close to one second remaining as possible to show that no transfers were extended beyond the downloading phase, which would distort download times.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="media/68a6eeed.Speed1Final.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/Speed1Final.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174818"/><figcaption><em>Downloads 1 and 2</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>As the image above shows, 24 BTT-enabled peers wanted to do business with the promise of increasing download speeds massively. However, the &#8220;download speed increase&#8221; bar is next to useless as a measurement tool (particularly when a torrent is just starting) and as the final elapsed times show, the Speed boost &#8211; if there is any at all as a result of spending BTT &#8211; is pretty small.</p>



<p>So, on to Downloads 3 and 4, the first with Speed, the second without. Again, it&#8217;s exactly the same file and as close to the same swarm as possible by executing both transfers immediately after the first batch. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="media/99895438.Speed2Final.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/Speed2Final.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174819"/><figcaption><em>Downloads 3 and 4</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>The results show that the Speed-enabled transfer took 28 seconds less than the one without, but given the promises of massive speed boosts when the torrent first started, we can conclude that the figures in the client are misleading at best. So, onto downloads 5 and 6 as quickly as possible, to ensure a consistent swarm.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="media/e0869fdc.Speed3Final.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/Speed3Final.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174821"/><figcaption><em>Downloads 5 and 6</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>As the transfer stats for Download 5 show, the elapsed time (6m 16s) is remarkably consistent when compared to Download 1 (6m 14s) and Download 4 (6m 12s), a testament to the stability of the swarm. It&#8217;s worth noting that Download 4 (the fastest of the three) was a test with Speed turned off.</p>



<p>Importantly, we can also see that during this final test the results were reversed over the previous one, with the non-Speed Download 6 trumping the BTT-powered Download 5 by 43 seconds.</p>



<p>Finally, we decided to put two torrent clients into exactly the same swarm. One of the clients was uTorrent with Speed turned on, the other was a basic Deluge client. We loaded the same torrent into both and gave uTorrent a small head start, basically the time it took to move the mouse over to Deluge and trigger the start. This is what uTorrent promised as a boost;</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="media/581ef390.speed-claim.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/speed-claim.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174829" width="600"/><figcaption><em>More than 320% speed increase offered&#8230;</em></figcaption></figure></div>



<p>As the video below shows, uTorrent managed to connect to many more seeders than Deluge and the performance of each client differed quite a bit in other areas too. Crucially, however, the downloads in both clients finished within a second of each other.</p>


<p>
<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style>
</p>
<div class="embed-container"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gE5VbV49zD4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>


<p>It&#8217;s important to note that there are many moving parts in any torrent swarm but the bottom line here is that when a BTT-enabled uTorrent client was placed in a swarm with many other clients with the same ability, it performed no better than one without, despite lofty claims to the contrary.</p>



<p>Of course, we should also remind people that with Deluge (in this case) people won&#8217;t earn any BTT for seeding but we&#8217;ve already established that the figure of 10 BTT that we began with has never changed since the client was installed.</p>



<p>Magic beans? People should taste them themselves before making their own minds up. Maybe they&#8217;ll taste better in future&#8230;.we&#8217;ll see.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174900
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 07/15/19
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-on-BitTorrent-07-15-19
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/MuNB6nA7xB8/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174903" src="media/832daf69.hellboy.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/hellboy.jpg" alt="" width="259" height="194" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/hellboy.jpg 259w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/hellboy-200x150.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px">This week we have three newcomers in our chart.</p>
<p>Hellboy is the most downloaded movie.</p>
<p>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 Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.</p>
<h5>This week&#8217;s most downloaded movies are:</h5>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Movie Rank</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>Rank <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-on-bittorrent-07-08-19/">last week</a></strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie name</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">Most downloaded movies via torrents</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2274648/">Hellboy</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2274648/">5.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsBO4b3tyZg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437086/">Alita: Battle Angel</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437086/">7.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7pYhpJaJW8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448115/">Shazam!</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448115/">7.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oD7B7oiBtw&amp;t=2s">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7558302/">Lying and Stealing</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7558302/">4.9</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ1SgV21W_E">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2499472/">Point Blank</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2499472/">5.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha2O-LdNoqE">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">Shaft</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">6.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD41XdWcmbY">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">Dumbo</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3861390/">6.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWpGdITSR4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">Missing link</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/">6.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6jCNhebfg8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(7)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">Captain Marvel</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LHxvxdRnYc">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(8)</td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">Escape Plan: The Extractors</a></td>
<td><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6772804/">4.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoipQuCpQ9Y">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174204
title: UK Pirate Site Blocking Requests Have Stopped, For Now
uri: UK-Pirate-Site-Blocking-Requests-Have-Stopped-For-Now
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/bEkzWxeQdUk/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-154673" src="media/41db868c.ukflagwallblocked.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ukflagwallblocked.jpg" alt="" width="277" height="177">Website blocking is without a doubt one of the favorite anti-piracy tools of the entertainment industries.</p>
<p>The UK has been a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/megashare-viooz-watch32-zmovie-blocked-140311/">leader on this front</a>. Since <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-forces-uk-isp-to-block-newzbin-usenet-site-110728/">2011</a>, the High Court has ordered ISPs to block access to many popular pirate sites.</p>
<p>Over time the number of blocked URLs in the UK has grown steadily to well over 1,000. This includes many popular torrent, streaming, and direct download sites, which remain barred today.</p>
<p>We have covered these efforts extensively here at TorrentFreak. However, since <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-piracy-blocklist-expands-with-123movies-and-other-streaming-sites-161028/">late 2016</a> something appears to have changed. The movie industry&#8217;s MPA(A) and the music industry&#8217;s BPI suddenly stopped submitting new requests.</p>
<p>The latest regular blocking order dates back nearly three years. While the Premier League did request some &#8220;dynamic&#8221; blockades of streaming related IP-addresses more recently, there have been no new efforts targeting traditional pirate sites.</p>
<p>This lack of new blocking requests is striking, especially since the UK model is often used as a prime example of anti-piracy enforcement around the world. Just a few months ago, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-and-riaa-want-site-blocking-in-new-us-uk-trade-deal-190122/">MPAA and RIAA argued</a> that it should become part of a possible US-UK trade deal.</p>
<p>“Website blocking has been successful in the United Kingdom with 63 music sites being ordered to be blocked following music right holders’ initiatives. On average this produces a reduction in the use of those sites by UK users by approximately 75 percent,” the RIAA said at the time.</p>
<p>Despite this effectiveness, UK piracy site-blocking efforts have been rather stagnant. While older court order are sill updated with new domain names, no new sites have been targeted by the MPA(A) and BPI in years. As such, new pirate sites can flourish.</p>
<p>TorrentFreak reached out to the MPA and BPI for a comment on this apparent slowdown. Neither organization gave a concrete reason for the absence of recent applications.</p>
<p>MPA informed TorrentFreak that it will continue to use a range of different methods for its enforcement efforts around the world. That includes working with local enforcement agencies to refer criminal cases, offering consumers new and innovative ways to access content, as well as seeking court orders to block access to pirate sites.</p>
<p>&#8220;The MPA will continue to use this range of methods as appropriate in the UK as we do around the world. Ensuring that filmmakers everywhere are compensated for their work and that revenues can be reinvested in new productions continues to be the number one priority for the MPA,&#8221; the group said.</p>
<p>BPI also stressed that site-blocking remains part of its anti-piracy toolbox.</p>
<p>“There are a very wide range of effective and complementary tools we use to reduce music piracy &#8211; site blocking is just a part of these,&#8221; a BPI spokesperson told us.</p>
<p>BPI&#8217;s other tools include delisting infringing URLs from search engines, site demotion under the search engine Voluntary Code of Practice, direct litigation against sites, criminal investigations, disrupting money flows to pirate sites, anti-piracy partnerships with online platforms, and consumer education.</p>
<p>The music group didn&#8217;t provide any details that explain why no new blocking orders were requested in recent years. However, it suggests that other tools are more appropriate at the current time.</p>
<p>“The mix of techniques we use varies over time and reflects the most appropriate strategy for dealing with a given problem at a given time,&#8221; the BPI spokesperson says.</p>
<p>&#8220;Having obtained High Court orders to block many of the major pirate brands, over the last few years other approaches have been effective to continue the reduction in music piracy. However, website blocking remains part of the mix and we will continue to use it in appropriate cases.”</p>
<p>The question remains why site blocking is seen as less appropriate. Perhaps the rightsholders feel that requesting additional blockades is not worth the resources, compared to other anti-piracy initiatives.</p>
<p>Part of the reason may be that the blocking orders can be quite expensive. Previously, it was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-soaring-financial-cost-of-blocking-pirate-sites-141019/">estimated</a> that &nbsp;an unopposed application for a section 97A blocking order is roughly £14,000 per website, while maintaining it costs an additional £3,600 per year.</p>
<p>With well over a hundred sites blocked, the costs are quite significant, to say the least.</p>
<p>While there haven&#8217;t been any new requests, the previously ordered blockades are still in place, of course. That being said, we have to note that these are not effective everywhere. When we tried to access The Pirate Bay on a Virgin connection this week, it was freely accessible.</p>
<p>While the notorious pirate site may still be blocked on other ISPs, workarounds are not hard to find. At the time of writing PirateProxy.ch, a TPB proxy,&nbsp; is among the 150 most-visited websites in the UK.</p>
<p>That said, rightsholders were never under the illusion that they can prevent the most determined pirates from accessing these sites. They simply want to dissuade casual pirates, and they feel that the current site blocking efforts are doing their job.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174919
title: Court Questions Whether Ebook ‘Pirate’ Site Operator Can Be Sued in Texas
uri: Court-Questions-Whether-Ebook-Pirate-Site-Operator-Can-Be-Sued-i
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ECuM7kmcD0w/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/24879ea8.3geINt6a_400x400.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/3geINt6a_400x400.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="256"/></figure></div>



<p>Back in March, Travis McCrea, the former leader of the Pirate Party of Canada, faced mounting opposition against his eBook platform, Ebook.bike. </p>



<p>Following in the footsteps of his similar creation TUEBL (The Ultimate eBook Library), Ebook.bike allows users to upload and download eBooks, some of which have turned out to be copyright-infringing. </p>



<p>Despite McCrea taking content down following copyright notices, large numbers of authors <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/former-pirate-party-leader-trolls-authors-to-push-traffic-to-ebook-site-190306/">weren&#8217;t impressed</a>, with some urging legal action. McCrea responded by <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/travis-mcrae-sue-me-over-ebook-site-i-want-the-bs-over-done-with-190316/">inviting</a> someone to sue.</p>



<p>Author John Van Stry took on the challenge by suing McCrea and alleged business partner Francisco Humberto Dias (doing business as ‘Frantech Solutions’) in a Texas court for direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement.</p>



<p>&#8220;Mr. McCrea has a long and proud history of pervasive, blatant, and egregious violations of other persons’ intellectual property rights,&#8221; the complaint read.</p>



<p>After the complaint was filed on March 27, 2019, the docket reports that McCrea was served on May 20. Eight days later, Van Stry requested the clerk to file an entry for default, which was actioned a day later. In June, Van Stry&#8217;s lawyers filed for a default judgment. </p>



<p>Claiming direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement in respect of 12 books written by Van Stry and allegedly distributed on eBook.bike, the author asked for $15,000 in statutory damages for each of the infringed works. He further demanded that McCrea should pay attorneys&#8217; fees and costs. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="media/60712355.image-89.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/image-89.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174923"/><figcaption><em>From the proposed judgment</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>On Friday, Judge William C. Bryson handed down an order but it wasn&#8217;t a straightforward rubber-stamping of the proposed judgment and doesn&#8217;t lay the matter to rest. Since McCrea has chosen not to participate in proceedings thus far, the Judge writes that the Court must consider whether a default judgment can be handed down and if so, what form it would take.</p>



<p>To begin, the Court needed to determine whether McCrea has entered an appearance in the case. That standard was apparently met after McCrea reportedly sent a signed email indicating that he was prepared to accept email service in the case. A later email from McCrea reportedly had him threatening a countersuit for libel and proposing an offer to settle.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/444fc3f9.image-90.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/image-90.png" alt="" class="wp-image-174926" width="600"/><figcaption><em>Email allegedly from McCrea presented to the Court</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>The Court also needed to determine whether it has subject matter jurisdiction. While that was quickly established, the question of personal jurisdiction over McCrea appears less straightforward, which is a problem because, without that, any judgment would be void.</p>



<p>In his order, the Judge explains that there are two bases for personal jurisdiction &#8211; general and specific.</p>



<p>&#8220;General personal jurisdiction is available when the defendant’s contacts with the forum State are &#8216;continuous and systematic&#8217;,&#8221; the Judge notes, adding that specific personal jurisdiction &#8220;must be based on activities that arise out of or relate to the cause of action, and can exist even if the defendant’s contacts are not continuous and systematic.”</p>



<p>In this case, the Court found that it &#8220;plainly&#8221; does not have general jurisdiction over McCrea as the complaint offered no evidence of that. &#8220;The question, therefore, is whether this Court has specific jurisdiction over Mr. McCrea based on particular acts relating to the cause of action having a sufficient relationship with the forum to support a finding of jurisdiction.&#8221;</p>



<p>In summary, based on the claims and allegations in the complaint, Judge Bryson says he doesn&#8217;t have enough evidence before him to conclude that the Court has personal jurisdiction over McCrea and as such it will not be handing down a default judgment at this time.</p>



<p>Instead, the parties have been told to file simultaneous briefs within 14 days, each detailing whether the Court has personal jurisdiction over McCrea, considering whether the injury to the copyright holder occurred in Texas, whether that injury is sufficient enough to imply a &#8220;substantial connection&#8221; with the forum/state, and whether McCrea knew that &#8220;his acts would be felt&#8221; by Van Stry in Texas. The Judge specifically asks both parties to consider McCrea&#8217;s residence outside the United States.</p>



<p>All of that said and taking McCrea&#8217;s general non-participation in the process into consideration, the Court says that Van Stry&#8217;s factual claims are enough for it to find McCrea liable for copyright infringement in the 12 books. If personal jurisdiction can be established to the Court&#8217;s satisfaction, that leaves the matter of damages.</p>



<p>While the excerpt from the proposed judgment above shows that Van Stry is demanding $180,000 in damages, the Judge cites $150,000 in his order. However, he also writes that no documentary evidence has been submitted to the Court which would explain why the amount is appropriate. </p>



<p>Furthermore, Van Stry&#8217;s demands for a comprehensive injunction cause an additional complication, the Judge notes, since a copyright injunction cannot be served outside the United States and does not apply directly to conduct occurring outside the United States.</p>



<p>&#8220;Such an injunction, if issued, would have to be framed so that it is directed only to conduct occurring within this country, which would be narrower than the full scope of the injunctive relief sought in the complaint,&#8221; the Judge writes. And that might be tricky since the relief being sought is extensive.</p>



<p>Van Stry&#8217;s motion demands that McCrea should refrain from directly, contributorily or indirectly infringing his rights in the future, not only for the 12 books in the complaint but any others written by him. </p>



<p>On top, there&#8217;s a request for caching and proxy services, web hosts, email providers, social media platforms and payment processors currently doing business with McCrea in connection with eBook.bike or similar platforms, to stop doing so, if those sites infringe Van Stry’s rights.</p>



<p>A further request would require search engines to “prevent links to the Defendant’s accounts or websites, which distribute or encourage the copying and distribution of Works or other titles by the same author, from displaying in search results, and removing such links from any search index.”</p>



<p>All that considered and if personal jurisdiction can be established, the Court is prepared to award damages, but not immediately to the level demanded by Van Stry. </p>



<p>&#8220;[T]he Court would be prepared to hold that the plaintiff is entitled to a statutory award of $750 for each of the 12 works as to which he has alleged copyright infringement, for a total award of $9000, if the plaintiff were to elect to accept the statutory minimum damages award in lieu of a damages award calculated after a hearing,&#8221; the order reads.</p>



<p>In the absence of such an agreement, the Judge says that the Court would not be prepared to go any higher without a further hearing to determine the appropriate amount of damages. In an effort to keep costs down for both sides, the Court is prepared to hold that hearing over the phone. </p>



<p><em>The proposed motion for default judgment is available <a href="media/35c462de.Stry-v-McCrea-default-6-13-19.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/Stry-v-McCrea-default-6-13-19.pdf">here</a>, Judge Bryson&#8217;s order is available <a href="media/80a31e4d.Stry-v-McCrea-et-al-2-19-cv-00104-ORDER.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/Stry-v-McCrea-et-al-2-19-cv-00104-ORDER.pdf">here</a> (both pdf) </em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174943
title: Premier League Wins New ISP Piracy Blocking Order
uri: Premier-League-Wins-New-ISP-Piracy-Blocking-Order
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/APZSNRXmT8U/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/605213e1.PL-Lion-e1562310432434.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/PL-Lion-e1562310432434.png" alt=""/></figure></div>



<p>Blocking websites associated with piracy is one of the most common tools deployed against unauthorized content distribution involving movies, TV shows, and music.</p>



<p>However, the rising consumption of pirate sources of live TV, particularly sports, has presented broadcasters with a new challenge.</p>



<p>The Premier League has been attempting to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-obtains-piracy-blocking-order-for-2018-19-season-180719/">solve this problem</a> in the UK with so-called &#8216;dynamic&#8217; blocking injunctions, one which allows servers to be <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/new-uk-kodi-piracy-blocking-injunction-is-a-pretty-scary-beast-170314/">blocked in real-time</a> by ISPs, as matches are underway.</p>



<p>Earlier this month it was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-seeks-live-football-blocking-order-in-ireland-180705/">reported</a> that the League had filed an application to expand this effort to Ireland. Targeting major ISPs Eircom, Sky, Virgin Media, and Vodafone, the League sought permission to have these companies quickly respond to blocking demands.</p>



<p>On Monday in the Commercial Court, after ISPs either supported or failed to oppose the application, the proposal was converted into Ireland&#8217;s first dynamic blocking injunction. It will aim to prevent consumers from accessing &#8216;pirate&#8217; streams via IPTV services, websites, apps, and third-party Kodi addons.  </p>



<p>Counsel for the Premier League told the Court that the bulk of those the company is seeking to block access the company&#8217;s matches via set-top boxes. </p>



<p>According to a report from <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/court-orders-block-on-illegal-streaming-of-english-football-matches-1.3957365">Irish Times</a>, the IP addresses of streaming hosts will be updated at least twice while matches are underway so that ISPs are able to prevent their subscribers from accessing the locations. Once the matches have ended, the blocking measures are supposed to stop.</p>



<p>There is also a nod to due process, with hosting companies being told of the existence of the order enabling them to notify their customers (the alleged infringers) that their streams will be blocked.</p>



<p>Targeted suppliers, almost certainly IPTV providers, are also given permission to apply to the court to have their servers unblocked, if any of their legitimate content is rendered inaccessible as a result of the injunction.</p>



<p>In common with the applications in the UK, the order granted in Ireland was in part based on &#8220;confidential information&#8221; that only the court and the parties involved have access to in order to prevent technical circumvention of the order.</p>



<p>The precise nature of that information isn&#8217;t clear but we&#8217;re informed that the blocking process is already well understood by outside parties, with providers able to take countermeasures and, if all else fails, end-users able to deploy VPNs. </p>



<p></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174845
title: ‘Repeat Copyright Infringer’ Case Against Cloudflare Can Continue, Court Rules
uri: Repeat-Copyright-Infringer-Case-Against-Cloudflare-Can-Continue
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/rH5jE8ib6l0/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-137767" src="media/c84f558d.cloudflarelogo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/cloudflarelogo.png" alt="" width="260" height="135">Popular CDN and DDoS protection service Cloudflare has come under a lot of pressure from copyright holders in recent years.</p>
<p>The company offers its services to millions of sites, including some of the world&#8217;s leading pirate sites.</p>
<p>Many rightsholders are not happy with this. They accuse Cloudflare of facilitating copyright infringement by continuing to provide access to these platforms. At the same time, they call out the CDN service for masking the true hosting locations of these &#8216;bad actors&#8217;.</p>
<p>Cloudflare&#8217;s activities have also triggered some lawsuits. Just last week, we reported that an <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-cloudflare-to-terminate-accounts-of-pirate-sites-190711/">Italian court ordered</a> the company to terminate the accounts of several pirate sites. In the U.S. there&#8217;s an ongoing copyright infringement case as well, which brought more bad news for the company a few days ago.</p>
<p>The case in question wasn&#8217;t filed by any of the major entertainment industry players, but by two manufacturers and wholesalers of wedding dresses. Not a typical “piracy” lawsuit, but it’s a copyright case that could have broad effects.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-sued-for-failing-to-terminate-repeat-infringers-181121/">complaint filed at a federal court in California last year</a>, Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs argued that even after multiple warnings, Cloudflare fails to terminate sites operated by counterfeit vendors. This makes Cloudflare liable for the associated copyright infringements, they said.</p>
<p>Cloudflare responded to the allegations and in April it filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. The company said that the rightsholders failed to state a proper claim, as the takedown notices were not proof of infringement, among other things. In addition, the notices were not formatted properly.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;Plaintiffs characterize their notifications as &#8216;credible&#8217; without stating any facts that demonstrate their credibility. In any event, defective notifications, like those the plaintiffs sent to Cloudflare, cannot support any claim of actual knowledge,&#8221; Cloudflare argued.</p>
<p>According to Cloudflare, the notifications &#8220;may or may not be true&#8221;. Without a court determining whether they are accurate or not, the company says they don&#8217;t &#8220;convey actual knowledge of infringement.&#8221; As such, the company doesn&#8217;t believe it can be held liable.</p>
<p>District Judge Vince Chhabria disagrees, however. In an order signed a few days ago he denies the motion to dismiss. According to the Judge, the allegations and claims made by the wedding dress manufacturers are sufficient at this stage of the case.</p>
<p>&#8220;Cloudflare’s main argument – that contributory liability cannot be based on a defendant’s knowledge of infringing conduct and continued material contribution to it – is wrong,&#8221; Judge Chhabria writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Allegations that Cloudflare knew its customer-websites displayed infringing material and continued to provide those websites with faster load times and concealed identities are sufficient to state a claim,&#8221; he adds.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/174ad797.denycloud.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/denycloud.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-174956"/></figure></div>


<p>Cloudflare also pointed out other deficiencies in the notices, and stressed that it&#8217;s not a hosting provider, but these comments were countered too. At this stage of the case, it&#8217;s enough to show that Cloudflare was aware of the alleged infringements, the Court notes.</p>
<p>&#8220;The notices allegedly sent by the plaintiffs gave Cloudflare specific information, including a link to the offending website and a link to the underlying copyrighted material, to plausibly allege that Cloudflare had actual knowledge of the infringing activity,&#8221; Judge Chhabria writes.</p>
<p>The denial of Cloudflare&#8217;s motion to dismiss means that the case will move forward. While the case has nothing to do with traditional pirate sites, any rulings could spill over, which means that other copyright holders will watch this case closely.</p>
<p>Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero ultimately hope to recoup damages for the losses they’ve suffered as well preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to stop all infringing activity.</p>
<p>Cloudflare, for its part, will argue that it&#8217;s not actively participating in any infringing activity and that it merely has a role as a third-party intermediary, which is not liable for the alleged infringing activities of its customers.</p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p><em>A copy of District Judge Vince Chhabria&#8217;s order is <a href="media/8569409f.cloudflarebridal.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/cloudflarebridal.pdf">available here (pdf)</a>.</em></p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174979
title: Organized Crime Unit Orders Pirate IPTV Sellers to Cease & Desist
uri: Organized-Crime-Unit-Orders-Pirate-IPTV-Sellers-to-Cease-Desist
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/aJ5KQ7vBDq4/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/a7c0897c.iptv.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/iptv.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-135034" width="270" height="179"/></figure></div>



<p>Over the past couple of years, it has become abundantly clear that entertainment industry groups are taking the rise of &#8216;pirate&#8217; TV boxes very seriously.</p>



<p>Where previously the supply of unlicensed content into living rooms mainly took place via hacked satellite and cable boxes, the latest threat is content delivered directly via the Internet.</p>



<p>Thousands of live channels are now readily available via cheap monthly subscriptions, modified Kodi installations, or dedicated apps, all of which are considered a threat by small and large broadcasters alike.</p>



<p>There are many civil strategies available for reducing the flow but in the UK, high-tier police forces are now getting involved. According to an organized crime unit based in the north of England, a wave of activity took place just this week.</p>



<p>The North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) is a collaboration between police forces across Cumbria, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, and North Wales. During Tuesday, the unit said it contacted people involved in the supply of &#8216;pirate&#8217; IPTV subscriptions (sometimes known as &#8216;lines&#8217;) and the sale of modified set-top boxes.</p>



<p>&#8220;Our disruption team have been working with GAIN (Government Agency Intelligence Network) &amp; @FACTUK &amp; today issued cease &amp; desist notices in Wrexham &amp; Blackburn to people involved in the sale of illegal IPTV subscriptions &amp; cracked online television boxes,&#8221; the unit said in a statement.</p>



<p>GAIN is a multi-agency group that provides a mechanism for various agencies to work together and share information. More than four years ago it was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/organized-crime-police-raid-pirate-android-tv-box-sellers-150630/">involved in raids</a> against several &#8216;pirate&#8217; box sellers.</p>



<p>FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) needs little introduction, as it has been involved in similar operations against a number of entities working in the &#8216;pirate&#8217; IPTV arena, whether that&#8217;s via subscription-based services or modified set-top boxes.</p>



<p>Early today, TorrentFreak sought comment from FACT chief Kieron Sharp on the events of yesterday. We asked about the nature of the campaign, whether it would be expanded to other areas, and requested further details on those targeted. We were also keen to know which laws are allegedly being broken.</p>



<p>Due to the nature of the investigation and the involvement of various police units, Sharp couldn&#8217;t immediately offer a comment but we&#8217;ll update when we receive a more detailed response.</p>



<p>The brief police statement does not make it clear whether those ordered to cease and desist are lower-tier players (resellers of subscriptions) or those closer to the top (IPTV providers), or a combination of both. The former seems more likely but in the absence of more detail, it&#8217;s impossible to say. </p>



<p>The North West Regional Organised Crime Unit has now been involved in action against illicit streaming on at least two occasions in as many months. </p>



<p>In June, its officers <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-add-on-developer-arrested-on-same-day-as-popular-repo-goes-down-190619/">arrested</a> the alleged operator of the Supremacy Kodi add-on repository after it was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/confirmed-supremacy-kodi-repo-was-indeed-targeted-by-police-190626/">reported to the unit</a> by FACT in association with the Premier League, Sky, BT Sport, and Virgin Media.</p>



<p> </p>



<p> </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174681
title: Torrent Site YTS Discussed Settlement With Movie Companies
uri: Torrent-Site-YTS-Discussed-Settlement-With-Movie-Companies
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/aaeQfH5Aazo/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-174026" src="media/5f6a61f6.ytslt.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ytslt.png" alt="" width="223" height="81" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ytslt.png 223w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/ytslt-220x81.png 220w" sizes="(max-width: 223px) 100vw, 223px">YTS is the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2019/">most-visited torrent site</a> on the Internet. With millions of visitors, it even beats the legendary Pirate Bay.</p>
<p>The site ‘unofficially’ took over the YTS brand when the original group threw in the towel in 2015. Since then, it has amassed a rather impressive user base. However, that growth didn&#8217;t go unnoticed by rightsholders.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago the site ran into legal trouble when it was sued by a group of film companies, including the makers of &#8216;Once Upon a Time in Venice,&#8217; &#8216;Mechanic: Resurrection,&#8217; and &#8216;The Hitman’s Bodyguard&#8217;.&nbsp; In a complaint filed at a Hawaiian federal court, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/movie-companies-sue-yts-and-yify-site-operators-in-us-court-190527/">they accused the site’s operator</a> of inducing massive copyright infringement.</p>
<p>With the legal action, the companies hope to shut the site down and recoup claimed losses. However, that&#8217;s easier said than done. In similar cases, site operators often ignored the complaints and any orders that follow them.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, however, a claimed representative of YTS, going by the name “Mr. Segaran,” directly reached out to the film companies&#8217; attorney, Kerry Culpepper, after the lawsuit was filed. Apparently, the torrent site was open to resolving the matter, a new court filing reveals.</p>
<p>In an email conversation documented by the attorney, Mr. Segaran said he was open to discussing a settlement, but refused to provide identifying information or sign a waiver of service. The attorney replied by stating that a settlement would at least require YTS to remove all links to movies of his clients, which Mr. Segaran agreed to do.</p>
<p>“We have received good news, confirmation that all the titles you have sent have been permanently removed from the website and filters put in place to avoid reupping,” the YTS representative wrote to Culpepper a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>While this seemed like a promising start, soon after that statement all communication stopped. That&#8217;s not all, because YTS also rebranded and switched domain names, moving from <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-site-yts-quietly-relocates-to-lt-domain-name/">YTS.am to YTS.lt</a>.</p>
<p>While no official settlement has been reached, YTS did limit the accessibility of the movie companies&#8217; films. Unlike other torrents, which can be downloaded by anyone, titles such as The Hitman&#8217;s Bodyguard are now listed as being &#8216;private.&#8217;</p>
<p>&#8220;You are trying to access private content. Please LOGIN to gain access to all YIFY content or Create a Free Account to join YTS.LT,&#8221; a message on YTS.lt reads.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/2859e641.ytserror.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ytserror.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-174975"/></figure></div>


<p>The movie companies&#8217; attorney also noticed this change. In the recent filing, he highlights the rebranding and the private listings of the torrents.</p>
<p>&#8220;The new website yts.lt once again apparently allows users to download torrent files of Plaintiffs’ motion pictures, but only if the user creates a YTS account and logs in,&#8221; Culpepper wrote to the court.</p>
<p>Culpepper suggests that people can still download the torrent when they sign in. However, when we created an account and tried to access the torrent while being signed in, it was still listed as private. This suggests that the movies in question are effectively inaccessible.</p>
<p>That doesn&#8217;t mean, however, that the movie companies are letting the case go. Their attorney recently asked the Court for permission to subpoena YTS&#8217;s international web host and domain registrars in order to obtain the true identities of the operator.</p>
<p>The Court denied this motion on July 1, citing a lack of personal jurisdiction, as its uncertain whether defendant(s) have ties to the US. To counter this, the movie companies&#8217; attorney submitted a motion for reconsideration, which remains pending today.</p>
<p>In recent filings, the movie companies stress that YTS has clear ties with the US. Among other things, YTS is believed to have used the services of New York hosting company Digital Ocean.</p>
<p>The information about the hosting provider was shared by Cloudflare, which handed over detailed audit logs after it was subpoenaed. This, surprisingly linked YTS to many other torrent sites as well.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;The audit logs for the YTS websites indicate that this Cloudflare account also hosted numerous other movie piracy websites such as: piratetorrents.net, limetorrents.cc, yourbittorrent.com, rarbg.to, torrentbutler.eu, piratetorrents.net, thepiratebay.se.net, torrentz.eu, 1337x.to and extratorrent.cc,&#8221; the movie companies write.</p>
<p>Whether all the mentioned sites have anything to do with YTS is doubtful though. TorrentFreak knows that many are or were operated by entirely different people, don&#8217;t use Cloudflare, or have been defunct for years.</p>
<p>It seems more likely that some of the listed sites are in no way related, especially since anyone can add a random domain to a Cloudflare account. This is sometimes done by bad actors who want to <a href="https://community.cloudflare.com/t/security-in-place-to-prevent-domain-hijacking/59326">hijack domain names</a> of other people.</p>
<p>The movie companies, nonetheless, will continue their legal battle and hope to unmask the real YTS operator. The same lawsuit also targets Vietnamese national Nguyen Manh, the alleged operator of YIFYMovies.is, a site that shut down shortly after the lawsuit was filed.</p>
<p><em>&#8212;</em></p>
<p><em>A copy of the motion for reconsideration, submitted on behalf of the movie companies, is available <a href="media/eeda3558.reconsideryts.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/reconsideryts.pdf">here (pdf)</a>.</em></p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=174948
title: High Court Slams Brakes on New UK Copyright-Trolling Effort
uri: High-Court-Slams-Brakes-on-New-UK-Copyright-Trolling-Effort
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/wLu4VT_eOv4/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/efd05bc4.trollsign.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/trollsign.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-108977"/></figure></div>



<p>Those familiar with the copyright-trolling landscape against alleged file-sharers in the UK will be familiar with the names Golden Eye (International) and Mircom.</p>



<p>The companies have a track record of targeting Internet subscribers in the UK (<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/alleged-uk-file-sharers-better-armed-and-ready-to-fight-ben-dover-120723/">1</a>,<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/sky-users-receive-porn-piracy-threats-in-time-for-christmas-151202/">2</a>,<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/golden-eye-hit-uk-with-piracy-letters-first-innocents-step-forward-130201/">3</a>,<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/virgin-customers-targeted-in-new-porn-piracy-shakedown-150314/">4</a>) with demands for cash settlements to make supposed (but non-existent) court cases disappear.</p>



<p>The companies have been quiet for years but back in February attempted to resurrect their pay-up-or-else scheme at the High Court. Neither firm was presented as copyright holders in their Norwich Pharmacal order application. Instead, they aimed to represent 16 pornographic movie company partners.</p>



<p>The crux of the application was that ISP Virgin Media should disclose the subscriber details behind allegedly-infringing IP addresses said to have downloaded the pornographic movies. The number of addresses isn&#8217;t clear but the claim that &#8220;no more than 5000 IP addresses per fortnight&#8221; would be requested from Virgin Media (and no more than 500 letters per week would be sent to subscribers) hints at the scale.</p>



<p>A High Court judgment published Wednesday reveals that Virgin Media put up a considerable fight to have the order denied, which is quite a novelty considering how compliant some ISPs have been in the face of similar cases.</p>



<p>Douglas Campbell QC, sitting as High Court Judge, indicated that Virgin&#8217;s submissions had been very useful since the points raised by the company would probably have been raised by the subscribers, had they been a party to the proceedings.</p>



<p>The judgment traverses a complex web of privacy and data protection matters, including those related to the GDPR. While important considerations, little of that appears to have mattered. Ultimately, it&#8217;s evidence that the companies simply failed to get their acts together.</p>



<p>Submissions by Virgin pointed out that evidence presented by Mr Becker (Golden Eye) and Mr Hoffman (Mircom) fell short, to say the least. To begin, the IP address list (crucial for the application to proceed) hadn&#8217;t been presented as evidence in the application.</p>



<p>&#8220;Mr Hoffmann&#8217;s witness statement is dated 26th February 2018,&#8221; the Judge responded.</p>



<p>&#8220;In paragraph 1 he explains that Mircom seeks disclosure &#8216;of the names and addresses of the subscribers associated with the IP addresses listed in a spreadsheet attached as Exhibit 1&#8217;. But there was no Exhibit 1.&#8221;</p>



<p>A terrible start. But there were further problems too.</p>



<p>&#8220;In a witness statement dated 26 June 2018, Mr Wagner [solicitor for the applicants] purported to exhibit a spreadsheet marked &#8216;MWH1&#8217;, described as a spreadsheet setting out the IP addresses of subscribers for the period 27 February to the dates shown on the spreadsheet,&#8221; the Judge continued.</p>



<p>&#8220;This cannot be the same as Mr Hoffmann&#8217;s own intended Exhibit 1 since it post-dates Mr Hoffmann&#8217;s witness statement. Further this exhibit does not even set out any IP addresses, merely information including an &#8216;infringement ID&#8217; which appears to be date-related.</p>



<p>&#8220;In any event even exhibit MWH1 is not what is sought. Mircom actually seeks the names and addresses of a spreadsheet which was sent to Virgin by email on 7 June 2019. This spreadsheet is not in evidence, nor is there any explanation of how it was produced.&#8221;</p>



<p>Claims by Golden Eye and Mircom that these were just &#8220;technical&#8221; issues were dismissed by the Judge, who explained the errors and omissions as &#8220;fundamental&#8221;.</p>



<p>Evidence provided by the applicants&#8217; supposed &#8220;experts&#8221; was lacking too. Mircom relied on an expert technical report by a Dr Sarre which supported the claimed effectiveness of infringement tracking software called &#8220;FileWatchBT. That report was reportedly &#8220;commissioned by telephone&#8221; on April 1, 2010.</p>



<p>&#8220;I do not accept that I should simply assume that a 9 year old expert report remains up to date, particularly one given in the field of computer software,&#8221; the Judge commented, noting that the report also lacked the required &#8220;statement of truth&#8221; to comply with civil procedure rules.</p>



<p>There were also problems with Fieser&#8217;s statement, not least the claim that the software was used to identify the infringements in Exhibit 1, which of course wasn&#8217;t presented in evidence.</p>



<p>According to the Judge, the evidence relied upon by Golden Eye,  provided by a Mr Paige, was somehow &#8220;even worse&#8221;. It certainly reads that way.</p>



<p>&#8220;There is no statement of truth; no clarity as to what his instructions were; his evidence refers to static IP addresses, not dynamic ones; and his evidence appears to relate to a software program called &#8216;Observer&#8217;,&#8221; the Judge complained. </p>



<p>&#8220;Yet Mr Fieser gave a statement (also unsupported by a Statement of Truth) dated 1st December 2017 in which he seemed to think the software mentioned in Mr Paige&#8217;s report was called &#8216;International IP Tracker&#8217;.</p>



<p>&#8220;Virgin also drew my attention (without comment by the Applicants) to evidence from Ms Griffin, Senior Legal Counsel of Virgin, suggesting that Mr Paige was a former detective who was arrested and dismissed after receiving a controlled substance.&#8221;</p>



<p>In response to these shortcomings, Golden Eye and Mircom requested permission to replace their &#8216;expert&#8217; evidence. Douglas Campbell QC denied the request, noting that the defects were &#8220;fundamental&#8221;.</p>



<p>At this point it&#8217;s clear that the application for disclosure was already in disarray but the Judge still took time to address other points that will be of interest to readers, not least the claim by Virgin Media that the applicants were part of a &#8220;money-making scheme&#8221; or &#8220;shakedown&#8221;.</p>



<p>The Judge said that in order to satisfy himself that the application was genuine, he&#8217;d need to know more about how IP addresses (obtained by Golden Eye and Mircom as a result of their earlier claims) had actually been used.</p>



<p>It transpires that following an earlier application, Mircom wrote to 749 people demanding settlement. Just 76 admitted fault, 15 settled without admitting liability, and zero cases were taken to court. That raised questions about what happened to the tens of thousands of subscribers identified following previous orders and what their responses had been.</p>



<p>&#8220;This is not something which the Applicants&#8217; current evidence addresses, nor is it information which they have offered to supply, hence this is a further reason why I refuse the applications sought,&#8221; the Judge added.</p>



<p><em>The full judgment is available </em><a href="https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2019/1827.html"><em>here</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=175060
title: Pirate Bay Overblocking Hits EZTV Due to Shared Cloudflare IP Address
uri: Pirate-Bay-Overblocking-Hits-EZTV-Due-to-Shared-Cloudflare-IP-Address
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ALEbgEZ1-E8/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-147564" src="media/b1b33e9f.pageblocked.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pageblocked.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="207" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pageblocked.jpg 275w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/pageblocked-200x150.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px">The Pirate Bay is arguably the most widely blocked website on the Internet. ISPs from all over the world have been ordered to prevent users from accessing the torrent site.</p>
<p>This is also the case in the Netherlands. While the issue remains pending at the Supreme Court, ISPs including Ziggo are already required to prevent users from accessing the popular torrent site.</p>
<p>A court <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/yarrrr-dutch-isps-block-the-pirate-bay-but-its-bad-timing-for-trolls-171005/">ruling of 2017</a> required Ziggo to block both domain names and IP-addresses of The Pirate Bay and its many proxies. The list of blocked domains has grown to hundreds in recent years and the Dutch blocklist is regularly updated with new domains and IP-addresses by anti-piracy group <a href="https://stichtingbrein.nl/">BREIN</a>.</p>
<p>Thus far, this hasn&#8217;t caused any trouble but earlier this month several torrent users noticed that Ziggo&#8217;s Pirate Bay blockade had carried over to EZTV.io, another<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2019/"> popular torrent site</a>. While EZTV also provides access to infringing content, it&#8217;s not covered by the court order.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Still, EZTV users were welcomed by the following message from Ziggo when they tried to access the site.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/9a70cf59.yarr.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/yarr.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-175063"/><figcaption><a href="https://www.ziggo.nl/yarrr">Blocking message</a> (translated)</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>As it turns out, both EZTV and The Pirate Bay use Cloudflare and the CDN company decided to put both sites on the same IP-address. As a result, Ziggo&#8217;s filters also blocked access to EZTV, which is a classic example of overblocking.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Ziggo confirmed the error to local news site <a href="https://tweakers.net/nieuws/154990/ziggo-blokkeerde-onterecht-torrentsite-eztv-nadat-deze-op-filterlijst-brein-kwam.html">Tweakers</a> but said that there was little it could do without an update from BREIN.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;Despite the fact that Ziggo has repeatedly pointed out these these types of risks, the court did not sufficiently account for these types of complications. This means that even if we see or are reminded that a website is being incorrectly blocked, Ziggo is obliged to uphold the blockade, until further notice from Brein,&#8221; Ziggo noted.</p>
<p>The ISP said that it informed BREIN about the issue early July, but the list wasn&#8217;t immediately updated. This meant that EZTV remained blocked for at least a week. The torrent site was eventually unblocked after BREIN asked Cloudflare to put ETZV on a separate IP-address.</p>
<p>BREIN director Tim Kuik admits that the overblocking took place but doesn&#8217;t known why Cloudflare put the sites on the same IP-address.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;I have no idea why EZTV became available at that IP address. Just like The Pirate Bay, they use Cloudflare and someone apparently thought it was a good idea,&#8221; Kuik told Tweakers</p>
<p>While BREIN helped to get EZTV unblocked again, Kuik stresses that the torrent site is illegal as well. The anti-piracy group summoned EZTV to stop its infringing activity and plans to have it blocked in the future as well, once the Pirate Bay case is finalized at the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Interestingly, this isn&#8217;t the first time that shared Cloudflare IP-addresses has resulted on overblocking. Two years go, dozens of pirate sites were <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/internet-backbone-provider-cogent-blocks-pirate-bay-and-other-pirate-sites-170209/">mistakenly blocked</a> by Internet backbone provider Cogent, following a court order. Cloudflare eventually resolved the matter by putting the sites on separate IP-addresses.</p>
<p>At the time, Cloudflare’s General Counsel Doug Kramer told TorrentFreak that it&#8217;s important for his company to understand how different blocks operate around the world, so&nbsp; it can <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/cogents-broad-pirate-site-block-was-collateral-damage-of-a-court-order-170217/">limit coleteral damage</a>. However, that clearly didn&#8217;t work in EZTV&#8217;s case.</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=175104
title: UK ISPs Stop Sending Copyright Infringement Notices
uri: UK-ISPs-Stop-Sending-Copyright-Infringement-Notices
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/2pQz_6MNf0Y/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/41db868c.ukflagwallblocked.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ukflagwallblocked.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-154673" width="264" height="169"/></figure></div>



<p>Every day, millions of Internet users obtain movies, music, TV shows, and other content from peer-to-peer networks, mainly BitTorrent. </p>



<p>The only ways to reach these users to stop or correct their behavior is via aggressive and controversial lawsuits or infringement notifications sent via ISPs. Both options are unpopular with pirates but the latter is clearly the softer option, especially when that allows rightsholders to turn a negative into a plus.</p>



<p>In 2014, rightsholders and several ISPs in the UK <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-agree-to-send-out-music-movie-piracy-warnings-140509/">agreed</a> terms on what would be known as VCAP &#8211; the Voluntary Copyright Alert Program. </p>



<p>Entertainment companies, for their part, would monitor file-sharing networks for infringement, logging pirates’ IP addresses as they went. These would be tracked back to ISPs who agreed to forward warning emails to subscriber accounts linked to the alleged piracy, without compromising customers&#8217; privacy.</p>



<p>As part of the broader government-funded Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative, the notices would be firm in tone but would also direct alleged pirates to a <a href="https://www.getitrightfromagenuinesite.org/">portal</a> where they could learn more about why they had received the notice and where legitimate content could be obtained.</p>



<p>The accompanying educational program <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-anti-piracy-education-campaign-starts-this-summer-150720/">was expected</a> to launch in the summer of 2015 but there was little immediate fanfare. By December that year, things did get <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-anti-piracy-education-campaign-launched-quietly-151201/">on the move</a> but a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-to-start-sending-piracy-alerts-soon-161130/">year later</a>, no notices had yet been sent out by participating ISPs &#8211; BT, Virgin Media, Sky, and TalkTalk.</p>



<p>A month or so later, that position changed with an <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-piracy-warnings-coming-month-heres-works-170111/">announcement</a> that notices were imminent. Soon after, the first news of notices appearing in the wild began to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/bts-piracy-warning-information-confusing-outdated-170117/">emerge online</a>. However, official updates on the number of notices being sent out failed to emerge, so it was difficult to report on the effectiveness or otherwise of the scheme.</p>



<p>Nevertheless, in December 2018 the government <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-govt-backs-anti-piracy-campaign-with-2-million-in-funding-181210/">committed</a> a further £2 million (on top of its original £3.5m investment) to the &#8220;Get it Right&#8221; anti-piracy campaign, as it had became known. The calculation was that increased sales as a result of reduced piracy would bring in <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-govt-hopes-to-profit-from-anti-piracy-measures-140924/">additional taxes</a>.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img src="media/e8a0c6cf.image-91.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image-91.png" alt="" class="wp-image-175120" width="600"/><figcaption><em>Most recent accounts filed by CCUK</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>Like the rest of the data connected to the progress of the scheme, additional sales tax figures have not been made public. However, in February 2019 there was a breakthrough of sorts.</p>



<p>During an anti-piracy conference in France, a director of music group BPI quietly <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-sent-a-million-piracy-alert-emails-190208/">revealed</a> that roughly a million notices had been sent out since the launch of the program. Since the beginning of the entire campaign, piracy had apparently dropped by 26%.</p>



<p>How much of that claimed decrease can be attributed to the wider campaign or the infringement notices specifically still isn&#8217;t known. However, TorrentFreak can today confirm that VCAP, the Voluntary Copyright Alert Program, has come to an end.</p>



<p>After receiving independent information from two sources this week, we approached the coordinators of the program for official confirmation, which was provided by CCUK last night.</p>



<p>&#8220;Having encouraged increased awareness of the value of genuine content and of its many legally available sources, in turn resulting in reduced infringing behavior, the Get it Right campaign is now moving to its next phase,&#8221; a spokesperson for the CCUK Get it Right education campaign told TF.</p>



<p>&#8220;The educational emails sent by ISPs upon detection of infringing file-sharing activity have served their purpose and are ceasing, with the focus instead increasing the broader engagement with fans based around their passion for music, TV, film and all other kinds of creative content.&#8221;</p>



<p>TorrentFreak is informed that during the notice sending stage, ISPs sent most notifications on behalf of the MPA, with the BPI trailing quite a way behind. That would make sense since much of the infringing content shared using BitTorrent is movies and TV shows. Music is still shared via the protocol but consumer habits have changed significantly since the program began and there are now more convenient options for consumers.</p>



<p>The decision to terminate the notification program was taken several months ago and information suggests that there was no requirement for ISPs to send out additional notices starting July 2019 after CCUK terminated the agreement.</p>



<p>We understand that a new phase of the Get it Right campaign is set to begin shortly so when we have more information from official sources, we&#8217;ll provide an update. In the meantime, we&#8217;re informed by third-party sources that the future focus will be on broader advertising and social media campaigns.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=175098
title: Stream-Rippers Successfully Counter YouTube’s Blocking Efforts
uri: Stream-Rippers-Successfully-Counter-YouTube-s-Blocking-Efforts
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/P1FpVgT1K64/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-117196" src="media/72389cbc.sadyoutube.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/sadyoutube.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="196">After the music industry complained about YouTube stream-rippers for many years, the streaming service took a drastic measure last week.</p>
<p>As first reported here, YouTube <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-blocks-popular-mp3-stream-ripping-sites-190710/">began blocking several popular stream-ripping tools</a>, which resulted in these sites becoming unusable.</p>
<p>YouTube didn&#8217;t repond to our request for comment, but it appeared to be a concerted efforts to prevent outsiders from downloading music from the platform. A big move, which generated widespread attention, all the way up to the US Congress.</p>
<p>House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Nadler">Jerrold Nadler</a> of New York, reportedly reached out to Google in response. Nadler is a driving force behind many copyright reform proposals and known as a staunch advocate of a more aggresive anti-piracy approach by tech companies.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/google-youtube-crack-down-on-stream-ripping-mp3-sites-pirating-music-songs/">CNET</a>, Nadler was interested in hearing more about the blocking measures, and he&#8217;s not alone. Several music industry insiders have shown a keen interest in the developments as well, and the RIAA is cautiously optimistic following the news.</p>
<p>&#8220;While we do not yet know how effective these new measures are, we applaud YouTube for taking affirmative steps towards shutting down the fastest growing form of music piracy,&#8221; RIAA boss Mitch Glazier said.</p>
<p>YouTube, meanwhile, has yet to respond to our request for more details. CNET was more lucky, and quotes the video platform stating that &#8220;some MP3 stream ripping sites&#8221; were blocked after the platform made some changes recently.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s our desire to be good partners to our content licensors as our interests are aligned on thwarting violative downloads and downloader site,&#8221; YouTube added in a statement.</p>
<p>While YouTube is happy to side with the music industry and the music industry is pleased with the enforcement efforts, the blocked sites are not sitting still. As is often the case when something becomes blocked online, people quickly find ways to thwart or circumvent the efforts.</p>
<p>And indeed, little over a week after the blocking efforts started, many of the targeted sites are able to rip MP3s from YouTube again.</p>
<p><a href="https://mp3-youtube.download/">Mp3-youtube.download</a> almost instantly announced that it was working on a fix and today the site is working just fine. The same is true for <a href="https://www.dlnowsoft.com/youtube-mp3">Dlnowsoft.com</a>, which was also blocked last week, as well as the massively popular <a href="https://www.onlinevideoconverter.com/">Onlinevideoconverter.com</a>, which is among the top 200 most-visited sites on the Internet.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/04d8e9b2.convertagain.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/convertagain.png" alt="" class="wp-image-175130" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/convertagain.png 600w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/convertagain-500x210.png 500w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"><figcaption>Ripping again&#8230;</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of a stream-ripping site who prefers to remain anonymous. He confirmed that bypassing YouTube&#8217;s block wasn&#8217;t that complicated. Simply moving the site to new IP-addresses did the trick.</p>
<p>&#8220;To fix the problem, we simply used other servers that are not in the range of IP-addresses blocked by YouTube,&#8221; the operator of the stream-ripping site informed us.</p>
<p>If YouTube is indeed serious about its efforts to take out &#8216;voliative&#8217; stream-ripping sites, it will likely block the new IP-addresses as well, eventually. This will then trigger a proverbial cat and mouse game, one we know all too well from other pirate site blocking efforts.</p>
<p>Although it&#8217;s unlikely that YouTube can completely ban stream-ripping sites from its platform, continued blocking efforts may eventually prompt some site operators and users to give up. Whether these users will switch to legal services or other &#8221;free&#8217; resources, remains a question, of course.</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=175094
title: Google Fined Again For Not Removing Banned Sites From Search Results
uri: Google-Fined-Again-For-Not-Removing-Banned-Sites-From-Search-Results
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/IizpjTakS-g/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright"><img src="media/8776ded3.googlelogo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/googlelogo.png" alt="" class="wp-image-135049"/></figure></div>



<p>In order to control what kind of information its citizens have access to online, Russia operates an Internet &#8216;blacklist&#8217;.</p>



<p>Known locally as FGIS (Unified Register of Prohibited Information), the database contains the domains of thousands of sites containing anything from extremist material to pirated copies of movies and TV shows.</p>



<p>Major online technology platforms are expected to interface with FGIS to ensure they receive up-to-date information on which sites are forbidden in Russia. In the case of search engines, the database provides details on which sites should be removed from search results.</p>



<p>After failing to connect its systems to the FGIS and deindexing sites as required, last December Google <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/google-gets-a-slap-on-the-wrist-for-site-blocking-failures-181211/">was fined</a> by Russian authorities. That was followed by threats from local telecoms watch Roscomnadzor early 2019 that the US-based company could be fined again for non-compliance, as well as facing a potential block itself. </p>



<p>In February 2019 it was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/google-begins-removing-banned-sites-from-search-results-190213/">reported</a> that Google was finally playing ball and everything was running more smoothly. However, that appears not have been the case. According to an announcement published this week by Roscomnadzor, Google has been fined again.</p>



<p>&#8220;The company has not complied with the requirements of the law..[..]..by excluding from search results links to Internet resources with illegal information, access to which is restricted in Russia,&#8221; Roscomndazor said.</p>



<p>&#8220;The control event recorded that Google carries out selective filtering of search results &#8211; more than a third of the links from a single registry of prohibited information are still preserved in its search results.&#8221; </p>



<p>Explaining that Google has been told repeatedly of the legal requirements in Russia, the watchdog revealed that the fine handed down was 700,000 rubles &#8211; just US$11,098 &#8211; a drop in the ocean as far as Google is concerned.</p>



<p>Digital rights group <a href="https://roskomsvoboda.org/48353/">Roscomsvoboda</a> reports that in April 2019, Google had removed 80% of the specified banned content from its search results. However, data covering the period ending May, for which the fine was levied, showed that removal levels had fallen to 67.5%.</p>



<p>Last month, when Google learned that it was in line for another fine after a warning from Roscomnadzor, the company expressed surprise.</p>



<p>&#8220;We have not changed anything. A couple of months ago we agreed that we will not connect to the registry of banned sites and will not blindly delete anything, but consider requests to delete content, and where it meets the requirements, we remove content from the Russian service,&#8221; a spokesperson said.</p>



<p>&#8220;We do not understand why Roscomnadzor is talking about a new case or where they get these figures from.&#8221;</p>



<p>Whether Google will eventually connect to the FGIS isn&#8217;t clear. It currently receives a daily list of sites to be blocked and acts on those as it sees fit. Only time will tell whether that will be enough for Roscomndazor moving forward.</p>



<p> </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=175132
title: Alleged KickassTorrents Founder Continues to Fight US Extradition
uri: Alleged-KickassTorrents-Founder-Continues-to-Fight-US-Extradition
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/lU11g_u5o2k/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-99785" src="media/cc93a9ae.kickasstorrents_500x5001-300x300.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/kickasstorrents_500x5001-300x300.png" alt="" width="300" height="300">On July 20th, 2016, exactly three years ago today, the torrent community was in dire straits.</p>
<p>Polish law enforcement officers had just <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-domains-charge-owner-160720/">apprehended</a> Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder of KickassTorrents (KAT), at a local airport.</p>
<p>The arrest was part of a U.S. criminal case which also listed two other men as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-alleged-top-men-behind-kickasstorrents-160826/">key players</a>. At the time, KAT was the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2017-170107/">most-used torrent site</a> around, so the authorities couldn&#8217;t have hit a more prominent target.</p>
<p>The criminal case marked the end of the torrent site and the start of a lengthy legal battle for the suspected operator.</p>
<p>To this day, Vaulin remains in limbo. March 2017, the Warsaw District Court ruled in first instance that the alleged KickassTorrents owner <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/alleged-kickasstorrents-owner-can-be-extradited-to-the-us-court-rules-170301/">can be extradited</a>. However, more than two years have now passed and the final ruling has yet to come in.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Vaulin is currently out on bail awaiting the final decision on the extradition request from the United States, while the other two defendants are still at large.</p>
<p>Over the past year, there have been no official updates. Vaulin&#8217;s defense team informed us that things haven&#8217;t really moved. In addition, a new status report filed by US Attorney John R. Lausch Jr. this week shows that there’s little progress.</p>
<p>&#8220;Defendant is still undergoing extradition proceedings in Poland, and the parties are not currently aware of a timetable for a resolution of those proceedings,&#8221; Lausch Jr. informed the court.&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/2ac82d32.statuskat.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/statuskat.png" alt="" class="wp-image-175161"/><figcaption>Status update</figcaption></figure></div>


<p>The case’s status hearing, which was initially scheduled for last Wednesday, has now been postponed until October. It’s unclear, however, whether there will be any progress by then.</p>
<p>Back in 2016, the defense team submitted a motion to dismiss the entire case. Among other things, it argued that torrent files themselves are not copyrighted content. The court decided, however, that the US Government’s case is <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/court-wont-drop-case-against-alleged-kickasstorrents-owner-170804/">strong enough</a>&nbsp;to continue.</p>
<p>Since that decision, more than two years ago, there hasn&#8217;t been any progress as both parties await the extradition decision.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it&#8217;s pretty clear that the original KickassTorrents is not coming back. The site&#8217;s spirit remains online, though. Several former staffers of the site <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-brought-back-to-life-by-original-staffers-161216/">relaunched a KAT spinoff</a> late 2016, and that site is still going strong.&nbsp;</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=175014
title: Free Spotify and YouTube Users Are Now a Bigger Challenge Than Music Pirates
uri: Free-Spotify-and-YouTube-Users-Are-Now-a-Bigger-Challenge-Than-Music-P
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/NQeu1hYRqzc/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-175024" src="media/a34c6170.cassettapemusic.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/cassettapemusic.png" alt="" width="276" height="152">Pirate site blocking has proven to be a rather effective copyright enforcement tool in many countries.</p>
<p>Italy, one of the European frontrunners, has taken a particularly active approach. In recent years, thousands of domain names have been added to the nation’s pirate blocklist, following complaints from a wide range of copyright holders.</p>
<p>It is not just the numbers that set Italy apart, the blocking mechanism itself is unique as well. To have a website blocked, rightsholders can ask the local telecoms watchdog Agcom to issue an order, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/off-us-blacklist-italy-begins-torrent-site-blackout-no-trials-needed-140510/">without need for a trial</a>.</p>
<p>Instead of dealing with blockades in court, Agcom has the power to grant injunctions without judicial overview, which it does on a regular basis. Over the past year alone, 385 blocking orders were issued by the telecoms watchdog.</p>
<p>The site blocking efforts have obviously decreased traffic to the targeted sites, but according to data released by Agcom, the number of visits to all pirate sites combined has dropped too. As shown below, the number of mobile and desktop visits to pirate sites decreased more than a third (35%) between 2018 and 2019.&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/2ffb9f44.image001.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image001.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-175016"/></figure></div>


<p>The downward traffic trend is visible across all types of piracy sites but, logically, the traffic drop for the blocked sites is most pronounced. The graph below shows that the number of visitors to blocked sites tank swiftly after a new blocking order is issued.&nbsp;</p>
<p>For example, in January 2019 2conv.com <em>(blue line)</em> and flv2mp3.by<em> (green line)</em> were blocked, and soon after, the visitor numbers went down.&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="media/c424d9ee.image003.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/image003.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-175018"/></figure></div>


<p>Agcom and various entertainment industry groups are happy with the overall impact. They believe that, after many years, they finally managed to get a grip on piracy.</p>
<p>TorrentFreak spoke to Enzo Mazza, chief at Italian music industry group FIMI, who believes that a combination of site blocking and educational campaigns has paid off.</p>
<p>&#8220;The first major blockade targeted the Pirate Bay in 2008 and the case was confirmed by the Supreme Court. In terms of market impact, site blocking has proven to be effective in conjunction with the increase of the legal offer,&#8221; Mazza says.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Agcom regulation played a great role, also in terms of education and awareness. Most of the blocked sites have a landing page, created by Agcom and shown by the ISPs, which explains visitors how to reach legal sites.&#8221;</p>
<p>While this is positive news for the Italian music industry, it doesn&#8217;t mean that all is well. Mazza informs us that there are bigger problems than piracy. Ironically, these problems are linked to the legal alternatives many pirates have switched to.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;The main issue here is not piracy. It&#8217;s how to convert people from free YouTube and Spotify accounts to premium services,&#8221; Mazza says.&#8221;Italy is a country where the &#8216;culture of free&#8217; is radicated and it’s not easy to drag people into a subscription model.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nearly 90% of Italian music consumers use YouTube to stream music, which is a problem for the industry. While these people are enjoying music legally, record labels would like to see these people converted into paying customers.</p>
<p>&#8220;Conversion rates are still below the global average and this is a major challenge for the industry. We are urging in particular Spotify to do more in terms of promotional campaigns in order to engage new premium customers,&#8221; Mazza says.&nbsp;</p>
<p>So, while the website blocking efforts have helped to bring piracy rates down, this isn&#8217;t immedially resulting in much more revenue.</p>
<p>The next step is to convert these same people into paying subscribers. However, this should be done witch caution, as cutting the free options could simply drive people back to pirate sites.&nbsp;</p><p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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feed_id: https://torrentfreak.com/?p=175057
title: Is Innovation Making Casual Pirates Less Knowledgable?
uri: Is-Innovation-Making-Casual-Pirates-Less-Knowledgable
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/it83vrQdQqM/
content:
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright is-resized"><img src="media/f27221ce.crypirate.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/crypirate.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-120440" width="228" height="312"/></figure></div>



<p>Anyone with a technically-minded older relative happy to reminisce over their particular &#8216;golden age&#8217; of motoring is likely to dwell for a moment on a particular train of thought.</p>



<p>Cars today are oversized computers, ones that are designed to be mechanically inaccessible to the regular Joe. Unlike their predecessors, elders argue, they often require specialist tools for repairs, adding that today&#8217;s vehicles are not made like they used to be.</p>



<p>Whether one agrees with these points is an individual matter, but it&#8217;s difficult to argue that in the face of rising technology, regular motorists are now less likely than ever to tackle even a basic oil change, previously the most simple of maintenance tasks.</p>



<p>In many respects, the same can be said of today&#8217;s consumer computing environments.</p>



<p>Enthusiasts of yesteryear had to be well-versed in languages like MS-DOS or BASIC simply to get by, which helped them to understand a great deal more about how their machines actually worked. Today&#8217;s graphical interfaces have all but demolished those barriers to entry, meaning there are now millions of people who class clicking icons as the height of &#8216;programming&#8217; expertise.</p>



<p>For today&#8217;s casual pirates, this could be a ticking timebomb.</p>



<p>This week, Stan McCoy, President and Managing Director of the MPA in Europe, published an interesting <a href="https://www.boxofficepro.com/mpaa-piracy-went-from-geeky-to-easy-whats-next/">piece</a> titled &#8220;Piracy Went from Geeky to Easy. What’s Next?&#8221;</p>



<p>&#8220;[W]hile the makers innovate, so do the takers,&#8221; McCoy wrote.</p>



<p>&#8220;In the last 15 years, piracy went from geeky to easy. Transmission technologies improved with the advent of streaming, and delivery via new apps and devices bridged the divide between the PC and the living room.</p>



<p>&#8220;Today’s piracy has become a very different type of organized crime: more sophisticated, tech intensive, very elusive, and massive in scale. Where will it go next? Increasingly, industry antipiracy efforts are bending the trajectory from geeky, to easy, to … broken.&#8221;</p>



<p>McCoy&#8217;s argument goes as follows;</p>



<p>Piracy was once the realm of the technically minded but as technologies developed &#8211; pirate streaming sites, Kodi add-ons, dedicated apps, IPTV &#8211; it became very easy and more accessible to the masses. However, with numerous anti-piracy initiatives underway, piracy is more easily broken. </p>



<p>Add-ons suddenly fail, app creators and their tools &#8216;mysteriously&#8217; disappear, IPTV platforms become less reliable. In this new and somewhat dumbed-down piracy world, access can be switched off in an instant, sometimes by hitting just one component in a system.</p>



<p>At this point, the more seasoned pirate will argue that none of these things present a problem <em>for them</em>. Add-ons can be reconfigured, new sites pop up to replace the last, new app makers fill in the gaps, and so on and so forth. Which, generally speaking, is correct. However, for the less well informed, these things are much more of a headache.</p>



<p>Casual pirates &#8211; the friend or colleague who bought a &#8220;loaded Firestick&#8221; off Craigslist or eBay &#8211; make up a huge proportion of today&#8217;s pirating masses. And the vast majority haven&#8217;t a clue how anything really works. To cite McCoy, &#8220;95 percent of TV piracy is driven by purpose-built set-top boxes.&#8221;</p>



<p>Of course, this doesn&#8217;t mean that 100% of these boxes are owned by tech-illiterates, far from it. However, it seems very likely that the screaming majority have little to no idea how their device works, or what to do when it all goes wrong. The &#8216;blame&#8217; for this can be placed squarely at the feet of technology and plug-and-play culture.</p>



<p>As piracy has grown more sophisticated, partly due to evolution and partly due to anti-piracy measures, much of the brainpower has become entrenched behind the scenes. Like the people who fix modern cars using a laptop and a &#8216;black magic&#8217; cable, many pirates rely completely on the wizardry of a tiny minority to get them out of a jam.</p>



<p>To put it another way, Joe Public&#8217;s ability to carry out the equivalent of a simple oil change is being lost, largely due to pirated content being presented to them as a sophisticated pre-cooked meal on a plate, made using a recipe that few know about or even care to understand.</p>



<p>To an extent, piracy has always been like this. In general terms, the brains have always been at the top while those at the bottom take what&#8217;s available. That said, today&#8217;s prevalence of &#8220;click-and-get&#8221; apps and services means that few have the motivation to learn anything technical while those that do can run into trouble.</p>



<p>Thanks to pirate sites and apps being downranking and removed from search results (sometimes after a lawsuit), combined with the opportunism of the malicious-minded, it&#8217;s now harder than ever for the novice to separate the wheat from the chaff.</p>



<p>&#8220;Try looking for alternatives on a search engine and you’re more likely than ever to get malware and clickbait sites posing as pirates. Are you feeling lucky?&#8221; McCoy asked this week. </p>



<p>While the more technically advanced will dismiss the above paragraph as scare tactics, McCoy&#8217;s comments can hold true for the casual user. It&#8217;s becoming a minefield out there for novices and unless people take the time to study and do their own research, bad things always have the potential to happen.</p>



<p>It will probably take many more years for the piracy &#8216;brain drain&#8217; to show its full effects but the popularity and ease of today&#8217;s ultra-simple and feature-rich pirate apps and services could potentially end up as a positive for entertainment companies.</p>



<p>Will the casual pirating masses spend days, months or years learning how to do piracy the &#8216;old school&#8217; way when things go pear-shaped, or dump a few dollars a month into a couple of legal services and get the headaches over and done with?</p>



<p>As usual, time will tell.   </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2018-180107/">torrent sites</a> and more. We also have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/">VPN reviews, </a><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-discount-coupon-offer-torguard-nordvpn-expressvpn-pia/">discounts, offers and coupons</a>.</p>
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